Oxford OX1 3UH
UK
Researching her family’s links with the Brontës, Monica Kendall idly googled an eighteenth-century ancestor’s name and place of death. She was surprised to find that he was briefly mentioned in a biography as a schoolteacher. The book’s notes led her to Morier Family, Class C, Box 1 in Balliol College’s Archives, which preserves letters written 250 years before by her four times great-grandparents. And serendipitously, a little piece of jigsaw from the 1780s had illuminated Charlotte Brontë’s time in Brussels in the 1840s…
Monica Kendall is a graduate of St Hugh’s College, Oxford. She is working on her third book.
Unlocking Archives is an interdisciplinary graduate seminar series of illustrated lunchtime talks about current research in Balliol College’s historic collections. The Historic Collections Centre in St Cross Church is next door to Holywell Manor and across the road from the English & Law faculties on Manor Road. These talks are free and open to the public. Feel free to bring your lunch. The talks will last about half an hour, to allow time for questions and discussion afterwards, and a closer look at some of the Balliol special collections material discussed.