Dr Richard Espley

Since March 2023, I have provided leadership for the National Art Library, working closely with colleagues across the wider V&A Research Institute and Archives. One of my key areas of focus is finding optimal ways to develop our extraordinary collections and optimising their use, building a vibrant and diverse community of readers. Since completing my PhD on the use of animals in the work of Djuna Barnes, I remain interested in related modernist topics, especially the cultural representation of zoos and taxidermy. After twenty years of working professionally in several remarkable libraries, from the National Maritime Museum to Senate House Library, University of London, I understand that the way such collections are built up, especially how they are augmented or distorted by donors and private collectors, is a fascinating reflection of fundamental cultural forces. I am actively researching issues of provenance and the ways in which libraries control issues of cultural value.

Publications

Meyer Ludowisy, A., Espley, R., and Tiedau, U., ‘The Collective Unconscious of the University of London’s German Studies Collections: Reflecting, Resisting and Remaking Anglo-German Relations on Library Shelves in the Era of the World Wars’, Angermion 15 (2022), pp. 171–206

Pyke, S., “‘It’s too easy to say that institutions are decolonizing’: an interview with Senate House Library’s Richard Espley and Leila Kassir”. English 70, 270 (2021), pp. 264–271

Queer Between the Covers: Towards a history of queer publishing and publishing queer voices (Co-Editor), London, 2021

‘Caroline Playne: the activities and absences of a campaigning author in First World War London’, The London Journal, 41 (2016), pp. 249–265

‘Alec Craig: pioneering opponent and marginalised victim of sexual censorship’, in The Book World: Selling and Distributing Literature, 1900–1940, ed. Nicola Wilson, Leiden, 2016, pp. 134–149