British Library Fantasy Exhibit opens . . . with me in it! A welcome to new subscribers. And the inevitable footnotes.
"Fantasy: Realms of Imagination" runs 27 October - 25 February. Catch me onstage in London on 9 November.
Welcome, new subscribers! I’m so happy to have you here with me. You can read all my past follies online, digging out snippets from my WIP, City Year1, recipes for holidays, the story of #altHallelujah, a picture of me as Shakespeare’s Mercutio, and plenty more I may come to regret making public.
I’m always looking for ideas, so if there’s anything you’d like me to write about, go ahead, Hit the Button and speak your mind:
I have some Big News - and as usual, I will embed it in a memory:
The British Museum vs the British Library
I grew up traveling. When I was a young teen, my parents took us to London. My little brothers and I slept in a sort of 3-bed dormitory room at the top of one of those lodging houses near the British Museum, where Philip tried to convince David that the Spirits were coming to get him, and the only way to fend them off was to fervently recite the charm:
Bow-wowser Miaow-ser, Bow-wowser Miaow-ser, Flee, spirits, flee!
We spent most of our time in the British Museum, which was old and dusty and had mummies and the Rosetta Stone and a Viking comb-case inscribed with runes saying Thorfast made a good comb. It also had a fabulous manuscript collection, glass case after case with autograph letters of Queen Elizabeth Tudor, Lord Byron, Mozart . . . the Magna Carta . . . and utterly fetching medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts that I bought a million postcards of.2
Years later I returned to the British Museum—only to find it all tarted up: well-lit, everything well-presented . . . and all the manuscripts gone!
Because someone thought that they should erect a fancy new edifice3 to house the nation’s paper goods, and also a new Reading Room.4
I was disinclined to like the British Library.
But then I went in, and I saw that it was good.
It’s even better now that they have decided to mount a huge exhibit called
Fantasy: Realms of Imagination!
I am stealing the announcement below largely and unashamedly from Terri Windling’s wonderful Patreon newsletter.5
Terri writes:
BIG NEWS: Opening this autumn: a major exhibition on fantasy at the British Library in London!
I6 was on the Advisory Board for the exhibition (along with Neil Gaiman, Aliette de Bodard, and Roz Kaveney) and absolutely urge you to go see it if you can, as it was put together with a great deal of care and love by a great team of folks from the British Library and Matthew Sangster from the excellent Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic.
Follow the link below for more information on the exhibition, and for the schedule of associated events -- some of which will be streamed online as well
Here I break in with MY big news:
My novel THOMAS THE RHYMER will be part of the exhibit!
It began with a letter from Matthew Sangster:
We'd very much like to include your Thomas the Rhymer in the British Library Fantasy exhibition that'll be opening in October . . . as part of a section on Folk and Fairy Tales that Rachel Foss is curating. For exhibition purposes, it's helpful for us to be able to show an interesting version or representation of the work (or of part of the process of composition) - something visitors won't generally have been able to see. We were wondering, therefore, whether you might be prepared to loan something from your archive to the library for the duration of the exhibition….
You can imagine my delirious delight - and also my stone terror as I tried to figure out what sort of things from “my archive”7 to offer them.
Rachel Foss added this wonderful tidbit:
I’ve attached for interest an image of the Thomas the Rhymer ballad in the Cotton collection at the BL, which we’re planning to use alongside your manuscript and an audio recording of a folk rock version of the ballad by Steeleye Span, so as to create a cluster on Thomas. (I should just explain that the Cotton collection is one of the foundation collections of the British Library. While it was still in the hands of the collector who gave it to the nation, there was a fire which damaged many of the manuscripts within the collection – so what we have are burned pages, as you can see here.)
In the end, we chose some pages from the live performance piece I created out of the novel:
I will be performing a version of in London at the Library along with the amazing ballad singer/collector Sam Lee. The British Library has titled it:
Journeys to the Land of Faerie... and Telling the Tale
Terri explains: On 9 November, a very special event exploring fairy lore in fantasy and traditional folk balladry.
My performance with (:gasp!:) Sam Lee is Part 2 of this magical evening.
Part 1 will be a panel with Terri Windling, Jeannette Ng & me, hosted (at my request) by the absolutely wonderful Oxford professor and fantasy/folklore writer Diane Purkiss.
Not in London? Not to worry:
"This event takes place in the British Library and will be simultaneously live streamed on the British Library platform. Tickets may be booked either to attend in person, or to watch on our platform (online) either live or within 48 hours on catch up. Viewing links will be sent out shortly before the event.”
Terri concludes her report:
This is the "secret project" I've been involved with for over a year now, but couldn't publicly talk about until the BL's official announcement. Now the word is finally out. If you're in traveling distance of London from 27 Oct, 2023 to 25 Feb, 2024, please go see it if you possibly can. And if you can't, be sure to check out the event schedule, since many of them will also be online. Plus, there will be a book/catalog published alongside the exhibition containing essays on fantasy by all kinds of good people...including one from me.
(That was Terri, not me.)
Oops! I am out of time. Delia & I are leaving for London in 3 days, on our way to a wedding in Surrey (I just bought my Fascinator, as something hat-like must be worn to every British wedding these days!)
After the wedding, we visit friends for a bit, even do some Tourist Stuff (I’ve always wanted to visit Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn’s childhood home - which is currently displaying the prayer book now identified as the one Thomas Cromwell holds in the famous Holbein portrait at NYC’s Frick Museum! - turns out it’s also a B&B so you can overnight there and stroll the grounds after hours….) before heading over to Paris where we will live for 3 months (the maximum stay allowed for non-EU citizens, which is why I’m desperate to get Lithuanian citizenship via my Vilnius-born Grandma Rose…).
And we aren’t even close to being packed yet.
so I will cease trying to edit and make sense of the final bit of info I copied here: text from the British Library’s Hey We Are Touring this Exhibit; want to bring it to your town? page:8
Fantasy: Journey into the imagination
This unique exhibition tells the story of the development of Fantasy from the earliest works up to the present day. It will look at how the genre developed and why people have always been drawn to it - either as an escape from reality or as a chance to reflect on our world.
Exhibits will include manuscripts and books, 3D objects, artworks, film and videogames. Audio visual elements and interactives will feature interviews with authors and creators, and the perspective of fans.
The exhibition is divided into four main themes:
- Fairy and Folk Tales
- Epics and Quests
- Weird and Uncanny
- Worlds and Portals
And it is more than time enough to stop. But I’d be honored if you’d share this with your friends.
Your pal,
Ellen
City Year is another Tremontaine novel, this time about Swordspoint Alec’s bastard daughter, the angriest teenager in the world. And what happens to Katherine & Marcus 15 years after The Privilege of the Sword (“TPOTS”). I’ve written a lot about the Riverside folks over the years, entirely out of order. There’s a list and some kind of explanation here.
I still have them, somewhere. Finding them is another matter. My dad took a couple from the Romance of the Rose and framed them together, and they looked really good.
The old Reading Room in the British Museum. Don’t get me started. No, I never got to work there . . . but I’ve heard stories. Do you have one of your own? Do you?? I’d love to hear it!
You can get stuff from Terri’s Patreon, Bumblehill Studio, for as little as $1/month - including a couple of videos of me interviewing her in her magical studio on a hill above Dartmoor.
Terri Windling, not me!
That would be the plastic box shoved into one of the dozens of corners of my office
My British Spies say it will be going to “California & Texas” so far . . . I’ll keep you posted!
I worked there just once, reading Jacobean pamphlets responding to Joseph Swetnam's The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women for a collection of same that I edited in 1995. Fun times - but I don't have a funny story about it, sadly!
This all sounds so cool!!! Have a great time!
BTW, my copy of _Thomas the Rhymer_ is a hardback from 1990. The only thing wrong with it is it doesn't have your autograph! :)