Speaker: Dr. Kit Baston

When refugees and exiles turned to the Signet Library to save a great European culture from destruction.

In the years after Napoleon, Polish culture found itself under threat from enemies east and west. The effort to save it began here at the Signet Library in Edinburgh when a group of exiled Polish nobles and intellectuals donated a collection of rare and important books to the Library, creating a unique oasis of Polish culture out of reach of the Prussians and the Czar.

Later collections would be established in Paris and London, but the Signet Library’s Bibliotheca Polonica was the very first and marked the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between the WS Society and the Polish nation. Dr. Kit Baston’s talk is based on her research into and survey of the collection which is now in the care of the National Library of Scotland.

Accompanied by an exhibition in the Upper West Library.