The Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) is a project aimed at bringing together information on all books published in Europe in the first age of print. At present this comprises 755,000 editions and around 4 million surviving copies, located in over 9,500 archives and libraries worldwide.
The Vernacular Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy Database (VARI 2.0) is a searchable catalogue of Aristotelian works written or published in Italian between 1400 and 1650. The census covers both manuscript and printed sources preserved in libraries in Italy, other European countries, and the US.
The database accessible here is in need of updating, with the last addition of new data dating back to July 2013. Currently, the database covers over 200 printed editions, 200 manuscript works, 130 authors, 65 dedicatees, and 115 printers. Since the research is still in progress, these figures are expected to rise in the coming years and will be periodically updated. The census already counts a wide range of materials constituting a critical mass suitable for general overviews as well as closer analyses.
Bess of Hardwick (c.1521/2 or 1527-1608) is one of Elizabethan England's most famous figures. She is renowned for her reputation as a dynast and indomitable matriarch and perhaps best known as the builder of great stately homes like the magnificent Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth House. The story of her life told to date typically emphasises her modest birth, her rise through the ranks of society, her four husbands, each of greater wealth than the last, and her ambitious aggrandisement of her family. Bess of Hardwick's letters, which number almost 250 items of correspondence, bring to life her extraordinary story and allow us to eavesdrop on her world. Her letters allow us to reposition Bess as a complex woman of her times, immersed in the literacy and textual practices of everyday life, as her correspondence extends from servants, friends and family, to queens and officers of state.
