Current PhD Students

Grace Murray

Thesis Title:

Imagining a Space for Science in Early Modern How-To Manuals

Supervisor:

Professor Helen Smith

Description:

My doctoral research examines early modern experiences of reading ‘how-to’ books, printed in England from 1550 to 1630. These practical manuals promised to teach their readers a variety of skills and trades, from gardening to chess. Through textual analysis and attention to marginal notes made by sixteenth and seventeenth-century readers, each chapter of my thesis explores a different mode of journeying through the early modern text, from following advertisements around the city of London to solving puzzles.

I hold an MA in Early Modern Studies from University College London and a BA in English from the University of Cambridge, and my research at York is funded by an AHRC studentship from the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities. I am also the co-founder of Miscellany, an international research network established during the COVID-19 pandemic to connect postgraduate early modernists interested in the history of the book.