Collecting Early Modern English Books in British Settler Colonies: Contexts, Problems, and Opportunities

Abstract

This essay considers the Emmerson Collection’s holdings of early modern printed drama, comparing and contrasting them with examples of printed drama found in other Australian and New Zealand libraries’ collections of early modern books. Prompted by the recent critical turns in bibliography and archival studies, the authors interrogate the extent to which the Emmerson Collection – and other major collections, such as those in the Mitchell and Turnbull Libraries – enables or frustrates feminist and decolonial approaches to book-historical scholarship.