Helena Bonham Carter to lead London Library
The actor Helena Bonham Carter's been elected as the first woman president of the London Library, succeeding Tim Rice at the end of his five-year term.
“The Library is truly a place like no other, inspiring and supporting writers for over 180 years, many of whom have in some way informed my own career and those of actors everywhere” she said. “The Library’s unique resources, history and membership help to connect the literary greats of the past with those of the future, and I am proud to support this incredible and vital establishment.”
The London Library is revered as one of the UK’s greatest literary institutions whose members and borrowers have included Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Bram Stoker, Rebecca West, Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier and H G Wells, and currently A S Byatt, Sarah Waters and Tom Stoppard.
Bonham Carter (picture credit Sane Seven) has been associated with the work of many other writer members of the library. Early in her career she played playing Lucy Honeychurch in the film adaptation of the novel A Room with a View by former library vice president E.M. Forster. Later she played Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (2012) by Charles Dickens a founding member; and recently Eudoria Holmes in the Enola Holmes films based on characters created by library member Arthur Conan Doyle.
The London Library was founded in 1841, before the time of lending libraries, after a campaign by the historian Thomas Carlyle, frustrated by being unable to borrow books in London, who took a year to gather funds from 382 founding members, who included William Gladstone, Lord John Russell and John Stuart Mill.
Their backing enabled the library to amass a starting collection of 2,000 books, handpicked by Gladstone, Mill and the exiled Italian revolutionary and hero of the Risorgimento Giuseppe Mazzini. Prince Albert donated £50, a number of books and became the Library’s first patron.
The library initially rented cheap premises in 45 Pall Mall (above a former Georgian gambling den) before moving to its more familiar location in St James’s Square five years later. The library now holds over a million books nearly all of which can be borrowed. Bonham Carter said she was keen to push forward with the library's Emerging Writers Programme, its schools programme and support for members unable to afford the annual fee. London Library members currently publish abound 700 books a year as well as 460 film scripts, television screenplays and theatre scripts, worth an estimated £21.3m a year to the UK economy.