40 things: #29/40 Writers’ and their cats

The Archives holds titbits of information on the close bonds between authors and their feline pets:

JD Salinger was crazy about his two Russian Blue cats. Photographs show the immaculate duo keeping an eye on Salinger from the top of a bookcase; or snuggling up to his typewriter. 

Doris Lessing writes of the scientific cat, Charles, who would sit by the record player, stop the record with his paw, let it go, stop it again … , a cat who could tell Copenhagen Grand Hotel beef apart from airline beef.

Lessing, a writer of many a cat tale, also writes about Butchkin’s struggles with cancer. Butchkin, otherwise known as El Magnifico, appears in The Old Age of El Magnifico (2000), a black and white cat who lived beyond 17.

Ming Ming. Copyright Anthony Grey

Anthony Grey, novelist and news correspondent, was held hostage for 777 days in Peking during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s. His cat Ming Ming helped him pass away many long hours in the early weeks of this solitary confinement. Sadly Ming Ming was to become a victim in this human conflict.

J.D. Salinger-Hartog letters
Doris Lessing Archive
Anthony Grey Archive

40 things: #28/40 The non-materialisation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Pritchard Papers reveals details of the Pavement Club and other student nonsense at Cambridge University.

The Guildhall, Cambridge, 1921

When dons and members of the press gathered expectantly in the Cambridge Guildhall in 1921 they  had come to hear about sex equality after death, spirits in everyday life and materialisations from the author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – creator of the almost fantastic Sherlock Holmes. Unsuspectingly they watched a young Jack Pritchard tip-toe across the stage and release a canvas placard SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE HAS FAILED TO MATERIALISE !?!

The Granta reported stamping feet, cat-calls, and the singing of Three Blind Mice before “here and there a spectator of more than average intelligence began to darkly suspect a hoax.”

There’s more on this story in the Pritchard Papers as well as details of the C.U. Pavement Club whose members met on some choice and central pavements, the only rule being that all members should sit while meeting!

Pritchard Papers

40 things: #27/40 Three short stories by Toby Litt

Fans of Toby Litt may enjoy three short stories from a collection of students’ writings for the UEA MA Creative Writing course, 1991-1995. Litt’s stories are: Sunflower, HMV and Between Fouriers™ and Undines™.

The Archives also holds some of Litt’s papers from the screenwriting course offered by Malcolm Bradbury, and video and audio cassettes from Litt’s appearances at UEA’s Literary Festivals.

40 things: #26/40 Karen Blixen

Karen Blixen with Dune circa 1905.

The Archives holds postcards from Karen Blixen to publisher Charles Pick, a cablegram announcing her arrival in London and press-cuttings. 

Pick’s memoirs describe his first meeting with Blixen in Copenhagen after the publication of ‘Anecdotes of Destiny’ (1958). He also writes of a later meeting in London and his efforts to secure champagne and oysters for Ms Blixen on her flight to New York. Pick describes Blixen’s disappointment at missing out on the Nobel Prize for Literature, his publishing of her biography by  Errol Trzebinski and the securing of film rights for ‘Out of Africa’.

In addition to these gems the Archives holds an original manuscript of Anne Born’s translation of ‘Letters from Africa’ (1981).

Charles Pick Archive

40 things: #25/40 The Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English

An unassuming, ‘sagacious therapist’ is how psychiatrist Prof. Anthony Clare describes Maeve Binchy in the Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in English. The popular Irish novelist, who died this week in Dublin, was “sensitive in her treatment of the ordinary and everyday, knew her readers and how to satisfy their readerly needs”. Binchy’s entry was submitted by Barbara Hughes.

Cover design copyright Paula Rego

The Archives holds documentation on this entry and all papers relating to this ambitious piece of work edited by Lorna Sage & published by Cambridge University Press (1999). The Guide includes a few thousand entries from contributors around the world. Sage’s task was to commission the contributors, edit and bring together their submissions.

“My new air-conditioning is wonderful, reduces the Florentine 35 or 36% to a liveable 22, so I sit in the dark dining room in my own atmosphere, conjuring contributors. And the email is working too, on and off, so the Guide should get delivered in September, why not …!”

Correspondence (sometimes frantic) and administrative papers highlight just what’s involved in producing a reference work of such proportions.

Lorna Sage Archive