The Centre for The Novel aims to attract scholars and postgraduates to work on Aberdeen University's exceptional collections of rare printed works and manuscript materials, which are available through the Woolfson Reading Room in the Sir Duncan Rice Library.
The library holds one of the best collections of early popular novels of any university in the world, an extensive range of supportive material such as letters, philosophical and medical literature, chapbooks, rhetorical handbooks, political pamphlets, and complete runs of many periodicals from the eighteenth century onwards, such as Gentleman’s, Blackwood’s, The Yellow Book and The Atlantic.
The Library holds the Sir Walter Scott Collection assembled by Bernard C. Lloyd. Students and scholars also have access to extensive holdings of critical materials relating to the novel.
