John Stuart Mill is an important figure in the history of The London Library and an intriguing presence in our institutional archive. Helen O’Neil, Head of Reader Services, continues her archival sleuthing.

In researching the Library’s archival records I want to do more than simply unearth those writers and thinkers who have been members of the Library throughout its history. I want to demonstrate the significance of membership.  One way of doing this is to take a single figure and delve deeply. With this in mind I have been tracking the economist, political theorist and most influential 19^th century philosopher in the English language, John Stuart Mill, through the archive. Needless to say the archive has offered up a revealing picture of his engagement with, and use of the Library.

Mill’s name is not to be found in obvious places.  He is absent from the lists of past Library Presidents, Trustees and Committee Members but his elegant intellectual handprint can be seen dispersed throughout the collections to a much greater degree than we had perhaps previously realised. We have always known that Mill drew up the lists for the first Political Economy collection – this is evidenced in letters from him in the archive and in the 1841 minutes of the Library Book Committee.  We knew too that he donated books to the Library; there are several such donations in the Library’s Special Collections. These donations are personal and significant to him and include for instance the Commonplace Books of his father, the reformist James Mill.  I mentioned in an earlier blog too, that Mill introduced his step daughter Helen Taylor to the Library in the year before he died, and she edited and translated several of his works after his death in 1873.

Title page of ‘Sermons Preached in Boston on the Death of Abraham Lincoln; the Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President’, donated to the Library by John Stuart Mill

In addition to this Mill’s donations turn up thrillingly, (and not infrequently) on the open shelves.  Sermons Preached in Boston on the Death of Abraham Lincoln; the Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President and The Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference held in Paris in 1867 are all examples of this. If you have recently been to see Daniel Day Lewis’s distilled performance as Lincoln, these donations demonstrate exactly how keenly Mill was watching America. He would follow up these donations with another in 1868 – Walt Whitman’s poetic panoramic of the American Civil War, Drum Taps.

Mill’s presence is also particularly prevalent in two other archival resources from which I have been gathering and collating data over the last month.  The first is a heavily annotated working copy of the Library’s first catalogue, and the second is the Library’s early Issue Books.  The annotated 1842 catalogue is an extraordinary Victorian document which reveals the level of Mill’s donations in 1841 was far greater than we had previously realised. 87 titles (numbering in excess of 240 volumes) are attributed to Mill in the annotated catalogue – only a handful of which are recorded in our much more contemporary records. In addition to this, Mill’s presence is unequivocally and impressively stamped in the Library’s early Issue Books which record the books issued during the very early years of the Library’s existence. I am half way through the Issue Books and have details of over 250 books Mill borrowed. To say he was an active regular user is an understatement.  Just look at the regularity and number of books he was borrowing during 1845.

The Library Issue Book showing some of John Stuart Mill’s borrowing in 1845

There are several themes which play out both in both Mill’s issues and his donations.  The first is they are incredibly international in feel.  His donations are published in Paris, Dublin, Brussels, London, Berlin, Venice, Amsterdam, Bonn, Hamburg, Calcutta, Dresden, Milan, New York, San Francisco, Boston and Edinburgh; and his loans include books about all parts of the globe including Europe, America, India, Africa, Australia, Mexico, China and New Zealand. Mill donated an enormous amount of material in 1841 in French on the French Revolution including Mary Wollstonecraft’s View of the French Revolution – and both his donations and loans are in English, French, German, Italian and Latin.

For a man caricatured in a dress for his outspokenness on the position of women, most notably after the publication of The Subjection of Women, his loans reveal that he was not only reading books about women, he was reading and donating books written by women.  One of my favourites is The History of Margaret Catchpole: a Suffolk Girl published in 1846 by the Rev Richard Cobbold. Margret Catchpole was an extraordinary woman, who twice escaped the death sentence in the late 1790s for stealing a horse (she captured the popular imagination by riding 70 miles in 10 hours without a saddle) and for escaping prison by scaling a 22 foot wall disguised as a sailor.

An illustration from ‘The History of Margaret Catchpole: a Suffolk Girl’ (1846)

To read Mill is to read work which is still relevant today.  He joined the Library in 1841 two years before he published Utilitarianism, and the major works which made his name were all published during his thirty two years of Library membership. On Liberty, one of Mill’s greatest legacies has never been out of print since it was published in 1859, an indicator of its enduring importance.

On May 8^th this year it will be 140 years since John Stuart Mill died.  By then I hope to have wrestled out of obscurity both the books Mill donated and the books he borrowed from the Library and I will be mapping these against his published works.  UCL has an internationally recognised reputation in the Digital Humanities which I am hoping will show its value here as I attempt to use the mass of Victorian digitised material sloshing round the internet to triangulate Mill’s issues, donation and published works.

It is to this unique destination point that I am racing, with as much speed as I can muster, to meet Mr Mill.

Many of you will have read in the Winter 2012 issue of The London Library Magazine that a substantial refurbishment of the Library’s Victorian Reading Room and North Bay will take place this summer. This latest phase — Phase 3A — of our capital project will see the creation of additional study spaces in both rooms and improved facilities for our members. Mary Gillies, Reader Services Manager, explains the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of the preparation work beginning now.

One of our aims in the lead up to the refurbishment, and throughout the process, is to minimise disruption to members. While both the Reading Room and North Bay (soon to be known as the Writers’ Room) will have to be closed for a short time — watch this space for dates, which will be given well in advance — we will ensure that Reading Room and North Bay materials remain on site and on open access, not in storage or locked away. We have identified pockets of space throughout the Library where we can relocate books; identifying heavily used items and making these readily accessible, trying our best to keep similar types of material together and choosing the most suitable available space for each. An example of this is the planned move to bring different sized Reading Room atlases to open access shelving in The Times Room, where they will be easier to browse and consult using the upright angled bookrests. We will also try to maintain a relevant and useful collection in the Reading Room and North Bay for as long as possible before work commences.

As part of this work you may see a variety of staff members in unusual positions as they crawl, with as much dignity as possible, around the Reading Room and North Bay floors, and in and out of cupboards, pencil and paper in one hand and tape measure in the other. A large part of ensuring that we can keep this material on site and in a logical fashion relies on us knowing that each section we identify to move (often filled with various size books) fits where we want to put it, with regards to height, depth and width!

As you can probably imagine, this is a mammoth task that will require careful planning and organising to ensure that stock movement is logical and easy to follow for both members and staff. Over the coming months, as different material is moved from the Reading Room and North Bay, we will keep you informed with new or updated signage within the building, up to date information on the Phase 3 section of our website (www.londonlibrary.co.uk/phase3) and regular posts here on the blog. Please feel free to ask a member of staff to show you to the new location for something you are trying to find or to retrieve any items for you; there will also be an explanatory feature on Phase 3A in the Spring 2013 issue of The London Library Magazine, which will reach members in mid-March.

There are very exciting things ahead which will make using the Library an even better experience for all. We look forward to sharing updates and providing you with all the practical information you will need over the coming months!

If you have any questions or comments about this ongoing work or about the planned refurbishment, please email capitalproject@londonlibrary.co.uk  or contact the Development Office on (020) 7766 4704.

This short film gives an inspiring overview of the Library’s redevelopment, including both completed and planned phases. Librarian and CEO Inez Lynn, London Library President Tom Stoppard and architect Graham Haworth outline the Library’s vision for its future:

As we all get into the swing of the new year, our Acquisitions Assistant has been hard at work ordering new titles to fascinate and inspire members in 2013.  In the latest installment of her regular blog, Rhiannon tells us about the fascinating titles crossing her desk.

I hope this won’t be an indication of things to come in world affairs this year, but we have ordered quite a lot of titles recently with a warfare or military theme. These titles vary hugely, spanning from the Fifteenth Century to now; they also cover a large variety of subjects, from torture and nuclear weapons, to photography and bird watching. They may not be especially cheering, but they are fascinating:

“Burke + Norfolk: photographs from the war in Afghanistan” Norfolk, Simon & Burke, John (Dewi Lewis Publishing: 2012)

“Sabres on the steppes: danger, diplomacy and adventure in the great game” Ure, John (Constable: 2012)

“The Finish: killing Osama Bin Laden” Bowden, Mark (Grove Press: 2012)

“Cruel Britannia: a secret history of torture” Cobain, Ian (Portobello: 2012)

“Nuclear Iran” Patrikarakos, David (I.B. Tauris: 2012)

“Power tends to corrupt: Lord Acton’s study of liberty” Lazarski, Christopher (NIU Press: 2012)

“Alexander I: the Tsar who defeated Napoleon” Rey, Marie-Pierre (NIU Press: 2012)

“War/Photography: images of armed conflict and its aftermath” Tucker, Anne Wilkes (Museum of Fine Arts Houston/Yale University Press: 2012)

“Magnum Revolution: 65 years of fighting for freedom” Watson, Paul (Prestel: 2012) – This is a photographic record of revolutions, from the Algerian uprising of 1954 to the “Arab Spring” of 2011

“Reading and war in fifteenth-century England” Nall, Catherine (D.S. Brewer: 2012)

“Birds in a cage: the remarkable story of how four prisoners of war survived captivity” Niemann, Derek (Short Books: 2012) – this is about bird-watching in a POW camp during WW2

“Iron man Rudolf Berthold: Germany’s indomitable fighter ace of World War I” Kilduff, Peter (Grub Street: 2012)

A number of other titles have caught my eye recently, mostly because I liked their titles. These ones are especially noteworthy:

“When pigs could fly and bears could dance” Neirick, Miriam (University of Wisconsin Press: 2012) – this is a history of the Soviet circus

“The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack: Victorian urban folklore and popular fiction” Bell, Karl (Boydell Press: 2012)

“From Gabriel to Lucifer: a cultural history of angels” Rees, Valery (I.B. Tauris, 2012)

“Angels and demons in art” Giorgi, Rosa (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005)

And my favourite title, which has landed on my desk this very moment.

“Walking sideways: the remarkable world of crabs” Weis, Judith S. (Cornell University Press, 2012)

I have a large stack of publisher catalogues to order from in 2013, so there will be plenty of new titles arriving in the library throughout the year. I look forward to keeping you informed!

Our Head of Reader Services, Helen O’Neill, provided a fascinating series of blog posts in 2012, tracing her journey into The London Library Archive. We hope you enjoy her final post for 2012 – the journey will continue in 2013!

The Victorian membership records of Henry Irving (1838-1905) and Bram Stoker (1847-1912) date from 1890.  Irving is Britain’s most acclaimed Victorian actor and theatre manager who, against considerable odds, not only made it to the top of his profession but changed the perception and status of his profession in the process.  Five years after joining the Library he became the first actor to be recognised with a knighthood for services to the stage.  Irving’s wingman, Bram Stoker joined the Library in the year he began work on Dracula.  Within seven years he published his most famous literary work which has never been out of print, and which made the most breath-taking transition onto the global stage with the advent of film.

Bram Stoker’s membership form

Stoker’s handwriting is a good example of the challenges involved in deciphering Victorian manuscript records. Stoker’s occupation, if you are struggling with the handwriting reads “Acting Manager Lyceum Theatre” where he was Irving’s right-hand-man for 27 years.   It is perhaps no coincidence that someone intimately involved in the theatre and who worked at close quarters with an actor of Irving’s magnetism, would create a character that would enthral in a visual medium. In the year Dracula was published, Stoker’s nominee Hall Caine published The Christian: the first novel in Britain to sell a million copies.

Henry Irving’s membership form

It is hard to imagine looking at these documents that either Irving or Stoker could have imagined when they dashed them off, that over a century later they would have the power to arrest and captivate in quite the way they do.  Look at Irving’s description of his occupation: verve, wit, humility and pride all wrapped up in that playful, telling word “Comedian”.

Irving’s status as a national treasure is captured in an evocative piece in The Times on October 20 1905, the day before his funeral.  The piece describes the traffic being stopped at the junction of Stratton Street and Piccadilly as a large number of “humble admirers” assembled to pay their respects as a glass hearse carrying Irving’s flower covered coffin made its way, at walking pace, to Westminster Abbey.  The piece records how Irving’s body had lain in state at the house of Lady Burdett-Coutts (also a member) where “all day long a silent stream of visitors had flowed slowly round the room and out again” a scene “in which gentle and simple joined in great numbers”.

In the Library’s Special Collections there is a copy of Tennyson’s play Becket.  Irving died in a hotel lobby after performing in the title role of this play.  His praise for the play appears on the title page, which is also signed and dated by Bram Stoker. The play, annotated throughout, was donated to the Library in 1937 by N.T. Stoker.  It is an eloquent example of how the collections have been shaped and enriched by past members and it demonstrates how a connection to the library, once made, can spread across generations within the same family.  Taken in conjunction with the membership records of Irving and Stoker it reflects the relationship not only between the archive and the book collection, but between the Library and the cultural life of the nation.

Bookplate in Tennyson’s Becket

Annotated pages – Tennyson’s Becket

One last membership record before finishing: from 1894 the joining form of Constance Wilde.  Notice her “occupation or position” is given as “Wife of Oscar Wilde Esq”. Within a year Oscar would be in jail and the family home at Tite Street along with all its contents auctioned off. My experience with the membership records to date tells me that wives often turn up in the records after their husbands, so if I come across Oscar while I continue pincher-action on the Victorian records, you will be the first to know.

Constance Wilde’s membership form

Next time: John William Waterhouse and George Frederic Watts lead the charge as the artists and illustrators sweep in.

In this, her third London Library archive blog instalment, Helen O’Neill explores Librarian Robert Harrison’s Commonplace Book and discovers fascinating anecdotes about past ‘literary workers’ in the Library…

Robert Harrison, Librarian (1857-1893) used this unwanted ledger to scribble anecdotes and personal experiences about his time at the Library.  His obituary notice in The Athenaeum in 1897 noted that his “long service at the London Library brought him in constant association with most of the leading literary men of the last forty years”.[1]  His entries are dashed off quickly and never re-worked – they brim with social and historical context, but have the immediacy of conversation.   His anecdotes pre-date the construction works of 1896-1898 which brought in the Issue Hall, main reading room, grilled Back Stacks and Literature block. During Harrison’s time, the membership would have rubbed shoulders, in what was essentially still a town house being filled with books. The photographs below pre-date the Victorian construction and remodelling works and give a flavour of the Library as it was in Harrison’s day.

I have picked two entries from Harrison’s Commonplace book: George Eliot, is the subject of the first extract, and Alfred Tennyson, (as he was at the time), is the focus of the second. Transcriptions are displayed below the manuscript image.

1859 Miss Evans, the author of Adam Bede, etc., etc., translator of Strauss’s Life of Jesus, possesses, says Dr. Chapman (of West’ Review), one of the most massive intellects of our time. Combe, the physiologist and phrenologist told him (Chapman) that he had never seen a woman’s head indicative of so much power, and very few men’s heads.  She is an agreeable conversationalist, full of knowledge-but her external graces are small and few, coiffure and toilette generally being of the negligent sort.  She was bred a Wesleyan and “turned out of her father’s house on account of her religious opinions or negations, which being of the most advanced school of freethinking make one wonder at the sketch of “Dinah.” [2]

Dec 4/73 One day last week Tennyson, the laureate went with W. Allingham [the poet], “Laurence Bloomfield”, to see Dr Lynn the conjurer at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. They are both very self-conscious men but dred to show it, tho’ imagining the world’s eye to be always on them.  The Laureate especially is morbidly sensitive about strangers noticing him in any way or drawing attention to him.   Conjurers however know no distinctions, and Lynn, who probably did not know his visitor by sight, walked up to him and asking what he had in his beard, seemed to pull out an egg therefrom, then another from his ear- the poet’s ear! – and to the amazed attention of the whole audience to the author of the “Idylls”.  Fancy his horror and disgust! [3]

Are Harrison’s anecdotes just tittle-tattle or do they provide revealing insights into a network of Victorian literary workers making use of the Library during his time? The extracts, though brief and entertaining are insightful. George Eliot was a formidable intellect and freethinker – and in 1859 no-one would have had more first-hand experience of her ability than the dashing Byron look-a-like, John Chapman; and Tennyson did have very real tensions between his inner and outer worlds, and struggled in the limelight.

In these two short snippets Harrison highlights George Eliot, Tennyson, the Irish poet William Allingham, and Dr Chapman, the influential publisher and proprietor of the radical Westminster Review, but it is the context, as well as the content, of Harrison’s anecdotes which make them zing with interest.  In addition to the literary movers-and-shakers, Harrison provides us with specific Victorian cultural references points.  We get a whiff of phrenology, (in its heyday during this period); and we are whisked off to the Egyptian Halls on Piccadilly (where “sofa stalls for three persons”[4] went for a guinea) to see the illusionist Dr Lynn, “the embodiment of all the strange manifestations and phenomena of the so-called spirit-media”[5] who was enthralling the metropolis every evening at 8pm in 1873, as the Evening Standard reported:

“During the past week an entertainment – one of the most extraordinary ever witnessed by a London audience- has been given nightly at the Egyptian Hall.  Dr. Lynn, who is a wizard of the most marvellous skill … comes to us from Paris with a certificate of excellence from no less a person than the poet Victor Hugo…”[6]

I doubt even Victor Hugo’s personal endorsement would have been any comfort to Tennyson but I confess to being hugely interested in the fact that Tennyson, whose work is littered with protagonists in psychological states of suspension, went to Dr Lynn’s show.  I am intrigued too by Harrison’s conversation with Chapman, and am rather impressed that in his anecdote George Eliot’s intelligence gets prime billing, ahead of her agreeable conversation, her looks, and her radical life choices.

Harrison used the ledger for what he called his “scrawling”[7] but his anecdotes act rather like flares, illuminating momentarily the hubbub of Library members with whom he came into contact, and the cultural and historical context in which they moved.

If you are interested in reading Harrison’s Commonplace Book it was transcribed and published in The Cornhill Magazine in December 1931 under the title “A Bundle of Dry Leaves” by his grandson Douglas G. Browne. The Cornhill Magazine is available in Periodicals 8vo in the Basement, sadly not through JSTOR.

Next time: Bram Stoker and Henry Irving get in on the act…

The President, trustees, members and staff of The London Library heard with great sadness of the death of Mrs Valerie Eliot last Friday, 9 November 2012.

Mrs Eliot had been a Vice-President of the Library since 2009, and through Old Possum’s Practical Trust was one of the Library’s most generous benefactors, providing funds for the purchase and redevelopment of our newest wing, T.S. Eliot House.

Mrs Eliot was present at the building’s naming on 11 June 2008, where actress Fiona Shaw read T.S. Eliot’s moving poem for Valerie, ‘A Dedication to My Wife.’

The Library’s President, Sir Tom Stoppard, said: “Valerie brought unprecedented and long-awaited happiness to her husband, to whom she was passionately devoted. During the long decades of her widowhood, she was equally devoted to her custodianship of his remarkable work. Her passing severs a vital link with our literary past. The London Library will continue to preserve the memories of both T.S. and Valerie Eliot, whose generosity, advocacy and leadership are part of the fabric of this great institution.”

T.S. Eliot was President of The London Library from 1952 to his death in 1965.

On assuming the office of President, he delivered an address at the Library’s Annual General Meeting in which he declared that ‘if this library disappeared, it would be a disaster to the world of letters, and would leave a vacancy that no other form of library could fill.’

A portrait of Mrs Valerie Eliot by Emma Sargeant hangs in The London Library, adjacent to the entrance to T.S. Eliot House.

The Library extends its condolences to Mrs Eliot’s family, to the staff and trustees of Old Possum’s Practical Trust, and to who all who knew and worked with Mrs Eliot.

Mrs Valerie Eliot at the opening of T.S. Eliot House, The London Library, 11 June 2008

Our industrious Acquisitions Assistant, Rhiannon highlights some of the new books that now grace the Library shelves, including approximately 900 volumes donated by generous members, authors and publishers and some of the numerous titles that have been added to the rapidly growing Art collection…

It’s been a while since my last blog entry, during which time the Acquisitions Department has been as busy as ever. We have ordered many new titles from recent publisher catalogues and newspaper reviews, as well as receiving many book donations (approximately 900 volumes in 6 months) from Library members, authors and publishers. Amongst the Publisher donations received are a copy of the recently reviewed “Wine Grapes: a complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours” ed. Robinson, Jancis; Harding, Julia and Vouillamoz, Jose (Allen Lane, 2012) from Penguin, and “A History of Opera: the last 400 years” ed. Abbate, Carolyn and Parker, Roger (Allen Lane, 2012) also from Penguin.

I have been keeping an eye on the huge variety of items that we are adding to the Library’s literature and fiction holdings. The series “The Oxford History of Historical Writing” has just been completed with the publication of volume 2. (The 5 volumes were, rather confusingly, not published in volume order.) Recently arrived titles also include:

• “Four Byzantine Novels” translated and introduced by Jeffreys, Elizabeth (Liverpool University Press, 2012)
• “The Girl with the Golden Eyes” de Balzac, Honore. Translated by Collier, Peter (Oxford World Classics, 2012)
• “Sylvia Plath: poems chosen by Carol Ann Duffy” (Faber, 2012)
• “<c> Odes” O’Donnell-Smith, Daniel (Open House Editions, 2012) – this is a debut publication and is housed in the Pamphlet collection
•  “Stag’s Leap” Olds, Sharon (Cape Poetry, 2012) – donated by the publisher

Titles currently on order and due to arrive shortly are:

• “May we be Forgiven” Homes, A. M. (Granta, 2012)
• “The Testament of Mary” Toibin, Colm (Viking, 2012)
• “Self-Control” Saeterbakken, Stig. Translated by Kinsella, Sean (Dalkey Archive Press, 2012)

We have also ordered quite a few art books recently, the most recent of which to arrive are:

• “Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images” Paleotti, Grabriele (Getty Research Institute, 2012)
• “Fish in Art” Jackson, Christine E. (Reaktion, 2012)
• “The Book of Kells” Meehan, Bernard (Thames & Hudson, 2012)
• “The Company of Artists: the origins of the Royal Academy of Arts in London” Saumarez Smith, Charles (Modern Art Press, 2012)
• “William Klein: ABC” Klein, William (Tate, 2012)
• “The Naked Nude” Borzello, Frances (Thames & Hudson, 2012)
• “Art as Politics in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena” ed. Smith, Timothy B. and Steinhoff, Judith B. (Ashgate, 2012)
• “Graphic Design before Graphic Designers: the printer as designer and craftsman 1700-1914” Jury, David (Thames & Hudson, 2012)
• “The Black Hole of the Camera: the films of Andy Warhol” Murphy, J.J. (University of California Press, 2012)
• “Daido Moriyama” Ed. Baker, Simon (Tate, 2012)

If we are missing any titles that you would like to read, please email your suggestion to the Acquisitions Department – suggestions@londonlibrary.co.uk. You can also browse a full list of new books added to The London Library catalogue via our website.

Helen O’Neill’s journey into the Library’s archive continues. In this second instalment, Helen discovers the Victorian membership records of some leading writers and thinkers – members who reflect social and cultural themes of the era…

19th century ledgers containing the Library’s Victorian membership records.

We started our archival journey last month with four 20^th century membership records. Over the last couple of weeks I have been getting to grips with the Victorian membership records and so here are eight records which date from 1841 and 1875 which reference some of the major scientific, literary, social and political themes of the 19^th century.

The early membership records are a simple numerical list of the names and addresses of subscribers as shown in the entries for Charles Darwin and William Makepeace Thackeray.

18 years before the publication of Origin of Species, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) joins The London Library. He is the 593rd person to join in 1841.

London Library member W.M. Thackeray (1811-1863), contactable at the Reform Club in 1844.

Occasionally the early records include additional information as in the 1844 entry for Henry James, theologian and father of the American novelist.

Henry James (1811-1862) vouched for by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

In the bottom left of the entry is the name of the Library’s instigating force Thomas Carlyle.  This practice of including the name of the person introducing, nominating or vouching for the applicant rapidly becomes a standard inclusion in the records as can be seen in the entry of Miss Lynn in 1857.

Proposed by Charles Dickens, the feisty and formidable journalist and novelist Miss Lynn (Mrs Eliza Lynn Linton after her marriage in 1858) joins the Library.

Suffrage and the position of women were hotly contested issues in the Victorian era and no-one contested them more vociferously in the mainstream press than Miss Lynn. She is a contradiction and a conundrum: a woman with a ground-breaking career as a salaried journalist she popularised debate about the changing role of women through her articles in the Saturday Review. Her “Girl of the Period” piece became a catchphrase which passed into common parlance, even shortened to G.O.P in the mainstream Press, but she was adamantly opposed to those she termed the “screeching sisterhood”.  In 1854 Dickens published her article “Rights and Wrongs of Women” in Household Words and in 1856 he purchased Gads Hill Place from her, realising a childhood aspiration.

A number of Dickens’ close friends appear in the early records including the painter Daniel Maclise; the theatre actor and manager W.C. Macready; and his confidant and biographer John Forster. Dickens himself appears on the Library Committee in 1847 alongside John Forster, who remains on the Committee into the 1870s.

In 1862 Darwin nominates George Drysdale, an early advocate of contraception and promoter of women doctors.  He also introduces his eldest son William who was the infant object of detailed observational study by Darwin which was referenced in his 1872 work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

For good measure I have included the membership records of Alfred Russel Wallace because he is an interesting mix of social reformer, scientist and spiritualist; and Mrs Oliphant because she is introduced by the publisher John Blackwood – and the mix of publishers, editors, literary agents, writers, illustrators and reviewers in the records is of interest not least because this is the time of the ascendancy of the novel in the literary marketplace and the huge expansion of writing opportunities through the periodical press.

In 1863 Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) becomes a member. It was his independently deduced evolutionary findings which finally pushed Darwin into publication. Both presented findings in 1858 at the Linnean Society. By 1870 Wallace is on the Library Committee, alongside John Forster and G.H. Lewes.

Mrs Oliphant becomes a member in 1868, nominated by her publisher John Blackwood.

It is no surprise to find that the women’s rights campaigner, Helen Taylor (1831-1907) was introduced to the Library by her step-father John Stuart Mill. This record dates from 10 March 1873, a month before Mill died.

Mill credits both his wife Harriet and his step-daughter in his Autobiography (1873) asking all who consider his work to see it as “the product not of one intellect and conscience but of three”. Helen Taylor had an active political life and edited all of Mill’s posthumous publications and Mill left almost half his estate on his death to women’s education.

In 1875 the artist Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) is nominated by London Library Committee member John Forster (1812-1876). Eyre’s depictions of slavery in America were published in the Illustrated London News and displayed in exhibitions in the 1850s and 1860s.

Crowe had illustrated several of Thackeray’s novels before he accompanied him on his American lecture tour (1852-1853) and it is the work he produced at this time which depicted scenes of slave auctions which appeared in the Illustrated London News. Crowe is introduced to the Library by John Forster whose literary connections, longevity on the Library committee, and small stash of letters in the archive make him a person of particular interest in the Library’s early history.

I am currently capturing the information the membership records contain in electronic format so that we will be able to search, extrapolate and analyse the content they contain rigorously. I want to find out not merely who the members of the Library were, but when they joined, who introduced them, what occupation they held at the time.  I want to look at the literary, cultural and intellectual networks sitting beneath the entries using the people who nominate, propose or vouch for new members, and I want to map that network against the published work of members.

I have been struck, even in the sample of records I’ve examined so far, by the variety of occupations represented in the Victorian membership. In a single year the following occupations, among others, appear: academic, actor, advertising agent, army surgeon, authoress, barrister, civil engineer, governess, Head of a Ladies College, journalist, newspaper editor, MP, manufacturer, merchant, navy surgeon, periodical publisher, physician, spinster, stationer, student and Catholic, Wesleyan and Protestant clergy.

Capturing membership information electronically may allow us to look at the relationship between the Library and the literary life of the nation in greater detail, but it might also bring out into the light a unique and absorbing piece of social history.

Next time – Between 1857 and 1893 the Librarian, Robert Harrison scribbled snippets and anecdotes in a commonplace book of personal reminiscences. He described a particular member as “one of the most massive intellects of our times” and another as “morbidly sensitive about strangers noticing him in any way” To whom was he referring?

Helen O’Neill, Head of Reader Services, is about to spend a year examining the Library’s archive, including its remarkable membership records tracing 171 years in the literary life of the nation. Who and what will she find? She’s going to tell us on The London Library Blog.

In this first instalment, coinciding with the BBC’s adaptation of Parade’s End (screenplay written by our President, Tom Stoppard) we catch an archival glimpse of Ford Madox Ford and some of his illustrious London Library contemporaries.

At the end of the month I will be away from my post as Head of Reader Services for a year while I undertake a masters of research degree at UCL on the Library’s institutional archive.  Over the course of the year I will be sharing with you research findings which extend our understanding about the Library’s relationship to the literary life of the nation.  To get the ball rolling I am going to jump into the world of Parade’s End and show you in four archival documents why the archive so richly deserves focused research attention.  The joining forms of  Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), T.S.  Eliot (1888-1965), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) and Violet Hunt (1862-1942) are in turn arresting, illuminating and intensely moving, and for what are basic administrative records they are also credibly rich in detail.

So let’s do this in date order. All three men joined the Library in their thirties.  Ford, or more exactly F.M. Hueffer, is first through the door in 1907 and the date I think is significant.  The following year he founded The English Review which ushered in the writers that would dominate modern 20^th century literature, and number 84 Holland Park became open house to an extraordinary number of them. The date on the document allows us to pinpoint exactly where Ford is in his literary, as well as his personal life.  He published three books in 1907, including The Spirit of the People: An Analysis of the English Mind, all still available on the Library’s shelves.

The joining form of FM Hueffer – better known to us as Ford Madox Ford.

The 30 year old Eliot is up next. He joins in 1918, a year after Prufrock; four before The Waste Land. Eliot provided a list of sources for The Waste Land in The Criterion and we are currently investigating how many of them were available on the Library’s shelves in 1918. This document captures Eliot still at Lloyd’s bank before his move to Faber & Faber.

When TS Eliot joined The London Library in 1918 he was still working for Lloyd’s Bank.

In the same year as The Waste Land appeared in The Criterion (1922) Siegfried Sassoon arrived in the Issue Hall, and it is difficult not to be moved by his joining form. The word “none” never fails to register. A single word that could signify defiance, honesty or a complete shift in meaning attached to notions of “position” and “occupation” brought about by the First World War.  It is such a powerful word in fact, that it is possible to miss the second signature on the form.  It was E.M. Forster who introduced Sassoon to the Library.

Siegfried Sassoon was introduced to the Library by EM Forster, whose signature appears here on Sassoon’s joining form.

If you have been captivated by Sylvia Tietjens and the complex sexual politics at play in Ford’s Parade’s End, you’ll understand why the joining form of the writer, literary hostess and socialite Violet Hunt is so meaningful in this thematic archival slice. In the 1890’s Violet was what was referred to as a “New Woman” or as D.H. Lawrence put it, in admiration, “a real assassin”.   A successful novelist in her own right, Violet founded the Women Writers’ Suffrage League; was in at the outset of The English Review (she appeared in its first issue); and embarked on a long, complicated, messy relationship with Ford just after The Review set out its stall. It was a relationship that had enormous repercussions for them both.  Violet’s identity as “Mrs F. Madox Hueffer” (still evident in the Library’s printed catalogue from 1920 onwards), had no legal basis and was challenged successfully and publicly through the courts by Hueffer’s first (and very un-divorced) wife Elsie. Just look at Hunt’s use of the double apostrophe on her form in 1916.  A story entire, told in punctuation marks.

“Violet Hunt”, as she styled herself on this form, joined The London Library in 1916.

The Library’s remarkably intact membership records, which date from 1841, are not only a record of the writers and thinkers who have used, enriched and shaped the Library, they are documents which reflect the nation’s literary heritage.  Showing the intersection of world events and social change with the personal biographies and intellectual endeavour of some of the most significant (and some of the most forgotten) writers in the English language, they reveal a host of literary and intellectual connections in the process. When the Library’s archival material is viewed within the wider Library collections things really start to spark and fly. The English Review and The Criterion, for instance, grace the periodical shelves in the Basement, and as the Library has never weeded or judged its collections on the grounds of popularity, fashion or taste, the works of Ford, Eliot, Sassoon and Hunt are to be found on the Library’s shelves, amassed from the point of publication. The subtitle of Violet’s novel Of Human Interest – A Study in Incompatibilities (1899) could be strikingly good shorthand for the push and pull of Christopher and Sylvia’s relationship in Parade’s End.

What is happening on Friday evenings at 9pm on BBC2 demonstrates a very simple literary truth and it is this: good books never become obsolete, they simply bide their time and wait for their moment.  That the baton of this particular literary relay race was picked up and taken across the primetime finishing line by the Library’s current President, 105 years after Ford first crossed the threshold, is particularly poignant when you look at the library through a long-angled lens; and archival documents have provided the key to unlocking that story.

Before the last installment of Parade’s End, you might like to read the poems To Any Dead Officer by Siegfried Sassoon, and Antwerp by Ford Madox Ford.

The London Library’s vast collection of Russian material covers a wide range of printed works. The Russian element of the collections was first introduced by Robert Harrison, Librarian from 1857 to 1893. His successor, Sir Charles Hagberg Wright (Librarian from 1894 to 1940) had an even stronger interest in Russia, its culture, literature and currents affairs, having received part of his education in that country and being personally acquainted with Gorky and Tolstoy among others.

Our present-day Russian cataloguing and acquisitions specialist, Anna Vlasova, tells the story of one particularly fascinating treasure, The Ostrog Bible…

The London Library houses an extensive collection of Russian material, among which some gems of the early Slavonic printing can be found. Certainly the most treasured one is the first printed edition of the entire Bible in Old Church Slavonic. It was printed by the pioneer of Russian printing Ivan Fedorov in Ostroh (modern territory of Ukraine) in 1581 and is thus known as the Ostrog Bible. This monumental publication lavishly decorated with woodcut panels and initials that were cut by Fedorov himself presents a marvellous example of the 16th century Cyrillic type. The Ostrog Bible was the first Bible printed in Cyrillic, and it became a model for printing later Russian editions of the Bible.

Woodcut decorations

The story behind the printing of the Ostrog Bible is fascinating and shows how the printing press could help advance one’s interests. From the outset, the printing of the first Bible in Old Church Slavonic was not a commercial endeavour, but rather a political move by Prince Constantine of Ostrog. Constantine was an ardent supporter, promoter and protector of the Eastern Orthodox Church, in spite of his domains being a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where Catholicism was dominant. To help him fight for his cause the prince decided to establish a printing press in Ostrog with the intention to publish the first complete Bible in Old Church Slavonic.

Bookplate of Franz Gregor Graf von Giannini

The greatest challenge of printing the biggest and the most authoritative book in the Christian world was to obtain the correct text of the Scriptures, therefore the hunt for manuscripts began much earlier than the actual press was established. Handwritten notes by a previous owner found pasted in the London Library copy of the Ostrog Bible shed some light on Constantine’s efforts to procure accurate manuscripts. ‘In order to obtain a correct text, The Duke [sic] assiduously collected all the M.SS. he could find’, read the notes, ‘but … he was not able to procure any codex containing the whole of the Scriptures in the Slavonic language.’ Luckily, in 1572 Constantine received a manuscript of the full Bible (the so-called Gennady’s Bible) in Old Church Slavonic from the Tsar Ivan IV (also known as Ivan the Terrible). However, many discrepancies and faults were detected by the collation, and therefore Constantine continued to gather and collate as many other manuscripts as he could lay his hands on. Constantine ‘wrote letters, and sent messengers to many distant parts, to Italy, The Islands of the Archipelago, to many Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian monasteries, and even to the head of the Oriental Church, earnestly requesting that persons might be sent him who were skilled in the Greek and Slavonic languages, and that they might bring with them corrected and authenticated copies of the Sacred Text’. As we read further in the notes: ‘His application was not without success. Both labourers and M.SS. were forwarded to Ostrog, and by mutual consultation and aid, they prepared, in the course of some years, a copy of the whole Bible for the press’.

Two printing dates, 1580 and 1581, are found in the colophons of the surviving copies, which has caused some confusion as to the number of editions of the Ostrog Bible. However, it is now considered that there is only one edition, as the date on the title page is invariably 1581. As the collation and editing of the procured manuscripts took time, the printing of the Bible was delayed, and thus was finished in 1581, almost a year later than expected. To fill in the downtime of the printing press, parts of the Bible that didn’t need corrections, namely the Psalms and the New Testament, were printed separately in 1580.

First page of the Bible

At great expense and despite the difficulties and delays, Constantine succeeded in publishing the first Bible in Old Church Slavonic language, which became the authorised version of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Constantine immortalised his patronage in the form of his coat of arms printed at the back of the title page and in the introductory text where he declares that he ‘was made worthy to lay the foundation and to see the accomplishment of this most venerable, and superior to every thing work ’. Acting as a defender of the Eastern Orthodox faith Constantine distributed copies of the Bible in Bulgria, Serbia, Montenegro and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He also sent a number of copies to Ivan IV, who was so impressed by the Bible that he offered a copy to the English ambassador Jerome Horsey (c. 1550 – 1626). Horsey left Russia in 1591 and that was probably when the first copy of the Ostrog Bible travelled to the British soil. Horsey’s copy of the Ostrog Bible is now at the British Library.

Almost a hundred years after its printing, the Ostrog Bible remained the only Bible printed in Cyrillic characters, and only in 1663 a reprint, revised by Arsenios the Greek and Zakharii Afanasev, was published in Moscow. The London Library copy of the Moscow Bible, like the Ostrog Bible, came to us from the Allan Library. Around 350 copies of the Ostrog Bible are still in existence today, 13 of which are found in British institutions. It is known that Fedorov took 400 copies of the Bible with him when he left Ostrog, after falling out with the prince. The number of surviving copies suggests that the edition was quite substantial for the time, by some estimates of 1000 to 1500 copies.

The earliest ownership mark found on the London Library copy of the Ostrog Bible is a bookplate of Franz Gregor, Graf von Giannini (1688-1758), canon of Olomouc. As Constantine distributed the Bible all over Eastern and Southern Europe, it is not surprising to learn that it once was on the territory of Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic, and in the possession of a priest. Later the Ostrog Bible came in the collection of Thomas Robinson Allan (1799-1886) who formed a library to provide a resource for Wesleyan Methodist ministers. Allan travelled widely and was always on the lookout for rare and valuable books, so it is possible that he acquired his copy of the Ostrog Bible outside Britain. Finally, the Allan Library was acquired by the London Library in 1921 and Allan’s copy of the Ostrog Bible has been residing here ever since.

Anna Vlasova, Aug 2012