Portico is Manchester's best kept secret
The Portico Dome
NOW that the dusty bespectacled librarians of the past have turned into tech-savvy ‘knowledge managers’, card-indexing has been pushed out by online catalogues and you’re more likely to find a coffee chain than a reading room in your local library, stepping into the Portico Library and Gallery is like entering another world.
Opened in 1806 as a library and newsroom, The Portico still occupies its original neo-classical, grade II listed building on Charlotte Street.
It houses a floor-to-ceiling collection of mainly 19th Century leather-bound manuscripts including fiction, natural science and a 'Polite Literature' section beneath an impressive Georgian glass-domed roof.
‘The collection was put together by the men who founded the library and it reflects their habits and interests’ explains librarian Emma Marigliano.
Cultural hub
It is here that Peter Mark Roget began to compile his thesaurus and early members included the scientist John Dalton and William Gaskell, Portico chairman and husband of 19th century novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.
Elizabeth was a frequent user of the library and was accompanied on occasion by her friend Charlotte Brontë.
With around 350 members, the Portico continues to serve as a hub of cultural activity and holds art exhibitions for local and national artists as well as a program of public events throughout the year including poetry and book groups, drama performances and lectures.
Harmonising tradition
The library remains true to the concerns of its founders but also continues to add to its contemporary collections, such as a great selection of North West fiction, and books on local history and the history of the book.
‘We’re not a cobwebbed museum’ says Emma ‘We’re about harmonising tradition with progress. I don’t believe it has to be one or the other.’
The Portico Prize
The Portico Prize was founded in 1985 to celebrate the writing of the region, as an antidote to the range of London-centric literature prizes.
In previous years, entries were required to be set in the North West only, but this year it was decided to widen the field, resulting in the largest number of entries to date, and an impressive and eclectic shortlist.
‘Publishers weren’t really too sure where the North West was’ explains Emma ‘We were getting stuff from Staffordshire and the other side of the Pennines so we decided to leave it to the writers to decide where the North is. Although we do draw the line at Birmingham.’
Shortlist
This year the shortlist for the £4000 prize for non-fiction includes Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey, Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie and the graphic novel Alice in Sunderland by Brian Talbot.
The shortlist for the £4000 prize for fiction includes David Peace’s The Damned United, about notorious football manager Brian Clough, Once Upon a Time in England by Helen Walsh, who received the prestigious Betty Trask Prize for her first novel and Ross Raisin’s debut novel God’s Own Country.
The Portico Library is open daily from 9.30am until 4.30pm. The winner of the Portico Prize will be announced on Thursday 13 November at an awards dinner held in the Town Hall. For more information follow the link to the right of this article
Published: Wed, 19 November, 2008
Comment on this article
You need to be logged in to comment. Login | Register