This month, Claire and Marjorie examine the letters of Henrietta Liston, a British botanist, world traveller and wife of diplomat Robert Liston. Liston documented her travels with meticulous detail in her journals, letters and personal documents which form part of the Liston archive held at the National Library of Scotland (NLS).
Thanks to the NLS, Marjorie has spent time delving into the archive, including exploring her writing about her time in Turkey during the Ottoman Empire and in North America in its infancy as a country, all through the eyes of a wry, learned woman.
The Liston Papers are available to explore at the National Library of Scotland. Find out more: https://digital.nls.uk/travels-of-henrietta-liston/
Our thanks to National Library of Scotland exhibit curators, Dora Petherbridge and Patrick Hart for their generosity and assistance.
Claire and Marjorie also discuss Heather Yeung's poem, Fable, written in response to her examination of the Liston Archives. A teacher in the School of Humanities at the University of Dundee, Yeung's poetry often examines ecology and culture, making Liston, with her extensive travel and her love of botany, the perfect figure to draw inspiration.
Join us as we read 'Plague, Princes and Political Embarras: a Constantinople Letter from Henrietta Liston' and 'Fable', a poem by Heather Yeung.
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Open Book Unbound
Episode 55 – 3 July 2023
Hosts: Claire Urquhart and Marjorie Lotfi
Producer: Colin Fraser
Cover Image: Henrietta Marchant Liston (1800), painted by Gilbert Stuart, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
