In this episode of the ReConEx podcast we speak to Dr Anna-Lujz Gilbert (@anna_lujz)about her research into four Devon libraries founded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and what they can tell us about books, readers, and communal and religious identities in early modern Devon.
Anna is a postdoctoral research fellow at University College London in the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (or CELL). She is currently working on the project Shaping Scholarship tracing early donations to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Anna undertook her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Exeter and has also worked in the heritage sector for the National Trust and Devon Archives. Today we will be discussing Anna’s research for her 2021 Exeter PhD thesis, which was entitled ‘Public Books in Provincial Towns: Parish and Town Libraries in Early Modern Devon’.