Tag: writers

For National Poetry Day we highlighted one of the poems in our collection: a rollicking travelogue that is sadly anonymous.  Much of the poetry in the Wellcome Library is anonymous – in many cases, it is amateur material bad enough… Continue reading

Frances Burney was a novelist, born in 1752 in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, to physician and highly regarded musician, scholar, and historian Dr Charles Burney and his first wife Esther Sleepe. Burney was a keen writer from a young age; a… Continue reading

As legions of Sherlock fans await a visit to Victorian London and an encounter with The Abominable Bride on British television in the New Year, we thought a little-known tale from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would further whet the appetite. Burger’s Secret is a… Continue reading

The life of Rosina Bulwer Lytton provides a fascinating insight into the attitudes towards women and mental health in the 19th century. Dismissed for years as the mad wife of the novelist and politician Edward Bulwer Lytton, Rosina was in… Continue reading

When we talk about our archives and manuscripts, our focus is usually on their content.  People order archive items in order to read them, by and large, and our catalogues tend to focus upon the words on the page, and… Continue reading

Archives and Manuscripts has recently acquired a letter (MS.8815) from the writer, critic and journalist Dame Rebecca West [Cicely Isabel Andews, nee Fairfield] (1892-1983) to Sir Weldon Dalrymple-Champneys (1892-1980), Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Health at the Ministry of Health (whose… Continue reading