The Munby Fellow 2011-2012
Mark Curran, MA, PhD
The Eighteenth-Century Book Trade
Dr Mark Curran has spent the past five years working on The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe, 1769-1794, an initiative which utilises cutting edge database technology to map the trade of the Swiss publishers the Société typographique de Neuchâtel. The resulting database provides a remarkable insight into the francophone book trade of the late-eighteenth century. During his tenure as Munby Fellow, Dr Curran will pilot adding other kinds of sources to the database - from bookseller's catalogues to newspaper reviews - pioneering a wider system for the study of the dissemination and reception of books. His work aims to link realised book-history projects by embedding common and core aspects of their datasets into library catalogues and digital content providers and aggregators. Dr Curran's debut academic article Mettons toujours Londres was recently awarded the French History article prize, and his first book 'Atheism, Religion and Enlightenment in pre-Revolutionary Europe' will be published by the Royal Historical Society in early 2012.