Woodpeckings

‘A glass of this kind’ is a poem by LL, composed out of fragments found from John Jackson and William Andrew Chatto’s book, A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical (London: Bentley, 1839). The piece was developed out of an exercise in cut-up poetry, at our creative writing workshop on seascapes and the Arctic, in the Prints and Drawings department…

Lindsay Smith is Professor of English and co-director of the Centre for Photography and Visual Culture at the University of Sussex. She has written extensively on Victorian painting, poetry and photography, and her work continues to engage the difficult and hesitant spaces between established disciplines. Lindsay’s most recent project is on Lewis Carroll as a creator…

This collaborative sonnet was improvised during our creative writing workshop on seascapes and the Arctic, in the Prints and Drawings department of the British Museum on 3rd December. The sonnet responds to wood engravings by Dalziel and Nancy Campbell’s poetry collection, Disko Bay. By Sarah Alexander, Helen Bailey, Camilla Bostock, Nancy Campbell, Nancy Gaffield, Cage Williams, Katerina Klaric, Jane McCarthy…

In celebration of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in November 1865, we have a special blog post by Nicholas Royle, Professor of English at the University of Sussex. In this piece he responds to the two images below, two different renderings of same illustration, known as ‘Living Backward’, or the ‘Hatter in Prison’. On the…

George Clutterbuck’s poem was developed out of a workshop held at the  University of Sussex on 16th September. In the workshop, called ‘Lost Letters’, writers produced new creative works using selected prints from the British Museum’s Dalziel Archive, especially pictorial initials that, within the archive, had become separated from their original texts. Life is all marked out in lines © George…

Heads, Shoulders and Whole Lengths, by Hannah Field, responds to the Dalziel image pictured below, an illustration for ‘To make dancing dolls’ from Laura Valentine’s The Home Book of Pleasure and Instruction, published in 1867 (see image 11 of Design in our exhibition). This piece was developed out of panel talks on the Dalziel Archive at the…

Camilla Bostock’s new work Word Hoard was developed out of a workshop held at the  University of Sussex on 16th September. In the workshop, called ‘Lost Letters’, writers produced new creative works using selected prints from the British Museum’s Dalziel Archive, especially pictorial initials that, within the archive, had become separated from their original texts. To view Word Hoard, click on the first…