Thursday, April 21, 2011

British Library buys Wendy Cope archive

20 Apr 2011
It houses the Magna Carta, a Gutenberg Bible and a Shakespeare First Folio, and now the British Library has added over 40,000 emails to its collection.
The publicly funded institution has purchased the archive of the acclaimed poet Wendy Cope for £32,000.
The archive consists of 15 large storage boxes as well as extensive email correspondence and Word documents.
Rachel Fosse, a curator at the British Library said: “Wendy Cope is one of the most distinctive and influential figures in the literary landscape of the last four decades. I'm thrilled that this important collection will be preserved in perpetuity.”
Wendy Cope is known for her witty take on the absurdities of every day life and for her incisive parodying of the male literary establishment. The archive will provide an invaluable insight into her creative process and in to contemporary literary networks.
It contains wide-ranging personal and professional correspondence spanning Cope’s 25 year career. It includes letters from James Fenton, Kingsley Amis, Andrew Motion and Craig Raine. A postcard from Ted Hughes reads: “I like your deadpan fearless sort of way of whacking the nail on the head – when everybody else is trying to hang pictures on it”.

Full piece at The Telegraph.

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