BUCHANAN, George, and others.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Respublica, sive Status Regni Scotiae et Hiberniae. Second edition of Elsevir's guide to Scotland and Ireland, with an interesting provenance: owned by Elsie Keary (1890-1971), one of the first university-educated female mechanical engineers. Her adapted "Biblioteca Elzeviriana" bookplate indicates that Regni Scotiae et Hiberniae was originally from the library of the polymath Edward Heron Allen. He collected Elzevier material and likely gifted the book to Keary.From 1910 to 1913, Keary attended Newnham College, Cambridge, to study mathematics and mechanical sciences. She was one of the first women to do so. At this stage, Cambridge would not allow her to sit for final examinations, so she was not able to graduate. However, she put her education to use during the First World War, when she was employed in a technical role in a government aircraft factory. In 1921, Cambridge University began to award women "titles of degrees", effectively degrees in name only, as women could not participate in university governance. Elsie Keary was retroactively awarded a Master of Arts in 1925, as recorded in her bookplate. Keary and Heron Allen likely met through a shared enthusiasm for the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, which developed a cult following after Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation. In 1926, C. S. Tute created new verse translation, for which Heron Allen provided the foreword and Keary the illustrations.Elsevier published several travel guides to European countries under the title of

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