ICVWW has provided research and blogs to local groups campaigning for the reopening of Folkestone Library in its historic Grace Hill location.
- Folkestone Free Library: Beginnings - Books have always had the power to cause trouble. Ironically the Folkestone Free Library catalogue for 1884 includes Mary Braddon’s Taken at the Flood among other watery volumes. Judging by word frequency in historic newspapers you might think that Victorian libraries were constantly being flooded. In a sense they were. With ‘cheap fiction’, books by women, novels you especially didn’t want your daughters to read... Read more »
- Reading in the Rain - If you’re finding it hard to think about summer reading after all the rain, spare a thought for Victorian visitors to Folkestone, ‘who hardly know what to do with themselves on a wet day’ - Read more »
- Dickens ragged steps and amateur twaddle - It was meant to be so exciting having the most famous writer in England staying in Folkestone for the summer. But as one resident admitted, just at first it was all a bit disappointing - Read more »
- Women and the Library - Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Young woman to her brother, ‘Silence, we’re IN THE LIBRARY.’ Child answers, ‘They must have hidden the sign in the ladies’ reading room.’ - Read more »
- Mooching around - It is a hot day in late Victorian Folkestone, and your stiff layers of clothing aren’t helping at all. If you are a man your starched collar is probably giving you chin rash. If you are a woman your underclothing alone weighs as much as a small child - Read more »
- Literature? Splendid stuff! ‘He had no doubt it was very splendid stuff, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was all about. There was an occult meaning, he knew, in literature, and he had forgotten it.’ - Read more »
Poetry based on the library’s archives is included in the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies special issue on ‘Water’ (Spring 2023)
