Awakening a Curate’s Library

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This book is the first to provide an account of the life of Rev. William Arderne Shoults (1839-1887) and his book collecting. It is also the first detailed examination of a true survivor, his book collection of some 5600 items, including medieval manuscripts, incunables, books on ecclesiastical history and primitive church rites and rituals, philology, bibliography, science, travel, and Arabic and Persian texts. The contents cover Shoults's early years at St. John's College, Cambridge University, his work in some of the poorer ritualistic parishes of London, his association with the Rev. Joseph Leycester Lyne (1837-1908), the controversial, enthusiastic, revivalist known as 'Father Ignatius', his work on Latin hymns, his marriage, and his travel overseas, which included visiting the Vatican Library. After Shoults's death at 48, his collection was gifted to Selwyn College, Dunedin, arriving in New Zealand in 1893. The survival of this collection is remarkable and it exists as a fine example of what a nineteenth-century curate could collect.