Friday 28 October 2011

Beatrice Potter (Webb) on Sidney Webb



Sidney Webb, c1930s
Sidney Webb, 1930s
The LSE Digital Library is here and the Webb diaries open to all. Here's my, albeit anachronistic, re-use matching a diary extract and one of LSE's pictures on Flickr.

Beatrice Potter recorded in her diary her first meeting with Sidney Webb (14th February, 1890)

 "Sidney Webb the socialist dined here to meet the Booths. A remarkable little man with a huge head on a very tiny body: a breadth of forehead quite sufficient to account for the encyclopaedic character of his knowledge, a Jewish nose, prominent eyes and mouth, black hair, somewhat unkempt, spectacles and a most bourgeois black coat shiny with wear; regarded as a whole somewhat between a London card and a German Professor. To keep to externals: his pronunciation is cockney, his Hs are shaky, his attitudes by no means eloquent -  with his thumbs fixed pugnaciously in a far from immaculate waistcoat, with his bulky head thrown back and his little body forward he struts even when he stands, delivering himself with extraordinary rapidity of thought and utterance and with an expression of inexhaustible self-complacency. But I like the man. There is a directness of speech, an open-mindedness, an imaginative warm-heartedness which should carry him far. He has the self-complacency of one who is always thinking faster than his neighbours, who is untroubled by doubts, and to whom the acquisition of facts is as easy as the grasping of matter; but he has no vanity and is totally unself-conscious."

An interesting and beautiful description of another human being and, perhaps one of the best expressions of love at first sight that I have ever read.

You can read and compare the manuscript and typescript version of this extract on the LSE Digital Library. Trust me, there is a mountain of incredibly interesting text here that can be used to tell amazingly resonate stories.

Related sources: LSE News archiveNew Statesman

In a digital world no book is an island

This is a derivative work based on content in the LSE Digital Library and on the LSE Library Flickr stream. The text is CC licensed and the image has 'No known copyright restrictions' 

Monday 3 October 2011

LSE Library Political Posters

How the Tories Have Increased the Cost of LivingThe Open Door And The Man Who Feels The DraughtTen Years of ToryismProtect your child and food from fliesThe vitamin content of food products: Fruits and BerriesAway With Private Peasants!
Quite Disinterested!Let's speed up industrialization in the USSR with deposits to state labour savings officesThe vitamin content of food products: Bread and CerealsA Free Trade ForecastFree imports have made Britain the dumping ground of all nationsDown With The Red Flag
This Way, Sir!Chinese LabourHe's Good Enough for MeThe Great Irish Ventriloquist, with his Performing Parliamentary ManikinThere was an old woman who lived in a shoe...I'll give him Home Rule!

LSE Library Political Posters, a gallery on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
A selection of posters from the LSE Library Archives collection.

Sunday 2 October 2011

LSE Library Selection

Beatrice and Sidney Webb, c1942Student reading in the Shaw Library, 1964Student using the library catalogue, 1964Lionel Robbins Building / BLPES, 1978H.G. Wells , c1890Houghton Street closed to through traffic, September 1975
Main Entrance, Houghton Street, 1973Student at microfilm reader, c1970sLibrary , c1981HM Queen Mother at the formal opening of the new library in the Lionel Robbins Building, 10th July 1979Houghton Street, 1985Student using the card catalogue in the library, 1981
LSE Library stair wellStudent in Computer Room, 1981The vitamin content of food products: Fat, Milk, Cheese, and EggsLibrary atrium, LSECollecting books for readers in the reserve stacks, 1964Night Falls
LSE Library Selection, a gallery on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
A selection of some of the best photos on flickr by, or of, LSE Library.