Transforming the Early Modern Archive: The Emmerson Collection at State Library Victoria

John Emmerson, QC (1938–2014) was Australia’s foremost collector of early modern rare books, and in 2015 his collection of over 5500 items was deposited at State Library Victoria, Melbourne. The Emmerson Collection is now the largest public collection outside the British Library, London, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, of materials relating to the English Civil War, and provides rich and diverse material for the analysis of printed texts and book history, marginalia, bindings, and the practices and politics of collecting. This article locates the Emmerson Collection in its Australian and international context, and outlines the approaches taken to Emmerson’s books in this special issue, arising from the Australian Research Council–funded Linkage Project, Transforming the Early Modern Archive: The Emmerson Collection at State Library Victoria (LP180100704).