User guide
What's in A Museum of Relationships?
The Fitzwilliam Museum holds the world’s largest collection of manuscript material relating to William Hayley (1745-1820). For this pilot, we have imaged, transcribed and annotated significant extracts from three exchanges of letters between Hayley and
- the sculptor John Flaxman. Some of these letters include contributions from/addressed to Flaxman’s wife Ann – also known as Nancy – and Hayley’s son, Thomas Alphonso, apprenticed to Flaxman in the mid-1790s.
- Hayley’s first wife Eliza (née Ball), dated after the couple had separated, and focused on an epistolary quarrel.
- the poet, Anna Seward. We only have Hayley’s side of the correspondence, but these letters show how the two poets critiqued each other’s work.
Exploring A Museum of Relationships
1. Correspondences
The correspondences page shows authors and recipients in pairs. Those letters with more than one author and/or recipient appear in more than one correspondence.
Clicking on one of the correspondences takes you through to an illustrated list of letters. At present, these are ordered by classmark.
The best way to view them in chronological order is to click on the green button reading "explore on a timeline" which appears at the top of the letter list.
NB: at present, the timelines only include precisely dated letters. Hopefully this will change!
2. Entities
People
People currently appear in the order we added them to our database. We hope we'll be able to sort them alphabetically in future, but this is funding-dependent… and at the moment, we haven't got any.
Not everyone represented is mentioned in the letters featured in this pilot.
In the meantime, please use search if you can't easily find someone you're looking for – and if you'd like more information about them, email Lisa, who may be able to help.
Places
Includes locations
- from/to which letters were sent
- mentioned in letters
- of certain mentioned or associated artworks
Artworks
These are divided into sculptures and pictures and include information about – and sometimes images of – artworks discussed in one or more letters.
Texts
A selection of written works by Hayley and other authors that are mentioned or discussed in the letters.
Events
Details of events mentioned in letters. At the moment, there's only one of these – but
3. Search
A standard text search
And, finally (for now)…
Like so many things, this pilot project was interrupted by the impacts of the pandemic on the museum sector.
So huge thanks are due, in particular, to Dan Pett, who has gone way beyond the call of duty to get this website up and running at a time when he is astonishingly busy. Thank you Dan!
We know it's not perfect – one of the elements we had to abandon was user-testing – and it doesn't do everything we wanted it to. I (Lisa) am exploring funding options to develop both content and technology
So, if you
- spot anything that isn't working
- have improvements you'd like to see
- find AMoR or any of its contents useful
- have any questions about it or about William Hayley
or
- have suggestions for potential future funding
please email me (Lisa). I'd love to hear all feedback, positive and critical.