2023 marks the centenary of Scottish writer Dorothy Dunnett (OBE), best known as a writer of historical fiction. To celebrate, members of the Dorothy Dunnett Society have reflected on items in the archive.
By Jill Harrison
Dorothy Dunnett's extensive archive in the National Library of Scotland is, as anyone who has read and loved her books would expect, exciting, convoluted, rewarding, and full of wonderful surprises. It can be viewed in the light-filled Special Collections Reading Room which looks out to Arthur’s Seat and the distinctive crown spire of St Giles cathedral. It provides the perfect backdrop to explore Dunnett's material on one of her real-life characters, Anselm Adornes. He is the charismatic mentor of the young dyer’s apprentice and fictional hero of the eight volume 'House of Niccolò' series, set mainly in Scotland and Bruges in the late 1400s.
I was already intrigued by Adornes through my study of Hugo van der Goes' spectacular Trinity Altarpiece, in the National Gallery of Scotland, a painting Dunnett mentions several times and for which Adornes may have been the agent. No in-depth study of this figure of international cultural and political significance exists and I had found only brief references to him during my research. Might the Dunnett archive have something to offer? It certainly did and two years later, I am still working my way through numerous boxes and folders filled with the most comprehensive, detailed, almost obsessive notes, just on Anselm Adornes.
They are written (in her sometime impenetrable script) on bus tickets, laundry and shopping lists, and in small school exercise books before being immaculately transcribed into reams of perfectly typed and ordered notes. This transformation from chaos to clarity is one of the fascinating aspects of her archive, a glimpse into the creative process of a great writer.
Cover of research notebook, Acc.12135/207. Copyright the Estate of Dorothy Dunnett.
For me, the excitement of working in her archive is twofold. Dorothy Dunnett is an unsung historical researcher and scholar par excellence. Not only is she bringing to light new information on all aspects of Anselm Adornes, but she is also revealing so much of herself, her fascinations and her rather idiosyncratic methodology. Dunnett’s characters are multi-faceted, deep, filled with flaws and emotions and complicated back stories, they have hordes of relations, lovers, friends, enemies, they have unique voices which we hear as we read, we think we know them and then we are surprised by a twist of fate or a lapse of judgement. Each person, real or imagined, is constructed little by little, from Dunnett's impeccable and exhaustive historical research which begins with the full context of what was going on in the world during the period. And I mean the world.
In Anselm's archive alone there is a timeline which sets out all the key events, not just in Europe, but India, Japan, Russia, Africa. As so many in her books are historical figures, she traces their families, their involvement in court life or merchant culture, who knew whom, going back generations before the novels begin so that she has their full back story and can credibly and consistently weave them into her plots. To do this, she devoured so many reference books, scholarly articles and journals, and consulted obscure archives all over Europe. The resulting notes and copies of key documents are now to be found in these precious boxes in this still little-known archive, a veritable treasure trove for researchers.
What is clear is that Dunnett researched so extensively because she was wholly taken over by her creations; she wanted to know everything about them and then she brought them fully to life. In the archive we have material on clothing, food, poetry in many languages, and music. From this the characters develop. The almost obsessive attention to detail, the repetitions and overlaps, can make sifting through the reams of papers overwhelming, even frustrating, but time and again wholly new information emerges, and her scholarship shines through and more than repays the effort.
Close-up of Dorothy Dunnett's handwritten Adornes family tree, Acc.12135/209. Copyright the Estate of Dorothy Dunnett.
With regard to Anselm Adornes, her construction of his vast family tree, hand-written, is a work of art. The archive contains information on all his relations going back to the 1200s. From his Genoese roots, his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to surprise forays into England, as well as copies of primary source documents in Latin, Flemish and French (Dunnett was also well versed in several languages) detailing his importance to the mercantile success of Scotland and Bruges during his time as trade envoy for James III of Scotland and counsellor to Charles the Bold of Burgundy. This might sound a little dry, but it is tempered by her notes on Adornes' appearance, which she was rather taken with and from which she teased out his emotions, values and modes of behaviour.
An endearing Dorothy Dunnett trait, which all researchers will empathise with, is how easy it is to become completely distracted by something other than your main topic. A perfect example is Dunnett's random but magical departure into the obscurities of fifteenth-century Scottish merchant culture. Anselm Adornes and Niccolò were merchants, so there is some justification, but Dunnett had no need to explore the family and business networks of scores of minor Edinburgh traders. However, for me, this is pure gold, and she opens avenues for much-needed work on the very parts of society that are rarely studied. All this results from her research into just one character and I am sure that the many other boxes and files in her archive will yield similarly exciting original material for those following in her footsteps.
To date the Dorothy Dunnett archive has received little attention other than from the Dorothy Dunnett Society, but gradually their members (I am one) are spreading the word and making academics and others aware of this rich, almost untapped seam of erudition. I am so grateful to Dunnett and her family for leaving it to the National Library of Scotland, and to them for making it available to anyone with a reader’s card and a serious desire to learn.
Acc. 12135/207–209