Frans Korsten – författare

Thomas Anthony Birrell (1924–2011) was a man of many parts. For most of his working life he was Professor of English and American Literature in the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, where he was famous for his lively, humoristic and thought-provoking lectures. He was the author of some very popular surveys of English Literature in Dutch, but – first and foremost – he was a bibliographer and a historian.His scholarly oeuvre is extensive and includes such highlights as English Monarchs and their Books (London 1986), a study of the Old Royal Library. However, many of his publications are hidden in occasional publications, periodicals and introductions to books no longer in print. That is why a – posthumous – selection of his bibliographical essays appeared in 2013, entitled Aspects of Book Culture (Ashgate 2013), and that is why it was decided to bring out a companion volume containing a selection of his essays in the field of recusant history.The present edition contains fourteen of Birrell’s articles published between 1950 and 2006. They all demonstrate his bibliographical expertise, his in-depth knowledge of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English Catholic history and his absolute determination to examine every scrap of archival material that might shed light on the episodes he was investigating. But, perhaps most important of all, he combined his scholarship with an intense interest in the individual lives that shape and are shaped by history, so the lasting impression that these articles will make is the sense of getting close to a whole series of personalities caught up in the turmoil of their time.Aspects of Recusant History was edited by Jos Blom, Frans Korsten and Frans Blom, all three former students of Tom Birrell and, both individually and collectively, authors and editors of a whole range of important book historical publications. (CS1092).

Thomas Anthony Birrell (1924–2011) was a man of many parts. For most of his working life he was Professor of English and American Literature in the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, where he was famous for his lively, humoristic and thought-provoking lectures. He was the author of some very popular surveys of English Literature in Dutch, but – first and foremost – he was a bibliographer and a historian.His scholarly oeuvre is extensive and includes such highlights as English Monarchs and their Books (London 1986), a study of the Old Royal Library. However, many of his publications are hidden in occasional publications, periodicals and introductions to books no longer in print. That is why a – posthumous – selection of his bibliographical essays appeared in 2013, entitled Aspects of Book Culture (Ashgate 2013), and that is why it was decided to bring out a companion volume containing a selection of his essays in the field of recusant history.The present edition contains fourteen of Birrell’s articles published between 1950 and 2006. They all demonstrate his bibliographical expertise, his in-depth knowledge of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English Catholic history and his absolute determination to examine every scrap of archival material that might shed light on the episodes he was investigating. But, perhaps most important of all, he combined his scholarship with an intense interest in the individual lives that shape and are shaped by history, so the lasting impression that these articles will make is the sense of getting close to a whole series of personalities caught up in the turmoil of their time.Aspects of Recusant History was edited by Jos Blom, Frans Korsten and Frans Blom, all three former students of Tom Birrell and, both individually and collectively, authors and editors of a whole range of important book historical publications. (CS1092).

Thomas Baker (1656-1740) occupied an important position in the world of antiquarian and historical learning in the first forty years of the eighteenth century. He was a well-informed historical scholar at home in theology, law, science and philosophy, whose scholarship extended to the history of the book and the book trade. His voluminous correspondence was almost entirely about books, and he emerges from it as a bibliographer and book-collector of note. This catalogue attempts a reconstruction of Baker's library of some 4300 titles. The library reflects the man, particularly his absorption in and love of St John's College, Cambridge, which retained the cream of his collection, and the University. Dr Korsten provides a biographical sketch, an account of Baker as book-collector and bibliographer, and a general survey and assessment of his library.

The history of the angelicall virgin glorious S.Clare (Douai 1635) is a translation by 'Sister Magdalen' of a work by the Franciscan priest François Hendricq, Vie admirable de madame S. Claire fondatrice des Pauvres Clairesses (1631). In its turn Hendricq's book is largely a translation of parts of Luke Wadding's Annales ordinis minorum ('Annals of the Franciscan Order'). These volumes include an account of the activities of the young woman, Clara Offreduccio di Favarone, one of the many followers of St. Francis of Assisi. In 1212 Clara was advised by St. Francis to withdraw to the monastery at San Damiano in Assisi. In this way St. Francis founded his Second Order, an order of religious women known as the Poor Clares. 'Sister Magdalen' has been identified as Elizabeth Evelinge who belonged to a dissident group of Poor Clares that left their English convent at Gravelines in 1627 and started a new convent at Aire in May 1629. The copy of her translation reproduced in this volume is that of Heythrop College, University of London.