About.

J. P. Ascher studies bibliographical methods along with Restoration to eighteenth-century generalist writing. He is currently working on two book projects: first, a broad history of seventeenth-century reading titled “Creating an Audience for Science: The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in Context,” and, second, a comprehensive “Descriptive Bibliographical History of Henry Oldenburg’s Editorship of the Philosophical Transactions, 1665-1676.” Over the summer, he conducted primary-source research at the Royal Society with a fellowship from the Bibliographical Society of America, the Katherine F. Pantzer Jr. Scholarship from the Bibliographical Society, and as a Platzman Fellow at the University of Chicago.

This fall he will be the inaugural Presidential Scholar in Bibliography at the Linda Hall Library, the Pantzer Fellow in Descriptive Bibliography at the Houghton Library, and taking up a Lisa Jardine Grant to continue his work at the Royal Society in London.

His dissertation was a descriptive bibliographical history of the very beginning of enlightened reading epitomized by the periodical The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

Where is he now?