PCS AGM 2020
The Notice of the Annual General Meeting and relevant paperwork has been sent out to Members. For those in the UK this was included in the package that contained the new Companion but for overseas members it was sent separately a week earlier.
If you have received your Companion but not the AGM papers please get in touch without delay. This can be done by emailing the membership secretary ([email protected]) or by private messaging through the Society's instagram account.
As the notice explains, it is necessary this year to run the Meeting in a different manner to normal. A copy of the Chairman's letter can be found here, the Notice of the AGM here and the Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 30 April 2020 is at PCS&ARF 2019-2020
If you have any questions do please get in touch with the Chairman. All questions and their responses will be put up on this page of the Website as will further relevant information.
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UPDATE 19 November 2020
The Reports from the Trustees are available for you to read, uploaded into a single document (NB Hannah's Report will be amalgamated into this document in due course but in the meantime you can read it below). I apologise that there is an error on the pdf in that a link is missing to the Chairman's Letter (which you received with your Notice of AGM package). Therefore I have linked it again here.
Report from Bristol University Special Collections
Special Collections has been shut to readers and staff since mid March 2020, due to coronavirus. Hannah Lowery came back to work in the office from early July 2020, and is helping readers with research remotely. We are currently trying to set up a Reading Room, but it will be much more limited than normal.
Readers have carried on getting in touch, we have supplied scanned files, and carried out zoom interviews for use on Seminars with the University of Exeter. We have carried on liaison with Penguin Staff, and contributed towards an article on the Penguin website about Penguin logos, as part of the 85th anniversary of Penguin Books. It is hoped that a set of the prints co-produced between Penguin Books and the Literacy Trust to celebrate 85 years will be donated to the Archive. We would like to help as much as we can resources/copyright/physical access to collections allowing.
In October 2019 Special Collections received the copy of Lady Chatterley which had been taken into court by Judge Byrne.It had been purchased with a mixture of crowd funding, and support from the Penguin Collectors Society, PEN England, and many more. It is catalogued at DM2936,
https://archives.bristol.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=DM2936&pos=106
We hoped to get a digital copy of the book with it's annotations, to avoid handling of the original, but due to lockdown this has not yet been possible.
20 October to 2 November 2020 marks sixty years since the trial of Penguin over Lady Chatterley under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. Unfortunately a proposed Sky Arts documentary has been put on hold due to covid times, but we have contributed to a Penguin article, and are publishing a blog to celebrate the event.
During lockdown thanks to my fellow Trustees clever finding they kindly purchased a set of David Gentleman engravings for the covers of the Penguin Shakespeare. We look forward to receiving these when time allows, and cataloguing them/making them available.
In late 2019 I had the opportunity to catalogue some of the Penguin materials which had been given over the years such as additional Hans and Tanya Schmoller materials, and DM2938 Irene Starkie Puffin related materials. We also received two boxes of duplicate copies of Puffin Books from Seven Stories in Newcastle in July 2020.
I will have forgotten some activities, but I think that it is time to thank my fellow Trustees; Penguin Collectors Society members; former members of Penguin Staff and their families and friends; Penguin Random House staff; students, academics, and many more for their generosity in helping make the Penguin Book Archive in Special Collections, so amazing. Thank you.
Hannah Lowery
