Tag Archives: Cartoons

Victorians, assassinations and monsters

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Here we are at the end of the first week of term – and would you believe, it’s almost exactly a month since Christmas. With so much of January behind us already, we’re looking forward to the rest of the year and I’d like to take the opportunity just to mention some of the excitement we’ve got to come in the next few months.

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Playbill from Theatre Royal, Hull, 1850

On Monday, we had our first taught session with the Victorian and Edwardian Theatre students in the reading room. It’s always great to get to meet and talk to researchers, as well as providing materials to inspire them and help them with their discoveries. One of the great things about this module is that each time we’ve run it, all of the second year Drama students are swept up with enthusiasm for the materials and being able to use them in creative ways to explore a topic of their choice. Of course, we’re in the early days so far and tutors Ken Pickering and Mark Woolgar still have plenty of sessions left – covering topics as diverse as pantomime, Henry Irving and votes for women. We’re very much looking forward to getting to know the students and to support their work which leads to a public exhibition in April.

If you’d like to learn more about this module, or see examples of past exhibitions by students of this course, take a look at our Exhibition pages on the website. If you’re interested in setting up teaching opportunities with the collections, please do get in touch with us.

While we’re on the topic of exhibitions, we have a brand new exhibition in the Gallery this term. ‘The Bullet is Stronger than the Ballot‘ is built around the unique holdings on the British Cartoon Archive, and explores the theme of political assassination. This ties in with the Beaney’s season on the theme which features Manet’s ‘The Execution of Maximilian’ and John Opie’s eighteenth century painting, ‘The Murder of Thomas Becket’. More information about our exhibition, which will run until 2 March, is available on our website as well.

The Devil rides again...come and discover the monsters hidden in the library

The Devil rides again! Discover monsters hidden in the library

If you’re more interested in some mystery and the odd spine-chilling tale, the second lecture in our annual series could be the event for you! Monsters in the Library: M. R. James and bestiaries at Canterbury Cathedral will be presented by Diane Heath, who is an assistant lecturer in History at the University of Kent and also teaches at Canterbury Christ Church University. She will be telling us about her research into mythical monsters and beasts in the Cathedral’s collections, drawn together through the work of scholar and author Montague Rhodes James. I have been told that we may discover, as part of this lecture, the medieval methods for finding unicorns. In any case, it will be an intriguing evening which we hope will not result in any nightmares!

The talk will take place at the AV Theatre, Cathedral Lodge, in the Cathedral Precincts at 6.30 on Wednesday 12 Febuary, with refreshments from 6pm.

And that’s all we have time for this week, although I’m sure I’ll be updating you about all kinds of exciting and interesting aspects of our collections in the next months. I hope that we’ll see you at some of these events, and please do let us know what you think of them!

An unforgettable year: 2014

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A very happy new year; on behalf of the Special Collections & Archives, I’d like to wish you a successful, peaceful and happy 2014. We finished 2013 in celebratory style, with two book launches for the ever talented students of Simon Smith’s The Book Project module, and a festive get together for our volunteers. Now back at the Templeman Library, we’re getting back into the flow of things, with the reading room back to our normal opening hours, ahead of the start of term on 20 January.

And what a term it’s likely to be! To start with, we have our first exhibition of 2014 opening in just a week’s time, on Friday 17 January. ‘The Bullet is Stronger than the Ballot‘ will explore cartoons of political assassinations, in collaboration with The Beaney, who are 15884 croppedhosting Manet’s ‘The Execution of Maximilian’, as part of a season looking at political assassination, as far back as Thomas Becket. Drawing on a wide range of cartoonists’ work since the Second World War, ‘The Bullet is Stronger than the Ballot’ will be on display in the Templeman Gallery until the end of February. Dr. Nick Hiley, Head of Special Collections and Curator of the British Cartoon Archive, will be giving a talk about British cartoonists and political assasinations at the Beaney on Thursday 20 February.

Exhibition launch 2013We’ll also be heavily involved in teaching this term, particularly with the Drama department, whose ‘Victorian and Edwardian Theatre‘ module has become a huge success. This involves intensive teaching in Special Collections, encouraging students to analyse the rare and unique performance materials we hold, and culminates in an exhibition curated by the students in the Templeman Gallery in April. I’m sure I will be blogging much more about that as we get closer to the time.

With the Templeman Development Project now well under way (foundations and ground floor level now visible), we’re starting to see our planned changes coming into effect. The first impact is going to be the closure of the Templeman Gallery space in the summer of 2014. This means that our final major exhibition, for the time being, will also be our first public presentation of the Kingsley Wood papers, in May 2014. The exhibition will open with the launch of historian Hugh Gault’s new book Kingsley Wood: Making the Heavens Hum. We can’t wait to see the results of all Hugh’s hard work, and many hours spent poring over cuttings in the reading room!

Section of Kingsley Wood's election poster for 1918.

Section of Kingsley Wood’s election poster for 1918

In addition, we still have two talks to come in this year’s Special Collections & Cathedral Library Lecture series – in February, Diane Heath will be telling us all about the monsters and beasts in medieval books, followed by Olly Double guiding us through the giggles of popular comedy, from music hall to standup in June.

Of course, we’ll also be doing all of our normal work cataloguing, processing and caring for collections, helping you with enquiries and research and in particular preparing for the University’s 50th anniversary celebrations next year. And that’s not to mention the start of the 4 year World War One centenary commemorations, or the exciting prospect of watching the Templeman extension – and the new Special Collections basement, offices and research and teaching space – take shape.

All in all, I think it’s going to be a very exciting and busy year!

A flurry of events

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Hot on the heels of my last post, announcing the short-term DocExplore exhibition and Harry Bloom Centenary display, we have some more exciting events to tell you about.

National Theatre display

National Theatre display (Templeman foyer)

Firstly, our third exhibition of the month, which joins in with the National Theatre’s 50th anniversary celebrations, is now on show. This small exhibition takes pride of place in the Templeman Library’s foyer, and contains gems from our collections which span the National’s life. Some of the highlights include the programme for the first production staged at the National, Hamlet, with Laurence Olivier as director, Chekov’s The Seagull, starring Judy Dench and Bill Nighy and materials relating to one of the National’s biggest successes, The History Boys. Do take a look if you get the chance, and tweet your thoughts to @UoKSpecialColls, using the hashtag #nt50.

Finding the funny posterI’m also delighted to announce that the new series of Special Collections & Archives and Cathedral Library lectures, will be opened by Pip Gregory on 26 November. Pip is in her second year of a PhD with the School of History, and is making intensive use of the British Cartoon Archive to examine humour in British and German cartoons of the First World War. On Tuesday 26, she will be sharing some of her discoveries and the challenges of studying humour when it comes to the First World War, in her talk: ‘Finding the Funny: humour in First World War cartoons’. There will be refreshments available from TR201 in the library from 5.30, with the talk starting at 6. The event will finish by 7.15, and we do hope to see you there.

Next on our radar is a celebration of pantomime, but I’ll let you know more about that as it occurs.

 

Discover Schartau’s Rowlandson

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Since the beginning of the year, Special Collections & Archives has been liaising with the Library’s Metadata team to make more of our uncatalogued book collections discoverable on the main library catalogue. Thanks to the hard work of the Metadata team, we’re delighted to announce that the first collection of books to be fully catalogued under this new scheme is now available.

Library Assistant for Metadata Josie Caplehorne tells us more:

Rowlandson's illustration of one of Dr Syntax's comedic episodes

Rowlandson’s illustration of one of Dr Syntax’s comedic episodes

The British Cartoon Archive: caricature and satire from the collection of Derek Schartau

We are pleased to announce that a treasure trove of rare books and periodicals from the collection donated by Derek Schartau is now available to discover at The British Cartoon Archive (BCA).  The collection consists of approximately three hundred items ranging in date from the late eighteenth century to the present day and focuses mainly around the English caricaturist, water-colourist, engraver and draughtsman, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827).

The majority of Rowlandson’s drawings depict the humorous qualities of urban and rural existence and demonstrate his remarkable talent for portraying the English way of life.  His artistic predisposition was encouraged and supported by his aunt and as a result he studied at the Royal Academy Schools.  Rowlandson continued his studies in Paris where he later developed a reputation as a gifted cartoonist and satirist.

Rowlandson is one of the most talented English artists of his time who produced humorous, graphic and often racy works directed at Georgian and Regency society.  Our contemporary view of this period in our history as prudish and serious is refuted by Rowlandson with realism and humour.

Visit the British Cartoon Archive to discover the fascinating collection of Derek Schartau from The Forbidden Books of the Victorians and Rowlandson’s Drawings for the English Dance of Death to The Bruising Apothecary: Images of Pharmacy and Medicine in Caricature and The Forbidden Erotica of Thomas Rowlandson.

All of these books can now been discovered on the Library catalogue.

Any of these books can be requested via the normal Special Collections & Archives request service and viewed in the reading room.

Next up for the cataloguing team is another BCA collection, the Linfield Library of Humour which contains around 600 books. We look forward to making more of our currently uncatalogued collections publicly visible thanks to our Metadata team.

Coming soon…

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There’s never a dull moment in Special Collections and Archives; just as our new student inductions are coming to and end, we start looking ahead to an exciting range of events for the next academic year.

This evening, Tuesday 16 at 9pm, materials from the British Cartoon Archive will be appearing on Ian Hislop’s BBC2 series ‘The Stiff Upper Lip‘. This episode, partly filmed in the Special Collections reading room, examines the rise and fall of this apparently quintessential British trait since the First World War. Using cartoons by ‘Pont’ (Graham Laidler), one of the earliest Punch cartoonists, Ian traces the humorous side of an increasingly disconnected set of attitudes. There’s more information about the BCA’s Pont holdings on the website.

Dickens posterAs you may be aware, the Templeman Exhibition Gallery (on level 1, by the cafe) is currently hosting our final Dickens exhibition of the year, entitled “What the Dickens! Beyond the Books“. Do pop in to have a look at this cornucopia of Dickens materials which show how Dickens’ much loved characters have endured beyond his lifetime. This exhibition will be running until 5th November.

To round off our Dickens extravaganza, our very own Nick Hiley (curator of the British Cartoon Archive) will be presenting a nineteenth century magic lantern show of A Christmas Carol next Thursday, 25 October. This show will include what was apparently the most popular of all Victorian lantern slides: ‘Man eating Rat’! Do come along to be enthralled and entertained; there will be refreshments from 5pm and the show will start at 6pm in TR201 (on the second floor of the Templeman Library). We look forward to seeing you there.

As a final note for today’s update, the first in our series of Special Collections & Cathedral Library Lectures will take place on Friday 30 November, at 6.30pm. This will coincide with the launch of the British Cartoon Archive’s latest exhibition, on William Combe’s literary creation Dr Syntax and will be given by Dr James Baker, associate lecturer in the School of History, University of Kent. We’re delighted at the range of topics and speakers who have agreed to present these lectures this year: more news on the series to follow soon!

In the meantime, if you would like to arrange an event at Special Collections or would like to know anything more about our collections, please do contact us at specialcollections@kent.ac.uk.