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Professor Samantha Rayner reflects on her research as she prepares to give her Professorial Inaugural Lecture on Una Dillon and the ‘formidable’ women booksellers of London, 1930s-1960s, at UCL on 9 June 2022…
Tell us a little about your research…
My main research interest is in bookselling, with one focus at the moment on women booksellers in the UK in the period after the First World War, which will become a short monograph with Cambridge University Press. But I’m also developing the Bookselling Research Network, set up with a colleague, to bring people all over the world working on bookselling research together; and work just started with Bookshop.org, around bookshops which create community spaces for marginalised voices is exciting, too! Reading for Wellbeing, is another interest, so it all connects. I was a bookseller in the past, so it’s brilliant to be able to pursue them as research areas in my current roles.
Why is your research important?
Bookshops are often overlooked as places where ideas (often radical ideas) are, and have been, disseminated and given space to develop. Bringing them into focus as valuable sites of activity around texts, marginalised voices, and the curation of reading materials often allows us to examine the impacts this had on readership, on cultural developments, and on communities. Many of these bookshop histories are in danger of being lost so raising awareness of their value is a critical task.
What inspires you in your work?
Bringing more visibility to and appreciation of hidden or lost voices, or events or spaces. I really enjoy collaborative working with internal and external colleagues, and am constantly inspired by them, and by my own students, who often bring new insights and perspectives forwards to keep learning, to keep being curious.
What has been your most memorable career moment so far?
There have been many high points: one was launching Academic Book Week with the Booksellers Association and other partners in 2015 as part of the AHRC/ British Library Academic Book of the Future Project. And I am excited about work being done via the Bookselling Research Network including a conference at Hay-on-Wye in September!
What passions/hobbies do you have outside of work?
Swimming, pottering about in the garden with my two cats, reading historical fiction, and collecting old Pan and Penguin paperbacks.
What book is currently on your bedside table?
Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman, and The Year Without Summer, by Guinevere Glasford.
Sign up for the lecture (in person or online), please register at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/una-dillon-and-the-formidable-women-booksellers-of-london-1930s-1960s-tickets-289409861687