Manuscripts
Chester Cathedral by Frank Bennett
- Description
- This collection contains the papers of English art historian Katharine Ada Esdaile (1881-1950), with the bulk of the materials relating to her research and writings on British monumental sculpture, sculptors, and church monuments from the medieval period to 19th century. Material types include personal writings, diaries, correspondence, business papers, family papers and photographs, research files and research notebooks, and miscellaneous published and unpublished materials. Notably the collection includes more than 600 chiefly pre-World War II visitor booklets and pamphlets produced locally by British churches and approximately 3500 photographs taken or collected by Esdaile of sculpture, often funerary monuments in English churches, ranging from large churches like Westminster Abbey to small rural parishes. This collection provides a resource for viewpoints on monumental sculpture in the early 20th century (for instance as represented in book reviews by Esdaile) and for information about Esdaile's experience as a woman art historian in the early 20th century. Given the broadness of Esdaile's scope, from medieval to 19th century British monumental sculpture, the collection is less useful for specific information about monuments or sculptors. In addition, many of Esdaile's attributions in her notes appear to have been based primarily on her own instincts and do not have citations. Many of Esdaile's notes are handwritten on small scraps of paper or are fragments, sometimes making the information difficult to parse. The collection is chiefly Esdaile's files, but the dates on some items (such as post-1950 booklets) indicate the collection was added to and used after her death, presumably by her son Edmund Esdaile, who also made notes on items in the collection and appears to have done the preliminary organization of the papers after Esdaile's death.
