Join CEMS on Wednesday 18th March for a talk by Prof. Abigail Williams on the reading practices of non-elites in long eighteenth-century Britain. The talk will be followed by a Q&A and drinks reception.

To attend, please register here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/centreforearlymodernstudies/2083498

Talk Abstract

The history of reading has often been the history of exceptional readers. We have focused on figures like the Renaissance polymaths John Dee and Gabriel Harvey, whose marginal annotations to their works illuminate a complex, elite intellectual life and a wide range of erudite reference. But what of the traces of the more humble early modern reader, the self-taught kitchenmaid, tailor, slave, farmer, those who read and wrote not in institutional or private libraries but in kitchens, ships’ cabins, under hedges. What might their stories have to tell us about changing access to culture and social aspiration in the long eighteenth century? What models of life writing can we find in the diaries, letters and memoirs of those we have forgotten? This talk explores the way in which we might use the material traces of past readers to better understand the relationship between literacy and selfhood in early modern England. 

Speaker Bio

A Professor of English Literature, Professor Abigail Williams joins King's in 2026 as the Executive Dean for the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. As Executive Dean, Professor Williams provides leadership and strategic direction for the faculty, supported by the Vice-Deans, Director of Operations, Heads of Cluster, Department leads, and Professional Services staff. The Faculty consists of 11 departments, teaching over 6,000 students across disciplines. Professor Williams joins King's from the University of Oxford where she was the Associate Head of Research and Innovation for the Humanities Division.

Prof. Williams’s research interests in eighteenth century literature have generated a number of collaborative projects, in the museum and heritage sectors and in creative industries. She is the author of Reading It Wrong: An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature (Princeton University Press, 2023), The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home (Yale University Press, 2017), and Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture (Oxford University Press, 2009). She writes and presents on cultural topics for BBC Radio 4, and her most recent BBC Radio 4 series include, Pride or Prejudice: How We Read Now (2022) and I Feel Therefore I Am (2023). She also served as a non-executive director of Oxford University Innovation, a trustee of the St Peter’s College Foundation, and a trustee of the Museum of the Home in Hoxton, east London. She is currently finishing a book for Allen Lane Penguin on class, culture and autobiography.