Wednesday, September 30, 2015

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

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