These photos also show the construction process of a custom cradle made from archival box board designed to support a book of Joyce's chamber music, whilst open throughout the exhibition.

SSJ B/1/1 Chamber Music, James Joyce

#conservation #nationalillustrationda #jamesjoyce #exploreyourarchive

These portraits of James Joyce by different artists from our @unirdg-artcol.bsky.social were remounted and framed in archival quality custom-made mounts for the exhibition.

UAC/11536, Portrait of James Joyce, Augustus John
UAC/11542 Portrait of James Joyce, Horst Janssen

🗃️ Can you help?
We are always looking to fill gaps in our holdings. If you have copies of these publications, or issues of Spark from 1997–2004 or post-2015, we’d love to hear from you!

WIZARD OF OZ COLLECTION—179

‘…or as forming one of the great motives of interest and curiosity to the general Traveller of taste and intelligence.’

‘…the Architect may gather new ideas and inexhaustible combinations of beauty, or as furnishing the Painter with an endless variety of graceful and imposing arrangements of form heightened occasionally by a sublimity of effect, peculiar to edifices of this period…’

The introductory page states the drawings have ‘no other object than an ardent desire to present a free and artist-like, as well as faithful representation of some of the most beautiful and picturesque fragments of the Architecture of the Middle Ages.’

The first Frankenstein illustration depicts page 43: “by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull, yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs, … I rushed out of the room”

Schiller's alleged antipathy to his creation reminds us of the story of Frankenstein, and is said to be why he left the work unfinished. We wonder what else these two stories have in common?

[RESERVE 823.79 SHE]

These two pioneering gothic novels accompany each other well, concerned with the enlightenment and rationality, both using letters and diary extracts to advance the story, where the individual attempts to testify to the supernatural.

Good question!

We answer that (and more) in this blogpost:

collections.reading.ac.uk/special-coll...

bsky.app/profile/zoon...

Visit the exhibition any time during @themerl.bsky.social's regular opening hours.

Plan your visit via The MERL's website today!

merl.reading.ac.uk/visit-us/