IDENTITY STATEMENT
Reference code(s): GB 0372 MURPHY
Held at: Bishopsgate Institute
Title: MURPHY, Clive Hunter (b 1935)
Date(s): [1920]-2013
Level of description: Collection
Extent: approximately 50 boxes
Name of creator(s): Murphy | Clive Hunter | b 1935 | author and oral historian
CONTEXT
Administrative/Biographical history:
Clive Murphy was born in Liverpool in 1935. He was educated and brought up in Ireland where he qualified as a solicitor. In 1958 he emigrated to London and settled in Spitalfields in the early 1970s. His 'Summer Overtures' was joint winner of Adam International Review's First Novel Award in 1972. 'Freedom for Mr. Mildew' and 'Nigel Someone' appeared to critical acclaim in one volume in 1975. A series of nine recorded autobiographies, as listed below, followed. Since 1999, Clive Murphy has published six books of comic, often ribald, verse. The eighth, 'On Pleasure Bent', was published in 2013. The 'Ordinary Lives' series, edited by Clive Murphy, includes: Deeds of a Good Woman by Beatrice Ali (1976); Born to Sing by Alexander Hartog (1978); Four Acres and a Donkey: the memoirs of a lavatory attendant by S.A.B. Rogers (1979); Love, dears! The memoirs of a former chorus girl by Marjorie Graham (1980); Oiky: the memoirs of a pigman by Len Mills (1984); At the Dog in Dulwich: recollections of a poet by Patricia Doubell (1986); A Stranger in Gloucester: recollections of an Austrian in England by Mrs Falge-Wahl (1986); Dodo by Dodo Lees (1993); Endsleigh: memoirs of a riverkeeper by Horace Adams (1994).
CONTENT
Scope and content/abstract:
Papers of author and oral historian Clive Murphy, including: typescript and handwritten drafts, correspondence and research materials for all of the books in the 'Ordinary Lives' series, including papers on unpublished books, 1966-1998; audio tapes of interviews with all subjects in the 'Ordinary Lives' series, including interviews for unpublished books, 1973-1999; typescrpt and handwritten drafts, correspondence and research materials for all volumes of comic verse, 1998-2013; typescript and handwritten drafts, correspondence and research materials for published and unpublished novels, 1964-1998; handwritten diaries, entitled 'The Old Age of Clive Murphy', 2003-2013; 198 photograph albums of personal photographs from holidays, day-to-day life and around Spitalfields, 1987-2013; ephemera, including pamphlets and leaflets, 1960s-1990s; scrapbooks containing press cuttings and handwitten notes of quotations, n.d.; extensive correspondence, mainly in postcard form, with author Francis King, 1997-2011; oversize scrapbooks, mainly in wallpaper sample books, containing miscellaneous press cuttings, 1980-2013; postcards of male beauty, n.d.; personal and family papers, including correspondence with mother Vera Murphy, childhood diaries, photographs and photograph albums, certificates, childhod match box collection and autograph book, c 1920s-2000.
ACCESS AND USE
Language/scripts of material: English
System of arrangement:
no further arrangement required
Conditions governing access:
OPEN
Conditions governing reproduction:
Photocopying and digital photography (without flash) is permitted for research purposes on completion of the Library's Copyright Declaration form and with respect to current UK copyright law.
Finding aids:
Copy of handlist available in Library Reading Room.
ARCHIVAL INFORMATION
Archival history:
Immediate source of acquisition:
Deposited with Bishopsgate Institute by Clive Murphy at various points, 2012-2013.
ALLIED MATERIALS
DESCRIPTION NOTES
Date(s) of descriptions: January 2014