Book at Lunchtime welcomes Professor Kathryn Sutherland (English) and an expert panel to discuss her book "Why Modern Manuscripts Matter".
Why Modern Manuscripts Matter
This is a study of the politics, the commerce, and the aesthetics of heritage culture in the shape of authors' manuscripts. Draft or working manuscripts survive in quantity from the eighteenth century when, with the rise of print, readers learnt to value 'the hand' as an index of individuality and the blotted page, criss-crossed by deletion and revision, as a sign of genius. Since then, collectors have fought over manuscripts, libraries have curated them, the rich have stashed them away in investment portfolios, students have squeezed meaning from them, and we have all stared at them behind exhibition glass. Why do we trade them, conserve them, and covet them? Most, after all, are just the stuff left over after the novel or book of poetry goes into print. Poised on the boundary where precious treasure becomes abject waste, litter, and mess, modern literary manuscripts hover between riches and rubbish.
Prof Sutherland is joined for the discussion by two expert panellists Professor Fiona Stafford (English) and Professor Seamus Perry (English).
Join us for lunch at 12.30pm followed by the discussion from 1pm-2pm.
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