Monthly Archives: April 2013

Ghosts in the Machine: (Re)Constructing the Bodleian’s Index of Literary Correspondence, 1927–1963

With the first phase of our Project at an end and our second phase now well underway, it seems an appropriate moment to look back at our work thus far on EMLO and to return to the dataset that lies at its core: the ‘Index of Literary Correspondence’ in the Bodleian Library, a card catalogue which occupies an imposing set of wooden filing drawers at the ‘Selden End’ of the Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room.

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CofK Spin-Off Site: The Travel Journal of Martin Lister

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Our former Martin Lister Research Fellow Anna Marie Roos has recently launched a small but perfectly formed spin-off site Every Man’s Companion, or An Useful Pocket-Book: The Travel Journal of Dr Martin Lister (1639-1712). Funded by a British Academy small grant, the site brings to life the notes kept in an almanac by Lister during a medical peregrination to Montpellier in 1663, and includes the text of the journal (rendered as a blog); supporting material from Lister’s memoirs and correspondence; a cross-referenced index of people, places, and books; and some sumptuous photographs taken by Anna Marie when she retraced Lister’s steps in the summer of 2011. Anna Marie discusses the project in this paper delivered at our 2011 conference Intellectual Geography: Comparative Studies, 1500-1750.

The Century That Wrote Itself: CofK Fellow on BBC Documentary

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Century_That_Wrote_Itself

Leigh Penman, our former Samuel Hartlib Postdoctoral Fellow, was recently in action on the prestigious BBC Four documentary The Century That Wrote Itself. Presented and written by author Adam Nicolson, the show explored a wide variety of seventeenth-century scribal and reading practices by means of a series of beautifully shot and edited case studies. One of these was Samuel Hartlib, and Leigh headed to a café on the concourse of St Pancras International to be interviewed by Adam about the intelligencer’s epistolary contributions. The programme is still available on the iPlayer; the Hartlibian section starts at 37:30. Project Director Howard Hotson also advised, while Leigh talks about the size and descent of Hartlib’s archive in this podcast.

The CofK Diaspora: New Horizons for Former Fellows

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Been There, Got The T-Shirt: Our Digital Editor Kim McLean-Fiander has swapped out Early Modern Letters for Early Modern London

The talented community of students, postdocs, and research fellows who made our first phase between 2009 and 2012 such a success have gone on to exciting new things. Kelsey Jackson Williams, our John Aubrey Doctoral Student, has taken up a Stipendiary Lectureship at Jesus College; Leigh Penman, our Samuel Hartlib Postdoctoral Fellow, has returned to his native Australia with his growing brood to take up a prestigious Research Fellowship at the University of Queensland; our Edward Lhwyd Research Fellow Helen Watt is now back at the University of Wales working on the Place Names of Shropshire Project; our Martin Lister Research Fellow Anna Marie Roos is now Senior Lecturer at the University of Lincoln; our John Wallis Research Fellow Philip Beeley remains Associate Faculty here in Oxford and is pursuing exciting funding opportunities around the English mathematical intelligencer John Collins; while our Digital Editor Kim McLean-Fiander (pictured in her EMLO finery) is now weaving metadata magic as a Postdoctoral Fellow on the wonderful Map of Early Modern London project at the University of Victoria. Iva Lelkova, our Prague-based Comenius Postdoctoral Fellow, continues with the Project, and will soon be joined by a brand new Hartlib Postdoctoral Fellow and a Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow. Could this be you? Join our Mailing List, Follow Us on Twitter, or stay tuned to the Blog (or its Feed) to stay informed!

Welcome to CofK’s New Home!

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Welcome to the new home of Cultures of Knowledge: Networking the Republic of Letters! Now in our second phase of development (2013-14), generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are based at the University of Oxford. Our mission is to reconstruct and interpret the epistolary networks and communities of the early modern period, especially by means of the ongoing population and development of our union catalogue of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century correspondence, Early Modern Letters Online. You can still access our old site – which provides an archive of our activities between 2009 and 2012 – but to keep updated with EMLO, our Projects, and Events – not to mention our growing archive of Resources and our Blog – stay right here. This is also the place to find out how to Get Involved. You can also join our Mailing List, or get more regular updates by Following Us on Twitter!