History Day

Items

• 'Queering the narrative' in the archival records at Bethlem Museum of the Mind
  Looking at the possibilities and perils of investigating same-sex attraction in the historic records of psychiatry.
• 'That which never can be suppressed': LGBTQ+ history in the Royal College of Physicians collections
  In this lively virtual talk rare books librarian Katie Birkwood and assistant archivist Felix Lancashire explore some fascinating and potentially challenging collections at the Royal College of Physicians highlighting the long, rich and inspiring history of LGBTQ+ lives.
• Absolute Units: 'Queer Rural Lives: Searching the Archives' with Tim Jerrome
  Queer histories of England have predominantly focused on the country's urban centres and cities - especially London. Yet queer and same-sex relationships have always existed throughout English life. Rural England is no exception. In the first of two podcasts, Joe and Ollie welcome onto Absolute Units former MERL colleague Tim Jerrome (University of Brighton), whose PhD explores the history of same-sex relationships in rural England. Learn about the challenges of finding queer histories in farm archives, the issues of archivist objectivity, and how museums can develop their practices to better surface and represent stories and relationships that were hidden in the past. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Absolute Units is the official podcast of The Museum of English Rural Life. This series is made possible through the generous support of and Museums Partnership Reading, a partnership of The MERL with Reading Museum. Themetune by Tai Dawson. Co-hosts: Ollie Douglas and Joe Vaughan Producer: Joe Vaughan
• AGRA Video
  Discover more about AGRA. Who has are we and what we do.
• Auction Catalogues in the Paul Mellon Centre Library
  The library holds approximately 15,000 auction catalogues, mainly dating from the late nineteenth century onwards, but with some eighteenth and early nineteenth century sales.
• Bees in the Collections
  The University of Reading houses one of the largest collections of bee-related material in the United Kingdom. The works contained within provide vital insights into historic social and political perceptions of the world’s most important pollinators. This online exhibition showcases some of the most significant apian-related works, held by the University and beyond, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century which demonstrate how social and cultural perceptions of bees and hives changed as British society evolved. The online exhibition curated by Olivia Blackburn, as part of a student project, ‘Bees in the Collections’, which was supervised by Professor Helen Parish and Dr Rohan Deb Roy from the Department of History, University of Reading.
• Beyond the Botanical in Kew's Persian collections
  The co-curators of the current "Persia Reimagined: From Herbarium to Heritage" exhibition write about the Persian collections in Kew's Library & Archives and the social and cultural histories tucked away within.
• Brian Sewell : an introduction to the archive
  Brian Sewell (1931-2015) was an art historian, art critic, author and media personality. He lead a remarkable life: born in 1931 to a single mother, he studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art and found fame both as Anthony Blunt’s unofficial spokesman following Blunt’s exposure as a Soviet spy and later in his role as daily arts correspondent for the Evening Standard. All his life he felt like an ‘outsider’ – this becoming the title of his published autobiographies – a reference to various aspects of his character and also his sexuality (he described himself as gay). This Sewell Archive, documents almost every part of his life and this display provides an introduction to the collection.
• British LGBTQ+ History Podcast Series, 1800 - Present Day
  This podcast series, produced by the Historical Association, focuses on UK LGBTQ+ history from 1800 until the present day. Episodes feature Dr Matt Cook and Dr Sean Brady of Birkbeck, University of London, Professor Sally R Munt of the University of Sussex and Dr Emma Vickers of the University of Reading.
• Constance Maynard's Diaries and Unpublished Autobiography Online
  Constance Maynard, the first Principal of Westfield College, kept confessional and detailed diaries about her life 1866-1935 and these are now available online. She also reflected back on her life 1849-1927 in the 1930s in an unpublished autobiography made available for the first time online. Both are rich sources for the inner life of a queer woman from 1840s-1930s, history of women in higher education and the relationship with faith and sexuality.
• Damaged & Destroyed : Three Stories of Preservation and Loss from the PMC’s Photographic Archive
  In 2021, the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) published its photographic archive online. The archive comprises more than 100,000 reproductions of paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures. The photographs, which were taken over a forty-year period between the early 1960s to the late 1990s, offer images of objects from across six centuries, and focus in particular on sixteenth- to nineteenth-century British art. This feature focuses on a selection of the damaged and destroyed works that are recorded in the Centre’s photographic archive, and uses them to suggest some of the values and limitations of such archives. It takes the form of three stories. The first offers a glimpse into the work and tragic life of the largely forgotten eighteenth-century artist Hugh Robinson; the second looks at four portraits of women associated with a titled Scottish family, the Rothes, which were totally destroyed during a high-profile warehouse fire in 1997; and the third looks at a damaged sketchbook by the nomadic Georgian artist George Chinnery.
• Diana Kimber and Louise Darche: leading lights in New York nursing
  A chance find in a newly catalogued book led to the story of two leading lights in nursing teaching in New York in the late 19th century: women who devoted their lives to their work and to each other.
• Exploration of the Paul Oppé Library and Archive
  Adolphus Paul Oppé (22 September 1878–29 March 1957) was an art historian and collector with a particular interest in British drawings and watercolours from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His scholarly work, like his collecting, focused on figures such as John Sell Cotman, Alexander Cozens, Francis Towne, Paul and Thomas Sandby and Thomas Rowlandson, and contributed considerably to establishing their reputations as major British artists.
• Exploring the Frank Simpson Archive
  Frank Simpson (1911–2002) was a Librarian and amateur art historian with a long-held interest in taste and the collecting of pictures in England in the eighteenth century, particularly from salerooms. The Paul Mellon Centre holds his archive, which includes records from the London office of M. Knoedler & Co., where he worked during the 1950s–1970s. Much of the material in this archive is unique and contains a wealth of information for those interested in the study of provenance, and collections and collecting during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.
• Exploring the Gavin Stamp Archive
  Gavin Stamp (1948–2017) was a British architectural historian, writer and campaigner. His archive, which is held by the Centre, illustrates a prolific career and wide-ranging interests. It includes material related to the Scott family architectural dynasty; inter-war period architecture; telephone boxes; war memorials; power stations; Victorian churches; ecclesiastical design; and colonial architecture.
• For What Reasons the Murder Was Done: the Destruction of Constance Maynard's Diaries
  A detailed look at the deposit file of Constance Louisa Maynard papers, the first principal of Westfield College and a queer woman, and what it reveals about what is missing from the collection.
• Full steam ahead! Celebrating Railway 200 across the Archives
  To celebrate Rail 200, Archives Hub explores a fascinating range of archives relating to railways, train travel and more – all board!
• History from an Era of Illustrated News
  A handpicked selection of 80+ articles from the archives of The Illustrated London News, The Illustrated War News, The Graphic & The Sphere spanning royal, society and military history.
• Joseph Lister in the Archives – “The Father of antiseptic surgery”
  Joseph Lister introduced the concept of antisepsis in surgery in the 1860s, paving the way for the modern aseptic techniques we recognise today. Read on for a brief history of his work, illustrated with items from the archive.
• LGBT+ History in the European archives
  A collection of documents on LGBT+ history in the archives of Archives Portal Europe
• Lord Ronald Gower: The Life of a Queer MP
  In this series of articles Dr Martin Spychal explores the life of Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (MP for Sutherland from 1867-1874), shedding light on the life of a young, aristocratic queer man as he navigated his way through the world of Westminster politics.
• Paul Joyce Archive : original drawings and papers on G.E. Street and Victorian Gothic Architecture
  Paul Joyce (1934–2014) was an architectural draughtsman and historian with a life-long interest in the work of George Edmund Street (1824–1881), a leading architect of the Victorian Gothic Revival. The Centre holds Joyce’s archive, containing material compiled in the course of his research on G.E. Street and other Victorian architects. The archive is fully catalogued and available for research. This spotlight feature highlights original drawings from the archive and a representative sample of Joyce’s research.
• Queer Constellations: The Histories of Rural Gay Men
  Criminal archives are the most common source of gay histories, as male homosexuality was illegal until 1967. Through searching assize records on Ancestry, and investigating court reports via the British Newspaper Archive, we identified rural occupations for some of the men placed on trial. By comparing these occupations to objects in our collection, we aim to show that these men were more than just a conviction. They were ordinary people living ordinary lives. An online exhibition inspired by the 2021 physical exhibition, 'Queer Constellations: Artistic Trespass and Rural Gay Histories'. 'Queer Constellations' posed the question as to whether there is queerness in rural life. It brought together artists from around the UK and Ireland, including Epha J Roe, James Aldridge, Emma Plover, Gemma Dagger, Eimear Walshe, Claye Bowler and Daniel Baker, to delight in the strangeness of rural life and to feel its enough-ness. The MERL invited users to trespass the space, explore the margins, and to join us in queering the countryside.
• Queer letters from Victorian England
  How Victorians were able to send coded messages in the post.
• Remembering Amelia Edwards this Pride Month
  This year the EES celebrated Pride by remembering their founder, Amelia B Edwards. Amelia was a Victorian novelist, travel writer, and pioneer of British Egyptology, but her personal life and relations with other women have often been ignored by the field she founded.