You may have noticed that it’s a dream of mine to stumble across a previously unknown manuscript by a famous historical figure. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but in honour of my first full year of blogging I’m posting a roundup of links about exciting archival discoveries. After all, reading about them is the next best thing…
Archival Discoveries Roundup
Sometimes exciting discoveries are made in archives themselves. For example, the patent for the Wright brothers’ Flying Machine was recently rediscovered after being misfiled in 1979.
A volunteer at the U.S. National Archives discovered a letter that Walt Whitman penned for an illiterate dying soldier.
Isaac Newton’s recipe for an ingredient in the mythical Philosopher’s Stone was buried in a private collection for decades.
In an interview that I published in March, Anne Daniel of Western Archives shared that they uncovered a letter by Charles Darwin — she called it “a hidden gem” in their holdings.
An intern at a small museum in Manhattan found — in a hot, humid attic — a manuscript that turned out to be “an urgent plea sent to the people of Great Britain by the Second Continental Congress one year before American independence was declared.”
A retired German professor discovered fragments of a Medieval manuscript that bear striking resemblances to The Book of Kells.
Sometimes unpublished writings by famous authors come to light, such as a short story by Edith Wharton discovered at Yale, a story and poem by Charlotte Bronte found in a book owned by her mother, and “The Tale of Kitty-in-Boots” by Beatrix Potter tracked down in the Victoria and Albert Museum archives.
Speaking of Beatrix Potter, some of her drawings were discovered by conservators tucked inside a book in a Suffolk mansion where she’d been a house guest.
An archivist in Kent came across an early copy of the Magna Carta that someone had placed between the pages of a scrapbook in the late 1800s.
A map annotated by J.R.R. Tolkien was discovered in a copy of The Lord of the Rings owned by Pauline Baynes, who illustrated books by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
A trunk containing 2,600 undelivered letters from the 17th century was donated to a museum in 1926 and recently rediscovered.
Russian archaeologists have found birds nests full of 18th and 19th century documents, from letters and banknotes to candy wrappers and recipes.
We found food stamp booklets in Kevin’s Nanny’s things, and a phone book that was about 60 years old. The food stamp booklet scared me a little; it was quite something to hold that and connect the lady sitting in front of me to all the war stories I’ve read.
Fascinating. The most interesting family documents I’ve seen are letters that Great-Great-Uncle Floyd wrote while fighting in the Boer War.
These stories are fascinating.
I would most like to find old Bible manuscripts. I picture monks copying them all out by hand and decorating them with whimsical pictures.