In the latest blog installment from our Graduate Trainees, Rosie describes the unexpected pleasure of communing in Biography with the likes of Thatcher, Pepys and Rousseau.

Xavier and Alice have already written about some of the tasks expected of us as graduate trainees, and I’m sure London Library regulars have become used to having us around the place on a day-to-day basis. A crucial part of our daily routine involves managing our own section of the shelves – in fact, each member of staff takes care of a particular section of the library to ensure the books are always in the right place. However, this is not merely a case of haphazardly putting books on shelves! As well as making sure the books are in the correct places for library members to find, we’re in charge of sending any damaged books to be repaired, ensuring that there is enough space on the shelves for returned books and generally making sure that the library is neat and tidy.

I’m in charge of part of third floor Biography, from Nei to T to be exact, and I have discovered that a daily shelving session can prove to be rather therapeutic. The London Library boasts an impressive Biography collection and one thing I love about my shelving section is the sheer amount of knowledge and the experiences that are held on the shelves. George Orwell’s diaries sit in the same aisle as Florence Nightingale’sSuggestions for thought, there are over fifty different editions of Samuel Pepys’ letters and diaries and Sir Walter Scott has a number of shelves all to himself. The list of well-known names includes the likes of Thomas Paine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dylan Thomas, Margaret Thatcher, Wilfred Owen; the list could go on and on. The volumes housed in the Biography section consist of works by the people themselves such as memoirs and journals, letters and correspondence and are often accompanied by biographies written by others.

The excellent thing about this section of the library is the very personal nature of the sources housed there. Could Pepys have predicted that people would still be reading his diaries over 300 years after they were written? Many of the decisions and actions taken by the people in Biography shaped the world we live in today, so I am pleased that the London Library takes great care to ensure that these books are preserved and the experiences of others continue to be documented and remembered.

The London Library has long been associated with the literary life of the nation, and it is to our past members – authors, poets and philosophers – that we look for romantic inspiration, words of wisdom and stories of love, both passionate and unrequited.

An 1842 edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Poems (originally published in 1830, when Tennyson was just 20 years old) from the Library’s English Literature collection, contains the enchanting poem Mariana – a melancholic exploration of isolation and rejection. Tennyson wasappointed President of the Library in 1855, a post he served until his death in 1892.

The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes and Mary Ann Evans (better known as George Eliot) were living in what the writer John Wells called “high-minded adultery” at the time of their membership of the Library. An 1872 edition of Middlemarch, discovered in the Library’s Fiction collection, explores with a critical eye the concept of marriage…

Many new members first discover The London Library via member A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession – the plot of which centres around the discovery of secret letters by the character Roland Michell in the Library’s Reading Room – certainly a romantic setting for such a discovery.

T. S. Eliot – appointed President of the Library in 1952, serving until his death in 1965 – made a rare public declaration of the deep affection he felt for his second wife Esmé Valerie Fletcher in “A Dedication to My Wife”.

Beyond the works of our past and present members, you’re sure to be romantically inspired when browsing the tomes shelved under ‘S. Love’ in the Library’s 1890s stacks. Reflections, musings, collected love letters and words of advice for the heartbroken await discovery, nestled between shelfmarks ‘S. Lotteries’ and ‘S. Machinery’, with the charms of ‘S. Laughter’ nearby.

In Love and the English, Nina Epton explores the history of love, lust and marriage in England from the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Ages to the 20th century, questioning as she does the “cliché that Englishmen make poor lovers”. (Love and the English by Nina Epton, 1960)

Finally, the intriguing dialogues in Doris Langley Moore’s The Techniques of a Love Affair - including “advice for the confession of former gallantries” – are worthy of consideration!

Rhiannon, our busy Acquisitions Assistant, kicks off 2012 with an update on all the lovely new books crossing her desk on their way to the stacks.

I’m also spending what seems like a vast amount of time tracking and chasing un-received books, the majority of which have had their publication dates changed. Some of these are now due in 2013, though one I have come across has had its publication date changed from 2009 to 2021! We won’t be holding our breath for that one, then.

With Dickens in mind, I have kept an eye on the fiction that the Library has been ordering recently, of which there seems to be quite a bit. Those that have either arrived of late or are on order include:

“The Art of Fielding” Harbach, Chad (a debut novel)
“Landfall” Gordon, Helen
“In the Orchard, the Swallows” Hobbs, Peter
“An Honourable Man” Slavo, Gillian
“Parallel Stories” Nadas, Peter
“It’s Fine by Me” Petterson, Per
“Jack Holmes and his friend” White, Edmund
“The Afrika Reich” Saville, Guy
“Married Love” Hadley, Tessa
“The Third Reich” Bolano, Roberto
“Pure” Miller, Andrew (winner of the Costa Prize)
“Mountains of the Moon” Kay, I. J
“Pacazo” Kesey, Roy
“All is Song” Harvey, Samantha

Plenty of fresh and exciting reading to keep fiction fans occupied until my next update! And now, back to dealing with yet another parcel of wonderful new books…

A very early London Library blog post explored the Library’s 1890’s stacks (or ‘back stacks’ as they affectionately known!). Home to our Science & Miscellaneous, History and Topography collections, the clanking floors, unusual architecture and magical atmosphere certainly create one of the most intriguing spaces in the Library. The Science & Miscellaneous collection is particularly well-suited to serendipitous browsing and carries with it some quirks of the Victorian cataloguing system developed by Librarian Sir Charles Hagberg Wright in 1894.

Highlights of the Science & Miscellaneous stacks include Love, Imaginary Histories, Birdcatching and Conjuring! As a special festive treat, we have been browsing S. Christmas and are delighted to bring you a selection of highlights from our yuletide collections! From ‘The History of The Christmas Card’ to ‘Christmas and Christmas Lore’, there’s plenty of festive-themed reading to be done!

The final installment for 2011 from our new intake of Graduate Trainees… After a busy November, settling in to the Library, learning to navigate the collections and looking ahead to the next step on the Librarian career ladder, our trainees are certainly deserving of a restful Christmas break.

Here, Alice looks to the wonderful Science & Miscellaneous stacks for festive inspiration and enlightens readers on ‘how to make a dish of snow!’

D Day. D for dreadful, devastating, defining, daunting Deadline Day. Dramatic? Perhaps. But the application for UCL’s Library School is the first of many within our Graduate Trainee year, and has therefore monopolised most of November with its pressing insistence. Complete me! Perfect me! The application itself is fairly straightforward: histories of employment and education, references. The bit that is most taxing is, as always, the personal statement, or why do I want to be a librarian? Why indeed?

Libraries have always been an integral part of my life; from a young age, I would visit and take advantage of the facilities on offer: story times, homework help, and later, academic resources. The unwavering support and enthusiasm of the librarians I encountered, not to mention their ability to seek out answers and deliver information has always inspired me… I believe in the importance of libraries, their ability to transform lives and open up opportunities. I want to become a librarian in order to share these doors and windows with future generations.

Though if truth be told fully, I actually enjoy helping people and the challenge of information searching. Oh, and I love books, but as every applicant loves books, that statement would be horrifically redundant. Wish us luck…

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Now for something slightly more seasonal, shelfmark S. Christmas(honestly, you’d think that the Trainees do nothing else bar rummage around the stacks looking for oddities the way we go on!). Let us hark back to the days when Christmas did come “suddenly and without warning” (Ingram 1924), instead of appearing the moment the Hallowe’en moon wanes in the garish form of foil and flashing Father Christmases. Advent nights at the London Library would be perfect with Howell’s A Spotless Rose haunting through the stacks in the cold, dark winter, the wind whistling through the windows, curled up in a Reading Room chair completely lost in a good book.

I thought I’d share with you a recipe taken from A Christmas Book(Original recipe from A Book of Cookerie, 1594). If any readers would like to test it, please share your opinions and photographs (I would myself, but lactose intolerance makes it somewhat restrictive). It won’t poison you… I hope!

To Make a Dish of Snow

Take a pottle of sweet thick Cream, and the white of eyght Egs, and beate them into your cream with a dishfull of Rosewater, and a dishfull of Sugar withal, then take a sticke and make it clene, and then cut it in the end foursquare, and make therewith beat all the aforesaid things together, and ever as it ariseth take it off, and put it in to a Cullender, this done, take a platter and sette an Apple in the midst of it, stick a thicke bush of Rosemary in the Apple. Then cast your Snow upon the Rosemary and fill your platter therewith, and if you have wafers cast some withal, and so serve them forthe.

References
Ingram, K. 1924 The Romance of Christmas, Society of SS. Peter and Paul Ltd, London
Lewis, W. and Heseltine G. C. 1931 A Christmas Book, J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, London