Thesis: Collecting the Counter-Revolution: Refugees, Religion and Anglo-French Politics in the library of Richard Viscount Fitzwilliam (1745-1816)
Funded by AHRC / Collections and Communities in the East of England
Supervisors: Dr Tom Stammers and Dr Suzanne Reynolds (Fitzwilliam Museum)
Second Supervisors: Dr Esther Chadwick and Elenor Ling (Fitzwilliam Museum)
The collecting activity of Richard, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam (1745-1816) took place against the backdrop of extraordinary turmoil, violence and political debate. The library assembled by him (now the founding collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) bears witness to his deep engagement with the events of the French Revolution, as expressed through his own anonymously published writings, his efforts to acquire books from endangered religious institutions on the continent, and his close relationship with French émigré networks in London.
This project is reconsidering Lord Fitzwilliam’s relationship to the political fall-out of the French Revolution, and his participation in cross-Channel networks of ideas, as well as casting new light on Fitzwilliam’s personal attitudes towards Catholicism, at a moment when its toleration in Britain as a potentially subversive minority faith was hotly contested.
Research interests
- British and French politics, society and culture in the long eighteenth century
- The French Revolution and Napoleonic Era
- Counter-Revolutionary thought and culture
- Public history
Education
- PhD student, The Courtauld Institute of Art (2024 – present)
- MA in Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York (2023)
- BA in English Language and Literature, King’s College London (2014)
