MAGAZINE Winter 2018 ISSUE 42
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finding dracula Philip Spedding reveals compelling evidence that the Library provided vital source material for Bram Stoker’s novel
Hidden Corners The Library’s Small Books Collection is scrutinised by Simon Garfield
Do say yes Anne de Courcy on the marriage proposal in literature
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Christina Rossetti: Vision & Verse 13 November 2018 - 17 March 2019
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The London Library Magazine / issue 42
14
Contents
Philip Spedding’s investigation into whether Bram Stoker used the Library’s collection while he was working on Dracula (1897) yields some fascinating new information
7 FROM THE director 8 Contributors
‘Trial of a Pig at Lausanne in the 14th Century’, from William Jones’s Credulities Past and Present (1880), one of the titles Bram Stoker used for his research into Dracula.
10 BEHIND THE BOOK Helen Castor’s reading list at the Library for her book on Joan of Arc
18
13 MY DISCOVERY Stumbling on Iain McCalman’s Radical Underworld in the Library was a revelation for M.J. Carter when she was working on her historical thriller
From a miniature Holy Bible to an 1841 edition of Bradshaw’s Railway Companion, the Library’s Small Books Collection is an enchanting discovery for Simon Garfield
14 finding dracula Philip Spedding undertakes some detective work on Bram Stoker’s use of books in the Library La Divina Commedia (1878), known as ‘fly’s eye Dante’ because its type is around 2 point in size.
18 hidden corners The Small Books Collection is celebrated by Simon Garfield
22
22 do say yes Anne de Courcy on marriage propositions in literature
Anne de Courcy compares the very different treatment of marriage proposals by writers as diverse as Jane Austen, P.G. Wodehouse and Jilly Cooper
25 THE LIT & PHIL The history of this independent library in Newcastle is related by Caroline Lievesley
27 MEMBERS’ NEWS Hugh Thomson’s illustration of Frederick Wentworth proposing to Anne Elliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817), 1898 edition.
25 The Lit & Phil in Newcastle dates back to 1793, and the library’s holdings include titles on travel and exploration and the history of science. Caroline Lievesley reveals the fascinating story behind this institution as part of our series on historic independent libraries.
Lit & Phil President Alexander Armstrong in the reading room of the library in Newcastle.
p
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 5
Christina Rossetti Poetry in Art
Susan Owens and Nicholas Tromans Situating poet Christina Rossetti within her artistic context, this book, published to accompany an exhibition at Watts Gallery, explores the art she inspired and created. ‘This study of Christina Rossetti and the visual arts enormously enriches our awareness of her centrality to the Victorian aesthetic story. As packed with seductive fruits as Goblin Market itself.’ –A. N. Wilson Hardback | £30.00 200 colour + b-w illus.
Published in association with Watts Gallery
The Warm South
How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination
Robert Holland
Hardback | £25.00
What is it about the Mediterranean that has delighted and inspired the British imagination for centuries? Robert Holland charts the influence of the ‘warm south’ on British culture, including its architecture, design, art, religion and literature. ‘Holland is a sensitive, prodigiously informed guide. . . this is a book so crammed with interest that when you finish it you feel like starting all over again to make sure you haven’t missed anything.’ –John Carey, The Sunday Times
The Collector
The Story of Sergei Shchukin and His Lost Masterpieces
Natalya Semenova with André Delocque
Hardback | £25.00
YaleBooks
The first biography of the great Russian art collector, Sergei Shchukin, a highly successful textiles merchant in the latter half of the nineteenth century, who was one of the first to appreciate the qualities of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and to acquire works by Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso. ‘Exhilarating. . . Russian art historian Semenova, with the help of Shchukin’s grandson André Delocque, wonderfully evokes the contradictory worlds of the thrusting Moscow merchant class and the swirling ferment of the pre-Bolshevik city.’ –Jackie Wullshlager, Financial Times @yalebooks www.yalebooks.co.uk
p from the director
On the cover
Bela Lugosi in the starring role in Dracula, the Universal Pictures film directed by Tod Browning, released in 1931. © Granamour Weems Collection/ Alamy Stock Photo.
A very warm welcome to the winter issue of the London Library Magazine. Our members have again provided a fascinating selection of articles, and this issue also unveils an extraordinary discovery made by Philip Spedding, the Library’s Development Director. Philip has found 26 books on the Library’s shelves that are almost certainly the copies that Library member Bram Stoker used to write Dracula. Many contain detailed marginalia that closely match Stoker’s research notes, and it is highly likely that these annotations were made by Stoker himself. It appears that one of the great characters in fiction was created here in the Library. It is an amazing find but it shouldn’t surprise us; some of the greatest names in English literature have found the Library to be an invaluable source of inspiration and information, and this continues to be the case today. However, we want to be even more active in our support and encouragement of aspiring writers, and in the coming months we will be launching new initiatives to try to achieve this, starting with the extension of Young Person’s Membership to include under-27year-olds, and a new partnership with the Society of Authors. To celebrate the Library’s part in the development of Stoker’s masterpiece we will be hosting Creation Theatre’s production of Dracula in the Reading Room in February. We look forward to bringing the story to life in the very place it was created and to welcoming both members and non-members to the Library for this wonderful experience. To find out more and to purchase tickets, please go to londonlibrary.org.uk/draculatheatre. Before that, there is the small matter of Christmas to consider. We look forward to welcoming you to our Members’ Drinks, which will be on 29 November. Please also consider giving your family and friends Gift Membership to the Library this Christmas – the perfect present, which also entitles you to claim £50 off your next year renewal. I would like to thank all our members for their support and generosity during 2018 and wish you all a very happy festive season and New Year.
Philip Marshall Director
Published on behalf of The London Library by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds London. Published 16 November 2018 © 2018 The London Library. ISSN 2398-4201. The opinions in this particular publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The London Library. All reasonable attempts have been made to clear copyright before publication.
Editorial Publisher Jane Grylls Editor Mary Scott Design and production Catherine Cartwright Picture research Catherine Cartwright
Editorial committee Julian Lloyd Helen O’Neill Peter Parker Philip Spedding Erica Wagner
Advertising Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661 Charlotte Burgess 020 7300 5675 Communications Department, The London Library 020 7766 4704
Magazine feedback and editorial enquiries should be addressed to magazine@londonlibrary.co.uk THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 7
CONTRIBUTORS
M.J. Carter at Vernon Square London WC1X 9EW
Photograph Roderick Field.
FACE TO FACE
joined the library in 1994
M.J. (Miranda) Carter is the author of two biographies, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (2001) and The Three Emperors (2009), about the rulers of Britain, Russia and Germany and the lead-up to the First World War. She has also written three historical thrillers, the first, The Strangler Vine (2014), and the third, The Devil’s Feast (2016), shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Daggers awards. She is a Fellow of the RSL and lives in London.
Helen Castor
Photograph Chris Gibbions.
joined the library in 2012
Helen Castor is a historian, writer and broadcaster, a Fellow of the RSL and a Bye-Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Her books include Blood and Roses (2004), She-Wolves (2010), Joan of Arc (2015) and most recently Elizabeth I: A Study in Insecurity (2018).
Anne de Courcy joined the library in 1982
Anne de Courcy has published 14 nonfiction books, mostly biographies and social histories, including The Viceroy’s Daughters (2000), Snowdon, The Biography (2008) and The Fishing Fleet (2012), several of which have been turned into documentaries. Chanel’s Riviera, the Golden Coast in Peace and War, will be published in June 2019.
SHORT COURSES IN ART HISTORY 2019
Simon Garfield joined the library in 1998
Simon Garfield is an author and journalist. His books include Mauve (2000), Just My Type (2010) and On the Map (2012). The End of Innocence: Britain in the Time of Aids (1994), won the Somerset Maugham Prize. His latest book is In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World (2018). He is a trustee of the Mass Observation Archive.
Caroline Lievesley
Photograph KG Photography.
Caroline Lievesley has been the Marketing Manager of the Lit & Phil in Newcastle since 2005. Charged with raising awareness and the membership, Caroline has enjoyed shattering the myths that surround this beautiful institution. The library now has more members, welcomes more visitors and is fully immersed in the world of social media.
Philip Spedding Philip Spedding has been The London Library's Development Director since 2014. He has worked in the arts for 30 years, first as an actor and then as a fundraiser. He was the director of Arts & Business before joining the Library and has lectured around the world on culture and the private sector. He was involved in a school production of Dracula 39 years ago.
t: +44 (0)20 39477 650 e: short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk web: courtauld.ac.uk/learn
8 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
London Library Autumn 2018 v5 indd.indd 1
26/10/2018 12:39:21
STEPHEN ONGPIN FINE ART
THE INFLUENCING IMAGE: One Hundred Years of Drawings for Commercial Illustration and Design 26th November to 20th December The gallery is located in Mason’s Yard, fifty yards from the rear entrance of the London Library. Including works by George Barbier, Paul Bonet, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Jean Dupas, Erté, Georges de Feure, René Gruau, Henri Matisse, Alphonse Mucha, Pablo Picasso, Joseph Southall, Theophile Alexandre Steinlen and Rex Whistler
Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), Danaë and the Infant Perseus, pen and black ink and black wash, with touches of watercolour. 258 x 227 mm. (10 1/8 x 9 in.) An illustration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Wonder Book, London, 1922.
Third Floor 6 Mason’s Yard, Duke St., St. James’s London SW1Y 6BU t: 020 7930 8813 info@stephenongpinfineart.com www.stephenongpin.com
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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 9
Behind the
Book
‘
Helen Castor describes the Library titles she found most useful when researching her book on Joan of Arc
’
Helen Castor’s Joan of Arc: A History (Faber, 2015).
My book Joan of Arc: A History (Faber, 2015) is an attempt to put aside the icon and the myth and to tell the story of a living, breathing young woman and the world in which she lived. So, rather than the many retellings of Joan’s life, I needed to immerse myself in the fifteenth century – and The London Library’s collections were the ideal place to start. Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc, ed. Jules Quicherat (Paris 1841–9, 5 vols.). Biog. Joan of Arc. At the heart of any attempt to tell the story of Joan of Arc are the transcripts of her trials: one that condemned her to death as a heretic in 1431, and another held 25 years later to overturn that verdict. In them we hear Joan’s voice, and those of her family, friends and companions-in-arms – but what they say isn’t straightforward to interpret, mediated as it all is through ferociously partisan legal proceedings. The texts have been published many times over the last two centuries, but Quicherat’s edition was the first – and it’s still invaluable, not least because this remarkable scholar also included in his five volumes all the chronicles, letters, accounts, treatises and poems he could find that related to Joan’s life. A Parisian Journal, 1405–1449, trans. Janet Shirley from Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris (Oxford 1968). H. France. The identity of this journal’s writer is unknown but, as Janet Shirley says, ‘he did not make history, he suffered it’ . ‘Suffer’ is the right word, because the journal covers some of medieval France’s most violent and destructive years: the civil war between rival factions known as Armagnacs and Burgundians, and the English invasion of France under
10 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
Henry V. The Parisian isn’t ‘objective’ – what, in any case, would that mean? – and doesn’t always have accurate information at his disposal, but his is the most powerful account we have of what it was like to live through this worst of times, complete with perennial complaints about the weather and rising prices, and a report from inside Paris of Joan’s attack on the AngloBurgundian-held city in September 1429. The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France by Colette Beaune (Oxford and Berkeley 1991). H. France. Colette Beaune’s book is a brilliant exploration of the way a nation imagines itself. By the fifteenth century, the French had a conscious sense of their own destiny as a people chosen by God, and their monarch as the ‘most Christian king’ . Beaune traces the ways in which theological, historical and symbolic traditions – many of which came into play in the story of Joan’s ‘mission’ – were invented and reinvented to make that destiny live. Paris 1400: Les Arts Sous Charles VI, exh. cat., ed. Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye (Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2004). A. Art, 4to. This gorgeously illustrated catalogue of a remarkable exhibition at the Louvre brings to vividly tangible life the luxury and artistic sophistication of the court of the mad king Charles VI at the turn of the
fifteenth century. These rare and often exquisite objects are the closest we can get to the glittering public stage – albeit battered, by then, by two decades of civil war – on to which Joan stepped so dramatically in February 1429. Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy by Richard Vaughan (London 1970). H. Burgundy. Along with the Armagnac Dauphin Charles and the English Duke of Bedford, Philip of Burgundy is the third key player in the high politics of Joan’s story. And anyone writing about Joan is fortunate to have Richard Vaughan’s richly detailed and endlessly fascinating study of the ‘Good’ duke to guide them. The Interrogation of Joan of Arc by Karen Sullivan (Minneapolis 1999). Biog. Joan of Arc. As almost all of the millions of words written about Joan attest, it’s difficult to approach her story without in some sense ‘taking sides’ . In that context, Karen Sullivan’s achievement is all the more brilliant: she demonstrates, with impeccable scholarship, how Joan’s interrogators and judges carefully and self-consciously committed themselves to handling her case with due inquisitorial process, theological integrity (as they saw it), and concern for the fate of her soul. Partisan it may have been, but this, Sullivan shows, was no kangaroo court.
T H E PA U L H Y S L O P P H O T O G R A P H A L B U M
‘Sailing with Gerald (Haxton)’ c.1938. Raymond Mortimer, Dadie Rylands, Paul Hyslop and Gerald Haxton
Photographs c.1904 - c.1970 compiled by Architect and Monuments Man, Geddes (AKA Paul) Hyslop (1901-1988)
Including photographs of … Lytton Strachey, Dadie Rylands, Adrian Stokes, Raymond Mortimer, Basil Long, Eddy Sackville-West, Tom Lowinsky, Clive Bell, Gerald Haxton, Valerie Taylor, Anna May Wong, John Banting, William Somerset Maugham, William Hayter, General Paget, Roger Senhouse and many more …
ABBOTT and HOLDER 3 0 M u s eu m Str eet, L o n do n WC 1 A 1 L H | 0 2 0 7 6 37 3981 | g aller y@abbottandholder.co.uk | www.abbottandholder.co.uk LL-Winter 2018.indd 1
17/10/2018 11:36
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 11
Make the past your present
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MY DISCOVERY Radical Underworld by Iain McCalman M.J. Carter on a book that brought a group of early nineteenth-century radicals to life As I remember it, I stumbled upon it during a sleepy mid-afternoon browse through the History: England stacks in 2013. I was researching my historical thriller The Printer’s Coffin (initially titled The Infidel Stain, but that’s another story). It was to be set in the 1840s, and to centre on the Chartists, the first mass working-class movement to campaign for the vote, and the world of Grub-street journalism. For me it was a fascinating period, but I had noticed that some people found Chartism a teeny bit of a snore. I was after something that would bring some zing to my plot. And on the shelf I saw Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840 by Iain McCalman. The title was intriguing so I prised it out, sat down on one of those rubber footstools, and was still there an hour later. Iain McCalman is a distinguished Australian academic who in the 1980s and 1990s opened up the world of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British low-life culture and its links with Romanticism. In Radical Underworld (1988), he resurrected an almost entirely forgotten subculture, the working-class revolutionaries and infidels (republican free-thinkers) of the generation before the Chartists, a much smaller, but much angrier and more idiosyncratic, group, who were self-educated and highly literate while living a hand-to-mouth existence. They had good reason to be angry. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Britain had plunged into depression, while the government heavy-handedly suppressed protest by suspending habeas corpus, banning public meetings, bringing in severe laws against sedition, and putting stamp duty on newspapers specifically to discourage the poor from reading. Inspired by the writings of working-class agrarian revolutionary Thomas Spence, the new radicals saw the aristocracy, government and church as a corrupt conspiracy of privilege, crushing the workers – now
living and working in some of the worst conditions ever endured – like slaves. In the book, McCalman disinterred characters like George Cannon, failed solicitor and would-be philosopher turned advocate of religious and political freedom; Samuel ‘little Waddy’ Waddington, shoemaker, trades organiser, ‘Infidel Preacher’ and buffoon, famed for ridiculing church and toffs in the filthy burlesques he performed in so-called ‘infidel chapels’; and the semi-literate, mixed-race activist Robert Wedderburn, whose fiery speeches denounced slavery, conditions in the Royal Navy, and advocated violent revolution and the redistribution of wealth. These radicals plotted revolution in cellars and haylofts in Soho, where they parodied church services and preached insurrection and blasphemy. They argued in illegal debating societies in ale-house backrooms. Some were involved in the Cato Street Conspiracy, a failed 1820 plot to assassinate the Cabinet. They
Iain McCalman’s Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (1988), 1993 paperback edition.
published angry pamphlets denouncing the government’s censorship, and they were constantly arrested, harassed and imprisoned. The book was particularly striking because historical documents tend to attach to the powerful and wealthy. It’s unusual to find such vivid and specific historical material about the poor. McCalman had used a cache of reports from government informers (many of them ex-radicals) in the Home Office archives. What I found really fascinating about this generation was that, unlike the Chartists (many of whom tried to demonstrate their deservingness of the vote by practising virtuous habits like teetotalism), they were determinedly unrespectable and immoral. Waddington had convictions for rape; Wedderburn managed a brothel. John Davenport, noted orientalist scholar and political campaigner, had a sideline in blackmail and extortion. But most extraordinarily – as the public appetite for their message waned over the 1820s and they reached middle age – a really significant number of these former firebrands became pornographers, setting up in Holywell Street off the Strand, the heart of London’s dirty-book trade. They had, after all, ideal transferable skills: plenty of experience in producing and distributing illegal publications. Exphilosopher George Cannon had a line in flagellation porn, then known as ‘birchen sports’; he claimed his biggest market was aristocrats and boarding-school girls. ExQuakers and pamphleteers William and John Dugdale became the most prolific pornographers of the nineteenth century. It was steady work – most of them were still publishing in the 1850s. The Chartists, incidentally, hated them and dismissed them as ‘the old blackguard school’ . As I read McCalman’s book, I felt I’d stumbled on a remarkable subject, and that I had found the heart of my story. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 13
FINDING DRACULA The Library has an intriguing association with Bram Stoker – his seven-year membership coincided almost exactly with the period when he worked on Dracula. Philip Spedding, the Library’s Director of Development, went in search of books to see if there was evidence of a connection. It is hard to name a book that has had a more pervasive impact on popular culture than Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Stoker synthesised a raft of folklore with a travelogue of Eastern Europe to produce a book that has never been out of print, has inspired a whole genre of writing and has been the inspiration for innumerable films. The latest of these, the 2018 animation Hotel Transylvania 3, sees Drac and his family take a bunch of monsters on a boat cruise, only to be pursued by the Van Helsing family. In the three months since its release, the film’s worldwide takings have been $513m. Dracula is clearly alive and well. We know from earlier research by our Archive Librarian, Helen O’Neill, that Stoker joined the Library when he started researching Dracula in 1890, and 14 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
his application form shows that he was proposed by the successful writer and Library member Henry Hall Caine, to whom Stoker dedicated Dracula seven years later. A handwritten letter in the archives of Stoker’s bank, Coutts, reveals that he cancelled his membership in December 1897, the year the book was published. Given that he was a member of the Library for only as long as he was working on his book, was it possible that he found the Library to be particularly useful for the research he undertook for Dracula? Stoker was not an established author when he joined the Library. He had three books to his name, a novel, a collection of short stories and his first book, published eleven years earlier when he was a civil servant in Ireland, with the unprepossessing title of The
Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland. Although he harboured literary ambitions, his main job was as the business manager for the great actormanager Henry Irving (a fellow Library member). Despite the time such work required, he took up writing as a serious pursuit shortly after he joined the Library and produced three novels in his first five years of membership. Stoker’s love of writers and books was obvious from his own collection. In 1913, the year after he died, his widow auctioned off its highlights. The Library has a copy of the auction catalogue (in Pamphlets volume 1433) showing that the items included a significant collection on Walt Whitman and volumes from a set of Shakespeare printed in Philadelphia and inscribed by the editor to Stoker. One of these volumes, so inscribed, has been on the Library’s open-access shelves for many years and was donated by H.W. McGee; we are not sure how he obtained the book. But it is lot 182 that is the most interesting: ‘Original Notes and Data for his “Dracula” in a solander case. ’ Today that solander case – a box made in the form of a book – sits in the Rosenbach museum and library in Philadelphia. Although various scholars have seen and reported on it, its significance was not fully grasped until Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller undertook a masterful transcription of the documents in the case. They trawled through the papers in painstaking detail, determined the meaning of almost all Stoker’s dreadful handwriting, and assembled the loose sheets into a very convincing order. The results of their labours were published in Bram Stoker’s Notes for ‘Dracula’: A Facsimile Edition (2008).
Opposite, top Recently discovered in the Library: the books Bram Stoker used to research Dracula (1897). Opposite, below Stoker’s 1890 London Library membership application, proposed by his friend Henry Hall Caine, to whom Stoker was to dedicate Dracula. This page, clockwise from top Frontispiece illustration from Sabine
Stoker’s notes in the Dracula papers fall into six sections. The first, entirely handwritten, focuses on the mechanics of the book’s plot. The second, also handwritten, contains notes he took from five books that were key to his research. To these he added observations he made while holidaying in Whitby (which subsequently became the setting for an important part of the book). The third section is a handwritten list of 23 books – ranging in date from 1777 to 1892 – and some authors of interest. The fourth section comprises typewritten extracts from seven further books,
and the final two sections contain an extended note on medical matters from his surgeon brother and some newspaper cuttings. It is impossible to know if these were the only notes Stoker made – it seems unlikely – but they are clearly central in helping us to understand how Stoker wrote his masterpiece. Of the 34 books in total that Stoker mentions in his notes, 30 were on the Library’s shelves when Stoker was a member (and 26 of them remain there today), a remarkable correlation given the esoteric nature of the books in
Baring-Gould’s The Book of Were-Wolves (1865); the annotation on this page to ‘copy’ the passage from Andrew F. Crosse’s Round about the Carpathians (1878) is mirrored in Stoker’s typewritten notes; frontispiece illustration from Baring-Gould’s Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1865), one of the five key books from which Stoker took handwritten notes. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 15
question. Intrigued as to whether Stoker actively used them in his research, I went searching for our copies. The first I pulled was Sabine BaringGould’s The Book of Were-Wolves (1865). This is one of the five key books from which Stoker took handwritten notes and was one of only two that he namechecked in an interview about Dracula that he gave when it was published. The Library’s copy is full of marginalia; almost three-quarters of the pages have pencil marks, which is sadly not uncommon in our books. However, there seemed to be remarkable similarities between some of the marks and Stoker’s notes. For example, he made notes on four relatively obscure passages on pages 112 and 113, and in our copy of the book those passages, and only those passages on the two pages, have, very precisely next to them, small crosses in pencil. Having reviewed the whole book, it is clear that the correlation with Stoker’s notes was not perfect; much of
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the marginalia does not match the notes Stoker took, and some of his notes do not have corresponding marginalia, but there is enough to suggest there is a link between the two. I went back into the stacks and pulled some of the other books from sections such as S. Folklore, T. Transylvania, R. Sacraments and H. German Social. The same story emerged. There were marks on many of the relevant sections – sometimes crosses, sometimes lines down the paragraph. There was sometimes significant folding of the top or bottom corner of the page and, very occasionally, handwriting. Some of these books have been borrowed since Stoker’s notes have been published, whereas others aren’t even on the Library’s online catalogue. Again, not all Stoker’s notes were marked and not all the marks were reflected in the notes, but there was a correlation, sometimes weak and sometimes very strong.
finding dracula
Opposite, top Characteristic lines and crosses appear throughout the Library’s 1672 edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), which was owned by Bram Stoker and donated to the Library in 1937 by his son Noel. Opposite, below Emily Gerard’s The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures and Fancies from Transylvania (1888) provided important source material on folklore for Stoker. Right Stoker’s typed notes refer directly to Charles Boner’s Transylvania: Its Products and its People (1865).
A key moment came when I saw Sir Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica or, Enquiries into very many received Tenets and commonly presumed Truths (1646). Our copy dates from 1672 and has been housed in our safes since 2000. A colleague in Conservation Care kindly brought it to me but noted that there were pencil marks in the margins which she could erase for me if I wished. I encouraged her not to. Stoker references four passages from this book. I went to the relevant pages and there were exactly the same types of marks that I had been finding in the books on the open-access shelves. They were a perfect match with the notes Stoker had made. There were also other marks that didn’t correspond with Stoker’s notes. Although the book did not enter the Library’s collection until 1935, its provenance was known; it was given to the Library by Noel Stoker, Bram Stoker’s son. William Wilkinson’s An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820) is of particular interest as it is the book that inspired the naming of Stoker’s title character, with its reference to the historical Romanian ruler Dracula on page 19. Stoker’s notes on this book come from the copy he
found in the Whitby subscription library. He even gives its shelfmark – 0.1097 – but sadly this copy has now been lost. The London Library has a copy, and it was on the shelves when Stoker was a member. Our copy has no pencil marks in it, but the corner of page 18, directly opposite the all-important Dracula reference, has been turned down, just as Stoker appears to have marked other pages of interest. Did Stoker come back to this book when he returned to London from Whitby? Did he turn the page down as a reminder to himself of his interest in the name? Was it another reader noting the similarity, or just someone marking a page? In the absence of borrowing records, we cannot say with absolute certainty that we have found the actual books that Stoker used to research Dracula, but the experts who have seen our copies feel that the evidence stacks up fairly convincingly. He was clearly very happy using libraries, including The London Library, the Whitby Library and the British Library at the British Museum. However, no other library has claimed to have the resources he used to research Dracula. It has been suggested that he used the British Library, but his
correspondence suggests otherwise – although he had been a member, in 1905 he wrote to them to ask for a replacement reader’s card as he hadn’t seen his ticket ‘for at least 20 years’ . Indeed, he was busy in the 1890s working on Irving’s affairs and it seems unlikely that he would have had the time to spend long hours in the library’s Reading Room at the museum. Rather it seems that in 1890 he began to make use of The London Library, where his friends and colleagues were already members. This would have offered him access to a remarkable collection from which he could borrow the necessary books to work whenever and wherever it suited him, enabling him to develop his writing career alongside his highly demanding day job. We may never know the full story, and there may be other discoveries to come, but it does appear highly likely that Bram Stoker was one of the many writers the Library has helped at a key moment in their careers. And it is not too fanciful to say that one of the great works of fiction, with its tale of the Transylvanian undead involving one of literature’s most enduring characters, has many of its origins in the quiet confines of St James’s Square.
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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 17
HIDDEN CORNERS
tall tales writ small The cabinet containing the miniature treasures in the Library’s Small Books Collection is opened for Simon Garfield
Of all the Library’s Hidden Corners, this one may be the least hidden. The collection of small and miniature books stands tall in a glass-fronted cabinet between the Sackler Study and the Writer’s Room, and if you haven’t reflected upon it you may have been reflected by it. The cabinet contains around 350 volumes. All are pocket-sized, and several would fit the pockets of the smallest child. Their titles range far and wide: Ismay Wigton’s Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect (1834). Shelley’s Poetical Works (1837). William Austin’s The Beauties of Hampton Court, historical and descriptive (1845). The majority are in Latin, Italian and French, and many are in a delicate state commensurate with their age, although others have a binding so tight that it’s hard to break your way in. Most date from the seventeenth century, although there are several volumes from the 1530s and a handful from the 1980s (most beautiful, I think, is the four-volume boxed set of Leonard Baskin’s Miniature Natural History of 1983). The earliest and rarest is Summa der Godliker schrifturen oft een Duytsche theologie – don’t all rush at once – attributed to the Lutheran preacher Henricus Bomelius, believed to have been printed sometime between 1523 and 1526. The collection is a hotchpotch, and an enchanting one. Each book offers transportation to its own miniature universe, and their collective physicality will take you down the rabbit hole. The materiality is more than a novelty; it is also a challenge and an adventure. You may pick up a book here that you would never have consulted at regular size, and while your optician may not thank you, your hernia clinic will. 18 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
These books are both small and miniature, and there’s a difference. All the books are 5 inches (12.7cm) tall or under, but to classify as miniature they must be 3 inches (7.6cm) or less. Only seven books in the collection are truly miniature. The smallest Authorized Version of the Bible, 1¾ inches tall, was printed by David Bryce of Glasgow in 1896 and comes with its own tiny magnifying glass tucked into a pocket in its cover. A copy of Horace, published in Paris in 1828, was printed by Didot the Younger using the 2½-point type cut by Henri Didot the Elder. But things get smaller still: in 1878, Dante’s La Divina Commedia was printed in a size believed to be 2 point, and the type was so small that the book became known as ‘fly’s eye Dante’ . According to the 1911 catalogue of miniature books in the library at the
Grolier Club in New York, fly’s eye ‘injured the eyesight of both the compositor and corrector’ . Happy reading everyone. A few weeks ago I took out a handful of small books for closer examination. I began with a classic, Bradshaw’s Railway Companion from 1841, printed in Manchester and priced at 1 shilling. This is not to be confused with another tiny Bradshaw in the Library’s trove, Bradshaw’s Railway Time Tables, and Assistant to Railway Travelling (1839), which is the same height (12cm) but slightly slimmer. The extra 11 pages in the later version reveal how fast the network was expanding, and is a very clear indication of what an impressive service ran daily from London to Birmingham. On weekday mornings a Third-Class train left the capital at 7am, followed by a Mixed
Opposite La Divina Commedia (1878), known as ‘fly’s eye Dante’.
Class at 8am and a First Class at 8.45am. There are caveats: the book explains that Third-Class passengers must share their journey with horses, and the Mixed-Class train stopped seemingly everywhere to collect and deliver mailbags. We learn that a smoking ban was already in force at all stations. There’s an added bonus: the Library’s edition carries a previous owner’s cuttings from the Times documenting the publishing history of the various Bradshaw’s guides, and which were preferable. The book itself is well worn, and has been roughly repaired with tape; one can almost smell the soot and steam as one handles it. Next on my pile was Alain-René Lesage’s The Devil Upon Crutches, a moral fable set predominantly above the rooftops
of Madrid. It was once the property of Hughes Minet, who inscribed it in 1750, the year of publication in London, and it was presented to the Library by his descendant Miss Susan Minet in 1967. The opening pages introduce it as a newly corrected edition of the book, translated from the French, and the first to appear ‘with the manners of the age’ in miniature. I can’t pretend to have read it, but I’m informed that the novel tells of ‘the picaresque wanderings of Asmodeus, a refined, likeable but decrepit devil, and Zambullo, his newfound mortal companion’ . The author’s intention is ‘to enliven and make my readers merry for a few hours’ , always a commendable ambition, and its first line suggests we may be in for a bumpy and clichéd ride: ‘It was in the month of October,
Left and below Bradshaw’s Railway Companion (1841). Left, below The Holy Bible, printed by David Bryce of Glasgow in 1896, with its magnifying glass.
one dark and cloudy night. ’ Susan Minet also contributed Remains of Sir Walter Raleigh, a collection of his principal writings and essays, first published in 1657; this is a battered but enlightening edition with woodcuts from 1675. Bound in calf, it is one of the thickest volumes in the collection, encyclopaedic in its scope. There are observations concerning ‘the causes of the magnificency and opulency of cities’ , thoughts ‘touching trade and commerce with the Hollander and other nations’ and letters ‘to divers Persons of Quality’ . Most useful to our present lives, surely, are Raleigh’s instructions to his son regarding the choosing of a wife, and the risk of abuse by ‘flatterers’ . We also discover what ‘inconveniences’ happen to those who delight in wine, but there is no mention of ‘ye hangover’ . All good value, certainly, at its original published price of 3s 6d. The history of small printed books begins at roughly the same place and time as large printed books: with Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable metal type in around 1439. Previously there were specific reasons for smallness: scribes would ink scriptures and psalms on tiny portions of uterine vellum, and religious men would secrete them about their person. Portions of the Bible and the Qur’an were popular for practical instruction, and as a token of devotion concealed close to the heart. And before vellum there was the clay tablet; the earliest known examples THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 19
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from around 2300 BC are trading contracts the size of a thumb. But Gutenberg’s invention enabled the concept of smallness for smallness’s sake. The potential for portability and secrecy multiplied, and fresh challenges came into play. When the humanist scholar and printer Aldus Manutius popularised italic type in Venice around 1500 (thus ensuring more words on less paper), typesetters and printers attempted to outdo each other with minutiae. Books of Hours were 20 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
particularly popular, but old auction catalogues reveal a great many almanacs with conversion tables, a large amount of ancient texts, a lot of Lives of Christ, a few books on etiquette, and good showings of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. My own interest in these volumes began a couple of years ago when I embarked on my new book, In Miniature, a study of how small-scale objects enable a deeper understanding of the full-sized world. The book examines model villages and railways, the models made by theatre designers and architects, and I’ve devoted an entire chapter to the Miniature Book Society. The MBS has about 300 members worldwide, and they like nothing more each summer than to meet in Dublin or South Carolina and talk about books such as the new Complete Sherlock Holmes, published in 60 volumes by Miniaturbuchverlag of Leipzig, each 5.3 x 3.8cm, every word legible without the need for magnification. Last year I attended the MBS conclave at the Marriott in Oakland, California. My expert guide was Dr Arno Gschwendtner, a tall man of 43 with brown curly hair and round Lennon-style glasses, who had travelled to Oakland from his home in Switzerland with a large selection of tiny books, almost all of which he could
Dr Arno Gschwendtner travelled from Switzerland with a large selection of tiny books, almost all of which he
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could have concealed in the holes of a slice of Emmental
have concealed in the holes of a slice of Emmental. He was selling, with a hint of pride, what was once purported to be the world’s smallest book. It measured 0.7 x 0.7mm, and each of the 22 pages displayed both text and an illustration of a flower. If you placed it at the apex of your forefinger it resembled a speck of dirt. The flowers in the book – and, it must be said, the text – all looked very similar, but this wasn’t really the issue: if you wanted a proper book about flowers you’d go to
HIDDEN CORNERS
Opposite, clockwise from top left Frontispiece illustration from AlainRené Lesage’s The Devil Upon Crutches (1750); Simon Garfield’s In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the World (2018), alongside the miniature edition; title page of Remains of Sir Walter Raleigh (1657), 1675 edition. Left Cowboy Life (1890), manufactured by Chisholm Brothers of Portland. Below ‘Pikes Peak or Bust’, illustration from Cowboy Life.
the Royal Horticultural Society or Robert Mapplethorpe. But if you wished to read this book, which was published in Tokyo in 2013 with the title Shiki no Kusabana, you would have to use the little magnifying glass that accompanied it in a jewellery-style case lined with blue velvet (or you could read a larger version of the very same book, a book which Dr Gschwendtner called ‘the mother’ , which was also in the case, and measured a whopping just-under-aninch square). Only 250 copies were made
by Toppan Printing of Tokyo, and Dr Gschwendtner wanted $750 for it. If this was too stunt-like for your tastes, Gshwendtner had beautiful modern versions of Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde and, of course, Gulliver’s Travels in four volumes. He also had a copy of the fly’s eye Dante, although this could no longer claim to be spectacular. Printed microscopic texts have long ago benefited from digital technology. At Stanford in 1985, nanotechnologists
reproduced the entire opening page of A Tale of Two Cities on to the head of a pin, reducing a regular 10-point typeface to 1/25,000 of its size. (It was the best of Times New Roman, it was the worst of Times New Roman.) Back at St James’s Square, I examined a book called Cowboy Life, manufactured by Chisholm Bros. of Portland in 1890. It comes in an oxblood leather binding and a concertina format, and features very little text but does have magnificent drawings of important demonstrations of ‘Throwing a Steer’ , ‘Skinning a Beef’ and ‘Branding a Maverick’ . The last picture in the book shows a bull pulling a covered wagon with an inscription painted on its side: ‘Pikes Peak or Bust .’ Small books possess an attribute common to many small things: they encourage a closer look. If you look at the small books cabinet the next time you’re in the Library I’m happy to say you’ll see a miniature version of In Miniature nestling alongside the Dante and the Bradshaw. It contains not only a chapter about small books but also (and what are you waiting for?) a potted history of the flea circus. Even at 7.5cm tall and 208 pages the book is totally readable, which is not something people say about some of my work.
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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 21
DO say yes proposals in literature
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Anne de Courcy examines the way marriage propositions are described by writers from Jane Austen to Jilly Cooper
‘He was beside himself with love. She took his hand and laid it on her heart. He felt the paper there, he stammered: “Then – you love me?” ‘She replied in a voice so low that it was no longer anything more than a barely audible breath: “Of course! You know I do!” … He fell upon the bench, and she beside him. They had no words more. The stars were beginning to gleam. ’ This is Cosette and Marius when they declare their love to each other in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (1862) – a love that is clearly the first step towards marital bliss. Today, almost half of all couples
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living together are not married (that is, to each other). Look into literature, though, and living together has hardly ever been an option. Marriage it is – and marriage almost invariably preceded by a proposal. Proposals fall into all sorts of categories – romantic, passionate, down-to-earth, half-hearted, desperate, faute de mieux, on bended knee or by letter. One of the most appealing of the epistolatory kind is from Frederick Wentworth to Anne Elliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817): ‘I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you … For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?’ Who could resist? It has everything from passion to persistence. Compare it with the proposal that no one – and certainly not Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) – could accept while maintaining their amour-propre. It comes from the oily, snobbish and altogether odious Mr Collins: ‘My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, that I am convinced it will add
“Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you … For
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you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this?”
very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly – which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness.’ Ugh. The most flattering proposal is that where its author implies that without the beloved life simply is not worth living, a mere desert of empty days made wretched by blighted hopes. There is Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, listening transfixed to Mr Rochester. ‘You – you strange, almost unearthly thing! – I love you as my own flesh. You, Jane, I must have you for my own – entirely my own. Will you
Opposite Charles Edmund Brock’s illustration depicting Frederick Wentworth and Anne Elliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817), 1909 edition. Left Hugh Thomson’s illustration of Mr Collins proposing to Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), 1894 edition.
be mine? Say yes, quickly. ’ In strict contrast is the Proposal Matter-of-Fact. Here peace of mind has clearly not gone missing for a second, as in this example from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938). It is made by Max de Winter to the anonymous heroine just before she is carted off elsewhere by her employer. ‘ “So that’s settled, isn’t it?” he said, going on with his toast and marmalade. “Instead of being companion to Mrs van Hopper you become mine, and your duties will be almost the same. I also like new library books, and flowers in the drawing room, and bézique after dinner. The only difference is that I don’t take Taxol, I prefer Eno’s, and you must never let me run out of my particular brand of toothpaste.” ’ Although our girl is overwhelmed, many others might have thrown the toast rack at him. A subcategory here is the concealed emotion or Rhett Butler school, which relies on out-arguing the indecisive female into a state of submission. Rhett, the rich, glamorous speculator hero of Margaret Mitchell’s epic American Civil War novel Gone With the Wind (1936), has always taken a cynical approach to Scarlett O’Hara, a fascinating young woman used to being treated with the chivalric, deferential politeness of Southern gentlemen. Rhett, by contrast, tells it like it is – and Scarlett doesn’t
always like it. ‘I always intended having you, Scarlett, since that first day I saw you at Twelve Oaks where you threw that vase and swore and proved that you weren’t a lady. I always intended having you one way or another, but as you and Frank have made a little money, I know you’ll never be driven to me again with any interesting propositions of loans and collateral. So I see I’ll have to marry you. ’ ‘Rhett Butler, is this one of your vile jokes?’ As usual, Rhett has the last word – and marries her. Rhett, incidentally, is modelled on a real-life Civil War speculator named Richard Wilson, whose various progeny made such successfully upwardly mobile marriages that the clan became known as the Marrying Wilsons. They appear in my latest book, The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York (2017), which describes the army of rich American girls who married into members of the British peerage – many of whom were at their wits’ end financially – at the end of the nineteenth century. One of these girls, the focus of what could be called the Proposal Lucrative, was in fact Wilson’s granddaughter, May Goelet. Conscious that her money and looks deserved nothing but the best, she held out for a duke, turning down numerous lesser titles until the Duke of Roxburghe came along. ‘Unfortunately, the dear man has
no title, though a very good position, ’ she wrote of one suitor, ‘and I am sure he would make a very good husband’ . To someone else, was the unspoken corollary. Proposals can even be accidental, as poor Bertie Wooster found in P.G. Wodehouse’s Right Ho! Jeeves (1934). Bertie, while trying to tell Madeline Bassett that his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle is in love with her (‘Can’t eat, can’t sleep – all for love of you. And what makes it all so particularly rotten is that it – this aching heart – can’t bring itself up to the scratch and tell you the position of affairs ’), has given her the impression he has proposed to her himself, a prospect that horrifies him. ‘The thought of being engaged to a girl who talked openly about fairies being born because stars blew their noses, or whatever it was, frankly appalled me. ’ Madeline turns Bertie down at the time but later changes her mind and writes to tell him so. He opens the letter when staying with his formidable Aunt Dahlia: ‘A sharp howl broke from my lips, causing Aunt Dahlia to shy like a startled mustang. ‘“Dash it!” I cried. “Do you know what’s happened? Madeline Bassett says she’s going to marry me!” ‘“I hope it keeps fine for you,” said the relative, and passed from the room looking like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. ’ Sex, naturally, ranks pretty high as a launch pad for those four important words, ‘Will you marry me?’ Here is Jilly Cooper’s version of the Bed and Breakfast proposal in Emily (1975). Her eponymous heroine meets the fascinating Rory at a party on Friday evening, goes to bed with him the same night and, on Sunday, after a particularly golden moment in their 48hour relationship, he proposes to her. ‘“I’m bored with living in sin,” he said a couple of hours later. “Let’s get married.” ‘I looked at him incredulously, reeling from the shock. “Did you say you wanted to marry me?” I whispered. “You can’t – I mean, what about all those other girls after you? You could marry anyone. Why me?” ‘“I’m kinky that way,” he said. “I’ll try anything once.” ’ As a justification for the two-night stand this glimpse of a busy weekend in Fulham could hardly be bettered. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the proposal where desire is unwelcome. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 23
Left Folies Bergère dancer and courtesan Liane de Pougy. © Alamy Stock Photo. Right Photograph of Virginia Woolf, aged 20, by George Charles Beresford, 1902. © Alamy Stock Photo.
‘As I told you brutally the other day, I feel no physical attraction to you,’ wrote Virginia Stephen (as she then was) to her future husband, Leonard Woolf. ‘There are moments – when you kissed me the other day was one – when I feel no more than a rock. ’ It says much for Leonard that he was not daunted by this massive hurdle – especially when compared with Molly Bloom’s memories of her husband’s proposal that conclude James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922): ‘He kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume. ’ It is a sensual and tender ending to her long and explicit stream-of-consciousness monologue. Occasionally, sex as a commercial activity inspires something more socially fragrant. In the Belle Epoque, becoming a great courtesan like La Belle Otéro, Cora Pearl or Ninon de l’Enclos was often a professional choice. The successful ones were given houses, horses and carriages, and were showered with jewels; in fact, set up for life by men who often ruined themselves in their pursuit of these hetaira – but almost never married them. Just occasionally, however, propositions led to proposals, and a 24 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
man so desperate to keep one of these enchantresses solely to himself marries her. Marcel Proust’s Charles Swann and Odette Crécy spring to mind. In real life, the celebrity French courtesan and Folies Bergère dancer Liane de Pougy – who acquired the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, as a client – details in her memoir, My Blue Notebooks, published posthumously in 1979, how she married the Romanian Prince George Ghika. To rise to the top of the demi-monde and then to secure her future, a girl needed not only proficiency in the art of love but elegance in dress and behaviour, the gift of entertaining her lovers with sparkling conversation and a practical and acquisitive mind hidden behind her alluring smile. Colette’s Gigi, at almost 16, is living with her grandmother Madame Alvarez – who rose about halfway up the demimondaine ladder – and being trained for her future as a grande horizontale by her aunt Alicia, who in her heyday swept all before her.
Every Thursday the innocent Gigi goes to lunch with Alicia, to learn everything from which jewels to ask for and how to eat an ortolan (‘cut in two, with one quick stroke of the knife’) to what her future may be. ‘Yes, aunt, I understand that we don’t marry.’ ‘Marriage is not forbidden to us. Instead of marrying “at once” it sometimes happens that we marry “at last”, ’ she is told. To the horror of her grandmother and aunt she turns down the rich young man whom she has known for years as a family friend and who now wants to set her up in the most lavish manner possible as his young mistress. She could not, she says, stand the life, and he flounces out angrily. But unable to live without her, he returns – to find Gigi herself equally unhappy. ‘I would rather be miserable with you than without you, ’ she sobs. It is all he needs. ‘ The happy man turned to Madame Alvarez. “Mamita,” he said. “Will you do me the honour, the favour, give me the infinite joy of bestowing on me the hand …” ’ A happy ending indeed.
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The Lit & Phil Our series on historic independent libraries continues with Caroline Lievesley’s insight into a much-loved Newcastle institution It’s easy to spot a first-time visitor to the Lit & Phil. They pause on entering, considering ‘How have I only just found this place?’ or ‘Where do I start?’ Despite the plaque outside announcing ‘The Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne’ , it has always been known as the ‘Lit & Phil’ . Perceptions of an elitist institution are slowly changing; it’s a public building open to all. In 2010 we hosted an exhibition of artwork from the comic magazine Viz, a coming together of two north-east institutions that helped to shatter some of the myths. The Lit & Phil Society predates its library. In 1793 a group of friends who met weekly to converse, resolved to form a Society whose members would read papers and participate in discussions and experiments. The annual subscription was fixed at one guinea. It was not long before a library was created, and as the
Top Lit & Phil exterior on Westgate Road. Above Reading room at the Lit & Phil.
collection expanded, a more permanent home was needed. Architect John Green was commissioned, and he designed the handsome neoclassical building, which was completed in 1825. The main library is an impressive space, double-height, galleried and flooded with natural light from the vast ceiling lanterns. The library was popular, but the overspend on the building had been great, and by the early 1850s the Society was financially insecure. Engineering genius and then President Robert Stephenson came to the rescue with a bold plan. If members and friends could raise funds to repay half the debt, and if the annual subscription was halved, he would clear the remainder. The latter condition faced fierce opposition. There was concern that if the Society became ‘popular’ , its ‘solid and permanent character’ would be jeopardised. With a nod to his humble beginnings, Stephenson
held firm – the debt was cleared and membership doubled. The Lit & Phil has always been associated with great minds. In 1815 Robert’s father, George Stephenson, demonstrated his life-saving miners’ safety lamp to the members. During a lecture in 1879, Joseph Swan made it the first public building to be lit by electric light. He subsequently illuminated Cragside, the home of William Armstrong, inventor, scientist and President of the Lit & Phil. One Armstrong leads to another, and although the ancestral link remains elusive, comedian and actor Alexander is now President. Today the collection numbers some 170,000 books, and strengths include travel and exploration, the history of science, biography, local history, fiction and poetry. There is also a printed and recorded music library. Notable gems in the collection include A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains by John Gould (1831) and the first English-language edition of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometrie (1570). We hold over 100 events each year, including lectures, book launches, concerts and two annual literary festivals. The Lit & Phil has welcomed many literary figures such as Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster and Gertrude Bell. Recent visitors have included Melvyn Bragg, Val McDermid, Derek Jacobi and Michael Palin. The Lit & Phil is well loved by a great many people, and will doubtless remain so for years to come.
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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 25
Part-time study with Oxford • online courses • weekend lectures • weekly classes • summer schools • continuing professional development • undergraduate and postgraduate award programmes
@OxfordConted www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses18
Q. What do Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Joyce and Ivy Compton-Burnett have in common?
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A. They all received grants from the Royal Literary Fund.
Royal Literary Fund Registered Charity no. 219952
26 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
MEMBERS’ News CREATION THEATRE THERE BUT DRACULA NOT THERE Following the discovery that The London Library’s collection is intimately connected with the creation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (see Philip Spedding’s article on page 14 for the full story), the Library is proud to announce that in February and early March in 2019 we will be hosting 18 performances of Creation Theatre’s acclaimed production of Dracula. Creation Theatre have established a growing reputation for their innovative theatrical adaptations of famous books, with performances taking place in dramatic and unexpected locations. Their version of Dracula features just two actors and draws on innovative audio-visual design to tell the story of Stoker’s great creation. The performances will take place in the Reading Room on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings between 1 February and 2 March. Director of the Library, Philip Marshall, commented: ‘Bram Stoker’s extraordinary work has become one of literature’s most enduring classics, but for decades it has also inspired the stage and big screen. Creation Theatre’s telling of the story is a powerful one, and their run of performances – taking place in the Library where Stoker created his masterpiece – will provide a unique and atmospheric evening.’ Tickets are on sale now at £28 for London Library members and £32 for non-members. To book, visit londonlibrary.co.uk/ draculatheatre.
Scene from a recent performance of Dracula by Creation Theatre.
Throughout November, to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War, the Library is joining forces with the ‘There But Not There’ campaign to commemorate those who died in the conflict and the impact it had on communities across the world. The campaign There But Not There has commissioned striking silhouette statues made by veterans at Royal British Legion Industries, which have been distributed for installation in locations up and down the country, in order to remind communities of the men who died in the First World War. With generous support from the Bissett Trust, the Library has installed six seated silhouettes, as well as an imposing six-foot aluminium sculpture of a soldier, in various locations across the building, to remember some of the Library members and members of staff who lost their lives during the course of the war. Library staff members Charles Kennelly, Ernest Newman and J. Miller were killed in action. Library assistant Charles Kennelly died on the Western Front in 1917. The death of Lance Corporal Ernest Newman of the Queen’s Westminster Rifles was announced at the Library’s AGM in 1917. Library Assistant J. Miller was killed in action in 1918, but his first name, regiment and place of burial are currently unknown. Several Library members were also killed, and our installation focuses on some of the lesser-known names as a reminder of the ways in which this conflict affected so many people. There But Not There is run by the ‘Remembered’ charity, and profits go towards supporting its beneficiaries who deliver vital services to those struggling with mental illness and the lasting effects of conflict. To find out more, contact therebutnotthere. org.uk. Sculpture of a soldier in the Back Stacks. THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 27
CHRISTMAS AT THE LIBRARY GIFT MEMBERSHIP Gift membership to the Library is a perfect Christmas present and anyone buying Gift Membership gets a gift themselves – £50 off their next renewal. All main types of membership – including Individual, Spouse and Young Person’s, can be given as a gift. It’s a great way to share your love of the Library and to give the book lover in your life access to our superb collection and online resources.
ADOPT A BOOK FOR CHRISTMAS Adopt a New Book This year, you can treat a fellow book lover to a special gift. For £40, The London Library’s Adopt a New Book package allows your chosen recipient to receive a bookplate in a new volume from a list of subjects, along with a postcard and personal letter from the Library inviting them for a tour to see their adopted book in situ.
Adopt a Favourite For £125, you can give a recipient a bookplate in their favourite London Library book. This gift will include an adoption of a book of their choice from the Library’s collection, a personal letter from the Library inviting them for a tour to see their adopted book in situ, and a set of Library postcards. These are not only great gifts for bibliophiles, but the funds from your gift will help continue to expand the Library’s collection, while maintaining and conserving our most loved books for you and other generations to come. To find out more, and to see specific books available for adoption, please call 020 7766 4795 or visit londonlibrary.co.uk/support-us/adopt-a-book.
MEMBERS’ CHRISTMAS DRINKS
Thursday, 29 November 2018 Reading Room 6.30pm–8.30pm Join fellow members and staff of the Library to raise a glass, or several, to celebrate the festive season. Tickets are free, but must be reserved in advance via the Library website – visit londonlibrary.co.uk/about-us/whats-on. Owing to high levels of demand we are giving priority to Library members and are unlikely to have availability to be able to accommodate guests. 28 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
MEMBERS’ NEWS
ORDER YOUR LONDON LIBRARY CHRISTMAS CARDS The London Library Christmas card, featuring a card specially designed for us by Quentin Blake exactly 25 years ago, is on sale now. It is available in packs of 8 cards and envelopes, costing £6 per pack excluding postage (£1.20 per pack for postage within the UK; please enquire for rates to Europe and the Rest of the World). You can buy the cards online at shop.library.co.uk or from the Library reception. If you would prefer to write to us to place your order, please cut out this order form and send it to us. All proceeds from the cards go to support the Library.
CHRISTMAS OPENING Over Christmas, the Library will be closed between Monday, 24 December and Thursday, 27 December 2018 inclusive. Over the New Year period we will be closed on Tuesday, 1 January 2019. Please note we are open on New Year’s Eve, Monday, 31st December, but will be closing early, at 5.30pm.
ORDER FORM I WOULD LIKE TO ORDER: ______ pack(s) of Christmas Cards, at £6.00 per pack Postage & packing costs: UK £1.20 per pack; Europe & Rest of World – please enquire for details. TOTAL £………… (including postage) Please make your cheque payable to The London Library Please return this form to: The London Library, Christmas Card Orders, 14 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LG YOUR NAME (BLOCK CAPITALS PLEASE) ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ADDRESS __________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ POSTCODE ________________________
THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 29
THANK YOU MARY GILLIES We will be very sorry to say goodbye to Deputy Director Mary Gillies, who leaves the Library in November. Mary joined us in 2012 as Reader Services Manager, before becoming Deputy Librarian in 2014 and Deputy Director in 2017. She has achieved real successes in all her roles, focusing on ensuring that the Library develops its collection and high levels of service. She has also managed to achieve a rare combination of drive and efficiency with great humour and affability. She will be missed by all of us working here and we wish her every success for the future.
CHANGES TO EVENING OPENING HOURS From January 2019 the Library will be introducing new opening hours, in order to give members greater access to the Library on certain weekday evenings, and also to increase the possibilities of generating funds from evening venue hire. We will be extending opening hours on Mondays and Tuesdays, so that members will be able to use the Library until 9pm, an hour later than currently. On Wednesday evenings the Library will close at 5.30pm unless we are holding an event in the Reading Room. On those event Wednesdays – which we are hoping will be frequent – all areas of the Library except the Reading Room will be open to members until 9pm, an hour longer than we are currently able to offer. Wednesday opening arrangements will be published well in advance on our website, londonlibrary.org.uk/opening-hours. We hope the new arrangements will mean that more members will be able to use the Library for longer on weekday evenings, but it will significantly increase our capacity to generate funds from venue hire and events. There is high demand from third parties to hire the Reading Room as an event location, and this is an important revenue stream for us. However, our current opening-hour arrangements mean that it is very difficult to offer this on more than one night a week, and we are frequently having to turn away potential bookings. The new opening-hour arrangements give us the possibility to double our venue hire/ events capacity, and also mean that on Monday, Tuesday and frequent Wednesday evenings, the Library will be more accessible to members than has been the case up to now.
NEW DESKS AND WINDOWS FOR ST JAMES’S STACKS October saw the completion of the project to replace the windows on the Lightwell Room side of the St James’s stacks (the old windows had deteriorated beyond repair). We have now installed custom-made replacements, which look nearly identical but are double-glazed and reduce the levels of solar gain. The windows replacement work has been part of a wider project to upgrade member facilities in the St James’s stacks, which also includes the installation of 12 new oak and leather insert desks and restoration of the existing 6 desks. The new desks – installed in early November – will be housed on the three floors overlooking St James’s Square. To make way for them the modern metal bookshelves have been removed, and the books they contained have been relocated elsewhere within the Library. The new desks will expand the Library’s overall desk provision by nearly 10 per cent, and should mean that spare desks will be easier to find during busy periods. It will also help with our wider ambition to increase membership numbers, which is a fundamental part of ensuring a stable financial 30 THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE
From left New desks will be installed overlooking St James’s Square; the new windows in the St James’s stacks.
position for the Library. We are grateful to members for putting up with the disruption, and want to thank everyone who has given to the windows appeal (which is now closed). It has raised enough funds to cover all of the work, meaning that none of it needs to be paid for out of operating resources. The donor board and plaques recognising donations to name individual windows will be appearing soon.
MEMBERS’ NEWS
LONDON LIBRARY AGM 7 NOVEMBER 2018 The Library’s 177th AGM took place on 7 November. The agenda included:
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A new perch Sharp-eyed members will have noticed that we have a new resident in the Issue Hall. The Library’s pigeon-deterring owl has long been a feature on the third floor of the St James’s stacks (where it was originally placed to prevent pigeons roosting on the window sills – a function that was superseded long ago by pigeon spikes). With the installation of new desks overlooking St James’s Square (see page 30) the time has come for the owl to move on, and it has found an elegant new home in the Issue Hall gallery. We expect the pigeon population in the Issue Hall to drop dramatically.
Fees. Proposals to freeze current prices for directdebit payers and increase the ordinary annual fee by £10 from £525 to £535 in 2019 for non-direct debit payers, an increase of 1.9 per cent. Proportionate increases were proposed for the other membership categories. The trustees also proposed that the maximum age for Young Person’s membership be increased from 24 to 26. • Trustee elections. Trustees Elizabeth Herridge, David Lough and Sara Wheeler were eligible for election to a second and final term and were accordingly put forward for re-election at the AGM. Daisy Goodwin was also put forward for trusteeship this year. This issue of the magazine went to press shortly before the AGM took place, so we were not able to report on the results in this edition. The up-to-date results can be found on our website, londonlibrary.co.uk/about-us/agmannual-reports.
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THE LONDON LIBRARY MAGAZINE 31
‘magnificent exhibition’ Evening Standard
Time Out
The Independent
Mail on Sunday
Until 27 January 2019 Book online and save nationalgallery.org.uk
Members go free
Exhibition supported by Julia and Hans Rausing The Thompson Family Charitable Trust The Robert Lehman Foundation
Exhibition organised by the National Gallery and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in collaboration with the British Museum
Andrea Mantegna, The Dead Christ supported by Two Angels (detail), 1485–1500 © Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
