Day 13: British Library

Due to a paper due this morning at 10 I was rather sleepy and preoccupied.  However I did make time to go to the British Library with our London Wizard Jane and I am so glad that I did!  I saw some of the coolest stuff that nobody but an English nerd could really appreciate.  Behold:

 Jane Austen's writing desk.  Bad picture but its the thought that counts.

A published poem by Oscar Wilde written during his period in prison

This is the nerd inside me who spent five years playing in an orchestra.  One night George Frideric Handel couldn't sleep and began composition of Messiah.  It is one of the most famous orchestral pieces in the world and he completed it in 24 days.  Big whoop, writes a song in nearly a month right?  No, a composition like that is writing every part for every instrument in the orchestra: violins 1, 2, and , viola, cello, base and making them mesh properly.  The score is 259 pages!
I saw the book Alice's Adventures Underground that Lewis Carrol presented to Alice Liddel as a gift, a painting by Tolkein of the Hobbiton, an early printing of Geofrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, the manuscripts of The Adventure of the Retired Colonel (Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dicken's Our Mutual Friend, Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,  and Elliot's The Wasteland!!!  And all sorts of early prints.  The all time winner though was William Blake's notebook with THE Tyger, tyger scribbled kind of to the side of the page and CROSSED OUT!  Its encouraging.  Even Blake thought his work was rubbish.  In case anyone is wondering Tyger, Tyger may very well be my favorite poem.  It was unreal to be so close to history.
Oh, I almost forgot!  I also got to see first draft pages of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.  It was from book 1, the part where Harry is trying to find platform 9 3/4.  Unreal!