What’s been going on in the world of the WCP!

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.

I have been in post now just over 6 months (the project has officially been going for over 17 months now) and what a busy time it has been! There is plenty to do, but we've covered a lot of ground already and there's never a dull moment. We now have letters from 57 institutions worldwide in the catalogue. At the moment the catalogue holds the records of the letters we have here at NHM, data that George imported into the catalogue of the letters held at the British Library, the letters held by the aforementioned 57 institutions, letters that we know of that are currently in private collections and also a few important unpublished manuscripts written by Wallace; all in all over 3,500 records so far. In 6 months I have catalogued over 670 letters and edited over 2,000 images – that's a lot of time spent in Photoshop!

Another great addition to the project has been our volunteers. We have over 20 volunteers working remotely all over the world transcribing letters for us and 3 volunteers who come into the museum once a week to assist with cataloguing and editing transcriptions. Our aim of providing a transcription for each letter in our catalogue is not a small one but at the same time, the work completed by all our volunteers is invaluable and helps us get one step closer to realising that aim. The phenomenal response we received after advertising for volunteers astounded us here on the project team and it's great that so many people want to get involved in helping to create such a useful resource which we hope will further Wallace studies and help to go some way to giving Wallace the rightful recognition he deserves for his incredible work.

On the theme of recognition; a letter I recently catalogued caught my eye. It was written to Richard Norris, on 21st December 1879. Wallace had seen an advertisement in Nature for a Professor at the “New Science College” opening in Birmingham (the Mason Science College founded by Josiah Mason and opened by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1880) and asked Norris to forward on a list of Trustees so that he may apply. Wallace wasn't interested in the Professorship but was looking for a post with not too much “indoor confinement”, such as Registrar or Librarian. He wrote that he was looking for a post “suitable to a man who has devoted all his life to some kind of scientific work with as yet, very little reward”. I hope that, although posthumously, the work that not only we are doing on the WCP but also what others are doing around the world, will give Wallace the credit he deserves for all he achieved in his illustrious 90 years.

We also recently unearthed a batch of letters we were previously unaware of which has made a welcome addition to the catalogue! The collection of books we have here at the NHM in the Wallace Collection have letters inserted in a lot of them and it seems not only Wallace did this as many letters penned by Wallace that we have received copies of have been those that are pasted into books belonging to the correspondent. Following this trail of thought, George asked me to investigate the possibility of letters in amongst the books that make up Wallace's Spiritualist Library. The Library is now held by Edinburgh University Library (having previously been held at Oxford) and after a dedicated search of all 300 volumes by the staff there, 28 letters to Wallace were unearthed! We now have copies of all of these which I will shortly be cataloguing. Thank you to all the staff there who took the time to look through each volume for us and making the letters available to us; that was no mean feat!

Working with Wallace everyday has meant I feel I've come to know his character quite well. What strikes me most about him is his formidable intellect and curiosity about the world. I can catalogue a batch of 10 letters and each letter can be about a completely different topic, yet he approaches each one with the same considered thought and logic that has so far impressed me greatly.

Another thing that strikes me is just how dedicated and hard-working he was. A letter that illustrates this perfectly is one I catalogued only last week and was written just 6 days before he died on 1st November 1913. He was writing to Thomas Fisher Unwin, (the English publisher who founded the publishing house T. Fisher Unwin in 1882) and talked of his difficulties in being able to complete a publication he was working on for Unwin, describing how his poor health and the overwhelming amount of correspondence inhibited him from giving the “necessary time to go on with the larger work”. However, ever industrious, he goes on to write he is “improving slightly, and may perhaps be able shortly to get on a little with your book”. Looking through our catalogue, this is the last letter we currently have before he died on 7th November, but may not be the last letter he ever wrote, although I think it's safe to say it's one of the last few.

That's all for now, check back soon for more updates.

-Caroline-