Inside the Archives: Writing Durham with Dr Laura McKenzie

Join us for a special session inside Durham University’s archives.  

This Inside the Archives session draws on Dr. McKenzie’s recent Writing Durham project, which aimed to chart the County’s literature of place. The literature of place is distinct from ‘regional’ literature: it mediates between society and the space it inhabits in specific ways, and in the instance of Durham reveals a historically complex relationship between writers with a significant attachment to it, and its social, cultural, and physical environment.

The two authors on which this session focuses, Lafcadio Hearn and Hugh Walpole, were educated in Durham, and both used their work to negotiate the emotional, psychological, and physical marks wrought on them by their Durham years. In this session we will explore works by Hearn and Walpole which draw on this period and tell us something about the formative effect Durham had on their writing and identities – often in unsettling ways.

Led by Dr Laura McKenzie.