Writing women back in: Rethinking historical erasure in the story of the Ashmolean

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My practice-based research for the Creative and Critical Writing PhD programme at UEA will be a project in two parts. The creative element will consist of a novel, The Ark, based on the true story of the creation of the Ashmolean museum at Oxford in the late seventeenth century. The novel will be told from the perspective of a woman, Hester Tradescant, who drowned herself following her family's loss of the founding collection to Elias Ashmole, but who has so far been obscured from the museum's official narrative. The critical essay will explore the significance of restoring a hidden voice to the history of a well-established institution, suggesting it has the potential to disrupt our understanding of the historical record. Can it be authoritative if it does not represent the varied voices and experiences that constitute it? And what does this mean for public institutions - museums, universities - who in significant ways are in charge of communicating the past to the general public? I will suggest that writing such accounts is an important act in creating a new, inclusive historical record, demonstrating how multi-faceted influences produce human actions and decisions.