“We met at a party” Professional Children’s Publishing and the lady editor’
This was the title of a recent seminar given as part of the English Departments’s latest Archives & Text series which I attended with volunteers Kaye Gough and Ann Livingstone. Kaye is involved in a multitude of volunteering activities with MERL and the Special Collections. In this post she gives us her thoughts on a […]
Love it or hate it? Mills and Boon at Reading
Today’s guest post from Judith Watts explores our Mills & Boon Collection. Judith is studying for her PhD as part of a unique collections-based research project at the University of Reading. The working title of her thesis, which explores the nexus between publisher, author and reader, is The Limits of Desire: the Mills & Boon Romance Market, […]
Steamy Sentences from Mills and Boon
Tired of hearts and roses for Valentine’s Day? Delve into the Mills and Boon world of innuendo instead! Boon Mots: Anthology of Artless Extracts compiles Mills and Boon editors’ favourite one-liners from over the years. A few of the best sentences: He paused and then added more softly, ‘Come on Elaine, it won’t be the […]
A snapshot of 19th Century publishing
Last summer volunteer Jenny Knight began work on the mammoth task of transcribing the indexes to the letter books of outgoing correspondence in the Chatto & Windus publisher’s archive. The early letter books are an invaluable source of information as loose files of correspondence were sent for salvage during the First World War and most […]
Top Ten Treasures from the Archives: Huntley and Palmers archive
Our collections richer than most people would imagine and cover a wide variety of subjects and historical periods. To give you an idea of what’s there, University Archivist Guy Baxter will be introducing his ‘Top Ten Treasures’ over the coming weeks, picking highlights from the archive collections here at Reading. Enjoy! Treasure Number 4: Huntley & […]
Turner Collection
This collection was moved back to Douai Abbey in September 2017. Please contact them for more information: http://www.douaiabbey.org.uk/ In the first of a series highlighting a selection of our collections, here’s a look at our Turner Collection, featuring a bibliophilic monk and revolutionary war. Consisting of nearly 8000 items in total, the Turner Collection is an invaluable […]
Ada Lovelace day: 15 October
Today is Ada Lovelace day, an annual celebration of achievements in science, technology, engineering and maths by women. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was a nineteenth century mathematician and computer pioneer. Interested in all kinds of scientific developments, such as the brain and phrenology, Ada is most well known for her work on Charles Babbage’s invention of an analytical […]
Recent highlights from twitter
Talking cake and victory cake: #MusCake Day
The first in our ‘Favourite Finds’ series looks at cake – a staple in every workplace. Claire Wooldridge, UMASCS Graduate Trainee, elaborates. It will be thought very odd, I doubt not by each little boy and girl, into whose hands this book shall fall, that a Banbury Cake should be able to write (as it […]