The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has a vacancy for a Research Associate: Literary & Artistic Archives (Fixed Term). Full details are at https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/32811/, and the closing date for applications is 30 January 2022.
Paul Claudel and Audrey Parr: a Cambridge exhibition
To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of the poet and playwright Paul Claudel (1868–1955), a new exhibition in the Cambridge University Library’s main Entrance Hall displays highlights from a collection of letters, postcards, verses and books sent or presented by Claudel to his friend and collaborator Audrey Parr (1892–1940), and donated to the … Continue reading Paul Claudel and Audrey Parr: a Cambridge exhibition
On display: ‘Poems by Siegfried Sassoon’
The friendship formed by the poet Siegfried Sassoon with the literary hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell was among the most formative of his life. Begun by correspondence early in 1916 while he was serving on the Western Front, the relationship introduced Sassoon to the circle of pacifist intellectuals centred on the Morrells’ home at Garsington in Oxfordshire. … Continue reading On display: ‘Poems by Siegfried Sassoon’
‘The first of rural bards’: Robert Bloomfield in Cambridge University Library
The poet Robert Bloomfield, author of The farmer’s boy, was born in Suffolk two hundred and fifty years ago, in December 1766. Of humble parentage, he worked briefly as a labourer on a nearby farm before moving to London to take up the trade of cobbler. The success of The farmer’s boy, a poem of … Continue reading ‘The first of rural bards’: Robert Bloomfield in Cambridge University Library
Virtual exhibitions from Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library has recently been using a generous grant from the Howard and Abby Milstein Foundation to augment its provision of online exhibitions. The re-designed Exhibitions homepage has links to the resources in the new format, which have been created using a customised platform based on WordPress. Two recent virtual exhibitions in particular may be of interest … Continue reading Virtual exhibitions from Cambridge University Library
‘All things go free that have survived’: Seamus Heaney 1939-2013
Seamus Heaney, the most celebrated member of a remarkable generation of Irish poets, died on the 30th of August at the age of 74. His full-length books of verse were published in Britain by Faber and Faber, but he also co-operated with artists and printers in a number of smaller-scale private and fine-press productions of … Continue reading ‘All things go free that have survived’: Seamus Heaney 1939-2013
Peter Scupham at Eighty
A new exhibition in Cambridge University Library celebrates the eightieth birthday of the distinguished poet Peter Scupham. Born in Bootle in 1933, Scupham read English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. While working as a schoolteacher, and later in semi-retirement as a bookseller, Scupham has produced eleven full-length collections of poetry in addition to volumes of Selected … Continue reading Peter Scupham at Eighty
Showing Their Hands at Cambridge University Library
Dawson Turner, the banker, antiquary, and leading light of autograph collectors in the early nineteenth century, claimed that he had ‘never met with the man who was not gratified to see how Newton wrote, or how Milton and Bacon formed their letters’. Since poetry is the most intense and heightened mode of language, fascination with … Continue reading Showing Their Hands at Cambridge University Library
Joanne Limburg Papers
For some time now Cambridge University Library has been engaged in building its collections of papers of modern and contemporary poets with local Cambridge connections, whether to the town or the University. Accessions of archival material relating to writers as varied as Siegfried Sassoon, Nicholas Moore, Anne Stevenson and Peter Scupham have significantly enhanced our … Continue reading Joanne Limburg Papers
John le Carré archive heads to Oxford
John le Carré, one of the world’s most celebrated authors, has offered his literary archive to Oxford’s Bodleian Library with the intention that it should become its permanent home. Le Carré said, ‘I am delighted to be able to do this. Oxford was Smiley’s spiritual home, as it is mine. And while I have the … Continue reading John le Carré archive heads to Oxford