Summary of the impact

This case study focuses on an exhibition of a collection of books owned or written by the great sixteenth-century writer Michel de Montaigne. These books were donated to the Cambridge University Library by the family of Gilbert de Botton. Philip Ford was involved in negotiating with the family for this donation, and subsequently wrote a monograph on the collection to accompany the exhibition. During the writing of this monograph, he worked closely with the exhibition's curator, Jill Whitelock (a senior librarian at Cambridge University Library), to determine the form and content of the exhibition. The monograph and exhibition attracted considerable attention and was followed up by public lectures by Philip Ford. The principal benefit from this project has been the enhanced conservation and presentation of the cultural heritage of sixteenth-century France.

Underpinning research

Philip Ford was employed by the University of Cambridge in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages (French Department) from 1981 until his untimely death in 2013. He was appointed to a personal chair in French and Neo-Latin Literature in 2004. All the research undertaken in preparation of the exhibition and the accompanying monograph was carried out while he was an employee of the University of Cambridge.

Before the reception of the donation and the associated exhibition, Professor Ford had organised an international conference on Montaigne in 1988, whose proceedings were jointly edited by him in 1989, had written three articles, in 1998, 2001, 2005, and contributed to several entries in the peer-reviewed Dictionnaire de Michel de Montaigne, ed. Philippe Desan (Paris: Champion, 2004; revised 2007). Research for the exhibition and the accompanying monograph, which was freely available to visitors to the exhibition, was undertaken before the collection had been catalogued, and aimed to focus on making the collection as accessible as possible to scholars. The editions of the Essais printed before 1600 were described in detail, with indications of variants, and photographs of title pages; a table presented all the editions between 1601 and 1700 again provided bibliographical details, and notes on ownership, variants, and the relationship between different editions; a shorter table presented eighteenth-century editions, fewer in number after the Essais were placed on the Index in 1676. Early translations of the Essais are also described in detail, as well as the Journal de voyage. Another chapter is devoted to the ten books in the collection bearing Montaigne's signature, of which by far the most significant is his copy of Denis Lambin's 1563 edition of Lucretius. This is the most heavily annotated of all the books known to have been owned by Montaigne. The other books are also clearly presented, with photographs of all their title pages. [It has subsequently been established that the tenth book, an edition of Du Bellay's Regrets of 1565, bears a signature forged by the nineteenth-century fraudster Vrainc-Lucas.] Various other aspects of the collection are also described, including texts that Montaigne is known to have possessed, but in copies not actually owned by him. There is also a section devoted to works written by or associated with his friends and family, including, of course, Etienne de La Boétie.

During the writing of this monograph, Philip Ford worked closely with the exhibition's curator, Jill Whitelock (a senior librarian at Cambridge University Library). Between them, they decided on which images to use in the monograph, and what should be included. Jill Whitelock was responsible for the exhibition captions, which were proof-read by Philip Ford. The contents of the exhibition and the text of the captions can still be consulted at
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Montaigne/labels.html.

References to the research

Details of the impact

The exhibition `My booke and my selfe': Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592' ran from 4 August-23 December 2008, with 14,526 visits to the Exhibition Centre during the period of the exhibition. In addition to this, the Montaigne Exhibition Site [5.1] received 48,000 hits in 2008, 61,981 hits in 2009, 57,026 hits in 2010, and 46,197 in 2011. The visitors' book [5.2] shows that a large number of non-academic visitors attended the exhibition, with comments from people from as far afield as Italy (`This exhibition interested me a lot. I have to read more and more about him', October 2008) and Japan (`Thanks for the exhibition. I was very lucky and impressed [by] these rare printings including the handwriting by the philosopher. These can never [be] seen in Japan', December 2008). Non-academic blog posters [5.3, 5.4] also showed their appreciation, with one who attended Philip Ford's lecture writing on 25 October 2008, `the lecture room holds fifty people and it was pleasing that it was almost full — deservedly so as we were well served by our lecturer', and another expressing how `privileged' he was to be taken on a tour of the collection by Philip Ford.

The official opening of the exhibition coincided with an international colloquium devoted to `La Librairie de Montaigne', held in Clare College, and aimed at bringing out the potential riches of the collection to be exploited in further research. Delegates, who included some of the world's top experts on Montaigne from France and North America, as well as the UK, attended the opening of the Montaigne exhibition at the Library and were invited to a private view of the collection in the newly created Montaigne Room in the Rare Books Room. The Montaigne Room provided the perfect venue for the delegates to be able to browse and enjoy the collection to the full. One fruitful outcome of the conference was the planned collaboration between the University Library and the CESR, Université François-Rabelais in Tours to digitise books from the collection for Les Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes. As a result, in 2009 the Library signed an agreement with the Université François-Rabelais, Tours, to digitise eighteen books from the Montaigne Library, including Montaigne's annotated copy of Lucretius's De rerum natura (1563). This, along with five other texts, have been digitised to date [5.5]. The digitisation of the Lucretius has been considerably enhanced by the transcriptions (both diplomatic and normalised) of the end pages and the marginalia in the main text, and the translation of the Latin notes into French, all by Alain Legros at the CESR. In this way, this extremely important text has been fully enhanced so as to be available to a world-wide audience, and preserved in digital form. Furthermore, the CESR have obtained funding from the CNRS to set up a project known as MONLOE [5.5]. According to the project description, `the aim of this project is to bring together, in a vast whole which would represent a single author's body of works, the main editions of the Essais, the diachronic edition of the Exemplaire de Bordaux, all the works bearing his signature held in various libraries, both public and private, and the main works which may be considered as constituting the major sources of the Essais. The Gilbert de Botton gift to Cambridge University Library in 2008 gave birth to this project, which is both international and collaborative.' Cambridge is, of course, one of the partners of the project.

On 6 May 2009, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, Ambassador of France to the United Kingdom, visited the University Library to view the Montaigne Library. The visit was led by Professor Philip Ford, and was highly appreciated. Cambridge University and its French Department strive to maintain close relations with the French Embassy and its Institute, and this was a useful exercise in showcasing our activities.

The publication of the conference proceedings: La Librairie de Montaigne (see section 3), enhanced both scholarly and public appreciation of the collection. Philip Ford participated in the University's Festival of Ideas in October 2008, presenting to an audience of 45, comprising of people from the general public, a lecture on Montaigne's education, his attitude to books, the actual room the library was kept in, and the publication and reception of the Essais over the centuries. In September 2010, he lectured on `Montaigne and his books' for a group of twenty-five visitors to the Library taking part in the University's Alumni Weekend, and gave an interview in 2012 on the collection to The Philanthropist, a magazine sent to donors to the University by its Development Office. It is hoped to raise money for further, related acquisitions, and funding to digitise the entire collection.

Sources to corroborate the impact

[5.1] http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Montaigne/labels.html

[5.2] The Exhibition Visitors' Book (photocopies of which are available on request).

[5.3] http://lundbooks.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/montaigne-sculpture-music.html, Blog of Philip Lund, a theological bookseller.

[5.4] http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001792.html, blog by Lorcan Dempsey, Vice-President of Online Computer Library Center.

[5.5] http://www.bvh.univ-tours.fr/Montaigne.asp.