Library of the Week: 14th February : We are so happy this week to feature The International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Anna Edwards (Archivist) shares with us this incredible piece about the work of the Foundation, its history and the amazing collections in the library and archive including a spotlight on Burgess and his favourite writer, James Joyce. Thank you so much to Anna and the International Anthony Burgess Foundation for taking part!
The International Anthony Burgess Foundation is an educational charity in Manchester which seeks to encourage and promote engagement with all aspects of the life and work of the novelist and composer Anthony Burgess (1917-1993).
Established in 2003 by Liana Burgess (Anthony’s second wife), the Burgess Foundation cares for an extensive library and archive, consisting of books, photographs, music, audio, video, personal and business papers, furniture, and other objects which belonged to Burgess, his two wives and his son.
The book collection consists of over 9000 volumes, most of which formed Burgess’s private library.
Topics include language and linguistics; literary criticism; poetry; drama; social science; geography and travel; history; politics; biographies, autobiographies, collected letters and diaries; general fiction; art and architecture; TV and film; and music. There are also novels and other literary works by Burgess (in English and translation); copies of books and journals to which he contributed; and a range of secondary works on Burgess’s life and writing. Over two thirds of the book collection is searchable on Jisc Library Hub Discover, and more information about its content is available in a previous library services blog here.
Browsing the book collection can be informative in a number of ways. It reveals, for example, more about Burgess’s wider interactions and friendships; his general interests; his work as a literary critic and reviewer; the books which inspired and informed the projects that he worked on; and the authors he most enjoyed reading.
James Joyce (1882-1941) was Burgess’s favourite writer. As this year marks 100 years since the publication of Joyce’s novel Ulysses, it seems appropriate to focus on the extensive number of books by or relating to Joyce within our collection.
Burgess’s life-long love of Joyce began at an early age, when he was a student at Xaverian College in Manchester. In his autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God (1987), he recalls that, in 1934, ‘my history master smuggled the Odyssey Press edition [of Joyce’s Ulysses] out of Nazi Germany and lent it to me.’ It was a seminal moment in Burgess’s life: ‘When we have read [Joyce] and absorbed even an iota of his substance, neither literature nor life can ever be quite the same again.’
The earliest work by Joyce in the collection was acquired by Burgess in the same year. It is a copy of the 1923 edition of Joyce’s Chamber Music and has been inscribed twice by Burgess: ‘John Burgess Wilson / Manchester 1934’ and ‘To Lynne from John, 1939’. ‘Lynne’ was Burgess’s first wife, Llewela Jones: they married in 1942. Both Lynne and Burgess’s second wife, Liana, were avid readers of Joyce and they contributed to the collection of Joyce-related works in the Foundation’s book collection.
The library contains approximately sixty copies of editions of works by Joyce in English, Italian and French, including eighteen copies of Ulysses and ten of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There are also numerous critical studies of his work, along with biographies, volumes of his collected correspondence, published collections of images of Joyce, and a cookbook featuring food and drink from Joyce’s Dublin, for which Burgess wrote the introduction. Burgess was asked to review many of these books, in his capacity as a well-regarded Joyce commentator, for the Observer and the Times Literary Supplement.
Joyce was, for Burgess, an author whom he measured himself ‘hopelessly against each time I sit down to write fiction’ and was a source of great inspiration for his own literature, music and poetry. Burgess wrote extensively on Joyce, producing two critical studies, Here Comes Everybody (1965) and Joysprick (1973); an edition of A Shorter Finnegans Wake (1966); a documentary for BBC television, Silence, Exile and Cunning (1965); a programme for American television, Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake (1973); a 1982 documentary about Joyce and Igor Stravinsky for Swedish television; an operetta, Blooms of Dublin (broadcast in 1982) based on Ulysses; musical settings of several Joyce poems; introductions to reprints of Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake; and numerous other articles and reviews.
Among the manuscripts is a pack of 52 playing cards, designed and hand-drawn by Burgess ‘in homage to Joyce’ in 1985 as part of an unrealised commercial venture. Inspiration for the suits and the characters of the court cards was taken from Joyce’s novels.
The library and archive are open to researchers by appointment in an on-site reading room on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, from 10am until 3pm. If you would like to make an appointment to visit, or if you have a question about the collection, please contact the archivist, Anna Edwards, on anna@anthonyburgess.org
You may also be interested to explore the growing range of resources at www.anthonyburgess.org including exhibitions, podcasts, and blogs. You can also follow us on Twitter @anthonyburgess
The Burgess Foundation contributes to the Archives Hub. Cataloguing of the archive is ongoing and descriptions are searchable at https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb3104-ab
Anna Edwards – Archivist
International Anthony Burgess Foundation
All images are copyright of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.
You can explore the library’s collections on Discover and find contact details on their Discover information page.
You can also view a previous post written by Anna at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in 2021.
