Went to the British Library last week - a very modern building at the back of St.Pancras and Kings Cross Stations in London. They have a free map exhibition on - husband is mad keen on maps - but it was good! I wasn't bored which says a lot. My attention span is similar to a goldfish. The detail on some of the old maps was incredible - even down to river depth. It must have taken the cartographers ages to draw.
But the big pull for me was in the small exhibition of manuscripts. The first page of Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles - with the word 'daughter' crossed out and Tess written in on the title. To see authors' actual hand written manuscripts was fascinatingg. Jane Austen and Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland.... Not so likely to happen now is it, as we tap away on word processors? I think Stephen King still writes by hand and gets someone to type it up but I'd guess most authors use computers. So maybe future generations will lose out on seeing how the big writers construct their novels, what they change, how they make them work.
1 comment:
Very cool. You go to the most interesting places, and quite the treat after the slasher tour. I thought it was fun to see how rock stars sign their names at the R&R hall of fame, so yep, works in progress of famous authors must have been a trip.
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