Carmen Callil, publisher, author and founder of Virago Press died on Monday.

Callil founded the publishing house Virago Press, in 1972, and was also Managing Director of Chatto and Windus and the Hogarth Press between 1982-1994. Callil remained Chairman of Virago Press until 1995 and was also a member of the Board of Channel 4 Television, between 1985 and 1991, and a member of the committee for The Booker Prize between 1979-1984.

Callil wrote and published in her own right, including Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family and Fatherland, a biography of Louis Darquier de Pellepoix and Vichy France, published in 2006.

The British Library Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts Department holds the archive of Virago Press, as well as the recently acquired personal papers of Callil herself. A truly contemporary collection, with material spanning into the 2010s, the Carmen Callil archive is still being catalogued and is expected to be available to researchers in 2023.  

As the cataloguer of this material, it was an honour to be able to work alongside Callil while processing it. She was always supportive and interested in the work we were doing, as well as enthusiastic about participating in events and research, and with helping our team to navigate the collections.

‘Keep whatever you think a student of women’s literature in 2000 would like to know about us’ [1] Callil wrote on an internal memo to the staff of the Virago Press in the early 1980s.

The message appears to have been taken on board. Both the Virago Press Papers and the Carmen Callil Archive come together to create a wonderful resource for researchers in a wide range of areas, as well as being a fitting part of remembering Carmen herself.

The Virago Press Archive, Add MS 88904, is accessible in the Manuscripts Reading room.

The Carmen Callil Archive, Add MS 89178, is currently being catalogued and will be released to researchers in 2023. Please contact [email protected] for any enquiries.

 

References: 

[1] The Carmen Callil Archive, Add MS 89178/1/71 

By Greg Buzwell, Curator, Contemporary Literary Archives.

‘Does anyone seriously believe that Beatles music will be an unthinkingly accepted part of daily life all over the world in the 2000s?’ wrote the philosopher and politician Bryan Magee in the February 1967 issue of The Listener. The passage of time has subsequently given a resounding answer to Magee’s question, and it turned out not to be the one he was obviously expecting. His comment highlights the now almost eye-wateringly unbelievable notion that, even after Beatlemania, several albums including A Hard Day’s Night, Rubber Soul and Revolver - and on the verge of the Summer of Love and the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - the Beatles’ lasting contribution to popular culture was still being questioned in certain quarters.

A small selection of the notebooks kept by Hunter Davies in 1967 as he carried out interviews and research for his book The Beatles: The Authorised Biography’. © Hunter Davies

Someone else also pondering the Beatles and their legacy in 1967 was the journalist Hunter Davies. The British Library has recently acquired Davies’s archive of Beatles-related material consisting of photographs, press cuttings, concert programmes and ephemera together with the notebooks he kept when carrying out his research for his 1968 biography of the band – The Beatles: The Authorised Biography. Hunter interviewed dozens of people prior to writing his book, including of course John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, but also wives and girlfriends including Cynthia Lennon and Jane Asher, along with other key contributors to the band’s success such as their manager Brian Epstein; their producer George Martin; Astrid Kirchherr whose early photographs of the group were instrumental in defining their look, and their road manager Mal Evans along with many, many others. Among the collection there is also a draft of Hunter’s original letter to Brian Epstein suggesting the idea that he write an authorised biography of the Beatles and asking for Brian’s approval.

A draft of Hunter’s letter to Brian Epstein outlining his proposal to write an authorised biography of the Beatles. 31st December 1966. © Hunter Davies

One of the points Hunter makes in the letter is that the book would provide a record of the Beatles phenomenon and allow everyone involved with the band to have their say while events were still relatively fresh in their memories. In essence the book would be, in Hunter’s words, ‘not a fan book, but a full study of what happened and why during the last five years’. Perhaps, even in 1967, this was ambitious. In particular the band’s recollection of their early days in Hamburg was already a little hazy. Unsurprising given the relentless nature of the gigs they had to play and the outrageous nightlife offered to those on Hamburg’s Reeperbahn where the clubs the Beatles played were situated. When talking to the Beatles about their Hamburg days Hunter’s notebooks contain details of John Lennon sleeping behind the stage and of Pete Best, the band’s drummer before Ringo Starr joined in 1962, being so exhausted he once collapsed over his drum kit mid-performance. Then again, all the more reason to have those recollections and thoughts put down on paper before they became even more lost in the haze between actuality and memory.

The highlight of the collection is undoubtedly to be found in one of the notebooks in which Hunter recorded his interviews with Paul McCartney. At one point Hunter asked Paul to describe how John Lennon and George Harrison looked back in their late-1950s pre-Beatles days with the band The Quarrymen. Paul duly obliged, but he also borrowed Hunter’s notebook and quickly sketched George and John: the former all boyishly innocent with upswept hair and bushy eyebrows and the latter with sideburns, glasses and a stare firmly focused on the future. There’s something touching about the sketches – an authenticity and affection that comes from Paul reflecting on two friends and the impression they made on him in the very first days of their friendship.

Paul McCartney’s sketches of George Harrison and John Lennon back in their Quarrymen days. © MPL Communications Inc

Also among the archive is the transcript of a television interview, the recording of which is now thought to be lost, between Hunter Davies and Ringo Starr dated December 15^th 1970. A date by which point the band had effectively split. In the interview Ringo talks about how one of his childhood ambitions, at least according to his mother, was to be a tramp and to wander the world. There’s also a list of the questions Hunter is hoping to have answered in the interview, such as whether Ringo worries that film companies only want him in their movies so they can put his name on the poster; whether he still goes back to Liverpool to revisit his roots and whether his fame prevents him from ordinary pleasures such as evenings out in a pub with friends. Much of the interview comes across as a touching attempt to discover Ringo the private individual, husband and father beneath the surface glamour of Ringo the rock-star drummer.

Hunter’s outline for the questions he’d like to ask Ringo Starr prior to a television interview. December 1970. © Hunter Davies

At its heart though the archive is really about Hunter’s authorised biography of the Beatles. First published in 1968 and the only book about the group ever written with the backing of the whole band and those within their inner circle. As such it offers an invaluable insight into what made the Beatles tick, and how they managed to achieve so much in such a relatively short space of time. There have been, quite literally, thousands of books written about the Beatles and while they all offer something perhaps only a dozen or so are absolutely essential to anyone who loves the music and wishes to know more about how it all came about. Hunter’s book is definitely towards the top of that select list and his archive reveals a great deal about how he put it together.

To learn more about The Beatles: The Authorised Biography, along with the archive behind its creation and Hunter Davies’s long association with the Beatles, please follow the link below for details of an event on November 11^th 2022 featuring Hunter in conversation: Hunter Davies: Writing The Beatles.

by Dominic Newman, Manuscripts Cataloguer. 

Donald Michael Thomas (b. 1935) made his name as a writer when, in the early 1980s, his novel ‘The White Hotel’ scored a sudden success in the United States. With its psychedelic expedition into the subconscious, Freud and the Holocaust, and the vertiginous buckling and melting away of trust in its fickle narrator, the sensation it caused then spread back across the Atlantic to Britain.

Yet Thomas had been writing steadily and copiously for many years beforehand, as his archive, now fully catalogued and available in the Reading Rooms, records.  In his early career he considered himself mainly a poet: between the 1960s and the 1980s he filled thirty-five notebooks (preserved in photocopied form) with sketches and drafts of verse.  A home-made chart (Add MS 89363/9/6) chronicles appearances of his early poems in magazines and journals.

A chart showing publications of Thomas’s early poems, c. 1960 (Add MS 89363/9/6).  ‘Weirdly child-like!’ is his subsequent annotation.

It was only at the end of the 1970s that Thomas turned to writing novels.  His first, ‘Birthstone’, set in his native Cornwall and already exploring his interest in the ideas of Sigmund Freud, is preserved in a first-edition copy (Add MS 89363/1/4) with annotations and amendments by the author.  Draft material and annotated typescripts and proofs record work on the other titles that then followed in quick succession, including ‘Russian Nights’, a sequence of novels which, though originally planned as a trilogy, expanded first into a quartet, then a quintet.

In ‘Lying Together’ (1990), Thomas appears as one of his own characters, helping three other writers to improvise a novel-within-a-novel (Add MS 89363/1/23)

Russia is a recurring theme in Thomas’s work.  He has translated the poetry of Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova, and made radio adaptations of Russian literature.  In the late 1990s he embarked on a substantial biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, ‘A Century in his Life’, which won the Orwell Book Prize in 1999.  The archive contains a great deal of draft and research material for this book, as well as photographs and interview transcripts.

A more unusual series of papers (Add MS 89363/8) records one of the great frustrations of Thomas’s career: the seeming impossibility of making a film adaptation of ‘The White Hotel’, in spite of at least three separate attempts by different producers over the years.  The idea of a film first surfaced almost immediately after the novel’s overnight success, and at various junctures it seemed almost certain to be made.  But each time the project ran into difficulties, including of the legal variety (Thomas even found himself being dragged unwittingly into an American court case).  He relates the whole saga in his memoir ‘Bleak Hotel’ (2008), a typescript of which is also present in the archive (Add MS 89363/3/4-5).

Thomas’s commentary on Dennis Potter’s screenplay for a proposed film adaptation of ‘The White Hotel’ (Add MS 89363/8/19)

Thomas has retained much of his correspondence with publishers and well-known writers (Charles Causley, Stevie Smith, Peter Redgrove, and others), along with hundreds of messages from his sister Lois (Add MS 89363/9/18-24).  There are also dozens of family photographs (Add MS 89363/9/8-11), starting at the time of his parents’ courtship in Cornwall in the 1920s and continuing through his childhood and adult life.  Lively scenes at home in Truro, where he returned to live in the late 1980s, are preserved for posterity. Most of the snaps are captioned by Thomas himself: ‘Rugby with Dad’ – ‘I was always distant at visits to beach / sea’ – ‘Singing my face off’. Family and friends too are fondly epitheted. There is even a calendar entitled ‘Singing Thomas’s’, each month with a different picture of the family singing, drinking and generally making merry.  Thomas has still found time to write, however: the latest drafts and sketches in the archive (Add MS 89363/2/9-23) date from as recently as 2017.

‘Rugby with Dad’ in the field behind Thomas’s childhood home at Carnkie, near Redruth in Cornwall (Add Ms 89363/9/8)

The D. M. Thomas archive is available under shelf-mark Add MS 89363.

The 14^th annual Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets is open for entries for best pamphlet, publisher and illustrator. The Awards are often marked by innovation and this year is no different, introducing the Award’s first prize for Environmental Poet of the Year.

The call for Environmental Poet of the Year closes on 1^st September, and focuses on the theme of the environment and the place of the human within it. Poets are encouraged to think about the theme in a broad way, and submissions might describe the impact of humans on the environment, or on the impact that climate change is having on people’s lives. Entry is by submission of a portfolio of poetry and full details and entry rules are available at https://michaelmarksawards.org/epoty/

The winning portfolio will be published as a pamphlet, and the winning poet will invited to read at a special ‘Environmental Poet of the Year’ event at Wordsworth Grasmere, as well as at the Michael Marks Awards in December. The poet will also receive a prize of £1,000.

The judges for the new Award are poet Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Dr Mark Avery (formerly Director of Conservation at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and Jane Caven, a member of the Poetry Readers group at Wordsworth Grasmere.

The call for the prizes for Poet, Publish and Illustrator are also open, and close 23^rd September. Full details for entry can be found on the Michael Marks Awards website at: https://michaelmarksawards.org/awards-2022/

Previous years have seen special prizes in different categories. The 2021 Awards were accompanied by an International Greek Bi-centennial Poetry Prize for both poet and illustrator, to mark the 200 year anniversary of the creation of the modern Greek state. The winning entries were published in the pamphlet, Ariadne, with poetry by Fiona Benson, illustrations by Judith Eyal and translations to Greek by Haris Psarras. The pamphlet can be bought from Broken Sleep Books.

In 2019 and 2020 the Awards included a prize for poetry in a Celtic language. The winning entries were (for 2019) moroedd/dŵr by Morgan Owen, and (for 2020) Carthen Denau by Rhys Iorwerth.

The Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets are a partnership of the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, with the British Library, Wordsworth Gasmere, Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies and Times Literary Supplement.     

By Amber Akaunu, filmmaker and artist, who was commissioned by the British Library to engage creatively with the Beryl Gilroy archive.

Reflecting on past projects and experiences is something that I admittedly had never even considered doing before spending time with Dr Beryl Gilroy’s archive. I didn’t see it as an essential aspect of my work as an artist and filmmaker until now.

The highlight of Gilroy’s archive for me were the reflective pieces of writings she wrote on her own work. They were detailed and read more like an essay, in comparison to her creative writings we see in books such as ‘In Praise of Love and Children’ (1996). I loved reading them and realised how important it is to not only reflect on our practice in order to identify areas that deserve celebration as well as areas that can use some development, however it is also important in defining our narrative and legacy; and Gilroy has done exactly that.

 

BL Ref Deposit 11286/1/10 – extracts from Beryl Gilroy’s reflective writing.

 

So, I want to follow Dr Gilroy’s footsteps and go on a journey of deep reflection on my experience working with the British Library:

I received an invitation to pitch an idea to make a body of work that responds to the archive of Dr Beryl Gilroy. This invite came only a week after I had moved to London and so it was an affirming and grounding first creative project to take on amidst a time of transition for me. On reflection, I think the consistency of coming to the British Library and viewing Gilroy’s archive was exactly what I needed at the time.

We often idolise Black women for all the incredible things we achieve in such harsh circumstances. We’re often thought of as the rose that grew from concrete, and although that tends to be an accurate representation, I really wanted my response to Dr Gilroy’s archive to look deeper into who she was. I decided to explore her roles as a mother, educator, psychologist and founding member of Camden Black Sisters. I also used these categories to highlight Black women in my life including; my mother (Jessica); my therapist (Amanda); my primary school head teacher (Mrs Wrigley); and Liverpool’s Black Sisters, who held summer schemes that I attended as a child. Through this process I got to realise how lucky I have been to be able to have incredible Black women in my life.

I enjoyed exploring Dr Gilroy’s role as a mother in particular, especially after meeting with Dr Gilroy’s daughter, Darla, an academic. It was inspiring to see the work she does to help keep her mother’s legacy alive and to hear the way she talks about her mother. It made me think about the close bond my mother and I have, and so it was fulfilling to be able to include my mother’s impact on me and link this with Gilroy’s impact on her own children, and of course the many other children through her role as an educator and one of London’s first Black head teachers.

I had begun writing a poem in my iPhone notes app a while ago about how Black women are the blueprint, and this project felt like the perfect reason to finish that poem and develop that idea further. I also wanted to extend this notion to include the fact the archive of Black women is also the blueprint to which we build from. I felt like the underlying message I took away from my time with Dr Gilroy’s archive showed the importance of archiving. Gilroy’s archive was a special first-hand look into her life and I am thankful that it exists.

I worked with my good friend Khadeeja to make a short film that brought to life the poem I had written. I sent Khadeeja a WhatsApp message asking her if she’d like to be in the film along with a screenshot of the poem. She then sent me a voice note response of her performing the poem perfectly. This is one of the reasons I love to collaborate with other creatives. Khadeeja brought the poem to life in a way I couldn’t have imagined. I loved that voice note recording so much that I used it in the film.

 

A screenshot from Amber Akaunu's 'The Blueprint' showing Khadeeja.

 

Alongside the film, I also created a zine that is titled The Blueprint, which is the same title as the film. The zine was designed by Lana Mauge-Tharpe, who was perfect for the project as not only is she incredibly talented, she also is a former student at Dr Gilroy’s school in North London.

Through colour, composition and typography, Lana was able to present my words in a fresh way. The zine also featured a QR code that allowed readers to access a blue inspired playlist I had made while working on the project.

In conclusion, I have learned a lot about Dr Gilroy, myself and my practice through this project and process and hope that visitors of the exhibition also felt like they got to know more about Dr Beryl Gilroy, her impact and the significance of her archive to the Black women that she has directly, and indirectly, impacted.

 

The Blueprint, a zine by Amber Akaunu

 

Further reading:

Beryl Gilroy | The British Library (bl.uk)

For enquiries regarding the Beryl Gilroy archive, please contact Eleanor Dickens [email protected]

by R.B. Russell, researcher, publisher and writer, who consulted the Robert Aickman Archive at the British Library and writes here of his experiences. 

BL Add. MS 89209/3/5. Robert Aickman at Gledhow Gardens, London. 1980

I first came across Robert Aickman (1914-1981) as the author of ‘strange stories’ (his own term), psychological tales that updated the traditional ghost story to the requirements of a more ‘knowing’ late twentieth century. I soon discovered that Aickman’s literary activities (he was also an editor of ghost story anthologies and wrote two volumes of autobiography) were just one part of his life. Another was his campaigning, largely successful, for the restoration of the inland waterways of Britain.

I was lucky enough to first see Aickman’s literary archive in 2014 when I visited his literary executor in Guiseley, West Yorkshire. At that time, Aickman’s manuscripts and typescripts were being stored in a spare bedroom. With my partner, Rosalie Parker, we produced an inventory of what was in the archive and we borrowed material to publish The Strangers and Other Writings (Tartarus Press, 2015) collecting together previously unpublished fiction and non-fiction. The Guiseley archive was ultimately acquired by the British Library in 2017. There are also collections of Aickman’s waterways papers at the National Archive in Kew and at the National Waterways Museum Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.

The more I found out about Aickman, the more interested I became in the man, and in 2020 I decided to write his biography. I realised there were several obstacles, however, and that any one of them might cause there to be a major shortcoming in the finished book. Until I started my research, though, I couldn’t be certain whether they were surmountable.

BL Add. MS 89209/1/70. Revised typescript for We Are For The Dark: Six Ghost Stories. The book, published in 1951, contained three stories by Elizabeth Jane Howard and three by Robert Aickman. Note Aickman’s amendment discarding the pseudonym ‘Robert Vigo’ in favour of his real name. The short-lived pseudonym was taken from the lead character in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1932 film The Blue Light. Reproduced by the kind permission of the Estate of Robert Aickman.

The first problem was one shared by all researchers—the pandemic. I couldn’t consult any of the archives I wished to visit, meet up with anyone who knew Aickman, or visit any of the sites associated with him. However, since the 1990s I had amassed more research material than I realised, and now I had the opportunity to read it! If anything, being confined to home was a blessing in disguise. As for interviewing Aickman’s old friends, they were very helpful and they now had the time to share information with me. Those who might otherwise have been wary of using modern technology were happy to make Zoom and Skype calls.

I had to wait for the archives to re-open here in the UK, but there was another small collection of important material at Bowling Green University in America. Even if I could travel there at some unspecified time in the future, I wasn’t certain I could justify the expense. When I contacted them, I discovered the librarians were able to make pdf copies (for a modest fee) of all that I needed to see.

After a year of intensive and productive research from home, I was confident that many gaps in my knowledge would be filled when the British Library re-opened. There were only two major lacunae that concerned me.

The first was my inability to read Aickman’s letters to his American agent, Kirby McCauley. This mine of useful information was in the hands of a rare book dealer in the US.

The second was any concrete information relating to Aickman’s claim that he had been a conscientious objector in the Second World War, exempted from any kind of war work. This seemed out of character, and his old friends suggested several alternative theories, none of which could be verified. It seemed unlikely I would ever clear this up because the majority of official records relating to conscientious objection have been destroyed.

Robert Aickman 1960

In June 2021 Covid restrictions were lifted somewhat and Rosalie and I were finally able to travel from North Yorkshire to visit the British Library on the Euston Road in London. After our informal experience in Guiseley, I must admit that it seemed like an imposition to have to join the British Library in advance (in Wakefield), then to book tables in the reading room, and to have to book the material we wanted to see from the online catalogue. Pandemic restrictions meant that the number of items we could consult at any one visit was limited.

R.B. Russell and Rosalie Parker

However, over three days Rosalie and I looked through everything we asked for, and because of the friendly efficiency of the staff, we were able to see a little more besides. Despite the restrictions, the atmosphere in the reading room was relaxed and comfortable, and it was brought home to me how important it is to have this vital material publicly accessible (not kept in bedrooms, or overseas, owned by rare book dealers). So much was still uncertain in the world at that time, but there was something reassuring about being inside the British Library with the background sounds of murmuring voices, pages turning, and pencilled notes being made. I filled in all the gaps in my knowledge that I had been aware of, and discovered additional important material, besides.

My preparation for the visit to the British Library (which felt very long-delayed) meant that I extracted the most out of the three days. And I also discovered in the various files of Aickman’s correspondence carbon copies of all his letters to his agent. They were as important as I had expected.

This left just that one unanswered question—Robert Aickman’s apparent conscientious objection. I felt I knew Robert Aickman’s beliefs and motivations well by this time, and it didn’t ‘fit’ with his personality. It was out of character in the same way that one item in the British Library catalogue seemed out of place. Tucked away in a folder, according to the catalogue, was an application by Aickman to work for the Civil Service. I called up this folder to discover that the item had been mis-described (it has since been corrected). Rather than an unlikely application to work for the Civil Service, it was Aickman’s application to be considered a conscientious objector, and the decision that had been made.

BL Add. MS 89209/3/3. Robert Aickman’s conscientious objection application decision

The biography came together at that point, although I still do not know what to make of the statement Robert Aickman submitted in support of his application for conscientious objection. He claims religious beliefs he does not profess anywhere else, and appears to contradict other statements he made. Whatever I may think of his justifications, he did receive the very rare judgement that he was exempt from any kind of war work.

My biography of Aickman was published in early 2022, as Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography, by Tartarus Press It contains extensive acknowledgements in alphabetical order, but if I had listed them in order of importance, along with Rosalie Parker, the British Library would have been towards the top.

Robert Aickman, An Attempted Biography by R.B. Russell, Tartarus Press 2022

By Alexander Lock, Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts. 

Today, 8 July 2022, marks the bicentenary of the death of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). One of the most politically radical of the Romantic poets, Shelley’s best known works include ‘Ozymandias’ (1818), ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ (1819), and ‘To the Skylark’ (1820). 

Shelley died at sea, aged just 29, on 8 July 1822. Earlier that month Shelley had sailed in his boat, the Don Juan, from his home in San Terenzo to Livorno. On that voyage he was accompanied by a young boat hand, Charles Vivian, and two close friends Edward Williams and naval officer Daniel Roberts. Shelley sailed to Livorno to meet Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron in order to develop their plans for the publication of a new anti-establishment journal The Liberal. Having accompanied Hunt to his accommodation in Pisa, on 8 July Shelley, Williams and Vivian set sail for home. Within a few hours the Don Juan was caught in a severe storm and all three men were lost at sea.

Shelley's body washed ashore near Viareggio on 18 July 1822 and William’s body was found on the same day three miles further along the shore. The remains of Vivian were discovered some weeks later. According to the friend who found them, Edward John Trelawny, Shelley was identified by the ‘volume of Sophocles’ he had ‘in one pocket, and Keats’s poems in the other’. Initially buried in quicklime, Shelley and Williams were exhumed and cremated on 16 August 1822 on the beach near Viareggio where they were found. It had been decided that Shelley’s remains should be interred near John Keats’ in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, whilst the remains of Williams were to be returned to England. In order to facilitate the movement of their bodies and overcome the Italian quarantine laws governing the burial of bodies washed from the sea, it was decided that the men be cremated.

An idealised representation of Shelley’s funeral in Louis Édouard Fournier, ‘The Funeral of Shelley’, 1889. Oil on canvas, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Public Domain

Following the funeral the ashes were collected for burial by Edward Trelawney who had also taken some of Shelley’s hair as a memento. He gave the hair and some of the ashes as a keepsake to Claire Clairmont – Mary Shelley’s stepsister and Lord Byron’s lover who was staying with the Shelleys in San Terenzo. These items would eventually pass to the British Library.

A lock of Shelley's hair and fragments of his ashes that once belonged to Claire Clairmont, stepsister of Shelley’s wife Mary Shelley

A lock of Shelley's hair and fragments of his ashes that once belonged to Claire Clairmont, stepsister of Shelley’s wife Mary Shelley

In the weeks leading up to his death, Shelley suffered from visions of drowning and death. In a letter written just after Shelley died – now in the British Library as Ashley MS 5022 – his wife Mary Shelley recounted how he dreamt that ‘the sea was rushing in’ and that he was strangling her whilst Edward Williams and his wife Jane looked on as corpses. After her husband's drowning, Mary began to consider how his visions might have foretold the future.

To mark the bicentenary of the death of Percy Bysshe Shelley, curators at the British Library worked with the poet Benjamin Zephaniah on a new Radio 4 programme ‘Percy Shelley, Reformer and Radical’. Presented by Zephaniah, the 2 part series brings a very personal take on Shelley’s work and how it influenced his own work and that of other poets. As part of this recording we showed Zephaniah the original draft of the ‘Mask of Anarchy’, Shelley’s annotated copy of ‘Queen Mab’, as well as the hair and ashes of the poet taken from his funeral pyre.

Curator Alexander Lock with Benjamin Zephaniah and the ashes of Percy Bysshe Shelley

Episode 1 was broadcast on Sunday 3 July and episode 2 will be aired on Sunday 10 July, at 4.30pm on BBC Radio 4. The episodes will be available online after broadcast. 

 

 

By Catherine Angerson, Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts. A small display to mark the 250^th anniversary of the birth of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) can be seen in the Treasures Gallery until 25 September 2022.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner recounts the experiences of a mariner whose ship becomes trapped in ice during a long voyage. The mariner brings great misfortune on the ship and its crew by killing the albatross which helped to bring them to safety. Coleridge’s depression and own experiences of travel led to his increasing identification with the Mariner and he continued to revise the poem, first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798, at different episodes during his life.

A new temporary display in the Treasures Gallery brings together three of Coleridge’s manuscripts (a poem and two notebooks) and two 20th-century illustrated editions of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of the poet.

The Coleridge display in the British Library Treasures Gallery

The first item on display is a handwritten poem titled 'Dura Navis' which Coleridge said he composed at the age of 15 while he was a pupil at Christ’s Hospital in Sussex. The poem shows the poet’s early preoccupation with the isolation of the traveller and the dangers of travelling by sea. The manuscript is an autograph fair copy written down by Coleridge many years after he first composed the poem. A 51-year-old Coleridge added a comment at the bottom of the first page saying that the poem ‘does not contain a line that any clever school boy might not have written’ (Add MS 34225, f.1r).

S.T. Coleridge, ‘Dura Navis’, composed 1787; fair copy around 1823. Add MS 34225, f. 1r.

At the centre of the small display are two of the 55 of Coleridge’s notebooks purchased by the British Museum from the descendants of Coleridge’s brother James in 1951. Coleridge used pocket-sized notebooks to record thoughts, feelings, quotations, travel accounts, language learning (especially German), philosophical musings, poems and more. Notebook No. 9 (Add MS 47506) contains Coleridge’s impressions of a voyage to Malta in April 1804. In a brief moment of calm in the Bay of Biscay, the poet observes ‘the beautiful Surface of the Sea in this gentle Breeze’ (f. 33v). A reference to his friend William Wordsworth’s poem The Female Vagrant can be seen near the bottom of the page: ‘And on the gliding Vessel Heaven & Ocean smil’d!’ (f. 34r)

‘And on the gliding Vessel Heaven & Ocean smil’d!’: a reference to Wordsworth in Coleridge’s Notebook No. 9, Add MS 47506, f. 34r.

In October 1806, Coleridge drafted a new version of a short section of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in his Notebook No. 11 (Add MS 47508). While the opening lines, ‘With never a whisper in the main / Off shot the spectre ship’, are close to lines 198–199 of the poem published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798, the following two lines do not appear in the first or the amended version published in 1817:

And stifled words & groans of pain
Mix’d on each trembling ^ murmering lip

Other images are altered but recognisable from part III of the poem published in Sibylline Leaves (1817). ‘The Sky was dull & dark the Night’ in the 1806 notebook becomes ‘The stars were dim, and thick the night’ in 1817.

S.T. Coleridge, manuscript revision of lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in Notebook No. 11, 1806, Add MS 47508, f. 5r

Many artists have been drawn to the creative force and supernatural imagery of The Ancient Mariner. The first illustrated edition on display was designed, decorated and illustrated by Hungarian artist Willy Pogány (born Vilmos András Pogány, 1882–1955) and published in 1910. The illustration of the ship struck by a ‘storm-blast’ is reproduced from Pogány’s watercolour and corresponds to Coleridge’s words on the opposite page. In the poem, the ship is driven by a storm, ‘tyrannous and strong’, towards the South Pole. Pogány’s storm has a suggestion of wings like the winged storm which chases the ship in the poem.

S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: in seven parts; presented by Willy Pogány. London: G.G. Harrap & Co., 1910. K.T.C.40.b.13.

The display concludes with Mervyn Peake’s stark image of a suffering and repentant Mariner in an edition published by Chatto & Windus in 1943. In contrast to Pogány’s deluxe edition printed on vellum, this edition with seven black-and-white illustrations reproduced from Peake’s drawings was designed to be affordable. In Coleridge’s poem, the crew hangs the albatross around the Mariner’s neck to mark his guilt for killing the bird of good omen. Peake’s image hints at the possibility of redemption for the Mariner.

Illustration by Mervyn Peake, in S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. London: Chatto & Windus, 1943. 11657.dd.18.

The Coleridge display at the British Library (until 25 September) overlaps by a few weeks with the loan of the manuscript of Coleridge’s other famous poem, Kubla Kahn, and a 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads to the Museum of Somerset for the exhibition In Xanadu: Coleridge and the West Country (until 25 June). The anniversary is also being marked at the British Library on 20 October with the Wordsworth Trust annual lecture by renowned Coleridge biographer Richard Holmes. Tickets will be available from mid-August.

Further reading

Kathleen Coburn, Merton Christensen and Anthony John Harding, eds, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 5 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957–2002)

Seamus Perry, ed., Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)