Charlotte Sneyd returns to Keele!

A previously unknown comic manuscript by Charlotte Augusta Sneyd (1800-1882) recently came to light in New York. The volume of fourteen original pen-and-ink drawings has now been acquired by the Library and safely returned to Keele for the University’s Sneyd Archive.

Charlotte lived at Keele Hall for much of the nineteenth century and was an accomplished amateur artist, producing paintings and drawings for the amusement of family and friends. This charming manuscript offers a satiric view of gender roles in Victorian England in the form of a prospectus of English grammar, with tenses of verbs illustrated by scenes of social aspiration and disaster. Many of the drawings feature an unmarried middle-aged woman contemplating who she was, is, and will be - no doubt based on Charlotte herself, who never married and had children.

To find out more, or to view the manuscript, please contact the Special Collections and Archives at h.burton@keele.ac.uk

National Sporting Heritage Day 30th Sept 2015

Part of Keele’s sporting heritage are the Keele Boxers, pictured here in 1956, with their inspirational coach Sam Pearson (himself a professional boxer in the 1930s). Among the students are Fred Edmunds, Mike Steele and Terry Prince. Recognise any others? If so, contact the Archives at h.burton@keele.ac.uk

Over a thousand more full-text e-journals now available!

Over the summer Keele University Library has increased the number of full-text e-journals which Keele students and staff can access. Over 1500 e-journals are now accessible through Taylor & Francis Online as the Library has subscribed to their full journals collection. 

You can access the full-text of these journals from on and off-campus at: http://www.tandfonline.com. For off-campus access you will need to sign in using your Keele username and password. As well as the latest issues you can browse back through the archives, accessing content from 1997 onwards for most titles.

The Taylor & Francis full collection covers multiple subject areas across Humanities, Social Sciences and Science and Technology.

For more information or help accessing the journals please contact the Library InfoPoint or your Liaison Librarian.

100 years of the Women’s Institute

To mark the centenary of the W I this month, here’s the first class certificate for crochet, awarded to the Keele Women’s Institute in 1937.

The first committee meeting of the Keele W I took place in the village schoolroom on 20^th April 1932. Keele W I records held in the Archives comprise minute books, correspondence, programmes and scrapbooks dating from 1932 to the 1970s.