Proposals are invited for papers for a conference to be held at Chawton House Library on 19 and 20 July 2007. The event is jointly organised by Chawton House Library, the University of Southampton English Department, and Goucher College, Baltimore.
There are many examples of collections put together by individuals that are now valuable assets of the libraries to which they have been donated and to the wider cultural heritage. Such collections include the Henry and Alberta Hirshheimer Burke collection of rare editions of Jane Austen's novels and related materials at Goucher College, and the John Charles Hardy collection of eighteenth-century novels, a substantial part of which now forms a part of Chawton House Library.
This conference will focus on individual collectors of books and manuscripts and their collections. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
* the role of such collections within the context of the libraries where they may now be accommodated
* the way in which libraries manage an individual's collection
* the act and process of private collecting
* the motivation of the individual collector
* the book or manuscript as artifact in the context of private collections
Plenary speakers are Reg Carr (Director of University Library Services and Bodley's Librarian at the University of Oxford), Robert H. Jackson (Collector, author, and lecturer on literature, rare books, and collecting; founding member of the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies), James Raven (Professor of Modern History, University of Essex) and Bruce Whiteman (Head Librarian, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, University of California - Los Angeles).
Proposals of no more than 500 words for individual papers of twenty minutes, or for entire panels of three/four papers should be sent to the conference organizers Gillian Dow, Gail McCormick and Helen Scott at the following email addresses: gail.mccormick@goucher.edu
or
helen.scott@chawton.net
Deadline for proposals: 15th of January 2007
