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Last week, I bade farewell to 9 Harvard students who had spent the last two weeks hard at work transcribing letters for the Wallace Correspondence Project. Their time at the Museum is part of a wider summer programme of study they undertake, which sees them head to Oxford to take the course “An exploration of evolutionary biology at Oxford University” (http://www.summer.harvard.edu/abroad/oxford/ ),
This is an exciting time for the Wallace Correspondence Project as there have been many significant recent developments. The most important thing is that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently approved funding for year 3 of the project. This is the final year of Phase 1 of the project so we will soon have to start looking for funding for Phase 2â¦
In 2013 the Natural History Museum in London will be celebrating 100 years since Wallace's death with a programme of activity which is likely to comprise a display/trail of Wallace material in the galleries, a Wallace area on the Museum's website, a conference, and other exciting events. The Museum needs a name for this series of activities and would like your help in choosing it. To help please complete the following extremely quick survey by May 23, 2012:- http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/35LV33G
Thanks!
Over the past week I have been cataloguing letters received from the American Museum of Natural History. They had 49 letters relating to Wallace in their Special Collections and the majority of the correspondence is between Wallace and Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell covering the years 1890 to 1912. TDA Cockerell (1846-1948) was born in Norwood, England and was the brother of Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (who was the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge from 1908-1937).
I have been editing transcriptions this week, which has been great fun reading about Wallace's exploits! However, I have become stuck on a word that I just can't decipher and I thought I'd ask any eagle-eyed readers out there if they would like to have a guess at what it could be!
The letter is written by Wallace to his son, William in 1901 and he is talking about overseeing the building of Old Orchard, his last home he lived in in Dorset.
It's been a while since we updated the blog, so I thought it might be nice to let everyone know how we're getting on.
The WCP's Transcription Protocol has been revised and has been designated as version 8. Please download the new version by clicking HERE and use it to replace any old version you have. A new section "Multiple layers of text" was added and a few minor changes made to other sections.
A pdf manuscript catalogue of the Natural History Museum's Wallace Family Archive has been added to the WCP's database of documents, with permission from the NHM's library. This catalogue lists and describes the c. 5000 Wallace-related documents purchased by the Museum in 2002 from Wallace's grandsons.
Details of a voluntary opportunity that has arisen on the WCP has now been advertised on the Natural History Museum's website. We are looking for three volunteers to assist in a variety of project tasks. Details of the role and how to apply can be found here;
https://nhm.irecruittotal.com/CONFIG/NHM/StaticPages/CAC/SearchVacancy.aspx?EmploymentTypeID=0&Intranet=0
I have been cataloguing letters this week and have come across two signatures that have left me stumped! I wonder if anyone out there can determine the names of the two correspondents?
The first signature (below) is from a letter written to Wallace from the Admirality Office on 15th November 1853 (ignore the superscript 'y' at the beginning of the signature – this belongs to the word before).
