House of Stories: Tales from the Chatsworth Library (until 4 October) is a new exhibition in the house, spotlighting some of the most interesting and unusual books preserved in the Devonshire Collections at Chatsworth by Chatsworth House Trust.

Accompanied by archival material, such as letters, sketches and manuscripts, the exhibition tells new stories connected with famous authors, Devonshire family members, and the history and art of books and publishing.

The shelves of the Chatsworth Library and Ante-Library hold 17,000 volumes, and there are a further 40,000 books in the Collections. How, then, do you begin to select which titles and authors should be featured in an exhibition?

In this short film, the curatorial team reveal how they approached the selection process.

Video transcript

"You kind of have to pinch yourself to think, wow, I'm actually looking at his own handwriting and an original illustration."
Louise Clarke, Assistant Archivist and Librarian, on letters to the 6th Duke from William Thackeray. 

We know there's an appetite for literature amongst our visitors, but people are also fascinated by the library as a space. It's a space on the visitor route that you can look into but not actually go into, so this exhibition is an opportunity for us to bring some of the contents of the library out onto the visitor route. 

Some objects obviously announce themselves, and we know that we have certain literary treasures, but, aside from those, we have thousands of other amazing literary items to choose from. So it was a case, really, of narrowing them down in terms of both their significance and appeal, but also the kind of stories that they could tell that were specific to Chatsworth. 

It's quite hard to balance the emotional and the historical significance that these objects bring to us. Some of the first themes that started to emerge were those linked to some of the family members, particularly Duchess Georgina. 

We have handwritten notes, we have novels by her, she was a prolific writer, which was actually amazing for this story. 

We had to really step back and look at the narratives and the threads that were running through all those objects. The stories don't exist in isolation. Every time we think about an object, we think about how it connects to Chatsworth and to the family here. 

The house is the central muse, the central core of every story that we tell at Chatsworth. Visitors come here to learn about our history, to learn about the Collections, to learn about the objects. And the starting place for all of our curatorial storytelling is really the house. 

We have an incredible collection to draw upon, so although this is an exhibition around storytelling and literature, we will use other elements of the collection to really emphasise and build a story around an object. 

We will have, for instance, Georgina's writing desk, so it really gives you that sense of her sitting, creating these works. 

Books and archival objects are really powerful, I think everyone can relate to them, and they tell really interesting stories, but visually they're quite quiet. 

We will display them in cases, so they're often flat, and it's quite easy for them to recede into the background. So, what we were trying to do with this project is really work in collaboration with Fran (Baker, Head of Archives and Library), and the archives and library team, to pick objects that spoke to the books and those stories, to add depth of texture and colour. 

We really want visitors to appreciate the exhibition as a holistic whole, as it's been designed. When it goes out to the public, it really should just look like the view of one person's mind, but I think what we're hoping to highlight is just how many people and how many collaborations and discussions go into pulling something like this together. 

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