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Read Our New Editorial 'Blog'

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:49:00 Z

Read our new blog – The Editor’s Choice for news items and features from the Adam Matthew editorial team.

We’ll be bringing you updates from our trips to the archives and insights into working with captivating collections and engaging resources.

Our ‘Object of the Week’ series is updated every Friday by a member of the team who shares a "favourite find" from our digital archives!

Discover fascinating ephemera, beautiful objects, and intriguing manuscripts, and keep up to date with news from the Adam Matthew Group by subscribing. See the blog now.

Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) Conference 2012

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:49:00 Z

Adam Matthew Education will sponsor and attend the 2012 Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) conference from April 2-4, 2012.

The conference is held at the AT&T Conference Center, Austin, Texas. Please see the conference website for further details.

We look forward to seeing you! Contact us with any questions.

Jewish Life in America awarded LJ 'Best Reference' 2011

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:49:00 Z

February 2011, Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 has been awarded Library Journal 'Best Reference' title for 2011.

Described as 'eclectic works to match a tumultuous year', Brian E. Coutts (Professor and Head of Department of Library Public Services, Western Kentucky, Bowling Green) and Cheryl LaGuardia (Research Librarian for the Widener Library, Harvard University) publish the names of the winning 'outstanding databases' for the year - see LJ 'Best Reference' in full.

"In this digital archive of original manuscript materials from the holdings of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) in New York, the content is phenomenal, and interactive features are not just “add-ons”—they’re integral parts. The map feature is superb, the chronology is eye-opening, and the “Visual Resources Gallery” is vividly evocative. Brilliant organization makes the material accessible to a range of researchers—beginners can go directly to the Date and Theme sections to find resources for term papers, while scholars can examine collections in detail, as well as run sophisticated searches across the vast primary source material. Strongly recommended for all libraries serving Jewish studies researchers". (LJ 5/1/11)

Popular Music Responds to the death of Martin Luther King, Jr

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:25:00 Z

From Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest
© Adam Matthew

Musicians have always tended to be colour blind.

It’s certainly not true to say that there are no racist musicians but the admiration felt by black and white musicians for each other, especially in the realms of jazz and blues, has helped break down racial barriers for at least as long as there has been recorded music.

When the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum in the late 50s, white folk musicians in particular showed solidarity by singing songs in defiance of racism. By the early 60s articulate young folk stars including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary were not only recording and releasing anti-racist songs but were taking part in public demonstrations in support of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On August 28, 1963, for example, Bob Dylan, Mahalia Jackson, Joan Baez, Odetta, Peter Paul and Mary and other musical celebrities turned out to support Martin Luther King Jr. when he delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

Speaking about the Dylan song ‘Blowing In the Wind’, Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary has said, “If you could imagine the March On Washington with Martin Luther King and singing that song in front of a quarter of a million people, black and white, who believed they could make America more generous and compassionate in a non-violent way, you begin to know how incredible that belief was.”

Support for Dr. King blossomed in the music community with artists such as Simon and Garfunkel, Janis Ian and Phil Ochs, releasing songs that showed clearly where their sentiments lay.

Regrettably, it was not until April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis, that the true extent of the depth of feeling in the music community became apparent. In a 2007 interview with writer Harvey Kubernik, white Memphis-based guitarist Steve Cropper of the racially-integrated band Booker T and the MGs, recalled that day. “Why did it have to happen in Memphis? A quiet town and everybody got along. You look back, and there were things happening around me that I wasn’t aware of. My buddies didn’t talk to me about it. We never had a problem. We went to each other’s houses, we hung out, we went to restaurants together, we were blood brothers if anything. We were family.”

Almost as soon as news of the assassination broke, riots erupted across America and immediately James Brown went into action. “I called my radio stations in Knoxville and Baltimore and had them put me on the air live,” he told his biographer Bruce Tucker. “I urged the people to stay calm, to honour Dr. King by being peaceful. I believe they had some effect because those two cities had less trouble than most.”

The Who heard the news in New York City, and found themselves faced with the dilemma of whether or not to cancel the next night’s scheduled gig at the Fillmore East. John Morris, director of the venue, told them he felt the show should go ahead and Pete Townshend agreed, but, “He was sitting in the office, talking about violence and how he hated it. How he didn't understand what was going on in the world. I mean, we literally talked for two or three hours … We decided to go ahead and do it. A lot of people were against it. But we did it.”

Muddy Waters was playing in Boston that night at a club called the Boston Tea Party, whose manager, Steve Nelson remembers, “As a lifelong blues fan, I've never heard the blues like they were played that night. And while there were race riots in the streets of Boston because of the assassination, the Tea Party was I'm sure the only place in town where people of all colours came together to share that tragic day in peace.”

Mark Boyle, the lighting director for Jimi Hendrix, remembered an awkward atmosphere down the coast in Virginia Beach, where The Jimi Hendrix Experience were booked to play at The Civic Dome. “The woman serving the drinks told us that Martin Luther King had just been assassinated and there were these guys at the bar drinking the health of the assassin,” said Boyle. “You immediately find yourself wondering what your role should be. You want to go in there and do something, you’re so outraged. And I remember turning and looking at Jimi, who was just staring away into space as if nothing had happened. Of course, I realised that these guys were just waiting, trying to provoke some reaction from Jimi and us, so they could beat us up. I was terrified.”

The next night, at the urging of the Boston city mayor, James Brown allowed his concert at the Boston Garden, to be televised and, once again, stressed the need for a non-violent response to Dr. King’s death.

Hendrix, meanwhile, had decided to go ahead with that day’s show at Symphony Hall in Newark, New Jersey. Experience bassist Noel Redding recalled how, “We got down to Newark and there were tanks in the street …We were supposed to do two shows. The police and the army advised us to do one show and get out of town. So we did exactly that.”

When Hendrix stepped onstage that night, he said, ‘This number is for a friend of mine.’ Then, he abandoned the band’s regular set and played improvised blues - clearly a lament for Dr. King. “And within minutes the whole audience was weeping,” remembers Mark Boyle. “Old redneck stagehands came on the side of the stage and they were standing there with tears running down their faces. The music had a kind of appalling beauty.”

Hendrix immediately returned to New York where a superstar gathering of musicians including Joni Mitchell, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Al Kooper and Ted Nugent had come together to pay their musical tribute to Dr. King. As Nugent described it, “Hendrix came walking in, pulled a blue Strat out of the case and, all by himself, started playing sh*t that was unbelievable. I was mesmerised, totally in shock. He did this for about 45 minutes, and then B.B.King, Al Kooper and a bass player joined him. B.B. signalled for me to come up, and we jammed until 6am.”

One day later, the mayor of the nation’s riot-torn capital city, Washington, DC, asked James Brown to make another televised appeal for calm. In words that might have come straight from Martin Luther King, Brown told the viewers, “You can’t accomplish anything by blowing up, burning up, stealing and looting. Don’t terrorize. Organise.” (For the work he did in preventing riots during this terrible time, James Brown was later cited in the US Congressional record.)

On the 7^th, at Westbury Music Fair, New York, Nina Simone ended her set with a newly-written lament, ‘Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead)’.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded a new song, ‘House Burning Down’, at the Record Plant, New York City, on May 1. When his friend Velert Turner asked him what the song was about, Hendrix told him it was, “about the insanity of people burning their own neighbourhood down, about the outrage and anger that the inner city folks felt at that time about having a leader like Martin Luther King killed.”

On June 28, Hendrix attended the Martin Luther King Memorial Concert in Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden, New York City, to watch performances by Aretha Franklin, Sam and Dave, Joe Tex, Sonny and Cher and the Rascals. Interestingly, the Rascals went to No1 in the middle of August and stayed there for five weeks with ‘People Got to Be Free’, a song whose message of universal tolerance clearly echoed the philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr.

And the appalling death of Dr. King was clearly in the mind of Diana Ross when she and the Supremes took to the stage of the London Palladium, on November 11 to play for the British Royal Family. She had arrived at the theatre that afternoon just in time to catch a rehearsal by the Black and White Minstrels, an all-singing all-dancing troupe of men with faces painted in a ludicrous golliwog parody of negro features. Ross was horrified to think that such an act was still considered acceptable in the UK, and decided to do something about it.

That night, during the Supremes final song, ‘Somewhere’, the orchestra softened and Diana Ross stepped forward and turned to confront the occupants of the Royal Box. “Yes, there’s a place for each of us,” she said, “and we must try to pursue that place where love is a passion that burns like a fire. Let our efforts be as determined as those of Martin Luther King who had a dream that all God’s children - black men, white men, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - could join hands and sing that great spiritual of old…”

The Palladium crowd was spellbound. Ross raised her arms towards the Queen Mother and repeated the final line of King’s I Have a Dream speech, “Free at last! Great God almighty, free at last!”

The crowd, including the Royal Family, gave her a two-minute standing ovation.

Since then, Dr. King’s life and work have been commemorated in such songs as ‘MLK’by U2, ‘Abraham, Martin and John’ by Dion, ‘Save The Country’ by Laura Nyro, ‘Begin The Begin’ by R.E.M., and ‘Southern’ by Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark, but ‘Happy Birthday’ by Stevie Wonder probably takes pride of place.

Wonder released ‘Happy Birthday’ in 1980 to help popularise the campaign to have Dr. King’s birthday, January 15, turned into a National Holiday in the USA. The holiday was signed into law just two years later and has been celebrated every year since on the third Monday of January.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

Martin Luther King: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html

Songs about Martin Luther King: http://www.spinnermusic.co.uk/2010/01/14/mlk-day-songs/

Civil Rights Movement: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/civil1.htm

Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest Available Now!

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:04:00 Z

“A landmark event in the study of post-war British and American popular culture”
Dr Marcus Collins, University of Loughborough

From the austerity of the 1950s to the excess of the 1970s, discover this dramatic period through a wealth of printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video clips.

Digitized in full colour, the material covers key areas and major events of the period including:

Student activism across Europe and the US, including the disturbances in France in Mai ‘68
The Vietnam conflict
The fight for Civil Rights
Women’s Liberation
Fashion and Youth Culture
The Music Scene
Book, Magazine and Film Censorship

Key Features include:

Striking Visual Resources - image gallery, photographs, online exhibitions
Video Footage – witness the sights and sounds of the period with our selection of topics and events
Chronology – an extensive, interactive chronology featuring significant events 1950-1975
Dictionary – learn what a hippie, beatnik and Teddy Boy are
Thematic Areas – study the major social, political and cultural themes of the period
Essays - from leading scholars
External Links

Request your free trial access today.

Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape Available Now!

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:32:00 Z

“This is an extraordinary resource for students and scholars of the Romantic period worldwide”
Jared Curtis, Simon Fraser University

This powerful digital resource enables scholars and students of Romanticism to forge new pathways of innovative research into the literary lives and artistic aspects of the movement.

Presenting manuscript collections of the Wordsworth Trust, this digital resource offers students and scholars of the Romantics period unique access to the working notebooks, verse manuscripts, and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers, all digitized in full colour.

Key features also include: interactive map and art gallery.

Authors represented in this collection include:

William Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Thomas De Quincey
Robert Southey
Matthew Arnold
Charles Lamb

With access to the full manuscripts as well as masses of personal correspondence between key literary and political figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this project is unrivalled in its content and scope.

Request your free trial today.

VIDEO SAMPLE

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:08:00 Z

Thank you for choosing to sample the following video from Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest.

To watch the video, please click on the image to your right.

About this video:

Title: Folk singers linked to alleged 'Communist Conspiracy'
Source: ITN Source
Credit: FOX MOVIETONE
Duration: 00:02:25
Date: 19 August 1963
Sound: Yes

Rock and Roll video sample

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:08:00 Z

Thank you for choosing to sample the following video from Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest.

To watch the video, please click on the image to your right.

About this video:

Title: ITN Reporting 67: Berkeley Students Versus Governor Ronald Reagan
Source: ITN Source
Credit: ITN
Duration: 00:03:09
Date: 3rd May 1967

Charleston Conference 2011

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:04:00 +0100

Adam Matthew Education will exhibit at the 31^st Annual Charleston Conference ‘Vendor Showcase’ (stand 46) where CEO Ben Cartwright and President Khal Rudin will be available to discuss our latest titles, including:

Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest
The First World War: Personal Experiences
Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape

This year Ben Cartwright will also give a 30-minute ‘Tech Talk’ on London Low Life:

"The session will showcase a range of innovative technology from Adam Matthew, including the custom-designed G.I.S. mapping. Examples from collections on Jewish history, World War I and Rock & Roll will also be explored".

Grab a plate at the continental breakfast buffet and join Ben for the session which starts at 8:40am (to 9:10am) on Saturday November 5, 2011.

The Vendor Showcase runs from 11:00am to 6:00pm on Wednesday November 2 and is located in the Gold Ballroom, Francis Marion Hotel. The Conference runs from November 2 to 5. Please see their website for further details.

South Asian Conflicts and Independence for Bangladesh, 1965-1971

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:39:00 +0100

The second section to Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980: South Asian Conflicts and Independence for Bangladesh, 1965-1971 is now available.

The continued fighting over Kashmir and the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan meant that further conflict dominated the period between 1965 and 1971. It saw Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, gain power in India, whilst the military government of Pakistan wrestled with political disturbances, military crises and issues in East Pakistan.

This new section also covers:

Asian immigration to the UK
The internal political situation in India, Pakistan, Bhutan and Ceylon
The Tarbela Dam project in Pakistan
US arms sales to India and Pakistan
British policy on aid and development in the region
British economic assistance for Afghanistan
Ceylon's intention to become a republic
President Nixon's visit to Pakistan in 1969
Reports on events in individual Indian states
The development of television and films in India
Nuclear policy in India
Indo-Soviet relations
Events leading to the declaration of independence for Bangladesh
UN debates - India, Pakistan and the dispute over Kashmir
Military situation, refugee crises and famine relief in East Pakistan

Free trials are available. Contact us for pricing information.

The Bill Douglas Centre – a new digital partnership for Adam Matthew

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Lauren Jones, Editorial Assistant

As one of the ‘newbies’ of the editorial team at Adam Matthew, my first research expedition took me on a fascinating tour through the archives of the Bill Douglas Centre at Exeter University. Along with Senior Development Editor Martha Fogg and Project Editor Beth Hall, I was there to help assess and select material for an upcoming resource on early moving pictures and cinema; an extension of our already successful Victorian Popular Culture resource. This exciting new project is due for publication in late 2012.

The Centre (for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture) is a tribute to British film maker, Bill Douglas, and the collection of approximately 50,000 items he put together with friend and colleague, Peter Jewell, which was donated to the university after Bill’s death in 1991. With contributions from various other writers, producers and directors such as Roy Fowler, Don Boyd, Bob Dunbar, James Mackay and Gavrik Losey, the collection’s 18,000 books gives Exeter the country's largest university library on cinema. The Centre serves as both a public museum and academic research centre holding “one of Britain's largest public collections of books, prints, artefacts and ephemera relating to the history and prehistory of cinema”. It is this captivating collection of artefacts and various ephemera, from ticket stubs and postcards to early film posters and programmes that makes this collection so unique.

As a useful introduction to the collection we were taken on a tour of the museum exhibition by the Centre’s extremely well-informed curator, Phil Wickham, which illustrated the development of optical recreation and popular entertainment from the late 18th century to Classical Hollywood. Whilst this really was a very educational introduction, helping to orientate us within the social and historical context of early moving pictures, what this exercise inadvertently revealed was that three grown women can find century-old optical illusions and toys (made for children) just as fascinating as their intended market!

As the chronological tour progressed, we were shown (and allowed to play with!) shadow plays and ombrescopes, optical illusions and kaleidoscopes, dioramas, panoramas, peep-shows, stereoscopic views, telescopic views, mutoscopes and magic lanterns. Of the entire collection we were just as mesmerised by the mutoscope, “a device which used the principle of a flick book to show an animated view”, as the tiny hand-held flick books themselves showing ballerinas dancing, or men boxing in a ring. Although there is no doubt that the collection appealed to the 8-year-old in me, it was the impressive range and preservation of these innovative and creative devices that allowed us to reimagine the impact of early film on ordinary people at the turn of the century. This resource will undoubtedly appeal not just to the serious academic scholar, but also to those with a more of a recreational interest in early film and Victorian amusements.

The process of assessing and selecting material for the resource was just as absorbing. Within the hundreds of programmes and early film souvenirs, we would every now and then discover a personal note written inside the front cover describing a night out at the picture show or even acting as an invite for a date. There was also a letter from an author congratulating a director on the moving picture adaptation of his novel but excusing himself from the opening show due to a severe cold.

The captivating subject matter of the collection was at times counter-productive to our task. I had to constantly remind myself that I was there to just assess the material, not get lost in the content, but it was increasingly difficult with such a wealth of interesting pieces. I am glad I got to be part of this process and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Having seen first-hand what is to be only a small part of the final product, I cannot wait to contribute to its development and see how it will be translated digitally for our users.

BIBA Ephemera from 'Rock and Roll'

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Liz Sargut, Publishing Associate

Liz Sargut takes a trip down memory lane whilst indexing ephemera and photographs from the archives of BIBA for Adam Matthew’s digital resource Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest, published this Autumn.

I have been very lucky to work on our Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest digital collection, which brought back so many memories of the period. Yes - I have to confess, I do remember the 1960s! I lived in London from 1968 for a few years before I went to work in Spain and it is all still very vivid. It was such an exciting time...

Looking through the BIBA catalogue took me back to a different world, a time of excitement when London was the centre of everything – fashion, music, art and culture. I feel very privileged to have been a young woman in the 1960s and to have been able to experience such a wonderful time when young people felt the world was full of opportunities.

I loved looking at the clothes shown in the BIBA catalogue and remembering the fashions of the time. The clothes shown on the catalogue pages are absolutely typical of the sort desired by the young women of the period. They were not only “with it” but cheap, which meant you could buy a different outfit every week. The hairstyles and makeup of the models bring back many memories too. They were exactly what every girl aspired to, the Twiggy look. This involved a bob haircut and dark eyes with very long lashes. If you did not have long lashes on the lower rim of the eye you painted them in with an eyeliner pencil. How silly we must have looked!

In 1968 I lived in Notting Hill in London, which was not the trendy area it is now. I was very lucky as the BIBA shop in Kensington High Street was only a short walk away. So every Saturday my treat was to go to BIBA and browse around. Owning something from the shop was the ultimate in fashion. From the outside the shop was invitingly dark and trendy people lingered around the entrance. It was patronised not only by ordinary customers but also by the rich and famous of “Swinging London”. Entering the shop was like entering a completely different world. It was very atmospheric with a fusion of Art Deco, Art Nouveau and Hollywood styles. Most of the clothes were in darkish colours and were spread around in inviting piles in a haphazard way. Nothing was on rails in the uniform way now used by clothes shops. The sales assistants were dressed in BIBA clothes and were all very young and just seemed to hover around looking beautiful. You could spend hours wandering around and no one bothered you. As well as clothes and shoes you could buy sultry dark shades of makeup and later when BIBA took over the department store of Derry & Toms, furnishings, food and even washing powder, all with the same distinctive BIBA packaging. I bought many outfits in the shop, but the one I particularly remember was a peplum suit made in a deep maroon silky material. I kept it for a long time but eventually threw it out, which I now deeply regret. I also remember very fondly a pair of pink velvet flared trousers which I wore until they were threadbare.

The BIBA label was founded in 1964 by Barbara Hulanicki and the store closed in 1975. But it will never be forgotten. It is part of the history of Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s, and Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest is all the richer for including material from its archives.

Adam Matthew Group Partners with PCG in India and Latin America

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:31:00 +0100

The internationally recognized sales and marketing consultancy Publishers Communication Group (PCG) has announced a new representation agreement for the Adam Matthew Group (Adam Matthew Digital / Adam Matthew Education) in India and Latin America.

With this new agreement, PCG, a division of Publishing Technology, will be the company’s exclusive sales agent in the regions, served by PCG’s established local sales and marketing teams.

In India, Adam Matthew’s content will be represented out of PCG’s new sales office in New Delhi by sales manager Dilip Kumar Jha. In Latin America, the company’s sales will be handled from PCG’s regional office in São Paulo, Brazil. Both will implement specialized, locally-focused sales and marketing programs targeting key institutions and consortia.

Doug Wright, Director of PCG commented:

“PCG is excited to be entering into this partnership with Adam Matthew Group for content sales in India and Latin America. We are proud to be working with a publisher of such first-rate online content, particularly within these developing markets where our global experience and connections will be instrumental in the promotion of Adam Matthew’s collections.”

Khal Rudin, Director of the Adam Matthew Group said:

“We are very pleased to be working with such a qualified partner as Publishers Communication Group. Adam Matthew has grown rapidly over the last 5 years and these new and extremely important regions will help facilitate further expansion. We’re thrilled that with PCG’s direct representation, important, new collections such as Foreign Office Files for India and Confidential Print: Latin America will be available to more students and scholars in these new markets.”

"Romantic Romantics":

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:01:00 +0100

A Valentine's Peek into Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape

Georgina Phipps, Editorial Assistant

I have recently finished working on one of Adam Matthew’s newest resources, Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape, the digitisation of The Wordsworth Trust’s unique manuscript collection covering William Wordsworth, his family and contemporary Romantics.

A highlight of the project for me was working through the collection’s copious correspondence, over 2,500 pieces from Wordsworth, his family and friends, which offer a direct and at times intimate glimpse into the lives of the Lake Poets’ circle. By following the paper trail of the Wordsworth connections as I progressed through the letters, a labyrinth of relationships and cross-connections unfolded before me, and the stories and voices of ordinary people, who were it not for the coincidence of their relationship with a renowned poet would be lost to history, came to life. There are many letters which merit special attention, yet as it is Valentine’s Day this month, I feel justified in defining ‘Romantic’ in its most literal sense, to draw attention to some of my favourite love letters in the resource, and the chain of connections they reveal.

First are a group of letters whose discovery in the 1970s caused scholars to re-evaluate William Wordsworth’s relationship with his wife Mary. Whereas the depth of William’s feelings had previously been questioned, these letters, with such fond openings as ‘My dearest love’ and ‘my sweet darling’, assuaged doubts that theirs was a love-match. Written during rare spells of being apart, William wrote in 1812 of how separation made him “feel how profoundly in soul and body we love each other.” By this time the couple had been married for ten years and had five children, yet William’s letters were still sufficiently passionate as to throw his wife into a veritable flutter: “Oh my William, it is not in my power to tell thee how I have been affected by this dearest of all letters” she writes in 1810. In 1813, she is reduced to tears of happiness by one of William’s love letters, much to her daughter Dora’s befuddlement.

As an adult, Dora would inherit her parents’ fiery passion, and is suspected of forming deep and perhaps physical relationships with a number of men and women. Among the latter was Maria Jane Jewsbury, whose emotionally charged letters to Dora are included in this resource. Dora would eventually marry Edward Quillinan, the Irish poet and one-time soldier, and old friend of the family. As William Wordsworth objected to the match, Edward’s courtship of Dora was excessively long, and his sufferings are well documented by the couple’s surviving letters. They are by turns affectionate, impatient and frustrated, but most of all, charmingly teasing. “You cruel wicked vagabondizer” opens one of Dora’s letters in 1829, while that same year Edward wrote “if I were to tell you that I am in love with you for your two last letters, you would answer ‘Why you wretch, you have told me that a thousand times before!’ Well, then, I am more in love with you than ever.”

Yet Dora was not the first of the Wordsworth household Edward attempted to woo. One of my absolute favourite pieces in the collection is a Valentine that Edward Quillinan sent in February 1928 – around the same time then as he declared his love for Dora – to Dora’s aunt Sara Hutchinson. “Sarah my dear, my love, my life! And soon I hope to be my wife!” the little sonnet begins, before ruminating on the domestic pleasures they could soon enjoy (“you’ll make my tea, I like it strong; you’ll mend my stockings, short and long”) and building up to a faux-Shakespearean flourish: “So thou art mine and I am thine, my Sarah thou and I thy Valentine”. Whether serious or not, it is a charming little piece from the collection. The idea of Edward Quillinan being genuinely attracted to Dora’s aunt is also not implausible; they were not massively far apart in age, and Sara, despite by all accounts being rather plain, had a history men falling hopelessly in love with her. Most famously of all, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was for years infatuated with her, despite already being married.

It is not known whether Sara Hutchinson reciprocated Coleridge’s love. She never married anyone else, although she was at one time linked with Wordsworth’s younger brother, John. John Wordsworth died tragically young at sea when the ship he was captain of sank in 1805. Coleridge’s lament after John’s death indicated that a union between John and Sara had been anticipated: “Ah that I could but have died for you, and you have gone home, married Sarah Hutchinson”. However, John’s own letters hint that any romantic inclinations he felt were for another woman entirely: Sara’s sister Mary. John Wordsworth composed a number of letters in 1800 and 1801 to ‘my dear Mary’, which, through their frequency and warmth, testify to an affection that ran deeper than friendship. “Write me often, and long letters” he implores in one, adding “to be with thee, I read thy letters a dozen times in a day”. Another begins “I wrote to you this evening, but I cannot forego the pleasure of talking to you a little again”.

John’s letters to Mary cease when she married his brother William in 1802, after which John never saw her again. That Mary’s marriage to William Wordsworth was a happy one is evidenced by the letters previously quoted; yet it is interesting to speculate on how William’s life and poetry would have evolved had his little brother been quicker to act, and married Mary first.

Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:01:00 +0100

Philippa Hubbard, Editorial Assistant

This week marks the beginning of London 60s Week (22-31 July), an annual festival commemorating the golden anniversary of the 1960s. A programme of London-based activities and events celebrate the creative spirit of the age through music, film, photography and dance. You can find out more on their website: http://www.london60sweek.co.uk/.

Here at Adam Matthew we have our own forthcoming project that will promote and support research into this exciting era. Due for publication later this year, Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest: Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 will enable students and scholars to examine this dynamic period in detail through an array of printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video clips. From psychedelic music, hippies, and miniskirts to civil rights, student protests and Vietnam – 1950-1975 was a truly revolutionary era.

Our full-text searchable documents, digitised in colour, include:

A wide range of Printed and Manuscript material – pamphlets, letters, government files, and eye witness accounts covering key events of the period
The renowned Social Protest Collection from University of California, Berkeley
A wide range of Underground magazines including OZ, IT and Gandalf’s Garden; as well as an impressive collection of fanzines and alternative press titles from Bowling Green State University
Visual material – thousands of indexed photographs depicting the people and events of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s
Ephemera and Memorabilia - posters, pins and artefacts
Video – a collection of carefully selected video clips that bring the sights and sounds of the period to life!

The material covers key areas and major events of the period, including:

Student Activism across Europe and the US, including the disturbances in France in Mai ‘68
The Vietnam conflict
The fight for Civil Rights
Women’s Liberation
Fashion and Youth Culture
The Music Scene
Book, Magazine and Film Censorship

The core libraries supporting this collection are: The Browne Popular Culture Library; Bowling Green State University; The University of California, Berkeley; The National Archives at Kew; The University of Sussex; and Rock Source Archive. There are also a number of other supporting libraries and institutions including Mirrorpix; Barclay Card Group and the Robert Opie Collection.

Our rich digital collection is a treasure trove of engaging and intriguing historical records. Read the letters sent to the British government in response to the lifted ban on Lady Chatterley’s Lover; view thousands of evocative photographs covering an array of topics from tower blocks to hippies; and watch video clips on the race riots, early space travel and the Beatles across America.

This exciting digital collection covers the entire period from the austerity of the 1950s to the excess of the 1970s. It promises to enrich teaching and research into the social, political and cultural events of this dynamic period of transition in British and American society.

Click on Sandra Ford's Mini to view sample images from Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest (PDF)

FREE Editorial Essay Sample

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:02:00 +0100

Click the PDF link below to read a free sample from Professor Jacqueline J. Burnside's essay 'Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of Berea's 19th Century Interracial Education in the 21st Century'.

This essay can be read in full by all subscribers to Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice.

Professor Jacqueline J. Burnside Editorial Essay Sample (PDF)

Adam Matthew at The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association 2011

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:01:00 +0100

Sarah Phillips, Editorial Assistant

I recently attended the third meeting of the annual Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) hosted by the Department of Native American Studies at UC Davis. Founded in 2008, NAISA is an organization dedicated to supporting scholarship in the academic field of Native American and Indigenous studies. This year the conference took place in the Hyatt Regency hotel located in the homelands of the Nisenan peoples. Held over three days in May, the conference featured close to 600 speakers across 140 panels and roundtables and was very well attended by Native American and Indigenous scholars, students, community members, publishers and museum professionals.

Rick Adams opened the conference with a land blessing, singing extracts from fourteen songs in which the natural rejuvenation of the earth and land was used as a metaphor for forgiveness. The songs were sung in Rick’s native tongue, and provided a moving and almost spiritual opening that seemed befitting for this academic meeting.

The programme was packed with engaging and thought provoking papers covering a wide range of diverse subjects on key topics that included: issues of sovereignty, colonization and decolonization, politics and law, indigenous cultures, language preservation, pedagogy and indigenous identity. I attended a diverse selection of stimulating sessions. I learnt about the cultural and religious significance of dance in American Indian culture – dances such as the Ghost Dance, Sun Dance, Scalp Dance and the Begging Dance were the center of discussion and debate. I was struck by the extent to which dance and ritual are an integral component of American Indian cultures and how dance was used strategically to address issues arising from colonization; as a tool for negotiation, and a means of retaining cultural identity. Other interesting talking points included the decline in native language knowledge and use and the challenges currently facing attempts at language revival and preservation; the segregation of native nations and their continued struggle for recognition and of the challenges faced by universities to retain American Indian students. As the conference progressed, it became clear to me that the fundamental challenges and issues faced by the colonized, whether they be Australian Aborigines or the Chamorro peoples of Guam, bear striking similarities.

One of the main reasons for my attendance was to develop some ideas for a follow-up to our American West resource. I met with some interesting academics and promising students over the duration of the conference who generously spared their time to talk to me, offering valuable information and feedback. Engaging with scholars is central to the development of our resources and a vital component in our development process.

The conference focused not only on the histories of a wide variety of indigenous cultures but there was also a strong emphasis on the issues facing native peoples today . This aspect of the conference led one to confront, and reflect upon, some crucial issues relating to the long-term effects of colonization.

I hope to attend NAISA again next year – it was an enjoyable, informative and valuable experience from which I gained a great deal of knowledge.

Adam Matthew Staff Summer Outing 2011

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 12:12:00 +0100

Every summer, the Adam Matthew team takes a day out of the office to do something fun. This year's outing to the beautiful city of Bath involved a one-day practical photography lesson from Phil and Rachel Hibberd of Photography Made Simple.

Armed with digital SLRs and the themes 'beauty', 'life, 'spaces' and 'decay' for inspiration, we were let-loose on the city. The resulting 120 images were assessed by Phil and Rachel and reduced to 40 great shots; out of these, four were chosen as overall 'winners'.

The winning images are reproduced below (click to enlarge) and all 40 images are now available to view on our new Flickr page. We hope you enjoy. Please feel free to comment on the Flickr images and agree/disagree with the judges decision!

The Moss Family Scrapbooks from Jewish Life in America

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:44:00 Z

Liz Sargut, Publishing Associate

I was very fortunate to be able to spend some time studying the material in our collection Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 and was particularly fascinated by the Moss Family Scrapbooks which provide a wealth of information for the study of Jewish life and culture in New York in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Moss Family Scrapbooks are just one of the twenty-four personal collections which form part of the collection of documents for Jewish history held at the American Jewish Historical Society, New York. Other documents include collections of organisations and rare printed books and pamphlets, ranging from the manuscript of Emma Lazarus’s famed sonnet “The New Colossus” to the records of the Baron de Hirsch Fund.

Lucien Moss was born in Philadelphia in 1831 and became a machinist there for the firm of Morris & Taws, later founding his own firm of brass workers, Wiler & Moss. After his retirement he became involved in philanthropic work in Philadelphia and was associated with many Hebrew charitable societies, in particular the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He left most of his money to the Jewish Hospital Association of Philadelphia for the founding of the Lucien Moss Home for Incurables of the Jewish Faith.

The Moss family scrapbooks, containing cuttings from a variety of New York and Philadelphia newspapers and covering the years 1840-1895, are a wonderful resource for Jewish history. The cuttings deal with social and domestic affairs, the history of the Jewish communities in the two cities and Jewish affairs in Europe.

Articles and obituaries on prominent Jewish personalities such as David Franks, Bernard and Michael Gratz, and Samuel M Isaacs can be found. The cuttings also feature many reports on the persecution of the Jews in Russia, Poland and Rumania with news on the relief work initiated by American Jews including the Baron de Hirsch Fund. Some cuttings from newspapers in Europe and from other parts of America can also be found. An article from the London Spectator speaks highly of Jews in America.

A wide range of reports from American newspapers such as Ledger and Transcript, The Jewish Record, Daily Democrat, New York World are included - for instance: a report on annual meeting of the Hebrew Educational Association in Philadelphia; annual meeting of the Board of Delegates of American Israelites; meeting of the Delegates of Conservative Jewish Congregations to discuss improving the Jewish prayer book; meeting of the Relief Committee of the Hebrew Emigrants’ Aid Society; report on the laying of the corner stone of the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York; description of the 25th wedding anniversary party of Mr J A Ephraim; report on a meeting of the Association for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes. Jewish charity work is also covered: one cutting describes the 14th Anniversary celebrations of the Jewish Foster Home, another reports on a Ladies’ Fair selling all kinds of Jewish articles.

There are also numerous cuttings reporting on the dedication of new synagogues, services held at the Congregation of Israel and the celebration of weddings.

Cuttings concerning the Philadelphia Board of Governors of the Poor, of which Moss was a member from 1882-1884, can be found in a separate volume.

NEW! Archive Explorer Widget

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:17:51 Z

The Archive Explorer search tool offers users a simple and powerful method to explore all Adam Matthew collections from a single source:

Full-text and detailed meta-data searches with top-level listings of all documents enable browsers to quickly get an overview of our resources and the topics they offer.

Existing customers can use Archive Explorer to search only the Adam Matthew collections that they hold. Search results link directly into each resource.

Choose to search our four theme-based ‘Discovery Packages’: ‘East Asian’, ‘South Asian’, ‘Literature and The Arts’ and ‘North American’.

Searching with Archive Explorer is now even simpler, with the creation of our new widget:

This widget is fully customizable and is easily inserted into any HTML web page. For details of how to add the widget to your web pages, please see our Librarians' Resources page.

"A Peep into the Rakish World of London Low Life"

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:01:00 Z

Nick Jackson, Editorial Assistant

London Low Life: Street Culture, Social Reform and the Victorian Underworld is the latest resource to be published by Adam Matthew. This compelling collection sheds light on the darker side of Victorian society, containing street literature on crime, sex, murder, gambling and all things insalubrious. There are also guide books, maps, reform pamphlets and much more.

In working on the maps for London Low Life I've learned how much the city has changed physically since the nineteenth century, but the written material has opened my eyes to the number of things we often think of as contemporary, that in truth have been around for a good long while. Maudlin and sensationalist news-reporting, prostitutes' cards and absurd obsessions with minor celebrities: the Victorians thought of everything!

As part of our resources we always do ‘Editor’s Choice’ picks to help users navigate the material – my Editor’s Choice is reproduced below. Enjoy!

There are several ‘swells’ guides’ included in the London Low Life collection. These are guidebooks to London’s nightlife, generally written from a consciously rakish angle and often in a slang impenetrable to the untutored modern reader. As the authors of The Swell’s Night Guide; or, A Peep Through the Great Metropolis (1849) [S97_1849] confidently informed their audience, ‘we consider ourselves fly to the fakements of the rum culls, donas, cullies, crib crackers, swag lifters, fence gaugers, broad sharps, hell rakers, and the whole fraternity of slang speculators’. This audience was assumed to be male, educated (the guides tend to casually scatter references to figures from classical mythology) and, at least to some extent, monied, with descriptions of middle-class pubs, restaurants and theatres in the West End intermingled with those of the poorer haunts east of the City and south of the Thames.

The swell of the guidebooks was interested in providing himself with food, drink, gambling, carousing in general and, as is continually evident, sex. Casual references to the availability of prostitutes are thrown in amongst the musings on the other attractions of a ‘crib’, with the implication that they are as ordinary a part of what one might hope to indulge in during a night out as a pot of beer or a sing-song. The Garrick’s Head Tavern in Whitechapel, for example, was in about 1840 ‘A famous depot for pretty black-eyed Jeweses’, whilst ‘Girls are to be found on the look-out for their living’ at the Hope in Clare Market; the Coach and Horses in St Martin’s Lane, meanwhile, was principally attractive for its collection of sporting prints, but was equally recommended nonetheless. [all F12].

A Sporting Surgeon’s contribution to this genre, Hints to Men About Town, or Waterfordiana, departs from the standard form in concerning itself solely with casual sex and, at some length (in fact, three of the four chapters), its potential medical consequences. The frontispiece depicts the usual fare of London leisure pursuits – shopping, drinking, a boxing match – but the text is devoted to the author’s sexual escapades, combining a matter-of-factness about the purchase of sexual services with a concern for the social proprieties of class. The Surgeon has picked up a virginal maidservant in a theatre and taken her to a hotel, where he overcomes her reluctance and provides her with a night, he is certain, ‘of true enjoyment, of unalloyed bliss’:

We breakfasted together the next morning, and as she was anxious to leave, and I had no desire to be seen quitting the house with her, I suffered her to go immediately after. But two minutes had elapsed when a servant came up stairs to inquire whether the damsel was departing with my knowledge. Such a precaution as this displays in the highest degree the excellent arrangements maintained at this hotel, for it prevents the possibility of a female robbing her sleeping partner, and so departing while he is unconscious of the matter. It would be well were every house of the description conducted in the same manner . (p. 7)

Adventures of this type, however, could and did have unwanted results. ‘The frequency of venereal complaints’, the Surgeon declares, ‘is much greater than the public imagines. It is a fact which cannot be disputed, that in large cities there is not perhaps, one in ten male individuals, from the age of twenty to thirty years, who has not been affected once or twice’ (p. 29). More than double the space in this guide given over to the delights of prostitutes is devoted to the prevention and cure of the consequent sexually transmitted diseases, interspersed with quite sober descriptions of their symptoms and progress. Avoiding sex with strangers is acknowledged to be the most effective way to prevent infection, but is dismissed in the same breath:

Why, what a thrice double ass is this same book maker – if these rules be attended to, there would be no danger of infection, no necessity for laying down rules for its prevention. And besides, how can it be expected that such wise saws or aphorisms are even to be retained at those moments when passion or lust takes possession of the breast, and when prudence or wisdom both flee before it? No, this is utterly impossible. (p. 14)

An infection, when contracted, ‘is often concealed from the family medical attendant, and the sufferer applies for advice to advertising empirics, who generally allow the disease to destroy or poison the constitution’ (p. 29). Abstinence being outside the swell’s capabilities – and, one assumes, of no great appeal to him – it must have been gratifying to find that prevention of all infections could be assured at ‘comparative trifling expense’ by the use of patent medicines developed by the author of the book and sold through the publisher. The attentive swell was thus enabled ‘to avoid the dangerous shoals of quackery’ and steer true to enjoy more wine, women and sporting prints, according as the fancy may have taken him.

"The Great Game revisited: Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1972-1980"

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:01:00 Z

Nick Jackson, Editorial Assistant

The third section of Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, which was published towards the end of last month, covers the British Foreign Office material on the whole of South Asia for the period 1972 to 1980. The proportion of material relating to each country in each section reflects international events and so the preoccupations of the British Government at the time: section I, covering the period after the partition and independence of the British Raj in 1947, is overwhelmingly on India and Pakistan, concentrating particularly on the tensions between them; towards the end of section II (1965-71), the diplomats’ attention alights on Bangladesh, as separatism there erupts into civil disobedience, repression and war.

Section III contains a much higher concentration than its predecessors of files on Afghanistan, again reflecting an increase in events there which provoked discussion and investigation both in London and in the British embassies and high commissions of the Indian subcontinent. It was in the early 1970s that Afghanistan entered into the spiral of governmental instability, insurgency, outright civil war and foreign interventions that has plagued it ever since. Amongst the dozens of Afghan-centred files – covering such topics as political relations with neighbours, visits to the UK by the royal family, drug-trafficking, British aid and links with the EEC and NATO – I have chosen to look at two which date from the regime of Mohammad Daoud Khan, president of Afghanistan from 1973 to 1978, and which shed light both on the circumstances under which he came to power and, with some considerable prescience, on the potential for instability and Soviet intervention which it was feared might follow the end of his rule.

Daoud Khan was of royal birth, the cousin of King Zahir Shah, and had served as prime minister under Zahir between 1953 and 1963. After a political crisis with Pakistan caused by disputes over the two countries’ border (the ‘Durand Line’) Daoud was forced from office, and Afghanistan entered into a period under which democracy took a decisive step forwards but was at the same time undermined by a lack of tools afforded the new institutions by which they could govern effectively. A briefing from the US government’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (FCO 37/1216) set out the hurdles an Afghan government faced: political parties were illegal, so all parliamentarians sat as independents and had to be convinced individually of the merits of each bill; the prime minister could not himself be a member of parliament; and the king appointed ministers, most of whom were technocrats. The result of this was that the king played an active role in day-to-day governance and the prime minister was reduced often to a position of near-irrelevance; however, because the prime minister was the visible face of the government, he could be, and was, blamed for its ineffectiveness. A succession of prime ministers came and went in the decade after Daoud’s fall as each was bestowed with, and lost, royal favour.

In July 1973 Daoud led a military-backed coup which overthrew King Zahir whilst he was abroad for medical treatment. Though his broadcast speech announcing the change of government criticised the shortcomings of Zahir’s moves towards democracy, Daoud’s regime replaced the king’s elected parliament with a nominated body. In a despatch (in FCO 37/1218) the following month to the foreign secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the British ambassador in Kabul, John Drinkall, mused on the reasons for Zahir’s downfall, and placed the blame squarely on his own and his family’s shoulders. Having acknowledged that the king was “a very nice person and seemed genuinely to have the welfare of his people at heart”, Drinkall went on to catalogue his failures, and those of his sons:

He introduced a Western style Constitution in 1964 but could not bring himself to implement it. He was temperamentally incapable of taking a grip on the administration of the country and yet equally incapable of letting his post-1964 Prime Ministers, who were each his personal choices, get on with the job. […] Of the King’s children the ex-Crown Prince, though amiable, is hopelessly wet, his second son is a wastrel and a womaniser and virtually exiled to Canada, and his third son, Shah Mahmoud, who was at Oxford, is very much like his eldest son. His fourth son Muhammad Daoud Pashtunyar, gave me the impression of having considerably more character than his brothers but with the same tendency towards self-indulgence. The youngest son, Mir Wais, is at Harrow and I have not met him.

The only member of the royal family to escape censure was the king’s elder daughter, Princess Bilqis, whom Drinkall described as “as remarkable as the others are not”. But a woman succeeding to the Afghan throne was not plausible, and anyway the political system was broken. Although the average Afghan’s expectations of the state were so nugatory that a general discontent with the government was unlikely to lead to revolution from below, a sense of chronic frustration with the regime’s shortcomings amongst powerful figures in the bureaucracy and army did lead to a change of personnel at the top (something which the his embassy had, Drinkall claims, been predicting for some years, with the result that “the British reputation for omniscience in this part of the world is now in the process of receiving an additional fillip”).

Yet the next question which would soon occupy British minds was: who, or what, would follow Daoud? By the time Drinkall was preparing to leave Kabul, in January 1976, Daoud’s regime, though apparently secure, had not yet been formalised; the government would announce consultations on a new constitution only that March. But Drinkall’s biggest worry harked back to the Great Game of the nineteenth century:

[I]t seems to me that we are in great danger of forgetting the extremely important strategic position that Afghanistan occupies. If we woke up one day to find that the Soviet Union had virtually taken Afghanistan over we should, I suspect, suddenly realize just how serious the implications could be. At a stroke the Soviet Union would have greatly increased its capacity to meddle in the affairs of the Indian sub-continent, it would be one significant step nearer to acquiring a warm-water port on the Indian ocean, but it would, above all, have immeasurably increased its capacity to put pressure on the Middle East oil-producing states, and particularly Iran.

Fortunately for the West, the Russians were not liked by the Afghans. But they succeeded in their penetration of the ruling stratum of the country because they made more effort than anyone else:

When President Daoud paid his first official visit to the Soviet Union Mr Brezhnev was prepared to devote a complete weekend to entertaining him. […] Almost any Afghan with any pretensions to prominence can get his children educated virtually free in the Soviet Union and can get free medical treatment there. Russian delegations come in an almost unending stream to try to make some impact on every aspect of the Afghan economy and culture. The Russians give vast quantities of economic aid and totally dominate the Armed Forces, both as regards equipment and training.

This assessment was a shrewd one, in its conclusions about both the intensity of the Soviet interest in Afghanistan and the attitude to them of the mass of Afghans. Daoud was overthrown and killed in July 1978 by the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. But the infighting that proved rampant in the new government, and the armed opposition its actions generated in much of the country, was such that a full-scale Soviet invasion was launched to shore it up over Christmas 1979 (covered in files FCO 37/2236-2253). Despite the overwhelming nature of the Soviets’ conventional military strength, opposition to them was as determined as it had been to the Afghan communists. By the time of the invasion there were 400,000 refugees from communist rule in camps in Pakistan, where the authorities provided them with training and equipment to fight government forces back over the border; the CIA had already mounted Operation Cyclone, its own effort to help arm, train and inspire the opposition. Until they left Afghanistan in 1989 the Soviets never succeeded in gaining secure control of any areas beyond the major cities, and Afghanistan was flooded with the weapons, expertise and dislocation which have helped fuel the civil wars with which the country has been battered up to the present day.

"To raise the Genius and improve the Heart": Private Theatricals in British Culture

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:01:00 Z

Philippa Hubbard, Editorial Assistant

Towards the end of 2010, Adam Matthew released ‘Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment’, the third section of Victorian Popular Culture. Included in this resource is a curious item from the British Library entitled ‘Playbills, notices and press-cuttings dealing with private theatrical performances, dating from 1750 to 1808’. This fascinating collection of printed ephemera has been described by the theatre historian Sybil Rosenfeld as ‘the most important single source of the period’ for the study of private theatricals.¹The printed material, organised in the manner of a scrapbook, conveys the widespread enthusiasm for amateur theatre in Georgian Britain, when unlicensed public theatrical performances were illegal.

The items in the collection cover the golden age of private theatricals between 1770 and 1810. Such was the interest in the theatre and acting at this time that people held private, amateur events on their own property. The collection brilliantly illuminates our understanding of the vibrant world of private theatricals performed for invited guests in private houses, halls, castles, and palaces across the country.

The collection is variously attributed to the prolific collectors Charles Burney (1757-1817) and Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818). In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Burney, a head master of his own school, established a reputation as a classical scholar and amassed a huge collection of printed books and English newspapers. On his death, he also left a large collection of manuscripts and printed material relating to the English theatre (now housed at the British Library), of which he had planned to write a history. Banks dedicated her life to collecting a wide range of objects from prints to coins, frequently arranging the material into scrapbooks related to particular themes or events which provoked her interest. The set of playbills, printed programmes, newspaper clippings, and admission tickets in the collection have been arranged over almost two hundred pages and organised under the locations at which the theatrical events took place (see image 1). The place names and many other additional notes are written in Banks’ hand (see image 2) while other annotations have been made by another. As the sister of the famous botanist Joseph Banks, Sarah Sophia likely received her own invitations to private theatricals or at least had the social connections to procure the associated items of ephemera for her collection. One of the items written by Banks includes meticulous details on the rehearsal of The Way to Keep Him at Richmond House in 1787. In her characteristically fastidious style, Banks not only listed the major characters and the dates on which the play was performed but recorded superfluous information on the size of the theatre at Richmond, the date on which the King and Queen had attended, a special seat reserved for Miss Farren, and the date of a performance postponed due to ‘a long day being expected in the House of Commons’.

While the collection largely relates to the private theatricals held by members of fashionable society, amateur theatre was popular more generally, with people from further down the social scale hosting performances in their own homes. Jane Austen’s family regularly held informal events of this nature and Austen explored the theme in her novels, most notably in Mansfield Park. Events at the most distinguished venues were often elaborate and costly. Richmond House, home to the Duke of Richmond, held some of the most splendid affairs with many noble guests invited, including the King and Queen. In the late eighteenth century, Richmond House boasted its own private theatre, which Banks noted could hold ‘125 persons’. Private theatricals at venues such as Richmond and Blenheim were important events on the social calendar of fashionable society and tickets were highly sought after.

The collection conveys the overwhelming professionalism of many of the private theatricals at the larger houses across the country. The majority of the playbills in the collection are professionally produced letter-press printed programmes, containing several pages with reproductions of the prologues and epilogues to particular plays. The hosts of the more prestigious private theatricals also issued admission tickets, which invited guests presented at the door (see image 3 and image 4). This printed material also suggests the rules and regulations that governed events at the larger houses. In 1785, the playbill for a performance of The Winter’s Tale at Wynnstay warned the audience that proceedings would ‘begin precisely at Seven o’ Clock’ and that ‘No Person to be admitted without a Ticket’. A final instruction, printed in capital letters at the bottom of the bill, noted that ‘Ladies are particularly requested to come without hats’ (see image 5). This appeal responded to the craze for oversized millinery, a fashion started by the stylish Duchess of Devonshire who had taken to wearing large head wear adorned with extravagant plumes of feathers. While such a sartorial accessory was à la mode, it was deemed inappropriate at an event where audience members desired an unobstructed view of an eagerly anticipated theatrical performance.

The newspaper cuttings in the collection demonstrate the public interest in private theatricals. Snippets of news related to amateur theatre offered readers reviews of particular performances, with critiques on the acting, set and costumes. At the most prestigious locations, rehearsals were also an important component of the private theatrical. In 1787, the performance of the comedy The Way to Keep Him at Richmond House was rehearsed in front of ‘select friends’ and formed the basis of a review which appeared in the press a few days later. The terms ‘fashionable circles’ and ‘the fashionable world’ frequently appeared in the press with reviewers commenting on the ‘taste’ and ‘elegance’ of the evenings at the most distinguished venues. As well as offering readers reviews of private theatricals the press provided more general information. In 1787, The World reported with much enthusiasm that the ‘pretty Theatre in the Palace of Hampton Court will soon be restored to its original purposes, and a play or two performed by a select party of people of fashion’. The same article also informed its readers that ‘The Theatre at Shanes Castle of Private Theatricals, the most jocund and the best, is no more, at least for the present’.

Readers were offered extraneous details on the members of the audience, the pre- and post-play entertainments, and even the designs of the admission tickets. In 1799, the press reported that Lady Shaftsbury’s guests at a house in Portland Place were treated to card games and dinner, ‘where three tables... were laid out and ornamented with all the delicacies the Confectioner, Fruitier, &c., could procure’. A ball concluded the evening’s entertainment (see image 6). In 1804, a review of a private theatrical at Coxheath Camp, a military base, commented that a ‘more brilliant assemblage of fashion has seldom been witnessed. The Theatre was brilliantly illuminated; a full military band attended, and before the performance began God save the King and Rule Britannia were played with great effect’. The proceeds made from such elaborate events frequently went to charitable causes.

Despite the widespread enthusiasm for private theatricals they were not without their critics. Moral concerns coalesced around the perceived potential for licentiousness and the morality of the performers who intimated close personal relationships in intimate settings. Other critics focussed on artistic considerations. In his ‘Remarks upon the Present Taste for Acting Private Plays’ Richard Cumberland had urged amateurs not to attempt to replicate professional standards but produce plays ‘planned upon a new model, original, and peculiar to themselves’.² Despite these voices of disapproval or concern, amateur theatre thrived across the country and came to form a popular and much loved pastime. This unique collection of playbills, press cuttings and admission tickets, held at the British Library and digitised for Victorian Popular Culture, attests to the importance of private theatricals in British culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

¹ Sybil Rosenfeld, Temples of Thespis: Some Private Theatricals in England Wales, 1700-1820 (The Society for Theatre Research, London, 1978), p. 186.

²Quoted in Rosenfeld, Temples of Thespis, p. 13.

Primary sources from the 1960s show public reaction to the trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:01:00 Z

Martha Fogg, Senior Development Editor

We are currently hard at work on our forthcoming resource Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest, due for publication in Autumn 2011. The period from 1950 to 1975 witnessed dramatic changes in society. There was the onset of Rock & Roll; the introduction of computers and credit cards; the boom of radio and television; and campaigns for black power, civil rights and women’s liberation. All around the world there were challenges to authority. By focusing on substantial collections of original archival material – manuscript, typescript and ephemera – from key libraries in Britain and America – we provide the primary sources that will enable students and scholars to examine these issues in detail and at first hand.

One particular subject which caught my attention while developing the resource was the publication of D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover by Penguin Books in the UK, and the subsequent prosecution of Penguin under the Obscene Publications Act in 1960. The trial caused a public sensation, and has become a celebrated example of the decade’s emphasis on permissiveness and personal freedom, and opposition to the outmoded values of the Establishment.

The Penguin trial was a test of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, which had introduced a defence against prosecution for works that could be regarded as "in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern. The trial was a resounding success for Penguin, who had arranged for some of the weightiest names in literature and scholarship to defend Lawrence’s work.

However, the trial was about so much more than literary freedom. The prosecution’s case was built upon the paternalistic and moral concerns of privilege, rank and station; Prosecuting Counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones’s opening address set the tone when he asked the jury to consider whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover was “a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” The defence seized upon the opportunity to contrast these outmoded concerns with the egalitarian principles in which Penguin had been founded: publisher Allan Lane described it as “a University Press in paperbacks”. Counsel for the defence Gerald Gardiner, in his closing remarks, forcefully highlighted this conflict:

I do not want to upset the prosecution by suggesting that there are a certain number of people nowadays who as a matter of fact don’t have servants. But of course that whole attitude is one which Penguin Books was formed to fight against, which they have always fought against.... Isn’t everybody, whether earning £10 a week or £20 a week, equally interested in the society in which we live, in the problems of human relationships including sexual relationships? In view of the reference made to wives, aren’t women equally interested in human relations, including sexual relations?

His words helped secure victory for Penguin, and usher in a decade in which a multitude of taboos would be challenged by law, including the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion; and in which sexual freedom for both men and women would be embraced in ways perhaps unimaginable at the time when the legal establishment brought this case against Penguin.

Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest contains some fascinating archival material that throws light on this significant moment in British cultural history. Two primary documents particularly caught my eye. The first comes from the National Archives at Kew. A file of complaints sent to the Home Office (HO 302/11) show that there was widespread consternation from the public at the jury’s verdict. One such letter implored Her Majesty the Queen:

I beg of your Majesty to use your influence to reverse the decision to allow 'Lady Chatterley's Lover’ to be retailed to the public at a price within the allowance of youths and girls still at school. The depravity of this book is unspeakable, and with your sheltered upbringing in a Christian home Your Majesty cannot conceive the immoral situations which will be put before innocent minds.

The writer received a terse reply from the office of the Secretary of State, who wrote that, “by her Majesty’s Command, [he] has given it consideration, but regrets that he is unable to advise the Queen to issue any command thereon. Your views have, however, been noted.”

Another particularly exciting primary source included in Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest is film footage from ITN, Reuters, Gaumont British Newsreels and Fox Movietone. This news footage is a fascinating and arresting insight into some of the momentous events of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Included in our video library is an amusing and enlightening ITN report on the sales frenzy that followed the release of the Penguin edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The report shows members of the public queuing to purchase their copy, while the bookseller implores them to buy “only ONE copy per person!” The reporter’s attempts to interview the purchasers about their reasons for buying the book are met with varying degrees of responsiveness; several interviewees refuse to talk at all, while others insist tersely that “I'm buying it for somebody else” or “I just want to see what it's all about”. Others are more open; one man acknowledges that it is “rather exciting to read”; while another, perhaps in mocking reference to Mervyn Griffith-Jones’s infamous opening address, insists that he is buying it “for my wife!”

Customers queue to buy Penguin’s first edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover on the first day of its release. Credit: ITN Source

Photographing Flanders Fields

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:01:00 Z

Aodhán Kelly, Editorial Assistant

Our editorial team here at Adam Matthew are currently busy at work with the upcoming digital project The First World War: Personal Experiences which is due to be released later this year. I am delighted to be part of the team for this project as the First World War has been a pet interest of mine for a long time, an interest aroused not least through my own family history.

Sitting quietly in a drawer in my family home in Dublin are two “Dead Man's Pennies”. This is all the evidence that remains of my Great Grandad’s two brothers’, Patrick and Edward Andrews, involvement in the conflict on the Western Front in 1917. Needless to say it was difficult not to imagine their mother’s heartbreak when this grave delivery arrived at her door.

Last month I spent a week in Belgium with my colleagues David Tyler and Delyth Reid, working on the First World War project. We spent the first few days in the Flanders area near Ypres in Belgium. Unlike in my home, where the visible history of the First World War is generally hidden away in a drawer, in Ypres and its surroundings it is a different story altogether. Here, the history is present all around and the memory of the war preserved for posterity and for the flourishing tourist industry in the region. We spent three days working here with Theo and Wesley from Punch Photography in order to visually capture the reality of the trenches and create a sense of the personal physical experiences of the soldiers.

At school and university I fancied that I had a fairly solid understanding of the origins and course of the war, but I now feel that I had very little appreciation of the reality of the trenches and the lives of soldiers like Patrick and Edward. Our three days in Ypres were quite active and involved handling a lot of the equipment and possessions of soldiers as well as getting our wellies on to document some preserved trench systems. Bumping our heads became a common feature of the trip and my incident happened while down a very long dark tunnel, plotting a plan of a trench system. The lengths we go to for history research!

Theo and Wesley captured images using a variety of photographic methods while at the same time we had to organise the materials and record all the metadata for each object or location. This was no easy task; recording metadata for archival documents seems much more straightforward now after trying to do the same thing for a German gas-mask, aerial compass, Lebel bayonnet or a Canadian War Memorial. Fortunately we had expert collectors working with us throughout the process.

Our first stop was Hooge Crater Museum located on the Menin Road outside of Ypres. Here we captured still photographs of a massive variety of objects held there by collectors and curators Niek Benoot and Philippe Oosterlinck. We captured highly detailed photographs of smaller items such as shaving kits [see image left], beer mugs, army shoulder straps, whistles, binoculars and trench knives but also larger pieces of equipment like rifles, medical oxygen tanks, artillery shells and even a chaplain’s field bag complete with the original sacraments.

Our photographers also performed a major technical task by capturing 360 degree rotatable shots of various objects in the museum. This was done on a large turntable by taking 24 separate shots of the items from all sides and then stitching the images together afterwards to make a 360 degree dynamic image. To see this technology in action, go to the thumbnail [left] to view a German army officer’s helmet, then click and drag to rotate – a whole range of 360 degree images will be available on the finished resource.

The second day we spent in the town of Ypres shooting an extensive collection of British and Commonwealth military regimental badges from Over the Top Tours, at the foot of the Menin Gate memorial. This image [below] is a Royal Dublin Fusiliers badge similar to the one which would have been worn by my relative Patrick Andrews as a member of that particular regiment.

Our third and final day in Flanders Fields area was spent shooting outdoors (and a little underground) at the Sanctuary Wood Museum. The wood itself was named by British soldiers because the site was initially used for troop rest and recuperation before it became involved in front line fighting. The museum contains a preserved original trench system and really brings home the veracity of trench warfare to the visitor. At this site you can walk through the entire trench system, tunnels included.

At Sanctuary Wood we took a number of excellent still photographs such as the one left, as well as shooting a complete step-by-step virtual walkthrough of the trench. In addition, there will also be a number of 360 degree panorama shots available to give a sense of place and space [see panorama image below].

The museum is located at the foot of the Canadian Hill 62 memorial which marks the efforts of the Canadian Corps to defend the southern line of Ypres Salient. While on the other side of the museum is the Sanctuary Wood cemetery within which lie the remains of close to 2,000 known and unknown allied soldiers, a stark reminder of the sheer numbers of casualties of life during the conflict in this now quiet and peaceful part of the countryside.

The still and dynamic visual resources such as those displayed above will be included in our upcoming digital collection, and will help create true visual context for the student of the First World War as well as providing raw material for the academic researcher.

Individual Voices: Mass Observation Diaries

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:01:00 Z

Katie Burningham, Editorial Assistant

As part of the team working on the next instalment of Mass Observation Online, which will be released this May, I have been indexing hundreds of diaries from the archive, focusing on entries from November 1944 to November 1945. Mass Observation was an extraordinary attempt to chart the experiences of so-called “ordinary” people and the diaries offer the chance to consider how national and international issues were felt at a local level, adding fresh and hidden perspectives on the time. In addition to their importance as a primary resource, I have found them to be a compelling reading experience that brings you incredibly close to the lives of their authors.

Some of the diarists quote comments that their friends and colleagues made, allowing readers to listen in on conversations that were had. Diarist 5270 described what a friend had to say about working in a factory during the war:

“To think that Hilda and I worked from 7.30 in the morning till 7.30 at night for a measley £2 a week! We had to be up at 5’ 0’ Clock in the morning and we got home about half-eight at night….Yet there were men charge hands and foremen and setters-up who used to be navvies, and were getting £15 a week, for watching us mugs work”.

Later, having been asked to sweep the factory floor, the woman is quoted as saying: “I’m not going to sweep the floor! I can stay at home and sweep my mother’s floor for her. I came here to do war work, and if that’s all you can provide then you can go and get my release signed!” The woman got her release granted a week later.

Other diarists use vivid imagery that shows us the period through their eyes. I found this depiction of a bomb-damaged street particularly moving:

“It was a desolate scene: a few jagged walls standing amid heaps of rubble where several houses had been, on either side of the battered hulks of several others, and behind them the gutted roofs of a factory. There were one of two rusty Morrison table shelters standing by the side of the road and one had been left partly buried by ruins with its top caved in and another was upside down a pile of debris. And here and there amongst the ruins were still to be seen the occasional household article and even a china ornament; on the pavement was a book called “Dulcie King”, a school prize for 1904” (Diarist number 5205).

And a passing comment invites us to imagine what the diarists may have been thinking, as with this extract that gives a rare glimpse into the decision-making process of the electorate in 1945: “Churchill was the voice to inspire us when there were heroic and courageous things to be done, but now we’ve got down to the slogging, uneventful things it’s a bit different.” The sense that you are experiencing history through the thoughts of those that lived it is an incredibly powerful one, and one that keeps you reading.

Amongst the hundreds of diaries that I indexed, there were, of course, certain favourites. One that stands out in particular was Diarist 5098. This diarist is an elderly man in his eighties, living in Peckham, South London, whose world centred around a small allotment and regular trips to the British Museum. Undoubtedly an eccentric character, his diaries are often humorous and surprising, including the short autobiography of a spider called Mabel, a poem to the mayor of Ohio giving thanks for seeds donated to the ‘Dig For Victory’ campaign and a colourful cast of local characters: Inge the “chatterbox” who lives next door, and his 93 year old sweetheart whom he doesn’t name. Although this diarist may be one of the more quirky contributors to Mass Observation, the constant presence of fear that pervades his diaries is suggestive of the general mood amongst those who lived with the threat of bombing. His dreams often related to dying; he wrote poems about the ghost of Hitler, and drew this diagram explaining exactly where the rockets that hit his allotment fell:

Diarist 5098 wrote consistently on a daily basis, as did the vast majority of participants included in the project. Crucially, this means it is possible to chart how people’s experiences and feelings changed as the war went on. I indexed the archive chronologically, and couldn’t help but wait in suspense to find out what happened to each individual diarist. Would Diarist 5030, an elderly disabled man who sends his chocolate rations to Dutch refugee children, ever find a lodging that will allow him to listen to the radio all day? Would Diarist 5271 manage to get a transfer away from the town she hates, Bury St Edmunds, and her job in social services? And when would the husband of Diarist 5239 be demobilized from India so that they can at last start a family together? In the case of diarist number 5344, the confirmation that her fiance, a prisoner of war who had been missing for over a year, was presumed dead came as a shock, even though I had been expecting this to be revealed every time I came across one of her entries.

These individual voices illuminate the experiences of the many; their diaries are full of insights and I feel very fortunate to have read them:

“This morning I saw the sun which had just risen, and it was shining direct into my kitchen. I had looked at it through the window and noted it would be a fine day, when, as I turned to go out of the room, I passed right across the rays, level as they were into the room. I turned instinctively to do what I always do when I leave a room - turn off the light. Imagine it. I had got so used to the black-out and turning off the lights that I, for a moment, went to turn off the sun.” (Diarist number 5399)

Click here to view examples of the diary entries listed above (PDF).

Introducing our new "Memory Wall" feature for The First World War: Personal Experiences

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 12:01:00 Z

Beth Hall, Project Editor

As part our our forthcoming resource The First World War: Personal Experiences, we are introducing a thought-provoking new digital feature, the ‘Memory Wall’, which encourages users to interact with documents in the resource through a visual montage of objects, photographs and images of the war.

By clicking on some of the arresting visual items in the Memory Wall, users can read about related documents in the resource. Written by members of the editorial team working on the resource, these articles introduce users to the rich and varied primary source material in the resource, and will provide inspiration for research and case study-based project work.

The following article on the papers of William Newsam McClean give readers a taste of the ‘Memory Wall’, which will be published as part of The First World War: Personal Experiences in September 2011. It was written by Liz Sargut, Publishing Associate, who is currently indexing the personal papers of soldiers sourced from McMaster University.

Papers of William Newsam McClean, Royal Engineers

A large part of this fascinating collection consists of letters written by William Newsam McClean to his wife and gives us a vivid view of his life behind the lines on the Western Front. It would seem that he spent his time working on repairing roads and building trenches. He does not seem to be fazed by the bombing going on around him but bemoans the bright moon which makes them so visible. He recounts: “My dearest Aggie - …. Breaks in the road are repaired as quick as they are made. It is some war here. The Moon is glorious and keeps rather a weird watch over us methinks. We had bombing all around us from 8pm to 2am this morning – nothing very near us – one about 200 yards from our Men rather disturbed us. How would London like 6 hrs of it! Sheldon had a machine gun bullet through his hut. We don’t love the Moon at all and look forward to its early disappearance. Well, so long Old Gal and lots of love, your loving hubby Willie.”

He describes the conditions the officers have to endure with the cold and the wet and how they deal with them. It is intriguing to hear how they dress during the night! Interestingly he does spare a thought for the men in the trenches: “…. I believe most of us want a thaw here but I don’t in spite of the cold nights. We had a slight south wind here this morning but it has not thawed here and the temperature was zero last night. It goes right through blankets. However I keep warm until about 5am. I don’t know what the men in the trenches do – they must be frozen stiff. We were discussing today the different way people retired for the night – one officer keeps all his clothes on including boots and top coat and another discarded his boots but put his pyjamas on over the rest. Very few take everything off – but I believe a complete change does best….. I have no more to say tonight and am feeling somewhat bored with things. Socks are not arriving and they are generally a minus quantity at stores. It is d…d cold for washing and my sponge is getting smaller and smaller….”

His description of how they spent Christmas 1916 is illuminating as it shows they did manage to relax somewhat. He obviously had a sense of humour as the address he gives at the top of the letter is “Dug Out Villas”! He relates: “Another Xmas come and gone. It was quite uneventful. Gun straffing on our side was much as usual or a trifle more. The Bosch was rather quiet. The Orderly Officer, Bonette by name, got his gramophone up and it did a good days work. 11am a Padre turned up and we had a service in the Mess…. We had the mince pies for lunch and they were very good. 6pm we were invited to a concert…. the singing was not very great but quite cheery…. The Xmas pudding came in on fire in great style and I made up Snap Dragon and we felt like babies. So ended Xmas in this weary waste of France.”

The rest of this most interesting collection consists of a mixture of official papers, photographs, maps, greeting cards and ephemera together with a printed book on trench construction written by McClean.

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Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:41:16 Z

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Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:50:18 Z

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Everyday Life Awarded 'Outstanding Academic Title' by Choice Magazine

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:50:15 Z

Choice magazine, America’s leading academic review journal has awarded Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920 an 'Outstanding Academic Title' review.

Described as “Highly Recommended”, Everyday Life was one of 50 electronic resources and 629 books ranked among the “best of the best” from an original list of 7,190 titles reviewed by Choice editorial staff during the year.

Choice Editor and Publisher, Irving E. Rockwood writes:

“These outstanding works have been selected for their excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as important – often the first – treatment of their subject.”

Khal Rudin, President of Adam Matthew Education and Director of Adam Matthew Digital commented:

“We are delighted that Choice magazine has awarded Everyday Life with this prestigious seal of approval, it is a further endorsement to the libraries and consortia around the world who have supported this collection.”

Free trials are available; please see the 'Request a Free Trial Today' tool (right) to access.

Adam Matthew offers institution-specific discounts on all resources based on banding. Please contact us for further details.

The American West:
Choice 'Outstanding Academic Title' for 2010

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 13:50:09 Z

The American West has been awarded an ‘Outstanding Academic Title’ by Choice Magazine, America’s leading academic review journal.

One of just 40 electronic resources and 652 books selected, The American West has been recognised as “the best of the best” out of an original 7,065 titles reviewed by Choice editorial staff in 2009.

Through a mixture of original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral material and rare printed sources, The American West provides a rare and fascinating insight into tales of frontier life, Native Americans, vigilantes and outlaws. Coupled with materials covering the development of urban centres and the expansion into the 'Wild West', this collection is a dynamic teaching and research resource.

Irving Rockwood, Choice editor and publisher, comments:

“these outstanding works have been awarded for their excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to the field, and their value as important – often the first – treatment of their subject.”

American West Project Editor Jennifer Bullock said:

“We are delighted to have received this prestigious award from Choice Magazine. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in the production of this resource, especially the Newberry Library and our Board of Academic Editors, who along with the dedicated staff at Adam Matthew who worked incredibly hard to make this such a great success".

Free, four-week trials of The American West and all other Adam Matthew collections are available. Please use the 'Request a Free Trial Today' tool to request access.

Adam Matthew offers institution-specific discounts on all resources based on banding. Please contact us for further details.

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Primary sources from the 1960s show public reaction to the trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover

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Photographing Flanders Fields

Aodhán Kelly, Editorial Assistant

Individual Voices: Mass Observation Diaries

Katie Burningham, Editorial Assistant

Introducing our new "Memory Wall" feature for The First World War: Personal Experiences

Beth Hall, Project Editor

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Everyday Life Awarded 'Outstanding Academic Title' by Choice Magazine

The American West:Choice 'Outstanding Academic Title' for 2010

The American West:
Choice 'Outstanding Academic Title' for 2010