Author Archives: Christine Davies

Special Collections and Archives highlights: 2025 edition

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Karen Brayshaw, Special Collections and Archives Manager

Welcome to the Special Collections and Archives annual highlights 2025. It’s always a pleasure to look back at what has taken place in the University’s Special Collections and Archives, and I’m always amazed at how much the team achieve – well done Team! This year some changes have taken place at the University and as a result Library Services (of which we are part) has now joined the Student Life Directorate. Don’t worry though – you can still find us in the same place. As a Team we said goodbye to Beth, our University Archivist. Beth joined us as Project Archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive, before taking over the post of University Archivist. We wish Beth well in her new post. In September we also said goodbye to Sam Datlen, Project Digital Administrator.  Sam has worked with us on a part-time basis since 2023, digitising the original artworks of Lawrie Siggs, Geoff Laws, Ron McTrusty and some of the Donald McGill collection. Although we said goodbye to Sam as a colleague we are delighted he has agreed to continue to come on to work on some of our volunteer projects.

Photograph from c. 1978 – Early days of the Centre for Cartoons and Caricature, now the British Cartoon Archive (University Archive UKA/PHO/1/1039)

This year it was 50 years since the inaugural lecture took place to launch the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature. The collections have grown enormously since then and to celebrate we hosted an exhibition. It was amazing to work with Clair on this. The activity was funded by the Beaverbrook Foundation, which covered the cost of two scholars and three interns and they were a delight to work with. The exhibition has been a huge success and there is still time to see it if you missed it, as it will remain on view during the first two weeks of January.

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy a good podcast and what better time of year is there to do just that. Clair and Christine feature in two separate podcasts, you can read all about it below and do treat yourself and have a listen.

Clair and Jacqueline have been working on Dr. R.E.W. Maddison’s collection, which arrived at the University in 1985. The collection is fascinating and they’ve both discovered some treasures – more of which you can read below. The printed works are available to browse via our online catalogue. The archival material is also available but more detailed work is being undertaken in the new year.

Christine continues to deliver an array of excellent and diverse sessions for our engagement and education activities, using her best Miss Marple skills to uncover treasures for our participants – eat your heart out Poirot. Although she doesn’t mention it here Christine is also doing some brilliant work with volunteers to sort out and make available our extensive theatre programme collections and many more have been added to our catalogue for your perusal.

This year we welcomed Emily to our team. Emily is Project Archivist, working on the UK Philanthropy archives, which continues to grow. As I type this, we await the latest addition to the archives… watch this space for more news next year!

We’re very lucky that we have managed to secure funding to retain the services of Jacqueline, our Project cataloguer. Although Jacqueline is with us part-time, she has managed to catalogue at least six collections over the last few years, which equates to several thousand books! Her latest target is the Ronald Balwin collection, which is turning up some real treasures. I know I’m looking forward to seeing what she unearths in the new year.

Soon we will have all the John Jensen original artworks available online as Alex has almost completed digitising them. At the same time he is exploring the audio material in the Max Tyler collection – we hope to have more to share with you about that next year.

Mandy also continues to digitise our cartoon cuttings as well as supplying the images for the Giles Annual every December and January. Mandy also supports us with requests for digitised material from staff and readers – including interesting scripts (of one of my all-time favourite programmes!)

Stuart and Matthias, our Curation and Discovery colleagues have been working their way through a variety of material, including books about cartoons, literature and sheet music, as well as our digital cartoons. This means there is now more than ever available online for everyone to access through our online catalogues.

And finally we have the contribution made by our volunteer community – our volunteers bring so much to our team. By giving us their time we are able to progress the processing of our collections and ultimately, we can make them accessible to everyone. So it’s a HUGE thanks from me to them.

Clair Waller, Digital Archivist

British Cartoon Archive – 50 years

2025 marks 50 years since the formal opening of the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature (now known as the British Cartoon Archive) and it’s been a bumper year of activity.

Beaverbrook exhibition

Images from the British Cartoon Archive left to right: Zoke [Michael Attwell], ‘Ah-men!’ [46886] ; David Low, ‘All blown up and nowere [sic] to go’ [DL0741a] ; Joseph Lee, ‘Smiling through: queer new world’ [JL 2539] ; David Low, [no caption] [DL1613].

This year saw us finish up our Beaverbrook Political Cartoon Collection Strategy project, and it finished with a bang. We invited two scholars (Amy Matthewson from the University of Birmingham and Dominic Janes from Keele University) to work with us to research and curate an exhibition using the Beaverbrook Collection and the British Cartoon Archive as inspiration. They could select any theme they wanted, and we were very fortunate to be able to employ three student interns (Isabel Walford, Freya Francis and Freja Dixon) to assist them in their research. The resulting exhibition was titled ‘Laughter in the Long Twentieth Century’ and explored the rise of fascism and the (in)visibility of LGBTQ+ people and communities since the 1960s through the lens of cartoons. Despite choosing two distinct topics to explore, Amy and Dominic were able to recognise and bring together a number of themes in the work, highlighting how humour acted both as a powerful tool of social control but also of resistance and defiance in the face of oppression and uncertainty. The exhibition was launched with an event on 1st July 2025, which featured guest speakers Dr Harriet Earle from Sheffield Hallam University and artist David Shenton. You can explore the exhibition online on our website and both Amy and Dominic will be exploring the topic further through a number of published articles, so keep your eyes peeled for more news on those!

[Update – see Amy’s article at https://doi.org/10.1080/14714787.2025.2576832]

new additions

The British Cartoon Archive has seen a number of additions to the collection this year. This included a collection of almost 100 originals of the cult satirical cartoon strip ‘Biff’, created by Mick Kidd and Chris Garratt, and a selection of original cartoons by Jeremy ‘Banx’ Banks. We were also very lucky to acquire a large collection of underground comics from Tony Bennet of long-standing alternative UK publisher, Knockabout. The collection not only spans over 50 years of underground and alternative comics from the UK and beyond, but also includes documentation and papers related to several legal cases brought against the company for breaches of the Obscene Publications Act.

Comics from the Knockabout Underground Comics collection

cartoon county, brighton

In August 2025 the British Cartoon Archive was invited to talk at a meeting in Brighton run by Cartoon County, a community group of local artists and storytellers. These events are held on the last Monday of every month, with host Alex Fitch inviting different speakers to come along and share their current work, after which Alex broadcasts the talks on Resonance FM’s Panel Borders. I was delighted to attend and had a great time speaking to the group about the work we do at the BCA. I can highly recommend attending if you find yourself in Brighton on a Monday evening!

The R.E.W. Maddison Archive

Images of items in the Maddison Archive

Dr. R.E.W. Maddison’s library has been a fixture of Special Collections and Archives, and the Templeman Library, since our university’s early days. Maddison was a personal friend of a fellow bibliophile, John Crow, whose own library constituted one of the University’s founding collections and who encouraged Maddison to deposit his with us too.  Maddison’s library was built up over a period of 40 years and was considered one of the finest private collections on the history of chemistry. Alongside his large collection of books (read more in Jacqueline’s entry below), we were also gifted a substantial archive of material from his career, which I have had the pleasure of cataloguing this year.

The archive contains many different aspects, including correspondence, research papers, scrapbooks, published pamphlets, prints, and Maddison’s own notebooks. Particularly exciting items I identified whilst working on the collection include some 18th century Gillray cartoon prints and many beautiful early-printed engravings depicting scientific instruments and diagrams. It’s been very satisfying to bring the collection to order and to make it accessible, so have a browse on our online catalogue.

Christine Davies, Special Collections and Archives Coordinator

One of the privileges of my role lies in the diversity of projects and groups of people I get to support with engagement and education activities. This year, one of the highlights was working with David Smith (Outreach & Widening Participation, University of Kent) in delivering two bespoke sessions for secondary school students about protest and activism, showcasing some of the wacky materials from the Mark Thomas Collection (including a toy Barbie car and hi-vis demonstration jackets) and crafting zines with which to empower their own civic voice.

Audience contribution slips and hi-vis jacket from Mark Thomas’ It’s the stupid economy tour, 2009 (Mark Thomas Collection, BSUCA/MT/2/12/1 and BSUCA/MT/12)

Another highlight was in supporting the wider Library Events Group with a social media campaign to celebrate Shakespeare’s Birth Year; it was thrilling to uncover so much unique material in our collections testifying to both the literary and social contexts of Shakespeare’s lifetime and the enduring performance legacy of his plays. We also created a pop-up display of these materials to complement a talk given by Dr Rory Loughnane (School of English, University of Kent) in which he shared research for his upcoming book – favourites included a 1502 copy of Cicero’s Tullius de officiis, a text Shakespeare would have recognised from the school he attended, a copy having been bequeathed by local vicar John Bretchgirdle in 1564, and several 19th-century libretti that were used by Arthur Williams as prompt-copies in Victorian productions of Othello featuring his annotations and paste-ins as well as intriguing printed front-matter about contemporary casts and costume recommendations.

Shakespeare’s Birth Year (pop-up display of Special Collections and Archives materials)

Lasty, and most recently, I collaborated with Dr Bala Chandra (School of Advanced Study, University of London) in a series of activities to coincide with the Being Human Festival, engaging the wider public with prominent literary and cultural figures associated with Canterbury through a curated display of our materials and a radio podcast now on Spotify.

Emily Royston, Project Archivist

This year brought about an exciting change for me as I joined the team in April as Project Archivist! Since stepping into the role, I’ve been working closely with the UK Philanthropy Archive (UKPA), appraising, cataloguing, and rehousing our newest collections. These include major acquisitions such as the Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants Archive, the Wates Foundation Collection, the John Ellerman Foundation Collection, and the Hilden Charitable Fund Archive. Recently established in 2019 with the late Dame Stephanie Shirley’s founding collection, the UKPA will benefit enormously from these additions, opening up fresh avenues for research into UK philanthropy and fundraising.

I’ve really enjoyed diving into our newest collections from the Wates Foundation and the John Ellerman Foundation, which has revealed the distinct yet complementary stories of two family-endowed trusts. The Wates Foundation Collection traces the work of a trust set up in 1966 by brothers Allan, Norman, and Ronald Wates, who earned their wealth in the building industry. As generalist grant-makers, the Foundation has supported a wide range of causes from housing and homelessness to young people and education, women’s health and wellbeing, and criminal justice and prison reform. Its records, including grant files, correspondence, publications, photographs, and audiovisual materials, offer a vivid picture of family-driven, community-focused philanthropy.

Arts and music projects supported by Wates Foundation and The Irene Taylor Trust, part of their work in prison reform and rehabilitation (UKPA/WATE/3/144)

The John Ellerman Foundation Collection, meanwhile, captures the legacy of a trust established in 1971 by John Ellerman II who inherited the fortune of his father, shipowner and investor Sir John Ellerman I. Its grant-making spans both UK-based charities and international projects, including support for disability organisations in South Africa. Also present in the collection are the Ellerman family’s personal photographs, records, and belongings, providing a rare insight into a family often described in the press as reserved and elusive. Together, these collections provide a rich and exciting resource for researchers, offering insight into how philanthropy and grant-making have shaped communities in the UK and beyond.

Newspaper clippings, publications, and personal belongings from the John Ellerman Foundation Collection (UKPA/JEF/1—4)

Making these collections accessible to researchers this year has been incredibly rewarding, with scholars traveling from as far afield as Japan and the United States to consult our UKPA materials. As our UKPA collections continue to grow, I’m excited to see the new research they inspire in 2026!

Jacqueline Spencer, Project Curation and Discovery Administrator

This year I have enjoyed working with the collections of two extraordinary book collectors, Dr. R.E.W. Maddison and Ronald A. Baldwin, Kent historian. Dr. R.E.W. Maddison was an academic and librarian of the Royal Astronomical Society who wrote the major work on Robert Boyle (1627-1691). His collection spans the history of sciences, particularly physics. In 2025 I completed the cataloguing of his later deposit of about 800 books including works on alchemy, astronomy and applied science. Dedications and notes in some of the books indicate Maddison’s personal connections with scholars across Europe. The older books include a four-volume set of the 1787 Paris edition of M. Sigaud de la Fond’s Eléméns de physique bound in block-printed pastepaper and John Dalton’s A descriptive poem addressed to two ladies at their return from viewing the mines near Whitehaven (1755) which indicate the range of his interests.

Élémens de Physique (Maddison Collection, QC 19 FON)
A descriptive poem [of…] the mines near Whitehaven (Maddison Collection, LRG PR 3395 DAL)

Ronald A. Baldwin was an indefatigable collector. The cataloguing project has revealed his interest in the quotidian history of Kent. Our collections have been enhanced by his material on hopping and farming of cherries and apples and the papermaking industry, on folklore, the natural history of the county and early practical medicine. The collection has added to the university’s holdings of older books on the history of the county including the first Ordnance Survey map of Kent from 1801, the General survey of England and Wales. : An entirely new & accurate survey of the County of Kent … surveyed by Capt. W. Mudge, at large scale, showing field boundaries, mounted on a single sheet and in its original box case.

An entirely new & accurate survey of the County of Kent (Ronald A. Baldwin Collection, G 5753.K4 1801)

Railway lines have been drawn on in red pen which, Baldwin notes, must have been before 1860 as the Crab and Winkle line is shown but not the line from Canterbury to Faversham. Baldwin assembled Acts of Parliament relating to the use of land and rivers in Kent and he sought out sources on local government and on crime. He was a Methodist and his interest in religious biographies may have helped him to acquire scarce pamphlets, amongst which is the rarest book I have ever catalogued, his pamphlet printed by James Abree in St. Margaret’s, Canterbury in 1745, A true and authentick confession of the many robberies committed by William Hook …the notorious house-breaker; our copy has now been added to the ESTC (English Short Title Catalogue) by Dr. David Shaw. I have been able to catalogue part of his collection this year; the biographies of people of Kent, of Kent authors and religious nonconformist groups are yet to be explored.

The life and travels of John Foster (Ronald A. Baldwin Collection, HV 28 FOS)
A true and authentick confession of the many robberies committed by William Hook (Ronald A. Baldwin Collection, HV 6653 HOO)

Alex Triggs, Digitisation Administrator

During 2025 I continued with the high resolution digitisation of the British Cartoon Archive collections. This year has been dominated by the original artworks of Jensen (John Jensen, 1930-2018), who drew for a wide range of publications; newspapers, books and magazines, but is perhaps most widely known for his work for Punch magazine and the Telegraph newspapers. Born in Australia Jensen came to Britain as a young man and began his career as a cartoonist and illustrator which went on to span six decades. He was a skilled artist who could draw with either hand and in a wide variety of styles. The Jensen collection contains circa 3000 artworks and is now almost entirely digitised. Personally it has been one of the most interesting collections I have worked on, largely due to Jensen’s artistic ability and stylistic diversity.

Digital Imaging Suite, Special Collections and Archives

The focus of my digitisation work on the audio visual collections has now moved on to the vast Max Tyler collection of Music Hall analogue magnetic audio cassette tape recordings. Max Tyler was the archivist and historian for the British Music Hall Society, and this substantial collection includes a wide variety of Music Hall memorabilia including sheet music, playbills, books and recordings. We are currently running an initial test digitisation of this eclectic collection of audio recordings to evaluate how we will approach the process as we move forward.

Box of cassettes (Max Tyler Collection)

Mandy Green, Special Collections and Archives Assistant

Back in January I completed scans from the Giles annuals that we receive every year, they are always so good to scan and the comedy element always funny. I’ve also been scanning the Donald McGill postcards which are particularly colourful and detailed. Most recently, I have scanned two of the Alexei Sayle scripts for the Young Ones, it was so interesting to see how the scripts are written.

Stuart Tombs, Curation and Discovery Administrator

This year, as well as cataloguing many more music hall song sheets from the Max Tyler collection, I have enjoyed cataloguing items for the Reading-Rayner Literature Collection. These have consisted mainly of twentieth century fiction and biographical works by authors including Charles Morgan, Evelyn Waugh, T. H. White, Jerome K. Jerome, and Gore Vidal (including a copy of his memoir, Palimpsest, signed by the author).

Many more interesting items have been added to the British Cartoon Archive of which the highlight for me has been “Drawing the curtain: the Cold War in cartoons”, a beautifully presented collection of Soviet cartoons from the Cold War era, published in 2012. Sergei Kruschev (Engineer, and son of Cold War Russian leader Nikita Kruschev), in his preface describes it as “a history of the second half of the twentieth century: from the gentle humour of the mid-1940s, when the world lived in a state of euphoric anticipation of peace and prosperity to come; through the mutual mistrust – not to say hatred – of the 1950s to 1970s; right up to the hopes of perestroika, and even the diplomatic ‘reboots’ of modern times.”

Drawing the curtain : the Cold War in cartoons (British Cartoon Archive Library, LRG NC 1763.W3 ALT)

Matthias Werner, Curation and Discovery Administrator

I have started to work on a collection of books and periodicals generously gifted to us by the late Graham Thomas, who sadly passed away in 2023. Dr Graham Thomas was a former Politics lecturer at the University of Kent and played an instrumental role in establishing the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, now known as the British Cartoon Archive. He left us a substantial collection, comprising a large number of books and periodicals, an extensive postcard archive, and a significant assortment of ceramics. The Graham Thomas book and periodical collection includes works of cartoon and  caricature artists, but also books on humour, drawing and design. Among the highlights are a number of first editions by Fougasse, George Molnar and Francis Carruthers Gould.

In addition, I have continued to catalogue Steve Bell’s cartoons for the British Cartoon Archive, making them available to the public. Steve has very kindly sent us his published editorial cartoons from The Guardian. It has been fascinating to revisit the political scandals of 2021, which made me realise how quickly things in politics have moved, although the broader topics have largely remained the same as we continue to battle with the fallout from Covid, Brexit, and the (first) Trump presidency.

Volunteers

We couldn’t end our annual newsletter without a massive thank you to all our volunteers, who provide indispensable support to managing our collections and making them more discoverable. Collectively, they contributed 1031 hours over the last twelve months – equivalent to 186 full work days. Read on for some of their own insights.

Martha Pledge

I have been volunteering in Special Collections and Archives since the spring. Most of my time has been spent archiving theatre programmes gifted to the university by Seona McKinnon and I’ve made some fascinating finds. This Sylvia Plath programme features her poems, a timeline of her life, and a scene sequence of her poetry to the dance movements performed. It even folds out to become an amazing poster, revealing a creativity of production which reflects beautifully on the legacy of Plath’s life and work. As a Shakespeare lover, I also want to highlight this 1979 adaptation of Hamlet at the Half Moon Theatre, starring Frances de la Tour in the title role. A more traditionally-structured programme, it includes an article on the lesser-known performance history of Hamlet being played by female actors. These are just two of hundreds of programmes I’ve encountered whilst volunteering, all of which has reminded me of the importance of preserving literature for future academics and students.

Programmes for productions of Hamlet (Half Moon Theatre, 1979) and Sylvia Plath (Heidelberg Dance Theatre at Jacob Street Studios, 1987). Seona McKinnon Collection

Emma Jeffree

As a Special Collections and Archives volunteer, I have been writing summaries and editing transcripts of interviews in the Winstanley Oral History Collection. These interviews were conducted by Michael Winstanley in the 1970s, looking at everyday life in Kent before 1914, and formed the basis for his book Life in Kent at the turn of the century [1978]. Listening to the original digitised recordings has given me the chance to hear the voices of people who lived at the time, and learn from them what their life was like, and how society worked 100 years before I was born. Having grown up in Kent myself, it is fascinating to hear of familiar places in very different lights. Volunteering at the archives is not only interesting and enjoyable, but it also provides me with good work experience vital for a student and the confidence and skill set necessary to embark on my future career.

Sport in Special Collections and Archives

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With the excitement of both the Euros and Wimbledon, sports fever has gripped Special Collections and Archives, so we thought we’d explore how the two sports have been represented in cartoons across the decades and open the reading room for a free drop in this Friday 12th July to showcase some of the incredible artworks we hold. Read on for a sneaky preview of the cartoonists whose work will be on display!

 

Tom Webster (1886-1962)

Tom Webster specialised as a sports cartoonist and pioneered his characteristic “running comment” cartoon style in response to the growing popularity of press photography; “I saw the red light,” he later recalled, “and realised that I had to find something the camera could not do”. After serving as a Lance Corporal in WWI, including action in the Battle of the Somme, he joined Northcliffe’s London Evening News as a sports cartoonist in 1918, and transferred to its sister paper, the Daily Mail, in 1919. His narrative cartoons began life at the sporting events themselves, where he would draw rapidly in pocket sketchbooks, and it proved quite a feat to meet the deadline for the next day’s paper. Equipped with his reference material, Webster explained, “I have to settle the sequence of the episodes, work up to the climax of my comic story, and pencil the whole thing in, within half an hour. This leaves me about three-quarters of an hour for finishing in ink.’ His cartoons were so popular that the Daily Mail provided Webster with a chauffeur-driven Daimler, fitted with an easel, so that he could start drawing on the way back from sporting events to the office. By 1924 he was reputedly the highest-paid cartoonist in the world.

Webster played golf with Herbert Chapman, manager of Arsenal Football Club, and supposedly inspired him with his habit of wearing a red sleeveless sweater over a white shirt to redesign the club’s red shirts in 1933 to incorporate their trademark white collar and sleeves. According to Webster’s family, he produced the design himself, and was rewarded with a shirt signed by the players on the sleeves and the directors on the collar. Webster covered plenty of football matches over the course of his cartooning career, and one player that features frequently in our collection is Charlie Buchan (1891-1960). Buchan started his career with Woolwich Arsenal (as it was then) in 1909, and – following a successful career with Sunderland – returned to Arsenal in 1925, seeing the club to their first FA Cup final in 1927. Webster seemingly makes much of the striker’s height!

Tom Webster cartoon of the Sunderland football team, featuring Charlie Buchan in the front row, centre, towering over the other players.

Buchan (Sunderland). Daily Mail (1921) – British Cartoon Archive, Tom Webster TW0287

Another notable sports personality of the early 20th century was French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen, the inaugural world No. 1 from 1921 to 1926. Invariably drawn with her short black bob and coloured bandeau, Webster seems less concerned about reporting on her skill, however, than he does in implicating her femininity. One can recognise the same trait in Webster’s contemporary, W. K. Haselden, in whose abstract cartoons about tennis a recognisably similar woman appears.

Tom Webster cartoon of Suzanne Lenglen reprimanding an American press photographer.

Champion of the world. Weekly Dispatch (20 November 1926) – British Cartoon Archive, Tom Webster TW1292

 

William Haselden (1872-1953)

A self-taught artist, Haselden is principally known as a social cartoonist and he had a steady career with the Daily Mirror from 1904 until his retirement in 1940. He worked with pen and Indian ink on board and developed a special multi-frame format, usually of six images, as his trademark style. He was known to use real people as the models for his cartoons, and his female tennis players often bear a striking resemblance to Suzanne Lenglen (see Tom Webster). His cartoons often satirise social expectations with regard to femininity and fashion, and he defends the short skirt as a pragmatic dress choice for tennis by contrasting it with an array of ridiculous alternatives – from swaddling gowns to custom-made bare leg protectors.

William Haselden cartoon in two sections, the topmost one showing four female tennis players in short skirts, the bottom one showing the same players in long training skirts, in the manner of Kate Greenaway.

If dresses are to be worn longer. Daily Mirror (8 September 1921) – British Cartoon Archive, William Haselden WH3380

William Haselden cartoon ridiculing society's outrage at female tennis players' short skirts.

Bare legs at Wimbledon. Daily Mirror (31 May 1929) – British Cartoon Archive, William Haselden WH4320

Asides from tennis, it’s also interesting what Haselden’s cartoons can tell us about the history of women’s football.

Whilst testimonies exist about women joining in casual community football alongside men as early as the 15th century, the first recorded match (between England and Scotland) wasn’t until 1881. Women’s football really took off during WWI, in fact it was reported that every town in England developed a women’s team. Naturally, when professional football resumed for men’s teams when the war ended, women’s football experienced an increased ideological backlash and legal action was taken to prohibit women from taking part in organised matches. In 1921, the FA implemented a countrywide ban on women’s football, which wasn’t lifted for fifty years. It is this context which we need to bear in mind when viewing Haselden’s cartoons. On 14th November 1925, the Daily Mail published Haselden’s cartoon about how rugby is – and ought to be – played. In response to contemporary complaints that the game is too rough, Haselden suggests that efforts to make the sport more genteel would risk emasculating the players. If men should conduct themselves like women on the pitch, how ironic is it, then, that women should be banned from the pitch?

William Haselden cartoon in two sections, the topmost showing rugby players fighting, and the bottom one showing 'civilised' play.

How to play rugby. Daily Mirror (14 November 1925) – British Cartoon Archive, William Haselden WH2589

 

Richard Willson (1939-2011)

Known principally as a caricaturist, Richard Willson can be said to have started his career proper in 1968 when he was taken on by The Observer. He started working freelance for The Times in 1971, contributing striking profiles for its Business Diary. His career involved freelance work for a wide range of publications, so it is difficult to know precisely which magazine or newspaper these caricatures may have been intended for. Amongst his sets of 80s and 90s sports personalities, Willson has captured footballers Gary Lineker and Vinnie Jones, and tennis players Björn Borg and Martina Navratilova. His fine, cross-hatched style with big heads on small bodies shows the influence of the American caricaturist David Levine; the artworks here have been done in ink and acrylic, which testifies to the spread of colour printing in newspapers since the days of Webster and Haselden.

Richard Willson caricature of 80s sports personalities: Rob Andrew, Gary Lineker, Björn Borg, Martina Navratilova, Brian Lara and Damon Hill.

80s sports personalities (Rob Andrew, Gary Lineker, Björn Borg, Martina Navratilova, Brian Lara and Damon Hill) – British Cartoon Archive, Richard Willson RW0028

Richard Willson caricature of 90s sports personalities: Will Carling, Mike Tyson, Michael Schumacher, Jonah Lomu and Vinnie Jones.

90s sports personalities (Will Carling, Mike Tyson, Michael Schumacher, Jonah Lomu and Vinnie Jones) – British Cartoon Archive, Richard Willson RW0027

 

Ron McTrusty (1948-2021)

Whilst Ron McTrusty started his career in 1970 as a magazine designer for Women’s Own and Women’s World, his significance for the British Cartoon Archive lies in his caricatures, and a number of notable sports personalities appear across our collection. To conclude this post, I leave you with the great Sue Barker, Tim Henman, Ian Wright and Glenn Hoddle. Come along on Friday to see even more!

Ron McTrusty caricature of Sue Barker.

Sue Barker – British Cartoon Archive, Ron McTrusty RMT0026

Ron McTrusty caricature of Tim Henman.

Tim Henman – British Cartoon Archive, Ron McTrusty RMT0507

Ron McTrusty caricature of Ian Wright.

Ian Wright – British Cartoon Archive, Ron McTrusty RMT1063

Ian McTrusty caricature of Glenn Hoddle.

Glenn Hoddle – British Cartoon Archive, Ron McTrusty RMT0474

Special Collections and Archives highlights: 2023 edition

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2023 has been a year of challenges and delights, we’ve amassed new collections, colleagues and knowledge, and – as is tradition – we want to use this post to share some of our highlights with you.

Karen (Special Collections and Archives Manager)

2023 has been another exciting, as well as challenging, year in Special Collections and Archives. We’ve seen a number of changes in our team. In the summer we said goodbye to two members of our team, Rachel who worked with us as a part-time project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive and Matt who was our Digital Lead. While in May we welcomed Daniella to the role of Project Archivist – Daniella’s post is externally funded and she is working to make two of our collections accessible and discoverable. If you follow us on our social media channels you’ll already know something of what she gets up to but there is more in her section below. In July we also welcomed Sam to the team. Sam is working on the Laurie Siggs Archive, purchased earlier this year with support from the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and Friends of National Libraries. The collection includes, original artworks, rough sketches and sketchbooks as well as notebooks and correspondence. 

Beth has had an amazingly busy year; working with me on funding applications, completing a survey of artworks around campus as well as all the things she mentions in her piece. One of the highlights for me was the amazing exhibition commemorating 100 years since the publication of T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland.  It was a great example of collaborative working with our academic colleagues. It proved to be a great attraction and we had many visitors to the gallery. Beth and I were delighted when Faustin Charles contacted us about his archive. Beth shares more about Faustin below but what you may not know is that he is the author of The Selfish Crocodile – a fantastic book for children. Clair has had great fun working on some of our collections and I know she especially enjoyed working on the Mark Thomas collection. Thanks to her excellent efforts you can now enjoy it too through our online catalogue or by visiting our collections. 

Exhibition poster for 100 Years: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land.

Christine has gone from strength to strength in developing her skills and talents as our Coordinator. She has finished cataloguing her first book collection, of which you can learn more about below and the Childrens Book Collection has so many lovely books for us all to enjoy. Christine also helped to develop the sessions for Discovery Planet in Ramsgate, working with our academic colleague Stella, and our whole team. I hope we can do more to these amazing sessions in the coming year. Mandy continues to beaver away making sure our cuttings collection is kept up to date. At the same time she has been working on digitising the original art works of Hector Breeze. Hector’s cartoons were published in Private Eye, Punch, Evening Standard, and other popular Daily newspapers. Jacqueline completed cataloguing the Carl Giles books, and moved on to catalogue Arnold Rood’s collection (he had a very attractive bookplate) and Jack Reading and Colin Rayner’s collection. Jacqueline has uncovered some real treasures, which I’ve enjoyed seeing. We’re looking forward to seeing what she uncovers next year! Our colleagues Stu and Matthias have been working with us one day per week and have made great progress in dealing with our British Cartoon Library backlog as well as our Shirley Toulson Poetry Collection, making them available to everyone.  

Display of Special Collections and Archives materials at Discovery Planet, Ramsgate.

Our volunteer projects this year have been hugely successful, and we continue to be amazed by the talented people that come to support us in our work.  

Looking forwards to 2024, we have some recently acquired collections that will be announced very soon. One I can mention though is a beautiful collection of Caribbean literature, donated by one of our former academics. We plan to start work on this collection in 2024 alongside some work to process a collection of African literature including works in the African Writers Series. Keep an eye on our social media channels for updates. And if you are not already following us do have a look at the Special Collections and Archives Advent Calendar – it’s on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram @UniKentArchives. 

Beth (University Archivist)

2023 has been full of highlights and it is hard to pick out a few special things to represent such a busy year!

With the University Archive collections this year I focussed on the archives of the Colleges. At the beginning of the year I started a huge (and still ongoing) project to sort and catalogue the enormous Eliot College archive. This has now been un-boxed and arranged in a logical way, and cataloguing is on-going. This is a huge step forward in preserving the history of these important institutions within the University, and there are many fascinating records coming out of this.

We also received a brilliant collection of literary manuscripts from alumnus Faustin Charles, a storyteller and poet, originally from Trinidad and who studied at the University of Kent from 1977-1981. Faustin is an important voice in Caribbean poetry and storytelling, and his collection of manuscripts and correspondence will provide a fascinating insight into his work.

The archive collection of Faustin Charles, Caribbean storyteller and poet, being catalogued at the University of Kent Special Collections and Archives.

With the UK Philanthropy Archive collections we have continued to build and expand this growing collection receiving a new collection from the Hilden Charitable Trust in the last few weeks! We have been involved with two great events to showcase the wider philanthropy collections and begin to share information about the content and its importance for research. In April we held a mini-display of material at the Understanding Philanthropy conference, and then later in November we helped organise the 15th Anniversary Colloquium for the Centre for Philanthropy, Philanthropy: Past, Present and Future, which included our 3rd annual Shirley Lecture. This year we were delighted to welcome Orlando Fraser KC, the Chair of Charity Commission of England and Wales, who delivered an interesting lecture of the role of philanthropy in the charity sector. We were able to showcase the UK Philanthropy Archive collections at this event, giving tours of the collections talking to participants about their value for research.

Display of philanthropy related items for the Centre for Philanthropy’s 15th Anniversary Colloquium in November 2023.

Our exhibition schedule has been jam packed this year beginning with the 100 Years: TS Eliot’s The Wasteland which was on until April, after which we installed the Migrating Materia Medica exhibition in collaboration with colleagues in the Schools of English.  In August we added a fabulous short term exhibition on zines and zine making, called “Zines Zines Zines!” which explored the history of this popular genre of self-publishing and allowed us to display some of our zine collections, modern poetry and artist books, and also a loaned collection of zines from the Queer Zine Library.

The zine we made to support the Zines Zines Zines exhibition this year.

We have ended the year by installing our new exhibition – which has been curated by a fab team of volunteers to kick off our celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the British Cartoon Archive at the University. The first cartoons arrived at Kent in 1973 and the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature opened in 1975 – which later developed into the British Cartoon Archive. Between 2023 and 2025 we are running a programme of events and activities to mark this significant anniversary. The 50/50 Project, where our volunteers have selected 50 cartoons reflecting the 50 years of the British Cartoon Archive, was the first of our celebratory activities and was launched in October. The exhibition will be on display until the end of February so do come along and see it if you can.

In addition to all of this – a particular highlight for me this year was in organising and delivering our Telling Our Tales series of workshops, held in June, in the run up to Refugee Week. This series of creative workshops related to our project and exhibition in 2022, Reflections on the Great British Fish and Chips. The workshops explored the ways in which we tell, share and preserve stories of migration and movement. Working alongside our amazing colleague Basma El Doukhi, we invited speakers to run artist-led workshops where participants learned about sharing migration stories and how these can be expressed and recorded through portraiture and photography. We held an In Conversation event between Basma and Rania Saadalah, a Palestinian Refugee, who shared her photography work where she lives in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Our final workshop was with Paul Dudman from the Living Refugee Archive at the University of East London, who talked about how to preserve stories of migration and the lived experiences of migrants living in Britain.

The workshops were all thoughtful and impactful events, that encouraged us to challenge stereotypes, build better relationships with people in our communities, and foster a spirit of understanding and compassion for others. This sentiment seems particularly important to highlight at this time of devastation and suffering in the ongoing war between the Israeli and Palestinian people. It remains vital that the stories and experiences of refugees and those with lived experience of migration are heard, shared and preserved to ensure their voices do not go unrecorded.

Poster for one of the Telling our Tales workshops, held by Paul Dudman and Beth Astridge.

Clair (Digital Archivist)

Once again, it’s been an incredibly busy year for Special Collections and Archives, and if you can excuse the cliché, it has really flown by! There’s been lots of enjoyable projects along the way, but I’ve chosen just three to talk about in this year’s round-up.

Firstly, we’ve had a bumper year for volunteering! Volunteers bring so much to our service, and help us achieve more than we could ever do alone with our small team. We’ve had the pleasure of working with over 20 individual volunteers this year on various tasks and projects. In particular, we’ve run two volunteer projects related to the British Cartoon Archive (BCA) this year. The first was the 50/50 project where volunteers were asked to research, select and curate an exhibition of 50 items from the BCA to celebrate 50 years since the founding of the collection. The second was the Cartooning Covid-19 project, where volunteers supported us in making over 400 cartoons published during the Covid-19 pandemic available to the public via our catalogue. It’s been such a pleasure working with all of our fantastic volunteers this year, and we hope to continue to work with some of them again in the next.

Our 50/50 volunteers.

In terms of cataloguing, I had a blast sorting and cataloguing material from our Mark Thomas Collection in the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA) this year. The Mark Thomas Collection has been part of BSUCA since its very beginnings, with the earliest set of records being deposited in 2013, and we were delighted to receive an accrual to his collection in 2020/21. This new batch of records contained notebooks, publicity, audiovisual material, and material related to his radio and TV work. In addition to this cataloguing, I also had the help of two work experience students in sorting and cataloguing the significant ‘100 Acts of Minor Dissent’ series. Records can be viewed on our catalogue now: https://archive.kent.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=BSUCA%2fMT

100 Acts of Minor Dissent: Act 61-63 – the BASTARDTRADE logo (designed by Greg Matthews) is trade marked and was created as a symbol of bad corporate behaviour (BSUCA/MT/3/8/26).

Finally, in the first half of this year I was lucky enough to take part in the National Archives’ peer mentoring scheme. I really enjoyed the experience of being a mentee and benefited from having a very knowledgeable, kind and supportive mentor. The scheme was the perfect opportunity for me to take the leap in creating a Digital Asset Register for our digital collections. Having a Digital Asset Register in place is important as it enables us to have control over our digital objects (both born-digital and digitised) and helps keep us informed of the file formats we hold so that we can make decisions about any preservation actions we may wish to take. It’s a huge step forward in improving our digital preservation maturity, so that’s definitely something to celebrate!

Computer Laboratory, Nov 1977 (UKA/PHO/1/1014)

Daniella (Project Archivist)

2023 has been an exciting year for me as I joined Special Collections & Archives as a Project Archivist, working on two cataloguing projects – Craigmyle Consultants UK Ltd’s archive and the “Oh Yes It Is!”: Cataloguing the David Drummond Pantomime Collection project, funded by Archives Revealed a partnership programme between The National Archives, The Pilgrim Trust and the Wolfson Foundation.

Donated by the collector David Drummond, the collection contains materials relating to a range of pantomimes, such as Cinderella, Puss in Boots, and Sleeping Beauty, as well as ephemera and photographic materials showcasing Principal Boys and Principal Dames. There are also gorgeous costume designers by prolific costumer designers, such as Wilhelm and Archibald Chasemore. Positive steps have been made with the cataloguing and, so far, I have catalogued in draft materials relating to Florrie Forde, Albert Chevalier, Godfrey Tearle, and David Wood. My latest cataloguing work package has focused on items relating to the pantomime Aladdin, started to coincide with this year’s pantomime performance at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. Watch this space to see these be added to our catalogue! Fantastic work is also being done by a wonderful group of volunteers who sorted and have been listing programmes and flyers for the pantomime Cinderella – they have made amazing progress and we can’t wait to share this with researchers.

Aladdin materials in the David Drummond Pantomime Collection.

Linked to the above, an absolute highlight of working on the David Drummond Pantomime Collection was going to the local pantomime at the Marlowe Theatre to watch Aladdin with my colleagues. We had an absolute blast watching the Dame strut her stuff whilst dodging the oncoming water guns!

Craigmyle’s archive is very different to the David Drummond Pantomime Collection and provides a different perspective to fundraising. It is interesting because the collection shows how this organisation, which was set up in 1959, helped charities across the United Kingdom fundraise. They work with a variety of clients ranging from Cancer Relief Macmillan to cathedrals and parish churches. Schools and education fundraising is of particular importance to Craigmyle. In fact, the company’s earliest focus was on this sector, with initial clients including The King’s School Ely, Tonbridge School, St John’s College Durham and Wycombe School. The project is well underway, and I have scoped what there is and begun to appraise and weed to select what we will be keeping for permanent preservation.

Working on Craigmyle’s archive has also given me the chance to meet staff in the Centre for Philanthropy, and Beth and I had the exciting opportunity to work with Professor Beth Breeze and Dr Karl Wilding to organise the Philanthropy Past, Present and Future colloquium. We had over 80 people register and attend, and has fantastic talks from Michael Seberich and Orlando Fraser, Chair of the Charity Commission for England and Wales. It was also a great chance to get the Craigmyle collection out and engage participants with what research can be done with this archive.

We’ve had an exciting end to the year by appointing two Archive Assistants, Cassie and Farradeh, who have joined me on the project to catalogue Craigmyle’s archive. We’re thrilled for Cassie and Farradeh to be a part of the team and they are sorting, listing, and repackaging appeal literature that forms a part of this collection. They have made an amazing start and have the following to say about their experience on this project so far:

Cassie: “I’ve only been working on the project for a couple of weeks so far but I already feel like I’ve learned so many new things about working in archives, and about the philanthropy sector. It’s been fascinating working through the new Craigmyle collection and I can’t wait to see what else we find and discover the ways in which this material can contribute to the UK Philanthropy Archive”.

Farradeh: “It’s really exciting to see what goes on behind the scenes at an archive, and have an active part in the formation of a new collection. It has made me see archives in a different light, understanding the thought and care archivists put into their craft, and appreciating the level of nuance that goes into executive decisions”.

Cassie and Farraday working on the Craigmyle Archive.

Outside of my collections work, Karen and I contributed to Dr Suzanna Ivanic’s module The Early Modern World: Conflict & Culture, 1450-1750. I gave a lecture about the recordkeeping revolution and archives between the sixteenth century and mid-eighteenth century. I also supported Karen and Christine in delivering the seminars for this module, during which students were able to examine and handle some of the spectacular early modern printed texts in the collection, including editions of William Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent, William Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury, and indentures ranging from the reigns of Henry VI to Elizabeth I that are found within the Ronald Baldwin collection.

Christine (Special Collections and Archives Coordinator)

This has been my first full year working as the Special Collections and Archives Coordinator, and it’s been a real opportunity to increase my knowledge of our collections and support a variety of digital and in person engagement activity – in the Autumn term alone, we engaged 177 UG and PG students through seminars, not to mention individual readers, school groups and prospective open day students.

Earlier this year I did a #FacsimileFridays series on Instagram to shine a spotlight on what is often underprized and overlooked – for facsimiles are copies, not originals. However, they increase the circulation potential of unique items and thereby fulfil an important place in telling the history of the book. The knowledge I gleaned from many of these items also became pertinent to my teaching of a seminar on Chaucer this December for third year School of English students, in which we were considering very early manuscripts and print technology.

Produced between 1330-40, the Auchinleck manuscript gives an idea of reading practices pre-Chaucer: it consists principally of romances (think Arthuriana) along with other secular tales and religious pieces. Chaucer died in 1400, just before the advent of the printing press, and no copies of his works survive from his lifetime. The most famous of 15th-century manuscript versions of his work is undoubtedly the Ellesmere Chaucer, which became the authoritative example for organizing the Canterbury Tales. It’s written in the hand of a single scribe, and is incredibly grand both in its use of blank space and famous miniature illustrations of the Canterbury pilgrims. You may even be familiar with one of these, for its portrait of Chaucer is blown up on the side of the former Nasons building in the Canterbury high street! Now in the Huntington Library, our monochromatic facsimile still gives us access to the scale and content of the original. The first printing of the Canterbury Tales was William Caxton’s 1476 version, and the earliest printed version of Chaucer that we hold dates to 1598. With ‘Dorothy Smallwood’ inscribed on the title page, we know this copy once had female readership and it is also fascinating for its marginalia showing just how much its readers relied on a glossary to make sense of Chaucer’s language just 200 years after it was first circulated. William Caxton was also responsible for bringing Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur to an English audience, and we are really lucky to have a facsimile of this work because only one and a half of Caxton’s original version survive to date. Given the depth of the book, and the pressure reading puts on the spine, this is not surprising – original copies would literally have been read to pieces.

The Ellesmere Chaucer (F PD 1865 Classified sequence).

Le morte d’Arthur (Q PD 2040 Classified sequence).

From the history of books to the art of books, I have had several opportunities this year to appreciate the variety of forms books can take and really get to grips with the non-textual components of books which is crucial to special collections cataloguing. In cataloguing our Children’s Literature Collection, I had to give condition and provenance notes as well as a physical description of each book, noting such varied features as illustrated fly-leaves, dust jackets, fold-out maps, pages of publisher’s advertisements, volvelle frontispieces and pop-up engineering. Children’s books are a joy to handle because they are so self-conscious of being tactile interactive objects, and they have proved inspirational – alongside our artist books – when displayed at book-making workshops led by Dr Stella Bolaki at Discovery Planet, Ramsgate. It has been a particular privilege for me to accompany our collections to a different venue off campus and engage different audiences, notably children, and witness them transpose their awe for special collections into creative responses.

This year : next year (PZ 8.3 DEL Children’s Literature Collection).

Les grotesques : en quatre tableaux (PZ 8 Children’s Literature Collection).

Mandy (Special Collections and Archives Assistant)

Over this past year I have been digitalizing our Hector Breeze collection, they are very interesting to scan and the way that they have been drawn.

HB0005, Hector Breeze Collection.

HB0011, Hector Breeze Collection.

I have also been scanning our cartoons collection, to see how they have changed over the last few years is so interesting, changes in the government also.

Sam (Project Digitisation Administrator)

In my first year as an official member of the Special Collections team, I have been cataloguing and digitising the charmingly offbeat world of Lawrie Siggs (1900-1972), a cartoonist who worked for various publications (including Punch, John Bull and Lilliput) for 35 years.

Here are a few examples to set the tone.

Pinch Me, SIG0307.

No He Doesn’t Talk, SIG0319.

Jacqueline (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

The theatre designer Edward Gordon Craig described himself as “fond of print.” His designs for theatre stage sets and scenery surpassed possibility in his time and he turned to typography and woodcuts. I have spent this year with the collections of three men who can all be described as fond of print. Arnold Rood’s collection is centred around Gordon Craig and his circle. It includes Craig’s woodcuts in print. I began the year at the end of Carl Giles’ collection (the cartoonist Giles) where I found a set of Puffin Picture Books from the 1940s-50s, their design and illustrations redolent of a return to delight in books after austerity. After Rood, I’ve been cataloguing the periodicals in Jack Reading and Colin Rayner’s collection; they were thorough collectors who focussed on theatre and literature. Last week amongst odd issues I came across a complete set of The Masque, a small and pretty journal of 9 issues each one on a theme. Issue 5 is The Masque of Christmas, presenting dramatic JOYS of the season to you.

The Masque, Reading-Rayner Literature Collection.

Stu (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

Over 90 titles added to British Cartoon Archive Library this year. Most memorable was probably the stunning cold war era illustrations in, Drawing the curtain : the Cold War in cartoons / Althaus, Frank.

Also Daily Mirror reflections : being 100 cartoons (and a few more) culled from the pages of the Daily Mirror. [Vol. I] / Haselden, W. K. (William Kerridge), 1872-1953, formerly owned by prime minister Stanley Baldwin.

Quite moving and of current topical interest, A child in Palestine : the cartoons of Naji al-Ali / ʻAlī, Nājī.- This collection of drawings chronicles the Israeli occupation, the corruption of the regimes in the region, and the plight of the Palestinian people. The images have bold symbolism and starkness to them.

The bottle / Cruikshank, George, 1792-1878, – This is a really interesting little pamphlet promoting temperance through a cautionary tale of the downfall of a family brought about by the evils of drink. No publication date but probably late 19th century.

Matthias (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

I have been working on the Shirley Toulson Collection this year, a collection of over 400 poetry books from the estate of the late author and poet Shirley Toulson. Handling a writer’s private library felt very special and personal. The books, many of them rare editions by small presses, often had personal notes and handwritten dedications by the authors. Often I found postcards or letters inserted between the pages. My personal highlight was a handwritten, seemingly unpublished poem by Shirley Toulson I found inside a W.H. Auden poetry volume.

Collected shorter poems 1927-1957, PR 6001.U4 AUD Shirley Toulson Poetry Collection.

Our reading room will be closed from 16th December 2023 and will reopen 16th January 2024 – we hope you all have a very happy and peaceful break.

Cataloguing our Children’s Literature Collection

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Most of us can trace our love of books to childhood, those formative years in which our imaginations were rampant and our curiosity unquenchable.

Over the course of the last year, I’ve catalogued our Children’s Literature Collection, amounting to 267 books and pamphlets, now readily available to view on our catalogue and consult in our reading room.

The collection is eclectic in terms of language, genre and aesthetics, including titles in English, German and French, and encapsulating a variety of print technology and literary innovation. The first item I catalogued in the collection dates to 1841, and is notable both for its female authorship and for featuring a disenfranchised heroine: Susan Carter, the orphan girl by Mrs Matthew Plummer. The book must have been popular, for our copy is a fifth edition, and the subject had been increasingly in the public consciousness since the founding of the Foundling Hospital a hundred years earlier. Stories of character overcoming circumstance reoccur throughout the collection, and give canonical context to more famous orphan narratives like those of Oliver Twist and Peter Pan.

Image of the title page and frontispiece for Susan Carter, the orphan girl.

Mrs Matthew Plummer, Susan Carter, the orphan girl (1841). Children’s Literature Collection.

Other earlier women writers are also represented in the collection, notably Hannah More (1745-1833) and Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849). Moralists and educationalists, More and Edgeworth wrote conduct literature, that is stories that revolve around virtue rewarded, deeply grounded in Christian ethics. For them, the purpose of children’s literature was to educate more than entertain, and above all, establish moral literacy. The ultimate example of this must be our hieroglyphic Bibles, in which words are replaced with illustrations that prompt children to fill in the gaps in the text from memory and visual understanding. These abridged versions are strikingly similar despite being published across an eighty year gap, and feature a scripture quiz at the end.

Image of the scripture quiz at the end of the Hieroglyphick Bible of 1786.

Hieroglyphick Bible (1786). Children’s Literature Collection.

Image of the scripture quiz at the end of the Hieroglyphic Bible of 1866.

Hieroglyphic Bible (1866). Children’s Literature Collection

Illustration and novelty of form are frequent features of the collection, for children’s books have ever endeavoured to be visually striking and tactile. Indeed, some of the books are backed onto linen, a practice developed by Routledge in the 1860s, in order to be more durable in the less dextrous hands of small children. Other notable features include paper engineering in the form of pop-up books and books with volvelle frontispieces. Take this macabre and uncanny book, Les Grotesques, which evidences the growing popularity of freak shows in the late Victorian period. And this Grammar of general geography which contains a number of folded maps besides its rotating geographic clock.

Image of a pop-up page titled Le Petit Bob from Les grotesques, depicting a baby having a tantrum..

Les grotesques : en quatre tableaux (1881). Children’s Literature Collection.

Image of the title page and volvelle frontispiece from a grammar of general geography.

Richard Phillips, A grammar of general geography for the use of schools and young persons, with maps and engravings (1842). Children’s Literature Collection.

Whilst the collection consists primarily of fairly obscure works, there are some notable classics that are worth mentioning. The most bizarre of these is undoubtedly Struwwelpeter, a selection of cautionary tales derived from the German in which bad behaviour is met with gruesome consequences. It depicts the most shockingly obtuse attitudes to mental illness, including an anorexic that wastes away and a thumb-sucker whose thumbs are chopped by a gargantuan pair of tailor’s scissors. Hoffman’s story of the Scissor-man in particular finds frequent reference in popular culture, including this cartoon by Nicholas Garland.

Image of page from Struwwelpeter, which illustrates the scissor-man cutting off a boy's thumbs.

Heinrich Hoffmann, The English Struwwelpeter : or, pretty stories and funny pictures (1925). Children’s Literature Collection.

Image of a cartoon by Nicholas Garland, derived from the illustration in Struwwelpeter where a boy's thumbs are cut off by the scissor-man.

Nicholas Garland, “The door flew open, in he ran, The great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man …” (Struwwelpeter) (1987). British Cartoon Archive.

Another significant work in the collection is Edward Lear’s Book of nonsense, for it marks the departure in children’s literature of overt moralising, instead prioritising fancy, fun and foolery. Lear’s Nonsense books popularised the limerick poem and his wordsmithery is an obvious precursor to such playful writers as Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. I’ve picked a festive favourite for this blog post, where holly and folly result in melancholy.

Image of Edward Lear's limerick: There was an old lady whose folly induced her to sit in a holly; Whereupon, by a thorn her dress being torn, She quickly became melancholy.

Edward Lear, The book of nonsense. Children’s Literature Collection.

My ultimate favourites in the collection, however, are undoubtedly these coloured fairy books edited by Andrew Lang – or, more accurately, by his wife, Nora. They are significant for their international scope and their Art Nouveau illustrations that strongly associate the fairy tale with Medievalism.

Image of the front cover of the violet fairy book.

Andrew Lang, The violet fairy book (1901). Children’s Literature Collection.

Image of the front cover of the orange fairy book.

Andrew Lang, The orange fairy book (1906). Children’s Literature Collection.

If you are interested in seeing these or other books from the collection, simply place a reservation through Library Search or drop us an email: specialcollections@kent.ac.uk

Outreach with Special Collections and Archives – combatting loneliness and isolation

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On Saturday 25th November we had the fantastic opportunity to participate in another book-making workshop led by Dr Stella Bolaki at Discovery Planet, Ramsgate, and share our collections with the local community and reach audiences we wouldn’t usually reach, notably children. The day became a creative celebration of individuality as well as bringing people together, and we were able to showcase collections which spoke to these themes – read on for more details!

With the arrival of pantomime season, this was prime time to explore the story of Cinderella, the classic rags to riches fairytale, in which the heroine moves from a state of loneliness to a sphere of belonging, by virtue of her individuality. Poor Cinders, she is maligned and mistreated by her family, and is made to work like a servant. However, her isolation is also what sets her apart, for she is the only one whom the glass slipper fits, and she consequently becomes the one and only girl with whom the Prince falls in love. Perrault’s classic 17th-century tale has notable predecessors and has itself been adapted over and over across forms as diverse as ballet and animation. We are lucky in our David Drummond Pantomime Collection to hold a variety of story-book versions as well as programmes and theatre paraphernalia relating to Cinderella. I find it fascinating to trace the aesthetic development of theatre programmes through history, from the single folded sheet war-time programmes that insist the show will go on even during air raids to the activity-filled bumper programmes of the 1990s aimed to keep children entertained with wordsearches, quizzes and spot-the-difference puzzles. The undisputed star however, was Roland Pym’s illustrated peepshow book of Cinderella, a beautiful feat of paper engineering that relates the story theatrically via a series of popup scenes that the reader peeps into.

Picture of the front cover of Roland Pym's Cinderella, depicting the heroine in rags holding a broom.

Roland Pym, Cinderella. David Drummond Pantomime Collection.

Picture of Roland Pym's Cinderella, a peepshow book open to display the finale scene where Cinderella reclaims her glass slipper.

Roland Pym, Cinderella. David Drummond Pantomime Collection

Another inspirational figure in our collections is undoubtedly Josie Long, who started performing stand up comedy at the age of sixteen and owned her own comedy club in Camden called ‘The Lost Treasures of the Black Heart’. Josie incorporated a lot of audience participation in her stand-up, which has resulted in an eclectic collection including t-shirts, teddy bears, and even a shrivelled orange! On one occasion she asked her audience to envisage themselves as super heroes, draw an accompanying portrait and list their special traits and catch phrases, rather in the manner of a Top Trumps card. This was a great way to celebrate individuality within a collective environment. Another way Josie did this was by gathering audience submissions on the theme ‘favourite small thing’ and subsequently binding these unique – sometimes peculiar – thoughts into a zine of multiple voices.

Picture of an audience character drawing named mosquito-to, featuring a drawing and listing characteristics of strength, intelligence, charisma, speed, special move, and catchphrase.

Anon, Audience character drawing. British Stand-Up Comedy Archive – Josie Long Collection.

Image of the front cover of Josie Long's zine called favourite small things, featuring a photograph of a cat.

Josie Long, Favourite Small Things zine. British Stand-Up Comedy Archive – Josie Long Collection.

Similarly to Josie Long, Special Collections and Archives ran a collective project in 2018 with artist Dawn Cole, inviting individual submissions to participate in an act of national remembrance, on the occasion of the centenary celebrations of the Armistice. The submissions consisted of personal diaries about the individual’s day on 11 November 2018, many incorporating photographs, illustrations, collage and poetry. What I consider particularly special about the collection that ensued, is the capturing of children’s voices.

Picture of the front cover of Kaya Clark's diary, featuring her drawing of a cross with poppies, and titled we will remember them.

Kaya Clark, We will remember them. Diaries of the Here and Now.

Picture of Ben Thurston's untitled diary, open at a page which features a drawing of a clock showing the time of 11am, with a descriptive sentence stating 'we did the two minute silence. It made me feel sad.'

Ben Thurston, Untitled. Diaries of the Here and Now.

Having catalogued our Children’s Literature Collection this year, I have been fascinated by the way in which they differ from other books in terms of their intended audience. Whilst reading is usually an isolated activity, children’s books in particular seem intended to be read together. This is often how children first encounter stories (by having them read aloud) and how they learn to read (by reciting from the page to an adult). Illustrated books help children to follow a story before they can read and some books insert images or symbols into the text to act as prompts, for instance, our hieroglyphic Bibles. These examples date to 1786 and 1866 respectively, but remain almost identical in format, with an abridged text at the bottom of each page in order to supplement the hieroglyphic versions intended to support literacy and, obviously, spiritual development in the committing of key Biblical verses to memory.

Image of a hieroglyphic Bible, open at the start of Genesis, featuring symbols inserted into the text.

Hieroglyphic Bible, 1786. Children’s Literature Collection.

 

Image of a hieroglyphic Bible, open at the start of Genesis, featuring symbols inserted into the text.

Hieroglyphic Bible, 1866. Children’s Literature Collection.

Alphabet books also connect letters and sounds with pictures, and we are lucky to hold a variety of facsimile versions in Special Collections and Archives that also show the innovative forms books can take, from teeny-tiny treasures that fit in your palm to concertina books that fold out dramatically. These examples show the vastly different aesthetic styles that bookend the nineteenth century, from satirical caricaturist George Cruikshank to sentimental children’s book illustrator Kate Greenaway.

Image of the front cover of Kate Greenaway's alphabet, showing an illustration of a mother and child engaged in reading together. The book sits in the palm of a hand and measures 7cm.

Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet. Children’s Literature Collection.

Image of A comic alphabet, which is a concertina book, extended.

George Cruikshank, A comic alphabet. British Cartoon Archive Library.

Of course the most innovative books that we hold are from our Prescriptions Artist Books Collection, which toy with the nature of what a book can be and how it can be read. From texts composed of textiles to scrolls wrapped around syringes, from manipulated books to feats of origametry, this collection forms artistic responses to physical and mental illness, and many deal with the emotion of loneliness and experience of isolation. Two particularly moving examples are Sally Chinea’s What do I do now you’r gone and Karen Apps’ Losing Touch, that speak respectively of grief and abandonment. Sally Chinea’s work of delicate voile cubes that piece together a portrait tells the story of a very personal friendship and constitutes a tribute to Cindy March who died of breast cancer in 2015. Karen Apps’ work is inspired by the Foundling Museum and documents the separation of mother and child, using a carved piece of soap as a metaphor for the erosion of that maternal bond. It also, like the story of Cinderella, celebrates the story of the orphan, and inspires us to consider how our individuality can become our strength.

Image of voile cubes within a cylindrical box, which forms Sally Chinea's artist book, and shows a partial portrait of Cindy March

Sally Chinea, What do I do now you’r gone. Prescriptions Artist Books Collection

picture of Karen Apps' Losing Touch, which takes the form of a concertina book inserted into a box alongside a pair of white gloves and a partially eroded sculpted soap bar.

Karen Apps, Losing Touch. Prescriptions Artist Books Collection

Participants of the workshop were inspired by the collections to create their own books using a variety of techniques, from folding to stitching, and were brought together by crafting. They had the opportunity to create stories envisioning themselves as heroes, and many used the workshop to create a book as a gift for someone else. It is through these acts of self-empowerment and generosity that the workshop thus fulfilled its objective, and combatted isolation and loneliness in a genuine and hands on way.