The Kim Stallwood Archive
In 2020, The British Library established the Kim Stallwood Archive with 36 boxes of research materials chronicling the animal rights movement’s development, including my involvement, from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. The boxes included more than 800 files, including 600 organisation files, 150 people files, and 118 subject files.
The files included correspondence, manuscripts, meeting notes, publications, and press cuttings. There were also appointment diaries and address books from the 1970s to the 1990s and the born-digital files of two laptops. Some of the most sensitive research materials are embargoed for 25 years.
The Kim Stallwood Archive includes files from Co-ordinating Animal Welfare, the groundbreaking activist organisation that I co-founded with Fay Funnell and Angela Walder, which nurtured the development of grassroots groups, challenged the effectiveness of established national organisations and contributed to the development of an international animal rights movement in its formative stage in the 1970s and 1980s. It also includes correspondence with Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s co-founder. and Jim Mason, author and attorney, from the late 1970s to early 1980s about the challenges to establishing the nascent animal rights movement in the UK and USA, including launching organisations, arranging demonstrations, and publishing magazines.
The Kim Stallwood Archive complements The British Library’s earlier acquisition of the Richard Ryder Archive. In 1970, Richard initiated the word speciesism to mean discrimination against or exploitation of animals by humans based on an assumption of human superiority.
As a long-standing member of the society’s governing council, Richard led the efforts to modernise the RSPCA. The author of many books, including, Victims of Science (1975), a pioneering expose of animal research written by a psychologist.
I am delighted that the British Library is now the permanent home for the Kim Stallwood Archive, where it greatly enhances our growing collections of archives relating to contemporary campaigning and activism.
The Archive is an extremely valuable resource for researchers, students and anyone interested in the history of the animal rights movement, animal welfare and food activism. We are looking forward to beginning work to make the collection available to the public which we hope to do by the end of 2021
Rachel Foss
Head of Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts,
Contemporary British Collections
Topsy The Elephant
A Biography of an Elephant
Kim is writing the biography of Topsy, the female Asian elephant who was electrocuted to death on Coney Island, New York in 1903. The narrative is written from various sources, from fiction to contemporary science, to tell the story of an individual animal’s life and the larger view of the plight of her kind, and animals generally.
The Kim Stallwood Archive
The British Library, London
In 2020 The British Library in London established the Kim Stallwood Archive, an extensive collection of 800 organisation, people, and subject files, including correspondence, manuscripts, meeting notes, and press cuttings chronicling his involvement with the international Animal Rights Movement dating from the mid-1970s onwards as part of their modern history archive.
The Kim Stallwood Collection
Tier im Recht, Switzerland
The Swiss-based animal law foundation, Tier im Recht, acquired the Kim Stallwood Collection in 2021. The publications, audio-visual materials, artefacts, posters, and much more became part of TIR’s extensive and professionally managed library and archive. Kim’s library of more than 2,000 books is scheduled to also go to TIR’s offices in Zurich.
