Lecture to focus on former Library

On Wednesday March 2 at 7.30pm Armagh Robinson Library, Northern Ireland’s oldest public library, will be holding online talks on the book collecting activities of the Conway and Rawdon families.

The speakers will be Brenda Collins (Visiting Scholar in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast, formerly Research Officer at the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum) and Dr Daniel Starza Smith (King’s College London).

They will speak about Edward, second Viscount Conway (1594–1655), one of the foremost book collectors in seventeenth-century Britain and Ireland. His library at Lisnagarvey (modern-day Lisburn) had some 8,000 volumes. While many of these are believed to have been destroyed during the 1641 Rising, an identifiable number of them now survive as part of the collection at Armagh Robinson Library, along with a handwritten catalogue of Conway’s Irish library. Among this surviving collection are books signed by Conway’s friends, the poet John Donne and the dramatist Ben Jonson. The catalogue of Conway’s library, which contains over 1,000 pages, shows that he amassed a large collection of books on many subjects, and in several languages. His interests ranged widely, with books on theology, history, literature, music, science, horticulture, horsemanship and warfare, as well as ballad collections, chess and dancing manuals all represented.

The talks on March 2 will examine Conway’s collecting habits, comparing the Lisnagarvey library to Conway’s 5,000-volume collection in London, and will suggest how the surviving evidence can help us understand the way knowledge circulated and was acquired at the time. The subsequent descent of the books, rescued in 1641, through four generations of Conway’s descendants, following the marriage of Conway’s daughter to George Rawdon, the estate manager of the Conway lands in the Lagan Valley, will also be considered. Some of the books, now held in Armagh, for instance, contain signature inscriptions of George Rawdon’s son, Arthur, daughter-in-law Helen, their son, John and grandson, John, first earl of Moira. Several of those containing Sir Arthur and Helen Rawdon’s signatures relate to botany and gardening, which is hardly surprising given the fact that together they were responsible for creating a notable garden at Moira.

Free places for the online event can be reserved at: https://armagh-robinson-library.arttickets.org.uk/, by emailing [email protected] or calling 028 3752 3142.

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