Thanks to the kind support of the German History Society, I was able to spend a week this March conducting research at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin and the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden. My PhD thesis examined German print on the English Reformation, 1558-1603. I am now moving to look at Anglo-German religious networks in the early seventeenth century, beginning with William Perkins (1558-1602), a moderate Elizabethan Puritan and a prolific writer. Many of his works were printed in German translation from 1602 onwards, but these have not been looked at in depth. This is in part due to the fact that many of these printed German translations have not yet been digitised. In Berlin, I was able to look at one of Perkins’s most popular works, Der Catholische Reformierte Christ (Herborn, 1602), as well as Latin editions of this work published in Hanau in the early 1600s. The SLUB in Dresden had four further undigitized translations of Perkins’s works. I was particularly pleased to be able to identify the English originals in all but one case: the contents of the German translated works were at times taken from a selection of Perkins’s writings and not a direct translation of a single original. This was my first visit to Dresden, so I made a little time to visit the Residenzschloss of the Saxon Electors, including its ‘Grünes Gewölbe’ of early modern treasures, as well as the amazing collection of works by Cranach in the Gemäldegallerie. I was also fortunate enough to speak to a number of the early modern Faculty from the Technische Universität Dresden, who provided excellent suggestions for tracking down relevant manuscript material for my project.

Dr Kate Shore is a Postdoctoral Associate Member in Early Modern History at the University of Oxford and Academic Officer at Christ Church, Oxford.