Dissenting academy libraries and their readers, 1720-1860

异议学院图书馆项目构成了一个重要的新多作者研究的重要组成部分“不列颠群岛异议学院的历史，1660-1860”，将由伊莎贝尔里弗斯（伦敦大学玛丽女王学院）和大卫威克斯（威廉姆斯博士图书馆）与努德哈康森和理查德沃特莫尔（苏塞克斯大学）一起编辑。这本书将由剑桥大学出版社（Cambridge University Press）暂时于2013年出版，并在网上提供相关资料。编辑们将从宗教史、思想史、政治史、社会史和文学史等领域的知名学者和年轻学者中挑选人选。尽管人们对这一主题非常感兴趣，尤其是在政治和文学史学家的著作中，但最近的研究大多依赖于50年前到近100年前出版的三本过时的书。在过去的三十年里，一些重要的专家著作已经出版，但是没有关于这些学院最近的通史。最早的非国教学院是在1662年的《统一法案》（Act of Uniformity）下建立的，目的是为不信奉英国国教的新教学生提供类似牛津和剑桥的高等教育，这些学生基本上被排除在牛津和剑桥之外。在18世纪和19世纪早期，福音派异议（公理会和浸信会）和理性异议（长老会和一神论）的对立传统建立了自己的学院。他们的主要目的是为牧师准备候选人，但也有一些受过教育的非专业学生。19世纪中叶，学院最初的目的是提供高等教育，但由于伦敦大学和地方大学的成立，以及牛津大学和剑桥大学的改革，这一目的在很大程度上被取代了。这个新项目的具体目的是分析和比较主要的公理会、长老会和浸信会学院的图书馆，特别是学生对书籍的使用情况。尽管伦敦的威廉姆斯博士图书馆、牛津大学的哈里斯曼彻斯特学院和布里斯托尔浸会学院保存着大量现存的资料（档案、书籍、目录、贷款登记簿、学生论文和课堂笔记），但令人惊讶的是，对这些持不同意见的学院图书馆的研究却很少。该项目将解决有关书籍的可用性和使用、教学方法、传统思想的灌输和鼓励原创思想等问题。学生们实际上读了什么？教授的课程和自主学习之间的关系是什么？在培养宗教和世俗领域的主要异见思想家方面，学院扮演了什么角色？学院在维护正统或鼓励学生异端方面扮演了什么角色？宗教与社会青年基金的申请是为两名两年的博士后研究助理和一名一年的技术助理提供资金，以收集和分析数据并撰写结果。其结果将是在威廉姆斯博士中心网站上免费发布有关图书馆的详细数据的在线出版物，以及“异议学院历史”中关于图书馆及其读者和教学方法的重要章节的印刷出版物。该项目将首次提供准确和详细的信息，了解在英格兰新教异见受到法律限制，后来又从法律限制中解脱出来的时期，持不同政见者的高等教育情况。它将展示不同教派学院的宗教和知识多样性，从而为宗教少数群体教育的现代研究提供一个比较历史的视角。这些发现对于研究这本书和阅读的历史学家、教育家、当地历史学家和高等教育部门以外的教会成员都很重要。

The dissenting academy libraries project forms a crucial part of the research for a major new multi-authored 'History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860', to be edited by Isabel Rivers (Queen Mary, University of London) and David Wykes (Dr Williams's Library), together with Knud Haakonssen and Richard Whatmore (University of Sussex). The book will be published by Cambridge University Press, provisionally in 2013, with supporting materials online. The editors will draw on a team of established and younger scholars in the fields of religious, intellectual, political, social, and literary history. Despite considerable interest in the subject, seen particularly in work by political and literary historians, most recent studies rely on three out-of-date books published between fifty and almost a hundred years ago. Some important specialist work has been published in the last thirty years, but there has been no recent general history of the academies. The earliest dissenting academies were established as a result of the 1662 Act of Uniformity, and were intended to provide Protestant students dissenting from the Church of England with a higher education similar to that at Oxford and Cambridge, from which they were largely excluded. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the rival traditions of evangelical dissent (Congregationalist and Baptist) and rational dissent (Presbyterian and Unitarian) established their own academies. Their main purpose was to prepare candidates for the ministry, but some educated lay students as well. In the mid nineteenth century the academies' original purpose to provide a higher education was largely superseded by the founding of London and the provincial universities, which were open to dissenters, and by the reform of Oxford and Cambridge. The specific aim of this new project is to analyse and compare the libraries of the principal Congregational, Presbyterian, and Baptist academies, and in particular the use of the books by the students. Despite the wealth of surviving sources (archives, books, catalogues, loan registers, student essays and lecture notes) held at Dr Williams's Library, London, Harris Manchester College, Oxford, and Bristol Baptist College, these dissenting academy libraries have been surprisingly little studied. The project will address questions about the availability and use of books, methods of teaching and learning, the inculcation of traditional ideas, and the encouragement of original thought. What did students actually read? What was the relationship between taught courses and independent study? What was the role of the academies in training leading dissenting thinkers, in both religious and secular subjects? What part did academies play in maintaining orthodoxy or in encouraging heterodoxy amongst their students? The application to the Religion and Society Youth Call is for funding for two postdoctoral research assistants for two years and a technical assistant for one year to collect and analyse data and to write up the results. The outcomes will be the online publication with free access on the Dr Williams's Centre website of detailed data about the libraries, and the print publication of important chapters on libraries and their readers and on methods of teaching and learning in 'A History of the Dissenting Academies'. The project will make available for the first time accurate and detailed information about the higher education of dissenting youth during the period when Protestant dissent in England was subject to and later freed from legal restrictions. It will show the religious and intellectual diversity of the academies of different denominations, and will thus provide a comparative historical perspective for modern studies of education among religious minorities. The findings will be important for historians of the book and of reading as well as for educationalists, and for local historians and church members beyond the HE sector.