1 00:00:00,300 --> 00:00:04,470 OK, well, thank you very much for agreeing to this this chat, Rachael, 2 00:00:04,470 --> 00:00:09,180 and perhaps you could introduce yourself saying your name and what your job is. 3 00:00:09,180 --> 00:00:15,240 Yes. So I'm Rachael Marsay and I'm the Roy Davids Archivist writer at the Bodleian Library. 4 00:00:15,240 --> 00:00:20,550 So I look after the modern literary archives and manuscripts at the Bodleian. 5 00:00:20,550 --> 00:00:30,450 So I liaise with depositors who are looking to deposit material and taking in new material when it arrives. 6 00:00:30,450 --> 00:00:41,100 And I catalogue literary collections to enable researchers to use and view them answering queries. 7 00:00:41,100 --> 00:00:51,720 And I do a bit of outreach work, which involves some work with schools or other events which showcase our collections. 8 00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:55,650 And the collections must be extensive, I mean, modern literary manuscripts of the Bodleian, 9 00:00:55,650 --> 00:00:59,910 I presume, that covers what period is modern cover in that in that definition? 10 00:00:59,910 --> 00:01:05,910 Yes, roughly it's anything post eighteen hundred. There's a bit of leeway sort of both ways. 11 00:01:05,910 --> 00:01:11,730 But yeah, that's what we sort of class and it's everything. 12 00:01:11,730 --> 00:01:16,890 It's like letters sort of first draughts and so on material. 13 00:01:16,890 --> 00:01:25,800 Yes. Yeah. Anything from the juvenilia Jane Austen for example, so early works of authors and as you say, 14 00:01:25,800 --> 00:01:32,310 sort of bare handwritten manuscripts of their sort of more famous works and often unpublished works as well. 15 00:01:32,310 --> 00:01:36,520 So quite a variety of different material. I can imagine. 16 00:01:36,520 --> 00:01:41,220 Yeah, well, I've worked with some of it. I've been very fortunate to, and it's wonderful. 17 00:01:41,220 --> 00:01:47,520 But for the purpose of this podcast, this is a series about fantasy literature and writers in that genre. 18 00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:56,250 And we're going to talk about two collections that you have which kind of reveal sort of the breadth of what's in these collections. 19 00:01:56,250 --> 00:02:00,530 So could you say something about who we're going to talk about? Yes. 20 00:02:00,530 --> 00:02:11,340 Yeah. Well, today we're going to look at William Morris, the designer author, and also the sort of visionary socialist of his time. 21 00:02:11,340 --> 00:02:16,200 He was born in 1834 and lived until eighteen ninety six. 22 00:02:16,200 --> 00:02:29,010 And the Bodleian holds a few of his letters and lectures, but also some wonderful illuminated calligraphic manuscripts written by William Morris. 23 00:02:29,010 --> 00:02:37,800 So both existing works and also his own compositions in special collections. 24 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:48,240 We also hold a full set of Morrises Kelmscott Press books, so the first editions for his own printing press. 25 00:02:48,240 --> 00:02:52,650 Many of these were deposited via sort of legal deposit. 26 00:02:52,650 --> 00:02:55,920 And as the Bodleian is a legal deposit library, 27 00:02:55,920 --> 00:03:08,070 so would receive copies of books published in the U.K. and the second writer we're going to look at and we're also looking at Eric Rücker 28 00:03:08,070 --> 00:03:16,110 Eddison or E. R. Eddison, who's born in 1882 and died in nineteen forty five. 29 00:03:16,110 --> 00:03:27,930 He was a civil servant, an author. We have letters from his friends and quite a few from quite a bit of fan mail. 30 00:03:27,930 --> 00:03:36,300 We held some correspondence between him and his publishers and we held a few proofs of his work. 31 00:03:36,300 --> 00:03:44,970 We've got his Egil's translation of the saga that he did in the 1920s. 32 00:03:44,970 --> 00:03:53,320 Lots of newspaper cuttings that he himself got out of book reviews of his own books, that his own work. 33 00:03:53,320 --> 00:04:03,540 And interestingly, one of the sort of highlights of the Eddison papers are the drawings and stories that Eddison wrote as a young man in sort of 34 00:04:03,540 --> 00:04:15,090 exercise books and his sort of own sketches and had sort of initial ideas and his own sort of making of a sort of different world, 35 00:04:15,090 --> 00:04:18,030 as it were, and tested. Well, that's whetted our appetite. 36 00:04:18,030 --> 00:04:25,860 So to two very important writers in, you know, for all kinds of reasons, but particularly for the development fantasy. 37 00:04:25,860 --> 00:04:30,840 So slightly overlapping in terms of I think Eddison was a boy when Morris died. 38 00:04:30,840 --> 00:04:36,420 And Morris is obviously that great 19th century bastion of of of of medievalism. 39 00:04:36,420 --> 00:04:42,120 And then Eddison comes along as a slightly more, say, modernist, but he writes in archaic style. 40 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:47,250 But, you know, a very important figure of 20th century fantasy that influenced Tolkien and Lewis. 41 00:04:47,250 --> 00:04:51,060 But am I right in saying they were both Oxford alumni. Yes. 42 00:04:51,060 --> 00:04:58,470 Yeah, that's right. Yes, 50 years apart. And Morris was a Exeter college in the 1850s. 43 00:04:58,470 --> 00:05:06,510 And Eddison was at Trinity College and in the early nineteen hundreds and both there studying classics. 44 00:05:06,510 --> 00:05:10,920 That's interesting, isn't it? Because of course, Tolkien came up to study classics. 45 00:05:10,920 --> 00:05:17,900 Yes. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, absolutely. OK, well shall we start with the Morris material, if that's OK. 46 00:05:17,900 --> 00:05:24,750 And so you've given us a broad outline there of what we have in terms of manuscripts, 47 00:05:24,750 --> 00:05:29,220 but also obviously printed books because of the extensive collection, the Bodleian. 48 00:05:29,220 --> 00:05:32,610 But let's concentrate on the manuscript. So. Yeah. 49 00:05:32,610 --> 00:05:38,700 And do you want to sort of say a few words about what what immediately leapt out about what you have? 50 00:05:38,700 --> 00:05:45,750 I think the the sort of link between them all is the sort of work that's gone into them. 51 00:05:45,750 --> 00:05:51,490 They're not like many of our other authors. 52 00:05:51,490 --> 00:05:57,460 He's not just writing them down, as we sort of expect an author to write them down. 53 00:05:57,460 --> 00:06:01,210 He's deliberately making these manuscripts beautiful. 54 00:06:01,210 --> 00:06:05,650 So he's writing them in. He's doing calligraphy. 55 00:06:05,650 --> 00:06:14,560 He's leaving room for drawings around the text and some of which are filled in. 56 00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:21,460 We have many sort of completed manuscripts with full illustrations, 57 00:06:21,460 --> 00:06:33,850 and they often have sort of the nice ones on the first few pages and then later on in the manuscripts that he's just left the spaces to be completed. 58 00:06:33,850 --> 00:06:40,990 And but it's showing that he's very much thinking of them in terms of manuscripts themselves, 59 00:06:40,990 --> 00:06:47,800 suddenly a sort of more traditional sort of sense of a manuscript, a mediaeval manuscript. 60 00:06:47,800 --> 00:06:53,620 So he's not only writing the story, he's wanting them to look beautiful as well. 61 00:06:53,620 --> 00:07:08,280 So they're bound in vellum and written on vellum and bound in the sort of style of the mediaeval and mediaeval books. 62 00:07:08,280 --> 00:07:16,460 I think you could still get vellum, but he went to that full extent of using that and that's it. 63 00:07:16,460 --> 00:07:26,110 And getting the inks and everything. Yeah, he said to be inspired by looking at some of the the medieval manuscripts of the Bodleian. 64 00:07:26,110 --> 00:07:38,230 And so he was aware of that sort of their existence sort of even then, which is which is interesting. 65 00:07:38,230 --> 00:07:46,690 I mean, it was quite late in his life that he sort of came back to doing this style of writing. 66 00:07:46,690 --> 00:07:51,190 The manuscript states the eighteen seventies. 67 00:07:51,190 --> 00:08:02,350 So this is sort of sort of midway through his career, he sort of returned to this after his early poetic phase. 68 00:08:02,350 --> 00:08:13,010 Yeah. In the 60s. So it's a very interesting sort of time we're looking at in Morris's life and sort of his works really. 69 00:08:13,010 --> 00:08:18,800 Absolutely. So the text of these manuscripts, what's the text again, sorry? 70 00:08:18,800 --> 00:08:23,360 Oh, so we've got quite a few different ones. 71 00:08:23,360 --> 00:08:31,040 There mainly is his sort of Norse saga style writings. 72 00:08:31,040 --> 00:08:40,400 So the story of the Dwellers the air, the story of the Nibelungs, 73 00:08:40,400 --> 00:08:48,560 which was published in nineteen seventy six, is the story of the fall of the Nibelungs. 74 00:08:48,560 --> 00:08:55,190 So yeah, they're both sort of early, early versions of the published work. 75 00:08:55,190 --> 00:08:59,990 Right. Which he's gone the extra mile by trying to produce. 76 00:08:59,990 --> 00:09:05,930 They're almost like it's the feel of an illuminated manuscript that said yes when it was first published. 77 00:09:05,930 --> 00:09:13,130 I believe it was published sort of as more of a sort of straight text like a normal published book. 78 00:09:13,130 --> 00:09:17,780 He did publish it himself at the press in nineteen ninety eight. 79 00:09:17,780 --> 00:09:26,000 So that version is obviously very highly decorated and and stylised in the sort of format of a manuscript. 80 00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:31,050 But that's sort of much later on. And the Illuminations to do any of them. 81 00:09:31,050 --> 00:09:34,640 Do you remember any of them that they stick out as to what he was drawing? 82 00:09:34,640 --> 00:09:39,370 Were they things from the text or were they just decorative? They were decorative mainly. 83 00:09:39,370 --> 00:09:44,630 Yes, sort of floral, as you might expect from Morris. 84 00:09:44,630 --> 00:09:54,140 One of them has pictures in from Charles Fairfax Murray. 85 00:09:54,140 --> 00:09:59,750 So he's not only doing this himself, he's having some help in there. 86 00:09:59,750 --> 00:10:04,670 So that's the one with the figures in which relate to the text. 87 00:10:04,670 --> 00:10:14,680 But most of them are just sort of floral sort of decorative illustrations rather than. 88 00:10:14,680 --> 00:10:23,620 And the story, I guess the purpose was trying to put your mindset into Morris, you know, I think Morris is thinking about this. 89 00:10:23,620 --> 00:10:29,890 He's doing this really because it's a work of art. It's building on the work he did with the Birmingham Set in Oxford. 90 00:10:29,890 --> 00:10:34,570 You know, this reinvigorating the arts, which leads to the arts and crafts movement. 91 00:10:34,570 --> 00:10:40,090 It's not that he was trying to produce a kind of forged manuscript? No, no. 92 00:10:40,090 --> 00:10:46,120 It's sort of it's a work of art in many senses. 93 00:10:46,120 --> 00:10:51,160 It's not just a text. It has to look beautiful as well. Yes, absolutely. 94 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:58,090 And on one of the other podcasts, we talked about the murals in the Oxford Union, about, you know, 95 00:10:58,090 --> 00:11:05,650 the Burne-Jones paintings and so on, which was Morris was part of that circle and went, oh, that's wonderful, OK. 96 00:11:05,650 --> 00:11:12,910 And are these accessible? Are these the sort of books that anyone could come in and have a look under certain conditions? 97 00:11:12,910 --> 00:11:14,170 Yes, that's right. Yes. 98 00:11:14,170 --> 00:11:25,360 Erm and by reading rooms and the description of the items is available on our online catalogue, for Bodleian archives and manuscripts, 99 00:11:25,360 --> 00:11:36,700 and I think at the moment they're not digitally available, but yes, they can be seen in the flesh as it were. 100 00:11:36,700 --> 00:11:40,720 So yes, I expect they'll be amazing to see. 101 00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:47,480 I would certainly try, OK, so let's move on to our second author. 102 00:11:47,480 --> 00:11:53,770 E. R. Eddison, who has, as you've already said, was at Oxford, did classics like Morris. 103 00:11:53,770 --> 00:12:01,010 And but also there's a similarity here in his attraction to Norse literature, isn't there, as well? 104 00:12:01,010 --> 00:12:04,420 He starts moving in that direction? That's right. Yes. Yeah. 105 00:12:04,420 --> 00:12:11,170 Both Morris and Edison learnt Norse so that they could read the sagas in the original. 106 00:12:11,170 --> 00:12:24,310 And I think Eddison himself actually read Morris's Norse works and was inspired by them to learn Norse and then go to the originals. 107 00:12:24,310 --> 00:12:32,790 So that's quite a clear sort of a link between the two and they both then. 108 00:12:32,790 --> 00:12:46,600 Were sort of enthralled by them that they both visited Iceland, which in sort of the 19th and early 20th centuries, not not an easy trip at all. 109 00:12:46,600 --> 00:12:54,310 And yes, and Eddison was also a member of the Viking Society for Northern Research as well. 110 00:12:54,310 --> 00:13:07,280 And this essay, he published his own version of the saga, as well as a sort of more straight translation of Egil's saga, 111 00:13:07,280 --> 00:13:17,230 both in the 1920s, just coming out of that sort of love of the north and the sort of Norse myth. 112 00:13:17,230 --> 00:13:23,320 There's something to be asked about what we were doing wrong with Classics teaching. 113 00:13:23,320 --> 00:13:33,310 You know, Morris said we're all old age classics or to a degree, but we're attracted by this, you know, Western Myth. 114 00:13:33,310 --> 00:13:39,820 Northern Germanic myths. And so. Yes, yeah. So what do we have of Eddison? 115 00:13:39,820 --> 00:13:43,350 You did the summary at the beginning. 116 00:13:43,350 --> 00:13:56,020 So and we have sort of volumes of letters which were sent from fans as well as friends. 117 00:13:56,020 --> 00:14:04,510 And one of their letters from a fan is interestingly was a tank commander and was writing from Fort Knox. 118 00:14:04,510 --> 00:14:12,100 It was a major, Robert Brown, and that writing in nineteen forty five saying how he loved Eddison's works and 119 00:14:12,100 --> 00:14:18,590 that two of them had accompanied him on his African and Italian campaigns. 120 00:14:18,590 --> 00:14:26,590 So Eddison treasured that letter. You know, the stuff that where his works have been. 121 00:14:26,590 --> 00:14:30,360 And I think that sort of appreciation was important to him. 122 00:14:30,360 --> 00:14:34,960 Know he wasn't writing commercially. 123 00:14:34,960 --> 00:14:45,700 You know, he had a very successful civil service career, but it was very much out of wanting to share his stories and imagination. 124 00:14:45,700 --> 00:14:55,880 And so I think he very much sort of kept all these letters carefully so ones from Lewis survive? 125 00:14:55,880 --> 00:15:08,400 Yes. Yeah, that's right. We've got a few letters from Lewis and some of them are in a. 126 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:20,010 The volume of letters relating to C.S. Lewis, so we have sort of Eddison in another collection, as it were, 127 00:15:20,010 --> 00:15:33,330 he read The Worm Ouroboros in nineteen forty two and Lewis wrote a letter of appreciation to Eddison as who's kind of prone to do. 128 00:15:33,330 --> 00:15:48,550 And he wrote it in a sort of pastiche of middle English. It's not in how we talk English now, sort of echoing Eddison's own prose in his works. 129 00:15:48,550 --> 00:15:53,070 And yeah, it's a lovely letter. So you are saying how much he likes it. 130 00:15:53,070 --> 00:16:01,310 And he says Eddison is a bit like William of Kelmscott, Snorri or Homer. 131 00:16:01,310 --> 00:16:09,240 And the correspondence led to Eddison visiting Lewis in Oxford in February nineteen forty three. 132 00:16:09,240 --> 00:16:22,860 So he went to Magdalene College and ate in the hall and sort of sort of touched on sort of the Inkling circle sort of on his visit. 133 00:16:22,860 --> 00:16:30,870 And so that's kind of interesting, sort of an interesting meeting of minds really. 134 00:16:30,870 --> 00:16:37,260 And they kept kept up correspondence and and sort of occasional meeting. 135 00:16:37,260 --> 00:16:41,190 Eddison lived down the south near London, Malmesbury. 136 00:16:41,190 --> 00:16:49,980 So it was sort of more occasional visits and keeping in touch via letter as well. 137 00:16:49,980 --> 00:16:55,860 So, yes, I'm returning to the letters then. Were there any other highlights that leapt out? 138 00:16:55,860 --> 00:17:04,860 Yes, there are some from sort of famous writers like Hilaire Belloc and Rider Haggard, 139 00:17:04,860 --> 00:17:11,340 but also from Arthur Ransome, who was brought up, close to Eddison. 140 00:17:11,340 --> 00:17:16,500 They shared a tutor at one point when they were very young. 141 00:17:16,500 --> 00:17:24,300 And he's writing from aboard one of his boats moored, moored somewhere. 142 00:17:24,300 --> 00:17:29,160 And he's appreciating Eddison's work. 143 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:36,600 And he's sort of referring back to these sort of fantasies that they used to sort of have. 144 00:17:36,600 --> 00:17:42,750 And Eddison's exercise books that he filled with sketches and stuff. 145 00:17:42,750 --> 00:17:54,420 So Ransome remembers that which we can see that in Edison's published works, is that the juvenilia you talked about? 146 00:17:54,420 --> 00:17:58,530 That's right. Yes. You have some of this material. Yes. 147 00:17:58,530 --> 00:18:09,000 Yes. I sort of like the, like, exercise books with tales of these figures that appeared in his works, especially Ouroboros. 148 00:18:09,000 --> 00:18:19,810 They were marvellous but lots of sketches of kind of men in sort of mock Elizabethan costume, 149 00:18:19,810 --> 00:18:28,940 but a lot of swords and a lot of sort of red ink as the battles are occurring. 150 00:18:28,940 --> 00:18:33,350 And I think I don't know whether 151 00:18:33,350 --> 00:18:41,390 Sort of this is the youngster with Arthur Ransom that they sort of used to suddenly imagine this world together, 152 00:18:41,390 --> 00:18:49,340 Or whether it was kind of mainly alone, I don't know. Ransome certainly remembers remembers those days. 153 00:18:49,340 --> 00:18:55,450 So I think you said at the beginning, Eddison, at probably around the age of 10 there, he's very young. 154 00:18:55,450 --> 00:19:02,330 Yes. Yeah. And he's got neat writing and that sort of flows. 155 00:19:02,330 --> 00:19:06,710 You know, it's it's coming out of his head and he's writing it down. 156 00:19:06,710 --> 00:19:10,700 He's not sort of writing bits and crossing them out. 157 00:19:10,700 --> 00:19:22,880 It is kind of sort of complete short stories and tales that he's putting together rather than just ideas. 158 00:19:22,880 --> 00:19:31,340 So they're little tales in themselves. Yeah, that's fascinating to be thinking that young about mythology, which we may have all of done, 159 00:19:31,340 --> 00:19:36,830 but to bring it with you into when you're an adult and writing these books and as you say, 160 00:19:36,830 --> 00:19:43,410 some of the characters carry over into the world and they're sort of definitely recognisable. 161 00:19:43,410 --> 00:19:50,690 They have the same names. You know, he's not changing them sort of substantially at all. 162 00:19:50,690 --> 00:19:54,380 So what else is there? Is there any more in the letters? 163 00:19:54,380 --> 00:19:59,120 I think you also mentioned there was other material like reviews and so on that. 164 00:19:59,120 --> 00:20:11,570 Yes. Yes. There's some volumes of newspaper cuttings about he's very much sort of diligently cut them out and kept them. 165 00:20:11,570 --> 00:20:19,970 And it's sort of to the extent that he he neatly crosses out the sections that don't apply to his book. 166 00:20:19,970 --> 00:20:29,210 You know, if it's a review that's covering two or three books, sort of cross out the bits that aren't relevant to him. 167 00:20:29,210 --> 00:20:35,210 And very, very occasionally, he does write marginal comments on the reviews. 168 00:20:35,210 --> 00:20:43,520 It's mainly when it's a negative comment, some remark. 169 00:20:43,520 --> 00:20:49,250 But most of the reviews were sort of fairly positive. 170 00:20:49,250 --> 00:21:00,380 And I think Eddison would have appreciated them. I think some sort of the reviewers agree that he's sort of unique and perhaps wasn't for 171 00:21:00,380 --> 00:21:09,990 everybody but could sort of appreciate the work and the sort of vision that he had. 172 00:21:09,990 --> 00:21:15,720 So are there any literary manuscripts, any drafts of any apart from the juvenilia? 173 00:21:15,720 --> 00:21:25,890 Is there any drafts of any of his stories? We've got one one draft for the Saga and the proofs for Saga. 174 00:21:25,890 --> 00:21:37,770 And most of his literary and sort of draughts of his novels were donated by his widow to Leeds Central Library. 175 00:21:37,770 --> 00:21:48,100 And they hold the letters and drafts for his work as well as a bit of correspondence. 176 00:21:48,100 --> 00:21:51,060 OK, and these drafts, are they actually there? 177 00:21:51,060 --> 00:22:01,530 They're handwritten drafts or they are typed scripts - there are a bit of both in the some of the letter books that we have. 178 00:22:01,530 --> 00:22:14,940 He actually drafts his replies, which are in the letter books, but he's written them on the back of the typescript drafts of his work. 179 00:22:14,940 --> 00:22:25,410 So whilst we don't have a sort of complete sort of set for anything, he obviously is sort of reusing this paper. 180 00:22:25,410 --> 00:22:30,870 So we do have the occasional sort of page. It's often upside down. 181 00:22:30,870 --> 00:22:36,330 And I think that he sort of jotted down which which is interesting in itself. 182 00:22:36,330 --> 00:22:44,820 One of the things with literary archives is how the authors themselves see their drafts and how they keep them. 183 00:22:44,820 --> 00:22:55,650 And it does vary so much between authors. You know, some keep them very religiously and others just use drafts as sort of scrap paper later on. 184 00:22:55,650 --> 00:22:56,740 Yeah, yeah. 185 00:22:56,740 --> 00:23:05,110 Well, what you were saying earlier about some of his letters ends up in the Lewis collection because it depends where the emphasis is placed, 186 00:23:05,110 --> 00:23:10,860 but that's it. But I guess what we forget now is just how valued paper was, you know? 187 00:23:10,860 --> 00:23:15,300 Well, that's. Yeah, yeah, of course. And certainly in the war, people, you know, it was something you treasure. 188 00:23:15,300 --> 00:23:23,010 It's reused. That's it again. And sort of Eddison's works that many of them are written during war time. 189 00:23:23,010 --> 00:23:32,130 And some of the publisher's correspondence refers to that Eddison wants his book published, 190 00:23:32,130 --> 00:23:37,710 but there are shortages of paper and they sort of stresses and strains. 191 00:23:37,710 --> 00:23:43,860 The sort of publishing world is undergoing during the war makes things very sort of difficult. 192 00:23:43,860 --> 00:23:51,540 And they're trying to explain to an author that, you know what the difficulties are. 193 00:23:51,540 --> 00:24:02,880 So I think one of his books was published first in America rather than the U.K., just because of sort of these issues that were going on. 194 00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:05,850 Yeah, it's it's an issue that affects Tolkien. 195 00:24:05,850 --> 00:24:10,090 Obviously, even after the war when The Lord of the Rings is coming out, you know, they're looking at this guy. 196 00:24:10,090 --> 00:24:19,650 We can't publish anything of that length. And so, Silmarillion, you know, the paper shortage, it's fascinating to pick up those times. 197 00:24:19,650 --> 00:24:24,120 They're contextual elements, isn't it, about book publishing? And so that's it. 198 00:24:24,120 --> 00:24:33,150 And that can so easily be overlooked. You sort of often hear more of the cost is something. 199 00:24:33,150 --> 00:24:39,960 Well, they changed people's lives, but you sort of don't realise when you sort of looking at what books are being published, 200 00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:47,560 the sort of other influences that are happening at the time. 201 00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:54,880 Well, it's a fascinating insight because we've got these these two writers, which in many ways share a lot of similarities, you know, 202 00:24:54,880 --> 00:24:58,330 interested in Old Norse educated Oxford classics, 203 00:24:58,330 --> 00:25:05,500 go on to write fantasy and deliberate in an archaic style that, you know, that's what Eddison was known as. 204 00:25:05,500 --> 00:25:14,930 And Morris. But at the same time, there's an imbalance because Morris is this great known character for all things 19th century, Eddison 205 00:25:14,930 --> 00:25:20,650 When I come across Eddison, he's always referred to as the person that Lewis and Tolkien liked. 206 00:25:20,650 --> 00:25:28,180 And he's almost diminished. And I was interested in the reviews and you may not of had had a chance to read them too much about. 207 00:25:28,180 --> 00:25:32,590 You know, you said they're generally positive, but there was some negative ones in there, was it? 208 00:25:32,590 --> 00:25:36,520 People just couldn't understand what Eddison was getting to. 209 00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:44,680 I think yeah. I think it was the grasp of sort of imagining sort of this completely different world. 210 00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:51,790 And it sort of wasn't as a sort of established a concept. 211 00:25:51,790 --> 00:26:01,120 And then and and I think that is sort of his way of writing could be sort of quite sort of overblown 212 00:26:01,120 --> 00:26:10,930 and sort of based on that sort of romance style and both the sort of words and in descriptions. 213 00:26:10,930 --> 00:26:20,170 And I think quite a few saw them as classics and at the time and thought they would sort 214 00:26:20,170 --> 00:26:27,010 of endure because they were so different to what was what else was being published. 215 00:26:27,010 --> 00:26:33,220 Yeah, absolutely. Well, they are re-emerging now certainly as as text to study and to read. 216 00:26:33,220 --> 00:26:42,850 If you want a picture of how fantasy progressed, I remember Tolkien definitely speaks with guarded praise about Edison. 217 00:26:42,850 --> 00:26:49,180 And I think he found from what I recall, apart from the names, which is a sort of thing, Tolkien, 218 00:26:49,180 --> 00:26:56,050 Was The Worm Ouroboros basically says violence comes around in circles. 219 00:26:56,050 --> 00:27:04,700 And that's the way you know, it's that the snake eating its tail, it's that whole idea that there's a very bleak. 220 00:27:04,700 --> 00:27:08,480 Bleak depiction of life in a way, isn't it? 221 00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:18,830 Yes, yeah, that's certainly the sort of harken back to sort of chivalric past, I think. 222 00:27:18,830 --> 00:27:32,070 And Eddison wasn't aware of sort of the sort of industrial or high sort of warfare of the 20th century, 223 00:27:32,070 --> 00:27:35,730 but he certainly was harking back to a different age. 224 00:27:35,730 --> 00:27:45,810 And I think the fact that such conflict occurred in the 20th century sort of sets his books slightly at odds with what was going on. 225 00:27:45,810 --> 00:27:51,480 And first, we sort of set these books early in his imagination, 226 00:27:51,480 --> 00:28:01,440 sort of thoughts and sort of chivalric dates all around and sort of harking back to the sort of Norse. 227 00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:06,120 Norse Sagas. Yeah, absolutely. 228 00:28:06,120 --> 00:28:07,410 Yeah. If he was 10. 229 00:28:07,410 --> 00:28:19,470 So that's what, eighteen nineties, the height of, you know, the boy's own chivalric sort of way of fighting. 230 00:28:19,470 --> 00:28:26,340 But then you go through the trenches and well the experience of the First World War and his book seem out of place. 231 00:28:26,340 --> 00:28:29,550 That's fascinating. Yes, absolutely. 232 00:28:29,550 --> 00:28:36,970 And well, before we finish, is there anything else that you wanted to pick out from the either of the collections? 233 00:28:36,970 --> 00:28:44,180 Oh, yes. I think for the Morris is just such a. 234 00:28:44,180 --> 00:28:50,510 Such sort of joy to look at the books, really the manuscripts, because they are so, 235 00:28:50,510 --> 00:28:59,000 so well done and some of them sin such a format as well, you know, they're quite small. 236 00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:07,200 They're just so tactile. And I think 237 00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:14,850 Morris's aim in producing them, when you actually see them, you do sort of understand where he's coming from, 238 00:29:14,850 --> 00:29:23,620 you know, because it's just tangible this I think of them and the fact that he's written them as well. 239 00:29:23,620 --> 00:29:31,590 You know, it's all but still in such a beautiful, beautiful way. 240 00:29:31,590 --> 00:29:37,740 I think I read that Morris's own favourite was the Nibelungs. 241 00:29:37,740 --> 00:29:42,300 So that's probably the highlight for the Morris collection. 242 00:29:42,300 --> 00:29:46,880 And certainly Eddison went to see the drawings and stories. 243 00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:49,480 As a young man, that young imagination. 244 00:29:49,480 --> 00:30:02,760 So coming through and making a map of the world that he sort of disappears into , 245 00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:09,570 he doesn't become a full time writer and he has his own career in the civil service, 246 00:30:09,570 --> 00:30:17,550 but he still longs to go back to that world of childhood, which I think is probably his own sort of escape. 247 00:30:17,550 --> 00:30:25,440 So, yeah, I think for me, it's definitely that those younger works that are in the collection. 248 00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:30,600 That's wonderful. Thank you. Yes, it gives us a picture of the two men, really. 249 00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:35,520 Yeah. In their career in the beginning. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much, Rachael. 250 00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:41,940 That was that was absolutely wonderful. I'm sure you'll get a lot of people wanting to come. 251 00:30:41,940 --> 00:30:53,970 That that would be great if it's that sort of not so widely known that these two aspects in our collection. 252 00:30:53,970 --> 00:30:58,780 So it'd be great to sort of get them out there, as it were. 253 00:30:58,780 --> 00:31:01,336 Thank you. Thank you.