Early Book Owners in Britain

About this Database

For several decades now there are taken efforts throughout Europe to investigate the national histories of books, their printing and trades.

The British History of books, which started in the early Middles Ages and continues to date, comprises not only the establishment of printed books in Great Britain, but also the import and buying of them.

The private ownership of printed books is up to now a barely investigated question. Margaret Lane Ford addresses herself to this task in respect of the private ownership of printed books in the late 15th and early 16th century. For a contribution to The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain she has gathered evidences of provenances for the time period in question from over 4300 printed works in the past, books in private ownership had a high practical value and were of importance for the professionalism. Classical and theological texts were indispensable for the university-educated and the students, while technical works were needed by merchants and handcrafters.

Other owners of books were for example the monasteries, who used books in their workshops of writing and the gentry, who had the means to acquire books for mere luxury.

As a group of students of the Fachhochschule Hannover we would like to make a contribution to the historical research of books and provide the scholarly community with a database, using the library software Allegro-C and containing all the bibliographic data of the sample used for Margaret Ford's research on privat book ownership in the 15th and 16th century in Britain.