The Harkives: Cataloguing the Coherence and Complexity of Margaret Harkness/John Law

Abstract

Following our 2014 symposium ‘In Harkness’ London’, which brought together scholars of the still understudied author, activist, and traveller Margaret Harkness (1854–1923), pseud. John Law, we embarked on a project to increase knowledge of Harkness by making copies of resources by and about her available online. The resulting repository, the Harkives, went live in 2015 and we have since updated it on a monthly basis with disparate materials reflecting Harkness’s long career, including both published work and archival material. This article considers the aims of our project and explores some of the challenges we have encountered in selecting and cataloguing documents reflecting the diverse nature of her interests and occupations. It is divided into two sections: ‘Identifying Harkness’ and ‘Archiving Harkness’. The initial section confronts the question of how to reconstruct Harkness’s identity in view of her deliberately distinct public and private personas; the subsequent section addresses the difficulties involved in assembling an archive that is coherent but recognizes the complexity of her identity and her work over time. Rather than seek to reconstruct or distinguish between Margaret Harkness and her pseudonymous identity John Law, the Harkives makes use of an open access digital resource to present a wide range of evidence reflecting the broad scope of Harkness’s career to allow researchers to develop new interpretations of her literary and activist work.