By msangster
(Many thanks to Julian Pooley (University of Leicester) for this fascinating account of the paper that he gave in the opening session of the ‘Institutions as Networks’ workshop: ‘”Dry, thorny and barbarous paths?”: The Nicholses, their Press and the Society of Antiquaries, 1777-1873′.)
I’m preparing an analytical guide to the vast, scattered archive of three generations of the Nichols family. John Nichols (1745-1826), John Bowyer Nichols (177-1863) and John Gough Nichols (1806-1873) were all printers, antiquaries and biographers, in contact through their printing business, editorship of the Gentleman’s Magazine and research interests with members of learned societies, fellow members of the book trade and private scholars across a wide range of disciplines. The database that I am using to manage detailed calendars of their letters, transcripts of their diaries and travel journals and descriptions of other papers allows us to map their contacts, trace the development of their friendships and assess the ways in which they were able to link together people of like mind and disseminate ideas and the results of research. Although I have often described the Nicholses as being at the ‘heart of the antiquarian network’ this workshop helped me to see them more …read more