Purpose and methodology behind the use of the PLRE and PLRE.Folger Database
When considering the potential context that booklists and catalogues may provide, it is important to note that book ownership does not necessarily mean that a book was read by its owner. Many books were owned and never read, and many individuals read books that they never owned. However, the presence of marginalia, underlining, and dogeared pages can indicate how past readers may have interacted with it.
An individual’s library becomes a representation of the person, and the books they choose to collect interact with each other to provide evidence of the individual’s interests and opinions. Looking for the presence of books similar to those within the Bader-Hatcher acquisition within private libraries of the period provides insights into the books. Identifying trends in ownership, like social status and profession, builds a perspective on how these books may have been read by their owners, why they were purchased, or why they were printed in the first place.
As of 2022, the Private Libraries in Renaissance England (PLRE) project consists of ten indexed volumes containing 299 booklists ranging from 1507 to 1654. Over 18,000 books are recorded in the database, the majority are drawn from inventories taken under the jurisdiction of the Chancellor of Oxford University as well as libraries of 16th and early 17th century Oxford Scholars.
The PLRE.Folger Database compiles the annotated booklists that appear in the published volumes of PLRE and appends booklists that do not appear in the printed volumes. Together, presently, the appended lists add 130 booklists containing over 2,600 books, and as of 2022 the PLRE.Folger database contains 429 booklists containing over 19,000 books.
The PLRE.Folger database and published volumes were searched for records of works contributed to or written by the main attributed authors of the Bader-Hatcher acquisition. Entries found were categorized as a close/exact match, a partial match, or not a match. This method of categorization was chosen because of the limits of the book lists. Often, they did not fully identify what text the book contained, and book owners also often customized their books, binding multiple separately printed works into one volume.
Books were considered a close or exact match if the entry clearly identified the book as being both the same text and in the same language. Books considered partial matches were if they were the same text but printed in a different language, or in the case when the book sought was the complete works of an author and a library only contained one or two of the author’s works. Books attributed to the same author but containing a completely different text than the one sought were considered as not a match.
The data compiled from the identified entries is not meant to provide an exact picture of readership and ownership within 16th century England; it is merely gathered to form an idea of how the books and authors present in the Bader-Hatcher collection may have been read, or what sort of individuals may have purchased these books when they originally came off the press.
In total, 260 books were identified in the PLRE.Folger database; 66 were considered close matches; 63 were considered partial matches; and 131 were found to be written by the same author but different than the volume it was being compared to.