Over one hundred of Roy Fisher’s workbooks and notebooks dating back to the 1950s and written in his highly legible hand. Ordered by date, they contain jottings of poems, thoughts, ideas, notes, and dreams.

Brief listing:

Box 20: 1950-1959

Box 21: 1959-1963. Includes an A5 workbook planning Citizen, and a larger workbook, the first half of which contains the whole work written out in ink, with notations and amendments (dated November 1959 on front flyleaf). The second half of this notebook contains The Album of Year 62 (dated 1964). Also included are two more A5 workbooks titled 'Sequence' and 'Collection'.

Box 22: 1964-1974

Box 23: 1974-1983

Box 24: 1983-1991, 2000-2004, plus an unnumbered workbook dated 2008. A workbook dated 1985 contains 'Odes, Notes and Cartoons', and 'Materials. From Furnace notebook'. Two further workbooks dedicated to A Furnace: the first, dated 1983 is a plan of the work, the second dated 1985, 1994, 2000 is the work in manuscript.

Box 25: smaller pocket notebooks, 1957-1993, numbered P1-P22 (no P series between 1975 and 1993).

Box 26, Misc.1: three larger notebooks dated 1979, 1984, and 2006; two 16mo pocket notebooks; two undated 'Black n' Reds'; three pocket-sized books which may have been part of an early P sequence (c1956-1957); two numbered B4, B6; notebook/diary dated 9 May 2006; a notebook with only five pages filled; notebook entitled 'Commissions' (1991-1995) including ideas about Anansi; a diary/notebook dated 20 March 2004-30 April 2006; William Morris cover design notebook, 1991-1999; Bordesley College exercise book c1961.

Box 27, Misc. 2: hard-back notebooks with handwritten titles, thus: 'Spent Images and Sketches'; 'Diversions'; 'On the Amygdala' (only one page written on); 'Called Forward'; 'Free Papers'; [untitled], 1974 (one page filled); 'Part-used Materials' (1991-1999); 'Tittivulary'; 'Sequence Sketch'; [untitled] (1963-1966); four spiralbound WHSmith notebooks; diary for 1996; a copy of anvil: an Anthology from the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College (1979) with a letter from W. Cooke (of the College) to Martin Dodsworth laid in asking for a review.