Vivien Noakes (1937-2011) was an authority on Edward Lear and published her seminal biography Edward Lear, the Life of Wanderer in 1968. During the course of her exhaustive research into Lear, his life and his work, Vivien Noakes compiled a collection of over 1500 facsimiles of letters mostly written by Lear, some written to him, the originals of which are located around the world in over 100 different public and private collections.
She subsequently published several other works including Edward Lear: selected letters (1988), The Painter Edward Lear (1991) and Complete Nonsense and Other Verse (2001). She was recognised as the leading expert in Edward Lear and curated an exhibition of his paintings at the Royal Academy in 1985. Vivien Noakes was also a scholar of First World War literature and an authority on the work of Isaac Rosenberg; she took her D.Phil. at Somerville and subsequently lectured for the college.
After her death, her family gave Vivien Noakes’ Edward Lear research archive to Somerville College. The collection comprises over 80 boxes of notes, photographs, drawings, proofs and ephemera, in addition to the facsimile letters. The college has catalogued the letters and gained the necessary permissions from the owners to make them available to researchers; the rest of the collection is in the final stages of curation and cataloguing.
Provenance
The collection was given to the college by Vivien Noakes’ family in 2016.
Using the collection
Please contact the archives with any queries about the collection or to make an appointment to access it.
Limitations on use
Unpublished works, such as private correspondence, are still in copyright and permission to reproduce or quote will be required from the copyright holder. See the WATCH database for further information.
Conditions of access to the facsimile letters are as stipulated by the owners of the originals; as such some letters may be available to view but cannot be copied.