The Intellectual Culture of the Country House, 1500-1700 was an international conference held at the University of Sussex over three days in July 2011. It emerged from and celebrates the fruitful connections established in recent years between the Centre for Early Modern Studies at Sussex and Petworth House (the southern seat of the Earls of Northumberland in this period), and was intended to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars working in many different contexts, both inside and outside the academy, to explore fresh perspectives on this newly vibrant field.

The intellectual networks associated with country houses in the early modern period – with library collections at their centre – were charted by two plenaries who are leading figures in this area: Professor James Raven (History, University of Essex) and Professor Maurice Howard (History of Art, University of Sussex).