New Cruciform Exhibition: Water and Sanitation in 19th Century London

By Sarah Pipkin, on 16 June 2025

Our new exhibition on Water and Sanitation in 19th Century London is now open at the UCL Cruciform Hub. It features reproductions of items from our collection that cover the debate over clean water and sanitation in the lead up to, and immediate aftermath of, the 1875 Public Health Act. The Act set out a requirement for local authorities to provide clean water and sanitation to residents.

Reproductions are displayed alongside research from the curators who have worked to put the exhibition together: Alex Careswell, Anna Gonzalez-Fort, and Chelsie Mok. We are planning to install a full version of their exhibition on public health in the UCL Main Library in 2027.

The exhibition is located in the lower ground floor of the Cruciform Building, adjacent to the Cruciform Café. It is open to anyone with a UCL ID card.

Thank you to Alex, Anna and Chelsie for their research and work on this exhibition!

Cartoon from Punch, part of the Cruciform exhibition.

Kelmscott Secondary School – Becoming an Historian

By Vicky A Price, on 29 May 2025

Year 9 pupils at Kelmscott Secondary School spent six weeks with our Outreach team, learning about the skills and knowledge required to become an effective and forward thinking historian.  As a group, they chose the theme of medical history and they worked on researching one collection items each.  Their hard work culminated in them writing museum label style descriptions, which we present to you in this blog, alongside some brilliant BlueSky posts.

‘Every man his own doctor, compleated with an herbal…’ by John Archer, 1673 (OGDEN A 514)

Lily

John Archer had the idea of people serving themselves with herbal and plant medicine. This book was written with parts and chapters, for example ‘Mushrooms and toadstools’.  It was published 1673 so to this day 352 years ago. The close proximity of the book and the Great Plague Of London suggests that this was possibly made when people’s views of hygiene and health was changing.

Elisha 

Made in 1673, John Archer intended this to be for those that have not patience to “Read Voluminous Authors”. It contains practical information such as quality of the air, diet, sleep and exercise.
It contains common theories at the time like how the body was composed of four primary fluids – blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile – which impacted mood and were all expected to be in balance in the ideal healthy body. It also has remedies for smallpox as there was an extremely high death rate from this at the time.

The front page of Archer’s ‘Every Man His Own Doctor’ (1673)

Horsley – First World War field operations notebooks, 1915 (HORSELY A/1-3 and A/10)

Robert

This is a notebook, written during the Gallipoli campaign when Horsley was colonel, that features his works such as death from intracranial pressure and bullet wounds to the brain. The front cover reads ‘21st General Hospital’ with ‘ARMY BOOK 136’ written in the middle. Inside contains his sketches and annotations of the brain’s cross section. This book reminds us of the struggles and trauma faced by the surgeons working on the battlefield. His reputation was boosted greatly as he brought 20th-century military surgery to a new level.

Jude

Victor Horsley’s pioneering field research notebook was ahead of its time, featuring medical drawings aided from both his work as a surgeon and his experience in war. In 1910, Horsley was commissioned to serve as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, to be deployed on he Western Front. This notebook, however, was produced in 1915 during the British Army’s Gallipoli campaign. One of the highlight features is a hand-drawn cross-section of the brain, building off Horsley’s previous scientific works and his first-hand wartime experience to create a notebook which was especially advanced for its early 20th century origins.

An example of Horsley’s notes and drawings of the brain.

Carswell’s Anatomical Watercolour Illustrations, 1828 – 1831

Leela

Robert Carswell was a Scottish physician and medical illustrator, celebrated for his detailed watercolour depictions of human anatomy and diseases. His works, often combining scientific precision with artistic skill, were used as visual references in medical studies. Notably, Carswell’s 1835 treatise A Description of the Diseases of the Skin featured his highly regarded dermatological illustrations. His legacy as a key figure in 19th-century medical illustration endures, bridging the fields of art and science to provide valuable insights into both human biology and visual representation.

An example of Carswell’s meticulous paintings. This shows Adhesion of the Pericardium with Dilatation of the Arch of the Aorta (CARSWELL/A/684).

The Medical Museum, 1763 (Rare Science Periodicals)

Patrick

“The medical museum or a repository of cases…” was published in 1776, during the Georgian period in England (1714-1830). This book includes over 60 topics ranging from the nature of honey, the bad effects of tea drinking, bloodletting, several studies about what urine can tell about a person and many more contents from loads of different researchers.

It was printed by W.Richardson and S.Clark and sold by W.Bristow. The artifact I have looked at is the first volume, but there are at least three other volumes.

One edition of The Medical Museum, 1763.

Marian Ray’s Illustrations for Educational Television, c1948 – 1983

Samuel

Marian Ray created many pieces of artwork on the subject of biology which were used on pieces of educational media in her collection of illustrations on the topics of “The Reflex Arc and Nervous System” or “Circulation”.  These pieces of art were hand painted onto filmstrip. Marian ran a successful business from the 1940s to the 1980s producing artworks such as these selling to schools in Britain and abroad, especially to Sweden.  After WWII Marian began working in the audio visual industry when she began working for the BBC press department.

Ray’s illustration of the circulation system includes this image of a heart (RAY/1/28).

Well done to all involved and for their brilliant research and writing!

Cavan McCarthy Archive

By Katy Makin, on 14 May 2025

Written by Sophie Bouckaert, UCL Archives and Records Management programme.

As part of the Curation and Stewardship module of the UCL Archives and Records Management module, students have the good fortune to be able to choose between many fabulous institutions for a 2 week work placement. I chose to spend my two weeks with UCL Special Collections as I had already been exposed to some of the great people working in UCL Special Collections and the rich and varied materials they work with through teaching sessions delivered as part of the course. I was also keen to broaden my experience of working in different archival environments, and had no previous experience of working within a higher education institution.

I was intrigued and a little apprehensive when Katy emailed to let me know I would be working with archive related to Tlaloc, an experimental poetry magazine published in the 1960s and 1970s. My task would be to sort, list and catalogue these archive materials to improve their accessibility, but given my limited familiarity with poetry – and especially experimental forms of poetry – would I even be able to identify what I was looking at?

Some preliminary research revealed that Tlaloc was a small press magazine with an emphasis on concrete and visual poetry, that is, poetry in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance; or, as John J Sharkey (one of the poets contributing to Tlaloc) put it: “The essence of a poem is inferred through a simple language pattern without necessarily having to ‘read’ it.” (John Sharkey, 1971, p.9)

A selection of concrete poems, showing examples of different textual layouts.

Tlaloc was edited by Cavan McCarthy, a poet and librarian at the Brotherton Library in Leeds. First issued in 1964, and running to 22 issues by the time it wrapped up 1970, Tlaloc was born at almost precisely the same time as UCL’s collection of Little Magazines. It featured the work of many of the key players of the British literary avant-garde, including Benedictine priest dom sylvester houedard, Scottish poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay, pioneering sound and visual poet Bob Cobbing and Angela Carter, English poet and writer known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. McCarthy was also the European editor for the Directory of Little Magazines and the Small Press Review, as well as producing his own Loc-Sheet newsletter. As such, he had an extensive literary and publishing network of connections into which UCL’s English Librarian at the time Geoffrey Soar was able to tap – with the result that UCL’s collection now contains this archive alongside countless rare items published by poets, artists and small collectives from around the world.

The archive itself came in the form of 5 boxes labelled “Tlaloc Files” each containing folders already labelled by Cavan McCarthy – ranging from record copies of his publications, original submissions to Tlaloc from over 100 poets and artists around the world, correspondence with writers, publishers and distributors, drafts of McCarthy’s own poetry and writing, as well as his own collection of Little Magazines published by other imprints. Despite the labelling of the of the boxes, it was clear that the materials they contained were much broader than Tlaloc and so, in discussion with Katy, I sought to develop a cataloguing structure that would make that evident to future users, while maintaining the prominence of Tlaloc and the context that had been provided by McCarthy. Thus the McCarthy Collection was born!

Various issues of Tlaloc found in the archive.

Much of the material was in the form of loose printed or manuscript sheets, and largely produced using the cheap and low quality materials common to the Small Press of the 1960s and 1970s. It was nevertheless in reasonably good condition, perhaps in part due to the limited access and use it has seen to date given its uncatalogued status. That was something my work would hopefully change, making details about the collection publicly available and searchable – but, before that, it would need some re-packaging into archive standard files, folders and boxes to ensure it could continue to be accessible to users for many years to come.

The work I was able to complete on this collection was eye-opening. I learned so much about UCL’s amazing Small Press collections, notable figures in the experimental poetry field and some of the challenges facing publishers and distributors at this time – many of McCarthy’s own writings focused on censorship and obscenity prosecutions undertaken during this period to limit the development of the field and suppress counter-cultural movements. Beyond that, I loved engaging with the various Special Collections teams from digitisation to outreach, conservation to reader services – thank you to all those who supported me through my work placement!

Sophie’s catalogue of the McCarthy archive can be found online here: https://archives.ucl.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=MCCARTHY&pos=1

Sign language histories in UCL’s Special Collections

By Kaja Marczewska, on 9 May 2025

Please note that this blog post contains some historic uses of language, which are outdated, offensive, and discriminatory. The language is retained in its original context and does not represent views of UCL Special Collections. We are committed to contextualising and addressing dated and harmful languages in our collecting practice, collection documentation, teaching, and engagement activities. You can read about some of our work in this area as part of UCL’s Liberating the Collections programme here.   

To mark this year’s Deaf Awareness Week, we explore the complex histories of sign languages and changing attitudes to their usage, through UCL’s rich collections documenting histories of d/Deaf communities and associated institutions. This blog showcases a few items. 

There are over 150,000 users of British Sign Language (BSL), approximately half a million of ASL – the American Sign Language. Yet widespread, and unsanctioned use of sign languages is a relatively new phenomenon.  Although awareness of sign languages and their uses among d/Deaf communities has a long and established history, little to no  record of their languages exists before the 16th century. There is evidence of manual signs as communication systems among European monastic communities who practiced vows of silence, but these are not linked, of course, to histories of deafness. It was, however, a Spanish Benedictine monk, Pedro Ponce de Leon who was the first to educate d/Deaf children through early forms of sign language.  

Gerald Shea notes that those early attempts to teach d/Deaf to speak were economically motivated. “A central problem for aristocratic families in Europe, as in Byzantium,” Shea writes, “was that Deaf offspring had to be able to speak in order to inherit. These […] considerations led to the growth and influence of teachers of speech and lipreading” who first appeared in Spain, at the height of its global power, followed by similar practices in England and Holland in the 17th c., and emerging in France and Germany in the 18th c., favoring the so-called oralism and attempts to ‘cure’ deafness over manual communication systems.[1]  

The first known work on teaching the d/Deaf, published in 1620 by Juan Pablo Bonet, described the d/Deaf as “inferior […] monsters of nature and human only in form.” Although a proponent of oralism, Bonet did concede the need to teach a manual alphabet in order to assist with spelling and pronunciation. His book offers one of the early printed records of sign language.

Title page of Juan Pablo Bonet’s
Reduction de las letras, y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos, published in Madrid in 1620. UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC SPA BON / 1.

A page from Bonet’s Reduction de las letras, y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos, showing one of the earliest recorded depictions of sign language.

Armstrong observed that the mid-17th century saw the rise of sign-language education for the d/Deaf, which coincided with the emergence of modern science and Enlightenment’s education philosophies. Sign language was, in fact, seen by the French Enlightenment philosophers as ‘natural’, more ‘natural’ than spoken language, and uncorrupted by language’s uses for political oppression.[2] The period saw a proliferation of new theories and language systems, based on signs and gestures. George Delgano’s Didascalocophus or the Deaf and Dumb man’s tutor (1680), which proposed a totally new linguistic system for the d/Deaf, was one prominent example.  

Didascolocophus or The deaf and dumb mans tutor, : to which is added A discourse of the nature and number of double consonants. Both which tracts being the first (for what the author knows) that have been published upon either of the subjects. By Geo. Dalgarno (Oxford, 1680). UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN A 822. 

An English doctor and philosopher, John Bulwer (1606 – 1656) saw gesture as the only form of speech inherently natural to mankind. In his Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of the Hand alongside a companion text, Chironomia, or the Art of Manual Rhetoric, he attempted to record hand gestures intended for an orator to memorise and perform while speaking. And although Chirologia and Chiromania did not focus on gestures as a form of d/Deaf communication – Chirologia  makes only a brief mention of deafness – Bulwer’s work became an important foundation of his long-standing commitment to and advocacy for d/Deaf education. He became known as one of the first people in England to propose education for the d/Deaf.  

John Bulwer’s Chirologia: or The natvrall langvage of the hand (1644). UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN A 534.

Frontispiece detail from Bulwer’s Chirologia.

“An index to the following Alphabet of naturall Gestures of the Hand” from Bulwer’s Chirologia.

And what is known as the modern tradition of d/Deaf education and its uses of sign language originated with the foundation of the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds de Paris, the National School for the Deaf, set up in the mid-18th c. by a French priest, Abbe Charles-Michel de l’Épée. He is also credited with initiating a movement that led to the spread of sign language learning in dedicated schools in Europe and North America.  

Institution des sourds et muets, par la voie méthodiques : ouvrage qui contient le projet d’une langue universelle, par l’extremise des signes naturels assujettis à une méthode / [By C.M. de l’Épée.], first published in Paris in 1776. UCL Special Collections reference: STRONG ROOM OGDEN 109.

A page from The invited alphabet; or address of A to B : containing his friendly proposal for the amusement and instruction of good children / by R. R., published in London in 1809, one of many resources offering guidance on uses of sign language to children published in the 19th c. UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC ENG RR.

Residential schools for the d/Deaf which followed the l’Épée model were popular in Europe and North American in the 19th c., fostering rich signing communities which developed around them. But following the controversial International Congress of the Education of the Deaf held in Milan in 1880, sign language education was internationally suppressed, often actively banned, in favour of oralism, i.e. speechreading and vocal training as the preferred education method. This dramatic shift in attitudes inevitably led to fragmentation of communities and subsequent development of small, highly localised dialects. It wasn’t until the mid-20th c. that significant moves towards greater visibility and acceptance of sign languages took place. BSL was only formally recognised as a language in 2003! And it wasn’t until 2010 the 21st International Congress on the Education of the Deaf, held in Vancouver, Canada that the motion declaring sign languages inferior to oralism, passed in Milan in 1880 was finally rejected.  

Première contribution pour le dictionnarie international du langage des signes : terminologie de conference = First contribution to the international dictionary of the language of signs / C. Magarotto, D. Vukotic. (Rome, 1959). UCL Special Collections reference: ACTION HC FRE MAG / 5.

Sample pages from First contribution to the international dictionary of the language of signs, showing their past use!

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A selection of postcards from RNID archive. UCL Special Collections reference: RNID/4/18.

A poster produced as an educational resource, Gallaudet pre-school signed English project. Held by RNID archival collections at UCL Special Collections.

Many items highlighted in this post are part of our RNID Rare Printed Collection and RNID archives, transferred to UCL Special Collections in 2020 from the UCL Ear Institute Library. To learn more about the collection and access to it, see our brief guide.  

[1] Gerald Shea, The language of light: a history of silent voices (Yale University Press, 2017), 12. 

[2] David F. Armstrong, Show of Hands: a natural history of sign language (Gallaudet University Press, 2011), 33.  

“For the first time appropriately issued at a ‘Socialist’ price:” Karl Marx in UCL’s Special Collections

By Kaja Marczewska, on 5 May 2025

This post was written by Katy Makin and Kaja Marczewska

Today, on Karl Marx’s 207^th birthday (Happy Birthday Karl!), we look at a couple of his prominent works in our collections, and explore their fascinating histories.

Karl Marx, Le Capital (Paris: Lachâtre, 1872. Traduction de M. J Roy)

Beesly Papers,

UCL Special Collections Reference: BEESLY/48-64/63

Perhaps the most significant item in our collection with a Karl Marx connection is the French translation of his seminal work, Capital, part of Beesly Papers.

Edward Spencer Beesly (1831-1915) was professor of History at UCL from 1860-1893 and Principal of University Hall, a UCL student residence in Gordon Sq, from 1859-1882. A Positivist and trade union activist, he was a friend of Karl Marx and acquainted with other members of Marx’s circle including Friedrich Engels. Despite some philosophical differences they collaborated for many years, with Beesly helping Marx to place his writings with various English publishers and periodicals. During Marx’s later life, he was often a dinner guest of the Beesly’s at University Hall.[1]

UCL Special Collections holds a small archive of Beesly’s papers which were gifted by Beesly’s grandchildren in 1960. They contain some correspondence, lecture notes and a variety of printed material. Included in the latter category are books written or owned by Beesly, such as his copy of the first edition of Le Capital, the French translation of Marx’s Das Kapital.

Title page of the first French edition of Das Kapital, with inscription by Beesly.

Frontispiece as seen in the first, French edition of Das Kapital.

On the title page is the inscription “Given to E S Beesly by Karl Marx. The corrections were made by K. M. himself”. Its source is unclear, but the hand is possibly Beesly’s own. There are also several small corrections to the text throughout the volume which match known examples of Marx’s writing, supporting the assertion made on the title page.

Examples of Marx’s annotations in the volume.

The French edition of Das Kapital was translated by Joseph Roy and published by Maurice Lachâtre, issued in 44 livraisons between 1872 and 1875. That Marx personally sent the French translations to Beesly is confirmed in a 1959 paper by Royden Harrison who had had sight of letters exchanged between Beesly and Marx:

Marx sent the Professor the livraisons of the French translation of Capital. These came in parts and, as they arrived, Beesly acknowledged them with warm thanks, explaining that: ‘I shall take the earliest opportunity of studying it with all the attention it deserves,’ or, ‘I promise myself great interest and pleasure in reading your work as soon as I have finished what I am now busy about –  the translation of Vol. Ill of Comte’s Pol. Positive.’[2]

The letters referenced by Royden were apparently at MELI – the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute – which no longer exists. It was wound up in 1991 and the bulk of its archival holdings transferred to the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, now inaccessible outside Russia.

By the time the French translation was published, Marx had already given Beesly one of a handful of presentation copies of the first German edition of Das Kapital, published in 1867, and asked for his help in having a review of it published in the Fortnightly Review, of which Beesly was a founder. Although Beesly was amenable, the review was ultimately rejected by the editor-in-chief, John Morley.[3]

The fact that the chapters of the French translation arrived in separate pieces explains why there is no dedication from Marx inside this volume of Le Capital; they would have been bound later. Beesly’s copy of the first German edition of Das Kapital, inscribed to him from Marx, was not part of the archive donated by Beesly’s family and was last seen at auction in 2010.[4]

Karl Marx, Capital (London: J.M. Dent, 1930)

Orwell Book Collection

UCL Special Collections Reference: ORWELL N 10 MAR

 Among other works written by Marx held by UCL’s Special Collections is a rather unassuming, later English translation of Das Kapital, published in two volumes as part of the popular Everyman’s Library in 1930. While the first edition of Capital was received poorly, selling only 1000 copies in the first four years of circulation, by the time Dent chose it for its series of reprinted classics, it achieved a canonical status. It was published in response to a new wave of interest in Marx, following the Russian Revolution and related proliferation of political writings. That is, by 1930 Capital – the foundational work of anti-capitalism – turned out to have commercial potential.

Title page of volume 1 of Capital, published by Dent in 1930 as part of Everyman’s Library.

The Everyman’s edition was important in that it popularised the new translation by Cedar and Eden Paul, based on the 4^th German edition of Das Kapital, produced for another publisher, Allen and Urwin two years earlier. But its relative novelty stemmed also from its affordability. The book was promoted as the first truly inexpensive edition of the work, somewhat cynically, perhaps, flaunting the socialist cause as a marketing tool.  It was advertised by Dent as one of the books “hitherto within reach of collectors and the comparatively well-to-do bibliophile…for the first time appropriately issued at a ‘Socialist’ price.”[5]

But our copy is also important because of its unique provenance. It is part of George Orwell’s book collection, consisting of rare and early editions of Orwell’s works, translations of Orwell’s publications, as well as books from his own library, of which we hold ca. 350 volumes. These represent part of Orwell’s library at the time of his death in 1950 and were purchased from Orwell’s executor, Richard Rees.

Richard Rees’ bookplate, as seen in the volume.

Orwell had a complicated relationship with Marxism, but Marx’s writings played a significant role in his own political thinking as well as fiction writing. Predictably, Marx’s works would have assumed a central place in his library. This particular edition offers a glimpse at Orwell’s engagement with Capital. It includes in the first volume two annotations, in pencil, which we believe to be by Orwell. The handwriting here is consistent with other samples of author’s hand, as represented in Orwell Papers, also part of UCL’s Special Collections.

“Quite!”, one of Orwell’s inscriptions in the volume.

[1] HARRISON, ROYDEN. “E. S. BEESLY AND KARL MARX (Continued).” International Review of Social History, vol. 4, no. 2, 1959, pp. 208–38: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44581406. Accessed 30 April 2025.

[2] p.226 of HARRISON, ROYDEN. “E. S. BEESLY AND KARL MARX (Continued).” International Review of Social History, vol. 4, no. 2, 1959, pp. 208–38 https://www.jstor.org/stable/44581406. Accessed 30 April 2025.

[3] See: https://www2.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/201007/auction-1.phtml. Accessed 20 April 2025.

[4] See: https://auctionpublicity.com/2010/06/09/world-records-set-at-bloomsbury-auctions-important-books-and-manuscripts-sale/. Accessed 30 April 2025.

[5]  Quoted in Terry Seymour, A Printing History of Everyman’s Library, 1906-1982. AuthorHouse, 2011, p. 182.

Student Reflection on the BA Education Studies Placement, Pt. 2

By Sarah Pipkin, on 2 May 2025

The Special Collections Outreach Team has been fortunate to host two students on a placement from the IOE’s BA in Education Studies. As their time comes to a close with us, they’ve written a blog post about their experiences. In this post, Joann Zhang reflects on her experience.

As part of my placement module this term, my colleague Elena Yu and I had the opportunity to work closely with the Outreach team at UCL Special Collections. This experience not only deepened my understanding of how the collections operate behind the scenes but also gave me a new perspective on how historical resources can be used for educational purposes.

This wasn’t my first time engaging with the UCL Special Collections. In Year 1, during the module The Worlds of UCL, Professor Georgina Brewis introduced us to various selected materials from the collection as part of our classwork. As a BA Education Studies student, I also often wonder how these resources could be used in school teaching. So, I was very excited when I knew that I was allocated to the Special Collections team—and even more so when I found out we would be developing a series of GCSE History learning materials.

Selection of photographs from the Worlds of UCL seminar

However, using collection items in a taught class and actually working as part of the team that selects and prepares those materials are very different experiences. In classes, items are pre-selected, but the process behind this is far more complex. First, our topic this year focused on Commonwealth immigration—something I had very little prior knowledge of. Also, I was unfamiliar with archive search engines and didn’t know how to begin locating relevant materials. In total, everything felt new to me at the beginning.

Luckily, with the support of Vicky Price and Sarah Pipkin, Elena and I were able to start with a presentation on the history of Commonwealth immigration, which gave us a basic understanding and helped us set a direction for our research. We then learned how to navigate UCL Library Services and use the archive catalogue to search for materials. Finally, we booked the Reading Room to check items in person and arrange our findings into a spreadsheet.

Viewing items in the IOE and SJRR Reading Rooms

Throughout this process, I was impressed by the diversity of items held in the collection. Beyond published rare books, there were small press materials like magazines and newspaper clippings, as well as personal letters and ephemera. My favourite item among all my findings was a videotape called Motherland, found in the Marina Foster collection. It was a play created by a group of female students at Vauxhall Manor School, based on the real-life stories of 23 Caribbean women who migrated to the UK in the 1950s. It might be particularly inspiring for GCSE students to learn about what students of the same age were creating more than 40 years ago.

Watching the Motherland VHS

This research experience felt like a treasure hunt: starting with almost no knowledge and slowly digging deeper to uncover hidden gems with teamwork and guidance from our supervisors. There were times of disappointment, especially when items didn’t quite match what I was looking for. But there were also rewarding moments brought by unexpected findings. Over the last four months, I was glad to see my confidence grow with each visit to the Reading Room, and I have developed new research skills that I can apply in other contexts.

At the end, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Amy Howe, Becky Sims, Chelsie Mok, Colin Penman, Liz Lawes, Sarah Pipkin, and Vicky Price, who supported me throughout the placement with patience and kindness. I’m truly grateful for this opportunity and hope to see you in the future, both in and beyond the Special Collections.

Thank you so much to Joann for her hard work and her reflection on her placement!

Student Reflection on the BA Education Studies Placement, Pt. 1

By Sarah Pipkin, on 1 May 2025

The Special Collections Outreach Team has been fortunate to host two students on a placement from the IOE’s BA in Education Studies. As their time comes to a close with us, they’ve written a blog post about their experiences. In this post, Elena Yu reflects on her experience.

Introduction

I chose the Education Placement Module this term, and it is so lucky for me to spend 50 wonderful hours with warm-hearted staff members in UCL Special Collection team and my classmate Joann Zhang, working on a project around the topic of “Commonwealth Migration”. We hope that our research and work will offer some help for GCSE students’ history study. Our placement started in late January with an initial online meeting with Vicky Price and Sarah Pipkin. Over the following weeks, Joann and I gained insight into the various aspects of the team’s work — including archiving, cataloguing, digitisation, and the outreach efforts related to the collection.

Working as a team   

Illustration of shooting an ancient book in the digitization process

While working through the archives, a number of staff members generously shared their expertise, guidance, and advice—all of which greatly inspired me and contributed to the development of my research. Colin Penman from the UCL Records suggested several useful items from the Records collection. Becky Sims, Liz Lawes, and Chelsie Mok kindly offered valuable advice on locating materials, and Amy Howe patiently demonstrated the digitization process (as shown in the photo). Their support was instrumental in deepening my understanding of archival work and contextualizing it within the scope of my research. 

The most exciting collection item  

Material reference number: GA/9/2/4

After keyword searching in the catalogues of online library and looking at them in the UCL Special Collections Reading Room, GA/9/2/4 is a part of most intriguing material that I found. These colourful leaflets and booklets are from 1970-1987, and perfectly show activities that were done by the Commonwealth Institute to provide better service to both immigrants’ lives. Leaflets included multiple types of activities offered, such as school visits to exhibition art galleries, educational services, quiz pamphlets featuring fun facts or knowledge of commonwealth nations’ culture, teaching packs, workshops and library services. The content of the activities covered wide range of commonwealth nations and communities. They are suitable for assisting students with GCSE History learning, as they used harmless language with easy vocabularies, with interesting illustrations and contents created for children in similar age groups.  

What I have learned   

This placement has provided me with not only practical work skills but also meaningful life experience. As a student who began with little background knowledge in either archival work or the topic of Commonwealth migration, I initially felt overwhelmed and uncertain. Thanks to the helping hands from Vicky, Sarah, and Joann, I gradually developed a clearer understanding of the research topic, along with the ability to navigate specific catalogues to find relevant materials, and it is truly cheerful when I can see my progress. I still remember Vicky’s words: “It’s human instinct to push away from daunting tasks but give yourself the courage to climb over the mountain and take the first step. That’s the hardest part of the process—once you’ve made that move, you’re already making progress.” Her encouragement stayed with me throughout the journey and continued to motivate me whenever I felt discouraged.  

Thank you so much to Elena for her hard work and her reflection on her placement!

Applications for the 2025 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize are now open!

By Sarah Pipkin, on 31 March 2025

Image credit: Howard Kordansky, 2024 Book Prize winner

The Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize celebrates and encourages student book collectors who are passionate about any type of book, printed, or manuscript material. It is open to any student studying at a London-based university who has a collection of printed and/or manuscript material focused on a cohesive theme.  

The winner will receive £600 as well as an allowance of £300 to purchase an item for UCL Special Collections. The prize will also include the opportunity to give a talk on your collection as part of the UCL Special Collections events programme.

Your collection should be based around a theme which has been deliberately assembled and that you intend to continue growing. Past shortlisted and finalist collection themes include post WWI Jewish experiences, transgender authors, and Arabic voices in science fiction and graphic novels.  

Your collection does not need to include items that are valuable, old, or historically important. Instead, your collection can include anything from comic books to postcards, 19th century novels to modern YA fiction. As long as it has a dedicated theme, you are welcome to apply! 

To apply, you must:

• Be a current undergraduate or postgraduate studying for a degree at a London-based university. Both part-time and full-time students are encouraged to apply. 

• Have a cohesive collection of at least 8 items.   

• Fill out our online application form by April 25th.  

• Shortlisted applicants will be asked to present their collection to the prize judges on May 19th. 

Below are several resources that can help you plan your application. However, please feel free to contact library.spec.coll.rarebooks@ucl.ac.uk with any specific questions you might have about the prize. 

Collection of Emma Treleaven, 2023 Book Collecting Prize winner

To apply or to learn more about the eligibility criteria: 

• The Anthony Davis Book Prize webpage. 

 For advice on what a collection can look like: 

• How to be a student book collector (and apply for the Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize) 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Collecting with Intention 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Interview with LSE Library 

 Conversations with previous winners and finalists: 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Interview with Emma Treleaven (2023 winner) 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize: Books that built a zoo 

• Q&A with Erick Jackaman, 2021 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize Runner Up  

Announcements of previous winners: 

• 2024 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize Winners announced! 

• Winners of the 2023 Anthony Davis Student Book Collecting Prize 

• Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize 2022: results announced 

• Announcing the winners of the 2021 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize 

• Results announced for Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize 2020 

Call for a Small Press in Residence at UCL Special Collections

By Kaja Marczewska, on 5 March 2025

Call for Applications 

In 2025, we are celebrating 60 years of small press collecting at UCL. We are looking for a small press to take up a temporary residency at UCL to help us celebrate and contribute to the programme of events and activities which will run over the course of the year.  

About the residency 

The residency is a collaboration between UCL Special Collections and the Slade School of Fine Art. We are offering a flexible, temporary residency for a small, independent press to develop a publishing project(s), engage with our collections, and feed into our small press anniversary celebrations in 2025.  

The successful press will spend up to 6 weeks or part-time equivalent at UCL, anytime between 1 May and 31 December 2025 (although alternative dates and residency duration might be accommodated, subject to space, staff, and funding availability; the exact schedule will be agreed with UCL Special Collections on appointment.).  

The press will have part-time access to a studio space and the printing workshop at The Slade (including equipment for all forms of intaglio printing, screen printing equipment, an Albion Press, lithography facilities, digital printing suite, a risograph, and bookbinding tools; visit The Slade website for more information about available facilities).  

The press will have freedom to develop a programme of activity, with support from colleagues at UCL Special Collections, but will be expected to:  

• work across the two UCL campuses and engage with staff and student communities at UCL Bloomsbury and UCL East;  

• curate a short programme of activity, feeding into our 60th anniversary celebrations; 

• by the end of the residency, produce a publication (or a group of publications).  

Publications produced during the residency will be acquired by UCL Special Collections and become part of UCL’s Small Press Collections.  

The Small Press in Residence will receive:  

• a grant of £5,000; 

• a part-time studio space at The Slade, on UCL Bloomsbury campus (please note the space might not be available for the duration of the residency, due to other demands on the space; we will discuss space requirements and availability with the appointed press); 

• part-time access to The Slade printing and binding workshop facilities (please note the facilities might not be available for the duration of the residency, due to other demands on the space; we will discuss facilities requirements and availability with the appointed press); 

• mediated access to UCL Special Collections;  

• access to and staff with specialist knowledge of the collections; 

• support in organising and embedding at UCL any proposed programmes of activity.  

The Small Press in residence will be required to provide, as a minimum:  

• a publication, or a set of publications;  

• at least two live public outputs – one at each of the UCL’s two campuses – during or after the residency period, such as talk, event, workshop; 

• a blog post for the UCL Special Collections blog on any aspect of the residency; 

• acknowledgment of the grant in any resulting publications.  

UCL Special Collections will work collaboratively with the Small Press in Residence to develop any programming. We encourage activities with capacity to engage UCL’s diverse staff and student communities in innovative and unexpected ways, showcasing in the process the potential of collections, and our Small Press Collections in particular, for cutting-edge programming. 

About UCL’s Small Press collections  

The UCL Small Press Collections were established in 1965 and now consist of over 4,000 independent literary Little Magazines, artists magazines and counter-cultural newspapers, and over 20,000 poetry pamphlets, artists’ books, and other experimental publications. The collections are global in scope with material having been collected from Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia. Strengths of the collections include concrete and visual poetry, Fluxus, and mimeographed magazines. 

Eligibility and Selection Criteria 

The residency programme is open to applicants of any nationality, background, or career stage. Individuals and groups/collectives/communities of interest will all be considered. No affiliation with UCL, past or present, is required.  

Small presses interested in applying will need to ensure that they are eligible to work in the UK before applying. UCL will undertake Right to Work checks for successful candidates. Please us the UK government website to check if you are eligible to apply and what documentation might be required. UCL is unable to support visa applications for this scheme.  

The Selection Committee will consider applications according to the following criteria:  

• suitability of the press and its engagement to date with small press printing and publishing traditions;  

• an interest in engaging with and responding to our collections; 

• the potential of the proposed residency programme to increase visibility and public understanding of small press as a practice and of our Small Press collections;  

• the potential of the project to engage the UCL staff and student community, across the two campuses;  

• the feasibility of the proposal.  

Application process 

Applications should be submitted by Monday, 31 March 2025, 12:00 noon and include:  

• a completed application form;  

• a short CV (up to 2 pages); for group applications, please include a CV for each member of the group involved in the application (uploaded via the application form); 

• a short portfolio of up to 5 pages showcasing the Press’ work to date (uploaded via the application form);  

• a statement of up to 800 words, outlining your proposed publishing project(s), including details of ways in which you plan to engage with our collections and feed into our Small Press Collections anniversary celebrations in 2025 (uploaded via the application form). 

Any evidence submitted after the closing date will not be reviewed by the panels. 

Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact UCL Special Collections before submitting a formal application, to discuss any access, technical, or curatorial requirements that their residency might require. Email: library.spec.coll.rarebooks@ucl.ac.uk. 

Applications will be shortlisted by a panel composed of UCL’s Special Collections experts. Notifications of the award will be made by 16 April 2025. Feedback will be provided to all shortlisted candidates. We regret that we cannot provided detailed feedback to all other applicants.  

Changes to our exhibitions and installations

By Sarah Pipkin, on 27 January 2025

2026 marks UCL’s bicentenary and in preparation for the upcoming celebrations, UCL is undertaking work to renovate the Main Quad and central areas of the Wilkins Building throughout 2025. Additional information about expected construction work is available on the Bicentennial Physical Legacy website.

The construction work for these projects has necessitated some temporary changes to our exhibitions and art installations in the Main Library. These include: 

• No Main Library exhibition in 2025 while the library entrance is relocated to enable construction work in the stairwell.  Exhibitions will resume as normal in early 2026.

• Temporary de-installation of the David Blackmore installation Undated Fragments on Unofficial Paper in the Donaldson Reading Room, to ensure the plasters are not damaged by any vibrations that might be caused by the construction work. 

David Blackmore’s “Undated Fragments on Unofficial Paper”. Photo © Mary Hinkley, UCL Educational Media.

Despite changes to our exhibition schedule, there are still ways in which  you can see items from our collection. A new exhibition, Prejudice in Power, will be on display in the Student Centre from early 2025 until 2026. We will also continue to offer public events, such as our Open Mornings, where you can see items from Special Collections. The South Junction Reading Room and IOE Reading Room remain open, and access to our collections is open to everyone.

To learn more about UCL Library Exhibitions, and to see past exhibitions, visit the Exhibitions webpage.

Recent Acquisitions at UCL Special Collections

By Kaja Marczewska, on 6 December 2024

written by Kathryn Hannan and Kaja Marczewska 

At UCL, we actively develop our Special Collections through acquisitions, by donation, bequest, transfer, and purchase.  We add to our collections regularly, across our collecting priorities, to enhance, complement, and diversify our existing holdings for research and teaching.

This blog is part of a new series, showcasing selected new additions to our collections from across UCL’s archives, records, and rare books. We hope you will enjoy learning a little bit about them!

White Lion Street Free School, Papers of Nigel Wright.  

Imagine a school with no compulsory lessons and no strict timetable, where pupils shop for and help prepare school lunches, take part in building maintenance, cleaning and tidying, and where decisions are made at a weekly meeting where teachers (known as workers), parents, and children all have an equal voice. This is how the White Lion Street Free School in Islington, London operated from 1972 – 1990. The school was free to attend with non-selective admissions, based on a local catchment area. 

We recently received an exciting donation of archival papers about the White Lion Street Free School, now part of the Institute of Education Archives here at UCL Special Collections. These papers were collected by Nigel Wright, who worked at the School for four years (1979-1983) and wrote a book about his time there. The papers include his research and reflections on the school, correspondence about the running and funding of the school, copies of School Bulletins, and a publication by the school “How to Set Up a Free School: A Handbook of Alternative Education”. As you can imagine such an experimental school created a lot of controversy and press coverage. The collection also contains press cuttings, both praising and criticising the school. 

Archive collections of material from such radical experiments in education during the 1970s – 1980s are rare as, so often, these experimental schools were short-lived. This adds to the value of this collection for research. And we are also already actively using the collection in our teaching too. Items from the Nigel Wright Papers were used this term in a module on ‘Radical Education’ on the Education Society and Culture BA. The students were fascinated to read first-hand accounts of such an experimental school and see photographs of its everyday life in the school bulletins. 

To find out more about the collection, see the catalogue record for Papers of Nigel Wright. 

NW/7, draft document outlining White Lion Street Free School’s philosophy, C1970s – 1980s, UCL Special Collections, IOE Archives.

NW/4, White Lion Street Free School Newsletters and publication, 1970s, UCL Special Collections, IOE Archives.

 In 2024, we have also so far added over 200 new items to our rare printed collections. Included here is a preview of some of these new additions.  

Two new volumes in our Laurence Housman collection:  

Laurence Housman (1865-1959) was the brother of poet and scholar A.E. Housman, and a versatile artist, scholar, and social reformer. At UCL, we hold a collection of books and periodicals by or with contributions from Housman. The collection was part of the library of Ian Kenyur-Hodgkins, an antiquarian bookseller, which was purchased by the College in 1978. This year, we added two new items to the collection:  

Of Aucassin and Nicolette : a translation in prose and verse from the Old French; together with Amabel and Amoris / given for the first time by Laurence Housman; with drawings by Paul Woodroffe; engraved on the wood by Clemence Housman. 

This new item is a lovely first Housman edition of the anonymous medieval French chantefable, or a ‘sung story’, which traditionally combined prose and verse. Of Aucassin and Nicolette has long been popular among book designers and illustrators and many editions exist. This Housman edition was printed in London, by John Murray, in 1902 and includes 3-full page illustrations – engravings on wood, by Clemence Housman, from the drawings by Paul Woodroffe. It is Clemence’s contribution that makes this item particularly interesting. Clemence Housman (1861-1955) was Laurence Housman’s sister and herself an author, illustrator, and activist in the women’s suffrage movement. Together with Laurence, she was the founder of Suffrage Atelier, an artists’ collective committed to campaigning for women’s suffrage in England, which specialised in printmaking, banner-making, drawing, and stencilling. Clemence and Laurence collaborated often, and we hold in our collection other examples of volumes illustrated by her (e.g. Moonshine & clover).    

While we hold another copy of the same edition, this new acquisition is a presentation copy, given by Housman himself to his friend John Baillie, subsequently regifted by Baillie and passed onto his friend, James Boswell in 1925.  

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Of Aucassin and Nicolette.  

Of Aucassin and Nicolette title page (left) and half-title page with Housman and Baillie inscriptions (right). UCL Special Collections Reference: SC Temp 2024/162.

Palestine Plays by Laurence Housman. 

In his four Palestine Plays, Housman explores the dangers of superstition in interpreting the Bible and offers unconventional takes on the Old Testament. In his reworkings of Biblical narratives about prophecy and social justice, Housman draws on his contemporary political activism and his engagement with radical social movements, including women’s suffrage, pacifism, and socialism.  

The copy we recently added to our collection is the first edition of the Plays, published by Jonathan Cape in 1942. It was Laurence Housman’s own copy of the volume, signed by him, and includes his annotations as well as corrections to the text. The volume also includes an inscription, pasted on the back endpaper which reads, somewhat ironically perhaps: “Please keep this copy very clear, as it is a special edition. L.H.” and a pasted, undated flyer advertising Houseman’s reading from his plays at the New School Hall, King St. Methodist Church in Derby. As is the case with Of Auccasin and Nicolette, we hold more than one copy of this edition of Palestine Plays, but the newly acquired item offers a rich and unique insight into Housman’s writing and editing practice and the circulation of the book.  

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Palestine Plays. 

Palestine Plays: half-title page with Housman’s inscription (left) and a page showing Housman’s corrections to the text (right). UCL Special Collections reference: SC TEMP 2024/9.

Palestine Plays inscription: “Please keep this copy very clean, as it is a special edition. L H”

Twelve Original Woodcuts by Roger Fry 

This item includes 12 plates of woodcuts by Roger Fry, hand-printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at Hogarth Press, in their Richmond home in 1921.   

Fry was, alongside Virgina Woolf, a member of the famous Bloomsbury Group, a Bloomsbury-based collective or artists, writers, and intellectuals active in the early 20th c. He founded the Omega Workshop in 1913, a design enterprise which brought together members of the Bloomsbury Group, set up to break what he considered to be a false division between decorative and fine arts, and to encourage the expression of Bloomsbury Group aesthetics in graphic and product design. Fry also had links with UCL, having taught art history at the Slade. And while he is today considered one of the most important art critics of his time, he was also a painter and a skilled printmaker in his own right. He printed many woodcuts in the early 1920s, mostly inspired by the modernist aesthetics of the German Expressionism.   

Twelve Original Woodcuts is a wonderful example of many different areas of Fry’s practice coalescing. The volume is an expression of Fry’s keen interest in printmaking and in woodcut as a printing technology as well as a statement on his place in the Bloomsbury Group community, and its often collaborative and collegial approach to artistic practice and production. Here, Fry doesn’t print the work himself, but rather relies on the Woolfs printing press and distribution channels of Hogarth Press to produce and promote his work.  

In a letter of 2 December 1921, Virginia Woolf noted that “the first edition of Roger’s woodcuts sold out in two days, and another [is] to be printed, folded, stitched and bound instantly” (Letters, II, p.495). The first printing to which Woolf referred, included 150 copies only. The second impression, which we hold at UCL, was printed on superior paper stock and without the titles of the woodcuts. The size of the second printing is unknown, but very few examples can be traced today. This was also the last book to be printed by the Woolfs to incorporate original woodcuts.   

Our copy of Fry’s Woodcuts was part of Albert Ronald Morris’ library. Morris was a former Slade School student, and the item was donated to UCL by Romilly R. Morris, his son. 

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue for Twelve Original Woodcuts.

One of the woodcuts from Roger Fry’s Twelve Original Woodcuts. UCL Special Collections reference: ART RARE PA 10.

 The Ojibway Conquest: a tale of the Northwest by Kah-ge-gah-bowl or G. Copway, chief of the Ojibway nation. 

Kahgegahbowl, also known as George Copway was born in 1818 in Upper Canda, to Mississauga chief. Although brought up in a Native American community, Kahkakakahbowh’s parents were converted to Christianity in 1827. Copway went to a church school in Illinois and later became a Methodist missionary in Canada. Following an embezzlement scandal, he was expelled from the Canadian conference of the Methodist Church and moved to the United States, where he enjoyed an extraordinary carried. His autobiography, considered to be the first book by a Canadian Native American, was published in 1847 and proved an immediate hit. The Ojibway Conquest, the copy of which was recently acquired by UCL Special Collections, followed in 1850.  

Published under Copway’s name, the work wasn’t in fact written by him. Julius Taylor Clark claimed in 1898 to be the author who had allowed Copway to publish it under his own name in order to “raise fund to aid him in his work among his people.” A later, 1898 edition includes Clark’s preface which outlines the book’s publication history.  

The copy we hold is the first, 1850 edition, published in New York and includes Copway’s portrait. Interestingly, it is a presentation copy, which was gifted by Copway himself to Dudley Arthur Mills, the British Conservative MP, in 1850.   

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for The Ojibway Conquest. 

The Ojibway Conquest: a frontispiece portrait of George Copway (left) and a presentation copy inscription (right). UCL Special Collections reference: SC TEMP 2024/16.

 Dialogo della bella creanza della donne, dello Stordito Intronato.  

Also known as La Raffaella, this volume was a popular 16th century work on women, social life, youth, love, and desire, considered quite scandalous in its day. Dialogo was written by Alessandro Piccolomini (1508 – 1578), but published under the pseudonym Stordito Intronato. Piccolomoni, very well known in his time for both his comic and scientific writing, was an active member of the Academia degli Intronati, an important meeting place for the aristocracy in the Republic of Siena. On entering the Acadmia in 1531, he took a name of Strodito, under which he published. His Dialogo was written as ironic, provocative, and playful entertainment for his fellow members of the Academia, but revealed also a wealth of detail on Renaissance women’s social lives, and often problematic modes of their representation in literatures of the period.  

First published in Venice in 1539, the volume was republished many times during the 16th century. UCL holds its 1560 edition from Milan. There are only two other copies of this edition recorded in the UK; Universal Short Title Catalogue identifies only four additional copies internationally. That is, this is a very rare item, and the UCL copy is made even more special as it retains its original 16th c. full soft pigskin binding with black lettering on spine. 

This item was part of the collection of Professor Charles Randolph Quirk, the Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at UCL from 1968 and 1981. His collection was donated to UCL by his widow Gabriele Stein, lady Quirk, and is now part of UCL Special Collections.  But our copy also includes traces of its other owner, the costume historian and British Museum curator John Lea Nevinson. Both an inscription and Nevinson’s playful bookplate are present in the volume, alongside a leaf inserted at the end with notes on edition of this work, in what looks like Nevinson’s handwriting.   

To find out more and to request this item, please consult our catalogue record for Dialogo. 

Dialogo della bella creanza delle donne (1560), title page.

John L. Nevinson’s bookplate, as seen in our copy of Dialogo (1560).

 All our collections and collection items mentioned in this blog are available to all and can be viewed in our reading rooms. More information about what we hold and how to book an appointment is available on our website.  

We often work with donors and accept new acquisitions, where these supplement and enrich our existing holdings and speak to our collecting priorities. If you have an item or a collection, no matter how big or small, which speaks to our collecting remit and might need a new home, please contact us on spec.coll@ucl.ac.uk to discuss a possible donation to UCL Special Collections.   

The New Curators Project 2025 – Applications are now closed

By Vicky A Price, on 4 December 2024

The New Curators Project is an annual programme run by UCL Special Collections. It offers 10 young adults in East London the chance to develop the skills and experience needed to start a career in the cultural heritage sector.

Update: applications are now closed, but you can register your interest to hear when we begin recruitment for The Curators Project 2026.

Previous applicants have gone on to work for organisations such as Toynbee Hall, Tate, The Roundhouse and UCL.  It is a friendly, fun way of learning about the cultural heritage field and taking your first steps towards a career in the sector without needing a degree.

What is Cultural Heritage?

The cultural heritage field is an area of work focused on preserving history and culture and making it available to the general public. Among other things, it includes:

Museums.
Arts organisations and charities.
Libraries and Archives.
Historic Buildings and heritage sites.
Archaeology.

What will the project entail?

Successful applicants will receive training from industry experts in key areas such as:

Carrying out historical research.
Using archives.
Creating an exhibition.
Running events and campaigns.
Communications in the cultural heritage sector.

Participants will gain real work experience by creating an exhibition that will tour Newham’s public libraries, using historical material from UCL Special Collections, the Archives and Local Studies Library in Stratford and beyond.

The programme also offers employment support such as advice on applying for jobs, writing applications and being interviewed.

Participants who attend all the workshops will receive up to £665.

Who can apply?

Applications are open to people who:

Are aged 18 to 24 at the time of making their application.
Are living, studying or working in Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
Are not a university graduate or currently studying at university.
Have less than 6 months paid experience in the cultural heritage sector.

Archivist Richard Wiltshire from Tower Hamlets Archive shows participants archival maps and plans.

When and where is it happening?

Workshops will be ‘in person’ on Tuesday evenings from 5pm to 7pm, beginning on March 4 2025 and ending June 24 2025. There will also be three full day workshops on:

Friday 21 March
Friday 4 April
Friday 13 June

Workshops will take place at the UCL’s brand new East London campus:

UCL East
Marshgate
London
E20 2AF

Do applicants need to have any specific A Levels or GCSEs?

Absolutely not. We want to recruit participants who have a passion for local history, regardless of their qualifications.

How do I apply?

Update: applications are now closed, but you can register your interest to hear when we begin recruitment for The Curators Project 2026.

Delivered in partnership with Newham Heritage Month.

Research Institute for Collections Fellowships 2025

By Kaja Marczewska, on 15 November 2024

The UCL Research Institute for Collections (RIC) is inviting applications for the 2025 RIC Fellowships. In addition to the Special Collections Visiting Fellowship and Liberating the Collections Fellowship we are delighted to announce the new Museums Collections Fellowship.

The RIC Fellowships offer opportunities to visit UCL to conduct research using the UCL holdings of archives, rare books, records, and museums collections.

Liberating the Collections Fellowship
The Liberating the Collections Fellowship is intended to unearth underrepresented voices and find new ways of engaging with collection stories and presenting them to wider society. As a Fellow, you will help us gain perspectives on our collections beyond the structural narratives that currently prevail.

Special Collections Visiting Fellowship
The Special Collections Visiting Fellowship offers an opportunity to visit UCL to conduct research on a topic centred on the UCL holdings of archives, rare books, and records. The aims of the Fellowship are to facilitate new research into UCL Special Collections and to raise awareness of the collections amongst the research community and the general public.

Museum Collections Visiting Fellowship
New for 2025 is the RIC Museum Collections Visiting Fellowship which offers an opportunity to visit UCL to conduct research on a topic centred on the collections of UCL Art Museum, Grant Museum of Zoology, Pathology Museum, Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology and UCL Science Collections.

The successful candidates will spend up to six weeks, or the part-time equivalent, at UCL researching the collections.

Projects can start from July 2025 onwards. Fellows should aim to finish their project by the end of 2025.

The closing date for applications is Monday 6th January 2025.

For more information please click on the individual fellowship links or click here for an overview.

“Yet but scantily peopled”: Teaching decolonising histories by re-reading children’s textbooks in imperial peripheries and in the metropole

By Nazlin Bhimani, on 8 November 2024

This post is by Pia Russell, who was was awarded the ‘Liberating the Collections Visiting Fellowship’ by the Research Institute for Collections in 2023.

Maria Lawson. A History Canada for Use in Public Schools. Toronto: W.J. Gage, 1908. p. 2. https://archive.org/details/historyofcanadaf0000laws/page/2/mode/2up

This scholarship occurs in the homelands of the WSÁNEĆ and LƏK̓ʷƏŊƏN peoples on whose lands the University of Victoria now stands and whose relationships with this land remain today.

Constructing settler colonial origin stories

In 2020 a petition signed by more than 268,000 people, asked the United Kingdom (UK) government to make the teaching of Britain’s colonial past more prevalent in the compulsory primary and secondary curriculum.  In doing so, signatories hoped that children in UK schools would learn how: “Colonial powers must own up to their pasts…and how this contributes to the unfair systems of power at the foundation of our modern society.”[1]  The following year, the UK’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities released a report which included among its 24 recommendations the teaching of an inclusive curriculum regarding the making of modern Britain.[2]  While these initiatives are not without challenges, they do demonstrate two important aspects.  First, that so often schools are ground-zero for debates about collective historical consciousness.  And second, that the UK is beginning a process of self-reflection about their colonial legacies which can feel overdue to many in former colonies.  While there is much public and scholarly discussion of our so-called postcolonial world, those living today in the peripheries of former empires continue to experience imperial realities as very much a part of our present.

In British Columbia (BC), Canada’s most western province, the Ministry of Education implemented an entirely revised elementary and secondary (K-12) curriculum in 2016.  A leading influence of this redesign was a response to calls for increased Indigenisation and decolonisation, largely influenced by the 2015 findings of the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) Commission of Canada.  The TRC was a federal government inquiry which sought to document the painful histories of the Indian Residential School (IRS) system and provide survivors of this system with opportunities to share their experiences.  Among the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action, many relate specifically to education.  For example, Call 62.i asks governments at all levels to: “Make age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada a mandatory education requirement for Kindergarten to Grade Twelve students.”[3]  Today, BC’s K-12 curriculum policy includes Indigenous ways of knowing and being at every grade level and in every subject.[4]  While considerable work still remains ahead, it is nonetheless a start towards decolonising the often fractured relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples living within the context of the Canadian state.  Whether it is controversy about curriculum, statues, the commonwealth, or museum collections, the process of how decolonisation is discussed in the heart of former empires—the imperial metropole—feels rather different than how it is increasingly discussed in its former colonies.

One powerful way for learners and educators to think about colonial legacy, is to understand how the narratives of our past often inform our present.  Reflecting on our historical consciousness asks that we think critically about how it is we came to know our past.[5]  By critically re-reading settler colonial origin stories we might begin to trace a line of how power was, and continues to be, expressed in the lives of people on the colonised ground.  In Canada, for most non-Indigenous people, a leading source of such stories has been school textbooks.  As the Education Librarian in Special Collections at the University of Victoria (UVic) Libraries, I curate BC’s historical textbooks (BCHT) collection.  It is a growing print and digital archive of our province’s textbook history.  In Canada, education is structured provincially so over the past 153 years of BC’s existence, a defined corpus of textbooks has been required reading for hundreds of thousands of public school pupils.  What stories might these textbooks have told children over time about the place they called home?  To be clear, we cannot always assume that just because children read a textbook that somehow meant they adhered to its ideology—what book historians often refer to as the receptivity fallacy[6]—but we can imagine that their interactions with the book’s narratives introduced them to commonly held attitudes portrayed in the textbooks.  So, what were the early textbook stories that British Columbian’s told their future citizenry about colonization and empire?  And, how might these compare to the textbook stories told in the heart of empire, the British metropole?

Liberating the Collections Visiting Fellowship

Self-image of Pia Russell, outside the Institute of Education (July 2023)

In July 2023, I had the remarkable opportunity to ask these internationally comparative scholarly questions about colonisation and empire in children’s school books when I was the 2023 Liberating the Collections Visiting Fellow at the Research Institute for Collections (RIC) at University College London’s Faculty of Education and Society.  Here I had the opportunity to review dozens of UK textbooks that were contemporaneous to the ones I curate in BC.  Currently my focus is on the first fifty years of BC’s textbook history.  During the fellowship, I also developed wonderful professional collaborations with counterpart colleagues such as the exceptional Dr. Nazlin Bhimani, Research Support and Special Collections Librarian.  Together, we were able to share best practices for the unique technical aspects of the rare books we curate, and also comparatively discuss the social contexts our collections exist within.  Serving as a Liberating the Collections Visiting Fellow initiated a completely new and innovative line of inquiry within my existing program of scholarship.  My long-term scholarship has focused on decolonising, anti-racist, and feminist analyses of these unique historical sources.  Most often I partner with and take guidance from Indigenous colleagues who work locally.  This is essential, truth-telling work that seeks to establish more respectful cross-cultural research partnerships and personal connections.  Through a Liberating the Collections Visiting Fellowship, I was able to include a dynamic international dimension to my historical textbook scholarship and this provided a beautiful complement to my already established local relationships closer to home.  When engaging in decolonising work in such deeply colonised lands as British Columbia (a problematic colonial name, to be sure), such complementarity not only strengthens the scholarly work but also takes seriously the responsibility of being a historian working in this place.  When reflecting on the histories, presents, and futurities of the Indigenous homelands where I reside, understanding the centuries old power structures of the British empire that instigated this colonisation through actions such as map making, land surveying, and textbook provisioning is essential.  Through my Fellowship at the UCL’s RIC, I strengthened my understanding of critical imperial studies alongside my engagement with local Indigenous ways of knowing and being.  As a result from dialog with colleagues such as Dr. Bhimani and while examining rare books in the RIC, I am now better able to fulfill my responsibilities as a historian who hopes to raise up previously suppressed voices and bring their histories in from the literal and figurative margins of both BC’s and Britain’s historical school textbooks.  Our vocational partnerships show much future promise and I look forward to exciting public history work together in the years to come.

Side-by-side: comparing historical textbook narratives

One specific outcome of my time as a Liberating the Collections Visiting Fellow at the Research Institute for Collections (RIC) was the development of a teaching resource that utilises these textbooks as historical objects of truth-telling instigation.  The resource seeks to embrace a pedagogical approach that is comprehensively decolonising.  By drawing upon both the UK’s Key Stage Three History curriculum alongside BC’s Grade 9 Social Studies curriculum, we now have an internationally cohesive, curriculum-aligned, learning tool.[7]  This resource guides teachers and students through critical re-readings of historical textbooks to reveal that narratives of empire did not tell the whole story and had considerable consequences lasting up until today. Read the rest of this entry »

The ‘reprint revolution’ and cultures of 20th c. Black publishing

By Kaja Marczewska, on 30 October 2024

Please note that this blog post contains historic uses of language which is outdated, offensive, and discriminatory. The language is retained in its original context and does not represent views of UCL Special Collections. We are commitment to contextualising and addressing dated and harmful languages in our collecting practice, collection documentation, teaching, and engagement activities. You can read about some of our work in this area as part of UCL’s Liberating the Collections programme here.  

In 1969, the USA publishing market saw “increasing numbers of reprints of old volumes by and about black Americans […] pouring off the presses,” as one review put it in the February issue of Negro Digest. Presses such as Arno Press, Negro Universities Press, Dover Publishing, and the book division of Johnson Publishing Company, the publisher of Ebony, a popular African American magazine, emerged in the 1960s to republish significant, out-of-print works of Black American history. Developed at the backdrop of the civil rights struggles and the new civil liberties – as well as disappointments – of the Black Power era, these presses positioned their work as a restorative and reparative effort to recover the work of and on Black American experience. The Crisis described this boom in reprints as a “revolution,” and an important new means of making Black American history visible and accessible.

At UCL, we hold examples of, among others, the Negro University Press (NUP) publications. An imprint of Greenwood Publishers, an educational an academic publisher which specialised in reprints, NUP produced an extensive list in its “The Black Experience in America” series. Among NUP’s most notable publications was a history of slavery in the USA, published as a 125-volume series of reprinted books which were originally published between the late 19^th c. and the 1930s. And while monographs constituted NUP’s principal specialism, the press also reprinted notable African-American periodicals, including the Crisis, and National Anti-Slavery Standard. And this is perhaps where their work proved most impactful, often recovering full periodical runs of otherwise hard to find publications.

Figure 1: Examples of Negro Universities Press publications from UCL’s collections.

NUP’s reprints, both books and periodicals, tended to be published as facsimile editions with no additional content or editorial interventions. In fact, facsimiles, rather than new editions, were very common among the publishers contributing to this Black publishing revival of the 1960s. The facsimile reprints were a practical choice; they made possible quick, efficient, and relatively cheap means of reproducing existing works – all important considerations for the heavily profit-driven reprints market. But this particular approach to bringing out-of-print works back into circulation also played into the contemporary desire for recovering the ‘authentic’ African American experience, here mediated through a historically significant text. And it was this desire for authenticity that was captured in and through the facsimile, a type of reproduction which “aims to invoke the virtual presence of the source, so the bond between reproduction and source is not only graphical and material but is also defined by a retrospective relationship between two points in history, the then and the now.” The sources of the reprint were typically acknowledged in all NUP volumes, further reaffirming the connection with the original.

Figure 2: A copyright page from a NUP reprint publication.

Many of the reprint publications were aimed at academic audiences and libraries. Their arrival was made possible by significant changes in the library practice in the first half of the 20^th century, and especially the work of African-American bibliographers, including W.E.B. Du Bois, and librarians such as Dorothy Porter of the Howard University whose  transformative work on library classification systems not only placed Black writing centre stage in many collections, it also created demand for more publications by Black authors. As Laura E. Helton notes, by the early 1930s there was a growing set of the so-called New Negro Libraries in the USA which held collections on and by African Americans. But existing library classification systems lacked vocabularies for their effective description. “For librarians of ‘Negro Collections,’” Helton writes, “the marginality of blackness […] politicised every instance of numbering, naming, and filing.” According to Helton, the period roughly between 1900 to the end of World War II was “compulsively documentary,” marked by collective efforts of building collections for the study of Black history and literature, of addressing their historic lack, and developing systems for their organisation and description, that is, of “making a field.”

By the time the NUP and other reprint publishers emerged, that landscape looked very different. The larger project of the 1960s reprints was a direct consequence of the work of librarians and bibliographers like Du Bois and Porter, and a response to the transformed conditions of Black writing, reading, and research. NUP was, in fact, set up, as its 1969 catalogue explained “to be an easily accessible publishing medium for […] American Negro colleges.” It run a dedicated ‘Standing Order Plan’ to aid library acquisitions and was to be “a complete, profession publishing organisation.” That is, the press positioned itself as serious scholarly endeavour; it presented acceptable, institutionalised, now increasingly canonised Black history.

Characteristically, NUP and other reprint publishers of the period also explicitly distanced themselves from the radical, small, independent publishers of the Black Liberation Movement and the Black bookshop networks which distributed them (one example is the Detroit-based Broadside Press, whose publications we also hold in our collection). As Joshua Clark Davis explains, “for many Black Power activists, reading works by black authors represented a fundamental step in political awakening, a central prerequisite of the intellectual and ideological transformation from Negro accommodationism to radical Black Power.” And the activist Black bookshops which emerged in the 1960s USA were the place of such radical reading. They were at once places to buy books, unique information centres, and important Black public spaces for community organising, explicitly supporting causes of black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.

Figure 3: A selection of Broadside Press pamphlets, part of UCL Special Collections Poetry Store collection.

Presses like the NUP represented crucial antiracist work always integral to cultures of Black print. But in rejecting their contemporary Black print activist networks, the reprint publishers also inevitably limited the horizon of 1960s Black prints’ radical possibilities. The politics of the reprints represented a characteristic position of the liberal centre and its narratives of diversity, inclusion, and assimilation – of one American history – rather than that of Black struggle for radical Black liberation. The reprint revolution was both transformative in making accessible and ‘legitimising’ Black history on an unprecedented scale, and at the same time, it was a means of controlling and containing the types of Black histories made available and their impacts on the American reading public.  “What if,” to borrow from Fielder and Senchyne, “print and infrastructures surrounding it might more often be constraining rather than freeing? The book form itself […] might actually be inextricable from the history of antiblack racism.”

This turn to reprints in the 1960s was not a new phenomenon. I wrote earlier in this short series of our Black History Month posts about the important role that reprinting played in popularising the abolitionist message of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (and in turning the novel into an international bestseller too). And like the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, reprinting African American books in the 1960s was good business. Porter, in fact, bemoaned this popularity of reprinting, which she saw as “largely characterised by white publishers’ insatiable desire for ‘putting [into circulation] everything [Black] that they could get their hands on.” The history of the reprints is, then, as Autumn Womack explains, “a question about how and why […] Black literary production gets circulated.” The reprint boom of the 1960s is a marker of the lasting history of Black publishing shaped by complex ecologies of reuse and reproduction, and tensions between constant struggle for freedom and profiteering. Simultaneously liberating and regulating, the gesture of reprinting is more than a mechanism for reproducing content; it is a complex technology long associated with radical fight for voice, representation, and visibility.

This blog post is the last instalment in the UCL Special Collections Black History Month series exploring black histories through histories of print and publishing. 

Other posts in the series:

Reprinting Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Kaja Marczewska

Independent Black Publishing and UCL’s collecting practices, by Liz Lawes