PhD students are invited to apply for a new placement which focuses on the British Library’s collections of First World War printed ephemera. This is an opportunity to examine an alternative perspective on what went on behind the lines on the Western Front.

The Printed Heritage and Collections team are looking for a postgraduate student to help them promote a hitherto largely hidden collection of First World War ephemera. This 3-month (or P/T equivalent) PhD placement, is one of seventeen projects currently on offer at the British Library.

British soldiers at play France (Photo 24-320) H.D. Girdwood collection (1915). British Library, Wikimedia Commons.

The background for this project is the Library’s wider collection of printed items published during the First World War, located within Western Heritage Collections, and including monographs, periodicals, pamphlets, leaflets and other ephemera.

In the context of the First World War Centenary, this project offers an exciting opportunity to research one of the British Library’s collections of ephemera, discover more about the context of its creation and promote it to a wider audience. The body of material, which has not been digitised, includes programmes for sports contests, vegetable shows and musical productions. The placement holder will be responsible for producing a descriptive record of the items, including details of the creating organisation (unit etc), place of publication and date. This record will be made visible through the British Library’s public catalogue, and there will be further potential opportunities to disseminate any findings via the Library’s World War One website, the Untold Lives blog, and/or through a resource guide or outreach event. 

The successful candidate will be granted considerable autonomy in deciding their research approach, and the most appropriate way of promoting the material. They can expect to work closely with specialist curators in the Printed Heritage Collections and develop valuable research skills. In addition to an induction to the British Library, training in the use of spreadsheets, and an introduction to a range of online subscription databases, all placement students will be allocated their own desk and/or workspace, and will be fully integrated into the working environment of their team/department.

Full details of the scheme and profiles of the 17 projects that are being offered can be seen here. All applications must be supported by the applicant’s PhD supervisor and their department’s Graduate Tutor (or equivalent). The application deadline, for all of the 2016/2017 PhD placements, is 19 February 2016.

Jane Shepard
Research Support Intern

Today is Chinese New Year (the Year of the Monkey) and to celebrate we thought we would share with you some of the amazing images we have of China made by the artist William Alexander (1767-1816) who was appointed draughtsman on the first formal British diplomatic mission to China between 1792 and 1794. Born at Maidstone in Kent, Alexander attended Maidstone grammar school before moving to London in 1782 and enrolling as a student at the Royal Academy Schools two years later. It was whilst in London that the quality of his draughtsmanship was recognised, possibly by the artist Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817), and he was recommended to accompany Lord George Macartney's embassy to China as an illustrator.

'View of Eastern Side of Imperial Park Gehol' by William Alexander in Thirty-seven water-colour drawings, made for the most part in 1792-3 on Lord Macartney's embassy to China, British Library Add MS 35300 

Tasked with promoting British trading interests with China the Macartney Embassy landed at Tianjin in northern China in August 1793 and travelled overland via Beijing to Jehol near present day Chengde where the emperor Qianlong was residing beyond the Great Wall near Inner Mongolia to escape the summer heat. After much ceremony and discussion about how the embassy would be presented to the Emperor (particularly whether Macartney would kowtow to Qianlong) the mission failed to achieve any of its primary objectives and the embassy was dismissed by the Chinese on 3 October 1793.

'Chinese Man' by William Alexander in Thirty-seven water-colour drawings, made for the most part in 1792-3 on Lord Macartney's embassy to China, British Library Add MS 35300 

 Yet despite this, the mission could be considered a partial success in that it exposed China to men like William Alexander who was able to make detailed observations of the great Chinese empire which he brought back and disseminated before an excited British public. During their long journey to meet the Emperor, the Macartney Embassy was treated with great hospitality by their Chinese hosts who allowed them guarded access to Chinese culture and customs. These encounters provided a rich source of inspiration for Alexander who made copious images of the Chinese landscapes and its people throughout his visit.    

'Chinese Figures from Nature' by William Alexander in Thirty-seven water-colour drawings, made for the most part in 1792-3 on Lord Macartney's embassy to China, British Library Add MS 35300 

Alexander’s experiences of China made a lasting impression on him and long after his return he continued drafting, publishing and exhibiting images of the country inspired by the mission. His drawings illustrative of the expedition were engraved for the official record in George Staunton’s An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (1797) and his own Views of the headlands, islands, etc., taken during a voyage …along the eastern coast of China (1798). All these images were immensely popular amongst the British public, coinciding as it did with the fashion for chinoiserie that so influenced the decorative arts in eighteenth-century Britain and which helped foster a strong commercial interest for the British in the Far East.

Though William Alexander is best remembered for his work on China he also has a close connection to us at The British Library. Some years after his tour of China, on 11 June 1808, Alexander was appointed assistant librarian and first keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum. In 1810, he began the first inventory of the museum's collection of prints and drawings and so we owe him a great debt of gratitude that we are able to locate his, and many other, images in our collections today.

Self-portait by William Alexander, 1792-4, watercolour over pencil, British Museum 1897,0813.2. This drawing was given to the British Museum at the same time as Alexander's Journal which is now in the British Library at Add MS 35714  

Like the Macartney Embassy, The British Library continues to seek to strengthen Sino-British relations and has recently announced that, for the first time in its history, it is to display some of Britain’s most iconic literary treasures in China. In all, ten items will star in pop-up exhibitions across the country between 2016 and 2019. They are expected to include handwritten manuscripts and early editions by some of the greatest British authors of all time, from Shakespeare and Dickens to the Brontë sisters and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

Dr Alexander Lock, Curator, Modern Historical Manuscripts and Archives, 1851-1950

These recent days have seen the 85th anniversary of the arrival in  February 1931 of the party including the legendary Omani, Shaikh Saleh bin Kalut al Rashidi al Kathiri, who guided Bertram Thomas across the Empty Quarter, to complete the first recorded crossing of the Rub’ al-Khali desert or the Empty Quarter: in 1930 ‘the broadest expanse of unexplored territory outside the Antarctic’.

They had started off from Salalah, Dhofar on December 10, enduring extreme hardship and constant threat of ambush by warring tribes to arrive in Doha, Qatar, 59 days later. Here they were warmly greeted by a welcoming party headed by the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani.   Never would the sight of the ruler’s fort have been so welcome as it appeared to that band of weary travellers through the haze of desert air.  In celebration of the epic traversal of 1930/31, an Anglo-Omani expedition of three Omanis and one Briton have just retraced their steps, in audacious homage to the explorers of the earlier Anglo-Omani odyssey.

By completing this feat of desert exploration, Thomas and his party beat Harry St John Philby to the prize and glory of first crossing. St John Philby had based himself in Riyadh as he prepared to make his own journey.  It is reported that the news of Thomas’ successful crossing left Philby so deflated he refused to come out of his room for a week.  To rub salt in the wound Thomas also visited Riyadh some years later, an opportunity being afforded him by the post of Publicity Officer, Bahrain.  With reference to his preference for exploration over paperwork the Government of India informed the India Office, London, that: 

‘We endorse recommendations that post of Publicity Officer be offered to Bertram Thomas in terms proposed by Prior and subject to Thomas being fit and willing to subordinate private to public interest.’  

The Government of India’s endorsement of Thomas  IOR/R/15/2/933

From Bahrain Thomas made another pioneering trip, this time by car along gravel tracks to Riyadh: ‘there was rain almost every day and we were bogged on occasions for hours at a time’.

He later reported to the Political Resident: “I had three very cordial conversations with Ibn Sa’ud who talked to me very freely and frankly about a great many subjects.  He gave me the whole story of the part he had played at the time of Rashid Ali’s rebellion, of the flying visit to him of Naji as Suwaidi which was most interesting. He also expressed his views on the Palestine question.  I got the impression that he thinks in qua-Moslem rather than qua-Arab conceptions of politics. He said that the greatest page in our history was written in the year during this war when we stood alone.  He is a convinced believer in our star and in our destiny to shape the post-war world.”

Thomas’ assessment of the court of Ibn Sa’ud IOR/R/15/1/573 f 149

Thomas came away from his trip to Riyadh, ‘as does everybody, British and Americans alike’, with a great number of presents including a sword, a gold dagger and gold bangles; such things he continued to gather through other postings in Arabia which included representing the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell in the shaikhdoms of  Trucial Oman. 

‘Oil fields and Concession Areas in the Middle East’ IOR/R/15/1/700 f 248

Thomas was not to see the change in Britain's post-war world, heralded most dramatically at Suez. He died in Cairo in 1950, and in a form of poetry in motion, at the end of all his gruelling and groundbreaking sojourns in Arabia, he was returned to the quintessential English village of Easton-in-Gordano, Somerset, to be buried near the house where he was born.

Dr Francis Owtram, Gulf History Specialist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership bl.uk/Qatar

Primary sources:
British Library, London, IOR/R/15/1/573  ff 152-154
British Library, London, IOR/R/15/2/933 f 6
Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix: Across the Empty Quarter of Arabia (Jonathan Cape, 1938)
Mark Evans, Crossing the Empty Quarter: In the Footsteps of Bertram Thomas (Gilgamesh, 2016)
http://www.gilgamesh-publishing.co.uk/crossing-the-empty-quarter.html
Crossing the Empty Quarter – Tahaddi Arabia
Francis Owtram, A Modern History of Oman: Formation of the State since 1920 (IB Tauris, 2004)

Researching the illicit history of booze in Britain is a tricky business since it’s not often that anyone makes a record of crimes that people got away with. After all, that would be evidence.

So I was overjoyed when I came across a complete manual from c.1800 explaining how to run an inn in the most underhand manner imaginable: The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion.  It must have been a popular work - the British Library holds copies of the sixth, seventh and eighth editions - and it can’t have done much good for the quality of the beer served in the period but did offer some fascinating insights into the seedier side of the trade.

The beer wasn’t actually all that bad. Sure, the author provides methods for “fixing” beer which has gone sour or which has a bad head, including adding raw beef. He also give a recipe for putting together all the little bits of beer leftover at the end of the day and making them drinkable again by using toasted bread, eggshells and sand. However compared to his suggestions for spirit keeping that was practically honest.

 

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

he worst part (or the best if you are fascinated by the naughtier side of things like I am) is that The Daily Companion actually provides pages and pages of tables and instructions for accurately measuring the strength, volume and quality of spirits received. It’s exactly the information you would need to ensure you were serving your customers with the very best unadulterated spirits from around the world. But of course that wasn’t why they were provided: they were just to stop any distiller or importer from tricking an inn keeper into taking watered down spirits. The author thought this very important because taking spirits which were already watered down would stop the innkeepers watering them down to maximise their own profits.

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

Then there are the spirit recipes. Some are actually quite good, and a bartender making their own fruit liqueurs today would get nothing but respect for the effort, but others are an obvious cheat to keep down costs. There’s a recipe for making “Nassau Brandy” from grain spirit which is an obvious swindle but at least nothing dangerous.

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

The gin is dangerous. Gin is properly made in a still by redistilling a spirit with botanicals and today we have very strict labelling laws which require gin to be made this way. But The Daily Companion insists that no one really bothers with that. You don’t need a still to make gin, all you need to make gin is a barrel and a pestle and mortar. No need even to bother with real juniper, it can be easily replaced with a few ounces of highly toxic turpentine.

 

The Publican and Spirit Dealers' Daily Companion 

A recipe that bad could only be a descendent of the illegal gin made from necessity fifty years earlier, and so it offers a unique insight into the tastes, the smells and the dangers of the Gin Craze.

Ruth Ball
Head Alchemist, Alchemist Dreams

Further reading:

The illicit history of booze in Britain
 

Nell Gwyn, actress and mistress of Charles II, was born on this day in 1650. Nell's short life didn't have a promising start. According to the diarist Samuel Pepys, she was brought up in a brothel, where she served strong liquor to clients. In 1663, at the age of about twelve, Nell became an 'orange girl' in the King's Theatre, selling fruit to theatregoers and probably passing secret messages between the actresses and their lovers. Within a short time Nell was herself elevated to the stage, where she proved a great hit. Pepys wrote admiringly of 'Pretty, witty Nell' and her performances in comic roles - as well as of her shapely figure.

Eleanor ('Nell') Gwyn by Simon Verelst, circa 1680 © National Portrait Gallery, London   

It wasn't only Pepys who found Nell desirable. She had affairs with several men, before attracting the attention of the King himself. She became his mistress and eventually bore him two sons. The King was evidently very fond of her. On his deathbed he supposedly said to his brother, the future James II, 'Don't let poor Nelly starve'. Nell clearly didn't go short of money: when she died in 1687 she left several hundred pounds to family members, as well as money to help the poor and those in debt.

As Charles II's mistress, Nell had sometimes awkward relationships with the King's other lovers. A particular rival was Louise de Kéroualle, to whom Charles had given the title Duchess of Portsmouth. The British Library holds several contemporary publications satirising the spats between the two women, including A pleasant dialogue betwixt two wanton ladies of pleasure, A dialogue between the Duchess of Portsmouth and Madam Gwin at parting, and Madam Gwins answer to the Dutches of Portsmouths letter. The last of these is full of sexual innuendo: the fictionalised Nell says to Louise that the sea-god Neptune (presumably representing Charles II):

'proffer'd you Gold, and Pearl, and what not, if you would have let him stick his Trident in you.'

The Duchess of Portsmouth's Catholicism made her unpopular with some people. While Nell was riding through Oxford in a coach in 1681, she was reputedly mobbed by an angry crowd, who thought the coach contained the Duchess. Nell is supposed to have leaned out of the coach window and reassured the crowd by saying, 'Pray good people be silent, I am the Protestant whore'.

Fascination with Nell Gwyn and her exploits didn't end at her death. She has been the subject of plays, operas and stories in the centuries since, including a three-act play by Edward Jerningham, published in 1799 with the title The Peckham Frolic. In this comedy Charles II, in heavy disguise, meets Nell in Peckham, where all sorts of trickery ensues.

Edward Jerningham: The Peckham Frolic (London, 1799). BL shelfmark: 11778.d.1. 

Sandra Tuppen, Lead Curator Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1601-1850.

Look at the following five images taken from books in the British Library.  Which of them belonged to Hans Sloane (1660-1753) – physician, naturalist, scientific networker and omnivorous collector?

 

 

Joannes Sturmius, ‘De Rosa Hierichuntina ...’ (Louvain, 1608), 966.b.39.(1.) 

Plutarch, ‘Libellus ... de non irascendo ...’ (Basel, 1525), 527.e.3.(1.) 

 

Matteo Ricci, ‘Istoria de la China ...’ (Seville, 1621), T 8687 

 

Jean François Vallant, ‘Quaestio medica’ (Montpellier, 1727), 1185.c.25.(1.) 

 

Gerardus Columba, ‘De febris pestilentis cognitione & curatione’ (Messina, 1597), 1167.h.7 

Trick question; they all did!  These are just a few examples of the various signs of ownership, inscriptions, tell-tale stamps and marks that have enabled British Library curators and researchers to identify some 32,000 books that had previously been part of Sloane’s library.  All are listed on the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue, a major resource for the study of the composition and provenance of one of the most important libraries of Enlightenment England. 

 Home page of the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue

Bequeathed to the nation at his death in 1753, Sloane’s vast collections formed the nucleus of the British Museum.  Besides the printed books, Sloane’s ‘museum’ comprised: printed ephemera and handbills; medieval and early modern manuscripts; prints and drawings; coins and medals; pre-historic, classical and Egyptian, Romano-British, medieval and oriental antiquities; and natural historical specimens (invertebrates, insects, minerals, fossils, plants) gathered from around the world.  These were subsequently divided between the Natural History Museum and British Museum and, more recently, the British Library.  Sloane’s library, estimated to contain around 45,000 printed volumes, formed the largest part of his collections.  However, it was not kept as a discrete, named collection but was scattered across the British Museum’s book holdings (now at the British Library).  During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, furthermore, a number of Sloane’s books were sold off during a series of duplicate sales and are now dispersed among libraries around the world.

Sir Hans Sloane, Bt, by Stephen Slaughter; oil on canvas, 1736; NPG 569, © National Portrait Gallery, London

The task of tracing these books began with a Wellcome Trust-funded project in 2008 and has since been continued by dedicated volunteers.  There is now an opportunity for a current PhD student to be involved in the final stages of this valuable scholarly endeavour as part of a British Library placement scheme.  The Sloane placement offers a student the chance to make a material contribution towards the completion of the project in a variety of ways:

• searching remaining, broadly subject-related shelfmark ranges (law, education/universities, literature, theology) to identify evidence of provenance
• adding in the region of 500 new entries to the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue
• conducting first-hand work with Sloane’s own handwritten catalogues to identify further books where physical evidence of provenance has not survived
• pursuing a small project on the provenance of some of Sloane’s books.

There is also scope to write for the British Library’s Untold Lives blog and to submit an article to the Electronic British Library Journal.

The deadline for applications is 4.00pm, 19th February – so don’t delay! 
 

James Freeman
Curator of Incunabula and 16th-Century Books