HLF gives go-ahead for purchase of archive
As noted earlier by AustenBlog, a decision from the Heritage Lottery Fund was expected Tuesday regarding a grant needed to purchase the John Murray archive. The Fund approved the grant, which clears the way for the National Library of Scotland to purchase the documents.
[The archive] was started by the first John Murray, who was a Scot and founded his publishing house in London in 1768.
Seven successive Murray generations built up the archive with the close relationships each enjoyed with the writers of their time helping to make it a “who’s who” of 19th century society.
Described as one of the world’s most significant literary collections, the John Murray Archive is made up of 150,000 manuscripts, papers and letters.
It contains correspondence between the publisher and influential figures including Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, Sir Walter Scott, Benjamin Disraeli, David Livingstone, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edith Wharton, among others.
More on the archive purchase here, here and here.
A note from the Editrix: Thanks to Alert AustenBlog Reader Joanne for sending in this news–I didn’t have a chance to post it before Cub Reporter Julie got to it! Dorothy obviously put a little Extra Something in her Orange Pekoe this morning.
January 26th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
I think there’s something else important in this news:
“library bosses still need to find £6.5m to buy the papers, which are on sale for £33m. A massive fundraising drive to get hold of the cash has been launched, and donors are being urged to contribute.”
Have they not heard that Jane Austen is powerful in internet?
I guess some of us (if not many) would gladly like to help them with our grain of sand in this endeavour, if they could only tell us where (I have not been able to find anything suitable at the National Library of Scotland site).