Barnes for All!

DAT is supporting the efforts of the William Barnes Society, working with Dorset History Centre and Dorset Museum and Art Gallery to raise funds to catalogue the Dorset dialect poet’s archive.  The collection, owned by the museum but deposited at DHC is the key resource to understanding and studying the man who along with his acquaintance Thomas Hardy best defines the county’s literary traditions.  Barnes who in his day was feted by such luminaries as Tennyson was the rector of Whitcombe and a co-founder of Dorset County Museum.

The ambition is to replicate the work that is now underway on Hardy’s archive – that is to open up the Barnes archive by generating a full, freely accessible catalogue and so encourage access to the letters, diaries, poems, sermons, photographs and printed material that make up the 66 boxes of this remarkable collection.

Find out more at the Barnes Society website or donate directly.