Balliol teamed up with the Oxford Bibliographical Society to support an early career scholar to work in Balliol’s library and archives. Dr Kate Allan visited for 2 weeks in 2025, exploring the 17th-century Nicholas Crouch collection.

Crouch was a Fellow of Balliol from 1640 until his death in 1690, and he left behind a large collection of books and manuscripts reflecting his interest in medicine, as well as politics, literature, and religion.

Dr Allan was particularly interested in the five poems by Katherine Philips (1631/2 – 22 June 1664) transcribed in Balliol MS 336, ‘a note-book containing a few arithmetical data and a short alphabetical catalogue of medical books, later used (the other way up) to copy verses’ (R. A. B. Mynors, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College (1963), p. 342).

By using Crouch’s diaries, the Annual Lists of the College, and the Battels and Buttery Books, Dr Allan was able to locate points of contact between Crouch and Philips’s coterie, identifying Francis Finch as the most likely conduit through which Crouch accessed Philips’s pre-publication poetry.

Dr Allan writes: ‘I am deeply grateful to the OBS and Balliol College for the opportunity to carry out this research and produce a draft of an article based on the findings. I am also indebted to the entire Balliol Collections team, especially Faye McLeod, Naomi Tiley, Nigel Buckley, and Hannah Smith, for making this research trip such a pleasure. Their knowledge and generous advice was invaluable not only for navigating the Balliol archive but also for beginning to pursue a career in special collections. I’ve recently started working at the Eton College library and I am sure this would not have been possible without their kind help.’