Play your part in ensuring the future of The Portico’s unique collection with our adopt-a-book scheme

Since it was built in 1806, The Portico has developed a fascinating collection of mainly 19^th century books, with subject matter ranging from Botany to Architecture, and from History to The Occult. Having been chosen over the years by its members, the collection can be said to be truly unique to the Portico, and representative of the interests of those who frequented the library in years gone by. The collection also forms a valuable aid to 19^th century studies, with researchers from across the UK and beyond consulting the many volumes on the shelves.

Yet having been built in the centre of an emerging industrial city, a combination of the resultant pollution, the mass production of paper and the use of gasoliers for lighting and heating have all taken their toll on the books. Whilst the generosity of a number of grant giving bodies and of supportive individuals has enabled crucial conservation and preservation work to be undertaken upon approximately a quarter of the Collection, there are still many books whose deterioration needs to be addressed.

The Portico needs your support to continue carrying out this vital conservation and preservation work, so that we can ensure that the books on our shelves may be read and enjoyed by many more generations to come.

Our adopt-a-book scheme is one way in which you could help. The scheme works in two ways: if you have a particular interest, you can select the author, title or subject of a book you wish to adopt, or you can simply make a donation that will help towards other priority volumes within the collection. In return for your generosity and support, a permanent bookplate will be placed within the volume/s, recording your name, date and a dedication of your choice.

Please feel free to ask a member of staff should you require any further information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Portico Library - Music Through a Lens

Manchester based photographer Priti Shikotra approached the Portico regarding a photo-shoot for five-piece indie Manchester rock-band The Rubys.  She has shared the experience with us in writing and pictures: 

Manchester is famous for it’s music scene - The Stone Roses, Oasis, Joy Division, heck even Take That! We have had heaps of talent starting their journey right here. The talent of the past has been great - but the light needs shining on the talent of the present and future. Manchester has such a fantastic music scene - multiple live music venues and such amazing musical talent. For a music photographer, well, that’s bliss.

The Rubys - An up and coming band is one that I slowly approached over social networking site Twitter, after seeing them live at Manchester HMV Ritz back in December.

I loved their sound and turned around to a girl friend of mine and said ‘I’m gonna work with these guys’ - Fast forward a month or so and Dave Earlam aka The Bat Ruby (Drummer, The Rubys) and I were discussing locations for a photo shoot.

The guys didn't want a typical northern grimy location - I began researching into whats in and around Manchester. Having been away for the best part of a year travelling, I came back with a different perspective on Manchester and was keen to find hidden gems that would be perfect for this shoot to pitch to the guys. You appreciate whats around you a hell of a lot more when you haven't been around it for a while - everything is the same yet so different.

Some how - I came across The Portico Library. I arranged a meeting with the lovely Emma. When I went by to see the library - I was surprised to see where it was - for the sheer fact that I had walked past it heaps of times before and never noticed it!

Have you seen Disney’s Beauty and the Beast? You know the Library Belle has all to herself at the castle? Yep, The Portico Library reminds me very much of this! 

I was blown away by how quirky the library is - the smell, the feel, the look of the library - it tells a story even just by standing in there. Such a stunning library with so much personality. The interior has been well maintained and the stacks upon stacks of books - piled high to the ceilings - it’s such an atmospheric place.

Fast forward another few weeks and the shoot was about to take place - The Rubys were super excited about the venue - it definitely doesn't have the typical northern look and feel after all! We were at the library for a few hours, and then shifted outside and hit the streets to get some shots on location.  We got some great shots and The Rubys were happy with the results. So happy, that the shots have been used on the album artwork for their new album - ‘Limelight Paradise’ . You can have a listen and buy the album over at http://the-rubys.bandcamp.com/ - Head on over!

As a photographer - the place is perfect - so many different angles to shoot from, multiple rooms to work with, plenty of natural light, so quirky, and so many props to work with ( with permission of course! ) Not only that, but since it’s bang right in the middle of Manchester, there are surrounding areas which can be of good use in a shoot. So you can get various different feels to different shots.

This is what Dave from The Rubys had to say about the venue.

"The Portico Library is a literary 'Time Capsule of Cool' hidden away on the busiest of Manchesters' streets.

We found it like silence looking for sound; a clash of isolation centred in the chaos of Piccadilly.

The atmosphere bled into our photographs; split-second shards of frozen time caught in a timeless environment of books with leather-worn looks, furniture with overtures, taxidermy with history.

Unique is an over-used term, although we found the Portico to be just that,.....just not in the obvious sense. It has character that doesn't overpower, a richness which did not make us look poorer, a pride of vision that didn't put shame in ours.

Artists and Photographers know the power of a good location, and in the Portico, we felt that we were passing through the history of the Library. Melville stared at us from across the bookshelves whilst Rambeau waited patiently.

There are few locations in the world that will give you the same sense of time standing still, to the point where the hours on the clock had no Meaning; at the Portico, we found Meaning, Relevance, and Elegance bleeding from every fissure." 

PSHIKOTRA Photography : www.pshikotra.com

Blog : www.pshikotra.wordpress.com

The Portico Poetry Prizes

The library is delighted to announce full details of our new poetry competition.

There will be two awards; The Portico Poetry Prize and The Portico Young Poetry Prize. Entry for the former is £4 plus £2.50 for each poem after; the latter is free. There's a cash prize for the Portico Poetry Prize and the Young Poetry Prize winner will be named Portico Young Poet of the Year and an opportunity to be anthologised and published. For more, refer the competition leaflets at the bottom of the page.

The guidelines are relatively loose; the only stipulations are that all poems entered must be linked in some way to the works of Charles Dickens and no more than 40 lines (not including the title).

The Portico Poetry Prize will be judged by Mandy Coe; The Portico Young Poetry Prize will be judged by Richy Campbell, Lisa Mansell and Krishan Coupland.

The closing date for both competitions are 31st July. Please see the details below on how to enter or print an entry form, found at the bottom of this page.

Please send a short cover letter, telling us who you are, no more than four lines.

Entries to both competitions in the e-mail's body to poetry@theportico.org.uk. Please state which competition you are submitting to in the e-mail header e.g. `Portico Young Poetry Prize Entry' or `Portico Poetry Prize Entry'.

Postal entries to:

The Portico Library
The Portico Poetry Prize 2012 / The Portico Young Poetry Prize 2012
57 Mosley Street
Manchester
M2 3HY

Please address cheques for the Portico Poetry Prize to The Portico Library.

You can also pay by bank transfer:

The Royal Bank of Scotland

A/C Name: The Portico Library

Sort code: 16ž00ž01

A/C No.: 14052426

PorticoForm / PorticoYoungForm

Elizabeth Gaskell Borrowed These Books!

Portico friend and researcher Megan Healy writes about her experiences researching Elizabeth Gaskell at The Portico:

In 2009, I traveled across the Atlantic to move to Manchester for two months for a research project at the Portico Library. Funded by my undergraduate Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, I spent my days going through the Portico’s Issue Books, which log every book and journal borrowed from the library from 1850 to 1904. My focus was the borrowings from 1850 to 1865 of the library’s chairman, William Gaskell, husband to Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell. By creating a typed account of Reverend Gaskell’s borrowings, researchers visiting the Portico now have access to records of Gaskell’s reading history, available chronologically and alphabetically, with details of the call number (when available) and the date checked out and returned.

Within this extensive list, one finds the classics—Shakespeare, Milton, and Swift—as well as several popular contemporary journals borrowed frequently, including Fraser’s Blackwood’s, Athenaeum, and Saturday Review. Though the books are all checked out in William’, one can assume the Jane Austen’s and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s works were for Elizabeth and not William. Not surprisingly, Collins, Cooper, Hawthorne, Scott, and Trollope feature frequently, as well a pleasantly wide range of female novelists, including Maria Edgeworth, George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Oliphant, and Dinah Mulock Craik. Interestingly, apart from the first volume of Household Words, the only Dickens work checked out by Gaskell was David Copperfield, borrowed in July 1852 and November 1858.

In addition to the extensive fiction borrowings, there is a range of biographies, including European rulers such as Louis XIV and Peter the Cruel and literary figures Samuel Johnson and Goethe. Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses was borrowed five times by Gaskell. More obscure borrowings include Personal Narrative of Thirteen Year’ Service amongst the Wild Tribes of Khondistan, for the Suppression of Human Sacrifice; Narratives of Sorcery and Magic, From the Most Authentic Sources; and Six lectures on the chemical history of the candle to which is added a lecture on platinum.  

Furthermore, there is a wealth of travel literature alongside Gaskell’s name, ranging from Yorkshire and Devon to Italy, Greece, and Spain, as well as Bengal, Turkey, Egypt, Ceylon, China, Koordistan, Mesopotamia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Algeria. Titles range from the Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada and Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale Fishery to Egyptian Sepulchres and Syrian Shrines, Including Some Stay in the Lebanon at Palmyra and in Western Turkey, and, my personal favourite, Unprotected Females in Norway; Or the Pleasantest Way of Travelling There, Passing Through Denmark and Sweden with Scandinavian Sketches from Nature.

A particular point of interest is that occasional entries appeared in Mrs Gaskell’s name; on the 17^th of March, 1853, she is noted to have borrowed Robert Chamber’s Life of Robert Burns and, two days later, Mariotti’s A Historical Memoir of Fra Dolcino and His Times is ascribed to Mrs Gaskell. Gaskell scholars who had previously worked with the Issue Books question what happened on these days: was William out of town? Was he ill? What do you think?



Can you spot Reverend William Gaskell's name?

"Big Writing for a Small World"

One of our regular researchers came in last week to continue her research on certain volumes in our collection, but before she headed down to the Reading Room she stopped to show us something...  It was a publication entitled Big Writing for a Small World which was launched in Manchester on May 1st and is organised in Manchester by English PEN with partnership support from Community Arts North West as part of their Exodus Greater Manchester Refugee Arts programme. The project was funded by John Lyon's Charity and the European Commission Representation in the United Kingdom.

Big Writing for a Small World is, as Jonathan Scheele states in his introduction "an ambitious cultural community project"  (p. 2).  The publication contains illustrations, short stories and poems in the English language by various contributors, all of whom speak English as a second language.  We were excited not only by the fact that our researcher is one of the contributors to this impressive collaborative work but by the publication itself and the amount of work that has obviously gone into it.

We are proud to have a signed copy of the book now in our collection and to be providing copies for sale on site.

Copies of Big Writing for a Small World are available at the Portico Library for £3 each.

Treasures of Travel - April Exhibition

The Portico Library presents an exhibition in celebration of the commencement of its Retrospective Cataloguing project.  The Voyages and Travels section is truly a demonstration of the travel habits, both for exploration and leisure, of the 19th century society which the Library represents and this exhibition highlights the treasures of this section.

Lyons McLeod (frontispiece portrait of the author) from

Travels in Eastern Africa; with the narrative of a residence in Mozambique

London: Hurst and Blackett, 1860 (Me 45-1)

Voyages and Travels is classified under the letter ‘M’ and contains 2088 titles within 2747 volumes.  The works range from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and cover travel and voyages to all parts of the world. The collection encompasses military, adventure, diplomacy, leisure and exploratory travel and works by women travellers are a highlight.

Constance Gordon-Cumming (frontispiece portrait of the author) from

Wanderings in China

London and Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1886 (My 231-2)

The exhibition opens today and will run until the 30th April. The Gallery is open to members and the public Monday to Friday, 9.30 - 4.30 and has late night openings to 7.30 pm on Thursdays.  Entry is free.

Sidy. Hafsan, Late Bey of Tripoli (frontispiece portrait) from

Narrative of a ten year's residence at Tripoli in Africa...

by Richard Tully, London: Henry Colburn, 1816 (Mz 35)

Retrospective Cataloguing

The Library has intended, for many years, to initiate the cataloguing of the collection on an online database.  There have been a few non-starters and there has certainly been a great deal of work by a number of people to finally get to this point now, where we have catalogued 3,700 of our approximately 25,000 volumes. We are working clockwise around the Library and have completed Voyages and Travels, Fine Arts, and Local History and have begun work on the Poetry and Drama.

The Library currently works off of a card catalogue, which, though effective, harbours some inaccuracies. Using Heritage Library Management System to create an online catalogue has allowed us to realize where books have gone missing, discover volumes that we did not know we had, and better appreciate the breadth and variety of the collection.  You may have noticed a number of empty shelves on recent visits to the library; an added bonus of the catalogue project is that we have been able to re-shelve the collection more efficiently, creating extra space and allowing for maintenance and repair of the shelves kindly carried out by our Chairman, Edward Thorp. 

Our cataloguer is able to catalogue approximately 30 volumes a day – people have asked why it takes so long!  The catalogue record for each volume contains basic bibliographic information such as author, title, and publication data, but we are going further than this to include information that will be useful both to the library and its members, and to researchers and general users.  Additional information that we note includes condition and binding of the volumes for future conservation projects and Adopt-A-Book activities; instances of marginalia (readers’ handwritten notes and comments); any unique details about the specific volume; details on maps, illustrations, frontispieces, plates and photographs and those responsible for them; dates of admittance to the Library; donations; sponsorship for conservation; general layout and description of the book; classification details; series titles and editors and related works.

Once the catalogue is online users will have the option of browsing by subject area or searching by keyword, author, title, etc.  As such, it is also an important aspect of the catalogue that we assign appropriate keywords and subjects to each volume to ensure that anyone searching the catalogue on a particular topic will be presented with all relevant book results.  We are also customising the keywords so that users are provided with alternate synonyms by which to search, for example: when a search for ‘student’ turns up the system will recommend the user to also search for ‘pupil’.  The catalogue should be available for online search within the next 4 months and will look like this:

Keep an eye on the website as we will be including and updating a ‘Catalogue’ page where you can find more immediate information on our progress and, once we go live, a direct link to the catalogue itself! If you would like more information on the Catalogue please contact Taylor Bishop at the catalogue desk, by phone (0161-236 6785) or email at catalogue@theportico.org.uk

Northern Launch of "A Mutual Friend" at the Portico Library - We're all friends now!

Vice-Chair of the Library Lynne Allan reflects on her afternoon and evening with the poets involved in the Northern Launch of A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens, held at the Library on Wednesday evening:

A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens is as much a response to Dickens’ life as his legacy and its Salford-based editor Peter Robinson, Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Reading,brought a number of its contributing poets to Manchester with him for an evening of live poetry and discussion which was a feast for poetry lovers.

My day began with meeting Mairi MacInnes off the train from York. As this was her first visit to the Portico she carried a copy of A Mutual Friend: Poems For Charles Dickens so she could be recognised! We returned to the Library to meet her fellow poets and had a very civilised afternoon tea made by our wonderful cook Kathy. Jeffrey Wainwright said they were the best scones he had ever tasted. If you want to see if you agree with him you could always pop in to the library to sample Kathy’s cakes and scones. Yum! Yum!

The poets talked about their work and what is going on in the world of poetry at the moment. As The Portico’s resident literary groupie, I listened in rapture! The evening began with wine and nibbles -the poets believing it important to relax the audience before a poetry reading. Our own Alan Shelston, long-time member of the Portico, introduced the poets and delighted us with his tribute to Dickens in poetic form:

 On a little dog, run over by Dickens’ carriage in the Hyde Park

‘Vague thoughts of a new book are rife within me just now; and I go wandering about at night into the strangest places especially ─ seeking rest and finding none. As an addition to my composure I ran over a little dog in the Regent’s Park yesterday (killing him on the spot) and gave his little mistress ─ a girl of thirteen or fourteen ─ such exquisite distress as I never saw the like of.’ (The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens ed. Jenny Hartley, 2012)

This little dog earned his distinction

Through his very sad extinction: 

Mr Dickens in his carriage,

Reflecting sadly on his marriage

Didn’t think to look outside

And so poor Fido quickly died. 

Dickens thought his little mistress

‘Exquisite’ in her dreadful distress.

Time it took when all was over

To regain his own composure.

This is an early entry for our Dickens poetry competition. Do you think it has a chance of winning? It is certainly in the spirit of  the occasion of Dickens' bicentenary as is A Mutual Friend.

Peter Robinson gave the audience a fascinating insight into the genesis of the book and then read his erudite poem Rubbish Theory. He followed this by introducing several other poets such as the lovely Mairi MacInnes, who movingly read her poem The Death Of Little Nell from the anthology and explained how she had first come across Dickens as a little girl of seven. We moved from an innocent death to award-winning poet Susan Utting’s poem about the death by drowning of the villain Quilp. Dogs in Dickens seem to be popular subjects for poems, as journalist and former MMU Professor Jeffrey Wainwright read his poem Merrylegs based on the dog in Hard Times, and the Portico’s very great friend and judge of the poetry section of the Portico Prize for Young Writers, Mandy Coe read her poem Bullseye, a heartfelt tribute to the dog of Bill Sykes. Hull University’s creative writing professor Carol Rumens followed with a reading of her inspiring poem Marshalsea Quadrille. All the contributors are fine examples of the formidable pedigree of the writers in the book (among the others: John Hegley, Philip Gross, Derek Beaven, Jayne Draycott and Manchester poet Peter Riley).

At the end of a wonderful evening the poets all dashed off to catch trains to various parts of the country but not before agreeing that we are all friends now and that the Portico Library is a wonderful place for book launches and poetry!

 A Mutual Friend: Poems for Charles Dickens (2012) is published by Two Rivers Press with the English Association and is available for £10 from the Library or through Two Rivers Press.