Americas and Oceania Collections blog

61 posts categorized "Events"

25 March 2025

The deadly women of crime fiction

On 29 March 2025, the British Library will be hosting Deadly: the festival of women writing crime. This full day of events will celebrate the very best in contemporary crime writing by women and features non-fiction as well as fiction, brand-new work from celebrated authors, fresh voices, lively exploration of themes and perceptions of the genre, and plenty of criminally good fun...

Examples of the crime fiction titles available in the British Library collections
Examples of the crime fiction titles available in the British Library collections

 In anticipation of this inaugural event, we’ve been hot on the trail of some of the early sleuths in the British Library archives: those created by women crime writers. From elderly amateur detectives to a hard-boiled private investigator, meet the women who paved the way for the likes of Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope and Busayo Matuluko’s Lara Oyinlola.  

First up is an inquisitive elderly spinster, but not the one you might think. The wealthy New Yorker, Amelia Butterworth, was the creation of the American author, Anna Katharine Green and she teamed up with Detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police in three novels published between 1897 and 1900. Unmarried but financially secure, the respectable Miss Butterworth heralded a new type of female sleuth: an independent woman with the means and time to indulge her natural curiosity - see That Affair Next Door (British Library shelfmark 012622.h.12).  

Leaving the bright lights of Manhattan for the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, we first meet Miss Jane Marple in 1927 in the short story, The Tuesday Night Club published in The Royal Magazine. Although Agatha Christie’s elderly detective has spent most of her life in a small village, she has had plenty of opportunity to study human nature and sees a great deal of wickedness in the world. Her fluffy exterior hides a shrewd intelligence, and Miss Marple went on to solve crimes in twenty short stories and twelve novels including The Body in the Library in 1942 (NN.33239.) 

Not far from St Mary Mead, another white-haired sleuth was at work in London. Miss Maud Silver, retired governess turned private investigator, was brought to our attention in 1928 by Patricia Wentworth. Whilst crimes just seem to happen around Miss Marple, Miss Silver actively seeks them through her detective agency and she features in a whopping thirty-two novels published between 1928 and 1961, with the first being Grey Mask (NN.14586.).  

Leaving England, we venture back across the pond to North Carolina where we first meet Blanche White, an African American domestic worker on the run. Created in 1992 by Barbara Neely, Blanche is another example of an underestimated woman detective, but here this is due to the colour of her skin and position in society rather than her age. Unlike the previous detectives, she is a reluctant sleuth who uses her ‘invisibility’ to solve crimes as an act of self-preservation rather than out of mere curiosity. Blanche features in four novels published between 1992 and 2000 starting with Blanche on the Lam (YA.1999.a.7225).  

Staying in the USA, we are introduced to the tough former police officer turned private eye, Kinsey Millhone. More noir than knitting needles but still dismissed by her male counterparts, Kinsey is a twice-divorced loner who rarely survives the cases she investigates unscathed. Snippets of her life are gradually revealed to the reader through Sue Grafton’s alphabet novel series which started in 1982 with A is for Alibi (Nov.1986/428) and ended with Y is for Yesterday (YD.2018.a.336) with Grafton’s death in 2017. 

To meet more amateur sleuths and private investigators from the archives, check out the British Library's Crime Classics series which resurrects long-forgotten novels from the Golden Age of detective fiction.

The launch event of Deadly: the festival of women writing crime is an evening with the globally celebrated author Tess Gerritsen, talking about her brand-new book The Summer Guests, on Friday 28 March. Tickets here. 

Online tickets for Deadly are are still available.

 

Lucy Rowland 

20 March 2025

‘America Now!’ continues: True Crime in the USA

The Eccles Institute and BAAS’s America Now! series continues on Tuesday 25 March 2025, with ‘True Crime in the USA’. Ahead of the event, here’s a look at the speakers joining us for the evening, and some materials related to true crime in the British Library’s collections.   

"True crime" is a very American genre, and a very American obsession. Evolving from the yellow journalism of press barons like Hearst and Pulitzer, and new forms of literature like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, true crime has also been central to the rise of new media and technology content creation and consumption over the past decade. Podcasting, streaming, and social media would not be what they are today without the American public's fascination with narrativizing violence, deception, and intrigue involving their fellow citizens. This panel of experts is on the case and will trace the threads that connect everything from Billy the Kid to Luigi Mangione, and from Serial and Making a Murderer to TikTok detectives and the very online, real-time, true crime-style storytelling of the present moment. 

Promotional image for America Now True Crime event, Tuesday 25 March 2025
Promotional image for America Now True Crime event, Tuesday 25 March 2025

Chaired by our friends at BAAS, the event will include a panel of experts to lead what’s sure to be an engaging and enlightening discussion:    

Dr George Larke-Walsh (University of Sunderland) 

George is currently Senior Lecturer in Arts and Creative Industries at the University of Sunderland. She began her academic career in the north east, but then moved to the USA, teaching at the University of North Texas from 2004 to 2020. She has published books and articles on mythologies of the mafia on screen, including the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Gangster Film (2018) [when the British Library’s digital services are fully restored this item is available to consult at BL shelfmark ELD.DS.326648]*. More recently she has turned her attention to documentary and specifically true crime. Her articles have explored numerous media examples from histories of the mafia wars to well-known series such as Making a Murderer, and The Staircase. Her most recent book is an edited collection of new scholarship called True Crime in American Media (Routledge, 2023).    

Megan Lupton (De Montfort University) 

Megan is a final year PhD candidate at De Montfort University in Leicester. To investigate the ethics of true crime, she has conducted interviews with true crime podcasters and is using her findings to inform the characters, plot and themes in a fictional novel. Megan has previously spoken about child safety on TikTok at the TikTok Cultures Research Network symposium, presented at the 2024 Great Writing Conference, and written for the National Centre of Academic Excellence. She is also the co-founder of an independent, cooperative newspaper in Leicestershire, and a passionate storyteller with a master's degree in creative writing. Through her solutions-focused PhD, Megan’s novel and ethical reflections framework will take true crime practitioners on a journey through ethics.   

Her Instagram account, documents her research journey. 

Dr Lindsay Steenberg (Oxford Brookes University) 
Lindsay is Reader/Associate Professor in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University where she is Chair of their Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Research Network. She has published numerous articles on the crime and action genres and is the author of Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture: Gender, Crime, and Science (2017) [BL shelfmark: YK.2013.a.8439], Are You Not Entertained? Mapping the Gladiator in Visual Culture (2021) [BL shelfmark: YC.2022.a.14] and the forthcoming The Hollywood Fight Scene.  She is particularly interested in the gender and race politics of violence in the popular media, from the lighter mode of ‘cozy crime’ to the darker obsessions of ‘dark tourism.’  

The British Library collections hold a host of materials reflecting the American true crime genre and conversation. Secondary sources include true stories of domestic terrorism [BL shelfmark: m22/.10005] to anthologies offering comprehensive examinations of how American writers have explored crime in a multitude of ways, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to James Ellroy [BL shelfmark: m08/.33001]. True crime events which have proven ongoing subjects of fascination and discussion, such as the bloody St. Valentine's Day massacre of 1929, can be examined through online access to FBI documents* and music scores from the 1967 film of the same name [BL shelfmark: VOC/1967/NEWMAN]. If you really want to investigate early depictions of sensationalised crime, look at A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March 1770 by soldiers of the XXIXth Regiment [BL shelfmark: 1061.h.11.] which includes Paul Revere’s engraving of the event we know now as the Boston Massacre, a pivotal event leading up to the American Revolution. 

Image of Paul Revere engraving from A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March 1770 by soldiers of the XXIXth Regiment ... with some observations on the state of things prior to that catastrophe., Boston, 1770, 1061.h.11.
Image of Paul Revere engraving from A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston perpetrated in the evening of the fifth day of March 1770 by soldiers of the XXIXth Regiment ... with some observations on the state of things prior to that catastrophe., Boston, 1770, 1061.h.11.

For those interested in early sensationalised journalism, 1883 examples of the The New-York World can be viewed on microfilm at BL shelfmark: MFM.MA79. The New-York World was established in 1860 but by the late 1870s the newspaper was losing money, tens of thousands of dollars a year. In 1883 it was purchased by Joseph Pulitzer who turned around its precarious fate. Hiring investigative journalists, it became a newspaper that concentrated on human-interest stories, scandal and exaggerated material, capturing readers' attention and upping its daily circulation. In response, William Randolph Hearst purchased the New York Journal in 1895 and employed an approach like Pulitzer. Pulitzer and Heart’s use of promotional schemes, overemphasised stories, and focus on illustrations and colour supplements, became known as yellow journalism and would have a lasting impact on the history of popular American newspaper production.  

Image from Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World. [With plates, including portraits.], BL shelfmark: X.900/2277, Princeton, 1966. The image shows one the newspaper’s front pages: a depiction of James Blaine’s attendance at a banquet in New York City, tendered by the nation’s foremost millionaires.
Image from Joseph Pulitzer and the New York World. [With plates, including portraits.], BL shelfmark: X.900/2277, Princeton, 1966. The image shows one the newspaper’s front pages: a depiction of James Blaine’s attendance at a banquet in New York City, tendered by the nation’s foremost millionaires.

On our whistlestop tour of true crime through the 19th to 21st centuries in British Library collections, you may also be interested to find Pat F. Garrett's Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney) [BL shelfmark: 010884.f.37.]. Originally published one year after the killing of Billy the Kid by Sheriff Pat Garrett, Sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico, this is considered one of the most authoritative biographies of William H. Bonney and the foundation of the Billy the Kid legend. 

Image from Pat F. Garrett's Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney) [BL shelfmark: 010884.f.37.] with colour depiction of Billy the Kid by W. M. Allison
Image from Pat F. Garrett's Authentic Life of Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney) [BL shelfmark: 010884.f.37.] with colour depiction of Billy the Kid by W. M. Allison

Truman Capote is often a name that springs to mind on the subject of true crime. His 1966 novel, In Cold Blood, reconstructs the real-life murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children, combining factual reporting with the imaginary possibilities of storytelling. The book is deemed by many to represent a milestone in the evolution of American true crime writing with Capote himself promoting the book as a new genre: the ‘literary non-fiction' novel. First published serially, in The New Yorker in 1965, Readers at the British Library can consult a first edition of the novel, published by Random House, New York, in the same year, at BL shelfmark: W13/2998 and later British-published edition from 1966 at BL shelfmark: 12208.a.1/2682. 

Images of front and back covers of paper back Penguin Books edition of In Cold Blood, 1966 [BL shelfmark: 12208.a.1/2682.]
Images of front and back covers of paper back Penguin Books edition of In Cold Blood, 1966 [BL shelfmark: 12208.a.1/2682.]

We move swiftly into the era of podcasts and giant streaming services. The story of a 1999 murder case in Baltimore was reinvestigated in 2014 by Serial, an investigative journalism podcast, in which host Sarah Koenig narrated the nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The show became a cultural phenomenon, launching podcasts into the mainstream. The experience of the young man examined in relation to the murder, Adnan Syed, can be explored further in collection item Adnan's story: the search for truth and justice after Serial [BL shelfmark: YD.2017.a.627]. And finally, with the likes of Netflix tapping into the true crime trend, tough, sometimes controversial, and often needs-to-be-seen-to-be-believed watching has been provided through shows like Tiger King (2020), Monsters (2024) and Apple Cider Vinegar (2025) all of which can be examined in BL items ELD.DS.732936,*  YK.1994.a.14823, and YKL.2018.a.20024 respectively. 

Photo from Adnan's story: the search for truth and justice after Serial [BL shelfmark: YD.2017.a.627] including notes from Baltimore Police Department detailing the discovery of a female body.
Photo from Adnan's story: the search for truth and justice after Serial [BL shelfmark: YD.2017.a.627] including notes from Baltimore Police Department detailing the discovery of a female body.

From the Supreme Court to Cowboy Carter, you can catch up on the other topics we’ve covered in America Now! via our blog series:  

If you’ve attended one of our America Now! events or have ideas about what you think we should discuss in the series, we’d love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and feedback via our online form

*Access to some digital items and e-resources is currently limited while we recover from the cyber-attack of 2023. We are working to reinstate these and hope to provide full access again when possible. Visit our website for full details of what is currently accessible. 

06 March 2025

Call For Papers: Twentieth-Century Black Periodicals and Space

Twentieth-Century Black Periodicals and Space Symposium
Thursday 8 May 2025
British Library, St Pancras, London

This symposium is about space and geography in the context of twentieth-century periodicals from across the Black Atlantic. Over the course of the twentieth century, Black periodicals negotiate space at several scales: in their pages, in their interests, in their circulation, and in the ways we conceptualise and archive them.  How do Black periodicals occupy and traverse space, and how do the spatial forms of Black periodicals shape their meanings? How have theorists understood periodicals and blackness through spatial metaphors? How do spatial contingencies affect the ways that Black periodicals are collected, archived and accessed? 

In December 2024, Elizabeth McHenry gave the 39th Annual Panizzi lectures at the British Library.1 Focusing on Black Bibliography, McHenry identified an overarching question which her three lectures asked of themselves and of the field more broadly: What does it mean to inhabit the space of black print?  The symposium takes McHenry’s ending question as its beginning.  It invites scholars, librarians and researchers from a variety disciplines whose primary objects of study are Black periodicals (magazines, newspapers, etc) published 1900-2000 in the Americas, Europe, and Africa to submit papers that ask about what it means to traverse the space of 20th Century Black Atlantic periodicals and what spaces these periodicals themselves traverse.  

Participants are welcome to submit papers on topics including 

  • The circulations of specific periodicals 
  • Black bibliography, in particular its diasporic aspects 
  • Page layout and print space in Black periodicals 
  • Internationalism, diaspora and Pan-Africanism in Black periodical cultures 
  • Reflections on the spatial conceptualisations of Black periodicals  
  • The space of the Black periodical archive 

International scholars, librarians and researchers from beyond the UK are also invited to get in touch.  Although the symposium is in-person, there is the possibility of a follow up event held online if there is enough interest.  

Please submit proposals for 10-minute work-in-progress papers, 20-minute papers, or 10-minute round table contributions. Proposals should be 300-500 words and sent along with a brief CV or bio to [email protected] by Thursday 17 April 2025. Email enquiries are also welcome. 

Three covers of Black World (1961-1976), an important magazine during the Black Arts Movement.  The magazine, previously known as Negro Digest, was re-named ‘Black World’ in May 1970 to better reflect the magazine’s diasporic interests and readership.
Three covers of Black World (1961-1976), an important magazine during the Black Arts Movement. The magazine, previously known as Negro Digest, was re-named ‘Black World’ in May 1970 to better reflect the magazine’s diasporic interests and readership.

This symposium is a product of the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD Studentship African American short fiction and magazines in the mid-twentieth century with the University of Cambridge and the Eccles Institute for the Americas & Oceania at the British Library. The Eccles Institute builds, cares for and shares the Americas and Oceania collection at the British Library, and champions knowledge and understanding of these regions through a rich programme of fellowships and awards, cultural events, research training, guides to the collections and programmes for schools.

References

1. Lecture One, 5 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: In Search of Black Readers   

Lecture Two, 10 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: Thinking Bibliographically 

Lecture Three, 12 Dec 2024: Panizzi Lectures 2024: Spaces of Black Study 

21 January 2025

The Inauguration of a New President: Where Will American Politics Go From Here?

The Eccles Institute and BAAS’s America Now! series continues on Tuesday 23 January 2025, with The Inauguration of a New President: Where Will American Politics Go From Here? Ahead of the event, here’s a closer look at the speakers joining us for the evening, and some materials related to presidential inaugurations in the Library’s collections. 

In his inauguration speech in January 2017 Donald Trump promised to ‘make America great again’ and stem the ‘American carnage’ he saw in US society. Coming just weeks after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capital, Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration speech urged the American people to come together, even though he conceded that ‘speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days.’ Donald Trump returned to power as President of the United States on 20 January 2025, after an election cycle marked by violence and division.

President Joe Biden, joined by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and their children Ashley Biden and Hunter Biden, takes the oath of office as President of the United States Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
President Joe Biden, joined by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and their children Ashley Biden and Hunter Biden, takes the oath of office as President of the United States Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Following the inauguration, we will reflect on 2024’s electoral activity in the US, and the role of democracy in American political life, in our first American Now! event for 2025. What will the new President mean for the future of the US, and the world? 

Chaired by our friends at BAAS, the event will include a panel of experts to lead what’s sure to be a fruitful and frank discussion:  

Ursula Hackett (Royal Holloway)  

Ursula Hackett is Reader in Politics at Royal Holloway, University of London. She specialises in the study of public policymaking and litigation in the United States, with a particular focus on religion, race, and education. Dr Hackett is the author of America's Voucher Politics: How Elites Learned to Hide the State (Cambridge University Press) and the essay writing guide, Brilliant Essays (Bloomsbury Study Skills). In the academic year 2023-4 she was a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow. 

Amy Tatum (University of Bournemouth) 

Amy Tatum is a Lecturer in Communication and Media at Bournemouth University. Her research explores gender and political leadership, political psychology and representation. Her recent work explores the impact of generative AI on US politics and the psychological responses to women in political leadership.   

Nick Witham (UCL) 

Nick Witham is Professor of American Studies and Dean of Social and Historical Sciences at UCL. He is a historian of American culture and politics. His most recent book is Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2023). 

So what is the inauguration? Inauguration Day is when the president-elect and vice-president-elect are sworn in and take office. George Washington was sworn in as the nation's first president on 30 April 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York. 

Inauguration of Washington engraving
Engraving from Seventeenhundred and seventysix, or the War of Independence; a history of the Anglo-Americans, from the period of the Union of the Colonies against the French, to the inauguration of Washington, the first President of the United States of America by Benson John Lossing, BL shelfmark: 9604.c.3. 1847 edition (pictured here) available via GoogleBooks.

To mark this historic day, here is the speech that Washington made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (BL shelfmark: MFM.M18894).

Washington speech p1
Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 1.

 

Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 2.
Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 2.
Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 3.
Washington's speech made to the Senate and the House of Representatives on 30 April 1789, taken from the Chester Chronicle, Friday 26 June 1789 (MFM.M18894). Part 3.

The ceremony today typically takes place at the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. However, it was announced last week that Trump’s inauguration would happen indoors due to dangerously cold weather being forecast in Washington. The address and other speeches took place inside the US Capitol's rotunda, rather than outside the building. The last president to be sworn-in indoors was Ronald Reagan in 1985, when cold weather also plagued the US Capitol. 

Vice president-elect JD Vance was the first to take his oaths of office on Monday 20 January 2025, followed by Mr Trump, at around midday local time (about 5pm UK time). 

John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court (for more information on the Supreme Court read our previous blog in the America Now! series), administered the oath to the incoming president. Mr Trump held up his right hand while taking his presidential oath as first lady Melania Trump stood next to the him holding two Bibles, one being her husband's personal Bible which was given to him by his mother, and the other the Lincoln Bible that President Abraham Lincoln used to take the oath of office in 1861. 

In recent years, inaugurations have attracted famous faces to sing the national anthem on the steps of The Capitol. Beyoncé and Lady Gaga have occupied this role in 2013 and 2021 respectively. Yesterday, country-folk singer Lee Greenwood, prior to the start of the inauguration ceremony, offered a rendition of ‘God Bless the U.S.A.’, followed by Carrie Underwood performing ‘America the Beautiful’ (see F.1893.w.(51.)), and opera singer Christopher Macchio closed with the national anthem 'The Star-Spangled Banner’ (of which the the Library holds various scores). 

Turning to Library collections on contemporary political ephemera, over 60 years of American electoral history can be seen via the Philip Davies Collection of US election archive material (Add MS 89357) which was donated to the Library in 2018. The material gives a picture of the competing sides of the US political landscape from the 1950s to the 2010s, and includes election campaign placards, newspaper cuttings, nomination petitions and promotional scripts for telephone calls made to recruit votes.  

Specifically, users can look at a Barack Obama Pride Poster supporting LGBT rights (Add MS 89357/4/27), President Trump's Inauguration Invitation 2017 (Add MS 89357/3/3), Democratic vs Republican flyer on environmental issues from 2000 (Add MS 89357/1/10), 1988 promotional posters for ‘Bold Leadership, New Direction’ under Jesse Jackson (Add MS 89357/1/7) and campaign posters calling for the protecting of women’s health (Add MS 83957/1/14). 

More on this collection can be read on our blog from 2019

America Now! is organised by the Eccles Institute and BAAS, and supported by the US Embassy London. You can book tickets for our next event in the series now: True Crime in the USA Tickets | Tuesday, 25 Mar 2025 at 6:30 PM 

Please note: as a result of the cyber attack in 2023, access to some of our collections and online resources is limited. Visit our website for full details of what is currently accessible. 

W Stands for Women, Bush–Cheney campaign, 2004 (Add MS 89357/1/10)
W Stands for Women, Bush–Cheney campaign, 2004 (Add MS 89357/1/10)
Trump inauguration ceremony 2017 3
Images of President Trump's Inauguration Invitation ticket and programme, 2017 (Add MS 89357/3/3)
Images of President Trump's Inauguration Invitation ticket and programme, 2017 (Add MS 89357/3/3)
Images of President Trump's Inauguration Invitation ticket and programme, 2017 (Add MS 89357/3/3)

13 September 2023

Machado de Assis, Portinari and the Bilingual Brazilian Book Club at the British Library

Rafael Pereira do Rego is the Interim Programme Manager and Area Specialist at the Eccles Centre for American Studies

It was a great pleasure for the Eccles Centre to welcome the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club to the British Library during the celebration of their 100th edition on Saturday 15th July. The Embassy of Brazil has been running the Book Club for the past nine years with a wide network of international members and friends. This special edition at the Library was an opportunity to deepen ties between our two institutions and to celebrate and invite discussion and reflection on Brazilian literature and culture through the Library’s collections.

A group of ten participants standing in front of the Klencke Atlas at the British Library.
Some of the attendees of the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club event during the tour of the British Library.

 

The star of the event discussed during the Book Club – and for which we brought a special edition for the show-and-tell presentation – was the classic novella O Alienista (translated in English as ‘The Psychiatrist’ or ‘The Alienist). Originally published in 1882, by the illustrious Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, it is a wonderful short satirical work with an elegant and concise style centred on Dr Bacamarte, an alienist – the designation of psychiatrist in the nineteenth century, from the French ‘aliéniste’ – and his scientific experiments in the town of Itaguai, near Rio de Janeiro. There he established the Casa Verde (Green House) – a cross between a 19th century prototype of a psychiatric asylum and a scientific laboratory – to conduct experiential studies on the human mind. Dr. Bacamarte used his scientific power to define which denizens of the town should be confined to the asylum according to his shifting ideas of normality. As the narrative unfolds, the alienist gets lost in a madness of his own making. O Alienista was included recently in Machado de Assis: 26 Stories (2019) translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, which among other translations of the title, are available at the British Library.

Machado de Assis is the most celebrated classic Brazilian author, so it is natural that the Library’s holdings will encompass some of his works, but it was very exciting to see the scope and depth of our collections reflecting the interest that his books have attracted from the time of their first publications in Britain. There are over 300 copies of various works by and about Machado de Assis, including some of his earliest works acquired in the nineteenth century, many of which are rare volumes. Nadia Kerecuk, the creator and convenor of the Book Club, very kindly made a list of all of our holdings available. For instance, the British Library holds the first edition of one of his most famous novels Dom Casmurro published in 1889, and the poetry collections Chrysalidas (1866), and Phalenas (1869). In addition, we have some beautiful editions including the 1948 version of the novella with illustrations of one of my favourite Brazilian artists, Cândido Portinari1.

 

title cover of the publication with an illustration by Candido Portinari; black print on white paper.
Machado de Assis, C., & Portinari, Cândido. (1948). O Alienista. Illustrado por Candido Portinari. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional. British Library shelfmark: L.R.416.r.18

 

Last year when I visited my hometown, Rio, there was a lovely and comprehensive exhibition at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil providing an overview of the various facets and languages explored by Portinari – and including some of the illustrations that are present in the selected 1948 edition, as well as from other illustrated editions of Machado de Assis’ Memoria Postumas de Braz Cubas and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha.

Both Machado de Assis and Cândido Portinari had this incredible capacity to capture the human condition and Brazilian-ness in ways that feel both universal and culturally specific. Portinari was a keen enthusiast of Machado de Assis’ work and both lived in one of the neo-colonial elegant houses in Cosme Velho, a bucolic neighborhood in Rio and perhaps one of my favourite areas of the city. They came from a rather deprived childhood but with unwavering talent and determination, came to represent big names in literature and visual arts.

Huge neocolonial houses within a square with tropical trees and plants
The Largo do Boticário (Apothecary's Square) is a square in the Cosme Velho neighborhood in Rio where Machado de Assis and Portinari lived.

 

The 1948 edition was sponsored by the bibliophile and executive Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya (1894-1968). It is part of a wider collection named Os Cem Bibliófilos do Brasil (100 Bibliophiles of Brazil) named after a bibliophilic society created by Castro Maya. The society was composed of a hundred personalities of the time, among intellectuals, executives and society figures, which met annually to produce and publish works by great authors of Brazilian literature, illustrated by notable visual artists. In 30 years, they published names such as Machado de Assis, Guimarães Rosa, Jorge Amado, José Lins do Rego, Lima Barreto and Mário de Andrade, with their literary work illustrated by major visual artists such as Di Cavalcanti, Portinari, Iberê Camargo, Cícero Dias, Carybé, among others.

The Brazilian media tycoon Roberto Marinho was part of the select society, alongside names that might be very familiar to Brazilians, such as Walter Moreira Salles, Maria do Carmo de Melo Franco Nabuco, Horácio Klabin, Gilberto Chateaubriand, Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, Lineu de Paula Machado, D. Pedro Gastão de Orléans and Bragança, Celso Lafer, Clemente Mariani and Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt.

The artisanal publication of these beautifully illustrated editions was an important initiative, which resulted in the publication of authors and artists portraying Brazil in a variety of themes and motifs. At the same time, it is revealing of the Eurocentric references of Brazilian elites, importing values, techniques and cultural codes to the ‘developing’ country. Castro Maya based this collection on European publishing trends, especially from France where he lived. The publications were generally composed by hand and printed on manual presses. The paper had great quality specifications with rough texture and watermark, supplied by French manufacturers. Many books were engraved with different techniques such as etching, dry point, xylography and lithography.

 

Book image with engraved illustration by Portinari; black print in white paper.
Machado de Assis, C., & Portinari, Cândido. (1948). O Alienista. British Library shelfmark: L.R.416.r.18

 

Each edition took about a year to be completed and each member of the society would receive their own exclusive copy with their names identified and within loose sheets, so the binding could be personalised according to the owners’ tastes. Print runs were limited to about 120 copies. The Society launches took place at gala dinners at Rio’s most exclusive Country Club – established by British executives in 1916 and since then the meeting point of the crème de la crème of carioca society – when auctions were held of the original illustrations not included in the final edition. I was very pleased to find out that the British Library has 20 published copies of the collection Os Cem Bibliófilos do Brasil! Rare and exclusive copies of the beautiful pas-des-deux between classic authors of Brazilian literature and notable visual artists. I hope you can explore more the collection available at the British Library.

After the show-and-tell presentation, O Alienista was specifically addressed during the hybrid meeting of the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club, with members joining from overseas via MS Teams. Nadia Kerecuk prepared a historical background of the publication and a series of questions to direct the engaging discussion with the members of this successful bilingual and bibliophile ‘society’ with the welcomed accompaniment of delicious snacks and wine. Notwithstanding the indisputable differences between the Country Club in Rio and the British Library in London, we could say this was an exclusive gala afternoon!

Attendees of the event seating around a rectangular table; online attendees are joining the event with their images projected on the walls of the room.
Participants of the Book Club discussing O Alienista in the Foyle Room at the British Library.

Notes:

1To learn more about Candido Portinari’s work please check the five-volume catalogue raisonné available at the British Library organised by his son Joao Candido Portinari as part of the major Portinari Project which has the aim of cataloguing thousands of paintings, drawings and printings, as well digitally processing images and oral history outputs. Some of the audiovisual content of this project is also available via the online platform here.

30 March 2022

A welcome return for on-site Doctoral Open Days

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to do ‘in real life’ show and tells for students attending the Library’s Doctoral Open Days so the Americas and Oceania Collections Curatorial team and Eccles team were delighted to be able to discuss a selection of items from the collections with researchers at the latest on-site sessions.

On 4 and 7 March 2022, a number of students from all disciplines visited the Library’s site at St Pancras to get better acquainted with the services and collections available for their research, inspiration and enjoyment. Theses practical sessions were offered to all who attended our PhD webinars that took place earlier in the year.

The days give the chance to attend Reader Registration appointments, go on building tours, take advantage of drop-in sessions with Reference Services, see how collection items are handled and conserved, and come along to show and tells with curatorial teams across the Library to see and discuss items from different collections.

Photo of the collection items from across the Library on display at the show and tell sessions
Photo of the collection items from across the Library on display at the show and tell sessions

Asian and African Collections, British and European Collections, Music Collections, Digital Collections and Resources, Contemporary Society and Culture Collections, and Maps and Visual Arts Collections all took part. We love being part of these days; not only do we get to meet new researchers and discuss their work, but we also get the chance to see colleagues from other collection areas and chat with them about the items in their remit and beyond – both things that have been much-missed in-person activities over the past two years.

For those unable to attend, we thought we’d share a few things with you digitally instead! Here are a selection of items that the Americas and Oceania team displayed over the two days:

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
Text by Lewis Carroll; designed by Tara Bryan
Flatrock, Newfoundland, Canada: Walking Bird Press, 2016
RF.2019.a.126

Photos of down the rabbit hole (RF.2019.a.126) by Tara Bryan, showing the item as it’s stored and in its open form
Photos of down the rabbit hole (RF.2019.a.126) by Tara Bryan, showing the item as it’s stored and in its open form

Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript for Alice's Adventures Under Ground is housed at the British Library, so we are always excited to see how the tale has been re-imagined, re-interpreted and re-illustrated over the last 160 years. This item invites readers into the rabbit hole, with the words from Carroll tunnelling down and down… just as Alice did. This artists’ book was designed by Tara Bryan in her studio in Newfoundland. One of only 40 copies, it is made from delicate handmade Thai Bamboo paper and Japanese paper.

FOR HOME USE: A BOOK OF REFERENCE ON MANY SUBJECTS RELATIVE TO THE TABLE
Proprietors of Angostura Bitters
Trinidad: Angostura Bitters (Publication year unknown/Donated)
YD.2004.a.5928

Photos of For Home Use: A Book Of Reference On Many Subjects Relative To The Table (YD.2004.a.5928)
Photos of For Home Use: A Book Of Reference On Many Subjects Relative To The Table (YD.2004.a.5928)

This item speaks to culinary social history, especially concerning those deemed belonging to the middle and upper classes of Trinidad and Tobago. ‘Invaluable to the Host and Hostess’, this book of recipes by the makers of Angostura Bitters, is an example of great marketing from a bygone era.

SÃO FERNANDO BEIRA-MAR: CANTIGA DE ESCÁRNIO E MALDIZER
Antonio Miranda
São Paulo: Dulcinéia Catadora, 2007
RF.2019.a.285

LA MUJER DE LOS SUEÑOS DEL DOMADOR DE YAKARÉS
Amarildo Garcia
Asunción: Yiyi Jambo, 2008
RF.2019.a.356

TRIPLE FRONTERA DREAMS
Douglas Diegues
Buenos Aires: Eloísa Cartonera, 2012
RF.2019.a.361

CARTONERAS IN TRANSLATION = CARTONERAS EN TRADUCCIÓN = CARTONERAS EM TRADUÇÃO: ANTOLOGÍA
Lucy Bell et al., eds.
Cuernavaca: La Cartonera, 2018
RF.2019.a.311

Photo of cartoneras from Latin America (Top left, RF.2019.a.311; top right, RF.2019.a.285; bottom left, RF.2019.a.356; bottom right, RF.2019.a.361)
Photo of cartoneras from Latin America (Top left, RF.2019.a.311; top right, RF.2019.a.285; bottom left, RF.2019.a.356; bottom right, RF.2019.a.361)

Cartoneras are books of poetry, literature, and translations made with covers from salvaged cardboard with original illustrations in acrylic colours made by members of cartonera workshops. Their illustrated cardboard covers are often anonymous, even when created by famous artists, or signed by all members of the publishing group in a clear attempt to promote the community effort over the individual artist. The focus is on making books together and giving everyone access to reading and writing their stories.

Cartonera books are not only visually beautiful, but also make a critical intervention in publishing and reading cultures in Latin America starting in the wake of the financial crisis in Argentina with Eloísa Cartonera in 2003. This type of cheap community publishing spread quickly across the region and allowed other Latin American countries plagued by economic and social inequality to appropriate reading and book-making practices creatively and in a community-based way.

LIP MAGAZINE ISSUE 1
Frances (Budden) Phoenix (featured artist)
Melbourne, Australia: Women in the Visual Arts Collective, 1976
RF.2019.b.172

Photo of Lip magazine with artwork using paper doily by Phoenix on centerfold (RF.2019.b.172)
Photo of Lip magazine with artwork using paper doily by Phoenix on centerfold (RF.2019.b.172)

Lip was an Australian feminist journal self-published by a collective of women in Melbourne between 1976 and 1984. The art and politics expressed in the journal provide a fascinating record of the Women’s Liberation era in Australia. The inaugural issue seen here includes articles on writer Dorothy Hewett, Australian embroidery, and Australian feminist art, film and performing arts, as well as a double page removable centerfold: a doily vulva artwork called ‘Soft Aggression’ by artist Frances (Budden) Phoenix. Phoenix was an Australian feminist artist who helped to establish the Women’s Domestic Needlework Group, and known for her provocative textile and needlework which subverted traditional notions of women’s domestic crafts. In her centerfold here, she revisits the tradition of women inscribing messages into their work and includes the directive to readers: “female culture is in the minds, hearts and secret dialogues of women. Use your culture in your own defence: use soft aggression.”

THE LITERARY VOYAGER OR MUZZENIEGUN
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, edited with an introduction by Philip P. Mason
[East Lansing]: Michigan State University Press, 1962.
X.800/1125.

ALGIC RESEARCHES, COMPRISING INQUIRIES RESPECTING THE MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS: FIRST SERIES: INDIAN TALES AND LEGENDS
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
New York, 1839.
12430.e.20.

The Literary Voyager Or Muzzeniegun (X.800/1125.)
The Literary Voyager Or Muzzeniegun (X.800/1125.)

In 1962, scholar Philip P. Mason collected and republished the entirety of the manuscript magazine The Literary Voyager. Originally produced between December 1826 and April 1827 by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, it is considered to be the first periodical related to Native American culture. Its alternative title, Muzzeniegun is Ojibwe for ‘book’.

Schoolcraft, an ethnologist and Indian Agent in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, handwrote a few copies of each issue which were posted to friends and family. Schoolcraft was married to Bamewawagezhikaquay, also known as Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, who was of Ojibwa and Scots-Irish ancestry. She is considered to be the first known Native American woman writer. Notably she wrote in both English and Ojibwe. Many of her poems and traditional stories were included in The Literary Voyager, however she does not receive credit for her work. Her mother, from whom Schoolcraft also collected traditional stories and cultural knowledge, is also not named. It has taken considerable efforts by Native American literary scholars to correct this historical omission, and to bring attention to this important Ojibwe voice.

Some of Bamewawagezhikaquay’s stories were later published in Algic Researches, also compiled by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. This Library copy is an original edition from 1839.

Algic Researches, Comprising Inquiries Respecting the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians: First Series: Indian Tales And Legends (12430.e.20.)
Algic Researches, Comprising Inquiries Respecting the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians: First Series: Indian Tales And Legends (12430.e.20.)

We’d like to thank our colleagues in the Library’s Research Development Team for organising the webinars and in-person sessions, and to our friends in the Eccles Centre for American Studies for their support in helping the days run smoothly.

As the Library continues to working hard at both our sites to make sure everyone can visit us safely, we are looking forward to the opportunity to run similar sessions and meet more of you in person over the coming year.

14 December 2021

Dystopian Fiction & Long Feminist Histories

This autumn the Eccles Centre has been hosting a series of events and activities for researchers interested in gender and US politics. The programme will conclude with two days of activities this week, including a public, online event exploring the process of communicating women’s history through exhibitions, Staging Women’s History, on Thursday 16 December at 17.00 GMT, which is free to attend and open to all.

In previous events, the group has explored different aspects of the British Library’s collections, including sheet music, poetry, and fiction, which network member, Dr Eir-Anne Edgar, explores in more detail in this post.

In October 2021, thousands came out to protest a restrictive new anti-abortion law in Texas, which allows individuals to sue anyone suspected in assisting in or receiving an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Images of the protests capture the scene – some women in bright pink pussy hats, many protestors armed with homemade signs and banners, and some wearing long red cloaks and large white wimples or bonnets that conceal much of the wearer’s face – the costume made famous by the television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and worn by the Handmaids of the novel’s title.

Mannequin wearing a black dress with red cape and white bonnet.
Homemade ‘handmaid’ Women’s March costume, featured in the British Library’s ‘Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights’ exhibition, 2020-21

Culturally, the costumes have come to be synonymous with the oppression of women by a Christian, patriarchal society that restricts women’s political and individual freedoms and punishes rule-breakers with physical and emotional violence. Even more significantly, the costumes represent the bravery and cunning exercised by women who have had enough and push back against oppression, as protagonist June/Offred does, rescuing children and women tormented in Gilead’s society.

Atwood’s follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, the highly anticipated 2019 novel, The Testaments, captures the zeitgeist of the Trump presidency. Without revealing too many spoilers, readers see Offred’s legacy via the brave actions of a few young women – some in Gilead, some across the border in Canada – as well as a surprising twist from characters familiar to readers from The Handmaid’s Tale. Told in alternating perspectives from three different women, it seems that Atwood is underscoring the way in which women must work together to implement societal change. In particular, The Testaments illustrates the power that narrative has. A secret library, tucked deep in the recesses of Gilead, contains forbidden books that portray “problematic women” who deviate from their social norms. “Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Paradise Lost, Lives of Girls and Women – what a moral panic each one of them would cause if set loose among the Supplicants!” (Atwood, 35).

Inside back cover showing envelop and extra content
Special edition of The Testaments (2019) from Pelee Island Bird Observatory. Inside back cover showing envelop for bonus material.

 

Handwritten list on lined notepaper
Special edition of The Testaments (2019) from Pelee Island Bird Observatory, featuring bonus content, including ‘Aunt Lydia’s Reading List’

These books, like 'The Testaments' itself, have the power to impact culture and society. As Atwood herself has noted, the Trump administration’s attempts to limit the rights of immigrants, women, LGBTQI people, and other members of marginalized groups have inspired her work.

In my research, I examine how dystopian fiction such as Atwood’s novels addresses contemporary feminist political issues and movements, including the #metoo movement and the fourth wave feminist movement’s drive for reproductive justice. Although my project focuses on recent iterations of women’s writing and their corresponding political issues, it is important to note that there is a much longer history of feminist dystopian novels that imaginatively reframe contemporaneous social and political issues. We can also see this in the work of authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose utopian trilogy (written in 1909, 1915, and 1916 – yet not published until the 1970’s) portrays a world without men, one in which women are breadwinners and are able to procreate without men, and emphasizes the necessity of community, education, and the malleability of gender roles. 

Three paperback books on a table
Selected editions of Gilman’s work, left to right: Herland (London: Woman's Press, 1979) General Reference Collection X.909/44756; Herland, The Yellow Wall-paper, and Selected Writings (New York : Penguin Books, 1999) Document Supply m03/42037; The Yellow Wallpaper (London: Virago Press, 2009) General Reference Collection H.2013/.5096

Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” arguably her most well-known story, was re-printed in 1973 by Feminist Press. Originally written in 1892 and, like her utopian trilogy, first published in her periodical The Forerunner, Gilman’s work was “rediscovered” by second wave feminists and struck a chord with a new generation of readers. The Yellow Wallpaper illustrates many 19th century women’s issues, such as the limitations of the domestic sphere, medical treatment for women’s mental and physical health issues, the pressures of motherhood and marriage, and more. For second wave feminist readers, the worlds that Gilman portrays in her work, imagined and real, resonate from the 19th century and into the 70’s, much in the same way that the Reagan-era issues captured in The Handmaid’s Tale reverberate in 2021.

The “Gender and US Politics” group discussed Gilman’s short story and Atwood’s latest novel during a meeting that focused on fiction. Given my current research project, I was very excited to discuss these materials with others. I am one of just a few literature scholars in the group, which is also composed of historians, political scientists, and members of diverse disciplines. Listening to those outside of my expertise was one of the most interesting (and inspiring) aspects of the meeting. For instance, several scholars research suffragism in the US and abroad, and their contributions shed light on new ways of thinking about the literature, particularly in considering Gilman’s work. The opportunity to be part of a transdisciplinary group of scholars with intersecting research interests has helped me “see” the literature I work with in new ways, such as making connections between Atwood’s novels and television adaptation with Gilman’s writing, first published almost one hundred years before. It has also helped me to see how literature resonates over time with readers and how political issues can morph or remain the same, despite the political progress women have made.

****

Dr Eir-Anne Edgar is Associate Professor of Literature in ILU at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. She is currently at work on her research project, Women in the Wastelands: The World-Making of Feminist Critical Dystopian Fiction, which explores the recent explosion of transnational, feminist dystopian novels and the ways in which they “re-make” or “re-see” real-world issues. Though the Wasteland may seem like a strange place to locate hope, this project finds that women authors have long located frustrations with the limitations placed against gender and sexuality within the pages of dystopian and utopian novels.

The Gender and US Politics project, coordinated by Cara Rodway (Eccles Centre) and Robert Mason (University of Edinburgh) is supported by the British Association for American Studies and the US Embassy London.

[Posted by Cara Rodway, Eccles Centre]

 

06 May 2021

Finding the Humor in 'Sappho'

Louise Siddons is an associate professor of art history at Oklahoma State University and a Fulbright Scholar at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. She is writing a book about the photographer Laura Gilpin that examines the intersection between mid-century lesbian liberation and Navajo sovereignty politics in Gilpin’s photographs and related visual culture. As part of that research, she has been taking a closer look at the transatlantic lesbian press and the construction of lesbian identity. In this post, she shares the unexpected pleasure she discovered in the pages of Sappho, a British magazine that, unlike the American counterparts which advertised in its pages, routinely included comics and cartoons.

Louise will be talking about transatlantic lesbian visual culture and the lesbian gaze in a free online lecture on Monday 10 May at 19.00, Looking Like a Lesbian.

_______________________

“Every group has its share of jokes,” announced “Robyn’s Page,” a regular feature of Sappho. Founded in 1972, Sappho’s mission was to build a meaningful community among lesbian women both as readers and in person. Early in its run, Robyn worried that humor was troublingly absent from lesbian culture.1

In this blog post, I’m taking a close look at the cartoons and comics that appeared in early issues of Sappho. Why should we take humor seriously? Robyn argued that, “Jokes are … a spontaneous endorsement of what’s happening where it matters most – that’s at grass root level.” The lack of lesbian jokes, she suggested, revealed a lack of group identity among lesbians. Eager to change this, she invited readers to come up with “the great lesbian joke.”2

Studies in the psychology of humor have historically focused on the role that “out-group disparagement humor” reinforces in-group identification; in other words, people mark their status as insiders by making fun of outsiders.3 But, as Robyn pointed out, in 1972 lesbian humor was still struggling to locate the notion of “lesbian.” The visual comedy published in Sappho’s early years is almost all about defining the in-group: what does it mean to be a lesbian, and how can humor help that definition cohere?4

If a brief survey of my friends last week is any indication, lesbian humor has achieved the status of a common culture, even if the jokes aren’t always great. Universally, when I asked for a lesbian joke, the first response was: “What does a lesbian bring on a second date?” (Is there any point to pretending we don’t know the punchline?) “A U-Haul.”

Groan-inducing though it is, the U-Haul joke echoes the humor presented in Sappho a half-century earlier, which overwhelmingly took couples as its subject and often poked fun at the intensity of new attachments—sometimes to make a serious point about healthy relationships. My informal friend survey, utterly unscientific and drawn largely from the same “militantly middle-class” audience to which Sappho addressed itself a half-century ago, points to the magazine as a foundational source for long-lasting tropes of lesbian comedy.5

In this 1990 interview, Sappho’s editor, Jacqueline Forster, described the board’s decision to include “photos, cartoons, articles, news stories, poems, and a list of places where lesbians can meet or contact.” As her inclusion of “cartoons” makes clear, there was an expectation that the magazine would include humor, at least some of which would be visual, under the direction of art editors Jay Francis and Murray Marr.

Sappho magazine cover. Yellow with the magazine name in large black letters and a small Venus symbol in black with two faces in profile inside the circle.
Cover, Sappho 1, no. 1 (1972)

An initial encounter with the magazine does not promise comedy: in the first few issues, the discreetly monochromatic panel of the cover is disturbed only by the title of the magazine in a typeface reminiscent of Westminster, the 1960s machine-readable typeface designed by Leo Maggs, volume and issue information, and a small logo—the Venus symbol with two facing, vaguely feminine profiles inside its ring. Reminiscent of the optical illusion in which our perception shifts between two faces and a vase, the logo hints at the semiotic slippage that characterizes queer, and especially lesbian, identity throughout the twentieth century—without making us laugh.

Once inside, however, the conservative, technologically savvy design gave way to a hand-drawn aesthetic reminiscent of earlier lesbian magazines like the British Arena Three and the American The Ladder, inviting intimacy and openness in the reader. The first cartoon appeared on page 7 of the very first issue, and introduced “Mabel and Mildred,” a quirky, naked couple who venture out into the world with varying degrees of success. Although their adventures are slightly surreal, they offer a slice of lesbian life to Sappho readers.

Line drawing of a naked woman holding an axe running off a ledge with a smaller naked woman sat below the step with a speech bubble saying 'Now Mildred, look out for that first step!'
“Mabel and Mildred,” Sappho 1, no. 1 (1972): 7

In each episode, the rendering is rudimentary: Mildred, slightly stockier than her counterpart, is perennially armed with an axe, which seems as likely to endanger Mabel as protect her. Mabel, in turn, is all knees and elbows, with a shock of unruly hair. In this first cartoon, Mildred is at the top of a precipitous set of steps, while Mabel sits at their foot, badly dinged by an apparent fall. “Now Mildred,” she warns, “look out for that first step!” Is this a commentary on Sappho’s inauguration—or on the dangers of coming out in public, as lesbians?

As a reader, I find myself less worried about Mildred than on the effect her outstretched axe will have on Mabel as she falls—a fear exacerbated by this cartoon, just a few pages later, in which Mildred has apparently chopped off Mabel’s head. The joke here is similarly dark: “For heaven’s sake Mildred,” chastises Mabel’s severed head as it floats above her fleeing body, “don’t lose your head!”

Line-drawing of two naked women. The woman on the right holds an axe and is running towards the woman on the left who is running away. With her head detached from her body she has a speech bubble saying 'For heavens sake Mildred, don't lose your head!
“Mabel and Mildred,” Sappho 1, no. 1 (1972): 12.

By the second volume, the two are clearly gendered as a butch/femme pair, thanks to the artist’s pointed application of a decorative bow shape: as a bowtie on Mildred (and her axe), and as a hair accessory on Mabel. It affirms the physical stereotyping already in place: Mildred is relatively stout (and violent), while Mabel is slim, with substantial breasts that occasionally overshadow her knobbly knees and elbows.

Line drawing of six people queuing for an opera performance.
“Mabel and Mildred,” Sappho 1, no. 5 (1972): 18.

With sly humor, this unusual level of clothing for the pair is featured in a cartoon in which the pair have joined a queue for a performance of Richard Strauss’s opera, Elektra. The four characters in line ahead of them represent various characters comically typical of performing arts audiences, all carefully disregarding the naked women behind them. Mildred, facing the viewer and thus seen frontally rather than in profile, explains to Mabel that “It’s about a disturbed nuclear family.” In Strauss’s opera, Electra is armed with an axe with which she avenges her father’s death at the hands of her mother; the myth was taken up by Carl Jung as the basis for a psychoanalytic model of the feminine psyche in 1915.

As an early example of humor in Sappho, “Mildred and Mabel” reflected the middle-class values of the editors in its expectation that readers would recognize references to Strauss and Jung, as well as in the types of activities in which Mabel and Mildred participate. At the same time, the cartoon couple embodied—literally—the paradox of middle-class lesbian existence. Asserting their cultural savvy in their choice of outings, yet persistently appearing naked in public, they thematize the struggle of queer visibility and social acceptance with irony and self-deprecation.

With the caveat that it’s outdated, a friend offered me: "What's the difference between a lesbian and a dyke?" "About $30K a year."

Class was a persistent discussion in Sappho despite its declared affinity with the middle class. In an early issue, Forster refuted the Union of Women for Liberation’s claim that the lesbianism of “a few petty bourgeois women” was “irrelevant to the economic needs of working-class women.” She regularly published letters from readers who asked for more working-class representation, and class struggle came up regularly throughout the magazine’s pages.6

In 1974, cartoonists Kate Charlesworth—now well-known, but in her early work for Sappho credited as “Kaye”—and Sue Neumann joined the masthead of Sappho as artists. They both created witty, many-layered comics for the magazine that draw on art history, public schools, tourism, fashion, and other features of middle-class lesbian experience. Alongside their carefully crafted images, a series of relatively simple images began to appear. Created by a variety of artists (none credited, although a few of the images are signed with initials), they transformed the Venus symbol familiar from the Sappho logo into an anthropomorphic character.

This had two important effects: first, it largely eliminated class-specific references—as well as racial or ethnic markers, which provoked less specific comment at the time, but are striking to contemporary readers. And second, by making visual puns that relied on the formal qualities of the Venus symbol rather than the cultural specificity of a human character, these apparently minor cartoons became surprisingly conceptual in their comedy.

Line drawing of two Venus symbols
“Stop acting butch,” Sappho 3, no. 11 (1975): 19.

The first to appear was this small bit, tucked into the corner of a page about halfway through the magazine. Two Venus signs are side-by-side: the one on the left is oriented in the expected way, but the one on the right is rotated so that the cross that should be beneath the circle is pointing up at a forty-five-degree angle, mimicking the position of the Mars sign typically used to signify male identity. The circle of the Venus on the left cracks into a speaking smile: “Stop acting butch,” she says. How are we supposed to interpret this directive?

Although Steven Dryden has noted elsewhere on the British Library blogs that the scholarly consensus is that “there was a class dimension to the hostility towards butch lesbian identities,” the illustrations in Sappho normalized butch-femme pairings. Along with “Mabel and Mildred,” “The Gailies,” for example, was a recurring strip by Jay Francis that featured a butch-femme couple, and a comic by Charlesworth replaced Tarzan with a butch Jane as she rescues a hapless femme damsel.7

The difference between “Stop acting butch,” and these other examples is that the former is stripped of any extraneous cultural markers, thanks to the reduction of our protagonists to symbols. In other words, the visual humor is based not on our ability to recognize a human type from their class/race/gender markers, but rather on a visual pun: the Venus symbol is acting out of character by rotating itself 135º anticlockwise—thereby mimicking the appearance of a different symbol.

The cartoon is immediately funny, but it also rewards sustained attention. Consider the effectiveness of the symbol’s transgressive resignification of itself: acceding to the anthropomorphism of the artist, we understand perfectly what the Venus symbol intends to represent—masculinity. At the same time, we understand the artist’s intent: to represent masculinity with a symbol that signifies femininity. The humor comes from our ability to comprehend both meanings at once, almost instantly, without this pedantic explanation. And then we realize that the artist is inviting us to transfer that awareness onto our understanding of gender: in the semiotic space of the tilted Venus, one sign signifies twice, equally effectively, because signs—and genders—are both arbitrary cultural constructions.

Louise Siddons, May 2021

_______________________
Endnotes
1 “Robyn’s Page,” Sappho 1, no. 5 (1972): 12; “About Sappho,” Sappho 1, no. 1 (1972): 3.
2 “Robyn’s Page,” Sappho 1, no. 5 (1972): 12.
3 Rod A. Martin and Thomas E. Ford, The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach (Academic Press, 2018).
4 Not exclusively, though: there’s a cartoon with two Venus symbols sharing a snide comment as the Mars sign bumps his arrow into a doorframe—and even Mildred gets an opportunity to turn her nose up at the thought of a man as a potential mate.
5 “About Sappho,” Sappho 1, no. 1 (1972): 3.
6 “Militant Madams,” Sappho 1, no. 5 (1972): 9-10; Jackie Forster, untitled editorial, Sappho 4, no. 1 (1975): 3.
7 Steven Dryden, https://www.bl.uk/lgbtq-histories/articles/arena-three-britains-first-lesbian-magazine; “The Gailies” first appear in Sappho 1, no. 7 (1972); Kate Charlesworth, “Me Jane!,” Sappho 2, no. 11 (1974): 20.

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