Libraries, Books, and Collectors of Texts, 1600-1900 by Annika Bautz James Gregory

Author:Annika Bautz, James Gregory [Annika Bautz, James Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780429952395
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Adams entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in October 1839, as a sizar: a student who received some form of assistance such as meals, lower fees, or lodging during his period of study.

By taking an exhibition, and gaining prizes during his college course, and by using every economy his expenses were kept as moderate as could be, and all energy was used on the farm to raise money to pay his bills.

(Adams 1892, cited in Harrison 19)

Once at Cambridge, Adams rapidly forged connections with the local booksellers. There were 18 booksellers and stationers listed in Pigot’s Directory in 1830 (McKitterick 2001, 171),8 to which one could add six different bookbinders (Pigot 1830, 6). Adams’s accounts in October 1840 show that he had £29 5s when he left his home and how one of first expenses, on 29 October, was to subscribe to the Bible Society for a sum of £2 6s, and to pay a bookseller’s bill of £1 14s. The bookseller was Deighton, the bookseller in Trinity Street, also a publisher and agent to the university, presumably the first port of call as the most famous and official of booksellers most conveniently located for a student at St John’s College. In the 1850s, undergraduates were advised to allow not more than £10 per term for books; although it is very difficult to estimate how much they were spending in reality, especially as cash would allow for discounts. Adams, however, spent twice the amount of his rent at the bookseller.

During Adams’s time in Cambridge, undergraduates did not have access to the University Library: a ban which had been initiated in 1472 and was not lifted until 1854, and even post-1854, they would only have access to their college libraries. As one of the biggest and most ancient colleges, St John’s had one of the best libraries, but Adams’s notes show how students also used the bookseller to look at articles and more recent material—for instance, an article in Joseph Liouville’s Journal des Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées:9 ‘Looked at article in Liouville’s journal at Deighton’s’. Adams demonstrably bought new publications at Deighton’s,10 and students clearly used local commerce as a means of accessing material not yet added to the institutional collections of Cambridge.

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