Q: What do all these have in common?
- William Wordsworth’s hair
- Marcel Proust’s hair
- Mrs Gaskell’s sewing scissors
- The lining of Walt Whitman’s hat
- Delia Derbyshire’s wartime gas mask
A: You can find them all in the collections of the John Rylands Library in Manchester!
Stella Halkyard will read from and discuss her book, Library Lives, described by the TLS as ‘a small, eloquent treasury’, ’a fitting tribute to the breadth and eclecticism of the Rylands’. Library Lives plots the lifelong love affair between one particular bookworm and the John Rylands Library in Manchester, its collections drawn from every corner and period of the world.
Date: Thursday 3rd April
Doors Open: 7.00 pm
Event: 7.30 – 8.30 pm
FREE: booking required. Please visit Marsden Library or book here to reserve your seats.
Stella Halkyard studied English at the University of Newcastle, History of Art at the University of Manchester, and Archive Studies at the University of Liverpool. She was the Joint Head of Special Collections at the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester where she curated its Modern Literary Archives, Art, Photography and Object Collections for many years.
As a curator, she was responsible for the endless classifying, documenting, and describing that brings alive library collections. Over the last two decades, her popular ‘Pictures from a Library’ and ‘Archive Corner’ features published in PN Review told the life stories of these and many other fascinating objects.
Now, the objects and their stories are brought together in Library Lives, unlocking the vibrancy of the Ryland’s collections for a new generation of readers, enabling them to discover the richness of its contents and take them on their own readerly and writerly adventures.
