The Ashley Library has been described as “the literary crime of the century” [1]. We explore its intriguing history with Malcolm Polfreman, Cataloguer in our Printed Heritage Collections, who has been working with the collection.

The Ashley Library was the passion of Thomas James Wise (1859 to 1937). Growing up in London, in humble circumstances, Wise spent his youth obsessively hunting down cheap editions of seventeenth to nineteenth century literature. Later, rising to commodities trader in the City, he applied the skills of a dealer to amass perhaps the finest private collection of books and pamphlets in the country. He named it after Ashley Road, in Hornsey, London, where he lived in the 1890s. The collection was prized for the quality of its first editions, many of them discovered by Wise himself, and by the turn of the twentieth century Wise was a titan of the bibliographic establishment.

 

Thomas J. Wise. From volume 2 of his Ashley Library catalogue (1905-1908 edition) BL shelfmark: L.R.32.a. [2]

 

By 1934, however, two young bibliographers, John Carter and Graham Pollard were on his trail. In their wonderfully understated An enquiry into the nature of certain nineteenth century pamphlets, they sensationally showed that at least 47 of Wise's pamphlets were either forged, piracies, or suspicious [3] – we now know the real figure to be at least 100 out of around 5000 total volumes [4]. Wise died in disgrace just three years later, in 1937, whereupon the then British Museum Library purchased the collection, recognising its literary significance.

So, how exactly had Wise done it? In short, Wise had mastered the art of creating a fake ‘earlier’ edition. First, he would find an obscure work by a major author. “Sonnets from the Portuguese” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for instance, was perfect, being published in 1850 but only within an anthology [5]. Wise reprinted the text as a separate pamphlet, choosing an old-looking font. He replaced the title page with a new one containing a fake earlier date (in this case 1847 instead of 1850), shortened the title to just “Sonnets”, and omitted any trace of a publisher [6].

Bingo! He had ‘discovered’ a valuable, first edition. Putting “not for publication” on the pamphlet’s wrapper would helpfully explain why no copies had previously come to light. He then retained a copy (or, in this case, two) for the Ashley Library with others being sold, mostly to wealthy American collectors.

 

A copy of the forgery of Elizabeth Barratt Browning’s Sonnets [Ashley 223 & Ashley 4715]

 

Yet the act of creating accomplished forgeries was only half the story. Wise excelled at hiding them in plain sight. A ‘creation’ would arouse less suspicion if the British Museum Library or the Bodleian Library had a copy and so he would quietly donate one. His prodigious 11-volume Ashley catalogue (1922-1936) was a perfect tool for disinformation: his entry for Browning’s Sonnets fabricated a plausible provenance trail for the copy at Ashley 223 [7]. Signatures too could suggest legitimacy, as when Wise shockingly persuaded the confused, elderly Algernon Swinburne to sign a forged copy of his Cleopatra (1866) [8].

 

The forged Cleopatra [Ashley 1857] with Swinburne’s shaky signature

 

Perhaps Wise feared the net would close in. His forging probably lasted only from about 1887 to 1900. By around 1900, however, he had a second trick up his sleeve: theft. Wise began buying cheap, imperfect copies of quarto plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, which he then ‘improved’. The ‘making up’ of perfect copies was nothing unusual for nineteenth century collectors. What sets Wise apart is that he stole pages from copies in the British Museum Library to do it! He damaged at least forty early modern plays from the Garrick collection in this way [9].

But it was the forgeries that ultimately betrayed Wise. The sheer number of his ‘new editions’ – plain-looking pamphlets, ‘for private circulation’, and in pristine condition – aroused suspicion.

Carter and Pollard were tenacious sleuths, Pollard having honed his forensic skills working as an MI5 spy. By the 1930s they could call on new scientific techniques (that Wise could scarcely have anticipated) to provide conclusive proof of forgery. For example, the paper used for Wise’s supposedly 1847 version of Browning’s Sonnets was found to be composed of chemical wood, with a trace of rag, which meant it could not have been manufactured before 1874, and the unusual typeface dated from after 1880 and was probably forged around 1893 [10].

Wise’s thefts only came to light after the Second World War. Wormholes and stitching, misaligned in copies that Wise had owned or sold, lined up perfectly with adjacent pages in copies at the British Museum Library [11]. Research at this time also showed that Wise had created his forgeries in partnership with fellow bibliographer – and fellow forger – Harry Buxton Forman [12].

 

Part of the Ashley Library

 

Quite apart from the forgeries, the Ashley Library is astonishing: a veritable Who’s Who of the most glittering writers and poets of the English language – Shakespeare, Dryden, Byron, Poe, Mary Shelley, the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tennyson, Conrad, and so on – as well as less-feted figures. The books, many in plush Riviere bindings, include poems and novels in multiple editions, as well as proof copies (some annotated by the author); anthologies; critical analyses; catalogues of their work; and biographies.

Ironically, inveterate collector that Wise was, at Ashley 2790 there is even a pristine copy of An enquiry, the very book by Carter & Pollard that in 1934 led so swiftly to his downfall!

 

 

Written by Malcolm Polfreman, Cataloguer, Printed Heritage Collections.

The Ashley Library is being catalogued as part of the British Library’s Hidden Collections programme. Part of the Ashley Library is currently accessible with the remainder expected to become available in 2025.

The available items can be consulted in our reading rooms, via our online catalogue, here: British Library Interim Catalogue

For enquiries, please contact our Reference Services Team.

 

 

References:

[1] Joseph Hone, The Book Forger: The True Story of a Literary Crime That Fooled the World (London: Chatto & Windus, 2024), dust jacket.

[2] Thomas James Wise, The Ashley Library. A catalogue of printed books, manuscripts, and autograph letters collected by T. J. Wise, 2 vols. (London: printed for private circulation, 1905-1908). [BL shelfmark: L.R.32.a.]

[3] John Carter and Graham Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets (London: Constable, 1934), pp. 86-95. [BL shelfmark: 011899.aaa.71.] Alternatively, see 2nd ed. (London: Scolar Press, 1983), a reprint of the 1934 edition (with identical pagination) but with a preface, corrections, notes, and epilogue [BL shelfmark: X.950/30622].

[4] Nicolas Barker and John Collins, A Sequel to an Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets by John Carter and Graham Pollard (London: Scolar Press, 1983), p.122 [BL shelfmark: X.950/30621].

[5] ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’. In Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems, New edn. 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850), II, pp.438-480. [BL shelfmark: Ashley 215]

[6] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets (Reading: not for publication, 1847 [that is, circa 1893]). [BL shelfmark: Ashley 223 & Ashley 4715]

[7] Thomas James Wise, The Ashley Library. A catalogue of printed books, manuscripts, and autograph letters collected by T. J. Wise, 11 vols. (London: printed for private circulation, 1922-1936), I, pp. 97-8 [BL shelfmark: RAR 820.16]

[8] Algernon Charles Swinburne, Cleopatra (London: J.C. Hotten, 1866 [that is, circa 1890?]). [BL shelfmark: Ashley 1857]

[9] David Fairweather Foxon, Thomas J. Wise and the Pre-Restoration Drama: A Study in Theft and Sophistication (London: Bibliographical Society, 1959), pp.11-35 [BL shelfmark: RAR 098.3]

[10] Carter and Pollard, 2nd edn (1983), pp.167-8

[11] Foxon, pp.7-9.

[12] Carter and Pollard, 2nd edn (1983), “Epilogue”, pp34-38. See also Barker and Collins, pp.17-20

What Can the Archive Tell Us?: 40 Years of Wasafiri Magazine

Join the British Library and Wasafiri magazine, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, for a deep dive into the magazine’s archives.

If you listen closely, what stories do Wasafiri’s archives tell us about its editorial inclinations and educational impact over the last four decades –– and how are these twists and turns in its journey intertwined with, and a product of, the larger arts landscape in the UK?

British Library curator, Helen Melody, and collaborative PhD student, Angelique Golding – whose research draws on the magazine’s archives – will offer fascinating insights on the magazine’s rich history, trajectory, and evolution within the changing landscape of publishing and academia since its founding in 1984. In addition to these short talks – and an introduction from the magazine’s Editor and Publishing Director, Sana Goyal – there will also be a selection of items from the archive on show for attendees with an interest in archival and book studies, and global literatures and decolonial practices.

Please book tickets on our website, here. 

 

Our annual Awards for new poetry published in the UK is now open for entries. You can find out more about the Awards, and how to enter at https://michaelmarksawards.com/  

The Awards are for poetry published in pamphlet form, with three prizes. The Poetry Award is for the author or authors of the winning pamphlet. The Publisher award recognises the creativity and commitment to publishing new poetry in pamphlet form. The Illustration Award is made to the artist, and celebrates the partnership between poet and artist in the creation of a poetry pamphlet.

The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets is now in its 16^th year, founded by the Michael Marks Charitable Trust with the British Library and in partnership with the Wordsworth Trust. Our poetry award winner for 2023 was Courtney Conrad for I am Evidence (Bloodaxe Books). Mariscat Press won the Publisher prize and Hannah Mumby won the Illustration prize for The Strange Egg by Kirstie Millar (Emma Press).

You can listen to a selection of readings from a selection of previous winners and shortlisted poets on our Soundcloud account at https://soundcloud.com/the-british-library/sets/michael-marks-award-for-poetry

Stephen Cleary, our Lead Curator for Literary and Creative Sound Recordings, returns as a judge for this year’s Awards. He is joined by Naush Sabah and Michael Symmons Roberts. Naush Sabah is co-founder of the Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal and was the author of Litanies (Guillemot press), shortlisted for the 2022 Awards. Michael Symmons Roberts is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was the winner of the 2013 Forward Prize for Drysalter (Cape Poetry), and the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2004 for Corpus (Cape Poetry).

The winners of the 2024 Awards will be announced at the British Library on Monday 9th December. For more details, and to book your ticket, visit https://www.seetickets.com/event/celebrating-new-poetry-the-michael-marks-awards/british-library/3162418.

The closing date for entries to the 2024 Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets is Friday 27^th September. For more details and how to apply, see the Awards website https://michaelmarksawards.com/awards/2024-awards/   

We are delighted to be working with McMaster University Library on a free virtual event One Love and Venceremos: Celebrating the Correspondence of Austin Clarke and Andrew Salkey, which will be held on Thursday, July 25 at 11 a.m. EDT or 4pm BST to mark the 90th birthday of the late Austin Clarke.

The free lecture will celebrate the correspondence and friendship between Austin Clarke and Andrew Salkey, two pivotal Caribbean diaspora writers. Though divided by oceans, borders, and distance, both writers were united by a sense of brotherhood rooted in shared origins, and the emergent Black political consciousness of the 20th century.

“This correspondence is a joy to read. As writers, language was the brush with which they painted their worlds,” said presenter Myron Groover, archives and rare books librarian in the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University Library. “Here we see them effortlessly moving between different registers of expression and dialect as they reflect on both the pivotal and mundane events of their lives.”

Austin Clarke was a Barbadian-born, ground-breaking, incendiary voice in Canadian and Caribbean literature. Andrew Salkey was an accomplished Jamaican novelist and a central figure of Britain’s Caribbean diaspora.

Clarke and Salkey’s poignant, furious, and funny letters reveal the inner lives, public triumphs, and private reflections of two very different men, both sustained by a sense of international community, deeply rooted in considerations of space, place, identity, exile, belonging, and transcendence.

The event will bring together scholars and archivists from McMaster University Library and the British Library to discuss this remarkable documentary legacy. Organizers say it is particularly meaningful to revisit these letters now that Clarke’s work, and the work of Caribbean diaspora writers more broadly, is receiving a long-overdue critical reappraisal.

McMaster University Library is proud to hold Clarke’s archive, which includes manuscripts, correspondence, personal files, audio tapes, unpublished novels, notebooks, and other material.

The British Library holds Salkey’s large and varied archive, which includes literary drafts, correspondence, research notes, diaries, photographs and ephemera that shed light on the different aspects of Salkey’s life and work in the literary, academic, and political spheres of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain and North America.

“The British Library is delighted to be part of this event, which will allow us to showcase the depth and breadth of the Salkey archive to a wider international audience,” said presenter Helen Melody, Lead Curator, Contemporary Literary and Creative Archives at the British Library. “Austin Clarke is the single largest correspondent within the Salkey archive, and it will be wonderful to work with McMaster to shed a light on two such significant figures in 20th century Caribbean Literature.”

This event is presented by McMaster University Library, the British Library, McMaster Alumni, and McMaster’s Department of English and Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and is part of a project titled Austin Clarke at 90 funded by the International Initiatives Micro-Fund and the Office of the President.

A conference will also take place in September 2024 at McMaster University and Toronto Metropolitan University. The conference, Austin Clarke, Black Studies and Black Diasporic Memory is being organized by Ronald Cummings, associate professor, Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University and Darcy Ballantyne, assistant professor in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Registration will open once details are finalized.

Cummings says the initiative for this project grew out of a course he has been teaching in the department for the last two years titled Windrush Writing/Writing Windrush: Empire, Race and Decolonization.

“This project not only celebrates Clarke and Salkey’s correspondence, but also seeks to understand them in relation to a wider transatlantic public and networks of Caribbean diaspora,” said Cummings. “In keeping with the diasporic friendship of these men, it is fitting that this project connects archives on different sides of the Atlantic and will hopefully lay the groundwork for future collaborations.”

Register for the July 25th virtual event on Zoom

We take a look at the wartime correspondence of the writer, Dorothy L. Sayers, with cataloguing manager, Michael St John-McAlister. 

The first thing that strikes you about Dorothy L Sayers’s wartime correspondence is the sheer volume of it. The paper shortage seems to have passed both her and her correspondents by; the collection of her unpublished correspondence, acquired in 2013 and now catalogued (Add MS 89727) and available for consultation in the Manuscripts reading room, comprises thousands of letters. She even had sufficient paper to keep copies of her replies. The paper shortage only seems to have started to bite in 1944; by April that year her order for five reams could not be fulfilled in its entirety and many of her books were out of print.

The first hint in Sayers’s correspondence that dark days were approaching can be seen in the 1938 and 1939 applications for domestic service vacancies in her household from Germans, Austrians, and Czechs, some of whom explicitly stated that they are Jewish. There was no attempt to underplay the situation: applicants were adamant that they would face “the horrors of Hitler’s inhuman concentration camps” and “despair and a sinister fate” if they did not get out. 

A desperate plea on behalf of two Germans, Add MS 89727/2/3.

Once the war started, up to the end of the first half of 1940, the ‘phoney war’ period, there was little indication in her correspondence that there was even a war on, save for the occasional stoic reference to “we must all try and carry on as much as possible” and a local whip round to pay for entertainment for soldiers billeted in Witham, Sayers’s home town, over Christmas.

The lull came to an end with the Battle of Britain followed by the Blitz. From September 1940 onwards her letters reported bombs near her London flat, the neighbouring property to her solicitor being “blown right down”, the destruction of her favourite milk bar near where she used to work and that of St Alban’s, Holborn, and devastation in Bloomsbury. She described Witham as “reasonably bomb free”, however. The only moment of interest was “a bit of a rocket, which sailed into the garden on Christmas Eve”. Even so, the uncertainty of the war still made it difficult to plan ahead: “I will put down the date and hope for the best” was a typical response to an invitation.

Much of the difficulty in planning was of course caused by travel difficulties. The radius of the area she could get to easily gradually contracted. The west and north were impossible almost from the start. By February 1940 she could not “truly say [she was] eager to travel to Derby on a Saturday under war conditions”. Given that it took “such a fearful time getting anywhere by train” she could not commit to “the loss of two or three days work in order to toil to some distant place with trains going through air-raids at 15 miles an hour”. Gradually, as the Blitz bit, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Surrey became beyond reach. She even had to think hard about engagements in London as that train journey could take two and a half hours each way. From 1943 she began to echo the government’s entreaties, asking herself whether her journey was really necessary, and usually answering in the negative. Given these travel difficulties, her lack of sarcasm in her response to a request to speak in Canada was commendable! 

A typical Sayers refusal, Add MS 89727/2/16. © The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased).

As a result of these difficulties Sayers had to turn down far more invitations to speak than she accepted, although she always did her best to meet invitations to talk to service personnel. Apart from travel, other reasons for her turning down invitations included pressure of work or being asked to speak on a subject she knew nothing about (gambling, missionaries, education, the Eastern Church, and writing for children, for example). She also increasingly turned down invitations to speak about religion: she felt that the surprise value of the arrival of an amateur in the field was long since lost once her appearances became commonplace and in the meantime her main job, which had brought her to prominence in the first place, was being neglected. She marked such letters NMR, ‘no more religion’, so her secretary knew to send out a proforma reply. What she called “difficulties on the kitchen front” also caused her to say no to many invitations. The war had left her “practically without domestic help”, such that “I cannot really leave my household completely in the lurch more than about once a month” – one wonders what state of rack and ruin she expected her household would fall into in her absence! She even had to do her own cooking and shopping (“endless time wasted trotting round the town with shopping-bags hoping for fish or biscuits”). 

Sayers’s domestic difficulties, Add MS 89727/2/14. © The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased).

She often said that as she had turned down invitations from the Ministry of Information and the Archbishop of York she could not very well agree to open a village fete or speak at a school prize day.

Apart from morale-boosting talks to servicemen and women, Sayers did much more for the war effort: she took in an evacuee from Stoke-on-Trent; she refused all requests from the general public to sell them duplicates of her books, instead donating them to be sold to benefit war fund charities or giving them to troop libraries; she refused payment for any books she sent to POW camps; she donated warm clothing, board games, and books to the men working the barrage balloon at Coram’s Fields; and she encouraged salvage in Witham and even knitted a single item using moth-ravaged wool found in a drawer. Sayers thought it “a cheerful little work” and hoped the Women’s Voluntary Service would “be able to find a youngster to fit it.” The WVS was so impressed they wanted to put it on display as an example of what could be done with even the poorest scraps of salvage. 

Sayers doing her bit for the war effort, Add MS 89727/2/7. © The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased).

 

And is thanked for her efforts, Add MS 89727/2/7.

In addition, Sayers was part of a circle producing woollen clothing for nominated trawlers and naval vessels. Obtaining wool became increasingly difficult as the war progressed, but even so the ships companies of HMT Grimsby Town, HMS Caroline, and HMS Sussex, among others, benefitted from sea boot stockings, socks, and sweaters.

Sayers also took part in the 1940s version of crowdfunding. She contributed £2 2s to an imaginative scheme, for women called Dorothy, to pay towards the production of a Spitfire. The resulting Mark V model was named 'Dorothy of Great Britain and the Empire'. Sayers also contributed towards a locally-sponsored Hurricane and contributed to fellow author Ursula Bloom’s appeal for money for bullets for Spitfires (12s 6d per 100; Sayers contributed 30s). Interestingly, her papers contain a price list of components for fighter aircraft: subscribers could donate 6d for a rivet or six screws; £75 would pay for a petrol tank; £500 for a gun turret, and so on. 

Crowdfunding the war, Add MS 89727/2/7.

As a writer Sayers was far from idle during the war. Several of her plays were performed, she wrote a number of essays, had talks published, and her 12 part cycle of radio plays on the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King, was broadcast to a huge audience on the BBC to wide acclaim. However, she wrote no new novels or short stories and the hostilities did have an impact on her most famous character. To requests to write more Peter Wimsey stories she would mischievously reply that Lord Peter was engaged in secret work “somewhere in Europe”.

Surprisingly, the end of the war went, mostly, unremarked. Continuing travel issues and shortages were alluded to, but Sayers felt positive. Writing to a Dutch correspondent she expressed the hope that “we shall find the energy and enthusiasm enough to pull our weight in getting Europe on its feet again”. She clearly wanted to do her bit: despite being the grateful recipient of post-war food parcels from fans and well-wishers overseas, she herself sent food and clothing to German friends and acquaintances in the same period; a measure of the type of person she was.

Sayers as recipient and donor of post-war food parcels, Add MS 89727/1/5-6. © The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased).

 

Written by Michael St John-McAlister, Western Manuscripts Cataloguing Manager, who has recently completed cataloguing the correspondence of Dorothy L. Sayers.

With thanks to David Higham Associates, London for permission to quote from the letters of Dorothy L. Sayers.

 

Further reading:

Add MS 89727

James Brabazon, Dorothy L. Sayers: The Life of a Courageous Woman (London: Victor Gollancz, 1981).

David Coomes, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life (Oxford: Lion, 1992)

Catherine Kenney, ‘Sayers [married name Fleming], Dorothy Leigh (1893-1957)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35966

Barbara Reynolds, Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993)

Ted Hughes, copyright Caroline Forbes

On the 7^th November the British Library will host an event that celebrates and explores Ted Hughes’ second poetry collection, Lupercal. Published in 1960 when Hughes was only thirty Lupercal contains some of the poet’s best-known poems including ‘Hawk-Roosting’, ‘Pike’ and ‘Mayday in Holderness’. In Lupercal we see Hughes’ development from his first collection, Hawk in the Rain, and the beginnings of themes that are considered central to Hughes’ work such as his animal poems and his depiction of the Yorkshire landscape in which he grew up.

The event will be chaired by Ted Hughes’ widow, Carol, who will be joined by poets, Alice Oswald and Zaffar Kunial, and the novelist, Jane Feaver, who worked with Hughes at his publisher, Faber and Faber in the 1990s. Faber is now publishing a heritage edition to mark the 25th anniversary of Ted’s death, and this event brings together speakers with a deep connection to its verses.  

Please join us for an event of discussion and poetry readings, which will provide fascinating insights into Hughes’ work. Please book your tickets today via the Library’s events page.

Event sponsored by Ted Hughes Estate. 

We mark the exciting acquisition of a collection of letters between Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, and his wife Ann.

Unlike Ann Fleming, who has had a whole volume of her correspondence published, Ian Fleming was not a habitual letter writer. So the British Library was delighted to be able to acquire this collection of almost 100 letters from Ian to Ann (and over 50 in the opposite direction) in 2021. This major resource for Fleming scholars has now been catalogued (Add MS 89670) and, from today, is available to access in the Library’s Manuscripts Reading Room.

Correspondence of Ann and Ian Fleming. Reproduced with permission of The Ian Fleming Estate. © The Ian Fleming Estate 1946-1964

The letters, most of which are unpublished and previously largely unseen, give an intimate and detailed insight into the shifting sands of Ann and Ian's relationship, from the complexities of the 1940s when Ann was still married to Esmond Harmsworth (in one letter Ian begs Ann to keep his letters well-hidden instead of leaving them in her underwear drawer), through the heartbreak of the death of Ann and Ian's daughter, Mary, just eight hours old, in 1948, their married life (they married in March 1952), and into the 1960s. It was at times a turbulent relationship and both had numerous affairs. The tension and strain of these affairs, as well as that caused by their long separations (even after their marriage, Ian spent three months every year at the house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica, he had built in 1945), is apparent in many of the letters. On the other hand, many other letters are traditional love letters, passionate and romantic, showing the depth of their feelings for each other.

Apart from their relationship, the subject matter of the letters ranges far and wide taking in the flora and fauna of Jamaica; the development of, and domestic arrangements at, Goldeneye; gossip from the newspaper world (Ian Fleming was foreign manager of the Kemsley newspaper group, the then owner of the Sunday Times, from 1945 to 1959 and continued to contribute articles into the 1960s) and discussion of his 'Atticus' column; their respective health, both physical and mental; the health, development, well-being, and schooling of Caspar, their son born in August 1952; and their international travels (India, Tangiers, Chicago, Miami, New York, Paris, Italy, Hong Kong, Istanbul, and Switzerland). They certainly took advantage of the advent of the jet age, but they also enjoyed the more leisurely pace of luxury liners such as the ‘Queen Elizabeth’, writing vivid pen portraits of their fellow passengers as they sailed.

The Flemings were inveterate gossips and a major thread in the correspondence is discussion of the figures within their social circles or passing through their orbit. The cast list of names that crop up – friends, acquaintances, guests at Goldeneye, fellow guests at others’ dinners and social events – is remarkable: Leolia Ponsonby, Blanche Blackwell (with whom Ian had a long affair), Patrick Leigh Fermor, Lucian Freud (“seems to have become world famous at last”), Micky Renshaw, Noel Coward, Truman Capote (“Can you imagine a more incongruous playmate for me… a fascinating character and we really get on very well” – Capote persuaded Fleming to try “a sinister pill called Mill Town”), Brendan Bracken, Hugh Gaitskell (with whom Ann had a long affair), Erica Marx, Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Edith Sitwell, Rosamund Lehmann, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Rex Harrison, Solly Zuckerman, Gladwyn Jebb, Joyce Grenfell, Pamela Churchill, Paul Gallico, Oscar Hammerstein, Charles Boyer, and Sidney Bernstein.

Ian Fleming to Ann Fleming, August 1952. The Flemings clearly had not yet settled on the spelling of their son’s name. The standard sources refer to him as Caspar. Reproduced with permission of The Ian Fleming Estate. © The Ian Fleming Estate 1952

Ian Fleming to Ann Fleming, August 1952. The Flemings clearly had not yet settled on the spelling of their son’s name. The standard sources refer to him as Caspar. Reproduced with permission of The Ian Fleming Estate. © The Ian Fleming Estate 1952

As would be expected, the letters are also littered with references to Ian Fleming's most famous literary creation, James Bond. He offers regular progress reports and occasional plot details, of mostly unnamed books: at one stage From Russia With Love, for example, is described as “galloping along. I have written a third of it in one week, a chapter a day”; another book “is half done and buzzing along merrily in the rain”. Fleming also alludes to some of the inspiration and sources for the stories and titles. For example, he mentions Blanche Blackwell's gift of a coracle, which he named Octopussy. The short story of the same name, written in 1962, would be published posthumously in 1966. 'Blanche' was the name of the guano-collecting ship in 1958’s Dr. No and Blackwell was the model for Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, published in 1959. Truman Capote is described as “twittering with excitement” while reading a proof copy of Diamonds Are Forever. Fleming writes of correcting proofs of Live and Let Die on-board the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ sailing to New York. There is even a reference to the gold-plated typewriter he bought while writing Casino Royale. However, there are also occasional allusions to Fleming's dissatisfaction with Bond as a character (“I have got so desperately tired of that ass Bond”) and with some of the stories (“just finishing a Bond short story of no merit”). Even so, his later letters make reference to possible television and film adaptations of his books, and on a trip to Hollywood, the positive reaction to his books gives him particular hope (“People really seem to be after my books... it’s as usual a question of crossing fingers & waiting for someone to pry them apart & force some dollars between them”). The first Bond film, Dr. No, would be released in 1962.

This is a truly absorbing collection, and there is something of interest on every page. Even the stationery the Flemings used is worth noting. So desperate were they to keep in touch with each other that if actual writing paper was not to hand they simply repurposed the endpapers of books, the back of a gin rummy score card, and even a hospital temperature chart!

We are grateful to the British Library Collections Trust for their generous support for this acquisition.

With thanks to The Ian Fleming Estate for permission to quote from the letters of Ian Fleming.

 

Written by Michael St John-McAlister, Western Manuscripts Cataloguing Manager, who has recently completed cataloguing the Ian and Ann Fleming letters.

 

Further reading:

Add MS 89670.

Mark Amory (ed.), The Letters of Ann Fleming (London: Collins Harvill, 1985).

Andrew Lycett, Ian Fleming (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995).

Andrew Lycett, ‘Fleming, Ian Lancaster (1908-1964)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/33168.

Andrew Lycett, ‘Fleming [née Charteris], Ann Geraldine Mary (1913-1981)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/40227.

With cataloguing underway on the archive of the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, manuscripts cataloguer, Cameron Randall, reflects on the process and the presence of its previous archivist Murray Melvin.

Working as a Manuscripts Cataloguer, I feel lucky that I can arrive at work each day with the possibility of being transported to past places, previous times, and perhaps most interestingly, entering the lives of those who rise from the collection. A photo, some exchange of correspondence, or an inanimate object can hold stories that have lain buried and dormant among the collection's contents. In some sense, every archive is intrinsically hauntological. Hauntology, as coined by Jacques Derrida, is a spin on the term ontology: a metaphysical inquiry into ideas around being. Where hauntology differs is that it refers to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost.

The collection that I am currently working on, the Theatre Royal Stratford East Archive, seems to capture this idea better than most. Running through the body of the collection is another presence that murmurs within the material. A spectre is haunting the archive: its previous custodian, the actor and director turned theatre archivist Murray Melvin.

Murrary Melvin at the Theatre Royal (c) The British Library Board

Murray enjoyed a distinguished theatre, television, and film career, working with directors including Joan Littlewood, Ken Russell, and Stanley Kubrick. He also appeared in 1966’s Alfie alongside Michael Caine, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, and the 2004 version of The Phantom of the Opera, not to mention the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood. Murray’s first leading role on stage was with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, where he took on the role of Geoffrey in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey, in 1958, followed by the seminal role in Brendan Behan’s The Hostage, later the same year.  His star continued to rise, reprising his role as Geoffrey in the 1961 film adaptation of A Taste of Honey. This performance would lead Murray to win the BAFTA film award for Most Promising Newcomer and the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor.

Murray sadly passed away in April this year, but his spirit not only lives on through his hugely successful acting career but also in the diligent care and attention he provided to the Theatre Royal Stratford East Archive, which was acquired by the British Library in 2021.

A selection of notes, programmes and other papers relating to theatre unions work in the thirties (c) British Library Board

Murray's influence on the archive cannot be understated; his methodology and instructions are extensive, precise, and deeply detailed. Each box contains Murray's literal and metaphorical fingerprints, from the chronological ordering of the Theatre Royal's productions, which Murray's hands would have sorted, to the micro-precision of labelled photos, designating the date, place, and individuals that sit within them. There are even meta-notes that accompany much of the archive, some with extended pages of long insights, stories, and descriptions that unearth an extra layer of context that enriches the content. In these moments, Murray's presence feels at its most potent; his tone and style of writing have a conversational quality that is not only accurate but provokes curiosity, establishing his personal perspective as an invaluable component of the archive and a lens through which to fully understand it.

Given Murray's long-term personal involvement with Theatre Royal Stratford East and his much greater knowledge of its history, I must adhere to his decision-making, and constrain my natural tendencies in shaping the collection, or even abstain from them all together. In some ways, I have to think as Murray would and respect his arrangement, order, and sorting of the material. In this sense, I feel like I am acting as a vehicle or conduit for Murray's archival logic, trying to stay true to his reasoning and maintain how he intended the archive to be perceived. This is both a blessing and a curse, as on the one hand, Murray guides me box to box, and on the other, his methodology creates inflexibility and rigidity, which I have to contend with as I attempt to pull a thread between Murray and potential researchers in the future.

Doll made by Una Collins and used by Fanny Carby in Oh! What a Lovely War (c) British Library Board

My involvement with The Theatre Royal Stratford East comes through the Hidden Collection initiative, which seeks to remove barriers to discoverability and access in the cataloguing backlog at the British Library. The initiative itself is one that recognises the hidden, invisible, and ghostly nature that collections like these possess. Through the cataloguing process, collections are seemingly revived, the hauntological becomes ontological, and the hidden is unlocked to take on a new lease of life, ultimately making archives available for research and opening up the library's collections. As a troubled Danish prince once put it, 'the time is out of joint', but with the work of individuals such as Murray Melvin, we see the possibility for time to fall back into joint, where the past is resurrected in the present to produce new ideas, other perspectives, and unknown possibilities, reaching beyond the material and into the future.

Further Reading

Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx (Routledge, 1994)

Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life (Zero Books, 2014)

Peter Rankin, Joan Littlewood: Dreams and Realities (Oberon Books, 2014)

Murray Melvin, The Art of Theatre Workshop (Oberon Books, 2006)

Murray Melvin, The Theatre Royal: A History of the Building (Stratford East Publications, 2009)