On 29 March 2025, the British Library will be hosting Deadly: the festival of women writing crime. This full day of events will celebrate the very best in contemporary crime writing by women and features non-fiction as well as fiction, brand-new work from celebrated authors, fresh voices, lively exploration of themes and perceptions of the genre, and plenty of criminally good fun...

Examples of the crime fiction titles available in the British Library collections

 In anticipation of this inaugural event, we’ve been hot on the trail of some of the early sleuths in the British Library archives: those created by women crime writers. From elderly amateur detectives to a hard-boiled private investigator, meet the women who paved the way for the likes of Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope and Busayo Matuluko’s Lara Oyinlola.  

First up is an inquisitive elderly spinster, but not the one you might think. The wealthy New Yorker, Amelia Butterworth, was the creation of the American author, Anna Katharine Green and she teamed up with Detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police in three novels published between 1897 and 1900. Unmarried but financially secure, the respectable Miss Butterworth heralded a new type of female sleuth: an independent woman with the means and time to indulge her natural curiosity - see That Affair Next Door (British Library shelfmark 012622.h.12).  

Leaving the bright lights of Manhattan for the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, we first meet Miss Jane Marple in 1927 in the short story, The Tuesday Night Club published in The Royal Magazine. Although Agatha Christie’s elderly detective has spent most of her life in a small village, she has had plenty of opportunity to study human nature and sees a great deal of wickedness in the world. Her fluffy exterior hides a shrewd intelligence, and Miss Marple went on to solve crimes in twenty short stories and twelve novels including The Body in the Library in 1942 (NN.33239.) 

Not far from St Mary Mead, another white-haired sleuth was at work in London. Miss Maud Silver, retired governess turned private investigator, was brought to our attention in 1928 by Patricia Wentworth. Whilst crimes just seem to happen around Miss Marple, Miss Silver actively seeks them through her detective agency and she features in a whopping thirty-two novels published between 1928 and 1961, with the first being Grey Mask (NN.14586.).  

Leaving England, we venture back across the pond to North Carolina where we first meet Blanche White, an African American domestic worker on the run. Created in 1992 by Barbara Neely, Blanche is another example of an underestimated woman detective, but here this is due to the colour of her skin and position in society rather than her age. Unlike the previous detectives, she is a reluctant sleuth who uses her ‘invisibility’ to solve crimes as an act of self-preservation rather than out of mere curiosity. Blanche features in four novels published between 1992 and 2000 starting with Blanche on the Lam (YA.1999.a.7225).  

Staying in the USA, we are introduced to the tough former police officer turned private eye, Kinsey Millhone. More noir than knitting needles but still dismissed by her male counterparts, Kinsey is a twice-divorced loner who rarely survives the cases she investigates unscathed. Snippets of her life are gradually revealed to the reader through Sue Grafton’s alphabet novel series which started in 1982 with A is for Alibi (Nov.1986/428) and ended with Y is for Yesterday (YD.2018.a.336) with Grafton’s death in 2017. 

To meet more amateur sleuths and private investigators from the archives, check out the British Library's Crime Classics series which resurrects long-forgotten novels from the Golden Age of detective fiction.

The launch event of Deadly: the festival of women writing crime is an evening with the globally celebrated author Tess Gerritsen, talking about her brand-new book The Summer Guests, on Friday 28 March. Tickets here. 

Online tickets for Deadly are are still available.

 

Lucy Rowland 

The Eccles Institute and BAAS’s America Now! series continues on Tuesday 25 March 2025, with ‘True Crime in the USA’. Ahead of the event, here’s a look at the speakers joining us for the evening, and some materials related to true crime in the British Library’s collections.   

"True crime" is a very American genre, and a very American obsession. Evolving from the yellow journalism of press barons like Hearst and Pulitzer, and new forms of literature like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, true crime has also been central to the rise of new media and technology content creation and consumption over the past decade. Podcasting, streaming, and social media would not be what they are today without the American public's fascination with narrativizing violence, deception, and intrigue involving their fellow citizens. This panel of experts is on the case and will trace the threads that connect everything from Billy the Kid to Luigi Mangione, and from Serial and Making a Murderer to TikTok detectives and the very online, real-time, true crime-style storytelling of the present moment. 

Promotional image for America Now True Crime event, Tuesday 25 March 2025

Chaired by our friends at BAAS, the event will include a panel of experts to lead what’s sure to be an engaging and enlightening discussion:    

Dr George Larke-Walsh (University of Sunderland) 

George is currently Senior Lecturer in Arts and Creative Industries at the University of Sunderland. She began her academic career in the north east, but then moved to the USA, teaching at the University of North Texas from 2004 to 2020. She has published books and articles on mythologies of the mafia on screen, including the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Gangster Film (2018) [when the British Library’s digital services are fully restored this item is available to consult at BL shelfmark ELD.DS.326648]*. More recently she has turned her attention to documentary and specifically true crime. Her articles have explored numerous media examples from histories of the mafia wars to well-known series such as Making a Murderer, and The Staircase. Her most recent book is an edited collection of new scholarship called True Crime in American Media (Routledge, 2023).    

Megan Lupton (De Montfort University) 

Megan is a final year PhD candidate at De Montfort University in Leicester. To investigate the ethics of true crime, she has conducted interviews with true crime podcasters and is using her findings to inform the characters, plot and themes in a fictional novel. Megan has previously spoken about child safety on TikTok at the TikTok Cultures Research Network symposium, presented at the 2024 Great Writing Conference, and written for the National Centre of Academic Excellence. She is also the co-founder of an independent, cooperative newspaper in Leicestershire, and a passionate storyteller with a master's degree in creative writing. Through her solutions-focused PhD, Megan’s novel and ethical reflections framework will take true crime practitioners on a journey through ethics.   

Her Instagram account, documents her research journey. 

Dr Lindsay Steenberg (Oxford Brookes University) 
Lindsay is Reader/Associate Professor in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University where she is Chair of their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Research Network. She has published numerous articles on the crime and action genres and is the author of Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture: Gender, Crime, and Science (2017) [BL shelfmark: YK.2013.a.8439], Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator in Visual Culture (2021) [BL shelfmark: YC.2022.a.14] and the forthcoming The Hollywood Fight Scene.  She is particularly interested in the gender and race politics of violence in the popular media, from the lighter mode of ‘cozy crime’ to the darker obsessions of ‘dark tourism.’  

The British Library collections hold a host of materials reflecting the American true crime genre and conversation. Secondary sources include true stories of domestic terrorism [BL shelfmark: m22/.10005] to anthologies offering comprehensive examinations of how American writers have explored crime in a multitude of ways, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to James Ellroy [BL shelfmark: m08/.33001]. True crime events which have proven ongoing subjects of fascination and discussion, such as the bloody St. Valentine's Day massacre of 1929, can be examined through online access to FBI documents* and music scores from the 1967 film of the same name [BL shelfmark: VOC/1967/NEWMAN]. If you really want to investigate early depictions of sensationalised crime, look at A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March 1770 by soldiers of the XXIXth Regiment [BL shelfmark: 1061.h.11.] which includes Paul Revere’s engraving of the event we know now as the Boston Massacre, a pivotal event leading up to the American Revolution. 

Image of Paul Revere engraving from A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March 1770 by soldiers of the XXIXth Regiment ... with some observations on the state of things prior to that catastrophe., Boston, 1770, 1061.h.11.

For those interested in early sensationalised journalism, 1883 examples of the The New-York World can be viewed on microfilm at BL shelfmark: MFM.MA79. The New-York World was established in 1860 but by the late 1870s the newspaper was losing money, tens of thousands of dollars a year. In 1883 it was purchased by Joseph Pulitzer who turned around its precarious fate. Hiring investigative journalists, it became a newspaper that concentrated on human-interest stories, scandal and exaggerated material, capturing readers' attention and upping its daily circulation. In response, William Randolph Hearst purchased the New York Journal in 1895 and employed an approach like Pulitzer. Pulitzer and Heart’s use of promotional schemes, overemphasised stories, and focus on illustrations and colour supplements, became known as yellow journalism and would have a lasting impact on the history of popular American newspaper production.  

Image from Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World. [With plates, including portraits.], BL shelfmark: X.900/2277, Princeton, 1966. The image shows one the newspaper’s front pages: a depiction of James Blaine’s attendance at a banquet in New York City, tendered by the nation’s foremost millionaires.

On our whistlestop tour of true crime through the 19th to 21st centuries in British Library collections, you may also be interested to find Pat F. Garrett's Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney) [BL shelfmark: 010884.f.37.]. Originally published one year after the killing of Billy the Kid by Sheriff Pat Garrett, Sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, this is considered one of the most authoritative biographies of William H. Bonney and the foundation of the Billy the Kid legend. 

Image from Pat F. Garrett's Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney) [BL shelfmark: 010884.f.37.] with colour depiction of Billy the Kid by W. M. Allison

Truman Capote is often a name that springs to mind on the subject of true crime. His 1966 novel, In Cold Blood, reconstructs the real-life murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children, combining factual reporting with the imaginary possibilities of storytelling. The book is deemed by many to represent a milestone in the evolution of American true crime writing with Capote himself promoting the book as a new genre: the ‘literary non-fiction' novel. First published serially, in The New Yorker in 1965, Readers at the British Library can consult a first edition of the novel, published by Random House, New York, in the same year, at BL shelfmark: W13/2998 and later British-published edition from 1966 at BL shelfmark: 12208.a.1/2682. 

Images of front and back covers of paper back Penguin Books edition of In Cold Blood, 1966 [BL shelfmark: 12208.a.1/2682.]

We move swiftly into the era of podcasts and giant streaming services. The story of a 1999 murder case in Baltimore was reinvestigated in 2014 by Serial, an investigative journalism podcast, in which host Sarah Koenig narrated the nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The show became a cultural phenomenon, launching podcasts into the mainstream. The experience of the young man examined in relation to the murder, Adnan Syed, can be explored further in collection item Adnan's story: the search for truth and justice after Serial [BL shelfmark: YD.2017.a.627]. And finally, with the likes of Netflix tapping into the true crime trend, tough, sometimes controversial, and often needs-to-be-seen-to-be-believed watching has been provided through shows like Tiger King (2020), Monsters (2024) and Apple Cider Vinegar (2025) all of which can be examined in BL items ELD.DS.732936,*  YK.1994.a.14823, and YKL.2018.a.20024 respectively. 

Photo from Adnan's story: the search for truth and justice after Serial [BL shelfmark: YD.2017.a.627] including notes from Baltimore Police Department detailing the discovery of a female body.

From the Supreme Court to Cowboy Carter, you can catch up on the other topics we’ve covered in America Now! via our blog series:  

• “America Now!” events series launches at the Eccles Institute 
• On the Road Again: “America Now!” events series continues at the Eccles Institute 
• The Inauguration of a New President: Where Will American Politics Go From Here? 

If you’ve attended one of our America Now! events or have ideas about what you think we should discuss in the series, we’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and feedback via our online form. 

*Access to some digital items and e-resources is currently limited while we recover from the cyber-attack of 2023. We are working to reinstate these and hope to provide full access again when possible. Visit our website for full details of what is currently accessible. 

Twentieth-Century Black Periodicals and Space Symposium
Thursday 8 May 2025
British Library, St Pancras, London

This symposium is about space and geography in the context of twentieth-century periodicals from across the Black Atlantic. Over the course of the twentieth century, Black periodicals negotiate space at several scales: in their pages, in their interests, in their circulation, and in the ways we conceptualise and archive them.  How do Black periodicals occupy and traverse space, and how do the spatial forms of Black periodicals shape their meanings? How have theorists understood periodicals and blackness through spatial metaphors? How do spatial contingencies affect the ways that Black periodicals are collected, archived and accessed? 

In December 2024, Elizabeth McHenry gave the 39th Annual Panizzi lectures at the British Library.¹ Focusing on Black Bibliography, McHenry identified an overarching question which her three lectures asked of themselves and of the field more broadly: What does it mean to inhabit the space of black print?  The symposium takes McHenry’s ending question as its beginning.  It invites scholars, librarians and researchers from a variety disciplines whose primary objects of study are Black periodicals (magazines, newspapers, etc) published 1900-2000 in the Americas, Europe, and Africa to submit papers that ask about what it means to traverse the space of 20th Century Black Atlantic periodicals and what spaces these periodicals themselves traverse.  

Participants are welcome to submit papers on topics including 

• The circulations of specific periodicals 

• Black bibliography, in particular its diasporic aspects 

• Page layout and print space in Black periodicals 

• Internationalism, diaspora and Pan-Africanism in Black periodical cultures 

• Reflections on the spatial conceptualisations of Black periodicals  

• The space of the Black periodical archive 

International scholars, librarians and researchers from beyond the UK are also invited to get in touch.  Although the symposium is in-person, there is the possibility of a follow up event held online if there is enough interest.  

Please submit proposals for 10-minute work-in-progress papers, 20-minute papers, or 10-minute round table contributions. Proposals should be 300-500 words and sent along with a brief CV or bio to [email protected] by Thursday 17 April 2025. Email enquiries are also welcome. 

Three covers of Black World (1961-1976), an important magazine during the Black Arts Movement. The magazine, previously known as Negro Digest, was re-named ‘Black World’ in May 1970 to better reflect the magazine’s diasporic interests and readership.

This symposium is a product of the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD Studentship African American short fiction and magazines in the mid-twentieth century with the University of Cambridge and the Eccles Institute for the Americas & Oceania at the British Library. The Eccles Institute builds, cares for and shares the Americas and Oceania collection at the British Library, and champions knowledge and understanding of these regions through a rich programme of fellowships and awards, cultural events, research training, guides to the collections and programmes for schools.

References

1. Lecture One, 5 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: In Search of Black Readers   

Lecture Two, 10 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: Thinking Bibliographically  

Lecture Three, 12 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: Spaces of Black Study  

We are delighted to offer two PhD placements for 2025 within the Eccles Institute for the Americas and Oceania. The scheme offers doctoral researchers from all disciplines the chance to develop and apply transferable skills and expertise outside the university sector.

PhD placement projects offered by the British Library cover activities ranging from cataloguing, conservation and interpretation to policy research, resource development and research or community engagement. The duration for each placement is 3 months (or part-time equivalent). Most placements are also suitable for part-time students, and there may be opportunities to undertake placements remotely which will be indicated on the individual project profiles. 

For the full list of British Library placements on offer for 2025 visit our Research Collaboration webpages. See below for the placements related to the North and Latin American collections respectively.  

Examination of the British Library’s collection of American underground comix and related ephemera 

Are you interested in illustration, underground comix, or the history of comix publishing? Do you enjoy problem solving and project management? Would you like to come and work behind the scenes on collections in the cultural heritage sector? This PhD placement will give you an invaluable insight into the holdings of US underground comix and related ephemera at the British Library.  

You will be given the opportunity to understand collection management and library cataloguing systems, and you’ll be able to make a real difference in improving access to a number of important and unique items for the research, inspiration and enjoyment of future generations using the Library.  

Continuing legacy work in this area you will have the opportunity to use and develop previous work, including meticulous record-keeping and cross-referencing of donations of comix and related ephemera. Among the holdings which speak to this subject are rare items with unique illustrations and inscriptions which offer a fascinating picture of the underground comix landscape from the 1960s onwards.  

The collections are a cornucopia of material for interdisciplinary research examining comics/x, book dealing, publishing, and/or illustration. Underground and alternative comix are important to the study of 20th century American countercultures, offering socially relevant reflections on subjects that would often be excluded from mainstream publishing, for example sexuality, violence and drug use. 

For more information see the full placement description. For enquiries related to this placement email [email protected] FAO Rachael Culley, with 'American underground comix and related ephemera' in the subject line. 

A selection of works by Aline Kominsky-Crumb from the British Library’s collection donated by J. B. Rund: Drawn Together by Aline Kominsky-Crumb & Robert (Basel: Cartoonmuseum Basel, [2016]), RB.31.b.431; Need More Love by Aline Kominsky Crumb (London: MQ, [2007]), YD.2019.a.366; Love that Bunch by Aline Kominsky Crumb (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1990), YA.1993.b.10691; The Complete Dirty Laundry Comics by Aline Kominsky-Crumb, R. Crumb and Sophie Crumb (San Francisco: Last Gasp Eco Funnies, [1992]), RF.2000.b.44. And example of inscription from Robert Crumbs and Aline Kominsky-Crumb to their ‘good friend’ Jeff (J. B. Rund) inside The Complete Dirty Laundry Comics, RF.2000.b.44.

Afro-Brazilian History and Culture in Print: Surveying the British Library Collections 

Afro-Brazilian history and culture is central to our understanding of Brazil and the wider world. Building on the work of Afro-Brazilian activists, Brazilian society has seen a reckoning with the country’s racism and colourism in recent years bringing Afro-Brazilian voices to the fore.  

The British Library holds extensive collections relating to, and created by Afro-Brazilians, from Brazil, Portugal, as well as material connected to colonial Brazil and the Transatlantic slave trade. Despite this, our understanding of the Library’s holdings of published material in this area requires significant improvement.  

In the context of these current debates challenging racism and, specifically, a forthcoming UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025-26, this is a timely project to increase access to important, interconnected, but also underrepresented areas of the Library’s collection. It is envisaged that the placement student would survey the Library’s holdings of published material relating to and created by Afro-Brazilians in order to produce a bibliography / research guide, as well as helping us to recognise gaps in our collection and working with the Latin American curators to identify material which could be acquired to remedy these. 

For more information see the full placement description. For enquiries related to this placement email [email protected] FAO Laurence Byrne/Iris Bachmann, with ' Afro-Brazilian History and Culture in Print PhD placement' in the subject line. 

Illustrations by Carybé for the exquisite ‘Iconografia dos Deuses Africanos no Candomble da Bahia’ (Iconography of the African Gods in the Candomblé of Bahia' with texts by Jorge Amado, Pierre Verger and Waldeloir Rego. (BL shelfmark 37/Cup.408.rr.7)

 

 

 

Velma Pollard, the Jamaican cultural activist, educator, linguist and writer, passed on to the realm of the Ancestors on Saturday 1st February 2025. The Caribbean literary community is in mourning for this daughter of the region who was passionate in her love of the Jamaican nation language/patwa, and Caribbean culture in general.

Both Pollard and her sister Erna Brodber (social activist and writer) were brought up immersed in an understanding
of the heritage and value of indigenous and traditional knowledge.

Winning the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1992, for the novella Karl, Velma Pollard continued to build on an impressive body of creative writing, with five collections of poetry and three short story collections. Her book Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari became a instant classic and many others are staples of the Caribbean literary canon.
Her impactful research focus on Caribbean women writers, Creole languages emanating from the Anglophone Caribbean, as well as the language of Caribbean literature, would find Pollard bringing forth texts like 'Anansesem - A Collection of Folk Tales, Legends and Poems for Juniors', 'Considering Woman' and 'From Jamaican Creole to Standard English: A Handbook for Teachers'.

The British Library holds titles about and by Velma Pollard. The following are some examples of what can be accessed:

Erna Brodber and Velma Pollard: Folklore and Culture in Jamaica by Violet Harrington Bryan YC.2023.a.841
Karl: Monologue - in the mind of - a man! by Velma Pollard YK.2009.a.31871
The Best Philosophers I Know Can't Read or Write by Velma Pollard YK.2008.a.5992
Anansesem: A collection of folk tales, legends and poems by Velma Pollard YD.2005.a.4795
From Jamaican Creole to Standard English: A Handbook for Teachers by Velma Pollard YA.2001.b.1763
Dread Talk: The Language of Rastafari by Velma Pollard YA.1994.a.18156

 

Go well Ms. Pollard and Thank You! May You be in the joyous company of the Ancestors.

Nicole-Rachelle Moore
Curator, Contemporary Caribbean Collections

The Eccles Institute and BAAS’s America Now! series continues on Tuesday 23 January 2025, with ‘The Inauguration of a New President: Where Will American Politics Go From Here?’ Ahead of the event, here’s a closer look at the speakers joining us for the evening, and some materials related to presidential inaugurations in the Library’s collections. 

In his inauguration speech in January 2017 Donald Trump promised to ‘make America great again’ and stem the ‘American carnage’ he saw in US society. Coming just weeks after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capital, Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration speech urged the American people to come together, even though he conceded that ‘speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days.’ Donald Trump returned to power as President of the United States on 20 January 2025, after an election cycle marked by violence and division.

President Joe Biden, joined by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and their children Ashley Biden and Hunter Biden, takes the oath of office as President of the United States Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Following the inauguration, we will reflect on 2024’s electoral activity in the US, and the role of democracy in American political life, in our first American Now! event for 2025. What will the new President mean for the future of the US, and the world? 

Chaired by our friends at BAAS, the event will include a panel of experts to lead what’s sure to be a fruitful and frank discussion:  

Ursula Hackett (Royal Holloway)  

Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. She specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the United States, with a particular focus on religion, race, and education. Dr Hackett is the author of America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press) and the essay writing guide, Brilliant Essays (Bloomsbury Study Skills). In the academic year 2023-4 she was a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow. 

Amy Tatum (University of Bournemouth) 

Amy Tatum is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at Bournemouth University. Her research explores gender and political leadership, political psychology and representation. Her recent work explores the impact of generative AI on US politics and the psychological responses to women in political leadership.   

Nick Witham (UCL) 

Nick Witham is Professor of American Studies and Dean of Social and Historical Sciences at UCL. He is a historian of American culture and politics. His most recent book is Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2023). 

So what is the inauguration? Inauguration Day is when the president-elect and vice-president-elect are sworn in and take office. George Washington was sworn in as the nation's first president on 30 April 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York. 

Engraving from Seventeenhundred and seventysix, or the War of Independence; a history of the Anglo-Americans, from the period of the Union of the Colonies against the French, to the inauguration of Washington, the first President of the United States of America by Benson John Lossing, BL shelfmark: 9604.c.3. 1847 edition (pictured here) available via GoogleBooks.

To mark this historic day, here is the speech that Washington made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (BL shelfmark: MFM.M18894).

Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 1.

 

Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 2.

Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 3.

The ceremony today typically takes place at the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. However, it was announced last week that Trump’s inauguration would happen indoors due to dangerously cold weather being forecast in Washington. The address and other speeches took place inside the US Capitol's rotunda, rather than outside the building. The last president to be sworn-in indoors was Ronald Reagan in 1985, when cold weather also plagued the US Capitol. 

Vice president-elect JD Vance was the first to take his oaths of office on Monday 20 January 2025, followed by Mr Trump, at around midday local time (about 5pm UK time). 

John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court (for more information on the Supreme Court read our previous blog in the America Now! series), administered the oath to the incoming president. Mr Trump held up his right hand while taking his presidential oath as first lady Melania Trump stood next to the him holding two Bibles, one being her husband's personal Bible which was given to him by his mother, and the other the Lincoln Bible that President Abraham Lincoln used to take the oath of office in 1861. 

In recent years, inaugurations have attracted famous faces to sing the national anthem on the steps of The Capitol. Beyoncé and Lady Gaga have occupied this role in 2013 and 2021 respectively. Yesterday, country-folk singer Lee Greenwood, prior to the start of the inauguration ceremony, offered a rendition of ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’, followed by Carrie Underwood performing ‘America the Beautiful’ (see F.1893.w.(51.)), and opera singer Christopher Macchio closed with the national anthem 'The Star-Spangled Banner’ (of which the the Library holds various scores). 

Turning to Library collections on contemporary political ephemera, over 60 years of American electoral history can be seen via the Philip Davies Collection of US election archive material (Add MS 89357) which was donated to the Library in 2018. The material gives a picture of the competing sides of the US political landscape from the 1950s to the 2010s, and includes election campaign placards, newspaper cuttings, nomination petitions and promotional scripts for telephone calls made to recruit votes.  

Specifically, users can look at a Barack Obama Pride Poster supporting LGBT rights (Add MS 89357/4/27), President Trump's Inauguration Invitation 2017 (Add MS 89357/3/3), Democratic vs Republican flyer on environmental issues from 2000 (Add MS 89357/1/10), 1988 promotional posters for ‘Bold Leadership, New Direction’ under Jesse Jackson (Add MS 89357/1/7) and campaign posters calling for the protecting of women’s health (Add MS 83957/1/14). 

More on this collection can be read on our blog from 2019. 

America Now! is organised by the Eccles Institute and BAAS, and supported by the US Embassy London. You can book tickets for our next event in the series now: True Crime in the USA Tickets | Tuesday, 25 Mar 2025 at 6:30 PM 

Please note: as a result of the cyber attack in 2023, access to some of our collections and online resources is limited. Visit our website for full details of what is currently accessible. 

W Stands for Women, Bush–Cheney campaign, 2004 (Add MS 89357/1/10)

Images of President Trump's Inauguration Invitation ticket and programme, 2017 (Add MS 89357/3/3)

Images of President Trump's Inauguration Invitation ticket and programme, 2017 (Add MS 89357/3/3)

Amber Kirwan is a PhD student in English at the University of Cambridge and the British Library. Her current research is on African American periodicals of the mid-20th century such as the Chicago Defender, Negro Digest and Negro Story among others. She is funded by the AHRC CDP programme.  

Where other listings in a library catalogue might tell us an author name, an explanatory title or even genre, this is not the case for periodicals. Studying magazines and newspapers, research often begins with a list of dates. These dates contain a lot of practical details about periodicals: when they are published, publication order, publication period etc. Yet for all this information, they tell me very little about the periodicals and what I will find inside. In a periodical listing all I have to guide me are dates, flat and lifeless, with no meaning outside of their relation to each other. 

Screenshot of the British Library Catalogue showing the results for the search term 'Chicago Defender'.

In this sense, to read periodicals is to jump in, no context. No context despite, of course, knowing the extremely specific historical context of an abstract date. It is a peculiar feeling - knowing exactly when in history you are, but with no sense of what this means.

This feeling of jumping into an unknown has become very familiar to me as of late; starting my PhD has been full of new things. In January 2024 I began a doctorate with the British Library on ‘Short Fiction in Mid-20th Century African American Periodicals’. As a CDP AHRC student, I designed my project around a pre-established research topic (for more information on CDPs, see the end of the blog; they are a great way to do doctoral study).¹ This meant that I was new both to African American Studies and to periodicals. My previous research interests had been in mid-century Caribbean literature, specifically poetry, so even seeing myself as an Americanist was startlingly new. Much like studying periodicals, I had that peculiar feeling of knowing exactly where I was, with very little sense of what this meant.

Screenshot of the British Library Catalogue record for the Chicago Defender [City Edition] 1945-1966; shelfmark MFM.MA.496.

And so, I jumped: first into the Black Chicago Renaissance, the successor to the Harlem Renaissance during the mid-century in (you guessed it) Chicago; and then into modernist little magazines - magazines which are so named not for their size (although they were also physically small) but for their circulations. I began looking at Negro Digest, the Chicago Defender, Crisis, Negro Story, and then continued to the Harlem Quarterly and Negro Quarterly, and the newspapers Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American.²  I did this the only way I could - plucking a random date from a long list and starting to read. 

Screenshot of the British Library Catalogue record for the Harlem Quarterly; shelfmark Mic.F.396.

Slowly I am constructing the contexts of these magazines around me. Now I recognise the names which reoccur in the periodicals. I know not just the canonical Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, but Ricardo Weeks, a poet, and Myrtle Sengstacke, associate editor of Negro Story. The most recent name that I recognized was one John Henrik Clarke, editor of the Harlem Quarterly. He was familiar because he was the same John Henrik Clarke that my grandfather had been sending me YouTube videos about for weeks. It is these points where you bump into yourself that research feels like it starts to take on meaning. 

Microfiche reader depicting the cover of Harlem Quarterly Vol.1 No.2.; shelfmark Mic.F.396.

I’m going to be writing regular posts here over the course of my PhD, sharing my research, the nuggets of interest I bump into in the British Library and the other serendipitous moments of understanding that bump into me over the course of my doctorate. I will also share the process of the project as well as the trials and errors of research as I jump into this other New Thing: a PhD. Studying periodicals will always begin with an opaque catalogue entry, with a long list of issues, with the limited historical contexts of publication dates. Over the next four years, as I read and I research at the British Library, some of those dates and their corresponding periodicals will come alive. I hope to share some of them here with you.  

Notes

1. CDP stands for Collaborative Doctoral Project. AHRC CDP PhD projects are collaborative PhDs between a cultural institution (such as the British Library) and an academic institution (such as the University of Cambridge). They are fully funded by the AHRC, the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For more information and a list of currently available AHRC CDP PhDs please go to https://www.ahrc-cdp.org/

2. Below is a list of mentioned periodicals with their catalogue numbers.  Please note that not all are currently accessible from the Library collection due to the cyber-attack; items with an asterisk are available to view in the Library collection at the date of publication:

• Negro Digest [6075.155000]
• Chicago Defender [MFM.MA496]
• Crisis [3487.382000] This is also publicly available on Google Books
• Negro Story [Mic.F.409] ***
• Harlem Quarterly [Mic.F.396] ***
• Negro Quarterly [Mic.F.388] ***
• Pittsburgh Courier [part of the ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers Collection; currently unavailable due to the cyber-attack]
• Baltimore Afro-American [part of the ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers Collection; currently unavailable due the cyber-attack]

 

 

Monique Hayes is a historical fiction author, poet, and screenwriter from Maryland. She was a 2023 Eccles Institute Visiting Fellow at the British Library.

As an author who often utilizes young adult protagonists, I have to think about what passions and promises propel my characters to act. Will they ultimately get what they want? My novel-in-progress Sally Forth focuses on two enslaved brothers with disparate dreams and journeys, who go boldly into the Revolutionary War when they’re promised freedom for their service. While younger brother Brook’s path as a Continental Army soldier comes with difficult challenges, his older brother Albie, a Black Loyalist, goes down a rockier road full of weak promises, debilitating hardships, and dehumanizing moments. It becomes increasingly hard for Albie to get what he wants and deserves.

My Eccles Institute Visiting Fellowship gave me access to rich resources so I could flesh out Albie’s journey, from his first time holding a uniform emblazoned with “Liberty to Slaves” in Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment to his days of crippling doubt in Nova Scotia and then his struggle to survive in Sierra Leone.

My primary goal during my Visiting Fellowship was to unearth as much information as I could about the Black Loyalist settlement of Birchtown and the Freetown colony in Sierra Leone. Unlike his brother who craves education, Albie’s passion is land ownership. He’s denied this as a slave in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and brightens at the promise of getting his own land in Birchtown after he emigrates to Nova Scotia. My eyes were truly opened by the British Library’s holdings. There were enlightening eyewitness accounts and secondary sources detailing how much the 1,521 free Blacks of Birchtown were disenchanted by the poor soil, the delays in receiving their land allotments, the lack of food and housing supplies, and the prejudice that forced them to take low-paying labour jobs.

The most stunning account came from a white landowner’s grandfather: “They just dug a hole in the ground and put a little packed roof over it…There was a small trapdoor in one side of the roof and the negroes entered the house by dropping right down through. And that was the black man’s home - a hole in the ground with a roof over the hole.”¹ Others erected crude huts, but the Black settlers often received lumber and tools after their white counterparts. It became much easier for me to compose scenes focused on Albie dealing with these injustices and waiting years for his longed-for land.

Inefficient surveyors and harsh winter conditions frustrated the Black Birchtown settlers as well. Some surveys for Black settlers were halted when new white Loyalists arrived looking for land. Other land allotments guaranteed to the Black Loyalists were taken away and used for other purposes.

I particularly gravitated to a passage about Black Loyalist Caesar Perth who went to his 34-acre lot for the first time, only to find “a rocky outcropping that was not suitable for crops.”² This was what Perth and 183 men received after several years of patience. I was heartbroken and inspired to craft a scene between Albie and Perth, arriving to see the “rewards” for their service, another crushing blow years after the loss at Yorktown.

After this devastating realization, Albie accepts the offer Thomas Peters gave to nearly 1,200 Black Nova Scotians to emigrate to Sierra Leone in 1792. According to naturalist Henry Smeathman, the land in Sierra Leone was a “suitable location”: “An opportunity so advantageous may perhaps never be offered to them again; for they and their posterity may enjoy perfect freedom.”³

Image 1: A drawing of Freetown in 1798, by William Augustus Bowles, a visiting Creek Indian leader. Frontispiece for Dr. Thomas Winterbottom’s An Account of the Native Africans of Sierra Leone (1803). Shelfmark L.69/5614.

However, that freedom was not at all perfect. Studying Mary Louise Clifford’s From Slavery to Freetown allowed me to truly see the major distrust between abolitionist John Clarkson and Peters, the negative influence the Sierra Leone Company had over the budding colony, and the emasculation of Peters over time.

Still, I was very moved when reading about the emigrants’ experiences, including the eldest emigrant that made the journey funded by the Sierra Leone Company. The one-hundred- and four-year-old woman, possibly the mother of famous preacher Cato Perkins, was determined to go so “that she may lay her bones in her native country.”⁴ Albie is just as eager to connect with his African past and start a family in the newly formed Freetown.

Image 2: Margaret Whitman Blair, “Liberty or Death: The Surprising Story of Runaway Slaves Who Sided with the British During the American Revolution” (2010). Shelfmark Y.K. 2010.b.6889.

What most surprised and inspired me was Thomas Peters’ downfall during the early days of Freetown. I was well aware that Sierra Leone’s intense rainy season and various illnesses plagued the settlers, but Peters’ life was more complex than I thought. Former Black pioneer Peters went from the settlers’ preferred leader to an outcast among his peers due to the machinations of Clarkson and other officials.

Orphan Albie views Peters as a father figure. He admires Peters, who protested when authorities delayed land distribution and failed to let the colonists govern themselves. Peters’ sudden death after being accused of theft is an event neither the settlers nor Albie are prepared for, and it’s a haunting historical example of what a life of dashed dreams can do.

I’m incredibly grateful for the Eccles Institute Visiting Fellowship which fulfilled one of my dreams to study these materials in-depth so I could give Albie a more historically accurate and meaningful journey. As he pursues his passions, Albie’s heart and spirit are tested on and beyond American shores, and I hope his story finds its way into the hearts of many readers.

References

1. "Birchtown: The History and the Material Culture of an Expatriate African-American Community", by Laird Navin and Stephen Davis. Chapter 4 of Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World, ed. by John Pulis (London: Garland, 2013), p. 72. Shelfmark Y.C. 2003. a. 12259.

2.  Mary Louise Clifford. From Slavery to Freetown (London: MacFarland, 1999) p. 60. Shelfmark Y.C. 1999. b. 6067

3.  Henry Smeathman, Plan of a settlement to be made near Sierra Leone, on the Grain Coast of Africa (London: 1786). Shelfmark B.496.(1).

4.  “The Black Loyalists in Sierra Leone” by Wallace Brown. Chapter 6 of Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World, ed. by John Pullis (London: Garland,1999), p. 109. Y.C. 2003. a. 12259.