My name is Chloe and I’m a third year studying English. This summer I was fortunate enough to work in the Collaborative Research Internship for Dr Caroline Radcliffe, assisting with research for her book ‘The Dramas of Wilkie Collins’ which is due to be published in 2024. The book is a two-volume monograph on the dramatic output of Wilkie Collins. Primarily, we were focusing on using library archives and newspaper databases to source artwork and contemporary reviews.
Here are some of the tasks I had to complete for the internship!
Artwork
A key aspect of the work I undertook involved organising permissions and copyrights for the use of images in Dr Radcliffe’s book. This involved carefully curating emails to a variety of institutions including museums and art galleries to inquire after images from their collections that Dr Radcliffe wanted to include in her book. These emails often inquired about the copyright of images and the provenance. I was able to communicate with famous institutions such as The Met.
Newspaper reviews
A significance part of the research involved searching databases for contemporary newspaper reviews on Wilkie Collins’ dramas. This proved to be difficult at times but highly rewarding when I found particularly interesting reviews. The University provides students with access to a variety of databases which are incredibly useful, such as: British Library Newspapers, The Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003, and 19th Century UK Periodicals. We searched for reviews on performances of Collins/Dickens’ plays and managed to find a huge selection. It was really insightful to read these reviews and find out about the contemporary reception of the plays, some of which I hadn’t heard of before.
Working environment & Logistics
A lot of the work for the internship was self-motivated and it was up to us to complete tasks in a timely manner. We met with our internship manager every two weeks to discuss our progress and allocate tasks. Our manager allowed us to decide between us which tasks or works of Collins/Dickens we wanted to focus on. It was reassuring to have consistent communication with the team and always be up to date with each other’s progress. This made for a very seamless approach to each task. As there were 2 of us working on this project, the workload was divided between us and at times involved working together on tasks. For example….
The Cadbury Research Library
The research led me to the basement of Muirhead Tower, in which the Cadbury Research Library resides. Dr Caroline Radcliffe set us the task of finding primary sources relating to Wilkie Collins. Neither of us had been to the CRL before but found it to be very informative and now, having obtained a bespoke library card, will be able to go whenever we would like. I anticipate this will be very useful as we begin researching for our dissertations this year. In the CRL we found first editions of Wilkie Collin’s play, which was really exciting. The sources we found will be used in the Special Collections library exhibition from July 2024 – January 2025.
Overall, the internship was a fulfilling experience that has facilitated my newfound appreciation for archival research.
Chloe Alhadeff, BA English