How to Use
“The memories that go to make up or construct the museum of the imagination possess the rather frightening ability to break out of their glass cases and run riot throughout the intellectual corridors”
George Barker
I’ve published this material on a website rather than in a book because this is not a linear story and because I hope the readers will be active. I’ve tried to make the content interesting and entertaining for the non-specialist reader, and provide guidance for anyone wanting to go further.
Be more than a passive reader
I hope you enjoy reading, but one of the joys of this research has been sharing with others. Many of you will know far more than me about a place or writer. Please post comments, corrections or contributions against posts or contact me at authentic@beggarsbush.org.uk
Placenames
All the Beggars Bush sites I have found are listed in the Gazetteer – more than 120 so far. This includes the location, county/country, OS map reference, and the date of the first record of the name. You can search the Gazetteer for any site that interests you.
See the Links for access to historic maps. You can see photographs of what some of these locations look like now at:-
http://www.geograph.org.uk/
Writers
There is a Chronology of writers (and cartographers) who have used the phrase Beggars Bush which you can search. This includes the writer, the work and the date.
For each writer there is a page giving the use of the phrase, the work it was used in, analysis of the use, some material about writer, sources and further reading.
Posts have tags to link them to other related posts, which you can follow. You can search for all related posts by tag or by text string.
Speculations
This section includes related material from other places, wider analysis and explanations of the relationship between sites, maps. It also includes other related material arising from this research – most presently seem dead ends but you may know more.
Sources
This is not an academic work so I have not given full references. Where possible I’ve given accessible sources for original works, and suggestions for further reading. If you know of better sources let me know.
Since this site was created in 2007 there has been a huge growth in the amount of original source material available online, much of it reliable, though sadly many of the pioneering sources suffered from poor scanning and OCR. Also most of the best sources require an academic or paid-for subscription, e.g. EEBO, JSTOR and the British Newspaper Archive. If you don’t have access try your local library service.