Journeys through the Archives: Bringing the past to life

This revealing event looks at the extraordinary value and rich possibilities of archives, and their creative potential to recover surprising or overlooked stories and figures from the past.

We begin with a conversation with internationally celebrated artist and author Edmund de Waal whose recent book, an Archive, reflects on his journeys through family archives from Odesa to Paris as well as the archives of poets and artists and places he loves. He looks widely at collecting and collections, how material kept together, lost, stolen or dispersed.

In the second part of the evening, two researchers introduce their explorations and whose own books show the power of archives to tell vital and fascinating stories.

Dr Mathelinda Nabugodi uses manuscripts, objects and visits to the homes of major Romantic authors in The Trembling Hand Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive to show how their lives and work were tied to the racist realities of their time and uncovers the overlooked Black figures who crossed their paths.  

And in Transnational Women Writers in the Wilmot Coterie, Dr Alexis Wolf uses a trail of archival material to reconstruct the lives and relationships of the Wilmot sisters, writers and editors who travelled across Europe and into Russia during the Napoleonic period. Their connections included Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, a controversial Enlightenment figure with ties to Catherine the Great, who the sisters helped write her memoirs – the beautiful manuscript of which is held at the British Library (Add MS 31911).

Followed by a book signing.

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