FOLIOCollections • Research • Events at the National Library of Scotland ISSUE 4 SPRING 2002

IN THIS ISSUE

CUTTING YOURSWEETHEART’S TOENAILSMacDiarmid Unplugged

A SCOTTISH COLLECTORIN THE 1930sHugh Sharp and the QuangleWangle’s Hat

ITALIAN CORNUCOPIACollections and Connections

GOAT FELL TO TABLEMOUNTAINThe Papers of ‘Jane Shaw’

THUMB’S UP! Children’s Books on Show

F O L I O 3F O L I O2

MacDiarmid is important fortwo reasons: he is a majorpoet and his writing hashad an incalculable

influence on the cultural and political lifeof twentieth-century Scotland. Bothaspects of his work are vital and, like somuch Scottish literature, massively under-researched. The Library has yieldedcrucial cross-references to MacDiarmid’srelationships with contemporaries such asLewis Grassic Gibbon, Neil Gunn,Naomi Mitchison, Helen BurnessCruickshank, John MacNair Reid, SorleyMacLean, Norman MacCaig – they allknew each other and wrote to eachother. There is no comprehensive socialliterary history of their period. Why arewe so reluctant to put personal anecdoteinto print? The history of therelationships of these writers and others –the composers and artists of the period –is crying out to be written. The archivesof the Library are full of materialdemanding to be sifted and creativelyinterpreted. These were people whoselives were full of passion, intensity anddifficulty. Their poetry and novels may bethe lasting yield but a great deal moremight be made of their biographies. Forexample, it is surely worth knowing that,probably just after his demobilisation, ayoung Christopher Grieve met JosephConrad in London, introduced byEdward Garnett. MacDiarmid mentionsthis in a radio talk on Conrad(MS.27058) but it isn’t in Alan Bold’sbiography or anywhere else, as far as Iknow. Similarly, it’s worth noting thespeeches MacDiarmid gave on occasion:for example, the funeral oration, forJames Barke; the speech on Polaris andthe possibility of nuclear war in 1960(both MS.27073). What wereMacDiarmid’s responses to key events inmodern history? In an undated article(MS.27061) headed ‘A Scottish Boy’sReading’ he notes: ‘… at Easter 1916[when he was twenty-three and in Britishuniform] in an English barracks I feltthat I had suffered the sudden brutal andwanton loss of some of my best friends… and was seized with an overwhelmingand permanent abhorrence for theuniform in which I was then parading.’

MacDiarmid’s eager interest in thetechnological developments in popularculture, the idiosyncrasies of hisfriendships and acquaintances, his

intimate personal responses tocontemporary political events: knowledgeof these helps humanise MacDiarmid andmight subvert the process by which apoet becomes a caricature and acaricature becomes an icon. And in aculture so prone to unquestioningreliance on iconic self-representation(think of Burns or Scott), a morehumanised comprehension of identitywould help.

Sidelights illuminate featuresotherwise indistinct: it’s valuable toremember that MacDiarmid championedthe work of the Orkney film-makerMargaret Tait (MS.27058) and the actorDuncan MacRae (MS.27060), and wrote

fugitive ephemera on such genuinelyabstruse topics as ‘The Drowned Man‚ inLiterature’ (Shakespeare, Milton,Swinburne, Hopkins), or ‘The Joys ofGuddling’ and ‘The Joys of Angling’, or‘The Onychiomatic Test’ (MS.27061) –an essay on the literature of fingernails ortoenails, the test being whether you canendure the thought of cutting yoursweetheart’s toenails. There are manyitems that didn’t get into thecomprehensive selection of prosepublished by Carcanet – essays on ‘TheLibel About Scotland’s Weather’ or ‘ThePlace of Photography in a Nation’sCulture’ or ‘The Twelve GreatestScotswomen’ (MS.27061).

I had the chance to explore some ofthe Library’s MacDiarmid holdings whileworking on my PhD. I was also luckyenough to gain the support of MichaelGrieve, the poet’s son, who put methrough to Colin Hamilton and KulginDuval, who had been MacDiarmid’sbenefactors, and whose collection ofmanuscripts and rare items I wasgenerously allowed to consult. Thisarchive is now housed in the Library andformed much of the basis of what was tobecome the MacDiarmid 2000 project –the ‘Collected Works’ which CarcanetPress began publishing in August 1992,on the centenary of MacDiarmid’s birth.

I’d moved to New Zealand by then,to teach at the University of Waikato,and when Carcanet took on theMacDiarmid project, thus began a kindof global, long-term rhythm of research.For ten years, the essential shape of thisrhythm was that I would plan what hadto be done in New Zealand, set off toScotland to see the necessary people, goto the archives and dig up what I had tofind, then go back to New Zealand andsort it out, prepare it for publication andpresent it. It was a productive time andthe National Library of Scotland becamethe central locus of work – a uniquelyexciting kind of work. The MacDiarmidproject had to be balanced betweenscholarship and the immediate appeal toa neglected readership. For variousreasons a significant hinterland of readershad been denied access to MacDiarmid’swork. Many of his books were publishedby small presses in limited print-runs.More troublingly, political antipathy tohis membership of the Communist Partyseems to have led certain influential

people to direct readers away from him;some readers have been put off by his useof the Scots language; his insistentnationalism led directly to his exclusionfrom some otherwise valuable accounts oftwentieth-century poetry in English.Addressing an international readershipthrough the agency of Carcanet Press –who not only publish Sorley MacLean,Edwin Morgan, Iain Crichton Smith, butalso Les Murray and John Ashbery –dictated an ideal of accessibility.

When the first volumes in the series –a new Selected Poems and Selected Prose –appeared, they were reviewed on BBCRadio 4’s Kaleidoscope programme byJoy Hendry and Peter Porter. JoyHendry memorably said thatMacDiarmid was ‘the mostimportant single figure inScottish life in the twentiethcentury’ but Porter seemeddistanced from that kind ofrecognition, and was surelyspeaking for many readers whenhe said that for the first timeMacDiarmid was beingpresented to him as ‘a poet ofgreat thinking capacity … Thewhole vision that I get fromthis new selection ofMacDiarmid is that … fewpoets are so certain that themind is the property of poetry, and fewhave been paid back so well for thattrust, for putting that trust into it.’

As an argumentative poet, as a poetof ideas, he comes over very stronglyindeed. His reputation in Scotland haschanged too. The American influence ofthe Beats and Black Mountain writers ofthe 1950s and 1960s led some Scottishwriters to stigmatise MacDiarmid as nomore than a nationalist fogey, when, infact, as research into the Library archiveshas shown, MacDiarmid was reviewingWilliam Carlos Williams and WallaceStevens as early as the 1920s, and wrotewelcoming Robert Creeley, CharlesOlson and others in the late1950s – wellbefore the 1960 publication of DonaldAllen’s influential anthology, The NewAmerican Poetry.

The 1960s saw MacDiarmid’s statusrecognised by critics like Duncan Glenand Kenneth Buthlay but there was also abacklash of criticism. Good critical workcame through in the 1980s but there wasanother critical reaction in the 1990s,

especially from ostensible feministsunwilling to analyse and understand thecomplexity of the profoundly sexist worldMacDiarmid came out of. Even more tothe point would be an investigation ofthe women in MacDiarmid’s lifeundertaken on their terms, rather thanhis. In the National Library of Scotland,the letters of Valda, his second wife, are awonderful, daunting repository,displaying her vulnerability and herprotective devotion to her husband andson as well as her independence of spiritand fierceness. In MS.27149 she talks ofher Aunt Jane reading MacDiarmid’sstory ‘Five Bits of Miller’, reaching thebit about ‘the ear’ and becomingviolently sick – ‘she has definitely come

to the conclusion that you’remad’. Yet there is also a letterof 1934 that includes theselines: ‘life isn’t worth living inmy opinion – if only I had thepluck … suicide would be aneasy way out … just swim outand out … beautiful blue sea …can go no further … arms up… a few gurgles and all is over… it sounds so easy but …’ Inthe story of the Grieves’ lifetogether, so much hangs fromthat little word ‘but’. If thepressures of living with

MacDiarmid were great at times, theweight of the man’s work was also felt by

Crying Out to be Written

ALAN RIACH

MacDiarmid History in the Making

How far did the public persona of‘Hugh MacDiarmid’ differ from

the private man ChristopherMurray Grieve? An icon of

Scottish identity and one of thegreat writers of the twentieth

century, Hugh MacDiarmid wasdauntingly outspoken in his

political views and no stranger tocontroversy and confrontation. Inprivate life, however, ChristopherMurray Grieve was a passionate,warm and vulnerable man whoinspired intense admiration and

love in his friends. The manyfacets of this complicated

individual are expressed withuninhibited immediacy in his

correspondence. As Alan Riachand his fellow editors of the NewSelected Letters discovered, theMacDiarmid material at theNational Library of Scotland

illuminates an extraordinary life.

Christopher Murray Grieve’s National Library card,1956–57. (MS.27214/73)

Chris and Valda Grieve. (Reproduced with the kindpermission of the Hugh MacDiarmid estate.)

Hugh MacDiarmid at Brownsbank, September1976. (MS.27213/33)

F O L I O 5F O L I O4

a number of Scottish writers of latergenerations, some of whom simplywished it would go away. So, in a sense,part of my work was to free upinterpretation by providing the texts in adefinite form – by making MacDiarmidhistory.

There was an urgency involved in thisproject particular to the moment. Inanother hundred years, perhaps, variorumeditions will proliferate on CD-ROM orwhatever technology might prevail then.How much time has had to pass beforedefinitive editions of Shakespeare,Dickens, Scott or Stevenson could beprepared, if they ever can? How muchcloser and more dangerous was a projectlike this! MacDiarmid opens more doorsinto a greater number of disciplines, areasof interest, histories, landscapes, ways ofunderstanding how the northernEuropean world changed from the late-nineteenth to the late-twentieth century,than any other major modern writer. TheCarcanet MacDiarmid really only beginsto show this – there are many roads andbyways still requiring exploration.

The Library offered two majorresources: the printed items innewspapers, journals and books, and themanuscript archives in the SpecialCollections Division. The periodicals andnewspapers were a revelation. We take somuch for granted, reading our dailypaper: we don’t consciously keep in mindthe evolution of the press, the waynewspapers looked four years or forty oreighty years ago. I read the polemicalessays and exhortations penned by C.M.Grieve or ‘Mountboy’ or ‘A SpecialCorrespondent’ or a dozen otherpseudonyms alongside contemporaryadvertisements for farmers’ chicken-feedor washing-up powders or the latest curefor lumbago. What would his first readershave made of him, as they turned thepage from an article summarising thelatest town council pontifications or localchurch luminaries’ ruminations to thepunchy aggression of ‘The PresentPosition of Scottish Arts and Letters’?Newspapers and periodicals provided awealth of material well beyond allprevious bibliographies. The pseudonymswere a problem. One series of articles waspromised, advertised, begun but nevercompleted; tracking through later issuesof the journal in which they appeared, asecond series on a different but related

Note on sourcesAt the National Library of Scotland, themain body of the correspondence ofHugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) iscatalogued as MSS.27001–27246 andMSS.26031–26035; other accessions andMacDiarmid-related material toonumerous to detail here may beidentified through the Library’scatalogues of manuscripts and printedbooks. MacDiarmid biographer AlanBold drew extensively from Libraryholdings for The Letters of HughMacDiarmid (1984). Furthercorrespondence that has since come intothe public domain forms the basis ofHugh MacDiarmid: New Selected Letters(2001) edited by Alan Riach, OwenDudley Edwards and Dorian Grieve, whohave drawn on correspondence coveringevery aspect of his life, including manypersonal letters, some passionate andtender, others electric with invective.

subject began but then the firstseries seemed to be resumed, ina much less polemical style andunder a more anonymouspseudonym – two initial letters. Iwas pretty certain this wasMacDiarmid at work again, butcouldn’t be one hundred percent sure. I showed photocopiesto W.R. Aitken, MacDiarmid’sbibliographer and the first editorof the Complete Poems. Hesmiled in recognition: ‘Oh, thereis no question,’ he said. ‘That’shim all right.’ The newspapereditor would have stopped theseries when it became too hot tohandle – too many establishmentfigures getting egg on theirfaces. Then MacDiarmid wouldhave infiltrated again after abreak, saying the same sort ofthing in a more reasonable tone.

There were importantdiscoveries in EdinburghUniversity Library, the MitchellLibrary, Glasgow, and the NewYork University Library atBuffalo (with help from RobertCreeley and the poetry curator Robert J.Bertholf). But crucially, for three monthsin 1995, I worked almost exclusively inthe National Library of Scotland’s SpecialCollections.

My co-editors in the MacDiarmidproject were Angus Calder, OwenDudley Edwards, Dorian Grieve, GlenMurray, Roderick Watson; John Mansonand others gave invaluable contributions.However, as we acknowledged in theNew Selected Letters, ‘Librarians makework such as ours possible,’ and it is noexaggeration to say that the work simplycould not have been completed withoutthe assistance of Library staff. It was aten-minute walk from my flat inEdinburgh to the Reading Room, and,once there, practically no time before themanuscripts were on the table. There isan intense sense of connection when youinterpret from written manuscript. Thepoems, stories, articles, journalist’snotebooks and letters amongMacDiarmid’s papers all revealed aspectsof the man. There are jottings, plans forunwritten books and short stories,collections of poems and notes forspeeches at events unrecorded hitherto inthe critical accounts. Such papers are also

highly suggestive of the preoccupationsof day to day life.

Perhaps the most revealingmanuscripts, though, are the letters.There are letters written in white anger –full of raging dashes and brokensentences – and there are the long,formulaic, eloquent letters of politeformality yet containing hints of otherstories working through the man’s life indeeper strata. Nowhere does the extentof pain Chris Grieve suffered becomemore apparent than in the letters to hisfirst wife, her lover and, most terribly, thechildren Chris had with her, whom shetook with her when she left him. InMS.27148 a letter addressed to his firstwife begins: ‘My dear Peggy, Valda’scourage is perhaps indeed beyondcomprehension to you, for it turns onthe little word “love” of which you knownothing. This must be my last letter toyou.’ It wasn’t, though, and memories ofPeggy and his hopes for his first lovecontinued to haunt him terribly, as theNew Selected Letters volume shows.

Christopher Grieve and his son Michael onWhalsay. (Reproduced with the kind permission ofthe Hugh MacDiarmid estate.)

MacDiarmid explains that he has decided tocall his autobiography Lucky Poet: ‘That’ll besome indication of how I intend to treat thebusiness, for despite all my ups and downsand the many unfortunate aspects of mylife, on the balance I have undoubtedly beenlucky… My Autobiography is certainly notgoing to be anything in the nature of awhine for pity.’ Letter to Valda, c. 1936.(MS.27221/92)

Carcanet’s New Selected Letters(H3.202.0408) draws extensively fromMacDiarmid correspondence at theNational Library of Scotland.

Yet there is an emergence.The long sequences of letters toValda and to their son, and then,much later in his life, the lettersto his daughter and son from hisfirst marriage after he wasreconciled with them, tell aprofoundly moving story ofloyalty growing through andbeyond the passions of youthfullove.

Ardour was never lacking inMacDiarmid’s emotional bankbut what comes through theletters published in 2001 is, inthe end, a sustaining trust in theresources of nature, a joy inremembering and a willingnessto face the unknown withcourage – confident, despitewhatever risk. In his lastinterview, MacDiarmid said thathe’d been told that he’dpublished over a hundred booksand pamphlets and would ‘hatelike hell to see them all lined upin front of me!’ Perhaps hewould have disapproved of the‘Collected MacDiarmid’ but I

cannot imagine that he would disapproveof the extent to which our humanitystands so revealed in his story. And thereis yet so much more to be told ...

F O L I O 7

Hugh Sharp. Hoping these points will beblunted by the impeccability of hislibrary’. The Muir letter is relativelyformal, but the two notes by GeoffreyKeynes, also written in 1931, show realfrienship and urge Sharp to visit. TheSadleir letter, dated 1935, is likewisewarm in tone, asking when Sharp wouldnext be in London, as he was keen tohave ‘bibliographical chat’ with him.Sharp’s copy of the first edition ofElizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853)(H.S.128) bears the Sadleir bookplate.

The Sharp Collection includes firstissues of work by most major British andAmerican writers from the eighteenthcentury onwards, including Fielding,Sterne, Hazlitt, Hogg, Scott, Galt,Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, Thackeray,Stevenson, Conrad, Poe, Whitman,Melville, Twain and so on, right up to asigned copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gonewith the Wind (1936) (H.S.705). Amonghighlights worthy of particular mentionare the 1532 Chaucer (H.S.215), IsaakWalton’s Life of John Donne (1658)(H.S.6) with corrections in Walton’s

hand, and a copy of the Lay of the LastMinstrel (1805) (H.S.203) gifted byScott to Dorothy Wordsworth. There isalso some French literature, includingThe Count of Monte Cristo (1865)(H.S.776-793), all eighteen volumes inoriginal wrappers.

Sharp’s Americana includes RichardCurle’s Collecting American FirstEditions (H.S.710) and other suchspecialist works. He had both a first issueof Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’sCabin (1852) (H.S.480–481) and herKey to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published the

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‘No Battered Derelicts’

On the afternoon of 10 December 1937, Hugh Sharp was travelling by train from

Dundee to Glasgow to visit hisfiancée. Just after 4.30 the train drew toa halt at Castlecary, west of Falkirk. Asnowstorm was raging and the driver ofthe Edinburgh train did not see a vitalred signal in the darkness and murk.Disaster struck. The express train fromEdinburgh to Glasgow ploughed into theback of Sharp’s train and he and thirty-four others lost their lives.

Hugh Sharp had been born intorather privileged circumstances and wasbrought up in splendid surroundings. In1904, his father, proprietor of JohnSharp and Sons, jute spinners in Dundee,had purchased Wemyss Hall near Cuparin Fife, changed its name to Hill ofTarvit, and commissioned the Scottisharchitect Robert Lorimer to transformthe late-seventeenth-century mansion.The house was filled with Chineseporcelain, pictures and tapestries, and fine furniture, including new piecesdesigned by Lorimer himself. (The houseand contents are today preserved as aNational Trust property.)

Sharp junior went to school at Rugbyand was seventeen when World War Ibroke out. In 1915 he received acommission as a Second Lieutenant inthe Royal Field Artillery Special Reserve,and ended the war as a Lieutenant andActing Staff Captain. Mentioned twice indespatches, he was awarded the MilitaryCross in October 1917, and by theArmistice, had also received the FrenchCroix de Guerre and the Italian Orderfor Valour. After the war he spent someterms at Oxford, but soon left universityto embark on a business career.

His business activities thrived despitethe 1929 crash, around which time hestarted book collecting, no doubt awareof the investment potential of rare booksand manuscripts, particularly in thecontext of a ‘bear’ market. Sharp wentinto book collecting with firm aims. Hewanted first issues and material in thefinest original condition possible: ‘Theremust be no battered derelicts which,although technically correct, are neitherpleasant to read nor suitable asbibliographical specimens’, as he writes inhis introduction to The Short-TitleCatalogue of the Hugh Sharp Collection,

Edinburgh, 1954 (H.S.1245). The mainsubjects he covered were literature,history and sport, concentrating onBritish and American material. Heaccumulated around 1,500 volumes, withmany fine examples of important books.

There are various clues as to how hewent about acquiring his books. In theSharp Collection there is a letter fromCharles des Graz of Sotheby’s, dated 15June 1933, discussing his purchase of asuperb first edition (1813) in originalboards of Jane Austen’s Pride andPrejudice (H.S.146-148). This copy hadcome from the Bellew family mansion inthe west of Ireland, where it had lainundiscovered in a locked cupboard forover a hundred years. From the samesource came Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy(1818) (H.S.80-82), also in the originalboards – this pristine copy is shown inthe frontispiece of Greville Worthington’sBibliography of the Waverley Novels(1931) (H.S.975). Also acquired in 1933was the magnificent Huth-Rosebery copyof the 1611 Authorized Version of theBible (H.S.385), which was on display atthe Library’s Scotland’s Pages exhibitionin the summer of 2000.

In January 1936, the great Americanbook dealer Dr Rosenbach acquired atauction, on Sharp’s behalf, Washington’sown copy of his Official Letters to theHonorable American Congress (1795)(H.S. 597-598), containing marginalnotes in the hand of the editor, JohnCarey, and with Washington’s signatureon the title page of each volume;Rosenbach described this as ‘the finestbook from Washington’s library’.

Some of Sharp’s incomingcorrespondence reflects the contacts hemade with others in the world of rarebooks. There is a letter from thePhiladelphian collector, MorrisLongstreth Parrish, whose obsession withoriginal condition mirrored Sharp’s, andwho visited him in 1935. In a letter toSharp, Flora Livingston of the HarryWidener Library declared: ‘“Parrish”condition is proverbial here’. There arealso letters from some other collectors,librarians, dealers and bibliographers(including Percy Muir, Michael Sadleirand Geoffrey Keynes), discussing mattersof mutual interest. The Muir letter isloosely inserted into Points, 1874–1930(H.S.973). The book is inscribed ‘For

Hugh Sharp, a successful Dundeebusinessman and book collector,

met a tragically early death in arailway accident in 1937.

Subsequently, his private bookcollection was donated to the

National Library of Scotland by hisfamily. Here Murray Simpson

discusses some of the high spots of theHugh Sharp Collection and

interprets the collecting approach ofthe man who assembled it.

Hugh Sharp and his Books

MURRAY C. T. SIMPSON

Below: Tenniel’s illustration of the Mad Hatter’stea party for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; theHugh Sharp collection includes the rare first issueof 1865 (H.S.255), which was recalled fromcirculation shortly after publication.

E.H. Shepard was commissioned by the Sharpfamily to design the bookplate for the Hugh SharpCollection. Placing the plate in each volume was aspecific condition of the bequest.

Edward’s Lear’s pen and ink drawing of ‘TheQuangle Wangle’s Hat’. (H.S.389 /13)

following year (H.S.632/1), which is isstored at the Library along with twopoignantly evocative items – a deed ofsale (H.S.632/2), for Lettice andWinney, slaves, sold for $278 in 1829 inthe county of Edgecombe and a noticeprinted in jaunty typography on lilacpaper, announcing the ‘Sale of SugarPlantation and Slaves’ at the St LouisHotel Rotunda, on 12 January 1852.The 129 slaves include three twelve-year-old children and a man of seventy.

Hugh Sharp did not collect muchmanuscript material. However, an album(H.S.389) of miscellaneous documentsincludes a letter signed by Bonnie PrinceCharlie as ‘Prince Regent’, bearing hisseal, its bright red wax fresh anduncracked, the impress crisp and fresh.The single-page folio missive, dated 7September 1745, appoints ‘a captain ofhis Majesty’s forces in the regimentcommanded by Euan McPherson ofClunie’. The auction catalogue

Hugh Sharp (1897–1937)

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description of this item, also bound intothe volume, states:

McPherson held command of a company inLord Loudoun’s regiment, and, althoughthe clan had fought for the Pretender in1715, he professed his determination tosupport the Government. On 28th August,1745, he was seized in his own houseduring the night by a large party from theYoung Pretender’s army, and brought as aprisoner to their camp.

It seems that McPherson was persuadedto support the Jacobite cause andsubsequently aided the Prince in hisescape to France.

The album also contains originalmanuscripts of Edward Lear’s ‘ThePobble who had no Toes’ (this versionconsists of ten verses, four more than theoriginal printed version), and of ‘TheQuangle Wangle’s Hat’ with Lear’s penand ink drawing. Two letters in thealbum relate to the Lear acquisitions. Aletter from Angus Davidson dated 4February 1936 notes difficulties heencountered in tracing Lear papers thatwere apparently dispersed at auction in1929 and 1932; thanking Sharp for theloan of certain Lear items, Davidson

Note on sources

The Hugh Sharp Collection comprisesover 1,200 volumes, including many finefirst editions of the classics of English andAmerican literature. The collection wasgifted to the Library by Hugh Sharp’smother and sister with the proviso thateach volume in it should bear HughSharp’s memorial bookplate. The shelf-mark of all volumes in the collectionbears the prefix ‘H.S.’. Further detailedinformation may be gleaned from H.F.B.Sharp, Books of American and CanadianInterest, 1613–1932, Privately Printed[1932] (H.S.1242). The Short-TitleCatalogue of the Hugh Sharp Collection,Edinburgh, 1954 (H.S.1245), compiledby Hugh Sharp, contains his own notesabout many of the works. Inscriptions,letters and papers inserted in the printedbooks are described and indexed involume 2 of the Library’s Catalogue ofManuscripts. A concise overview of theLibrary’s Special Collections is availablein Special and Named Printed Collectionsin the National Library of Scotland(1999) edited by Graham Hogg(GNE.2000.2.1), and an online directoryis available on the Library’s website atwww.nls.uk/catalogues/online/snpc/.

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requests permission to reproduce thehitherto unpublished part of ‘ThePobble’. Sharp’s album also contains aletter, dated 8 August 1933, fromGeorge Lushington, explaining that the‘Quangle Wangle’ poem and drawinghad been given to his elder sister, LouisaGertrude, who was Lear’s god-daughter.Davidson’s Edward Lear: Landscapepainter and Nonsense Poet (1812–1888)(NC.259a.17), published by JohnMurray in 1936, contains the variantstanzas of Sharp’s ‘The Pobble’.

Also of Lear interest is a smallsketchbook (H.S.954) kept by the artist,containing vividly depicted birds andbutterflies – the latter cut out andmounted on pencil drawings of foliage togive a ‘3D’ effect. The collection includesboth the rare 1846 first published editionof Lear’s A Book of Nonsense (H.S.949-950), and the Privately Printed edition(H.S.948) of the same year, as well asfirst editions of More Songs, Stories,Botany and Alphabets (1871) (H.S.952),More Nonsense (1872) (H.S.951) andLaughable Lyrics (1877) (H.S.953).

Album H.S.389 contains a poemwritten in the hand of Andrew Lang onRoyal and Ancient Golf Club notepaper,which opens:

Forget me not, although I broke your putter

Beating your dog; and cheated you at pool,And sent you homeward senseless on a

shutter

A family card with affectionate spoof verse andpicture based on ‘The Quangle Wangle’s Hat’.(H.S.389/17)

‘The Old Man of Leghorn’ from A Book of Nonsenseby Derry Down Derry (H.S.949-950). Theextremely rare first edition of Edward Lear’s firstbook of nonsense verse will be on display at theLibrary’s summer exhibition of children’s books.

And very often bullied you at school;Forget me not, although the maid who

loved youPrefers my own congenial caress,Remember how I was the man who shoved

youInto the Harbour once, in evening dress!

Sharp was a member of the Royal andAncient Golf Club, St Andrews – golfbeing one of his many sporting pursuits.

The Sharp Collection includes somenotable ‘Lewis Carroll’ items includingthe rare 1865 edition of Alice inWonderland (H.S.255) and a copy of the1869 edition of Phantasmagoriainscribed by the author to Dean Liddellof Christ Church, Alice Liddell’s father(H.S.260). The collection also includestwo specially produced Christmas cards:the 1930 card features, in facsimile, apoem inscribed by ‘Lewis Carroll’ on thefly-leaf of Sharp’s copy of The Hunting ofthe Snark (H.S.262); the other card,described by Sharp as his ‘ChristmasCarroll’ for 1931, shows a poem writtenin his 1866 Alice (H.S.257). In bothcases the dedicatee of the verse wasMarion Bessie Terry, younger sister ofthe more famous Ellen. Sharp sent a copyof the 1930 card to T.J. Wise, thebibliophile who four years later would beexposed by John Carter and GrahamPollard as an audacious forger ofcollectors’ desiderata. Wise’s reply thanksSharp ‘for the gift of this most interestingand attractive little waif’.

Only 1,240 of Sharp’s collection of1,500 volumes actually came to theLibrary. This discrepancy is not explainedin any extant documentation. TheLibrary has two typescripts of Sharp’sown catalogue of his collection: onecame with the gift, whilst the other,longer version, arrived in 1981,presented by Sharp’s surviving executor.Both are full of notes recording ‘points’establishing primacy of issue, such as‘reversed comma on page 235’, or ‘with“and” for “an” on page 168’, and thelike. The cataloguing seems to have beenkept up to date until the latter half of1936. In these typescripts, certain itemsare scored through in pencil, but notalways the same items in the two copies.The present whereabouts of nearly all theitems scored through remains a mystery.

Preparation of a printed catalogue of

the Hugh Sharp Collection began in1949 and proofs were ready in 1954, buta decision against publication was made,partly for financial reasons but alsobecause, according to a Library memo, ‘a small collection of books of suchdisparate character can hardly beextensive enough within any one field tobe of significance to any single branch ofserious study …’ Another memo, dated22 May 1962, from the Keeper ofPrinted Books, D.M. Lloyd, to theLibrarian, Dr W. Beattie, went further:‘The publication of the catalogue might even be hurtful to the reputation ofHugh Sharp. He died a young man of 35[sic] and, with increasing experience,would probably have sold many of his

books and specialised in certain kinds ofAmericana and the English novel. It ishardly fair to draw undue attention tosuch unfinished ends as the collectionpresents in its present state.’

While it is true that the SharpCollection may be too diverse and smallto be considered truly first-rate, itcontains some wonderful examples ofmajor works in first issue state. Its valueas a piece of social history has emergedwith the passage of time, in that it cannow be perceived as illuminating theefforts of a Scottish collector in the1930s who had at his disposalconsiderable wealth and the services oftop flight book dealers. As a result of the1937 tragedy, we will never knowwhether Hugh Sharp’s collecting zeal wasdestined to peter out or to develop in aseriously thematic way. That the NationalLibrary of Scotland has benefited fromthe generous bequest of the Hugh SharpCollection is beyond dispute.

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Italian literature, art, music,philosophy and politics have greatlyinfluenced Scottish life and letters.Think of Gavin Hamilton, Allan

Ramsay, Christopher Whyte, AllanMassie and Muriel Spark – fullinterpretation of the work of these andmany other Scots would not be possiblewithout reference to the Italianconnection. Correspondingly, in Italythere is a lively interest in things Scottish.For instance, books by and about DavidHume, Adam Smith, Thomas Carlyle andAdam Ferguson feature regularly onscholarly publishers’ lists; Robert Burnsand Robert Louis Stevenson areenduringly popular, while the work ofGaelic poet Kevin MacNeil is currentlybeing well received in translation as partof Dalle Ebridi a Malta(HP1.201.3902).

The Italian collection’s origins lie inthe Library’s foundation inheritance ofthe non-legal holdings of the Advocates’Library. These included substantialEuropean collections built up from the1680s onwards, reflecting Scotland’scultural and economic ties with the restof Europe: French was the most stronglyrepresented of the foreign languages, andthere was also a strong emphasis onLatin. Two famous Florentines, GiovanniBoccaccio and Francesco Gucciardini,adorned the first Advocates’ Librarycatalogue in 1692 and Italian languagebooks continued to be added under theauspices of early keepers such as ThomasRuddiman. In 1752 came the keepershipof the great philosopher David Hume,who clashed with the directors over thepurchase of various foreign books. TheLibrary catalogue of the late eighteenthcentury showed a strong presence ofItalian authors. However, the twilight ofthe Enlightenment saw a decline in thepurchase of European books and asFrench revolutionary armies marchedvictorious, the Edinburgh advocatesbecame more insular and fearful ofimporting republican ideas. As thenineteenth century advanced, lack ofspace and funds compounded the trend.From the perspective of Italian studiesthis was all the more disappointing andironic because Italy was enjoying aliterary and political renewal.

When the National Library ofScotland was established in 1925,overseas purchasing once more became

an essential activity. Several significantpurchases were made including thelibrary and papers of John Purves (one ofthe founders of the Italian department atEdinburgh University), which containedlate early nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature that was missing fromthe collections.

During the 1970s and early 1980sItalian book purchasing reached a newgolden age, with budgets at an all-timehigh and a specialist curator appointed in1971. New subscriptions were taken outto journals and monograph series, andconnections were forged with peoplesuch as Renaissance scholar ProfessorDenys Hay, who served as a trustee ofthe Library, and sculptor and designer SirEduardo Paolozzi, part of whose archive(Acc.11632) is a component of thepresent collection.

Several manuscript collections at theLibrary include interesting Italianmaterial. For instance, among the

Cockburn Papers there are letters fromthe exiled writer Ugo Foscolo to LordJeffrey on topics as diverse as Dante andrheumatism. On 15 May 1818, hecriticises Italian literary historians,

who, being court academicians, priests,and monks, have written under thedictation of princes, prejudices and theInquisition. They have adopted andpractised with a scrupulous fear themaxim of extracting literature frompolitics and religion, and they have neverdared talk, or deal with, or even examinethe influence of revolutions againstgovernments or customs that have exercisedon the genius of our writers.(Acc.3521 no.47)

Extraordinary insight into the politicaland social situation in mid-nineteenthcentury Italy is to be found in the papersof the 2nd Earl of Minto, one of themost internationally importantmanuscript collections at the Library. In1848, Minto led a British diplomaticexpedition to Italy. An ardent supporterof Italian unity, his papers includepropaganda leaflets, broadsides andnewspapers as well as correspondencewith key figures such as Cavour andD’Azeglio. (Elsewhere in the Library’scollections, items can be found in thehandwriting of Garibaldi and Mazzini.)Vice-Admiral William Parker wrote toMinto on 29 January 1848 regarding therebellion in Sicily:

I do myself the honour of transmitting foryour Lordship’s information, the latestaccounts that I have received fromCommander Key of the Bulldog, relatingto the revolt and proceedings at Palermo,in which he appears to have acquittedhimself very satisfactorily.

I also enclose the copy of a letter fromHer Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Catania,reporting on an outbreak at that place onthe 24th instant, and I have been sinceinformed by a small vessel from Syracuse,that an insurrection is expected to takeplace there tomorrow.

I have detached the Hammer to theformer and the Harlequin to the latterpoint, for the due protection of Britishsubjects and property.

In this state of affairs I have orderedHMS Vanguard to Corfu, and she will befollowed in a few days by the Rodney, as Ideem it expedient to have a naval force at

From Boccaccio to Berlusconi

CHRIS TAYLOR

The great strength of the Library’sItalian collection is its

astonishing scope and depth. Booksand manuscripts from thefifteenth century through to

contemporary times reflect Italianlife and the influence of its

writers, artists, politicians andthinkers. The collection

demonstrates the key cultural rolestill played by Italy in a Europemoulded by Roman Emperors,

medieval Florentine writers andbankers, Renaissance Venetiansand twentieth-century Sicilian

intellectuals. In highlighting themany facets of Scotland’s

relationship with Italy throughthe ages, it advances

understanding of Scotland’sidentity in an international

context.

The Bel Paese and the National Library of Scotland

F O L I O 11

the entrance of the Adriatic to meet anyexigency their captains will be instructed toappear off the Neapolitan and Papalcoasts, when the weather is favourable fortheir doing so: – the Vengeance is gone toPalermo. (MS.12078)

The British Vice-Consul in Catania hadwritten to Parker on 25 January, 1848:

I beg to enclose you a despatch just receivedfrom Palermo, which ought to have arrivedthree days ago, but the courier was twicearrested on the road.

On the news of the events in Palermoreaching this place, the inhabitants took upthe national cause and with the exceptionof two posts, the castle and prison, the citymay be said to be in the hands of the CivicGuard and a committee elected by theinhabitants: – this was effected withoutbloodshed, with the exception of a skirmishlast evening between a patrol of the CivicGuard and some soldiers.

I am enabled to add a few lines thismorning to say that a regularattack has begun between the armedinhabitants, assisted by people from theneighbouring villages and the troops.

There is firing in every part of the city.The inhabitants have procured two canonsfrom a native merchant vessel, and aremaking or about to make an attack on theCollegio Cutelli, one of the points still inpossession of the troops.

There seems to be a great deal ofenthusiasm on the part of the people. TheCollegio Cutelli is close to my house and Ican consequently see the whole proceedings.(MS.12078)

The immediacy of such eye-witnessaccounts of the Italian scene – thoughnot usually of such dramatic events – is

to be found in the Library’s journals ofthe Grand Tour undertaken by Scots inthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.In one particularly interesting collectionof correspondence between the engineerSir John Rennie and his equally eminentengineer father, John Rennie, Sir Johneagerly reports back on civil engineeringprojects in Italy, as well as the country’stransport, life, culture and food, not tomention the infamous bandits of Pugliain the early nineteenth century.

In terms of Italy in modern times,one of the most remarkable manuscriptcollections in the National Library is thepapers of John Purves, who met andcorresponded with many leading writersinternationally. He kept notebooks ofhand-written contributions by writersfrom the twentieth century includingMontale, Palazzeschi, Landolfi, Soffici,Papini, Gadda, Luzi and Quasimodo.(Incidentally, Incontri alle Giubbe Rosse(H2.202.0001) published by Polistampain 2000 is a record of the life of a caféfrequented by many of these writers andartists.) The second anthology notebook(Acc.7175) includes a contribution fromAlberto Moravia, who wrote:

I will always hold the fond memory of theblack and gold houses, of the clear sky, ofthe poetic profile of Edinburgh.

We are lucky to have this precious item.Later in 1948, Purves sent it to DylanThomas, who almost lost it. He writes toPurves:

Enclosed at last, your book. You have everyreason to cherish it; its [sic] a mostremarkable collection; and I can imaginehow you must have felt when you thought anasty man, me, had lost it. I can’t tell you

how upset I was to realise how much I hadupset you by my irresponsible carelessness.

Thomas provided a handwritten poem,‘In My Craft or Sullen Art’. Edwin Muirand Norman MacCaig are among theScottish contributors to Purves’santhologies, but appropriately the lastword was left to the Sicilian poet andNobel prize-winner, SalvatoreQuasimodo, who dedicated his poem ‘ISoldati Piangono di Notte’ / ‘TheSoldier’s Cry During the Night’ to his‘dear friend, John Purves, 22 March,1960’. This was to be the final entry inthe Purves manuscript anthologies.

The Library continues to build itsunique archive of material on the ItalianScots, a project which gained newmomentum following the very successfulexhibition on the subject in 1991 curatedby Alison Harvey Wood.

Ten years later, an Italian CulturalInstitute study day on GabrieleD’Annunzio held in the National Librarywas the occasion of a remarkabledonation (Acc.12028) from an ItalianScot whose father had served in theItalian army during World War One andsubsequently with Gabriele D’Annunzioat the infamous invasion of Fiume. OfItalian immigrant family, Libero di Folcowas brought up in St Andrews and wentto fight for the Italian Army in 1918,seeing action on the front around theriver Piave. His diary and notes give vividaccounts of his wartime experiences thatdetail the misery of being bombarded,gassed and wounded, as well as daringforays to lay ambushes for the Austrians.This donation also includes photographsof Fiume at the time of D’Annunzio’sexpedition, three early editions ofD’Annunzio’s works, and di Folco’s FirstWorld War and Fiume medals.

Allies in the First World War, Britainand Italy were military antagonists in theSecond. The impact of this twist ofinternational affairs on the happilyintegrated Scottish-Italian communitywas dramatic. The Library has acollection of fascinating notes(Acc.12029) by a St Andrews man ofItalian origin, made during hisinternment in Saughton Prison,Edinburgh. (He was later transported toAustralia.) It shows that, to keep up theirspirits, the internees mounted variousentertainments, including a boxingtournament; well-known surnames suchas Paolozzi and Crolla appear among theentertainers.

Evidently, its manuscript holdingsalone put the National Library ofScotland on the map for researchers intoItalian matters. But its printed collections

Amorosa: Visione di M. Gio Bocc Novamente Ri published in Venice by Giolito di Ferrarii, 1549 ([AF].8/12a):title page, woodcut initial letters and decorative publisher’s device.

F O L I O 13

The genesis of children’sliterature from theseventeenth centurythrough to the present day

is the theme of the summerexhibition at the National Library ofScotland. Exhibits have been drawnfrom all over the Library, notablyfrom the Hugh Sharp, Eudo Masonand Lauriston Castle Collections.This book belongs to me: from TomThumb to Harry Potter will offer aspectacular display of booksexpressing the development of thegenre, assembled by guest curator,children’s book expert BrianAlderson. To everyone’s delight,Joanne Rowling has generouslyloaned her manuscript of theQuidditch chapter from HarryPotter and the Philosopher’s Stone –its first time on show in Scotland.

In the children’s department ofany modern bookshop, a starburst ofimages beckons youngsters to visitimagined worlds. How very differentit was for children born into theseventeenth century. Before 1650,virtually no books were published forchildren; most could not read or write –the lucky few would learn from hornbooks made of bone and wood, showingthe alphabet.

The first publications in conventionalbook form specifically aimed at childrenwere moralistic works. The earliestchildren’s book in the exhibition, TheProverbs of Solomon: Newly translated out

of the original tongue. Very commodiousfor the use of young children, Edinburgh,1672 (RB.s.441) is hardly recognisable asa children’s book in today’s terms: amanual of religious instruction, devoid ofillustrations, reflecting austere Puritanvalues. Yet, as one of the earliest booksprinted in English for the use of children,this dull-looking volume is one of theLibrary’s real treasures.

The more fabulous and imaginativethemes in children’s literature have theirroots in oral tales. Many such populartales first appeared in print in chapbookform, sold around the country byitinerant peddlars. Of around 15,000chapbooks printed in Scotland, theNational Library has over 4,000; mostare to be found in the Lauriston CastleCollection (L.C.2716–L.C.3193). Awoodcut from one of them provides anamusing image of Tom Thumb, acharacter who has popped up in variousguises over the years. The Famous Historyof Tom Thumb (L.C.2734/7) waspublished in London around 1750.Under the heading ‘Of Tom’s running atTilt’, it shows a side view of our verticallychallenged hero astride a gorgeously

plumed steed, clutching a miniaturelance. A hint of a smile on thehorse’s face suggests that theabsurdity of the situation appeals tothe equine sense of humour.

Petit Poucet (or ‘Hop o’ mythumb’) is another character whotransmogrifies through the ages in amost fascinating way, starting out inthe pages of Charles Perrault’scollection of fairy tales (the firstcollection of fairy tales for children),published in Paris in 1697. ‘Hop’seems to be related to MollyWhuppie (Maol a Chliobain), whoappears in Popular Tales of the WestHighlands (1860–62) collected byJohn Francis Campbell of Islay(1825–85). The J.F. CampbellCollection at the Library includes610 printed items bound into 270volumes (many of which bear theGaelic scholar’s annotations) – aswell as his correspondence, journals,papers and maps.

The Library’s collections(augmented by items from other sources)illustrate the exhibition’s focus on theevolution and transformation ofchildren’s literature, through themes suchas fairy tales, nonsense and wonderlands,desert islands, school stories, worldsbeyond, fabulous animals and magic. Thisbook belongs to me: from Tom Thumb toHarry Potter is mounted jointly by theNational Library of Scotland and theMuseum of Childhood, Edinburgh (seeDiary column on the back page of Folio).

This book belongs to meFrom Tom Thumb to Harry Potter

Jean Wylie’s illustration in art-nouveau style forHop o’ my Thumb and Other Fairy Tales, GrantRichards c. 1903. (T.149.h)

The Famous History of Tom Thumb (L.C.2734/7)published in London c. 1750. From the LauristonCastle Collection.

Cheeky and full of fun, one of Catherine Sinclair’sown watercolour illustrations for her Holiday House(1839). (MS.24640)

Note on sources

The internationally recognised UNESCOguidelines of 1987 state that a nationallibrary should collect a representativesample of foreign published material. Partof the National Library of Scotland’schosen sample is Italian publications. Thisis based on a long tradition of Italianbook purchasing dating back to the daysof the Advocates’ Library collections. Themain body of the John Purves Papers arecatalogued under MSS.15560-901;Acc.7203 contains further papers andnotebook Acc.7175/4 contains writers’contributions, as mentioned above. TheNational Library of Scotland has a uniqueand diverse archive of Italo-Scottishheritage that demonstrates Scotland’spolitical and cultural relationship withItaly. Curator of the Italian collections,Chris Taylor, welcomes requests forinformation from researchers.

F O L I O12

contain equivalent treasures and reflect asimilar scope. The Library holds a fineselection of Italian incunabula, includingthe complete works of Renaissancehumanist Angelo Poliziano printed inVenice in 1498 by Aldus, and a 1481Florentine edition of Dante. EarlyScottish printers occasionally producedItalian-language books and in theeighteenth century Foulis of Glasgowprinted editions of Tasso in 1753 and1763. The Blairs College Collectioncontains books from the Scots College inRome, and the Crawford BorgheseCollection – currently on deposit – is afine resource of documents relating tothe administration of the Papal States.Other early printed collections includeNewhailes, Newbattle and Tyninghame.

Most readers come to the Library insearch of modern publications, and theirneeds are served with Library purchasesof around 500 books a year from Italy. Italso subscribes to more than 100 Italianjournals, supplemented by British andIrish publications about Italy, rangingfrom Critica Marxista (QJ2.36.SER) toCorriere della Sera (Mf.N.19.SER).

As for book purchases in the fields of

literature and philosophy, emphasis isplaced on more established authors.Scholarly editions, complete works andcritical studies of writers such as Dante,Tasso, Ariosto, Bruno, Leopardi, Vergaand Carducci have been acquired.Boccaccio, of course, still featuresstrongly, with a subscription to the seriesStudi sul Boccaccio and the recentpurchase of the luxury 1999 VittoreBranca edition of the Decameron, whichcontains superb reproductions fromvarious medieval illustrators. Virtually allleading Italian twentieth-century writersare on the shelves; purchase ofcontemporary authors is focused on keywriters such as Dacia Maraini, Dario Fo,Antonio Tabucchi, Mario Luzi andUmberto Eco. The Fellini, Pasolini andBenigni holdings have recently expanded,reflecting increasing interest in Italiancinema.

Political parties, trade unions, theevolution of the Left, the legacy offascism, the Mafia, relations with Europe,constitutional crisis and the influence ofthe Catholic Church and the Mafia are allcovered. Among recent purchases arebooks on the assassination of judgesinvestigating the Mafia and the murder offormer prime minister Aldo Moro byterrorists; studies of the legacy ofAntonio Gramsci, whose politicalphilosophy has been so well documentedby the celebrated Scottish writer andfolklorist, Hamish Henderson, who asCommander in Chief officially acceptedthe Italian surrender at the end of theSecond World War. Acc.10528 containsan annotated typescript of his translationsof Gramsci’s letters.

Recent arrivals include the memoirsof long-serving former prime ministerGiulio Andreotti, together with workssurrounding his trial for Mafiaconnections, the parliamentary speechesof Italy’s current Prime Minister, media-magnate Silvio Berlusconi, several booksabout the Northern League Italianseparatists and their leader UmbertoBossi’s role within the Berlusconigovernment.

As well as general works on thenation of Italy, there is detailed materialon specific regions or cities: the historyand culture of Sicily, Florence, Bologna,and Venice, in particular, are populartopics in the reading room. Scotlandboasts a number of experts on thesesubjects, and as the only library inScotland to have maintained itssubscription to the important journalStudi Veneziani, the National Library ofScotland is vital to such Scottishresearchers.

The works of publishers such as

Einaudi, il Mulino, Polistampa, Marsilio,Olschki, and Bulzoni are wellrepresented. The Library holds over 700examples from the renowned intellectualpublishing house Laterza, founded inBari in 1901, including texts byBenedetto Croce, Rocco Scotellaro andGaetano Salvemini, and publications onWilliam Gladstone, David Hume andThomas Carlyle. A generous donation ofa further hundred volumes was made byAlessandro Laterza during his visit to theLibrary to mark his firm’s centenary.Similarly, following the 2001 study dayon Gabriele D’Annunzio, a number ofbooks were donated by the RegioneAbruzzo and associated publishers aboutthis flamboyant figure – covering hisgenius as a poet, his posturing as amilitary hero, his love of fast cars, boatsand planes, and his insatiable appetite foramorous adventure.

A recent survey showed that onereader in thirty-four in the Main ReadingRoom was researching Italian topics orusing Italian publications. In manyinstances the Library holds the onlypublicly accessible copy of an Italianwork in Scotland (sometimes in theUnited Kingdom), making it an essentialresource for all those interested in the belpaese. Overall, the Library’s Italiancollection is indicative of the long-standing Scottish interest in overseasculture and the ongoing exchange ofideas and knowledge through the ages. Itcan truly be said to range from Boccaccioto Berlusconi. Hopefully, the Library willcontinue to develop the Italian collectionin David Hume’s spirit of a Scotlandwithin Europe.

Two recent additions to the Italian collections atthe National Library of Scotland: Le Metamorfosi diVenezia: da Capitale di Stato a Città del Mondo acura di Gina Benzoni. Florence: Olschi, 2001; andArnaldo Pini’s Incontri alle Giubbe Rosse, Firenze:Polistampa, 2000 (H2.202.0001) which describes ahub of artistic and literary life in the 1930s, thecafé where John Purves met many leading Italianwriters.

1939, a year after her marriage to RobertEvans, an accountant from Glasgow. Thecouple settled in London, taking the topfloor flat at 11 College Road, Dulwich,(which, as 12 Tollgate Road, laterappeared as the Carmichael family’shome in the ‘Susan’ books). Jean andtheir two children – born during the waryears – were forced to move around as aresult of the Blitz, staying with friends inBath and Kent, (settings later employedin her books), and returning to Dulwichafter the war. The only letter whichsurvives from this period is from herfather, written in January, 1941. Hementions the bombing of Collins’premises in London and the possible lossof the typescript of Highland Holiday;however, the book was safely publishedin 1942. During the war, Jean built upcontacts at the BBC, and many of hershort stories were broadcast onChildren’s Hour and Listen with Mother.

In 1952 Robert took a job in SouthAfrica and the family sailed out on theWarwick Castle to join him. This journeyto a new life was recreated in Venture toSouth Africa (1960) (NG.1630.b.17),which contains clearly autobiographicalelements. An account book kept from1950 to 1961 reveals that this book,under the title Venture to Africa, was firstsold to Lutterworth in 1953 for £90;Lutterworth later sold it on to ThomasNelson and Sons. Jean also detailedtransactions with the BBC and DieBrandwag, a South African newspaper,and kept in regular touch by letter withher UK publishers. Fan letters indicateher growing popularity with readers. Hercorrespondence with Jocelyn Oliver, whoby this time had moved to Nelson’s, wasone of the constants of her life. Hisnicknames for her – ‘dear wee Jean’ and‘my Trilby’ – show his affection. Writingto her on 9 January, 1958, he expressedhis pride at being immortalised inCrooked Sixpence as Mr Parfitt, ‘a tall,gaunt old man with a close beard andsavage eyebrows’.

In Johannesburg, Jean found work atthe Children’s Bookshop and spent overtwenty-one years there. This full-timeoccupation meant that she could onlywrite in the evenings and weekends; herson Ian remembers her sitting in theliving room, balancing a notebook andpencils on her knee. She wouldeventually type the final manuscript on a

F O L I O14

A Woman with IdeasThe Papers of Jean Evans, ‘Jane Shaw’

When I was at school, my class library included an

abundance of Collins Children’s Press hardbacks;

it was amongst these shabby green copiesthat, at the age of nine, I first encounter-ed ‘Jane Shaw’. By fortunate coincidence,my initial choice fell on her first novel,Breton Holiday and from then on Idelighted in each discovery of a new JaneShaw title. She wrote school andadventure books and stories for children,set in Britain and abroad, many featuringScottish characters; her characters areregularly plunged into a series of chaoticevents and unexpected encounters, allwith a highly comic flavour. But in theend, everything is happily resolved.

As an adult my interest developed,focusing as much on the author as on thebooks. I wanted to find out what I couldabout her life, and my research eventuallyled me to the author herself (in privatelife, Jean Evans). I was fortunate to enjoyher friendship for the last seven years ofher life, and following her death herfamily allowed me to look through herliterary and business papers. These havenow been deposited in the NationalLibrary of Scotland where, along with thepapers of other twentieth-century child-ren’s writers and publishers, they formpart of a valuable resource for researchersinto the history of writing for children.

‘Jane Shaw’ was born Jeannie BellShaw Patrick in Glasgow on 3 December,1910. Her impressive collection ofsurnames provided her with two of herpen names: Jean Bell was used for twosmall paperbacks published in the CollinsSpitfire series in the 1960s. Educated firstby a governess and then at the ParkSchool, Jean moved on to GlasgowUniversity in 1928 and graduated withHonours in English Literature andLanguage in 1932. Amongst her papersare a bundle of class tickets, theacquisition of which was an essentialrequirement before students wereallowed to sit their examinations, and anumber of references written by hertutors, who are warm in their praise ofher ‘considerable critical ability’, ‘poiseand confidence’ and ‘literary taste andjudgement’.

Despite completing a teacher-trainingcourse in London, she realised thatteaching was not for her. Londonhowever, she loved, and she spent a

The National Library of Scotlandhas collections of papers frompublishers such as W. & R.

Chambers and authors includingJoan Lingard, Mollie Hunter andAllan Campbell McLean, which

shed light on the inner workings ofthe world of children’s publishingin the twentieth century. Its mostrecent acquisition in this area is

the papers of Jean Evans, author ofthe ‘Susan’ series, who wrotenumerous books for children,mainly under the pseudonym

‘Jane Shaw’.

ALISON LINDSAY

couple of years at the Times Book Clubbefore moving back to Glasgow to workfor William Collins and Sons, who in1938 published her My Own Book of BabyBeasts and My Own Book of Other Lands,both written ‘in-house’. At around thistime, an editor at Collins, Jocelyn Oliver,encouraged her to pursue her ownwriting, spurring her on to completeBreton Holiday. This was published in

Jean Evans c. 1940. (Private collection.)

paperback; two letters fromCollins press her to complete ‘AGirl with Ideas’. As far as I know,Collins never published this classicschool story, which appears inSusan and Friends (Bettany Press,2002).

In 1978, Jean and her husbandretired from South Africa toArran, the setting for some of herbooks. Robert died in 1988.In conversation with me, JeanEvans was modest about herwriting, which she evidentlyregarded as a minor part of hervery full life. Nevertheless, she washighly professional in herapproach and frequent reprints of

her titles attest to her popularity. She stillhas a considerable following.

For researchers at the NationalLibrary of Scotland, Jean Evans’s papers provide significant insight intoone writer’s experiences. More broadly,they add to our store of knowledge ofthe world of commercial children’sfiction through a period of almost forty years.

Account book (Acc.12060/7(7)) kept by Jean Evansfrom 1950–61. This page notes payments fromNelson’s for various titles in the ‘Penny’ series.

flimsy portable on the diningroom table. Amongst her papersare several of these manuscriptswritten in her round hand, andshowing that she made very fewalterations between first draft andfinished typescript. Plots wereevidently worked out before shestarted a book or story, andchanges are usually limited to theintroduction or substitution of theoccasional phrase.

The colourful single sheet ofnotes for Fivepenny Mystery(Nelson, 1958) shows Jeanemploying pencil, red ink and blueink, and writing both along andacross the lines. The correctspelling of Innsbruck’s main streetappears alongside a verse of treasure-seeker’s doggerel and a timetable of herheroine’s journey from Johannesburg toInnsbruck. The reverse side of the pagecarries a draft of part of Chapter Two,‘What Happened in Athens’, written inthe first-person – a narrative style thatwas abandoned for the finished work.

Fivepenny Mystery formed part of the‘Penny’ books, Jean’s other main series,which began with Penny Foolish (1953)(N.F.1160.b.31) set on Arran, where sheand Robert had both spent holidays aschildren. Bernese Holiday (1940)(V.312.d) was set in Grindelwald, wherethey spent their honeymoon. The Libraryhas a diary of a return trip to Switzerlandin 1955; outings taken by theCarmichaels in Susan Interferes (1957)correspond closely to Jean’s ownexcursions around Lucerne; she has takenher journal observations and woven theminto a comic drama. There wereeventually eleven books in the ‘Susan’series, published between 1952 (SusanPulls the Strings) and 1969 (A Job forSusan (NG.1075.g.46), as well as anumber of short stories published inCollins’ annuals.

The Library has nine typescripts ofshort stories as well as radio scripts,including ‘The Cat, the Owl and the

Scottie Dog’, broadcast on the SchoolService of the BBC Home Service on 28October, 1964. Letters dated between1964 and 1977 include correspondencewith Collins concerning Swedishtranslations of the ‘Susan’ books, andtheir possible publication in Armada

F O L I O 15

Note on sources

The Jean Evans papers includenotebooks, correspondence, manuscriptsand typescripts as well as some printeditems 1928–94, some undated. (TheLibrary also holds twenty-eight copies ofher titles.) The collection (Acc.12060)has been arranged into six categories(detailed below), each with sub numbers.To call up specific items, the entire shelfmark should be cited, for exampleAcc.12060/1(1)). Category 1, Typescripts – short stories,undated unless otherwise mentioned:1(1) ‘A Girl With Ideas’ an unpublishednovella by ‘Jean Bell’; 1(2) ‘The CookieBun’; 1(3) ‘The Cat, the Owl and theScottie Dog’ radio script, 1964; 1(4)‘Jumble Sale’; 1(5) ‘Crooks Limited’;1(6) ‘Family Trouble’; 1(7) ‘Susan andthe Spae-Wife’; 1(8) ‘The Picture’; 1(9)‘Adventures of a Mouse’. Category 2,Manuscripts (undated): 2(1) ‘GreatExcitements’, chapter 1 of Susan inTrouble; 2(2) chapters 1 and 2 of TheMan at Villa Carlotta; 2(3) an early draftof Patches McGee; 2(4) notebookcontaining draft of ‘Family Trouble’;2(5) list of chapter titles for FourpennyFair; 2(6) list of chapter titles forFivepenny Mystery; 2(7) notes for Susan’sTrying Term. Category 3, PrintedMaterial: 3(1) Chippy, Teddy, TidyTwinkle and Golly; 3(2) ‘Die ManLangsaan’ by ‘Mary Shaw’ in Die

Brandwag, (an Afrikaans newspaper), 10December 1954. 3(3) Books andBookmen, 1964, with a review on page50 of Anything Can Happen. Category 4,Items Relating to the University ofGlasgow, 1928–34: 4(1) GlasgowUniversity Magazine, 1934; 4(2) classtickets 1928–32; 4(3) letters ofrecommendation, 1933. Category 5Newscuttings Book (5): from 1939–c.1965, includes pages from the RadioTimes with details of story broadcasts.Category 6: Correspondence 1941–94and undated: 6(1) letter to Jean from herfather, regarding Blitz damage to Collins’London office; 6(2) letters 1964–77,mostly from publishers, includingcorrespondence with Collins concerningthe paperback publication of the Susanseries and Swedish rights for ‘A Girl withIdeas’; 6(3) nine fan letters, 1962–70;6(4) four fan letters, 1994 and undated;6(5) correspondence 1952–71 withpublishers and fans. Category 7,Notebooks: 7(1) journal of visit toLucerne, 1955; 7(2) Susan in Troublefirst draft and notes on plot; 7(3) noteson trips in South Africa, 1960, 1961;7(4) first draft of The Man at VillaCarlotta, notes for Murder Perhaps; 7(5)notes on characters, visits to safari parks;7(6) notes on various locations, draft ofscene at end of Venture to South Africa;7(7) account book 1950–61.

Susan Intereferes(Collins, 1957).Much backgrounddetail for SusanInterferes wasrecorded by thewriter in a journalof a visit toLucerne in 1955:Susan orders ‘2Weggli und einGipfel’ because,‘she liked the soundof it’.

F O L I O16

Notes on contributorsALISON LINDSAY is editor of Susan andFriends: The Jane Shaw Companion (ISBN0 9524680 6 9), published in spring 2002by the Bettany Press. The book gatherstogether short stories originally publishedin annuals as well as unpublished storiesfrom Jane Shaw’s personal archives, nowdeposited at the National Library ofScotland; it also includes critical essays onthe books and their settings, biographicalinformation and a full bibliography. AlisonLindsay, Publications Officer at theNational Archives of Scotland, has spentseveral years researching Jane Shaw’s lifeand writings.

ALAN RIACH, Head of the Department ofScottish Literature at the University ofGlasgow is author of Hugh MacDiarmid’sEpic Poetry (Edinburgh University Press,1991) and The Poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid(Association for Scottish Literary Studies,1999). He has also written several volumesof poetry and numerous essays and chapterson Scottish and other literatures. He is theGeneral Editor of the Carcanet PressCollected Works of Hugh MacDiarmid, ofwhich the most recent volume is NewSelected Letters, co-edited with OwenDudley Edwards and Dorian Grieve.

MURRAY SIMPSON is Director of SpecialCollections at the National Library ofScotland, a department which coversManuscripts, Maps, Music and Rare Books.Prior to that he was in charge of SpecialCollections at Edinburgh UniversityLibrary. He is particularly interested in thecontents of Scottish private libraries, andhas written on examples dating from theseventeenth to the twentieth centuries.

CHRIS TAYLOR is curator of French andItalian collections in the CollectionDevelopment Division of the NationalLibrary of Scotland, where he is responsiblefor the acquisition and promotion ofmaterial relating to French- and Italian-speaking countries. He is currently planningseveral co-operative projects with the Italianand French Institutes in Scotland followingthe success of the Library’s Laterza andd’Annunzio round tables last year. Heregularly contributes to the journalReference Reviews.

NLS diary dates In the next Folio(Autumn 2002)DUNCAN GLEN explains the significance ofthe resources of the National Library in hisresearch for his extensively illustratedPrinting Type Designs: A New History fromGutenberg to 2000. This 306-page work waslaunched in the Library in March 2001when guests came to hear him introducethe book and see the display mounted bythe Library. Duncan Glen is poet, editor,publisher and emeritus Professor of VisualCommunication. The National Library ofScotland has an extensive holding of hisliterary papers, including those of AkrosPublications, the literary imprint thatDuncan and Margaret Glen founded in theearly 1960s.

RODERICK GRAHAM, author of John Knox –Democrat, describes the journeys heundertook while researching the book inthe National Library of Scotland. A self-confessed romantic and bibliophile, he alsoreflects on the joys of unexpected discoveryas bibliographies lead the researcher furtherdown the paths and byways of memoir andhistory. A good bibliography is like anOrdnance Survey map, but it has no moralsand can invite you to explore quiteirrelevant areas, which are often more fun,but less directly useful. The feeling ofirresponsibility while reading quiteunnecessary books is delightful – but awanton misuse of the book-fetchers timeand effort. It takes a Scottish upbringing tofeel guilt reading in the National Library ofScotland!

MICHAEL NIX, a curatorial assistant at theNational Library of Scotland, piecestogether the story of how 100,000 bookswere imported from the continent in 1820for the Advocates’ Library. While pursuingresearch into emigration from Leith toAustralia he came across documents relatingto the importation of the DieterichsCollection’s, which was purchased inLeipsig, taken by river to Hamburg, andfrom there, by sea, to Leith. ExaminingCustoms records for 1820, he came acrosstwo letters referring to the Advocates’efforts to avoid paying import duties.Delving further into the subject hediscovered an enthusiasm, following theending of the Napoleonic Wars, forcollecting from overseas involvingprivate individuals and institutions inScotland.

CHRISTOPHER WHYTE, in preparing an allbut complete edition of Sorley MacLean’sDain do Eimhir for the Association forScottish Literary Studies, made valuable useof the Library’s extensive Sorley MacLeanholdings, many of them only recentlyacquired. These include unpublished poemsand translations, letters to and from thepoet, and a rare joint pamphlet with RobertGarioch. Poet, novelist and Gaelic scholarChristopher Whyte talks about his work onthe edition, the problems he faced, and therich store of manuscript material he wasable to draw on. Previously unpublishedpoems from the Dain do Eimhir cycle havebeen incorporated into the new edition.

May 2002‘Mr D.O. Hill Presents his Compliments . . .’A small display of the correspondence ofDavid Octavius Hill goes on show as part of anationwide series of events to mark thebicentenary of the Scottish photographypioneer’s birth. 29 April to 24 May.

The winner of the Callum MacdonaldMemorial Award for the publication of poetrypamphlets is announced.

Muriel Spark – ‘Scottish by Formation’An appreciation of Scotland’s most celebratedliterary emigré by authors Alan Taylor andAllan Massie. Free but ticketed. Tuesday 21 May at 7.30pm.

Robert Louis Stevenson – Still TravellingHopefullyAn illustrated talk by RLS biographer JenniCalder on one of Scotland’s most inter-nationally appealing authors, with additionalcontributions by Owen Dudley Edwards. Freebut ticketed. Wednesday 22 May at 7.30pm.

The above events form part of the Festival ofScottish Writing: please note that while theytake place in the National Library of Scotland,tickets are only available from the LendingEnquiry Desk at the Edinburgh CentralLibrary in George IV Bridge.

June 2002This Book Belongs to Me: from Tom Thumb toHarry PotterThe Library’s summer exhibition, celebratingthe appeal of children’s books through thecenturies, is launched by the Children’sLaureate, Anne Fine. The exhibition is openfrom 1 June to 31 October, and featuresregular storytelling sessions and a programmeof children’s book events throughout its run.More information is available atwww.nls.uk/tomthumb.

From Accession to CoronationTo mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, theLibrary presents a small display of materialrelating to the period of the accession andCoronation in 1953. 4 June to 3 August.

AugustConference of Directors of National LibrariansOver 100 National Librarians from aroundthe world hold their annual conference at theNational Library of Scotland on 21 August.

National Library of ScotlandGeorge IV BridgeEDINBURGHEH1 1EWTel 0131-226 4531Fax 0131-622 4803www.nls.uk

If you have any comments regarding Folio, orwould like to be added to the mailing list toreceive it, please contact Jackie Cromarty,Deputy Head of Public Programmes, bytelephone on 0131-622 4810 or via e-mail atj.cromarty@nls.uk

Folio is edited by Jennie Renton

ISSN 1475-1151Front cover image by permission of Pollinger Ltd and theestate of Charles Robinson