David Pearson offers this list as work in progress to construct a reference source on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English book owners, based on various kinds of evidence. It does not seek to cover Scottish and Irish owners, unless they were predominantly English-based. The aim is to focus on collections which were at least partly, if not entirely, formed within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the list includes people who died between 1500 and 1715. The author hopes that the list may already have enough data to be useful in various kinds of ways, and that it will stimulate responses and ideas as to how it should be developed.

Original version: January 2007.
Latest update: August 2020. Format: PDF. Size: 1.6Mb