St John’s College Library Newsletter L
LENT 2021
VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2
A man of many parts How many poets does it take to end a war? As unlikely as it sounds, in 1713 the answer was one: St John’s Fellow Matthew Prior. This year marks three centuries since Prior’s death, in September 1721. Today he is best remembered for his contribution to literature in the early years of the eighteenth century, when several now-familiar names – Swift, Pope, Johnson, Cowper and others – took direction from the ease and elegance of Prior’s verse and the pragmatic pessimism of his philosophy. During his lifetime, however, Prior was a high-profile public figure: a leading diplomat and ambassador who frequently travelled overseas and who played a crucial role in negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht, which brought an end to the complex European conflict known as the War of the Spanish Succession. Indeed, Prior’s role in the supposedly secret
negotiations with Louis XIV was so well known that his colleagues in parliament took to calling the treaty ‘Matt’s Peace’. This term’s Library exhibition takes a detailed look at Prior’s surprising life and achievements, and attempts to piece together the puzzle of how one person – who at the age of 11 was pulled out of school and sent to work behind the bar in his uncle’s tavern – managed to rise to prominence in the competitive and capricious worlds of politics and poetry simultaneously. A thread common to both contexts, in the eighteenth century at least, was satire, and the exhibition showcases several irreverent publications that poked fun at the poetic establishment and stoked the fires of long-held political rivalries (whig versus tory, England versus France, and so on). A spotlight on a very large and handsomely produced volume of Prior’s poetry published in 1718/19 also reveals how he managed to become one of the only poets ever to have generated a fortune through the publication of lyrics and odes. While we would of course rather be welcoming visitors to the Exhibition Area in person, there are advantages to curating an exhibition solely for viewing online. Limitations imposed by the size and configuration of glass cases disappear, so we can display items that would otherwise prove unwieldy or impractical to move, such as gilt-framed portraits and enormous folios. We can show Image: Matthew Prior, Ambassador to France. Painted by AlexisSimon Belle (1713/14). Oil on canvas.
multiple pages inside a book, instead of having to choose just one (and several of Prior’s volumes feature beautiful engravings and woodcuts that might otherwise have remained hidden). We can also make the exhibition available permanently, enabling many more visitors to find inspiration in the unlikely activities of one of the College’s most intriguing alumni.
Visit Barboy, Scholar, Poet, Spy: The party-colour’d life of Matthew Prior on the website at www.joh.cam.ac.uk/matthew-prior-2021.
Rebecca Watts, Library Projects Assistant
The distinguished and the dear In the course of its 500-year history, St John’s has welcomed tens of thousands of extraordinary students, researchers and educators through its gates. Many have gone on to accomplish extraordinary things in their respective fields of expertise, with some achieving public acknowledgement of their various contributions, in the form of awards, medals, knighthoods and other distinctions. Astronomers and archbishops, economists and explorers, poets and prime ministers stand side by side in the roll call of famous Johnians – individuals who are the subjects of hundreds of enquiries received by the Library’s Biographical Office each year. To aid researchers, the Library has created three new online resources which showcase some of the College’s distinguished alumni. ‘Famous Johnians’ (www.joh.cam.ac.uk/ famousjohnians) organises people by field of activity, and points to other webpages, including online exhibitions and talks, that provide more detail about their careers and achievements, from Nobel Prizes and Royal Medals to Poet Laureateships and pioneering photography. Two additional new webpages offer information on the College’s 45 Masters (www.joh.cam.ac.uk/masters-st-johnscollege-cambridge) and current Honorary Fellows (www.joh.cam.ac.uk/honoraryfellows). By their nature, these resources are works in progress, and staff are looking forward to expanding and diversifying them over the coming years. Of course, for every ‘famous’ Johnian there are hundreds who remained behind the scenes, dedicating their time and unique talents to their work, their hobbies and, most importantly, their families. The Biographical Office continually gathers and records information on the lives, passions and achievements of the entire alumni base, and is a rich resource not merely for biographers but for the relatives of alumni who would
Above: Spot the famous explorer in the 1929-30 rugby team. Left: General Admission 2017. like to find out more about their loved ones or their Johnian ancestors. ‘Some of the most absorbing enquiries we receive relate to individuals whose modest achievements may not be considered of significance to anyone beyond their own family,’ explains Fiona Colbert, Biographical Librarian. ‘The comprehensive nature of the biographical collection is what makes it special, and updating the records of all Johnians allows a fascinating and valuable insight into the lives of the whole College community over the centuries.’ Find out more about the Biographical Archive at www.joh.cam. ac.uk/biographical-records, or contact Fiona Colbert for further information. She will always be happy to hear from you! Rebecca Watts, Library Projects Assistant
For comments on this Issue, and contributions to future Issues, please contact Janet Chow. Email: jc614@cam.ac.uk; Tel: (3)38662.
A new sculpture for the Library At the end of 2020 we welcomed a new arrival: a magnificent bronze bust of Frederick Douglass, sculpted by Bruce Wolfe, commissioned for the Library by alumnus and artist Roger Arvid Anderson.
of slavery. He embarked upon a career of political activism, becoming a powerful orator, campaigning for equal rights for all races, an end to segregation, the provision of education for all, and female as well as black suffrage. In 1846 whilst travelling in Europe on a lecture tour, Douglass took the opportunity to visit Thomas Clarkson at his home in Ipswich just weeks before the veteran campaigner’s death.
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland in around 1818. His mother was a slave, his father a white man, possibly his master. He had the unusual good fortune for a slave to be taught to read and write whilst a child, and his early education stood him in good stead. After he managed to escape from bondage with the aid of a free black woman who later became his wife, he wrote and published his first autobiography in 1845: a compelling narrative of the horrific reality
Clarkson had first become aware of the unconscionable injustice of slavery when it was set as the subject for an essay prize whilst he was a student at St John’s. Thereafter he devoted his life to the abolitionist cause, speaking at meetings across the UK, collecting and using first-hand evidence of slavery, and promoting the writings of those formerly enslaved. Both men would have had great respect for the other’s work in a common cause. We are thrilled to be able to commemorate the life and work of this prominent abolitionist in the Library with such a stunning artwork, and are grateful to Roger for his generosity in making this happen. Exactly where Frederick Douglass may best be displayed is yet to be decided. Cast in bronze the bust weighs as much as a well-built man, and may need to be provided with a strong plinth. Watch this space… Kathryn McKee, Special Collections Librarian
Displaying your ignorance Librarians don’t know anything. I mean, I don’t. Library users often, flatteringly, assume otherwise. Staff will instantly know the correct name of the misidentified textbook, or the complete contents of any box of documents in our collections; we’ll know about paper stock, about Eastern musical notation, about every conceivable computer error… My colleagues manage it. They’re awfully bright. And sometimes I do chance upon an answer without research – I shelved the book only an hour ago; the photocopier behaves when I stand nearby – but then I rush to assure the enquirer that this was simply luck. But I do, occasionally, have to pretend. Such as when curating exhibitions. Image: From the ‘Pictorial Times’, 17 June 1843. Clarkson Doc. 80.
One doesn’t say: ‘I know all that can be known of magnetism, botany, twelfth-century French theology.’ Of, as is the case respecting our forthcoming online exhibition for the Cambridge Festival, slavery and abolition. But if you’re grouping and captioning items, and aiming to inform, you need to imply that you’re not clueless, that you’ve a right to be doing this. Our slavery collection, including the papers of the Johnian abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, was frequently consulted by researchers in the Beforetimes, and early in the Nowandforevertimes I transcribed and catalogued many recently acquired pieces of plantation correspondence. I’ve a sense of the collection’s range; I’ve read hundreds of its pages. But having read The Pickwick Papers doesn’t make me a Dickens scholar; having fed lemurs doesn’t grant me expertise on the Malagasy ecosystem. And slavery is a topic that transcends its historical facts: it is not only a sequence of events, but a scar and a stain on our culture, our species. Obviously you don’t hide this material away, but what do you do with it? How, without retraining
as an historian or such, do you come close to making a faintly respectable attempt at doing the topic justice? Well. You’re not presenting the entire multifaceted narrative: you’re presenting the material. You explain some context, but you also remember that items sharing exhibition space will inevitably create their own contexts anyway, and should be allowed to do so. You pitch it so that somebody new to the topic can orient themselves, but somebody with deep knowledge might find value in a detail, in a juxtaposition.
LGBTQ+ History Month February is LGBTQ+ History Month, and to celebrate the Library has put on a display packed full of Pride! We have brought together a wonderful collection of books and DVDS that are both about and by members of the LGBTQ+ community. From literary classics such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, to more modern tales like The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and How to be Both by Ali Smith, there is something here for
Mary Wollstonecraft was not one for a quiet life. A pioneer of women’s rights, a political theorist who produced the first riposte to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, a philosopher, a novelist, a travel writer, a literary critic, a publisher of educational treatises: she packed a lot into her short thirty-eight years. It is moving, then, to learn of those calmer moments when Wollstonecraft ‘caught tranquillity’, as she described it, during stays in the countryside: ‘the singing of a robin, or the noise of a water-mill, engaged my attention—partial attention—, for I was, at the same time perhaps discussing some knotty point, or straying from this tiny world to new systems.’ Sylvana Tomaselli’s new book highlights Wollstonecraft’s gift for attending to and enjoying those small things that make up the good life, while also showing how her mind was always busily engaged in working through knotty problems. The book reveals, too, how the impulse to stray from ‘this tiny world to new systems’ is characteristic of Wollstonecraft’s ability to reflect on the particular circumstances of the present in order to envision new, radically reformed systems.
Good Read
The emphasis Tomaselli places on the things Wollstonecraft enjoyed revises the familiar view of her as stern, fierce, a bit of a
You can only hope to offer one version of the story. You strive to ensure that you’re offering that version with sensitivity, with clarity, and with honesty. Slavery and Abolition: Collections Uncovered, a collaboration between St John’s College Library and Wisbech & Fenland Museum, goes live on the St John’s website on Friday 26 March. Adam Crothers, Special Collections Assistant
absolutely everyone. If you prefer to watch rather than read, then our DVD selection has a fantastic range of titles, including Carol, The Danish Girl and Paris is Burning. If you want to borrow or know more about any of the material in this display, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us at library@joh.cam.ac.uk. Katie Hannawin, Library Graduate Trainee
killjoy. ‘Much of her writing is condemnatory and her tone, cutting’, Tomaselli notes, partly because there was so much to condemn in the current system. Yet she was not a pessimist, as is shown in the first chapter entitled ‘What She Liked and Loved’. A careful distinction is drawn in the book between the asceticism of selfdenial and the kind of self-control and rational restraint that Wollstonecraft promoted. She was also passionate, and argued that strong feeling and reason are not at odds but vitally interconnected. Liking and loving were hard to keep recommitting to and harder won, the achieved effort of fortitude and forbearance. Tomaselli identifies these latter traits as central to Wollstonecraft’s ethical thinking. As someone who could so easily spot flaws, she appreciated that the test of forbearance lies in ‘making allowances for the weakness in our friends that we would not tolerate in ourselves’. She embraced love and friendship, but was honest and matter-of-fact about their circumscribed realities. She twice attempted suicide after her relationship with Gilbert Imlay ended, making her subsequent determination to go on liking, loving and loathing the product of concerted effort. ‘The strength she possessed, or acquired, was a gift she very much wanted to share: she strove to make a case for endurance and wanted children to be made resilient’, Tomaselli summarises. The process condensed into that ‘or acquired’ is what the book so carefully unfolds. In doing so, it presents a rounded account of how Wollstonecraft’s personal turmoil gave edge and energy to her philosophy, her passions, and her politics. Dr Stacey McDowell, formerly Fellow in English