Author Archives: Jamie Carstairs

Cataloguing the Personal Papers of John Addington Symonds

Introduction

Hello, my name is Alexander Taylor, and I have been cataloguing the archive of literary scholar, cultural historian and poet John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) since September 2024, with completion expected by July 2025. The archive records Symonds’ multifaceted and complex life through manuscript correspondence that comprises the single largest category of material in the collection. His correspondents included, among others, Janet Ann Ross (historian and biographer), Havelock Ellis (social reformer and physician), Thomas Hardy (novelist and poet), Andrew Lang (novelist and poet) and Vernon Lee (pseudonym for writer Violet Paget). The archive would appeal to a diverse range of audiences interested in late nineteenth-century sexuality and gender and Symonds’ literary career. Extensive correspondence tracks Symonds’ intellectual development and relationship with his family, from adolescence at Harrow School to his final years living and writing in Switzerland. He published prolifically throughout his lifetime, spanning various genres, including literary criticism, travel writing and cultural history, with a specific focus on Renaissance studies.

The Symonds family and the City of Bristol

Dr John Addington Symonds (John Addington Symonds’ father) moved to Bristol in 1831 and began practicing as a physician at Bristol General Hospital. In 1851 he purchased the Palladian villa Clifton Hill House, which his son inherited in 1871. In 1909 the house became the first university hall of residence for women in south-west England through successful lobbying by May Staveley, a lecturer in history. The house remains in the possession of the University of Bristol and accommodates approximately 226 students. The Symonds archive came to Bristol through a series of deposits dispersed throughout the twentieth century. An overwhelming majority of the extant material came to Special Collections from a donation by Dame Janet Vaughan, Symonds’ granddaughter through his daughter Margaret Vaughan. Other papers were given to Special Collections by Dame Katharine Furse (née Symonds) and her executor, Dame Rachel Crowdy, between 1946 and 1953, and further papers have been purchased by the University from various sources. In 2001 a substantial collection of literary manuscripts, including some of Symonds’ seminal histories of the Renaissance in Italy and the Memoirs of Carlo Gozzi, was transferred to Special Collections from Bristol Central Library, where they had been deposited by Symonds’ daughter, Madge Vaughan, in 1915.

Students outside Clifton Hill House, the former home of John Addington Symonds and his family, 1921 ( DM2225/1).

Students outside Clifton Hill House, the former home of John Addington Symonds and his family, 1921 ( DM2225/1).

Structuring and cataloguing the archive

Because of the numerous and drawn-out depositing, the collection has been scattered across multiple reference numbers and sometimes remained packaged in it its original envelopes, rather than specialist archive folders designed to ensure long-term preservation. The aim of re-cataloguing the archive has been to aggregate the many accession and reference numbers into one overarching reference number (DM3271) to aid in accessibility for researchers and library staff alike. The intellectual arrangement follows a series level chronology tracking Symonds’ life from his education at Harrow School (1854-1858) to life convalescing and writing in Switzerland (1878-1893). Additional series allow space for literary papers, printed material, photographs and family material, including the papers of Symonds’ wife Janet Catherine Symonds and their daughter Margaret Vaughan.

Favourites from the archive

My favourite item from the collection is a scrapbook compiled by Madge Vaughan consisting of photographs, poems and an account of the life of the Symonds family dog, named Beppo. This intimate and emotive document is bound in a silk cover and includes several fine sketches depicting their adored pet alongside photographs of family members and Angelo Fusato, John Addington Symonds’ romantic partner and personal gondolier. A sketch of Beppo’s memorial reveals that he was born in Venice, September 1894, and died at Davos (Switzerland) in September 1903.

Illustrated page from the ‘Ave Beppo scrapbook’ [c1903] created by Madge Vaughan [née Symonds], the daughter of John Addington Symonds (DM3271/9/1/3/1).

Illustrated page from the ‘Ave Beppo scrapbook’ [c1903] created by Madge Vaughan [née Symonds], the daughter of John Addington Symonds (DM3271/9/1/3/1).

An album of photographs compiled by Madge Symonds (later Vaughan), dated Silvester Abend (31 December in German), depicts daily life at the Symonds family home in Davos and includes studio and amateur photographs of John Addington Symonds from adolescence to later life. Several photographs depict Symonds writing in his study and enjoying recreation in the snow with labouring men. The contrast between his erudition and beguilement by athleticism and masculinity was a defining characteristic of Symonds during his life in Davos. Retained in the archive is an envelope dated 1904 containing dried ivy leaves from Rome. Photographs from the album show Symonds’ grave at the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome consumed by ivy and other shrubbery. It may be tentative to say that Madge Vaughan took clippings from a visit to her father’s final resting place.

Portrait photograph of John Addington Symonds from an album of photographs, sketches and cuttings [c1894] created by Margaret Symonds (DM3271/10/1/4/1).

Portrait photograph of John Addington Symonds from an album of photographs, sketches and cuttings [c1894] created by Margaret Symonds (DM3271/10/1/4/1).  

This inconspicuous and rudimentary document provides an insight into the precarious situation John Addington Symonds and his family faced as his health continued to deteriorate. The damp English climate exacerbated Symonds’ pulmonary disorder and specialists recommended convalescing abroad in either the high-altitude mountains of Switzerland or the arid environment of Egypt. The document lists Symonds’ pros and cons for each country.

Pros for Davos included rest, the presence of a doctor (particularly pulmonologist Dr Carl Rüedi) and being part of a community; Davos became a popular convalescence hub for wealthy expatriates in the second half of the nineteenth century. Cons included monotony and the lack of intellectual stimulation, fear of catching a bad cold, and general misery towards the weather.

Pros for Egypt included the relative warmth and dryness, while the cons (which patently outweighed the pros) stressed the absence of a doctor, fear of catching fevers, possible war and famine, and the presence of insects and flies.

Symonds visited Davos for the first time in 1877, a then isolated and underdeveloped rural community in the Swiss Alps. For several months a year he resided at various hotels including Hotel Belvédère and Hotel & Pension Buol before settling in Davos permanently in 1880. The family home, named Am Hof, was built in 1881 and became a cultural hub for visiting literary scholars and friends including Henry Sidgwick (philosopher), Benjamin Jowett (scholar) and Robert Louis Stevenson (writer).

The pros and cons of living in Davos and Egypt [c1876] (DM3271/7/2/2 ).

The pros and cons of living in Davos and Egypt [c1876] (DM3271/7/2/2 ).

I hope you have enjoyed this short introduction to the John Addington Symonds archive. If you have any questions regarding the collection, please do not hesitate to contact me on hz24494@bristol.ac.uk.

Alexander Taylor
Project Archivist

This cataloguing project was made possible thanks to a generous bequest from the estate of Pricilla Makepeace.

My experience of attending the DPC Unconference 2024

Emma Hancox, Digital Archivist, working in Special Collections and Theatre Collection, shares what she learnt at the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Unconference event in May.

In May I attended the Digital Preservation Coalition’s annual Unconference and Networking Event. The Digital Preservation Coalition or DPC is a membership organisation for institutions involved in digital preservation activities. Its vision is to build ‘a welcoming and inclusive global community, working together to bring about a sustainable future for our digital assets.’ My role at the University of Bristol is Digital Archivist and I was excited to attend this event as it was the perfect opportunity for me to meet others in similar positions from a variety of institutions in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue this year was the beautiful Royal Irish Academy, an historic building in the centre of Dublin. Its meeting room was lined with books and it was a grand setting for the events of the unconference which were spread over two days.

Digital Preservation Coalition Unconference and Networking Event 2024, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

Digital Preservation Coalition Unconference and Networking Event 2024, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.

The unconference had a strong focus on opportunities to network, share information and have conversations with others. This is particularly important to practitioners in the digital field as they are often the only member of staff working on digital preservation in their institution and there may not be any other Digital Archivists working in their local area. I am fortunate that we have two Digital Archive Assistants at the University of Bristol but it is still invaluable for me to be able to meet other Digital Archivists. The programme for the event was driven by members hence the ‘unconference’ name. As well as proposing talks in the run up to the event, we were able to suggest and vote on topics for discussion on the day. The winning areas were cloud storage, procurement of digital preservation systems, advocacy for digital preservation and lastly artificial intelligence which was no surprise due to its popularity as a topical issue!

One of the highlights of the event for me was going to the DPC’s reading club for the first time. Whilst I have attended reading groups outside of work, a reading group based on professional literature was new to me. This was the first in-person reading club as it is normally held online. The topic of the session was an article called ‘Toward a Conceptual Framework for Technical Debt in Archives’. ‘Technical debt’ is a term borrowed from commercial software development. It is a metaphor for future costs and work which are necessary because of compromises that were made (either intentionally or unintentionally) when setting up a system or project. Technical debt applies to digital archives work where there is often a legacy of early collections-based projects and infrastructure which are time intensive and resource heavy to maintain in the future and compete with the many other tasks archivists are faced with in their day-to-day jobs. The article proposed a model to assess past digital projects through an understanding of technical debt to make better decisions in the future. I found the article a useful starting point for evaluating the status of legacy projects and it gave me a framework I will use when analysing past projects that are presented to me. I enjoyed the discussion around how the article could be expanded to include case studies relating to born-digital rather than just digitised material. I plan to attend more of the DPC’s reading groups in the future online as they are a useful driver for engaging with professional literature.

Other talks I attended included one on fixity file checking in the cloud by Gen Schmitt from the University of Illinois. File fixity checking allows archivists to verify that files in their care have not become damaged or corrupted over time. The talk discussed performing fixities at scale across a whole repository of content and it was interesting to hear how the cost and efficiency of the process had been balanced. There was also a useful discussion around appraisal of born-digital collections led by Nicola Caldwell from the National Library of New Zealand. Appraisal in the digital realm is a very challenging area due to the sheer volume of digital files produced. It was encouraging to hear about tools that could help to make this piece of work easier such as Brunnhilde and the full version of FTK Imager. We are also grappling with challenges around how to appraise born-digital files at Bristol and because of the information gained from this session we will certainly look at these two tools as part of our future research and testing.

Professional visits were another part of the unconference and I was lucky to get a place on a tour of the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Housed in the Georgian Merrion Square the archive collects everything to do with Irish traditional music and has a fascinating and wide-ranging collection. After a tour of their digitisation and recording studios we learnt about their collections and how they provide a service to the public. As expected, the ITMA staff spend a lot of time clearing rights in their collections to be able to make them accessible. If you are ever in Dublin a visit is highly recommended.

I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to attend this year’s unconference. It was a fantastic opportunity to make new connections and I plan to integrate what I learnt about dealing with legacy projects, fixity checking in the cloud and digital appraisal in my own role at the University of Bristol.

General Election 4 July 2024 – an appeal for election leaflets

Ian Coates, Library Assistant, working in Special Collections on our political materials, calls for the your help to preserve General Election flyers: Donate, don’t dump!

We are appealing for donations of General Election material published by candidates in the forthcoming General Election. Please gather up any election-related leaflets you receive and post them to us at Special Collections, Arts & Social Sciences Library, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TJ.

  • We collect election addresses, leaflets, manifestos, and related political materials
  • This includes items produced by all political parties, and independent candidates, as well as other groups seeking to influence the election, in all UK constituencies, to represent the whole political spectrum
  • We welcome donations of material from members of the public, political parties, parliamentary candidates, and their agents. We redact any personal names and addresses printed on material added to the archive
  • Please bundle up what comes through your door and send it to us after the General Election, with a note of the location or postcode where it was received

A collage of election flyers.Special Collections at the University of Bristol holds the largest and longest established collection of election addresses (over 30,000) and campaign literature, from all British parliamentary elections since 1892. We also hold leaflets from London County Council and European parliamentary elections, along with campaign literature from other important national plebiscites such as the 1975 and 2016 referendums on membership of the European Union. This material is available for consultation by students, researchers, journalists, and members of the public.

Please help us to keep our UK general election leaflet collection up to date!

A leaflet from the 1906 General Election.A description of our political collections, including our election address archive, can be found at: http://www.bris.ac.uk/library/special-collections/strengths/politics/.

Our online archive catalogue is at: https://archives.bristol.ac.uk/. For example, have a look at DM2952 for our holdings relating to the 2019 General Election (23 boxes).

How to get in touch:

Email: special-collections@bristol.ac.uk

Phone: 0117 928 8014

Web: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/library/special-collections

Twitter: @BrisUniSpColl

Address: Special Collections, Arts & Social Sciences Library, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TJ

Two maps of London constituencies, dated 1900 and 1906.

Our collections go virtual!

Catherine Dack, Research Support Librarian, Library Services, writes about our contribution to the virtual museum.

Special Collections recently contributed digitised versions of some of our collections to The Uncertain Space, the new virtual museum for the University of Bristol which officially launches this week.

The Uncertain Space is a permanent museum space which will host a changing programme of exhibitions. It is just like a real-world museum, but is experienced online or in a virtual reality headset. The first exhibition, Secret Gardens, has been co-curated with a group of young Bristolians. It explores connections between the University’s public artworks and selected objects from across the University’s rich collections, underpinned by the interest of our ‘Secret Gardeners’ in activism and climate change.

Items from Special Collections that feature in the first exhibition include:

Kaleidoscope magic lantern slide (DM3192)

Kaleidoscope children’s magic lantern slide (DM3192).This kaleidoscope mechanical chromotrope magic lantern slide for children dates from around 1870-1880. The slide has two panels and was designed to be inserted into a lantern slide viewer. The handle of the viewer would be turned, so that one panel would move while the other remained stationary, giving a kaleidoscope effect. The slide comes from a collection donated to us by Paul Raphael in February 2023.

The Sea-Dragons as they lived by John Martin

'The Sea-Dragons as they lived' from 'The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons' by Thomas Hawkins (1840).John Martin (1789-1854) was an English Romantic artist, known for his dramatic, apocalyptic scenes. The engraving, The Sea-Dragons as they lived, depicts plesiosaurs attacking an ichthyosaur, while pterosaurs feed on the body of a second ichthyosaur. It forms the frontispiece to The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons by Thomas Hawkins, published in 1840. Thomas Hawkins (1810-1889) was a Somerset fossil collector, who collected fossils from Lyme Regis and the Dorset coast, which are now held in the Natural History Museum.

Danckerts’ Atlas (DM511)

The title page from an atlas of 1690, produced by Justus Danckerts (1635-1701).The title page from an atlas of 1690, produced by Justus Danckerts (1635-1701) who was part of a Dutch family of mapmakers, based in Amsterdam. The illustration depicts the titan, Atlas, holding up the sky. Our copy of the atlas came to the University of Bristol Special Collections as part of the Bristol Moravian Church Archive.

The exhibition also includes digitised material from Archaeology, Anatomy, The Botanic Gardens, Earth Sciences and the Theatre Collection.

You can view the exhibition online or book an appointment with Special Collections to view it on one of our VR headsets.

You can read more about the making of The Uncertain Space and its first exhibition on the blogs of our colleagues from Library Research Support and Theatre Collection.

First impressions of Special Collections

Nicky Sugar, our new Head of Special Collections, looks back over a busy few weeks.

It’s now 4 weeks since I came up the hill from Bristol Archives to join the university as Head of Special Collections. I still have a huge amount to learn, but thought it was time to share some first impressions!

Some of the Special Collections team in our reading room.

Some of the Special Collections team in our reading room.

Being local, I already knew that Special Collections holds a wide variety of unique and interesting material and is looked after by a fantastic team. It makes a huge difference to students and researchers to work with original sources, not just for scholarship but to find proof of past events which can impact the present. There is also enormous potential to work with people in the university and across the city to increase access to the collections, and that really excites me.

Colleagues exploring the Virtual Museum, which features treasures from Special Collections.

Colleagues exploring the Virtual Museum, which features treasures from Special Collections.

So these are a few of my highlights, in no particular order…

  • I attended the launch of “The Uncertain Space” – the university’s brand new Virtual Museum. This displays treasures from our collections alongside curated items from other university art, archive and audiovisual collections in a unique virtual space. We met some of the young people who had worked on the first exhibition and tried out the headsets for ourselves.
  • We hosted my first alumni event, for a group of ex-students who visited Special Collections. Several offered to send us items from their time in Bristol, and they were keen to hear how we can capture digital material to create the university archive of the future. As well as treasures from the university’s own archive, the alumni heard talks from colleagues about the Historical Photographs of China and the Wildfilm Archive.
  • The Wildfilm Archive is a unique resource for studying the history of wildlife filmmaking, an important part of Bristol’s cultural heritage. In my last job I was involved in a project to examine the role of wildlife collections in responding to the ecological crisis, and I see huge potential here to develop this area of our work. With this in mind, some of us met with Peter Bassett, the wildlife history ambassador who rescued much of the collection, to discuss next steps.
  • A team from the Brand Department at Penguin Random House visited us to look at iconic material from the Penguin Archive. This was a great example of the inspiration that historic collections can provide to innovation and business development.
  • On a gloriously sunny day I had a trip off campus to the SS Great Britain, where our collection of Brunel material is held by the team at the Brunel Institute. The material has huge relevance for STEM education, the history of migration and many other topics, and we discussed our shared commitment to making it available to diverse audiences.
A beautiful day to find out more about our Brunel Collection.

A beautiful day to find out more about our Brunel Collection.

My other main highlight has been meeting new colleagues in the library and wider university, who have all been incredibly generous with sharing their expertise and future plans. The amount of new information I’ve absorbed has been almost overwhelming at times but I can definitely see it all coming together in some innovative ways to share the collections more widely. I look forward to providing an update on it all soon!

Edward Tawney geology lecture notes, 1876-1878 (DM3215)

Ian Coates, Library Assistant in Special Collections, rediscovers Edward Tawney’s lecture notes in geology, dating from his time at University College Bristol.

One of the pleasures of working in Special Collections is the rediscovery of material that has been long forgotten.  Following a refurbishment, we moved some book collections to a new set of shelves.  Along with the books were fifteen manuscript volumes of lecture notes in geology with Tawney MSS. on the spine.  It soon became apparent that the author was Edward Bernard Tawney (1840-1882) who, between 1876 and 1878, was the first lecturer in geology at University College, Bristol (before it became the University of Bristol).  Since that time, although these volumes had been preserved, only now have they been given a catalogue listing.  Tawney’s importance has been acknowledged by the School of Earth Sciences, who recently posted a blog giving details of his career, but they did not know that the University still held his original lecture notes.

Edward Tawney (1840-1882)

Edward Tawney (1840-1882)

Tawney was educated in Bristol before gaining Diplomas in Geology and Mining from the Royal School of Mines (Imperial College, London) in 1863, where he proved himself to be an outstanding scholar.  Pursuing his interest in geology he published several papers on his investigations before being appointed Curator at Bristol Museum and Library in 1872, where he was responsible for the geology collections.  He continued with his fieldwork and contributed a chapter on physical geography and geology in Bristol and its environs, produced by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1875.

'Bristol and its environs: historical, descriptive and scientific' (London: Houlston and Sons, 1875).

‘Bristol and its environs: historical, descriptive and scientific’ (London: Houlston and Sons, 1875).

Tawney’s talents were widely recognised leading to his appointment in 1878 as Assistant to the Woodwardian Professor at the University of Cambridge which at the time had the best geological collection in Britain.  He provided lecture courses on various aspects of geology, as well as being made a Fellow of Trinity College and awarded an honorary M.A.  His health, which had never been robust, deteriorated and he died four years later.  The main body of Tawney’s papers are held at the Sedgewick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge.

DM3215 Edward Tawney geology lecture notes, 1876-1878.

An early Christmas present

Catherine Dack, Research Support Librarian, writes about Thomas Hervey’sThe Book of Christmas’.

Special Collections received an early Christmas present this year when Friends of the National Libraries gave us a donation of rare books from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library (see an earlier blog). Among the titles we received was a first edition copy of Thomas Hervey’s The Book of Christmas, published in 1836.

Thomas Hervey (1799-1859) was known as a poet, critic, and editor of the Athenaeum. In The Book of Christmas he describes a variety of Christmas and New Year customs and traditions.  First published just before the Victorian enthusiasm for the festive season took hold, the book became popular and went through many editions. Part of its popularity must have been due to the lively Illustrations by Robert Seymour (1798-1836), a caricaturist who also worked on Dickens’ Pickwick Papers.

‘The Mistletoe Bough’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

‘The Mistletoe Bough’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

Among the holiday customs depicted are traditions that are still very familiar today, such as carol singing, kissing under the mistletoe, and Christmas dinner, turkeys for which were transported by coach with

…hampers piled on the roof and swung from beneath the body, and its birds depending, by every possible contrivance, from every part from which a bird could be made to hang.

‘Norfolk Coach at Christmas’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

‘Norfolk Coach at Christmas’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

The Christmas pudding is shown being boiled in a cloth (steaming being a more recent method for cooking the puddings) and is described as “a truly national dish” which “refuses to flourish out of England”.

‘Christmas Pudding’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

‘Christmas Pudding’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

Father Christmas appears in an early guise as “Old Christmas”, wearing a traditional holly crown and riding a goat.  Later in the 19th century, he merged with the figure of the gift-giving St Nicholas or Santa Claus.

‘Old Christmas’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

‘Old Christmas’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

Christmas trees had not yet become popular at the time the book was first published, but the “ancient and still familiar practice of adorning our houses and churches with evergreens” is recommended.

‘Bringing home Christmas’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

‘Bringing home Christmas’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

Other traditions described in the book are less well-known now, such as the wassail-bowl, which should be composed, according to Hervey, of wine or ale, highly spiced and sweetened with roasted apples floating on its surface.

‘Wassail Bowl’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

‘Wassail Bowl’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

The origins and traditions of mummers’ entertainments are explored at length.  Hervey describes the performance of ancient plays, travelling from house to house in disguise to make merry, dancing hobby-horses and sword-dances.

‘Mummers’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

‘Mummers’. An illustration by Robert Seymour from ‘The Book of Christmas’ by Thomas Hervey (1836).

The Book of Christmas helped to fuel the Victorian revival of the Christmas season and was soon followed by the publication of numerous books about Christmas.  Our copy will be catalogued in the New Year and will then be available for consultation by readers in Special Collections.

Historical books from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library find a new home

Catherine Dack, Research Support Librarian, writes about recent additions to our holdings – distributed from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library.

We were delighted recently to receive a generous donation of books from the Honresfield Library, which has been acquired for the nation by Friends of the National Libraries.  The charity, who work to save the UK’s written and printed heritage, succeeded last year in raising £15m to purchase this significant collection of manuscripts and books, formed towards the end of the 19th century by mill owner brothers William and Alfred Law, who lived at Honresfield House near Rochdale. The manuscripts and books are being distributed to libraries across the UK to ensure they will remain accessible to the public.

Honresfield books donated to the Arts and Social Sciences Library, University of Bristol.

Honresfield books donated to the Arts and Social Sciences Library, University of Bristol.

Among the historical works in the collection is a copy of The Baronage of England by William Dugdale, an English antiquary. Printed in 1675-1676, in three volumes, bound in two parts, it is an account of the lives of the English nobility from the Anglo-Saxon period. Our copy was originally in the library at Stourhead, and was sold at Sotheby’s in 1883, presumably to the Law brothers.

Dugdale’s 'Baronage of England', Vol. 1, 1675.

Dugdale’s ‘Baronage of England’, Vol. 1, 1675.

A very different historical work is The Comic History of England, 1847-8, by Gilbert Abbott A’Beckett.  This popular work was illustrated with many humorous engravings by John Leech who, like the author, was a contributor to Punch, in which the episodes in the book first appeared.

'Georgy Porgy the First going out for a ride in his State Coachy Poachy' from 'The Comic History of England'.

‘Georgy Porgy the First going out for a ride in his State Coachy Poachy’ from ‘The Comic History of England’.

One item with an interesting publication history is a pirated edition of Tennyson’s early poems, printed in Toronto in 1862. Tennyson successfully obtained an injunction to prevent its sale in Britain, receiving an apology and £100. A manuscript copy of the Bill of Complaint in Chancery is loosely inserted into this copy.

Manuscript copy of the Bill of Complaint between Alfred Tennyson and John Camden Hotten.

Manuscript copy of the Bill of Complaint between Alfred Tennyson and John Camden Hotten.

The gift includes eight volumes of Charles Knight’s Standard Edition of the Pictorial Shakspeare 1842-1843, which was originally issued in monthly parts and later published in a number of editions. Knight took a new approach to the illustration of Shakespeare’s works, using images that aimed for historical accuracy, rather than representations of Shakespeare as performed in the Victorian theatre in contemporary costume, which previously had been the standard practice.

Act I of 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona' from Charles Knight’s Standard Edition of the Pictorial Shakspeare, Vol. I.

Act I of ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ from Charles Knight’s Standard Edition of the Pictorial Shakspeare, Vol. I.

We also received some fiction titles, including an 1877 edition of Bracebridge Hall by Washington Irving: a series of tales of life in an English manor, written when Irving was living in England.  The illustrations are by Randolph Caldecott, after whom the Caldecott medal, awarded by the American Library Association for children’s picture book illustration, is named.  Caldecott’s illustrations for Bracebridge Hall were among those which first established him as an illustrator.

'Bracebridge Hall' by Washington Irving, illustrated by Randolph Caldecott.

‘Bracebridge Hall’ by Washington Irving, illustrated by Randolph Caldecott.

We are now looking forward to cataloguing these, together with the other books we received, to make them discoverable to the public.

You can read more about the saving of the Library, which has now been renamed the Blavatnik Honresfield Library, in honour of the principal benefactor, on the Friends of the National Libraries’ blog.

Also note the British Library event on Tuesday 6th December 2022 at 7pm, celebrating the acquisition for the nation of the Blavatnik Honresfield Library and its extraordinary collection of manuscripts by the Brontës, Jane Austen, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.

Archiving the Web: collecting web crawls for the University Archive

Sam Brenton, Bridging the Digital Gap Trainee, writes about his work in Special Collections and the Theatre Collection.

Hello, my name’s Sam and I’m the Digital Archives trainee on the Bridging the Digital Gap programme from The National Archives. This scheme aims to place people with technical skills within archives around the country to help preserve the increasing number of digital items they collect. Over the past fifteen months I’ve been at the University of Bristol, working on a number of digital archiving projects with Special Collections and the Theatre Collection. One of the things I’ve been working on is expanding the quantity of web pages in the University’s web archive.

Illustration by Jørgen Stamp digitalbevaring.dk CC BY 2.5 Denmark.

Illustration by Jørgen Stamp digitalbevaring.dk CC BY 2.5 Denmark.

So what is a web archive? And how is it different from the website itself? A web archive is a collection of web pages preserved offline and is totally independent from the source website. This means that should the original web pages become unavailable, or are altered in any way, there is still a perfect copy of the original. The pages are stored as WARC files, a format specifically designed for the preservation of web pages as it acts as a container for all the elements that make up the web page, such as text and images.

When we’re concerned with long term preservation we can’t guarantee that the pages will still be hosted by their original source. Sometimes this is simply because an organisation likes to regularly refresh its content, for example a manufacturer listing their current products. But even something that appears to be more permanent, such as online encyclopedias and other information resources, may be altered, or older content might be removed without warning. It’s important that an archive is aware of any websites that come under the scope of its collection policy, particularly any that might be at risk.

I’ve been archiving parts of the University’s own website, such as the various news and announcements and the catalogues of courses offered, by crawling them in Preservica (our digital preservation system). The websites were identified by the University Archivist as being similar to traditional paper elements of the archive. So in order to mirror those collections, I’ve been doing small individual web-crawls based on dates (either year or month). These smaller crawls deliver more consistent results and will allow for better cataloguing in the future.  Sometimes this is challenging, as it takes a lot of time to process each crawl. When web crawling, it is common to run in to issues when rendering the pages, this if usually because complex JavaScript elements of modern web pages, such as interactivity and animations, are difficult for the crawlers to capture, so it was important that I checked each crawl before adding it to the archive. Fortunately for me, the sites I’ve been crawling are relatively simple, so the only issues I had were with the .WARC viewers themselves. Each one behaves slightly differently, so it’s useful to try rendering the crawl in a different viewer (such as Conifer) if there are issues with it, before re-doing the crawl.

WARC files of crawled University web pages in Preservica.

WARC files of crawled University web pages in Preservica.

In the future I’d like to look into adding relevant external web pages to the collections. In due course, we also hope to be able to catalogue and make web crawls accessible. In the longer term I would like to look into archiving social media profiles.  These are far more challenging to preserve due to log-in requirements and the large number of interactive elements, but they are arguably just as important as standalone web pages. The posts are far more ephemeral than web pages and we are reliant on the platform to maintain them.  They are also a key way that the University communicates with the public.

Atlantic Bristol: Connecting the City to Central America and the western Caribbean

Karl Offen is Professor of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University in New York. He specializes in the historical geography of Central America and the Caribbean. Caroline A. Williams (1962-2019) contributed in absentia to this post. Caroline was a professor in The Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Bristol until her untimely passing. An article about her many and diverse scholarly achievements can be accessed here. As much as I would like to say that Caroline co-authored this post, I must acknowledge that she did not and that any errors are mine alone.

‘Prepare to be amazed!’ This was how Caroline started an email to me in 2014. She had just received transcriptions of some 30 family letters of a private collection that we had been searching for. ‘There is so much information, I’m at a loss for words’. The email could not contain her elation, and after reading the rest of her message I too understood that we had stumbled upon a once in a lifetime find.

Fast forward seven years to October of 2021, and I was finally able to bequeath the entire trove of associated documents to the University of Bristol Library. The appropriately named, Peter Blencowe Collection (PBC), contains almost 300 letters and miscellaneous papers covering 1730 to the mid-nineteenth century. The collection has the reference number DM3028 and will be catalogued by library staff in 2023.

The collection offers much to scholars of the Georgian era of the greater Bristol area, the epistolary world of Atlantic families, and political events shaping the western Caribbean. Above all, the documents illustrate how multiple generations of Hodgsons maintained family, business, and social ties across the Atlantic.

Central America and the Caribbean. From Thomas Jefferys, A compleat chart of the West Indies, ‘The West-India atlas...’, London, 1775. Courtesy of United States Library of Congress.

Central America and the Caribbean. From Thomas Jefferys, A compleat chart of the West Indies, ‘The West-India atlas…’, London, 1775. Courtesy of United States Library of Congress.

Readers interested in how we came to acquire this private collection are encouraged to peruse the full story in the second half of this post. The short version, however, must highlight the forethought and generosity of Mr. Peter Blencowe. Peter inherited the documents from the descendants of J.J. Blencowe whose first wife, Gratia-Maria Prowett Blencowe (1806-1840), was the grand daughter of Robert Hodgson II, the writer, receiver, or principal subject of the vast majority of the PBC. Peter worked diligently with the documents, and his published writings about the provenance and family significance of the collection can be found in The Hodgson Papers, Appendix VIII of the book The Blencowe Families: The Descendants of the Blencowe Families of Cumbria and Northamptonshire, edited by J.W. Blencowe and published in 2001 by The Blencowe Families Association in Oxford. Peter gave the collection to Caroline and I in 2016 under the condition that we would ensure its public availability.

Book cover of ‘The Blencowe Families’.

Book cover of ‘The Blencowe Families’.

Central characters in the documents are members of the Hodgson family, including Robert Hodgson (father) and especially his son – also named Robert – both of whom served as British Superintendents for the Mosquito Shore (1749-1758; 1768-1775), a British outpost in eastern Central America that was always contested and claimed by Spain. The dominant force on the Shore, however, was the native Miskitu people whose leadership formed a political alliance known as the Miskitu Kingdom. The letters of Robert Hodgson I (the father) and Robert Hodgson II (the son), as well as letters from Robert II’s spouse, Mrs. Elizabeth Pitt Hodgson, and their four children, expose political intrigues in and beyond the contested borderland for much of the eighteenth century.

A particular highlight of the Peter Blencowe Collection is the letters that Elizabeth Hodgson Symons sent to her brother, Robert II, from her home in Stony Hill (part of which is now named Stoney Hill, part Park Row) in Bristol that she shared with her husband, the Bristol solicitor Thomas Symons, and their daughter Elizabeth (Betsy) Symons.

Part of 'A Plan of the City of Bristol', drawn and surveyed by John Rocque, engraved by John Pine, dated MDCCXLII, and published in March 1743. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library. Stony Hill (part of which is now named Stoney Hill, part Park Row) can be seen above and to the left of The Red Lodge

Part of ‘A Plan of the City of Bristol’, drawn and surveyed by John Rocque, engraved by John Pine, dated MDCCXLII, and published in March 1743. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Bristol Library. Stony Hill (part of which is now named Stoney Hill, part Park Row) can be seen above and to the left of The Red Lodge

Between 1768 and 1776, Elizabeth Hodgson Symons sent 33 numbered letters to Robert II on the Mosquito Shore – sadly letters 9, 13, and 32 are missing. Her letters paused in 1776 because the British government recalled Robert II to answer charges of misconduct. When he returned to the Caribbean in 1780 as a colonel to advance the British assault along the Río San Juan in Nicaragua (along with compatriots Horatio Nelson and Edward Despard), his sister wrote him four more letters.

Elizabeth’s letters contain mundane gossip of Bristol, news from London, the prices fetched by Hodgson’s natural resources, and, especially, notices of relatives near and far, including the Tyndales of Bath and Bathford, Lords Delamere and Earls of Stamford, the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, whose sister Margaret Maskelyne married Robert Clive (Clive of India). In short, the epistolary world of Elizabeth Symons provides an intimate glimpse into eighteenth-century domestic life of an aspiring upper-middle class family and the role played by letters in passing along news, maintaining family relations, and strengthening commercial networks locally and across the Atlantic.

A second highlight of the PBC is a set of letters connecting Robert (Rob) Hodgson II (c.1737-1791) with his four children – William (Billy) Pitt Hodgson (1767-1800), Robert (Bob and Rob) Hodgson III (1769-1808), Martha Maria Hodgson (1774-1850), and Ariadne (Ari) Hodgson (1776-1792) – and his wife, Elizabeth (Betsy) Pitt Hodgson (1740-1797), over a period spanning the American War of Independence through his death in Guatemala City.

Letter from Robert Hodgson II in Guatemala to his son, Robert (Bob) Hodgson III, in Bristol, June 2, 1791, four days before he died. Courtesy of Yamil Kouri.

Letter from Robert Hodgson II in Guatemala to his son, Robert (Bob) Hodgson III, in Bristol, June 2, 1791, four days before he died. Courtesy of Yamil Kouri.

In a letter announcing their father’s passing, Robert Hodgson III assured his sister Martha Maria, ‘at the moment of his death (our father was a) Brigadier General, a Knight of the Order of Charles the third (the first foreigner who ever arrived to that most distinguished Spanish Title) with an appointment of 30,000 Dllrs. per ann. pension …’ Given that none of the family could attend his funeral, he sought to convince his sister that all due respects were paid: ‘The funeral cost three thousand Dollars which were paid by the King. He died a steady Protestant. The King of Spain has sent an express message of Condolence to my mother with his royal word that she and her Children are to be considered his peculiar protection’.

Maps of Bluefields drawn by Robert Hodgson II in 1770, in which he laid claim to the region by virtue of having purchased it from the Miskitu king and governor in 1757. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.

Maps of Bluefields drawn by Robert Hodgson II in 1770, in which he laid claim to the region by virtue of having purchased it from the Miskitu king and governor in 1757. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.

The revolutionary Atlantic was a time of significant upheaval for many families and the Hodgsons were no exception. Many family members were physically separated by great distances, and in order to stay in touch they needed to cooperate with Spanish authorities, especially following the British evacuation of the Mosquito Shore in 1787. When complex Shore tensions came to a head in 1790, a faction of Miskitu attacked and destroyed the Hodgson property at Bluefields. Robert II, Elizabeth, Billy, and Ari fled to Panama, and then to Nicaragua. Following Robert II’s death in 1791, the family fell on hard times and relied on the generosity of well-connected Spaniards in Central America. Surviving Hodgsons who reconnected at Corn Islands (Elizabeth, William, and Robert III) eventually had to seek refuge in Jamaica where they all died destitute. (Ari had died earlier as a fluent Spanish speaker in León, Nicaragua).

Robert Hodgson II's letter to Thomas Symons from Portobelo, Panamá, informing his Bristol relations of his detention, June 3, 1783. Courtesy of Yamil Kouri.

Robert Hodgson II’s letter to Thomas Symons from Portobelo, Panamá, informing his Bristol relations of his detention, June 3, 1783. Courtesy of Yamil Kouri.

At the very beginning of 1783, Robert Hodgson II was taken as a prisoner of war by a Spanish patrol ship off Portobelo, Panamá. For the next several years, he negotiated his position with the Archbishop of Santa Fé de Bogotá and Viceroy of Nueva Granada, Antonio Caballero y Góngora, while being detained in comfortable circumstances in Cartagena.

'A Map of the Bay of Honduras and the Moskito Shore with the number of inhabitants and the commodities exported in 1782', drawn by Colonel Robert Hodgson II and William Pitt Hodgson. At least 14 maps of different parts of the shore are attributed to Robert Hodgson II, but this is his magnum opus. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa de España.

‘A Map of the Bay of Honduras and the Moskito Shore with the number of inhabitants and the commodities exported in 1782’, drawn by Colonel Robert Hodgson II and William Pitt Hodgson. At least 14 maps of different parts of the shore are attributed to Robert Hodgson II, but this is his magnum opus. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa de España.

Following the British evacuation of the Mosquito Shore specified in the Treaty of Versailles and the follow up Convention of London in 1786, Robert returned to Bluefields as a colonel in the Spanish Army. Hodgson’s ability to speak Miskitu and his knowledge of the region convinced Caballero y Góngora that he was needed to help bring the Miskitu leadership to Spanish interests. At least 50 letters in the PBC contain correspondence relating to the important decade of the 1780s. For scholars of the Mosquito Shore, the PBC complements the well-known collections covering the activities of Hodgson II held at the Archivo General de Simancas and other locations in Spain, Britain, and Colombia.

The Benjamin Franklin House, 36 Craven Street, London. Wikimedia Commons.

The Benjamin Franklin House, 36 Craven Street, London. Wikimedia Commons.

One of the great surprises of the PBC is its connections to the life of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Franklin lived on Craven Street in London during two extended stays between 1757 and 1775. There, he lodged with the widow Mrs. Margaret Stevenson and became livelong friends with her daughter, Mary (Polly) Stevenson Hewson. Polly’s ‘dear friend’ from childhood was Mrs. Elizabeth (Betsy) Pitt Hodgson. Two months before she died in 1795, Polly had sent Martha Maria Hodgson a letter stating that she had known her mother Elizabeth for more than 40 years. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth Pitt is mentioned in several letters between Benjamin Franklin and Polly Stevenson, and Pitt and Franklin must have interacted on numerous occasions. The first of these letters, dated circa 1759, was written from Craven Street; Franklin signed off by presenting ‘my best respects to your good Aunts, and to Miss Pitt’. Scholars of Benjamin Franklin have not identified Miss Pitt as Mrs. Elizabeth Pitt Hodgson and now the PBC provides evidence for this and places it in a rich social context.

A stylized Spanish map by Luis Diez Navarro from 1765 showing the main British settlement at Black River in today's Honduras. The map highlights the residence of William Pitt, the settlement's 1732 founder, the grandson of a former governor of Bermuda, a distant relative of the eponymous British prime minister, and the father of Elizabeth Pitt Hodgson. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

A stylized Spanish map by Luis Diez Navarro from 1765 showing the main British settlement at Black River in today’s Honduras. The map highlights the residence of William Pitt, the settlement’s 1732 founder, the grandson of a former governor of Bermuda, a distant relative of the eponymous British prime minister, and the father of Elizabeth Pitt Hodgson. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Elizabeth Pitt was born at Black River on the Mosquito Shore, the favourite daughter of the settlement’s founder, William Pitt, and a Spanish widow that William had rescued from the Miskitu following a shipwreck sometime in the late 1730s. Elizabeth (Betsy) Pitt married Robert Hodgson II in London in 1766, returning home by herself before her husband followed in 1768. Letters in the PBC reveal that Robert II spoke with Franklin during and after his courtship with Betsy in the mid-1760s.

First page of a love letter from Robert Hodgson II writing from London to his wife, Elizabeth Hodgson, care of her father at Black River on the Mosquito Shore, Oct. 1, 1766. As he put it, 'My uneasiness at our Separation increases upon me if possible, in so much, that some times I am so miserable about it that I scarce know what I do'. He did manage to enclose a letter to Betsy from her 'dear friend' Miss Stevenson.

First page of a love letter from Robert Hodgson II writing from London to his wife, Elizabeth Hodgson, care of her father at Black River on the Mosquito Shore, Oct. 1, 1766. As he put it, ‘My uneasiness at our Separation increases upon me if possible, in so much, that some times I am so miserable about it that I scarce know what I do’. He did manage to enclose a letter to Betsy from her ‘dear friend’ Miss Stevenson.

At some point, Mary (Polly) Stevenson Hewson had loaned Robert II money. Her will of 1794 – available in The National Archive at Kew, and which varies in significant ways from the published version – testifies to her friendship with Elizabeth: ‘I bequeath to my friend Elizabeth Hodgson the Bond with all the Money due to me from her deceased Husband Robert Hodgson. It is a small mark of the Love I bear her’.

Much more can be said about the traces of Benjamin Franklin in the PBC, and to his poorly known connections to the Mosquito Shore more broadly – including the fact that his only daughter with his common law wife, Deborah Read, Sarah Franklin, married Richard Bache, the brother of Deborah Otway (née Bache), the wife of Mosquito Shore Superintendent Captain Joseph Otway whose appointment was situated between those of Robert Hodgson I and Robert Hodgson II. But that will have to await another venue.

Four watercolours by an unknown traveller dated to July 1845 showing dwellings in Bluefields on the Mosquito Shore at the beginning of a new British protectorate. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Four watercolours by an unknown traveller dated to July 1845 showing dwellings in Bluefields on the Mosquito Shore at the beginning of a new British protectorate. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Family members presumably preserved these documents in hopes of recovering property in Central America. Hodgson II’s oldest daughter, Martha Maria Hodgson Prowett, and especially her husband, the Rev. John Prowett (d. 1851), fought long and hard to acquire Hodgson’s property at Bluefields, or to receive monetary compensation from the Spanish government, and later from the Federal Republic of Central America, and finally from British officials seeking to establish a protectorate at Bluefields (see Colonial Office 123/61; 123/78 at The National Archive). A dozen letters in the PBC document Prowett’s correspondence with British ministers, lawyers, embassy staff, and even a hired investigator who retained a translator in Guatemala to dig into Hodgson II’s possessions at the time of his death. The documents suggest that Prowett became obsessed with his quest, and that his repeated failures ultimately consumed him.

Two letter covers from Robert Hodgson III to his sister, Martha Maria Hodgson, in Bristol. Left: from Blewfields, 17 April 1792, reporting on his return to the Shore. Courtesy of Jesús Sitja Prats. Right: reporting from Corn Island, 1 August 1792, after the family was once again forced to flee Bluefields. Courtesy of Yamil Kouri.

Two letter covers from Robert Hodgson III to his sister, Martha Maria Hodgson, in Bristol. Left: from Blewfields, 17 April 1792, reporting on his return to the Shore. Courtesy of Jesús Sitja Prats. Right: reporting from Corn Island, 1 August 1792, after the family was once again forced to flee Bluefields. Courtesy of Yamil Kouri.

Although the Rev. Prowett emphatically claimed his wife was the last living heir and thus the rightful owner of Robert Hodgson II’s property, including his rumoured pension of 30,000 dollars held in Cartagena, this was not completely accurate. In his Jamaican will of 1807, Robert Hodgson III, left a portion of any share of his father’s pension to the children he shared with his domestic partner Mary Pitt, Catharine Maria Hodgson and Robert Pitt Hodgson. Mary and her children were of African descent and could have also laid claim to Robert Hodgson II’s property and pension. Indeed, the many Hodgsons of today’s Nicaragua and to a lesser extent Jamaica almost certainly trace their ancestry in some way to Catharine or Robert Pitt Hodgson, Robert Hodgson II, Robert Hodgson III, or William Pitt Hodgson.

By the early nineteenth century, many Creole Hodgson descendants resided at Bluefields and likely elsewhere such as Corn Island. More than 20 percent of 53 property lots registered on an 1846 map of Bluefields were owned by Hodgsons with different first names, suggesting they had claimed Robert II’s property on their own (see Foreign Office 53/5 at The National Archive).

How did we learn about these documents?

Caroline and I had been exchanging emails for many years when we finally met in person at The Tap on the Line, a Kew Gardens pub, in the summer of 2014. There we hatched a plan to write a book about Robert Hodgson II. Each of us had been working separately with Hodgson’s diplomatic writings found in Britain, Spain, Colombia, and in other depositories around the Atlantic (e.g. the William Clements Library at the University of Michigan), for over a decade.

My chance reading of ‘The Hodgson Correspondence: 18th Century Mail from the Western Caribbean to England’ – a 2003 article by Yamil H. Kouri, Jr., and Leo J. Harris, published by the Postal History Journal – altered the scope of our research. The article discussed some unusual Hodgson family letters sent from Bluefields, Corn Island, and León, Nicaragua, to Bristol via Spanish carriers. Through daily correspondence with Yamil and, then with his fellow philatelists Leo Harris, Brian Moorhouse, Neal West, Bill Byerley, Mike Birks, and Jim Mazepa, I was initiated into an unknown (to me) world of enthusiastic collectors and knowledgeable Nicaraguan historians. From the good will of these individuals, and especially Yamil Kouri, I received numerous scans of Hodgson family letters that collectors had purchased for their rare postal markings. They were more than willing to provide me with scans, and some of their letters are shown in this post – because these particular letters remain in private collections, the PBC only holds photocopies of them.

When I told Caroline of this correspondence she replied, ‘I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about this discovery’. We learned that 21 letters had been sold during a Christie’s Robson Lowe auction on 16 July 1992. This got Caroline and I thinking about who had sold these letters and, more importantly, if there might be more of them.

Two pages from Christie's Robson Lowe Catalogue, London, 16 July 1992, showing the sale of the lots 318 to 328 referred to as 'The Hodgson Correspondence'. Courtesy of New York Public Library.

Two pages from Christie’s Robson Lowe Catalogue, London, 16 July 1992, showing the sale of the lots 318 to 328 referred to as ‘The Hodgson Correspondence’. Courtesy of New York Public Library.

After finding a review of The Blencowe Families book mentioned earlier, Caroline reached out to Peter Blencowe in an email explaining our interest in the Hodgsons. Peter quickly wrote back, confessing that he had ‘been waiting for an email or letter like (hers)’ for a long time. When Caroline planned a trip to meet with Peter in person in the summer of 2016, he told her ‘to bring an empty suitcase’.

Screen capture of a database showing a small portion of our early efforts to catalogue the Peter Blencowe Collection.

Screen capture of a database showing a small portion of our early efforts to catalogue the Peter Blencowe Collection.

In the summer of 2017, Caroline and I sat down together in her home in Bristol and did a quick reading of all the documents and a cursory cataloguing of the entire collection. Although we always planned to give the papers to the University of Bristol Library, Caroline’s sudden hospitalization, unexpected passing, and the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the transfer until the autumn of 2021. Thanks to the special care of the documents by Caroline’s husband, Richard Williams, and Gina Robinson, who helped Richard organize Caroline’s papers, the documents are now safe with Special Collections.

In her last email to me, and not hinting at any worrisome health conditions, Caroline offered her commentary on a paper I was presenting on Robert Hodgson II at the Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute in 2019.

She wrote to say, ‘my inclination would be to emphasise again in the conclusion of the paper the significance of the PBC! What it allows us to do, among many other things, is to delve into and juxtapose the professional and personal aspects of Hodgson’s life, his wider family, the role that close relations (Elizabeth & Thomas Symons, John Peighin, etc played in facilitating his trading activities, the way family fortunes may have motivated his or his father’s adventuring and the impact of these on his children), how their letters shed light on the ways in which a close family maintained contact and – for the Hodgsons – a sense of belonging and identity.’ And so I did, and so I shall.