MY OVERFLOWING LIBRARY by Caroline
Lawrence
I live in a riverside flat with my
husband Richard, an English graphic designer and author of non-fiction books.
The flat is in Battersea, southwest London, about
a half hour’s walk from the Kings
Road in Chelsea or
leafy Wandsworth Park in Putney. As an American, I never
feel a stranger or out of place because London is so cosmopolitan.
Richard and I have just had a purge of
about three hundred books but there are still thousands left. This section in
my study (the second bedroom) is about a hundredth of the total number. When we
moved in twelve years ago we had a carpenter put in an entire wall of
bookshelves in our bedroom and also in our big living room. There are even
books in the hallway, stacked against the walls.
This picture shows part of my Western
Mysteries research shelf. The top shelf holds books about Mark Twain and his
time in Virginia City as a reporter. I also have books on the history of that
town and the area around it, called The Comstock.
Other topics covered here are Music
Hall, the history of the Pinkerton detectives, famous shoot-outs, desperados, prostitutes,
ghost-towns, and the Jews of Nevada. “Doo-Dah!” is a biography of the great
songwriter Stephen Foster. Unlike my other historical passion, first
century
Rome, I can listen to 19th century music!
Below my box set of DVDs for the
entire 1960s series of The Wild, Wild West you can see my stereoscopic viewers.
My books are set at a time when the first 3-D photos were in vogue. Using those
viewers with stereoscopic photos, I virtually look into the past.
Out of sight on the shelf below is
Flederman’s gun catalogue and other catalogues from the American Victorian
period, plus big picture books about guns, Native Americans and early photography.
One of my motives in writing a series
set in 19th century America was to learn more about my own history
and background. My husband Richard has always been a Civil War enthusiast and
for the past five years I’ve been sharing that passion with him.
Another delight of researching this
period is delving into the thousands of intimate letters and journals written
by people. My “Bible” (apart from the King James version) are the diaries of
Alf Doten, a massive three volume record of one man’s life, kept from the age
of 19 until his death fifty odd years later. It lives on my desk by my
computer.
What you can’t see here are all the
documents I have in box files and folders: newspaper articles, travel
brochures, museum guides and re-enactment programmes. Nor can you see the
fabulous resources I have access to over the internet: thousands of Mark
Twain’s letters, for example, or scans of Lady’s Magazines, just to name a few.
And you can’t see my Kindle, where I have just downloaded Team of Rivals: a biography of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns
Goodwin, and a 900+ page document on my iPhone!
And then there are the DVDs like the
film Gettysburg or Ken Burns’ fabulous documentary about the American Civil
War… But I am getting away from the main topic: books!
As Emily Dickinson says:
There
is no Frigate like a Book/To take us Lands away
--
Caroline Lawrence’s latest history
mystery book, The Case of the
Good-looking Corpse is set in Virginia City in the 1860s and includes
shootouts, firemen, lawmen, journalists, music by Stephen Foster, Mark Twain
and ‘soiled Doves’.
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