GladCAT
GladCAT is the end result of a three year AHRC funded research project undertaken by Gladstone’s Library and the University of Liverpool between 2006 and 2009, which aimed to identify and catalogue the books personally owned by William Ewart Gladstone. It is an electronic research resource invaluable not just for Gladstone scholars, but for all students of nineteenth century literature and culture, as well as for historians of the book and of reading.
GladCAT is an online catalogue, separate from the main library catalogue, which contains records only for those books known to have belonged to Gladstone himself. Many of these – like Gladstone’s copies of works by Dante, Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Newman, and Tennyson - contain his own annotations and are irreplaceable. GladCAT not only provides a unique insight into the scope of his library, but provides extensive, searchable details of his many annotations and marginalia. It is designed for use by research by scholars interested in Gladstone’s reading, and by literary and cultural historians interested in reading practices, in the nineteenth-century ‘reading experience’, and in libraries as cultural institutions. These are dynamic and relatively new areas of cultural investigation, and no other project in the world offers such an insight into the habits of an individual reader over so many years and across so many volumes.
The project to identify Gladstone’s books and create GladCAT was headed by Dr Juliet John as principal investigator. The postdoctoral researchers on the project were Dr Mark Llewellyn (2006-7) and Dr Matthew Bradley (2007-9). Also working on the database were Karen McDonaugh-Nicholls, Michela Baldo, Jessica Thomas, Stewart Manifold, Mark Bradley, Deirdre Boleyn, Gregory Morris and Patsy Williams.
- To access the GladCAT library, please click here.
- For a guide to GladCAT and how it was created, please click here
Gladstone and his Library
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