Published: Thursday, 4th June, 2009 8:00am

Authors' letters from the past brought to life online

by Annabel Williams

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HUNDREDS of thousands of pages of personal letters and documents from British literary figures, including letters from Oscar Wilde as he languished in Reading Gaol, went online this week for the world to see.

Some 600,000 hand-written pages have been scanned and can be accessed from cyberspace, a previously impossible feat as they were held in different libraries across the world.

Among them are letters from the Irish playwright, who was given two years" hard labour after a libel action he brought against the Marquis of Queensberry led to an indecency conviction.

Wilde wrote to a friend from his cell: 'I admit I look forward with horror to the prospect of another winter in prison: there is something terrible in it: one has to get up long before day break and in the dark cold cell begin one"s work by the flaming gas jet...

'And days often go without one being once out in the open air.'

There are also documents from Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Robbie Burns and early drafts of some of Charles Dickens" work.

The collection is called the British Literary Manuscripts Online c1660-1900, launched on Tuesday by Gale Cengage Learning, an e-research and educational publishing firm.

It is available from subscribing schools, colleges and libraries, and eventually through a pay-per-view service.

See www.gale.cengage.co.uk/manuscripts/