The project idea consists of the digital edition of the personal correspondence between Hereditary Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (1786-1859) and her mother, Empress Dowager Maria Fedorovna. This correspondence, which is kept in the Weimar Main State Archives, provides unique insights into Weimar relations during Goethe's time and the international significance of the Weimar court after the reorganisation of Europe following the Congress of Vienna.
The aim of the proposed research project is to systematically reconstruct and analyse the "Bibliotheca Anglicana" within the entire collection for the first time and to make its contextual relevance visible. Particular attention will be paid to the materiality of the "English" books.
At the end of the funding period, the results will not only be presented in a monograph (printed), but the "Bibliotheca Anglicana" will also be prepared for the public (digitally, using the library reconstruction tool LibReTo). Both results offer valuable opportunities for follow-up projects in the early modern period.
The project, led by Gabriele Ball, is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for three years (1 November 2023-30 October 2026).
This project examines the intertwined practices of producing and publishing botanical knowledge that characterised the networked knowledge culture of early modern botany. The focus is on text-based practices, which have long received little attention in research due to a persistent fascination with scientific objects. Specific forms of production and circulation of botanical texts created a publication system that was used by the botanical community and at the same time constituted it.