British Library acquires Ronald Blythe archive, author of Akenfield

One hundred years of a unique literary record of rural life will be made available after the British Library acquired the archive of Ronald Blythe. Blythe, the author of Akenfield, a globally bestselling account of a Suffolk village, lived and wrote in East Anglia until his death in 2023 at the age of 100.

His papers were found immaculately ordered — “a million words or more, in neat writing, in humble school workbooks and on index cards” — and curators estimate it will take a year to fully catalogue the archive and better understand the material it contains. “He was so orderly,” said Ian Collins, Blythe’s biographer and literary executor.

“When people say ‘archive’ it’s usually another word for ‘muddle’ but with Ronnie you can tell it’s the product of an amazing, self-trained mind.” The archive details Blythe’s background and methods: he was born in poverty as a Suffolk labourer’s son, never went to school or university but taught himself and published more than 40 books spanning social history, fiction, poetry, nature writing and essays.

Papers reveal the depth of research behind Akenfield — letters to the Ministry of Agriculture, index cards showing interviews with hundreds of people from otter hunters to commuters, and notebooks in which interviews were often written up immediately afterwards from memory, according to Collins.

Key Topics

Culture, Ronald Blythe, Akenfield, British Library, Suffolk, Ian Collins