About the Samuel Butler Project
One of Butler's iconic photographs
Erewhon, with MS additions
Artefacts from the Samuel Butler Collection
St John’s College Library holds an extensive collection of material produced by and relating to the Victorian polymath Samuel Butler (1835-1902), which includes:
- around 100 boxes of papers, articles and correspondence
- more than 650 printed books
- around 450 paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints
- 50 artefacts
- a substantial photographic archive, comprising more than 1500 glass plate negatives, five albums of snapshots and 550 loose photographs, plus 125 prints produced more recently for exhibitions.
The Butler Project began in July 2011 and will run for two years. Its aim is to catalogue the collection and to make it accessible to researchers, schools and the public through a range of exhibitions, events and activities. The project is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and St John’s College.
Rebecca Watts is the Butler Project Associate, responsible for most of the cataloguing and for organising exhibitions, events and visits. Rebecca has previously worked as a postgraduate researcher on the papers of the poet Louis MacNeice, and as an intern with the collections at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere.
You can keep up with the lastest developments in the project on the Butler Project Diary pages, updated each month.
To organise a visit, or if you are interested in volunteering with the Butler Project, please contact Rebecca by email at rew35@cam.ac.uk or by phone on 01223 339362.