Guy Philipps talks to Mary Wellesley

Guy Philipps introduces his edition of Frederic Madden’s memoirs – a previously-unpublished selection of journals from one of the most entertaining intellectual figures of the Victorian age. 

Frederic Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum from 1837 to 1866, kept an extraordinarily detailed daily record of his social, professional, emotional and sexual life over more than half a century. Written with irresistible wit and candour, Madden was an admirer of the diary of Samuel Pepys, and the literary quality of his own journal puts it in the same class.

Deftly edited into a single volume by Guy Philipps, this self-portrait of an eminent Victorian is sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, often moving, and always fascinating.

Here, he talks to Dr Mary Wellesley, who teaches Medieval Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and is the author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts & Their Makers.

Guy Philipps is an independent scholar and researcher specialising in mid-Victorian literature and culture.

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