Hello!
I’m so glad you’ve found me here. This is my new newsletter for 2024, the Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society. Previously known as Lost in the Archives, it’s still the same mix of short pieces about literature, memoir, writers’ homes, the history of Cambridge women and more. Since launching my blog/newsletter here on Substack in late 2023 I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being part of such a welcoming and engaged community of readers and writers. Now that I’m settling into this neighbourhood, this is just to introduce myself and my writing. If you enjoy diving into (or even just dabbling in) books, literary lives and women’s history, you’ll feel at home here.
‘I enjoy the focus on unknown ordinary women in Cambridge, memorable because of being extraordinary.’
‘Ann, this is the kind of post that brings something unique to me on Substack that I can't get (can't find) anywhere else. The deft way you handle your material and the novel perspectives that you open up from your time in the archives are so precious. Thank you!’
‘English Republic of Letters’About me
I’m Ann, and following my first degree in languages at Trinity College Dublin I moved to Cambridge as a PhD student in 1985. I fell in love with the university, the town and a certain physicist, so I decided to stay. For a number of years I worked in publishing as an editor and lexicographer, and then became a literature tutor for the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education. I’ve written academic papers, a book about Baudelaire’s art criticism and contributed to a monograph on Tennyson in Europe (see my About page). Then, about ten years ago, I became fascinated by the stories of the pioneering women who came to Cambridge as students, wives and workers in the 1870s and 1880s, and my writing life took off in a completely new, and very enjoyable, creative direction.
Writing and research
I studied for an MA in creative writing at UEA, specializing in biography and creative nonfiction, which I was awarded with honours in 2015. Since then I’ve worked as a literary critic and essayist, and my articles and reviews have been published in the TLS, the Guardian, History Today, Slightly Foxed and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography among others.
Cambridge women
I’ve also been busy researching in library and college archives to find out more about the first generation of Cambridge women from 1870 to 1914. Although women were denied full degrees and barred from equal membership of the University until 1947, this first generation broke through barriers and helped other women who followed them to Cambridge, including myself. Their lasting influence is like an almost invisible but resilient web, still spinning outwards into the 21st century. Yet most of their stories have never been told, so I was thrilled to be awarded a Women’s History Network Independent Researcher grant (2021-22). It was a recognition that my research - and the work of these pioneering women at Cambridge - mattered.
Literature and writers’ lives
One of the things I love most about Substack is discovering brilliant authors, a high standard of writing and a shared love of literature here. I’m a regular contributor to Slightly Foxed magazine. writing about my favourite out-of-print memoirs. So Lost in the Archives gives me the opportunity to share my passion for old and new books, and what I’ve most enjoyed reading, reviewing and returning to.
I want to spread the word about a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, from neglected nineteenth- and twentieth-century classics to the best of twenty-first century writing, all seasoned with my favourite writerly Substack publications. My focus will usually on the best of biography and memoir but I can’t resist lesser-known fiction and poetry. You’ll often find me wandering through the lives and houses of my favourite authors and artists including Virginia Woolf, Lucy Boston, Sylvia Plath and Gwen Raverat (see below). I’d really like to hear about what you enjoy reading too.
Why Substack, and why subscribe?
Substack is based on a subscription network so it’s ad-free and very simple to use. It helps writers to reach a wide audience by curating newsletters and posts onto a personal website that can be searched and revisited.
There are two types of subscription for Lost in the Archives. If you subscribe for free, you’ll get:
Regular blogposts delivered straight to your inbox every week or so, including my newsletter A Cambridge Notebook, with up-to-date literary news, views and links for further reading. Most of my new posts are free, and after three months they will be available to paid subscribers only.
If you become a paid subscriber, you get all the above plus:
Regular paid-subscriber-only articles, with full references and archive sources, plus access to my complete Lost in the Archives archive.
Introductory offer until 12 May 2024: the chance to have a 2,000-word sample of your work edited by me, or an hour’s Zoom session - to be arranged individually.
The knowledge that you are actively helping me to continue to share these stories, which I appreciate beyond words. (I also treasure words, such as the lovely message below from
, one of my first paid subscribers.)To sum up: every post I write involves hours of research, editing and writing, and every subscription, paid or unpaid, means a great deal to me. Your interest and encouragement is the best incentive for me to keep going on this platform. So thank you very much for finding me here, and for ‘liking’, sharing, commenting and connecting. Most of all, thank you for reading.
Oh, Ann. I am so honored. Every word I wrote can be magnified countless times. You were one of my first two paid subscribers. What that means is incalculable: in a lifetime of writing, I had never been paid as a writer. I deeply appreciate your kind and generous comments not only on my work, but on that of the many writers who are lifted by your words. And, most importantly, thank you for your posts!
Hi Ann, I'm enjoying reading your articles very much. You are just my cup of tea. I write about books (what I'm reading, etc), I'm working on a few essays and am researching several 19th-century English women who were forgotten. I fall into a lot of rabbit holes. Have a good weekend.