Fragments and traces: uncovering Sabine Winn’s reading experiences, 1734–1798

Sabine Winn (1734–1798) was an elite Swiss woman who moved to England upon her marriage to Rowland Winn, the fifth Baronet of Nostell Priory in Wakefield. Like many eighteenth-century married women, Sabine's archival traces are fragmentary because of the split-nature of her life between Switzerland, Nostell and London. This article embraces fragmented evidence to partially reconstruct Sabine's reading experiences through her surviving book collection and personal papers. This article points to new methodological approaches by making space for the books on the shelves that contain little to no sign of readership and including non-textual, material signs of reading such as library furniture. By focusing on just one reader in a family library where generations of a family sit alongside each other on the shelves, this article demonstrates that in family spaces readers accessed far more than the fragmentary collection left on the shelves today.