Blog

It’s been hard to get the creative juices flowing this year, that overwhelming sense of anxiety about the world, in general, was stifling, to say the least. However, the acknowledgements at the end of Colson Whitehead's The Nickle Boys got me thinking...

“Pink Pills for Pale People!” is the excited announcement from a leaflet that can be found in Popular Medicine in America 1800-1900. If like me, you’re wondering whether the pink pills make people pale, or pale people pink, or perhaps that this much alliterative pinkness is beyond the pale...well, you might be right.

When I first started working on the Food & Drink in History resource, I immediately became obsessed with molded jelly salads. This food fashion fascinates me, so I leapt at the chance to dig deeper.

This blog will showcase a few highlights from a document which explores interesting research into consumer attitudes to packaged white bread in 1959 and how attitudes and spending habits reflected changing consumer priorities.

This month we’ve been celebrating the release of two resources: Children’s Literature and Culture, and the second module of Food & Drink in History. I was lucky enough to work on commissioning documents for both titles, and one of the best parts of my job is making connections between our resources – connections across history.

Even if you’ve never heard the term “Christmas creep”, chances are you’ll be familiar with the concept. September has only just begun and already you’re noticing Christmas-themed merchandise in the mall and on the outer fringes of the high street.

This week marks the publication of Food and Drink in History, module II, which adds a wealth of new material to a resource which spans centuries and offers users a unique lens through which to explore food histories, cultures and traditions from around the globe.

“An old adage maintains that 'blood is thicker than water' but this must have been proven false countless times, as such ties are no guarantee of help in adversity.” Ouch! Old friends, neighbours and relatives are at the centre of our support networks – particularly in times of adversity. This was the topic that participants in the Mass Observation Project were asked to write about in the winter of 1984. How would they weigh up ‘relatives versus friends’?

World Fairs were events that involved huge-scale expositions from countries all over the world, which showed off their innovations and inventions. AM’s World’s Fairs resource represents over 200 fairs, and there are 10 core collections that relate to 12 ‘case study’ expositions. With so much daydreaming about holidays and getaways, I thought I would take myself on a virtual trip to 1889 Paris, around the Exposition Universelle.

As the post-Covid news cycle regularly reminds us of travel corridors, quarantine requirements and localised lockdowns, I have begun to wonder if holidays have ever been so stressful. A browse of the travel manuscripts collected in Nineteenth Century Literary Society reminds me otherwise.

In a time when women could not govern democratically, Caroline Norton mobilised the power of poetry to mount political campaigns – and successfully reformed the legal rights of women in the process.

This Sunday, 23 August, marks five months since the lockdown began here in the UK and, as restrictions slowly but steadily begin to ease, I’ve been reflecting on my lockdown experience.

Holidaymakers the world over have put their passports away this summer as the global pandemic continues to make international travel difficult, if not entirely impossible. In an effort to recreate that holiday feeling, I’ve been seeking inspiration for future trips in some of the documents published in Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism.

The release date for Winds of Winter is still unknown, and Game of Thrones finally went down in (literal) flames last summer, but if you’re missing your annual dose of fierce queens, morose knights and fiery dragons, look no further than Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

Masks. Haven’t you heard? They are all the rage this month. From the blue medical coverings you get in the Pharmacy to the fancy four-layered ones my Mother has been making (and everyone’s Auntie/Grandma/Neighbour), they have become as much a fashion statement as a necessary, life-saving item. 

Four months on from us Brits going into lockdown, the BBC has reported that we have splurged on tea, biscuits and good books.  I have delved into the directives in AM’s newly released Mass Observation Project, to take a look at tea-drinking habits in the 1980s. One thing for sure is that there is always an occasion for a cuppa.

In the spring of 1988, I was newly 5 and was about to undertake the most exciting thing in my young life – to be a real-life bridesmaid. There would be white ballet slippers, a crown of (fake) flowers, ringlets to match the bride, and, best of all, a Laura Ashley dress covered in watercolour hues.

Inspired by the recent news of the wedding of Princess Beatrice to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, I decided to dig into the newly published Mass Observation Project, to see what the mass observers of the 1980s had to say about another famous royal wedding, that of Prince Charles to Diana Spencer.

This month would have marked the beginning of the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. However, this is not the first time Tokyo has had to cancel or postpone the international competition. 80 years previously, the city found itself in similar circumstances, although for different reasons. Often referred to as the “missing Olympics,” material within Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952 reveals the discussions that surrounded the 1940 Summer Games and their value as a political tool.  

Residing within an issue of Victory: The Weekly for the India Command, from Service Newspapers of World War Two, is an intriguing article on the ‘Secret Societies of Islam’. While the article explores three ‘sects’, we shall be delving into the information provided on the Druze and al-Hakim.

The importance of the fourth of July to the United States and its citizens goes without saying. And during the Second World War, the Declaration of Independence and other milestones in American history were pressed into service to bolster morale and motivation among new recruits to the US Army. The papers of Julius S. Schreiber, held by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and digitised for Adam Matthew Digital’s Medical Services and Warfare, 1928-1949 offer an interesting example of how the United States’ birth was brought into military service.

For my blog this week I decided to revisit one of my all-time favourite documents, MS Lt q 32 or Poems breathed forth by the nobel Hadassas, and The Unfortunate Florinda, by Lady Hesther Pulter, digitised in Adam Matthew's resource Literary Manuscripts Leeds. Probably written and compiled between 1645-1665, the manuscript appears to have laid largely unread until 1996, when it was discovered by Mark Robson during a digital cataloguing project at the Brotherton Library.

This special librarian guest blog was written by John Cosgrove and Johanna MacKay of Lucy Scribner Library at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

What does a stuffed squirrel, an escape room and AM’s Victorian Popular Culture have in common? At Skidmore College’s Lucy Scribner Library, we combined all three – and a scavenger hunt to boot – to provide a fun, interactive library orientation for First Year Experience students.

After 18 weeks of lockdown, many of us are missing the regular pastimes of life before the pandemic. Having exhausted Netflix, I turned to the recently published Mass Observation Project for ideas on what to watch next.