Thursday 12 November 2015

Foraging through Fickling’s Archive Part 3

If you’re late to the exploration check out the other diary entries written by our volunteer Grace .  This is Grace’s final forage into the Fickling collection. 

Next week is The National Archives Explore your Archive Week.  So come explore our archives and join in the #exploreachives conversation.  Join us on Twitterand Instagram using the handle @7stories and on Facebook by searching for 'Seven Stories, National Centre for Children's Books'.

Part 3

I managed to sort through the final few boxes today - they contained a massive array of little surprises. One box contained cover ideas, mock-ups and all the little extra bits of promotional material to go with several books such as Philip Pullman’s Lyra’s Oxford and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. In amongst these little gems were personal letters of Fickling’s that will have to be weeded out before the cataloguing process. 




The archive team have to ensure that all personal data is removed before making the archive available to the public. My main role in sorting through these boxes has been to gain an understanding, for the archivist, about what is actually there. The boxes were entirely unsorted and had not been looked at in some time, so it is no wonder there was so much interesting stuff. I have to say, although it is fantastic that Fickling donated so much material to Seven Stories, I can’t imagine, if I ever became famous enough, that I would be able to just hand over all my work! When looking I can clearly see the hours of work dedicated to the drafts, the time and effort dedicated to the editorial notes, the many letters between all the parties and I just feel like the archive contains a huge part of Fickling and his team’s life.  

- Grace Owens




Seven Stories was able to support the acquisition of David Fickling's archive through support from a Heritage Lottery Fund ‘Collecting Cultures’ grant. This has been awarded to Seven Stories in recognition of the museum’s national role in telling a comprehensive story of modern British children’s literature. For more information on our HLF Collecting Cultures project see: http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/news/latestnews/hlf.




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