Week 6: All the Fun

This is the seventh of a series of posts about my Humfrey Wanley Fellowship project, which investigated the scholarship of the women who staffed the Bodleian's unofficial research department in the early twentieth century. The full series of posts can be read here. The first post, which outlines the scope and background of the project, is here. 

'...a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry.' ~ Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night 

My final task at the end of my fellowship at the Bodleian Libraries was to write a short report summarising what I had accomplished during my six weeks in the library. Because my fellowship focused on letters, I chose to write my report in the form of a letter to Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726), the person after whom the fellowship was named. Reading late nineteenth and early twentieth century epistolary style is a delight and I had 'all the fun' doing my best to imitate it.

I hope you enjoy reading my report as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Visiting Scholars Centre, Weston Library
Oxford
17 September 2021

A letter to Sir Humfrey Wanley concerning time spent during a fellowship bearing his name

Dear Sir,

I have been asked to give an account of my time as a visiting fellow at the Bodleian Libraries. I have been a grateful holder of the fellowship which bears your distinguished name and, as the compass of my researches includes medieval manuscripts and scholarly librarians, I hope that the following may be of some interest. Since my work has involved letters, it seemed appropriate to write my report in epistolary form—I trust that this might be acceptable, and will gladly provide plainer prose if preferred.

Trained as a historian at the University of Leeds, where my doctorate focused on friendship in the works of the late antique poet Venantius Fortunatus, I became an academic librarian and associate lecturer at the University of Lincoln in 2017. When I started those jobs, I carried with me curiosity about the story of a footnote in an article Theodor Mommsen’s edition of the Theodosian Code, which mentioned that between 1899 and 1903 he had manuscripts collated and transcribed in Oxford by a woman named Annie Parker. About her the author of the article, Brian Croke, knew nothing beyond her name. Mommsen’s praise for the high quality of Miss Parker’s manuscript work made me curious about who she was, and where and how she learned to work with medieval manuscripts. As a medieval studies librarian and associate lecturer, working with students whose level of preparation for the technical skills of the discipline (languages, codicology, paleography, and so on) vary widely, I also wondered Miss Parker’s journey towards expertise might provide lessons for how one learns to study manuscripts, and so provide inspiration for new ways to teach these skills. 

4 August 2021. Punts in the morning.

My work as an academic librarian, meanwhile, had led me to become interested in the fields of scholarly communication and research librarianship—questions which might be summarised as the way that historical research works as a process, from the time a scholar formulates a question they wish to answer, to the point where their findings are shared with others in some way. One often thinks of a large publication—an edition or monograph or catalogue—as the product of a single individual, but working with students and academics in my library made me aware of the ways in which published research, which often bears the name of a single author, is made possible by the labour of many other people. My project thus investigates the hidden and unacknowledged contributions of female library workers to scholarly publications, especially in the study of the Middle Ages.

The Library Records collection affords a unique opportunity to explore these subjects; and during the period of my fellowship (August to September 2021), I have been reading letters sent to Bodleian Library Assistant George Parker, and his daughters, Angelina Frances New (nicknamed Annie) and Evaline Gertrude Parker. I am given to understand that as Keeper of the Harleian Library, you yourself spent much time replying to requests for information, and sharing details of the books in your care with those who could not travel to see them (or who lacked the facility with languages or paleography to access the texts without an intermediary). You would find familiar ground in many of the 2,583 letters I have had the pleasure to read during my fellowship—requests for information about the contents of the library in relation to specific subjects are extremely frequent, and so too are requests from scholars for copies of specific sections of manuscripts or books. Inquirers show a substantial level of interest in the material related to architecture, heraldry, and landholding collected by your correspondent Samuel Carte (bequeathed to the Bodleian by his son Thomas), and the antiquarians Roger Dodsworth and Richard Rawlinson.

11 September 2021. A run to Godstow Abbey.

Angelina and Evaline Parker, and their father George, contributed transcriptions, proof-reading, and research to a number of publications, including W.S. McCormick’s edition of the works of Chaucer, J.A. Herbert’s edition of the Middle English poem Titus & Vespasian or the Destruction of Jerusalem, F.W.D. Brie’s edition of the Brut, and other publications for the Early English Texts society. Indeed, correspondence from most of the editors of EETS volumes published between the late 1880s and 1910s are found in the Library Records collection. A number of letters are from Frederick James Furnivall, the redoubtable founder of that society, and his colleague Walter Skeat—who clearly regarded the Parker family (especially Annie) as trusted authorities on Oxford manuscripts. While the Parkers’ paleographic specialisms and interests do not seem to have entirely intersected with yours, theirs being much later, a letter from the antiquary Agnes Gibbons shows that Annie Parker read and transcribed Old English. Further to the subject of learned societies, you will be pleased to learn that there are twelve letters from that distinguished body which you cofounded, the Society of Antiquaries, relating to the researches of its secretary, William Henry St John Hope.

The Parkers’ correspondents were not limited to scholars and antiquaries in Great Britain—they corresponded with antiquaries, genealogists, and scholars in Austria, Bohemia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the United States. Notable names among the German correspondents include the classicist Theodor Mommsen, the historians Ernst Dümmler and Oswald Koller, and the philologist Max Müller. American correspondents include the economic historian Charles Henry Hull, the art critic Frank Jewett Mather Jr, the writer Imogen Louise Guiney, and the Harvard University professors Chester Noyes Greenough, George Herbert Palmer, and Oliver Sprague. Letters which have some entertainment value as well as being of scholarly interest abound, but rather than recount these in full, I beg leave to refer you to a series of short essays about them, which you can find here. 

My office in the Visiting Scholars' Centre

As you wrote in your letter on the library of St Paul’s Cathedral, the librarian of that place should be ‘ready to receive strangers,’ and I must acknowledge the welcome I have received from members of the Bodleian Library community. I am very grateful to Neil Iden, Hannah Jordan, Ernesto Gomez, Nicola O’Toole, and other members of the Special Collections team who have shepherded me through archival work in a pandemic with kindness and efficiency. I am enormously grateful to Alex Franklin and Rachel Naismith, for their help in making arrangements for me to come to Oxford, and for making my time here such a great pleasure.

In addition to several helpful conversations about my findings as they progressed, Dr Franklin kindly arranged introductions and meetings with Oliver House, Faye McLeod, Martin Kauffman and Andrew Dunning, with whom I have discussed (respectively) the Library Records collection and special collections enquiries then and now; ways in which my research notes could be used to enhance the Bodleian’s electronic catalogue of these particular Library Records (our conversation also discussed the medieval and early modern records of the Vice Chancellor’s Court—to which I subsequently found reference in letters to the Parkers); and the Parker family’s work with medieval manuscripts. Ms McLeod kindly introduced me to Bethany Hamblen of Balliol, and we have corresponded about George Parker’s work in the Library of that College. I am most grateful for the time these people have taken, and the interest they have shown in my work, and I hope we will continue to correspond as my work progresses. While the time of year and state of the pandemic have meant that I have not been able to organize or deliver any seminars or lectures relating to my work, I would be honoured to do so should opportunities arise in the future. 

23 August 2021. At work in the reading room.

My application for the fellowship referred to two publications I hoped to produce as a result of my time here. Thanks to Dr Franklin’s kindness in recommending my project to Professor Elizabeth Baigent, I am presently working on an article about the Parker sisters’ research work for a special issue of the journal History of Universities, on the theme of women at the University of Oxford, which has an anticipated publication date of 2023. As Louise Guiney and her work are of interest to scholars of American literature, I have sought advice from experts in American Catholic writers, Holly Faith Nelson and Jonathan Nauman, about a publication of her forty letters in the Library Records collection. The Parkers corresponded with and referred to other ‘Record-searchers’ like themselves at the British Museum Library and Record Office, and I plan to expand my researches to investigate the scholarship of these women, with the intention of publishing a book on their lives and work.

Outside of the library, I have been an enthusiastic attender of concerts, particularly at the Holywell Music Rooms and Sheldonian Theatre—joyfully listening to live music for the first time since February 2020. Additionally, I have been training for the Manchester Marathon, and have enjoyed many miles on the beautiful river paths and meadows, that make Oxford such a pleasant place to be. The run to and from the ruins of Abingdon Abbey is a lovely sixteen miles—though it can be extravagantly muddy after heavy rain. I have also enjoyed trips to many of Oxford’s bookstores, and am returning home with many additions to my personal library. Serendipitously, one of these, Genki Kawamura's If Cats Disappeared from the World, is itself in the form of a letter. 

22 August 2021. Aftermath of a visit to Daunt Books.

I modestly hope that this letter has been a pleasant diversion from the great labours of your Librarianship, and sign myself, in the manner of Louise Imogen Guiney, a most ‘grateful undergraduate of Sir Thomas Bodley's eternal college,’ to which I anticipate returning on many further occasions. With great gratitude and many happy memories of a delightful and productive visit, I remain, Sir,

Yours very truly,

Hope Williard