BUILDING ON ACCOMPLISHMENTS

On the premise that if you don’t write it down, there is no possibility of anyone reading it [the original aphorism of the Hypatia Trust was ‘no documents, no history’] we are once again taking to paper, in parallel with our on-line Newsletter here, for the benefit primarily of those who do not use the computer on a regular basis.

The cost of printing and postage of this newsletter had reached £500 an issue, so we are now only mailing a paper copy to those we think don’t see the website version. If, in fact, you do have internet access but still receive a paper copy, please let us know at info@hypatia-trust.org.uk.

We are definitely alive and well and moving forward on several fronts. We are especially grateful to our loyal supporters, who continue to remember us, not only with financial contribution but also with thoughtful deeds of time and effort. As we approach our 13th birthday as the Hypatia Trust, and our 23rd birthday at the Jamieson Library Collection, we are not simply sitting on our assets, but allowing and pushing these to grow together with other communities of interest.

With only three of us working in the office on a part-time basis, it is difficult to slice the time needed from other more pressing, daily callers & duties. Maintaining the offices is naturally a costly affair in itself with computers, photocopier and other necessities including recent rises in utilities putting even more of a strain upon our charitable resources.

A main source of our income is the publication list that we maintain, and to which we add 3-4 titles each year. Some of these are runaway successes, and sell relatively quickly. Examples of this were recent studies of Balmaidens (women who worked in the mines of Devon and Cornwall) by Lynne Mayers), and of the Women's Land Army in Cornwall, Digging for Memories, edited by Melissa Hardie. Others are produced for individuals or organisations who undertake the distribution and advertisement themselves.

Subsequent to Balmaidens (out of print), Lynne Mayers has just published (2008) A Dangerous Place to Work!, available at £7.95, from her website at www.balmaiden.co.uk. Much in demand as a speaker, Lynne’s dedication to her subject is formidable, and her additions to our knowledge of women in the history of British industrial heritage greatly valued. Not least of its rewards has been the interest raised in the American west and Australia where many Cornish families still reside.

Digging for Memories has not only contributed to the recent announcements from DEFRA that a badge will finally be awarded to those Land Army girls from the Second World War still alive today, but is about to enter its third printing. Angie Butler and Di Ayres who carried out the interviews with the ‘girls’ and Barbara Santi who produced the film (a prize-winner!) have all been active in speaking to groups and schools all over the county. We have also distributed the DEFRA forms from our offices. Frequently we still hear from our Land Girls, and recently Joy Micallef from Germany where she now lives, called into the office. So good to have become friends through the written word.

John Ryton Andrews, a long-time supporter and patron of the Trust, died in February of this year. John was a writer and a former librarian at Exeter University and the proud descendant of a West Cornwall family, who owned both ‘Eagle’s Nest’ and the ‘Poor House’ (Zennor), in addition to swathes of land extending down to Cape Cornwall, known as Bosigran.

Keen to remember his family and their roots here, he determined from the set-up of the Hypatia Trust (1996) to ensure that his novelist ancestor, Marian Andrews (née Hare) who wrote 30 historical novels mainly under the pseudonym Christopher Hare, should have a special place in our Collections. To this end he presented an entire collection of her work, her scrapbook of reviews, and an enormous antique framed map of the northern side of the Cornish peninsula, showing the land his family occupied.

At the same time he provided a permanent endowment fund to initiate the Andrews-Westlake Archive, to which he has now added by residual legacy in his Last Will. We are most grateful to John, for his remembrance of our work in this generous way.

Partou Zia was an extraordinarily talented young artist and writer, born in Tehran, Persia, having emigrated with her family to England in 1970. She died recently (March, 2008) after living with cancer for some years.

After studying Art History at University of Warwick, and then Fine Art at the Slade, she settled in Cornwall in 1993. By then, she had already participated in a number of mixed shows, such as Young Contemporaries, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester (1989), and her Cornish debut was at the Salthouse Gallery, St Ives.

Solo exhibitions quickly followed as her very poetic treatments of archetypal images were brought to canvas, Partou herself virtually a messenger bringing a crescendo of light to her story-pictures.

Jane Potter’s excellent book, Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print (Women’s Literary Responses to the Great War 1914-1918) published in hardback in Oxford English Monographs (OUP) in 2005, has proved so popular that it this year to be issued in paperback.

In 2006 it was the joint Winner of Women’s History Network Book Prize, and an excellent documentation of the female narrative at such a fraught and anguished time in our history. Dr Potter is the Senior Lecturer in Publishing, Oxford Brookes University and Assistant to the Archivist at Wolfson College, Oxford.

A recent residency was awarded to a distinguished poet, Judith H Montgomery to work on her latest collection of poems. Elspeth Pope sent not only a charming photo of Judy at her desk upstairs in Holly House, but reports that she intends to return in summer from her home in Oregon’s High Desert to offer a writers’ workshop for the benefit of Hypatia.

Her chapbook, Passion, received the 2000 Oregon Book Award for poetry, and her first full-length collection, Red Jess appeared in 2006. A new chapbook, Pulse & Constellation (2007), has just appeared from Finishing Line Press.

Here we have a new poet/friend well worth the read. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and periodicals such as The Southern Review, Poetry Magazine (Featured poet 2007-08 Winter issue), The Bellingham Review and many others.

'Building on our assets' means attempting to bring our authors into the public eye, and demonstrating the high quality of our research and production work. Because of the Annual Awards made by the Cornish Gorsedd to publishers small & large, this is made easier for those of our titles that are Cornish-connected.

Presented each year in a ceremony held at Waterstones' (formerly Ottakars') bookshop in Truro, certificates representing the judges' commendations, are bestowed by the Grand Bard to the publishers and authors of the selected winning titles. Cash awards are also made to the winners in each of the nine categories, donated by the Eden Project (St Austell), that then revert to Cornish charities as chosen by those winners. Certificates are also presented to a second level of 'Commendations'. There is also a literary salver presented to an outstanding work of literature, and an overall 'Holyer an Gof' trophy presented to the considered best book of all for the year.

Each year the competition, now in its fifth year, gets tougher, and the choices more difficult. Also the entries are more and more professional and mainstream in their production - showing that Cornish printers are upping their game, and that designers and editors are ever more learned in their craft. In the current year of 2008 (for books published in 2007) there were 78 book entries adding to our knowledge of Cornwall and its cultural life.

Though no publisher wins with every book each year, Hypatia Publications has had a goodly share, of prizes and commendations. And naturally the publishers offer books on subjects other than Cornwall, that are not eligible for these awards. The on-going record of the Hypatia prize-winning books is the following:

In 2005, the Holyer an Gof Trophy winner was Balmaidens by Lynne Mayers. This was not only a well-deserved prize for the hardworking author, but also for the editor and lay-out designer, Phil Budden. This is the story of the women and children who worked in mining throughout Cornwall and West Devon as rock breakers, carriers and all manner of surface workers. For a whole year the beautiful silver cup adorned the Hypatia Offices and was much admired.

In 2006, a commendation was awarded to the Trust in the adult non-fiction category for the well researched and well written book by Barbara Eaton, described in her article above. Letters to Lydia, dearest Persis broke new ground, revealing for the first time the love story between the world famous missionary-thinker, Henry Martyn and his Cornish sweetheart, Lydia Grenfell, daughter of the famed family of Grenfells of Marazion and West Cornwall. Tim Eaton, Barbara's husband was the designer of this fine book.

In 2007, Digging for Memories, The Women's Land Army in Cornwall, edited by Melissa Hardie based on interviews with Land Girls undertaken by Angie Butler and Diana Ayres, received a commendation in the same category as in 2006. This was an extremely popular book, selling out of two subsequent editions. The designer for this attractive and eye-catching production was Donna Anton, who deserves full credit for her careful attention to detail, and stylish lay-out work.

A commendation was awarded to Susan Hoyle for her masterly history of the Church of St Levan. This was high praise indeed because the category in which the book was entered, local and organisational histories, was one of the most prolific. Her writing style was especially complimented, and her keen historian's eye. Again Donna Anton was the designer and lay-out editor, and this work was commended.

In southern India in 1994 I came across a small paperback biography of Henry Martyn (1781-1812) of Truro, Cornwall, published by The Henry Martyn Institute for Islamic Studies in Hyderabad.

Back home in Cornwall his story led to intriguing research. In 19th Century biographies Martyn had been acclaimed as an evangelical missionary although in fact he appears to have made few if any converts on his travels in India, Persia and Turkey. His main work was the translation of the New Testament into ‘Hindoostanee’, Urdu, Farsi and Arabic. What had not been revealed was an account of his love affair with Lydia Grenfell of Marazion, Cornwall. Their letters took up to 16 months for delivery and reply by return of post. Some were lost at sea. Transcripts of seventeen of Henry’s letters and his diaries survive and Lydia left a long and often anguished diary.

In getting Letters to Lydia: ‘beloved Persis’ published I found great joy when Melissa Hardie of Hypatia Publications in Penzance offered to publish it with a print run of 500. The Hypatia Trust supports writing by and about women in Cornwall. After the printing cost and wholesale discount the price at £12.50 gave an author’s royalty of 81pence but did not allow for marketing and distribution so in November 2005 I set about giving talks to library and book groups, and visiting the bookshops of west Cornwall, always with a book box in the boot of the car, on the road like the medieval mercators with their bundles of books. The royalties did not cover the petrol.

Interestingly, most copies are sold by the village post office at Mullion and Waterstones in Truro, both using a front cover display with ‘local author, signed copy’ labels. The market beyond West Cornwall remained largely inaccessible although a good review in The Church of England Newspaper produced a batch order from an American seminary.

The runner-up award for adult non-fiction of the Cornish Gorseth’s 2006 Holyer An Gof Literary Awards was a triumph and not too disappointing; the winner was a handsome biography of A. L. Rowse from Exeter University Press.

By the summer of 2007 copies were down to the last box and it was time to consider how to reach the wider audience. A second edition was prepared for an American publisher specialising in book printing on demand (PoD) and internet downloads. Lulu provides rapid single and small order printing in the USA and UK and supplies both direct sales through www.lulu.com and wholesale orders for bookshops and online distributors. The author uploads formatted print-ready .pdf files as to a book printer. Within a few days lulu.com places the book on the lists of major distributors and booksellers in the US and the UK. It also provides advice on formatting, pricing, marketing and engaging search engine potential. A retail price of £12.50 gives the author a royalty of £1 for sales through wholesalers and about £4 for lulu’s direct book sales.

Although avid readers might not imagine that books would be read on a computer, lulu.com also provides a book download service for e-books for which there is a rapidly growing market, rather like audio-books. Readers download books from www.lulu.com to read or print from their own computers or on a book-sized e-reader, an electronic device like a notebook computer to take on the beach or train.

Letters to Lydia: ‘beloved Persis’ is downloaded from lulu.com for £5 of which the author’s royalty is £4.

In May and June of 2007, two major Collections left Trevelyan House and the Jamieson Library, Newmill respectively, to be catalogued and settled into new venues.

Tremough Campus, Penryn-Falmouth, Cornwall: The CUC

A collection of approximately 600 volumes, combining Women’s Studies with Women’s Literature was presented to the new University Project in Cornwall: Exeter University, University College Falmouth, and their partners. The University Library at Penryn serves all of the students attending the ‘Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC)’. These volumes mainly will be on general access shelves, rather than preserved within a Special Hypatia Collection as they are at Exeter University Library in Devon. Many are duplicates of material already at Exeter, and have been accumulated from donations and purchase since the launch of the Special Collection a decade ago. Doreen Pinfold, the University Librarian, expressed her pleasure at the gift, coming at the time of a new stage in the development of learning resources for the Combined Universities.

Remaining at Trevelyan House, is the Elizabeth Treffry Cornish Collection, with its extensive and growing archival deposits of women writers and artists related to Cornwall. The concept behind this Collection remaining in Penzance is to work together with other libraries and collections – such as the Morrab Library, the Penzance Public Library, Penwith College and the West Cornwall Art Archive – providing a research facility at post-graduate and general public educational levels. Trevelyan House has opened its doors for the first in a series of post-graduate seminars together with the English Department of the Exeter University sector. Of special importance in the building of this centre will be the ‘putting up’ of the Bibliotheca Cornubiensis Femina as an on-line academic resource for those researching women in Cornwall’s history. All will be welcome to contribute to this major learning tool.

Meantime, the ‘mother collection’ at Exeter did not miss out, as several recent purchases of rare finds have also been sent there to join the Hypatia Collection of documents by and about women.

Peter Waverly, Andrew Symons and Melissa Hardie are the curators working on these developments. The curator of the Elizabeth Treffry Collection is currently Peter Waverly, who has been building his Penzance Archive database for over a decade. Our previous curator, Andrew Symons, continues to work with us on the creation of a Quiller-Couch Family Archive. Complementing all of the above is a rich collection of documents related to the arts and artists in Cornwall, past and present that may in time be contributed to the West Cornwall Art Archive. These also offer a major learning tool for students and researchers.

Dr Heiner Gillmeister and his partner, Anya

Melissa had been collecting books for an American Studies Collection for over 30 years and had named it in honour of her journalist grandfather, Paul Wagner (1889-1937), and her mother, Vera Wagner (1917-2000).

Vera Wagner

Melissa Hardie and Elspeth Pope

On Sunday 25th November 2007 about 60 friends of Hypatia gathered at Newmill to celebrate Jamie’s life.

This picture is of an exhibit about her life, in the library which carries her name.

Hypatia member, Ann Kelley, from St. Ives, has won this prestigious award, and a £5,000 prize, for her book The Bower Bird.

The book is the second in a trilogy that tells the story of Gussie, a 12-year-old who needs a heart and lung transplant. She suffers from the same condition that Ann’s son, Nathan, died of, 22 years ago.