Ted Hughes archive

Data Protection and archival collections

Whilst proofreading the catalogue it is important to be aware of any possible issues relating to data protection within the archive. The Data Protection Act was passed in 1998 and came into force in March 2000. The legislation was created to safeguard information about individuals by ensuring that eight principles are adhered to. These eight principles put simply relate to the way in which data is processed, how accurate and secure it is and whether it can be transferred to others. Information about the Act and how it relates to different situations can be found in a number of places including the British Library website and of course the Act itself, which is available online.

For archivists and cataloguers the main issue to consider is whether an archive contains any possibly sensitive material that could adversely affect an individual if it was in the public domain, so for example information about their health, private life or financial affairs. One of the key things to consider is time (i.e. how recent the information is) and whether or not the individual involved is alive, as the Data Protection Act relates only to living people. However if the nature of the information means that it could cause pain or distress to members of the deceased family then the matter may need to be considered again. As I hope you can see it's a complicated business, particularly if you work in an archive, which holds a lot of sensitive material such as medical records (e.g. NHS trusts or Wellcome Library).

Whilst at first glance you might think that the Hughes archive might not face problems around data protection as Hughes is no longer alive it is important to realise that the archive also contains personal information about individuals who were in contact or involved with him. Any material that cannot be made available currently because of data protection will be restricted for a set period and then released into the public domain when sufficient time has elapsed.

The size and complexity of this archive mean that checking for these issues has taken slightly longer than anticipated. As a result and allowing for the final stages of the process it is expected now that the archive will be available to researchers in early Spring 2010. I will continue using the blog to provide updates on progress though so please watch this space!

Ted Hughes and Keith Douglas

Whilst the horrors of war have been described in many different literary works the use of the theme in poetry has been particularly well established since the First World War with the work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and others. Interestingly the papers of Sassoon have recently been in the news as Cambridge University are currently seeking funding to enable their purchase of a collection. With this in mind and given the Armistice Day services this week I was interested to see whether there is any material in the Hughes with a connection to war.

Whilst Hughes spent two years in the RAF on National service he did not participate in active combat. He explains though in an autobiographical piece in the archive how the First World War was the 'big, ever-present, overshadowing thing' in his childhood as his father and uncles fought in the conflict, and indeed it 'seemed to have killed every other young man that my relatives had known'. Another connection in the archive is material written by Hughes about the young poet and soldier, Keith Douglas who died aged only 24 whilst leading a tank troop as part of the D-day landings on the 9th June 1944.

A number of Douglas' poems were published in Poetry London prior to his death and arrangements had been made between Douglas and the editor of Poetry London, Tambimuttu to publish a new poetry collection just before Douglas' death. Sadly of course the new poetry collection was not created although a volume of Completed Poems by Douglas was published in 1951. Hughes meanwhile became interested in Douglas in the early 1960s. He wrote a number of essays about Douglas' work, one of which was broadcast on the Third Programme in 1962. The broadcast and publications were the first critical studies of Douglas' work and they helped to increase awareness that led to the re-publication of the Selected Poems of Keith Douglas in 1964. Drafts of these essays therefore provide an insight into Hughes' ideas about Douglas' poetry and his own creative process.

Interestingly the British Library holds the archives of Keith Douglas and Tambimuttu, which help to shed light on developments in poetry in the 1940s. The Douglas archive is available to researchers and Tambimuttu's will be by the end of the year. With that in mind I had better get back to my own cataloguing...

Correspondence and catchphrases

I am currently checking through the large correspondence section of the archive. As I have explained before the correspondence is subdivided into separate sections for personal and writer's correspondence, general correspondence, letters from children and copies of Hughes' outgoing letters. Although the majority of the correspondence was catalogued in February and March a number of letters were found amongst other papers in the archive in later months. This means that it is all the more important to proofread this section of the catalogue to check that the information is correct as quite a few additions and changes have been made over the last six months. I am sure that the wide variety of correspondents will be of real interest to researchers.

Once it has been catalogued all the material has been placed into acid free four-flap folders, which can be folded to ensure so that they fit snugly around the material inside without damaging any of the individual papers. Whilst it could be argued that the wide variety of boxes in which the archive arrived (including boxes from Marks and Spencer, and Pampers) were most interesting to the eye the acid free boxes that the folders are now stored in will hopefully play a much greater part in ensuring the long term preservation of the archive.

Well now I had better get back to all that correspondence...

Hughes, nature and animals

As I mentioned in my last post, I gave a talk last week at the Ted Hughes festival run by the Elmet Trust. I am pleased to say that the talk seemed to go well and I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet a range of different people including Hughes' childhood friend, Donald Crossley, academics and others interested in Hughes. It certainly highlighted to me the level of interest that there is in Hughes' life and work as well as the archive here at the British Library.

I was particularly pleased to be able to give the talk in Mytholmroyd, the small town in the Calder Valley where Hughes was born on 17th August 1930. I visited Mytholmroyd and Heptonstall over the summer, but it was interesting to return to the area again as I think that there is a clear connection between the landscape and aspects of Hughes' work. As I mentioned previously the archive includes autobiographical material, which provides an interesting insight into Hughes' childhood and the influences that shaped his life and work. In one document, which appears to be the transcript of an interview, Hughes explained how his interest in and connection with the natural world and animals had been there all his life although it was something that 'my poetry eavesdropped on only at a later date'. I am sure that such insights will be very useful for researchers hoping to better understand Hughes' well documented relationship with the natural world.

Now I had better return to my proof-reading as there is still plenty of material to work through...

Cataloguing and the Ted Hughes festival

Following on from my previous blog posts I am continuing my work checking the Hughes catalogue. Given the sheer size of the archive and the need to check and add information to a variety of different fields from date and quantity to a description of the archival material this is going to take quite a while.

I thought that some statistics about the archive might be useful at this point. When the archive first arrived at the library it was housed in an assortment of over 220 box-files, folders and cardboard boxes. This material has now been placed in acid-free folders and boxes and in total there are 420 folders, 3 large volumes, 10 oversize items (which will not fit into standard size archive boxes), 1 box and 1 large envelope. From these figures it seems almost as though the archive has grown, which I should say that it hasn't! Hopefully though, by repackaging the archive into acid-free containers it should be possible to help ensure its future preservation.

In addition to this work I am also currently preparing information about the Hughes archive for a talk that I will be giving later this week as part of the Ted Hughes festival being organised by the Elmet Trust. The festival, which takes place in Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge from Thursday 22nd until Sunday 25th October includes evening events with the poets, John Hegley and Jackie Kay; a talk from Keith Sagar, a Hughes academic and a guided walk led by Hughes' childhood friend, Donald Crossley. Further information about the festival can be found on the Elmet Trust website. Now I had better get back to my talk...

It's all in a name - cataloguing an archive

As I explained in my last posting I am now working through my existing cataloguing entries, proofreading content and numbering the folders and files. Once this quite large task has been completed I will then have to write what we, archivists call 'the higher level descriptions'. This refers to information about the creator of the archive, so in this case, Ted Hughes as well as providing a description of the provenance of the archive, in other words how it came to be acquired by the British Library.

Other things to be included will be a brief outline of the archive as a whole, its content and format as well as information about the copyright of the material within it. This information is likely to be the first thing that researchers will access when they start to browse the catalogue so it is important that it is clear and concise. Looking through the archive again I am stuck by its sheer size and the variety of material within it. I am sure that the archive will provide a real insight into all aspects of Hughes' life from his literary works to his personal interests and friendships.

One thing that I was interested to discover was that Hughes would never have published his work under the name 'Ted Hughes', but would have instead used his full first name, Edward. However as Hughes went onto explain in a letter to the American academic, Leonard Scigaj he became superstitious about changing his name by the time that his first poetry collection, Hawk in the Rain (which was submitted by Sylvia Plath on his behalf) won the competition run by the Poetry Centre of the Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association of New York in February 1957. Whilst I am sure that Hughes' poetry and prose would have been as successfully received if it had been published under the name 'Edward Hughes' it is interesting to think how firmly someone's name becomes linked to their achievements. Having said that the archive will be recorded in the British Library's catalogue as being that of 'Edward James Hughes (Ted Hughes)' so perhaps that is the best of both worlds!

Hughes, the Royals and fishing

As the deadline for the completion of my project draws closer I am now starting to re-examine some of my earlier decisions about the arrangement and description of the archive. Having now worked with the archive for nearly ten months I feel that I am much more confident about the content of the material and any interrelationship between different subjects within it that may not have been initially clear. With all this in mind I am working back through the previously catalogued material and proofreading my entries. At the moment I have not found too many surprises so I have my fingers crossed that the majority of the more difficult identifying work has now been done.

Two new publications that have come out this month both shed some light on Hughes' life through two of his friendships. In the first book, a biography of the Queen Mother by William Shawcross, the author describes the friendship between the poet and the royal who met through Hughes' position as Poet Laureate. Interestingly the connection between Hughes and members of the Royal Family can be seen in the archive with the inclusion of correspondence including a letter from Prince Philip.

The second book entitled Savage Gods, Silver Ghosts: In the Wild with Ted Hughes, published this month by Douglas and McIntyre has been written by Hughes' friend and fellow fisherman, Ehor Boyanowsky. In the book Boyanowsky describes his friendship with Hughes and their fishing trips in British Columbia. Again there is a significant amount of correspondence between Boyanowsky and Hughes in the archive, which I am sure will be of interest to anyone wishing to learn more about Hughes' well known love of fishing.

Timmy the Tug

I am sure that many of you will be aware of the forecoming publication of the recently rediscovered children's story, Timmy the Tug by Ted Hughes and Jim Downer. The story was created by Downer between 1953 and 1956 when he was living in a flat in 18, Rugby Street in Bloomsbury, London. Downer created the book hoping to impress on his girlfriend that he would be a good husband and father. Downer and Hughes met when they lived in the same house on Rugby Street and after looking at Downer's work Hughes asked if he would him to provide his own versin of the verses. Although the men stayed in touch over the years, Downer's original manuscript was not returned until it was discovered amongst Hughes' papers by Carol Hughes in 2008.

The publication by Thames and Hudson, which consists of Downer's original illustrations and Hughes' verse comes out next Monday, 21st September. Aside from this I am pleased to say that I have now looked through all the material in the Hughes archive, include a box of papers and notebooks, which were previously kept by Hughes in a hut in his garden that he used as a work room. As I have mentioned before it is interesting to be able to get a sense of the way in which Hughes created his literary works and I hope that this material will enable readers to understand his creative process.

Ted Hughes and T.S. Eliot

As I continue cataloguing the Hughes archive I have found material relating to a number of collaborative projects, which Hughes was involved with including Remains of Elmet (with Fay Godwin) and Seneca's Oedipus (with Peter Brook). In addition the archive also includes correspondence between Hughes and his British publishers, Faber and Faber. Whilst the majority of correspondence dates from the 1990s the archive does include a letter sent to Hughes by Charles Monteith in 1958. In the letter, Monteith writes about their shared journey back to England from America that saw 'pure Mediterranean cruise weather'. He also writes that T.S. Eliot will be happy to act as Hughes' referee for the Guggenheim grant, which Hughes later successfully won in April 1959. Other correspondence between Hughes and his publisher includes textual queries and discussion of new ideas for literary work.

Hughes' relationship with Eliot and more widely Eliot's work at Faber and Faber will be highlighted in a new exhibition entitled ''In a Bloomsbury Square': T.S. Eliot the publisher' opening on Monday 14th September. The exhibition, which will be held in the British Library's Folio Society gallery includes original manuscripts, artwork and sound recordings that have been brought together from the holdings of the British Library, the Faber archive and the Eliot estate. This includes three items from the Hughes archive, which have never before been on display. In the first, a diary entry, Hughes writes about attending the now famous party at Faber and Faber when he was photographed with Eliot, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice and W.H. Auden. The next, another diary entry contains Hughes' reflections on his feelings about Eliot's death. The final item is a notebook containing drafts of poetry inscriptions written by Hughes for Faber staff to be included in a private publication of The Hawk in the Rain to mark the fortieth anniversary of its publication in 1957.

The exhibition should provide an interesting insight into Hughes' relationship with his publisher and his place in the wider context of Faber and Faber's work. Hopefully being able to see material from the archive will also whet the appetite of researchers hoping to come and consult the archive in the future.

Unusual items within the archive

When cataloguing the personal archive of an individual there are certain things that you expect to find such as diaries, notebooks and correspondence. In turn when cataloguing the archive of a literary figure there are particular types of material that you expect to find such as literary drafts, working notes and unpublished material. When cataloguing any archive though you often find things that can be quite surprising and the Hughes archive has been no exception.

In previous postings I have highlighted items within the archive that have fitted into this category such as information about where and when Hughes wrote his poetry. As I have now looked through the majority of the archive in detail I have also identified some further material. One example of this is a number of sketches of people and animals, which I have found. In some cases the sketches have been drawn on papers used for other purposes such as sketches of fish that can be found on environmental papers. Elsewhere though I have also found two sketchbooks and a number of loose leaf sketches drawn on otherwise blank paper. Interestingly one of the sketchbooks includes a series of sketches of a bull, which appear to be drafts of an illustration of a bull that Hughes created for the front cover of Moortown Diary (1978).

Whilst at a seminar about Hughes in April I learnt from Daniel Weissbort that Hughes was very attached to the South Devon bull, Sexton, that lived on the farm that he bought with his wife and father-in-law in 1972. Hughes sketched the bull, which weighed a tonne when he bought it in 1973 from memory.

Finally I have found a much more unexpected item in the archive, a nineteenth century traveller's journal. The journal dated between 19th December 1890 and 30th January 1891 and written in a small black notebook by an unknown author contains an account of a journey through the Mediterranean, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean towards Australia. The volume also contains a number of pencil sketches of people including fellow passengers and native people whom the traveller encountered on his journey. It is certainly an interesting and unexpected part of the archive particularly as it is not clear how Ted Hughes himself acquired it.