The Really Popular Book Club is the reading group hosted by Cambridge University Libraries. Everyone is invited to join us and our special guests to discuss a really popular book, one that we all know and perhaps or perhaps not love.
Following the opening of the Darwin in Conversation exhibition we are taking letters as the theme of August's book club. A.S. Byatt's Possession follows the path of academics as they uncover the passionate affair of two Victorian poets. Possession is a novel of love, longing, the desire to own, and literary detective fiction. At its centre Byatt puts historic correspondence, and its ability to beguile as we glimpse into our literary ancestors’ innermost feelings.
We are delighted to be joined by two special guests for the evening.
Dr Jessica Gardner is Cambridge University Librarian, with a passion for preservation and access to cultural and heritage collections and a long-ago PhD based on literary correspondence between writers and editors. In 2020 Jessica launched the University Library’s public appeal for two missing Charles Darwin notebooks, which were returned anonymously fifteen months later and now feature in the exhibition, Darwin in Conversation.
Dr Alison Pearn is the Associate Director and one of the editors of the Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University Library. She has been involved in the publication of twenty of the thirty volumes that make up the edition of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. She is lead curator of the University Library’s current exhibition, Darwin in Conversation, and author of a short popular book, Darwin: All that Matters.
As well as hearing from Jessica and Alison about their thoughts and observations on Possession, we will once again be opening the floor up to you, our club members, to share your own observations and remarks. To get you thinking and to help prepare any comments or questions you might want to share, we have prepared three starter questions:
1. Just how important are letters to the story?
2. Are the modern day or Victorian characters the most convincing?
3. What does Byatt think of academics and academic pursuits?
Further information about The Really Popular Book Club, including our FAQs, can be found here.
Where: Online via Zoom Meetings
Registration: Free, booking essential. REGISTER HERE
Date: Tuesday 23rd August 2022