Photograph of James-Joyce

Old photos, letters and notes are always deeply evocative, but what if the ephemera you uncovered, say, in a box at a car boot sale or at your local charity shop, were the leftovers from authors’ lives?

The British Library has just made over 300 literary treasures online for the first time – and it’s all entirely free to access. Every item relates to 20th century writers, including literary drafts, rare first editions, notebooks, letters, diaries, newspapers and photographs from the archives of  Virginia Woolf, Ted Hughes, James Joyce and Angela Carter, among others.

Intrigued? Take a look for yourself on the Discovering Literature website, and then allow the creative ideas begin to emerge.

If you write or create something prompted by this, please send an email to Judy(at)socket creative.com to let me know. With your permission, I’ll publish it on SkyLightRain.com.