Analyzing an Eighteenth-Century Irish Booklist Part 1: a Snapshot of Eight Shelves

This article is the first of a pair which consider an early eighteenth-century booklist in the library of the National Trust’s Castle Ward. These articles ask how much it is possible to learn from this booklist. The appearance of the present Castle Ward library room is largely the result of the early nineteenth-century renovations by Edward Southwell Ward (1790–1837), 3rd Viscount Bangor. However, items within the library, including this booklist, reveal an earlier era of book ownership in Ireland by a prominent Plantation-origin family and their descendants. This article analyses and contextualises this booklist in relation to book ownership in the period while broaching some of the challenges of working with such bibliographical sources.