THE WS SOCIETY ONLINE EXHIBITION 2024
In words and pictures, our new exhibition tells the story of that Golden Age, during which the WS Society’s giving birth to a small legal library burgeoned into the creation of one of the aesthetic and intellectual wonders of the late Scottish Enlightenment.
The Exhibition begins and ends with Thomas Hosmer Shepherd’s iconic image of the Signet Library’s Upper Hall. It first appeared in John Britton’s Modern Athens in 1829 when the Hall was still in fact serving as part of the Advocates Library, a carry-over from the building’s origins in an attempt to house the whole of Scotland’s legal establishment under one roof. But the WS Society had already been the Hall’s proprietors for three years at this point, and the moment in 1833 when the Signet Library took ful possession of the room marked the culmination of the Library’s first Golden Age.
The Exhibition’s major highlights include a transcription of historic letters from the period of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion written by Deputy Keeper Charles Cockburn and the digitization of a rare and important pamphlet on early Scottish legal education written by advocate John Cuninghame.
The Exhibition is in four parts:
- Setting The Scene : Lawyers and Intellectuals Before 1722
2. 1722: The Foundation of the Signet Library
3. The Signet Library in the Scottish Enlightenment
John Davidson and the Enlightenment Signet Library
4. The Golden Age of the Signet Library
Macvey Napier: Golden Age Librarian
Acknowledgements
Dr. Kit Baston undertook the research and transcription behind the Cockburn Letters 1714-1715 and material is also included here from her cataloguing of the WS Society’s archives of the period the exhibition covers.
Conservation of materials, research and a great deal of the photography for the exhibition was undertaken by the WS Society Conservator Jo Hockey.
This exhibition owes much to four books: The First Scottish Enlightenment: Rebels, Priests, and History by Dr. Kelsey Jackson Williams (Oxford University Press, 2020); Charles Areskine’s Library: Lawyers and Their Books at the Dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment by Dr. Kit Baston (Brill, 2016), Building for Books: the Architectural Evolution of the Advocates Library by Dr. Iain Gordon Brown (Aberdeen University Press, 1989) and The Signet Library Edinburgh and its Librarians by George Ballantyne (Scottish Library Association, 1979).
The text and captions are the responsibility of WS Society staff and any errors are the Society’s responsibility .