Library Collections

The Centre for The Novel is grounded in the exceptional material resources of Aberdeen University as well as its long intellectual tradition of rhetoric and literary criticism. Over its five-hundred-year history, the University has acquired an outstanding collection of printed works and a unique manuscript archive. It holds one of the best collections of popular fiction published between 1790 and 1830 of any university in the world; an extensive range of supportive material such as Enlightenment philosophical and medical literature, chapbooks, rhetorical handbooks, political pamphlets and conduct books; and complete runs of many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century periodicals (Gentleman’s, Blackwood’s, Dublin University Magazine and many more). The recent acquisition of the Sir Walter Scott Collection assembled by Bernard C. Lloyd has further enhanced the Library’s holdings. The Centre for The Novel aims to attract scholars and postgraduates to work on these collections.