Staff Profile

I am an interdisciplinary historian and curator of music, literature, and print. My research interests centre around book history, music bibliography, and the historical networks of the print trade. I hold a BA in music and popular music, a Masters in musicology, and a PhD in History from the University of Liverpool. I have five years’ professional experience in the music department of the British Library where I worked as a research curator for the British Library’s Discovering Music: 19^th Century webspace and co-curated the Beethoven. Idealist. Innovator. Icon. Exhibition (2021-2022).

My AHRC funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD (University of Liverpool in partnership with the British Library), Selling the Score: Entrepreneurs and New Markets for Printed Music in Eighteenth-Century England (2023), examined the commercial and cultural intersections between music, graphic, and literary print. However, the broad aim of my scholarly and professional work is to develop a more complete understanding of eighteenth-century print by bringing the historical value of the musical scores to the attention of wider scholarship.

I am currently working as a research associate on the AHRC-funded Book Forgery: History, Practice, and Detection project with Dr Joseph Hone. The project aims to evaluate the fundamental challenges that forgeries present to the libraries and archives sector and to set standards for dealing with these materials across universities, libraries, and the rare book trade. My research for the project interrogates the bibliographic and paratextual features of printed music and books to uncover forgeries that have been erroneously described as authorised originals in library catalogues. 

Publications:

Bridge, Dominic J. R., “A Musical Bouquet for the Ladies”: Gendered Markets for Printed Music in Eighteenth-Century England. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 46, 4 (forthcoming)

Bridge, Dominic J. R., “Sold at the Vestry: John Rippon and the Hymnbook Trade.” In The People of Print: Eighteenth Century, edited by Adam James Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

Bridge, Dominic J. R., “Exhibition Review ‘Two Last Nights!’: Show Business in Georgian Britain.” Brio 56, no.2 (2020): 96-98.