In October 2024 I had the privilege to volunteer for the Burgess Foundation where I assisted with a project to catalogue the numerous objects in the archive in preparation of eventual digitisation. My academic background in History of Art has given me an interest in the politics of the museum, the ways in which visitors interact with a space and how this is guided by curatorial decisions and bias.

One of the most pertinent issues faced today is the concept of access to the museum, and there has been much discussion in the heritage sector about both physical and invisible barriers (education, social and cultural capital, reading levels and much more all play an important role). In particular, the digital archive not only provides the traditional source for researchers but it can also act as a bridge between the physical museum to the online space for a more general audience. As such this was a fantastic chance to gain some practical experience in an archive working with all manner of objects as the collection is incredibly wide-ranging, having been sourced from Anthony Burgess’s own homes after his death in 1993.

I found the Burgess Foundation different to other heritage institutions: almost all our national museums are based on a nucleus of one wealthy man’s collection of historical and personal artefacts, so it feels rarer to have such objects be so contemporary. The Burgess Foundation archive, for example, contains typewriters, cassettes and battery-powered clocks. You will not find such items in Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, the collection of which spans millennia but stops in the mid-1800s. I found that my familiarity with Burgess’s personal objects created a different relationship with the archive, which in turn affected how I felt during the categorisation process. It seems that the principal question being pondered at the Burgess Foundation is how you might go about categorising a life.

My experience with the archive began with a meeting with Anna, the archivist at the Foundation, during which we talked about methods of object categorisation and the importance of accessibility in the archive – themes that would follow me into my experience as an archival volunteer. Anna gave me a wide array of objects, which I had to catalogue by describing each piece, researching its provenance and noting its condition as a benchmark for future caretakers.

Many objects offered an opportunity to get lost into a world of literary accomplishment, from studying previously obscure foreign writing awards, researching how jurors are selected for the Monte Carlo Television Festival, or tracking the production history of certain models of electric typewriters. Another example of the unexpected areas the research took me into was when I had to make an interesting diversion into historic Italian family crests when finding out more about the family of Burgess’s second wife, Liana Burgess – daughter of an Italian Contessa.

I found that the crux of the cataloguing project lay at the intersection here between the home and the museum, and the catalogue reflects this. It can be difficult to make sense of the difference between an archive formed by the intent of a professional collector and an archive formed from the haphazard accumulation of a lifetime. How someone chooses to populate their home, relies more on utility and sentimentality than posterity or coherence. This is particularly interesting as Burgess was very invested in how he presented himself to the world, directly comparing himself often to Shakespeare. In the archive, however, medals of honour for literary achievement sit alongside cheap Ikea clocks, hand painted to suit a new colour scheme and to avoid buying again. It was very humanising in a space that often feels removed from our own reality.

A question Anna and I discussed often was the transience of categorisation, and how one person’s definition can dictate for others how an object is understood. This can be equally significant when applied to the objects of a home; when objects were utilised in ways that defied their original purpose. One week I was tasked with categorising six typewriters in varying states of disrepair. I made me wonder why Burgess had so many and whether some may never have been used – if this was the case would they have counted as home decor? Such questions often have no answer, but they affect all parts of the process. Objects being used for something other than their intended purpose could be revealed by close examination of their condition. Another example of this are the numerous mugs in the collection, some used as ashtrays by Burgess, the prodigious smoker. All of this meant the archive felt very alive.

In the Burgess Foundation archive objects take you around the world before always leading back to home. It is this idea of a personal, domestic collection, without the intentional curation of sense of self that is applied to collections meant for the world to see, that can reveal much more about a literary great than just his writing; we can learn about the way he worked and the life he led.

• Share | 
• Print