Feminist Histories and Digital Media by Paula Hamilton Mary Spongberg

Author:Paula Hamilton, Mary Spongberg [Paula Hamilton, Mary Spongberg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367729875
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Stopes archival sources

The publicly available material evidence for accounts of these three figures, their context and influence, is spread throughout a variety of resources in Britain. A substantial archive of Stopes manuscripts is available to researchers at the British Library in London, which includes several volumes of correspondence and other personal papers. This is complemented by sources available at the Wellcome Institute Library and the Women's Library at the London School of Economics. Additional documentary sources are also available at the Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, the University College London Special Collections and the British National Archives, while the Henry Stopes geological collection is held at the National Museum of Wales. The construction of a comprehensive Stopes digital archive, drawing on contributions from the major as well as the minor collecting agencies, would be a massive logistical effort, encompassing the resources of many people and institutions and requiring a complex process of image production, permissions and digital information management. Moreover, these materials are publicly available for scholarly inquiry. It is, rather, the smaller collections of nevertheless vital materials—which make up the current private archives—whose fate is somewhat uncertain; these are not easily accessed by international scholars and would provide the most valuable and manageable core content for a Stopes digital collection.

Key documentary evidence is held, however, with the Stopes-Roe family archive in Birmingham.56 These papers, which have been privately preserved, are among the most important evidence of the factors which affected Stopes family relationships, including those which may have influenced Marie Stopes towards pursuing a public, rather than an academic, career. The documents reflect intimately the values and priorities of the time, and may enable a revaluation of assumptions and interpretative stances previously advanced by biographers and cultural historians. In addition to the Stopes-Roe family archive in Birmingham, crucial items relating specifically to the work of Henry Stopes are currently held under the custodianship of Dr Francis Wenban-Smith.57

Other items of historical importance are held in repositories which have faced changing and sometimes uncertain circumstances, such as the Women's Library, now based at the London School of Economics, and the Special Collections archive at University College, London. These private archival collections include early letters between Charlotte and Henry, journal publications, manuscripts, letters, drawings, books, photographs and correspondence with leaders in the fields of science and literature. Noteworthy items amongst the collections are correspondence between Henry and Charlotte from the period leading up to and shortly after their marriage, Henry's research notes, correspondence and architectural drawings, Charlotte's honeymoon tour diary, Charlotte's draft autobiography and various correspondence from a later period in her life with friends and members of the various associations of which she was a member. These materials are fragile, many are written by hand, finely inscribed, occasionally in crossed lines, demanding careful and repeated reading.

These facts all demonstrate the value of strategic accessibility that a Stopes digital archive would offer to researchers. Such a resource would be an important strategy in preserving documentary evidence for future researchers. Of course, an online digital archive need not only be a practical resource.

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