Extensive Wendy Cope archive acquired by the British Library

“Some sort of record seemed vital”, the British Library said of the extensive archive they have acquired from popularly acclaimed poet Wendy Cope.

The hybrid archive, comprised of 15 storage boxes, contains more than 40,000 emails dating from 2004 to the present, as well as a multitude of Microsoft Word documents.

It is the most substantial literary archive the British Library has received so far, and provides a fascinating insight into contemporary writerly networks.

Staff at the British Library have also created additional content around the archive, including a panoramic photo of Cope’s study and an interview recorded the day the material was collected.

Rachel Foss, Lead Curator of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the library, said she was "particularly excited" by the opportunity working with a contemporary writer gave organisers to create "enhanced content".

“This has now become a key part of how we acquire archives in the 21st century,” she added.

Cope’s witty parodies and unflinching eye for the absurdities of everyday human experience allow her to connect with an extremely wide and diverse readership.

In a BBC 4 listener’s poll in 1998, she was voted as the best successor to Ted Hughes for the Poet Laureateship, although she reckoned the post should be discontinued.

In a postcard to Cope congratulating her on her second volume of poetry, Serious Concerns, Hughes said: “I like your deadpan fearless sort of way of whacking the nail on the head - when everybody else is trying to hang pictures on it”.
 
Letters from Andrew Motion, Blake Morrison, Carol Rumens, Craig Raine, and Kingsley Amis - who expressed his delight with the success of Cope's first published volume of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis - can also be found among the extensive volumes.

At the core of the collection are 67 poetry notebooks dating from 1973 to the present day, including literary and poetic drafts throughout her career, including Family Values, published earlier this month.

Prefaced by quotations from poets Cope admires, including John Betjeman, Emily Dickinson and AE Housman, the notebooks give an insight into the labour of the creative process, showing the meticulous progressive re-workings of poems.

One notebook containing drafts of Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis will be on display in The Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library from April 21 2011.