Women's Book Collecting in the Eighteenth Century: The Libraries of the Countess of Hertford and the Duchess of Northumberland

abstract:The long eighteenth century is characterized as a watershed moment for women's increased engagement as both readers and writers. Key to understanding that engagement is the phenomenon of the personal library collection. Studying the development of women's personal libraries unearths hidden legacies of reading and reception that revise and extend existing histories. This essay explores the collecting practices and libraries of an aristocratic mother and daughter: Frances Seymour, the Countess of Hertford, later Duchess of Somerset (1699–1754); and Elizabeth Percy, the Duchess of Northumberland (1716–1776). Using six manuscript library catalogs from the Northumberland Archives as a case study, it illuminates trends and issues in the study of libraries, book collecting, and book ownership in the period. These lists have the potential to shed light on the broader question of cultural contributions by eighteenth-century women collectors to the circulation of ideas and the fashioning of taste.