Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to study the contents and uses of literary archives in the UK. The dissertation will begin with a literature review that will examine how literary archives have been defined and valued by archivists and literary scholars. The review will aim to establish whether there is a common consensus as to what constitutes a literary archive; it will also discuss contrasting views on the potential uses of these constituents.The literature review will reveal what are thought to be the main characteristics of a literary archive. The second chapter will investigate this aspect further by exploring in detail the various elements that are considered to make up a typical literary archive. In order to do this, it will draw on evidence both from the literature review and from a survey of the literary holdings of 70 UK repositories. This chapter will also look at how a number of these repositories have sought to exploit their holdings for educational, promotional, or other purposes.
Chapter three will use the evidence found in chapter two to examine the contents of one archive in particular: the George Orwell archive, at University College London. It will discuss the various ways in which the archive could be (or has been) used by scholars, biographers, students, and casual Orwell readers. This chapter will evaluate a number of publications that have reproduced large parts of the archive; in addition, it will measure the success of two projects that have sought to widen access to the archive.
It is hoped that the combination of a literature review, a survey of the holdings of 70 UK repositories, and an in-depth study of a single literary archive will produce an accurate representation of the diverse range of literary archives that can be found in the UK
| Date of Award | 2013 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Jennie Hill (Supervisor) |