Research Notes

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XII, Issue 1, 1 May 1979, Page 52

Research Notes

Mrs Margaret Scott who was commissioned several years ago by Oxford University Press to prepare an edition of the collected letters of Katherine Mansfield has been joined by Vincent O’Sullivan as assistant editor for the final stages of the work. The transcription of the letters is now complete but there still remains much research for the annotations. The final text is likely to be completed in 1979. The Turnbull Library holds more than half of the letters so far collected as well as manuscript diaries andjournals. Mrs Scott has been awarded the A.H.I. Writer’s Bursary for 1978 to enable her to complete the project.

Professor lan Gordon has completed work on an edition of Katherine Mansfield’s unpublished notebook 0f1907, the ‘Urewera journey’, in the Turnbull’s collections. Publication by the Oxford University Press will be early in 1979.

A two-volume facsimile/performing edition of the Harpsichord Master (1697) prepared by Robert Petre, a member of the staff of the Turnbull’s Reference Section, is to be published by Price Milburn Music of Wellington. The original, which is held in the Rare Book Room of the Auckland Public Library, was recently identified by Mr Petre as the unique extant copy of this seventeenth century book of English harpsichord music. It includes ‘lntroductions for Learners’ and twenty-one pieces (several of them previously unknown) by such composers as Henry Purcell and Jeremiah Clarke.

Vincent O’Sullivan has been authorised by the Library to edit for publication John Middleton Murry’s letters to Katherine Mansfield purchased by the Endowment Trust in 1972. Mrs Mary Murry’s initial restriction on access (closed until after Mrs Murry’s death except to Margaret Scott to assist editorial work on Katherine Mansfield’s letters) was lifted in June 1976 and since then the attention of several Mansfield scholars has been drawn to the letters. Editorial work is to be completed by the end of 1980.

Dr Elizabeth Sheppard, formerly a member of the staff of the Department of English at the University of Auckland, has begun work on the Turnbull’s Frances Hodgkins collection for an edition

of the letters. As well as the large Hodgkins-Field correspondence, donated by the Hodgkins and Field families several years ago, the Library has acquired other significant collections of Hodgkins letters, scrapbooks and drawings in recent years.

Dr David Branagan of the Dept of Geology and Geophysics, University of Sydney, is editing the 1825-27 journals of Samuel Stutchbury (1798-1859) for publication. Stutchbury was employed by the Pacific Pearl Company as a naturalist on the 1825-27 expedition to the South Pacific during which time he visited New Zealand. The Stutchbury journals and associated papers were acquired by the Library in 1973. A grant for research costs has been made to Dr Branagan by the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust.

Janet Paul, Art Librarian, has been invited by the editors (Ms P. Bunkle and Mrs B. Hughes, Victoria University of Wellington) to contribute a chapter on women artists for a volume Women in New Zealand to be published by Allen & Unwin Ltd.