Diederik Oostdijk is Professor of English and American Literature at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and was a 2021 Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow at the British Library.

The British Library is an excellent place to do cross-media research. During my research stint, I intended to study the working relationship between poets and visual artists, especially Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and Leonard Baskin (1922-2000). As a consequence, I spent most of my time in the Manuscripts Reading Room where papers of both are held. In addition to finding many relevant letters and manuscript drafts that reveal how the English poet and American artist collaborated, I found plenty of doodles and drawings that showed the genesis of several books on which the two worked together. The detailed finding aids on the British Library website often describe these, but they cannot do justice to the experience of seeing this visual material in person. In order to take photographs or have scans made, it is necessary to acquire permission from the copyright holders, so it is advisable to seek this before making the trip to the British Library. It is much more of an ordeal to do that after visiting.

The British Library’s holdings of fine press materials was equally relevant for my research, but to check these out I needed to go one floor down, to the Rare Books & Music Reading Room.¹ Hughes and Baskin collaborated on many books that were published by their own publishers, Eremite Press and Gehenna Press, respectively. The leather bindings containing the richly illustrated books printed on handmade paper are sights to behold. Some of the fine presses were short lived and have remained obscure, but they often presented young authors with their first opportunity to publish, or gave established writers the chance to try out new approaches for their work. It allowed Hughes, for instance, to express his grief about Assia Wevill and Sylvia Plath in poems hidden in limited and sumptuously designed editions, years before this became public knowledge with his more public Birthday Letters, which he issued through a commercial publisher.

In a different corner of the same reading room, I listened to many interviews with poets, painters and photographers. These recordings are not accessible from outside the British Library, but through a few desktop computers of the Rare Books & Music Reading Room. They include radio recordings, footage made at and by the British Library, and assorted other tapes that were digitized. I was able to listen to dozens of digitized cassette tapes that Ian Hamilton recorded for his biography of the American poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977). He only used a tiny fraction of these interviews for his book. This raw material will undoubtedly give researchers new leads, insights, and ideas, as Hamilton could obviously not pursue all angles, and there are always unexpected pronouncements in these interviews that are waiting to be explored further. Not all links that I clicked on worked, but the reference staff encouraged me to fill out forms when that occurred, so that they could help repair the broken links.

The physical papers of the Ian Hamilton collection are still largely unprocessed, and so not readily accessible. Yet the curators are interested in making portions of them available if scholars can specify what exactly they are looking for. I was lucky to be able to peruse some transcripts of interviews and some correspondence from that collection that are not yet detailed in finding aids, but that I can now use for my research. The joy of searching through boxes and folders of unsorted material is the distinct pleasure of being like a kid in a candy store. Every time you open a folder or box you don’t know what it will contain, and I discovered nuggets that I know will become part of articles or essays that I will write down the line. I was allowed to look at these unsorted papers in the Maps Reading Room, yet another reading room that I could add to my tally at the British Library.

My favorite research experience was looking at Fay Godwin’s contact sheets and photographs in the Visual Arts Reading Room. Tucked away in the much larger Asian and African one, this tiny reading room is only open from 10.30am to 12.30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you need to make an appointment before going there. Godwin (1931-2005) was an English photographer who collaborated with Hughes on a book, Remains of Elmet, about the area of Yorkshire where Hughes grew up. Godwin, however, also took photographs of many poets and writers, including of Lowell. The contact sheets and developed prints held in the Visual Arts Reading Room allow one to retrace the photographer’s steps. The sequence of shots helps you to see how she conceived of several images, and decided which one to single out to develop as a photograph. Godwin clearly wanted to showcase chess pieces in her photograph of Robert Lowell, for instance, when she visited him and his wife Caroline Blackwood at Milgate House in Kent in 1971. He stares intently and bemused into her camera, and as viewers we are interested in observing the next move in his life, and also Godwin’s next move as photographer.

Robert Lowell by Fay Godwin © British Library Board.

The limited access time and spacing in the Visual Arts Reading Room made me value the opportunity and experience of viewing this unique visual material even more. Like visiting the other reading rooms, it deepened my interest into how poets and visual artists collaborated together. To make the most of your research time at the British Library, it is surely important to plan ahead, but also to allow for chance to occur. Allow some time to wander around, and to inspect some of the other reading rooms that you were not intending to visit. You never know what you will find.

Notes:

1.  A guide to the British Library's post-1945 US fine press holdings may be found here (fourth item down). 

The fortieth anniversary of the Falkland Islands War is an opportunity to draw attention to the extensive collections on the subject, British and Argentinian, in the BL.

One immediate effect on the then Hispanic Section of the Library, responsible for acquisitions from all Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries (we are now split into European Collections and American Collections) was that books from Argentina bought for the Library were impounded at Dover and curators had to examine them to satisfy the authorities that they were not a threat to national security.

 

Andrew Prescott, English Historical Documents (BL, 1988), p. 79. Shelfmark: 2702.b.127.

 

Showcase items from the period might include the volumes of ephemera collected and donated to the BL by Argentinian journalist Andrew Graham-Yooll (1944-2019), who had fearlessly exposed the Junta’s ‘dirty war’ at risk of his life.

 

DETAILS:

[A collection of communiqués issued by the Argentine government relating to the Falkland Islands War of 1982]. Shelfmark: HS.74/2206

[A collection of communiqúes issued by the Argentine Government and printed ephemera relating to the Falklands Islands War of 1982]. Shelfmark: HS.74/2207

[A collection of newspaper cuttings from US and Argentine papers relating to the Falkland Islands War]. Shelfmark: HS.74/2208

Researchers though don’t go to a library to see standout items but common or garden books and journals.  According to Explore, we have 618 books on the subject (Search “Falkland Islands War 1982”), 333 in English and 263 in Spanish.  One shouldn’t give greater attention to one publisher over another, but 44 of these are published in Buenos Aires by Falklands specialists Ediciones Argentinidad and 4 by Grupo Argentinidad. On both sides of the Atlantic the anniversary year has encouraged publication of personal testimonies by combatants of both parties.

Hugh Thomson, Andrew Graham-Yooll Obituary, Guardian 18 July 2019.

Blog post by Barry Taylor, European Collections

In this first installment of a series of blogs, Philip Clark shares his experience of being a 2022 Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award winner. The Writer’s Award offers £20,000, a year’s residency at the British Library to develop a forthcoming book, and the opportunity to showcase work at Hay Festival events in the UK and Latin America. Philip’s book – Sound and the City – will be a history of the sound of New York City and an investigation into what makes New York City sound like New York City.

At last, I’ve made it. After two years of pandemic travel bans, followed by an embarrassing gaffe with my visa back in January, I’m writing this blog sitting in the café at Barnes & Noble bookstore on Union Square in New York City. Since my arrival, I’ve checked in religiously every morning at 9am for a few hours’ writing; ingrained habits, even when in the city in which we’re told sleep is optional, die hard. Wake up, write. That’s the rhythm. The Barnes & Noble café – the equivalent of the café in Foyles, Charing Cross Road, my usual haunt – is quiet, comfortable and studious. I write surrounded by fellow scribes and ferocious readers – also a young couple gazing into each other’s eyes over a chessboard, who were here yesterday, too. This café has character, although not so much character that I’m distracted from my work. And best of all – the book I’m writing, Sound and the City, a history of the sound of New York City, will, in a few years’ time, be sitting on one of the shelves here. In this space where it was partly written, an idea which appeals to me very much.

'Atmosphere'; image, author's own.

My book opens an investigation into what makes New York City sound like New York City, a soundscape completely different from, say, London, Paris or Berlin. What my book is not is a history of music in New York. Instead, the project is to piece together interwoven histories from architecture, geology, immigration, politics and city planning to explain the unique relationship this city has with sound. Alongside, I’m exploring how writers and musicians who have called this endlessly fascinating resonating chamber home have dealt with the sound of the city – a long, impressive role-call that includes Henry James, John Dos Passos, Antonín Dvořák, Edgard Varèse, Duke Ellington, John Cage, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Philip Glass, Bob Dylan, Meredith Monk, Ornette Coleman, Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Don DeLillo, Grandmaster Flash, Cecil Taylor, Gloria Gaynor, DJ Kool Herc and Wu-Tang Clan.

Miles Davis'  house; image, author's own.

What does New York do to an artist’s sense of pacing, proportion, structure? Of the sort of material they’re minded to put into their work and the way it behaves once they’ve put it there? In his memoir Words Without Music, published in 2015, Philip Glass claimed “My music sounds like New York”. Which is undoubtedly true. But so does the bebop of Charlie Parker, the modernist composition of Edgard Varèse, the rock of Debbie Harry and the nimble vocal gymnastics of Meredith Monk – none of which sound remotely like Glass. Could factors beyond musical style and idiom knit all this work together? It is my duty to find out.

As life drifted on between lockdowns, and I wondered whether travel would ever be a realistic proposition again, a fantasy New York ran riot inside my imagination. That said, ever since I discovered modern jazz, West Side Story, Morton Feldman and Bob Dylan in my mid-teens, some thirty-five years ago, I have always carried around my own inner-New York. The environment of the city, transferred to reality, felt entirely familiar to me when I started visiting seriously around 2005, testament to how much information its sonic footprint carries within it. New York played a crucial role in my previous book, a biography of the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, A Life In Time, but there I needed to curb my enthusiasm; editing out superfluous city history became a continual necessity. Now the time has come to fully understand my New York fixation – why that fascination with the sound of its sound, and the sound of its music, has never left me alone.

Last year was spent immersing myself in histories of the city, and also in a pair of works that I knew would give my book its starting point: Edgard Varèse’s orchestral Amériques and John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer. Dos Passos’ novel was published in November 1925, with the premiere of Varèse’s composition following only a few months later in April 1926. The degree to which these panoramic captures of the city mirror each other virtually word-to-note and note-to-word is uncanny. The steamboat whistles and fire engine sirens which Dos Passos describes so vividly are not merely evoked in the fabric of Varèse’s music – he literally wrote both machines into his piece, urban objets trouvés he made sing and holler.

Edgard Varèse’s front door; image, author's own.

Surely Varèse and Dos Passos had enjoyed long discussions about the meaning of art, life and the universe itself in various hostelries around the East Village? The closeness of their art suggests they must. Having won the Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer’s Award at the end of 2021, and now with the whole British Library at my disposal, this was one of the first questions I set out to answer: did they ever meet? Varèse, I read, enjoyed the company of the composers Carl Ruggles and Carlos Salzedo, the conductor Leopold Stokowski, the violinist Fritz Kreisler, the artist Marcel Duchamp – and there is also a documented encounter with the writer Theodore Dreiser. Dos Passos’ associates at the time included the writers E E Cummings, Hart Crane and Dawn Powell. At the British Library, I was very happy to find an extended critique by Sinclair Lewis of Manhattan Transfer, published in 1926, in which Lewis describes Dos Passos’ novel as “the moving symphony itself” and talks up the central role sound takes in the narrative (although Lewis’ respect for Dos Passos was, sadly, not reciprocated).

Plotting the various addresses before I left home where Dos Passos and Varèse lived in the mid-1920s – and then this week walking between them – I discover that they criss-crossed each other constantly and, during different periods, lived but a few blocks from each other. The hotel in which Varèse took up long-term residence when he first arrived from his native France in 1916 – The Brevoort on the corner of 8th Street and 5th Avenue – is where two characters in Dos Passos’ novel, Elaine Oglethorpe and George Baldwin, conduct their affair.

Novelist and composer are traceable to some of the same bars and cafés. Romany Marie’s famous bistro-tavern, the place in the Village where artists, musicians and writers met to talk, was a regular meeting place of Varèse’s – and surely Dos Passos went there too. Walking a block from 188 Sullivan Street, Varèse’s home from 1925 until his death in 1965, I find Caffe Reggio – the first café to bring cappuccino to the city is the boast – which opened its doors in 1927. Given Dos Passos’ love of European culture and Varèse’s yearning to find tastes of Europe in New York, could their paths have crossed there? And then there’s McSorley’s Old Ale House, opened around 1860, and subject of a poem by Dos Passos’ close friend E E Cummings. And we know that Varèse loved ale. His wife, Louise, in her memoir, Varèse: A Looking Glass Diary, tells us how he took a shine to a barmaid – who called him ‘Dearie’ – in a London pub, near Broadcasting House, when the BBC performed his piece Hyperprism in 1924. Degrees of separation melt away by the moment.

McSorley's Old Ale House; image, author's own.

But even if they managed never to meet, my thesis holds firm. Varèse and Dos Passos walked those same sidewalks, listening deep into the sound of the city, and you feel that kinship in the work they produced. New York works as an artistic matchmaker apparently – even when artists are not aware it is happening.

As we continue our series highlighting the breadth of electronic resources available for researchers at the British Library, this blog will discuss some of the collections which can support those exploring US Politics and Political History. All resources can be accessed from our Electronic Resources page, and some are available remotely once you get your free Reader Pass. All previous posts in the series can be found here.

There are many resources which can help uncover the operation of government, with Congress being especially well represented. The Congressional Record Permanent Digital Collection 1789-1997 and the US Congressional Serial Set 1817-1994 provide impressive levels of insight into the legislative process. The Congressional Record is a substantially verbatim account of the remarks made by Senators and Representatives while they are on the floor of the Senate and the House of Representatives (the equivalent of the UK’s Hansard). It also includes all bills, resolutions, and motions proposed, as well as debates, and roll call votes. The Serial Set is comprised of the numbered Senate and House Documents and Senate and House Reports, bound by session of Congress. There is also a dedicated selection of maps with the Serial Set. The Serial Set, and its maps, can be accessed remotely by registered Readers. The maps can be browsed by State as well as topic. The image below shows the Indian Reservations in the United States in 1940.

Map showing Indian reservations in the United States. Compiled and drawn by E.H. Coulson, Chief Engineering Draftsman, Office of Indian Affairs, Division of Forestry. 1940. Serial Set No. 11747, Session Vol. No.11, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, H.Rpt. 2680, Page [Not Numbered], Map No. 1. (Accessed via the US Congressional Serial Set 1817-1994.)

The Library’s selection of electronic resources is very wide, and it is worth looking at resources which may not seem immediately ‘Political Studies’ yet may still hold relevant material. For example, the American History, 1493-1945 resource is drawn from the diverse collections of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York, and has some fascinating collections including materials related to the private lives of First Ladies, and Presidential Pardons. Below is part of the pardon by President Polk of an elderly counterfeiter, Samuel Howard, convicted of passing counterfeit coin and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, who was pardoned due to age, previous honesty, his family’s dependence on him, the small amount of counterfeited money involved, and the judge’s recommendation for clemency.

Presidential authority to the Secretary of State to affix the seal to the pardon of Samuel Howard, 13 January 1848, Collection Reference Number, GLC00045.08. (Accessed via American History, 1493-1945.)

Similarly, there are many aspects of US domestic politics which are well-covered in other thematic resources focused on different identity groups, such as women’s suffrage campaigns, LGBTQ+ political activism, and African-American civil rights campaigns and political activism. For example, the African American Communities resource holds legal papers of justices and policymakers which shed light on the politics around busing and school desegregation, including the Algernon Lee Butler Papers, 1928-1978, from the Southern Historical Collection at the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Butler Papers consist of Butler's political, legal, and personal papers from 1928 until 1978. Featured are a wide variety of writings and speeches Butler produced on political, educational, and civic topics, including materials relating to school desegregation and civil rights cases.

African American Communities database screenshot showing items from the Algernon Butler Papers.

There are many full-text US newspapers available in the electronic resources, which were covered in this earlier post. These newspapers are a fantastic resource for many aspects of US social and political life. Importantly, these don’t just include historical newspapers. The British Library subscribes to the excellent NewsBank: Access World News resource, which is available via Remote Access for registered Readers. This is an extraordinary database and an excellent resource for events from the 1980s to the present, including full-text coverage of more than 1300 American dailies such as the Boston Herald (1991 to the present) and the New York Post (1999 to the present); transcripts of more than 200 major TV news and radio programmes including 60 Minutes (2004 to the present) and Fox News Channel (2003 to the present); full-text coverage of more than twenty news magazines; output from more than 300 web-only sources; and access to more than 80 newswires.

Recent issues of The Atlantic magazine (left to right: June 2021; July/August 2021; May 2021), available via NewsBank: Access World News.

Finally, our electronic resources are very strong on US foreign policy and international relations, particularly how other countries viewed the US. These include the Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961 collection which comes from the National Archives at Kew and contains British Government documents covering the US (as well as other parts of the Americas). The collection covers topics such as slavery, Prohibition, the First and Second World Wars, racial segregation, territorial disputes, the League of Nations, McCarthyism and the nuclear bomb. For a broader global perspective, researchers can explore the excellent Foreign Broadcast Information Service (also available via remote access). FBIS was a US government operation which translated the text of daily broadcasts, government statements, and select news stories from non-English sources. The idea was to understand more about foreign opinion of the United States and its policies. It is an archive of 20th century news from around the world, offering global views on US foreign and domestic policy after World War II. The documents cover the Cold War, the Middle East, Latin America, the Soviet Union and more. Below is an example from the Soviet Home Service criticising America’s perceived plans in Asia as it ended the official postwar occupation of Japan.

‘U.S. READIES JAPAN AS FAR EAST BASE’, Source: Moscow, Soviet Home Service, 09 August 1951; Translated into English and published in: DAILY REPORT. FOREIGN RADIO BROADCASTS (FBIS-FRB-51-160), 10 August 1951, USSR HOME SERVICE, Page AA6. (Accessed via Foreign Broadcast Information Service).

This whirlwind tour of the Library’s e-resources has just scratched the surface, but it does give an indication of the wide range of collections which include materials helpful for both historic and contemporary US Political Studies. For those interested in diving further into US politics at the Library, do check out the Collection Guide for US Federal Government Publications. 

By Cara Rodway, Eccles Centre, April 2022

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to do ‘in real life’ show and tells for students attending the Library’s Doctoral Open Days so the Americas and Oceania Collections Curatorial team and Eccles team were delighted to be able to discuss a selection of items from the collections with researchers at the latest on-site sessions.

On 4 and 7 March 2022, a number of students from all disciplines visited the Library’s site at St Pancras to get better acquainted with the services and collections available for their research, inspiration and enjoyment. Theses practical sessions were offered to all who attended our PhD webinars that took place earlier in the year.

The days give the chance to attend Reader Registration appointments, go on building tours, take advantage of drop-in sessions with Reference Services, see how collection items are handled and conserved, and come along to show and tells with curatorial teams across the Library to see and discuss items from different collections.

Photo of the collection items from across the Library on display at the show and tell sessions

Asian and African Collections, British and European Collections, Music Collections, Digital Collections and Resources, Contemporary Society and Culture Collections, and Maps and Visual Arts Collections all took part. We love being part of these days; not only do we get to meet new researchers and discuss their work, but we also get the chance to see colleagues from other collection areas and chat with them about the items in their remit and beyond – both things that have been much-missed in-person activities over the past two years.

For those unable to attend, we thought we’d share a few things with you digitally instead! Here are a selection of items that the Americas and Oceania team displayed over the two days:

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
Text by Lewis Carroll; designed by Tara Bryan
Flatrock, Newfoundland, Canada: Walking Bird Press, 2016
RF.2019.a.126

Photos of down the rabbit hole (RF.2019.a.126) by Tara Bryan, showing the item as it’s stored and in its open form

Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript for Alice's Adventures Under Ground is housed at the British Library, so we are always excited to see how the tale has been re-imagined, re-interpreted and re-illustrated over the last 160 years. This item invites readers into the rabbit hole, with the words from Carroll tunnelling down and down… just as Alice did. This artists’ book was designed by Tara Bryan in her studio in Newfoundland. One of only 40 copies, it is made from delicate handmade Thai Bamboo paper and Japanese paper.

FOR HOME USE: A BOOK OF REFERENCE ON MANY SUBJECTS RELATIVE TO THE TABLE
Proprietors of Angostura Bitters
Trinidad: Angostura Bitters (Publication year unknown/Donated)
YD.2004.a.5928

Photos of For Home Use: A Book Of Reference On Many Subjects Relative To The Table (YD.2004.a.5928)

This item speaks to culinary social history, especially concerning those deemed belonging to the middle and upper classes of Trinidad and Tobago. ‘Invaluable to the Host and Hostess’, this book of recipes by the makers of Angostura Bitters, is an example of great marketing from a bygone era.

SÃO FERNANDO BEIRA-MAR: CANTIGA DE ESCÁRNIO E MALDIZER
Antonio Miranda
São Paulo: Dulcinéia Catadora, 2007
RF.2019.a.285

LA MUJER DE LOS SUEÑOS DEL DOMADOR DE YAKARÉS
Amarildo Garcia
Asunción: Yiyi Jambo, 2008
RF.2019.a.356

TRIPLE FRONTERA DREAMS
Douglas Diegues
Buenos Aires: Eloísa Cartonera, 2012
RF.2019.a.361

CARTONERAS IN TRANSLATION = CARTONERAS EN TRADUCCIÓN = CARTONERAS EM TRADUÇÃO: ANTOLOGÍA
Lucy Bell et al., eds.
Cuernavaca: La Cartonera, 2018
RF.2019.a.311

Photo of cartoneras from Latin America (Top left, RF.2019.a.311; top right, RF.2019.a.285; bottom left, RF.2019.a.356; bottom right, RF.2019.a.361)

Cartoneras are books of poetry, literature, and translations made with covers from salvaged cardboard with original illustrations in acrylic colours made by members of cartonera workshops. Their illustrated cardboard covers are often anonymous, even when created by famous artists, or signed by all members of the publishing group in a clear attempt to promote the community effort over the individual artist. The focus is on making books together and giving everyone access to reading and writing their stories.

Cartonera books are not only visually beautiful, but also make a critical intervention in publishing and reading cultures in Latin America starting in the wake of the financial crisis in Argentina with Eloísa Cartonera in 2003. This type of cheap community publishing spread quickly across the region and allowed other Latin American countries plagued by economic and social inequality to appropriate reading and book-making practices creatively and in a community-based way.

LIP MAGAZINE ISSUE 1
Frances (Budden) Phoenix (featured artist)
Melbourne, Australia: Women in the Visual Arts Collective, 1976
RF.2019.b.172

Photo of Lip magazine with artwork using paper doily by Phoenix on centerfold (RF.2019.b.172)

Lip was an Australian feminist journal self-published by a collective of women in Melbourne between 1976 and 1984. The art and politics expressed in the journal provide a fascinating record of the Women’s Liberation era in Australia. The inaugural issue seen here includes articles on writer Dorothy Hewett, Australian embroidery, and Australian feminist art, film and performing arts, as well as a double page removable centerfold: a doily vulva artwork called ‘Soft Aggression’ by artist Frances (Budden) Phoenix. Phoenix was an Australian feminist artist who helped to establish the Women’s Domestic Needlework Group, and known for her provocative textile and needlework which subverted traditional notions of women’s domestic crafts. In her centerfold here, she revisits the tradition of women inscribing messages into their work and includes the directive to readers: “female culture is in the minds, hearts and secret dialogues of women. Use your culture in your own defence: use soft aggression.”

THE LITERARY VOYAGER OR MUZZENIEGUN
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, edited with an introduction by Philip P. Mason
[East Lansing]: Michigan State University Press, 1962.
X.800/1125.

ALGIC RESEARCHES, COMPRISING INQUIRIES RESPECTING THE MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS: FIRST SERIES: INDIAN TALES AND LEGENDS
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
New York, 1839.
12430.e.20.

The Literary Voyager Or Muzzeniegun (X.800/1125.)

In 1962, scholar Philip P. Mason collected and republished the entirety of the manuscript magazine The Literary Voyager. Originally produced between December 1826 and April 1827 by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, it is considered to be the first periodical related to Native American culture. Its alternative title, Muzzeniegun is Ojibwe for ‘book’.

Schoolcraft, an ethnologist and Indian Agent in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, handwrote a few copies of each issue which were posted to friends and family. Schoolcraft was married to Bamewawagezhikaquay, also known as Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, who was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish ancestry. She is considered to be the first known Native American woman writer. Notably she wrote in both English and Ojibwe. Many of her poems and traditional stories were included in The Literary Voyager, however she does not receive credit for her work. Her mother, from whom Schoolcraft also collected traditional stories and cultural knowledge, is also not named. It has taken considerable efforts by Native American literary scholars to correct this historical omission, and to bring attention to this important Ojibwe voice.

Some of Bamewawagezhikaquay’s stories were later published in Algic Researches, also compiled by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. This Library copy is an original edition from 1839.

Algic Researches, Comprising Inquiries Respecting the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians: First Series: Indian Tales And Legends (12430.e.20.)

We’d like to thank our colleagues in the Library’s Research Development Team for organising the webinars and in-person sessions, and to our friends in the Eccles Centre for American Studies for their support in helping the days run smoothly.

As the Library continues to working hard at both our sites to make sure everyone can visit us safely, we are looking forward to the opportunity to run similar sessions and meet more of you in person over the coming year.

How can electronic resources help with literary research? In this brief blog I consider a number of electronic databases to which the Library subscribes, and look at the ways in which they can be of use for literature scholars and any Library reader looking for information on authors, movements and texts. All resources can be accessed from our Electronic Resources page, and some are available remotely once you get your free Reader Pass.

Databases of digitised periodicals are often the most rewarding electronic resources. While nothing compares to spending an afternoon immersed in magazines in the reading room, these databases enable you to search across a large number of issues and titles for articles by or about an author. If you are studying the reception of a literary work, digitised periodicals make searching for reviews across several titles much easier. Digitised newspapers and magazines are helpful to track down uncollected publications by a writer, and to study the context in which their short stories, poems or articles were originally published. In the case of authors who had longstanding relationships with a specific publication, research on these databases can yield rich results. For instance, a reader interested in the American writer Langston Hughes who searches the digital archive of the Baltimore Afro-American will be able to read his articles and war reporting, his poetry and reviews of his published collections, reports of readings and lectures he gave, news about the staging of his plays, and even his autobiography The Big Sea, which was serialised in the newspaper.

Fig 1: The Big Sea by Langston Hughes serialised in The Baltimore Afro-American, issue dated 3 August 1940. (Accessible at the British Library and remotely on the e-resource ''The Baltimore Afro-American'.)

 

The Library’s databases of periodicals range from little magazines connected to literary movements to middlebrow publications and periodicals for children. Among other titles, the database Interwar Culture provides access to the influential American literary magazine The Dial, edited by Scofield Thayer and Marian Moore in the 1920s. Those inspired by the centenary of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land this year will be able to read the poem in The Dial, where it was first published in America in November 1922.

Fig 2: The November 1922 issue of The Dial, containing T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Accessible at the British Library on the e-resource 'Interwar Cultures'.

 

A popular resource in the reading rooms is the US Vogue Archive, which my colleague Polly Russell mentions in an earlier blog in relation to its relevance to women’s studies. Researchers focusing on the history of literary journalism are likely to find articles of interest. Joan Didion, who worked for Vogue from 1956 to 1964 and became an assistant features editor for the magazine, published her influential essay “Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power,” in the August 1961 issue.

Fig 3: "Self-Respect: Its source, its power" by Joan Didion, Vogue August 1961 issue. Accessible at the British Library on the e-resource 'Vogue Archive'

 

In addition to periodical databases, the Library subscribes to other resources that can facilitate literary research. Bibliographic databases Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1903-1982 and Book Review Digest Plus (which covers 1983 to date), contain excerpts of reviews of English language adult and children’s fiction and non-fiction.

The Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro–Latin American Biography, edited by Franklin W. Knight and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., provides a comprehensive overview of the lives of Caribbeans and Afro-Latin Americans of historical significance, including speakers of Creole, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. An extremely valuable resource for any scholar studying the African Diaspora, it contains concise entries that explore individuals’ lives and their major contributions, in addition to a brief bibliography for further research. Writers Paulette Poujol-Oriol, Nancy Morejon, and Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro are some of the names featured in the Dictionary.

Finally, if you are researching an Australian author or movement, AusLit, published by the University of Queensland, will be of help. It contains biographical and bibliographic information about Australian writers and their works. Helpfully for those who don’t have access to a physical library, AusLit also lists full-text works, including poetry, prose and criticism freely available online. Those studying Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers will be interested in their site BlackWords, which records information about authors, their works, and the traditions that influenced them, as well as teaching materials and other resources.

Fig 4: BlackWords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writing and Storytelling website.  Accessible at the British Library on the e-resource 'AusLit'.

 

Mercedes Aguirre, Lead Curator, Americas

This is the final blog looking at Cherokee language printing. Previous posts introduced the topic of Sequoyah’s syllabary and the Cherokee Phoenix through Frank Brannon’s work- Cherokee Phoenix, advent of a newspaper: the print shop of the Cherokee Nation 1828-1834- and spoke to Frank about his experiences of printing in the Cherokee language.

Frank’s book led me to the wider holdings of Cherokee language materials at the British Library and helped me understand and follow the printing networks found across the materials. In his book on Sequoyah, Grant Foreman writes that ‘the most nearly complete file of this newspaper in existence is one of the prized possessions of the British Museum, in London’ and the British Library holds almost the entirety of this newspaper in microform. However, the library also holds materials tangential to the story of the Cherokee Phoenix.

It seems appropriate to begin with Sequoyah, the Cherokee inventor who completed his syllabary in 1821 and committed the Cherokee language to writing (see first blog). Whilst Sequoyah was driven by a fascination for the written word he was also an enchanting and powerful orator, a skill that never diminished in commitment to writing. In 1840, author and playwright John Howard Payne interviewed Sequoyah for his ‘true history’ of the Cherokees. The translator- so captivated by Sequoyah’s retelling- refused to interrupt and eventually forgot to translate anything. Sat in the corner with his ink, pen and paper, Payne was ‘entirely forgotten by the rest of the audience’. Payne (albeit briefly) features in events after the demise of the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper. On November 7th 1835, Payne was accidentally caught up in the arrest of Chief John Ross during a visit that was deemed suspicious. Payne’s name and interest can be found in the library’s copy of The Gospel of Jesus Christ According to John: Translated into the Cherokee Language (1838). The owner- a William Wrixon Leycester- writes in the front: ‘given to me on the 10th of Jan 1843 by my esteemed friend John Howard Payne’ (Fig 1, below).

Fig 1: The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to John. Translated into the Cherokee language by S. A. Worcester & E. Boudinot, printed by John Wheeler at Park Hill: Mission Press, 1838 (British Library shelfmark: 3070.de.13)

In 1834, the last Cherokee Phoenix was printed at New Echota. The printer for the newspaper, John Wheeler, moved westward, followed in 1835 by the missionary, Samuel Worcester and the printing apprentice John Candy. A new press was set up in Park Hill, where Wheeler, Worcester and Candy continued to work together. Boudinot arrived at Park Hill in 1837, but Worcester was wary of collaborating with him due to Boudinot’s support of the Treaty of New Echota.

Fig 2: The Gospel of Matthew (1832), The Acts of the Apostles (1883) and a book of Cherokee Hymns (1833) by S. A. Worcester & E. Boudinot printed by John Wheeler and John Candy at New Echota (British Library shelfmark: 3068.a.64)

The movement of the printing networks can be easily read across the collections. The library’s holdings of the earlier output from New Echota attributed to Worcester, Boudinot and Wheeler are bound together and include a second edition of The Gospel According to Matthew (1832), The Acts of the Apostles translated into the Cherokee Language (1833) and a fourth edition of Cherokee Hymns (1833) (Fig 2, above) The stamps indicate that the British Museum Library acquired these materials on the 2nd of August 1892. The library’s later holdings reflect the move to Park Hill and consist of later reprints of Boudinot and Worcester’s works as well as other outputs, such as a Cherokee Primer (1846) and the Swiss Peasant by Rev. Caesar Malan in Cherokee (1848) (Fig 3, below). The stamps indicate that the library acquired these materials in August and September of 1889, a few years before the New Echota materials.

Fig 3: Cherokee Primer (1846) printed by John Candy at Park Hill: Mission Press (British Library shelfmark: (884.a.13)

The Gospel of Matthew was one of the earliest printed materials in Cherokee. Translated by Major George Lowry and corrected by Worcester and Boudinot, two chapters were published each week in the Cherokee Phoenix. In 1829, the Cherokee Phoenix also reported that 200 copies were requested for the Cherokee Brainerd Book Society and Worcester sent a copy of The Gospel of Matthew to Georgia Governor Gilmour as proof of the ‘good work’ being done among the Cherokee. The library holds multiple editions. Most striking however, is a later fourth edition printed in 1844 at Park Hill by John Candy (fig 3, see below) which can be digitally accessed. The book is inscribed with Cherokee characters by Richard Taylor who was at one time Assistant Chief and delegate to Washington. It reads:

Presented, through Henry Stevens Esquire of Boston, to the Library of the British Museum London, by Richard Taylor of the Cherokee Nation. Washington, April 15th, 1848. The above is a translation of the Cherokee written on the opposite page by Mr Taylor.

Henry Stevens was book agent to the British Museum Library.

Fig 3: The Gospel According to Matthew. Translated into the Cherokee Language, Park Hill: Mission Press, 1844 (BL shelfmark 3070.a.15)

 

This blog includes a snapshot of the library’s holdings of Cherokee language materials. My hope is to keep exploring these collections.

 

- Rebecca Slatcher, Collaborative Doctoral Student (British Library & University of Hull)

This is the second blog looking at Cherokee language printing through the work of book artist and papermaker Frank Brannon. A previous post introduced Frank’s work, Cherokee Phoenix, advent of a newspaper: the print shop of the Cherokee Nation 1828-1834: a handmade letterpress book that tells the history of the first newspaper printed in an Indigenous language. After becoming interested in the materiality and creation of Frank’s book, he kindly spoke to me about his experience of printing in Cherokee as well as complex questions about what it means to have Indigenous language materials at the British Library.

Initially, Frank explained to me some of the technical difficulties of printing in Cherokee, such as ensuring the right spacing is on the type and watching for typos. We also spoke about the differences between Sequoyah’s syllabary, and the type-cast-

“To other eyes through time, just as you and I will see Roman letters, others will see Cyrillic if they have that background, or they might see Greek. They tend to look like other things. But Sequoyah’s original letters look nothing like the type-cast."

Fig 1: Binding of Frank Brannon’s, Cherokee Phoenix, advent of a newspaper: the print shop of the Cherokee Nation 1828-1834, with a chronology, Tuscaloosa, Ala: Speakeasy Press, 2005 (British Library shelfmark: RF.2007.a.36

In creating the book, Frank also described how he visited the University of Alabama special collections library to model the book on those of the 1820s:

"I wanted to put the person in the time. The 1820’s is a time of transition from handmade to machine-made books. Books would be encased in a cheap cover, and they weren't really meant to last long in the publisher’s binding before they became something else. At the special collection's library, you would open the books and the backs would be breaking. So, The Cherokee Phoenix book really wants to fall apart- it was made for a better binding" (Fig. 1 above)

In speaking to Frank, what is notable is the book’s grounding in materials and place. On asking him what drew him to the topic, he replied that “it was the papermill and it was Sequoyah”. The historic materials used to print the Cherokee Phoenix were excavated from the site of the original printing office in New Echota (now Calhoun, Georgia) and those materials extend into the narrative and creation of Frank’s book. Given the (sometimes) difficult history of printing in Cherokee and the current endangerment of the language, I asked Frank if he felt a sense of responsibility in the work today. In his response he recalls returning to New Echota-

"I felt early that we had a responsibility to get it right, and I still feel that responsibility today. I was able to take some of the printing type and print at the historic site of New Echota in what is now North Georgia, and I actually taught a class in the reconstructed print shop there. When my friend- who was a member of the tribe- and I, would go and print in New Echota you could just kind of feel the weight of that event. It was almost like a dream. It's prescient, it's superseding your regular day, and I would have to admit there are not that many times in life it happens. It was the reality and the depth of that experience. The manager of what is now a Georgia state historic site understood the importance of us coming there and doing that work, also. And as a white person trying to support the revitalization the Cherokee language, you have to try a little bit harder."

This reminds us also of the gap between language on the page and language in the world as lived, happenstance and imperfect. Frank retells how when teaching at the Southeastern community college in western North Carolina, he labelled drawers of coloured paper with their Cherokee names. There is a sense of immediacy, in a place where all understand the importance of language revitalization-

“It was immediate for people from that community who did not know the language at the time to start using those words. I never told anyone in the class that I would like for them to use the names, but they did, every time. It’s not like you have to teach them, its osmosis, it’s in them.”

When considering the poignancy of printing in New Echota, we spoke about different sense of place presented by the British Library. What does it mean for Frank’s work and wider Indigenous language materials to be in the British Library? Much of the library’s holdings - and its history as an institution - speak to a North American context whereby Indigenous languages were taken, classified and denied to peoples in service of historic and ongoing settler colonial projects that sought to eradicate languages and cultures. These contexts have legacies in the ways languages are misrepresented and accessed in library systems today -

“The idea that one might need to verify who they are to access the language of their own people, things that they have been denied the ability to speak or say themselves, in a boarding school for example. The indignity of being pressed to follow someone else’s rules, to access their own knowledge”

“It’s hard to think in general about doing a fine letterpress book and having anyone upon it. There are a lot of questions here, and it has to with ownership, and it has to do with possession.”

This brought us to a discussion on the issues with the label of ‘Indigenous languages collection’ and the narratives those collections claim to tell -

“That’s the key - that process of ‘collecting’ them, ‘acquiring’ them. The parallel for me as an artist is that question of - when looking at the larger picture of European history - whose books are in those libraries? It’s mainly male, it’s mainly Anglo. Is that the entire history of the European experience? Well, we know that the answer is no. My artists’ statement says that I wish to tell the story of those that are less told, and to ask: what is the library of 500 years and what will it look like?"

I found the Frank drew between languages and institutional approaches to curating books very insightful in reflecting on some of these questions. In many contexts, Indigenous languages were viewed as ‘exotic’ objects and brought into an institutional setting, to collect and to study or observe. Such a view can persist in the ways people may approach or ask questions about the subject today. As Frank says, ‘it’s just a group of people who have their own language and they would like to use it, it’s as simple as that’. Some of these ideas inform Frank’s work as a book artist-

“For one of the art projects me and my friend Jeff Marley did in Cherokee, I wanted to do an outdoor installation- an exhibition for everything other than people. I did no advertising, and we documented through photography and film. That’s a larger response to the bigger questions you’re asking, because many days I’m not sure if I want to put it in ‘that’ library. A lot of artists books, or book arts, are now shown in a very display like manner. They’re fetish objects and it’s very much ‘over there’. I always struggle when they are behind glass."

By extension, Frank’s artistic process challenges and expands how we interact with books-

“With an artists’ book, you know immediately from the cover that something is different. I would love for the person to recognise that something different is going on long before they even get to the book, and so with the idea of installation or performance artwork to surround the object I am trying to expand the epi-text of the book. All those little things that go with the book, I want them to come out and be alive and blow through the cover. To think of the book as an epi-textual environment that best represents the thoughts and ideas of the individuals or group”

Perhaps in the context of the British Library, this approach can be used to think about how language materials are there, how they have been decontextualised and how Indigenous creators and representation has been written out of the record-

Image: North American Indian (Other) from British Library catalogue record

“How you describe books, that is part of that epi-textual environment. The stuff that floats around it, is about it, is of it. And how is that presented.”

As a result of Frank’s work, the printing type is out in the world and the story continues. It’s clear that Frank misses this work, and I am incredibly grateful to him for talking to me. The conversation made me think on the importance of place and ask important questions of collecting practices: what are we trying to preserve, and for who? Above all I love the materiality of the book, and its layers and relationship to the historic materials and contemporary questions. There is something poignant in the 1820’s style book that ‘wants to fall apart’ as the used and accessible artists’ book (as opposed to the displayed and distant artists’ book), and the used, imperfect and grounded use of the Cherokee language (as opposed to the collected and exotic ‘Cherokee language’ materials). Additionally, it begins a very crucial questioning of the difficult ‘epi-text’ of the British Library.

 

- Rebecca Slatcher, Collaborative Doctoral Student (British Library & The University of Hull)