Category Archives: The Victorian Collection: a Baylor Libraries Digital Collection

Introducing…The Victorian Collection at the Armstrong Browning Library: a Baylor Libraries Digital Collection—Religion and Politics

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By Melinda Creech, PhD, Graduate Assistant 

Marie Ada Molineux (1856-1936), Author, Bacteriologist, Psychologist, Charter Member of the Boston Browning Society. Nell Pomeroy O'Brien, painter. 1936. Courtesy of the Armstrong Browning LibraryThe Armstrong Browning Library is pleased to announce the release of The Victorian Collection online. This new digital collection contains over 3,000 letters and manuscripts connected to prominent and lesser known British and American figures and complements the Armstrong Browning Library’s unparalleled collection of materials relating to the Victorian poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The letters and manuscripts in this growing collection can be browsed and searched by date, author, keyword, or first line of text. Letters from the collection are currently on display in Hankamer Treasure Room.

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Religion

Many of the letters in the Victorian Collection are from clergymen. The letters run the gamut of different types of Christian faith. There are letters from Catholics, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Universalists, Friends, Brethren, “High” Church, “Low” Church, “Broad” Church, and even Baptists, written by such well-known correspondents at John Henry Newman, Charles Kingsley, William Johnson Fox, Frederick Temple, and John Keble.

One album of letters that is particularly interesting contains a group of letters collected by Charles Room. Room was a student at the Baptist College in Bristol, presided over the Baptist Church in Evesham, Worcestershire and was assistant pastor to Dr. John Rippon at New Park Street Baptist Chapel in Southwark and minister of the Baptist Church, Meeting House Alley, Portsea.

In this letter R. W. Overbury, pastor of the Baptist Church at Eagle Street, London from 1834 until his death in 1868, invites Charles Room to preach at his church.

Letter from R. W. Overbury to Charles Room. Undated. Page 1.

Letter from R. W. Overbury to Charles Room. Undated. Page 2.

*****

Rev. John Rooker, an Anglican minister, was the Director of the Church Missionary Children’s Home, Highbury Grove, Islington, and vicar of St. Peter’s, Clifton Road, Bristol. The letters he collected in the Rooker Album consist of a large number of letters to and from clergy, including this letter from Brooke Foss Westcott, biblical scholar, theologian, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and Bishop of Durham. He is perhaps most well known for co-editing, with Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek in 1881. In this tender letter Westcott answers Rooker’s question about a reference in a book responding:

My great hope is that I may perhaps sometimes encourage a young student to linger with patient faith over the words of Scripture and hear then the message which he needs. We need all of us to write out the promise εν τη υπομονη κτησασθαι τας ψυχας.

[“In patience possess your souls” Luke 21:19]

Letter from B. F. Westcott to John Rooker. 9 August 1884. Page 1.

Letter from B. F. Westcott to John Rooker. 9 August 1884. Pages 2 and 3.

*****

The ABL has many letters from Anglican bishops, including letters from Christopher Wordsworth, youngest brother of William Wordsworth and Bishop of Lincoln. In this letter to an unidentified correspondent, Wordsworth mentions his publication, “Pastoral to the Wesleyans.”

Letter from Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln to an Unidentified Correspondent. 13 March 1870. Page 1.

Letter from Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln to an Unidentified Correspondent. 13 March 1870. Pages 2 and 3

*****

Comparative religion was an important focus in the nineteenth century as scholars such as Edwin Arnold began to introduce research on world religions. In this letter Emily Marion Harris, English novelist, poet, and educationist, finds a point of comparison between the Book of Common Prayer and prayers that Arnold described in his book, Pearls of Our Faith.

Letter from Emily Marion Harris to Elizabeth Purefoy Fitzgerald. 21 November [No year]. Page 1.

Letter from Emily Marion Harris to Elizabeth Purefoy Fitzgerald. 21 November [No year]. Page 2.

Letter from Emily Marion Harris to Elizabeth Purefoy Fitzgerald. 21 November [No year]. Page 3.

*****

Another interesting set of letters and manuscripts come from Dryden Phelps. Dryden Phelps was the nephew of William Lyon Phelps, Browning scholar and founder of the Fano Club, an annual gathering of Browning aficionados who have visited “The Guardian Angel” painting in Fano, Italy, about which Robert Browning wrote a poem. Dryden Phelps, a missionary to China, reveals in this letter his missions strategy of using the poetry of Browning and Tennyson to introduce his Chinese students to English literature and the tenets of Christianity. Dryden attributes Browning’s popularity in China to the fact that he is “terse, succinct, witty, epigrammatic, unique in a brilliant use of words, profound, a lover of nature, and of human nature, a lover of life.” A Chinese poetry scholar with whom he had studied commented that “he [Browning] is like one of our own poets!” Dryden surmises that one of the highest services we can render China at this moment is to open their eyes to such men as Browning.”

Letter from Dryden Phelps to A. J. Armstrong. 3 May 1928. Page 1.

Letter from Dryden Phelps to A. J. Armstrong. 3 May 1928. Page 2.

Letter from Dryden Phelps to A. J. Armstrong. 2 October 1928. Page 1.

Letter from Dryden Phelps to A. J. Armstrong. 2 October 1928. Page 2.

*****

The following manuscripts are Phelps’s students’ efforts to translate the poetry of Browning and Tennyson into Chinese.

Chinese Manuscript by an Unidentified Author. Undated.

“Then Welcome Each Rebuff” by Robert Browning, Translated by an Unidentified Author. Undated. Recto.

“Then Welcome Each Rebuff” by Robert Browning, Translated by an Unidentified Author. Undated. Verso.

“Flower in a Crannied Wall” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Translated by Paul Liu. Undated.

“Flower in a Crannied Wall” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Translated by Ghipi C. Chang. Undated.

*****

Scholars in the nineteenth century were very interested in archeology and reclaiming antiquities. Many letters describe trips to the Middle East to search for treasures. This letter from the Director of the British Museum records a contribution by Mrs. Norris toward the purchase of the Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript written over 1600 years ago, containing the Christian Bible in Greek, including the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. Edwin L. Norris was a British philologist, linguist, and orientalist who wrote or compiled numerous works on the languages of Asia and Africa. It is unclear what relationship Mrs. R. Norris had to Edwin Norris, if any. Arundell James Kennedy Esdaile was a British librarian, and Secretary to the British Museum from 1926 to 1940.

Letter from Arundell Esdaile to Mrs. Norris. 30 October 1934.

*****

In this letter Thomas Hill Lowe, English cleric and Dean of Exeter (1839-1861), responds to Henry Phillpotts’s criticism of his sermon about changing the Athanasian Creed in the Book of Common Prayer. Henry Phillpotts was the Bishop of Exeter from 1830–1869.

Letter from Thomas Hill Lowe to Henry Phillpotts. 21 February 1852. Page 1.

Letter from Thomas Hill Lowe to Henry Phillpotts. 21 February 1852. Page 2.

*****

Joseph Barber Lightfoot, an English theologian, Bishop of Durham, and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, writes to and T. G. Bonney, an English geologist, president of the Geological Society of London, and tutor at St. John’s College, Cambridge, bemoaning the rivalry between Trinity and St. John’s. He is also annoyed by religious newspapers, writing:

I quite agree with you about religious newspapers. Nothing more nearly drives me to despair than the correspondence in the _______ and _____. I think possibly that St. Paul would also have failed to recognize any likeness to himself in the pictures of him which are drawn by many of our German friends

Todd Still, Dean and Professor of Christian Scriptures at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University, suggests that one of the newspapers could be The Church Times. He adds, “As for Lightfoot’s remark regarding ‘German friends,’ this is his gracious way of saying that he categorically disagrees with the portrait of St. Paul being painted by F. C. Baur and the Tubingen School.”

Letter from Joseph Barber Lightfoot to T. G. Bonney. 18 May 1875. Page 1.

Letter from Joseph Barber Lightfoot to T. G. Bonney. 18 May 1875. Pages 2 and 3.

 

Politics

Political letters also comprise a large portion of the Victorian Letters Collection. Our collections contains letters from Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, William Ewart Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, and others. The collection also contains many letters from military leaders. The following are only a sampling of the many.

In this letter Lilian Whiting, American journalist, editor, poet, short story writer, and member of the Boston Browning Society, writes about her attendance at a dinner in New York on March 1, 1912 honoring William Howells’s seventy-fifth birthday. Howells was an American novelist, literary critic, and playwright. President Taft and Winston Churchill gave speeches there. Winston Churchill was a young man of thirty-eight who had just become First Lord of the Admiralty the previous year. Whiting comments on and quotes a from Churchill’s speech, rather uncomplimentarily. She writes

Excepting the President, the host, the guest of honor & Mrs. [Alden], – the speeches were unspeakably & ludicrously poor! Winston Churchill’s was as common & as cheap as a table waiter might have made – “As a midshipman”, he preceded to give a chapter of cheap reminiscences of himself – the only link with Mr. Howells being that he had a copy of ‘Silas Lapham’ & “climbed the mast with [it] Howells went up & has been going up ever since” & the copy of ‘Silas’ fell out of his pocket to the deck & that is the only time Howells ever went down!

Letter from Lilian Whiting to Miss Carrie. 5 March 1912. Page 1.

Letter from Lilian Whiting to Miss Carrie. 5 March 1912. Page 2.

*****

In this letter to an Unidentified Correspondent, Benjamin Disraeli, then serving his second term as Prime Minister of Great Britain, mentions two residences, Marlboro House, the residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Portland Place, the residence of the unidentified correspondent.

Letter from Benjamin Disraeli an Unidentified Correspondent. 23 May 1879. Page 1.

Letter from Benjamin Disraeli an Unidentified Correspondent. 23 May 1879. Page 2.

*****

The Armstrong Browning Library has several letters written by William Ewart Gladstone, British statesman and Prime Minister.

This letter was accompanied a pamphlet on vivisection. Gladstone explains that the subject is one “I have never been able to examine with all the care it deserves but I have always had & expressed the opinion that the practice, . . . ought to be confined within the limits of strict & well defined necessity.”

Letter from William Ewart Gladstone to [J. E. Walker]. 27 September 1878. Page 1.

Letter from William Ewart Gladstone to [F. E. Walters]. 27 September 1878. Page 2.

*****

This letter, written to Charles Lee Lewes, may perhaps be referring to Essays and Leaves From a Notebook, by George Eliot, early essays written by Eliot, published posthumously. She had bequeathed all her literary rights to Charles Lee Lewes, the eldest son of George Henry Lewes, her residuary legatee and sole executor of her estate.

Letter from William Ewart Gladstone to C. L. Lewes. 23 October 1889. Page 1.

Letter from William Ewart Gladstone to C. L. Lewes. 23 October 1889. Page 2.

*****

In this letter, Gladstone reports that he has no occasion for the works sent by Clement Sadler Palmer, a London publisher and antiquarian bookseller.

Letter from William Ewart Gladstone to Clement Sadler Palmer. 3 August 1895. Page 1.

Letter from William Ewart Gladstone to Clement Sadler Palmer. 3 August 1895. Page 2.

*****

Robert Peel, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for a second term in 1841, writes to Frederick Marryat, a Royal Navy officer and novelist, complimenting him, assuring him that he has received his letter, but stating that it is not in his power to speak to him on the subject of his letter

Letter from Robert Peel to Frederick Marryat. 11 July 1841. Page 1.

Letter from Robert Peel to Frederick Marryat. 11 July 1841. Page 2.

*****

This manuscript, written by Napoleon III, provides a guardian for the chateau of his mother.

Letter from Napoleon III to an unidentified correspondents. Undated.

*****

This fragment in German written from Konigsburg is signed by Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, known as the “Romantic” monarch.

Unidentified Manuscript, signed by Friedrich Wilhelm IV. 1844.

*****

In this undated letter, found in the DeCastro Album, William Pitt the Younger, British statesman, declines an “excursion up the river” with  Walter Scott, Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and biographer, but invites him to London to discuss some business.

Letter from  William Pitt to Sir Walter Scott. 15 August [Undated]. Page 1.

Letter from William Pitt to Sir Walter Scott. 15 August [Undated]. Pages 2 and 3.

On the verso of the letter is a note in an unidentified hand that reads: “To my father.”

Letter from William Pitt to Sir Walter Scott. 15 August [Undated]. Verso.

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For the complete series of blog posts on the Victorian Collection:

Literary figures represented in the Victorian Collection are covered in the blog series: Beyond the Brownings

Introducing…The Victorian Collection at the Armstrong Browning Library: a Baylor Libraries Digital Collection—Science and Exploration

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By Melinda Creech, PhD, Graduate Assistant 

Marie Ada Molineux (1856-1936), Author, Bacteriologist, Psychologist, Charter Member of the Boston Browning Society. Nell Pomeroy O'Brien, painter. 1936. The Armstrong Browning Library is pleased to announce the release of The Victorian Collection online. This new digital collection contains over 3,000 letters and manuscripts connected to prominent and lesser known British and American figures and complements the Armstrong Browning Library’s unparalleled collection of materials relating to the Victorian poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The letters and manuscripts in this growing collection can be browsed and searched by date, author, keyword, or first line of text. Letters from the collection are currently on display in Hankamer Treasure Room.

~~~~~

Science

The term “scientist” was coined by William Whewell in 1833. Previously such persons were known as natural philosophers. Whewell was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Researching ocean tides, publishing in the fields of mechanics, physics, geology, astronomy, and economics, composing poetry, translating Goethe, and writing sermons and theological tracts, he was quite a polymath. Groundbreaking discoveries in science mark the nineteenth century: evolution, natural selection, germ theory, genetics, atomic theory, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, electricity, telecommunication, and many others. The Armstrong Browning Library, although primarily concerned with the collection of literary letters and manuscripts, has accumulated an interesting collection of science-related letters. A sampling of those letters follows.

William Whewell, 1794-1866, portrait by James Lonsdale, Courtesy of Trinity College, University of Cambridge; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation.

A letter from William Whewell, who coined the word “scientist,” to Richard Owen, a biologist, anatomist, and paleontologist, who studied fossils and coined the word “dinosaur,” discusses the nomenclature of bones.

Letter from William Whewell to Richard Owen, 16 March 1847. Page 1.

Letter from William Whewell to Richard Owen, 16 March 1847. Page 2.

Letter from William Whewell to Richard Owen, 16 March 1847. Page 3.

*****

Henry Bence Jones, 1813-1873.

Ada Lovelace, 1815-1852

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry Bence Jones, an English physician and chemist, writes to Lady Lovelace, English chemist, writer, and daughter of Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke, describing two experiments that he conducted, using an iron tube and coiled wire. The experiments he described involved changing iron to slate and producing a sound in the tube by passing a current through the tube.

Letter from Henry Bence Jones to Lady Lovelace. 4 November 1844. Page 1.

Letter from Henry Bence Jones to Lady Lovelace. 4 November 1844. Pages 2 and 3.

Letter from Henry Bence Jones to Lady Lovelace. 4 November 1844. Page 4.

*****

Lady Lovelace also worked with Charles Babbage on his computing machine. The ABL owns one of Babbage’s letters. In this letter Babbage thanks Booth, the executor of Kenyon’s will, for the gift of a telescope, which had belonged to the Brownings’ valued friend, John Kenyon. EBB in a letter to RB (17 February 1845) makes a reference to Babbage. She compares Tennyson submitting to the criticism of others like “as if Babbage were to take my opinion & undo his calculating machine by it.”

Charles Babbage, 1791, 1871.

Letter from Charles Babbage to [James] Booth. 20 December 1856.

*****

Richard Owen, 1804-1892. Courtesy of Armstrong Browning Library.

Richard Owen, the paleontologist who first coined the word “dinosaur,” writes a letter to Edmund Belfour, Secretary of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, reporting on his observations at the Collections at the Jardin du Plantes in Paris. It appears that he was there studying the bones of fish and reptiles.

Letter from Richard Owen to Edmund Belfour. 8 September 1853. Page 1.

Letter from Richard Owen to Edmund Belfour. 8 September 1853. Pages 2 and 3.

Letter from Richard Owen to Edmund Belfour. 8 September 1853. Page 4.

*****

Charles Wheatstone, 1802-1875. Courtesy of Armstrong Browning Library.

Charles Wheatstone, who experimented with acoustics, optics, electricity, and telegraphy, and is known for his contributions to spectroscopy and telegraphy, writes to an identified correspondent about viewing his “curious productions.”

Letter from Charles Wheatstone to an Unidentified Correspondent. Undated.

In another letter Wheatstone declines an unidentified correspondent’s request to become a resident curator for the Observatory at Kew.

Letter from Charles Wheatstone to an Unidentified Correspondent. 27 July 1842.

*****

Adam Sedgwick, 1785-1873, by Samuel Cousins, after Thomas Phillips. Courtesy of  © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Andrew Crosse, 1784-1855.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adam Sedgwick, British geologist and mentor of Charles Darwin, writes to Andrew Crosse, an early pioneer and experimenter in electricity, bemoaning his own recent illnesses and injuries and acknowledging Crosse’s recent “interesting” experiments.

Letter from Adam Sedgwick to Andrew Crosse. 10 July [No year]. Page 1.

Letter from Adam Sedgwick to Andrew Crosse. 10 July [No year]. Page 2.

Letter from Adam Sedgwick to Andrew Crosse. 10 July [No year]. Page 3.

*****

In this letter, Victorian poet, Sophia Lydia Walters, writes to Mr. Craig-Brown, thanking him for a photo of Mr. Lang and promising to send a copy of her book.  She goes on to recount a story about meeting a Mr. W. Coffin, who took her to “a meeting of the aeronautical Society, where I saw flying machines – or rather strange machines hung on ropes down which they slid and then broke.” She says he has a “sad name.” Ironically, I ran across an announcement that a Sophia Lydia Walters married a Mr. Walter Harris Coffin in 1892. The letter was tipped into a volume of her poetry, Lostara.

Letter from Sophia Lydia Walters to Mr. Craig-Brown. 19 May 1890. Page 1.

Letter from Sophia Lydia Walters to Mr. Craig-Brown. 19 May 1890. Page 2.

Letter from Sophia Lydia Walters to Mr. Craig-Brown. 19 May 1890. Pages 3 and 4.

 

Exploration

The nineteenth century was also an age of exploration. Explorers sailed to the North and South Poles and explored the interior of the African continent. One of the albums acquired by the Armstrong Browning Library belonged to Louis Arthur Lucas (1851-1876), merchant and traveler in Africa. Many of the letters refer to his travels in Africa.

This letter from Frederick Arthur Stanley, Earl of Derby and Colonial Secretary from 1885-1886, to Major General Stanton, British Consul-General in Egypt, reports that Dr. Hooker, the Director of the Gardens at Kew has requested an introduction of Mr. Lucas to Stanton regarding Lucas’s proposed exploratory trip to the Lake District of Africa.

Letter from Frederick Arthur Stanley to Major General Stanton. 11 October 1875. Page 1.

Letter from Frederick Arthur Stanley to Major General Stanton. 11 October 1875. Page 2.

*****

Frances Rawdon Moira Crozier, 1796-1848.

F. R. M. Crozier was the Captain of the HMS Terror, one of the ships of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. In this letter to Sir Thomas Hamilton, First Lord of the Admiralty, Crozier expresses his confidence in the seaworthiness of the lifebuoys used for the voyage. There is another interesting inscription in pencil at the bottom of the page:

Capt. Crozier —who commanded the same ship as Sir John Franklin’s expedition & was lost with him in 1843-6 . My brother was lost with him.

This letter was found with other letters removed  from an album of letters and autographs collected by Mr. Louis A. Lucas. However, no one with the surname Lucas was found among the crew lists of either the Terror or the Erebus.

Letter from Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier to Sir Thomas [Hamilton]. 28 March [1845]. page 1.

Letter from Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier to Sir Thomas [Hamilton]. 28 March [1845]. Page 2.

*****

Samuel Baker, 1821-1893.

Florence Baker, 1841-1916.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ABL has several letters from Samuel and Florence Baker. Samuel Baker was an English explorer, officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer and abolitionist. Barbara Maria Szasz was orphaned and sold as a slave to Samuel Baker. Together they became African explorers, searching for the source of the Nile River and discovering Lake Albert. Returning to England they were married, and she became Lady Florence Baker.

Moses Montefiore, a British financier and banker, activist, philanthropist and Sheriff of London, was Jewish and an advocate for Jewish causes. He lived to be 100 years old. His wife, Judith Montefiore, was a British linguist, musician, travel writer, and philanthropist. She was Jewish and wrote the first Jewish cookbook written in English.

In this letter Samuel declines Mrs. Montefiore’s invitation due to illness.

Letter from Samuel White Baker to Mrs. Montefiore. Undated. Page 1.

Letter from Samuel White Baker to Mrs. Montefiore. Undated. Pages 2 and 3.

Letter from Samuel White Baker to Mrs. Montefiore. Undated. Page 4.

*****

The Burr Album contains letters on a variety of subjects —science, exploration, politics, art, travel, and literature. Mrs. Ann-Margaretta Burr was an English watercolor artist. Her husband, Daniel Higford Davall Burr, was a Member of Parliament and a justice of the peace. In this letter, Baker accepts Mrs. Burr’s invitation to visit their home, Aldermaston.

Letter from Samuel White Baker to Ann Margaretta Burr. 20 January [Undated].

In this letter Florence asks for a postponement of visiting Mrs. Montefiore’s garden, because her youngest daughter has measles.

Letter from Samuel White Baker to Mrs. Montefiore. Undated.

In another letter Florence accepts Mrs. Burr’s invitation to dinner. She mentions that they had met Mr. Burr at the geographical meeting.

Letter from Florence Baker to Ann Margaretta Burr. 27 February [Undated]. Page 1.

Letter from Florence Baker to Ann Margaretta Burr. 27 February [Undated]. Pages 2 and 3.

Letter from Florence Baker to Ann Margaretta Burr. 27 February [Undated]. Page 4.

~~~~~

For the complete series of blog posts on the Victorian Collection:

Literary figures represented in the Victorian Collection are covered in the blog series: Beyond the Brownings

 

 

Introducing…The Victorian Collection at the Armstrong Browning Library: A Baylor Libraries Digital Collection

Posted on by
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The Armstrong Browning Library is pleased to announce the release of The Victorian Collection online. This new digital collection contains over 3,000 letters and manuscripts connected to prominent and lesser known British and American figures and complements the Armstrong Browning Library’s unparalleled collection of materials relating to the Victorian poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Below is a Q&A with Dr. Melinda Creech, Graduate Research Assistant at the Armstrong Browning Library and the driving force behind this digitization project. In the interview, Dr. Creech discusses how this project came about and highlights some of her favorite items in the collection.

The Armstrong Browning Library will celebrate the release of this new digital collection with short presentations by Dr. Creech and Darryl Stuhr, Associate Director, Digital Preservation Services, Library and Academic Technology Services, on Thursday, November 29 at 3:30 pm in the Armstrong Browning Library Lecture Hall. A reception will follow in the Mary Armstrong Seminar Room.

Melinda Creech

Melinda Creech organizes and describes letters from the Armstrong Browning Library’s Victorian Collection

How did you become involved in the project to digitize the Victorian Collection and what role did you play in the project?

I first came to work at the Armstrong Browning Library in the summer of 2011. One of my first jobs was to transcribe the letters in the Kenyon/Frizell Album that had been purchased in June of that year. The album had one letter from Robert Browning to John Kenyon, and two letters from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to John Kenyon. John Kenyon, an English poet and philanthropist, was Elizabeth’s distant cousin and introduced her to Robert. He became their dear friend. However, in addition to these three letters, there were eighty-three other letters in the album. Several were from other notable authors of the nineteenth century: Dickens, Carlyle, and Thackeray. As I struggled to read the handwriting of so many correspondents, I began to realize that although they may not have had the notoriety of the Brownings, all these people had led interesting lives and had fascinating stories to tell.

I continued to pay attention to interesting Victorian letters that I ran across. This led to the creation of a several exhibits and blog posts, “Beyond the Brownings,” “Giving Nineteenth Century Women Writers A Voice and a Face,” “Seeing Many Beautiful Things,” “They Asked for a Paper,” and “White Star Lines: Titanic Connections at the ABL.”

There was not a comprehensive list of the Victorian letters. I remember asking about how many Victorian letters were thought to be in the collection. When I was told about 500, I was surprised, based on my personal experience with the letters, and asked if I could  create a more comprehensive list of the Victorian letters, those not directly related to the Brownings. In the summer of 2014, I began the Victorian Letters Project. That summer Kara Long helped me to create a schema for collecting the metadata, and I spent the summer collecting the metadata from existing card catalogues, and continued adding letters discovered in albums, tipped into books, and hidden in other collections. In January of 2017, having collected all the metadata on almost 4000 letters, we began to make plans for digitizing the letters and manuscripts.

Sarah Rude

Sarah Rude digitizes letters from the Armstrong Browning Library’s Victorian Collection at the Riley Digitization Center

Who were some of your collaborators and what roles did they play in making this digital collection possible?

Jennifer Borderud, new director of the ABL, Darryl Stuhr, Assistant Director for Digital Projects, Allison Riley, Digitization Coordinator, and Kara Long, Metadata and Catalog Librarian, and I finalized plans for digitizing the Victorian Letters Collection at the ABL in January, and the work began. The letters had to be properly identified, transcribed, if necessary, housed, and transported to the Riley Digitization Center. I was not involved in the process at the Digitization Center, which involved scanning the letters, editing and saving the images, processing the images, archiving them, recording all the processes, and returning the letters to the ABL. Once the letters were returned they had to be checked in and returned to their storage area. Many graduate assistants and paid staff, both at the ABL and the Riley Digitization Center, were instrumental in the completion of the project. I’m not sure I can recall everyone, but here are some who helped: Darryl Stuhr, Allyson Riley, Michael Galindo, Katherine MacKenzie, Sarah Rude, B.J. Thome, Evangeline Eilers, Josh Pittman, and Meagan Anthony.

What aspects of the project were the most rewarding?

The most rewarding part of the project was bringing to light letters and manuscripts that had been hidden for a long time. Finding the Dowden letters was thrilling. Mrs. Dowden had been a correspondent of the Brownings and of Dr. Armstrong. She lived in Ireland during a time of great unrest in the early part of the twentieth century. After corresponding with Dr. Armstrong for a while, she decided that her letters would be safer at the ABL. She sent the letters of her husband, Edward Dowden, first, and eventually sent her letters also to Dr. Armstrong, with the stipulation that they were only to be published after her death. The letters, almost 400, are filled with contemporary literary criticism. Prof. Dowden was the first English literature professor in Ireland. The letters had been safely stored in the vault at the ABL, and were undisturbed, I think, until I opened the drawer in 2016.

I often write to scholars all over the world with questions about letters, and those questions have, in some cases, opened new avenues of research for them. Sometimes scholars responded to blogs that I had written about the Victorian Letters, and a lively correspondence grew between us. Those correspondents included a Dickens scholar in Ireland, a science historian in Germany, a religious biographer in Florida, a maritime museum curator in Greenwich, a Purefoy-Fitzgerald scholar at the Bodleian, Wordsworth and Carlyle scholars in Grasmere, and a Hopkins scholar in York.

What aspects of the project were the most challenging?

Four thousand letters are a lot of letters. Just collecting the metadata on that many letters seems an almost impossible job for one person to do. I suppose one of the most frustrating moments came after all 1100 letters that had been housed in the filing cabinets in the vault had been prepared, sent to digitization, returned, and refiled, when I received word that the scanning machine at the digitization center had not been working properly, and all the letters would have to be returned and scanned again. That was pretty discouraging, but the rescanning took a lot less time the second time around.

Percy Florence Shelley Letter

Letter from Percy Florence Shelley to Tom Taylor, dated 11 January 1871, in the Armstrong Browning Library’s Victorian Collection

What item or items in the collection are the most interesting to you?

There have been many, many interesting stories associated with the letters. I remember how excited I was one afternoon as I was making my way through a bundle of letters that were related to the cartoonist Tom Taylor. Most of the letters were letters of condolences to his wife after his death. However among the letters I found one signed “Percy Shelley.” A quick bit of research revealed the letter was from the poet’s son, Percy Florence Shelley, and unlocked a fascinating story about the plays he produced in a theater in his own house. There was a letter from the artist and writer John Ruskin to his protégé, Lilias Trotter, who became a life-long missionary to Algeria. This was timely, because we were showing a film about Lilias Trotter’s life here at the ABL at the time. Her biographer was thrilled to find this bit of correspondence between Ruskin and Lilias. There are letters from writers, artists, musicians, scientists, explorers, clergy (even Baptists), statesmen, soldiers, and even cricket players. There are many letters related to scientists and explorers, artists and musicians, clergymen and politicians, and actors and stage managers. My hope is that digitizing these letters, which are outside the purview of the literary world of the ABL, will provide scientists, artists, musicians, and historians a new glance into the life of someone in their particular field for whom they have a passion.

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For the complete series of blog posts on the Victorian Collection:

Literary figures represented in the Victorian Collection are covered in the blog series: Beyond the Brownings