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Morgan Dawn The Professionals Circuit Library and Fanzine Collection

 Collection
Identifier: MsC0439

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Scope and Contents

This collection contains fanzines and individual examples of fan fiction relating to the British crime drama The Professionals. Most of the collection is composed of fan fiction - short stories, novellas and entire novels. A large percentage of this fan fiction is "slash", that is, fiction that concentrates on sexual relationships between two or more characters of the same sex.

Series I in this collection is comprised of materials from The Professionals Circuit Library. The Circuit Library (also known as the Circuit Archive) is a singular form of fannish creative association, that for The Professionals fans actually predates the creation of more typical zines. In a standard fanzine distribution, a fan or group of fans will write, edit and publish a fanzine, and the publication will be printed and made available for sale. With The Professionals fandom, things began much more informally. Fans would place their stories 'on the circuit'. That is, they would write their stories and then produce photocopies; the copies would then be circulated among one another via standard mail. In time, certain fans began collecting copies together into 'circuit libraries'. Interested fans could become members of these informal lending libraries, and would receive titles on request, which they could read and /or photocopy and then return to the library. Although, in time, The Professionals fans began producing zines in the same ways that other fans did, much of the fanfiction remained (and remains) on the circuit.

By the late 1980s, two large circuit libraries were in place: one in Great Britain, and another in the United States. They enjoyed considerable overlap in their contents, but because of geographical distance and the informality of circuit distribution did not duplicate each other. In the early 1990s, as zines started entering the electronic era, fans began working to convert the vast number of paper stories into an electronic format that would encourage and increase access (as well as help preserve the much-used paper originals). In 1996, the Circuit Library went online and continues to periodically increase its contents with new stories. The Circuit Library, sprung from humble beginnings, now holds more than 1000 individual stories, which form the backbone of The Professionals creative fandom.

To quote Morgan Dawn, the donor of the collection, "the circuit library in the Professionals fandom is a unique tradition of women writing and sharing fan fiction (often anonymously) without going through the editorial and fanzine publication process. In many ways, it is the precursor to the fan fiction on the Internet where people would read a story, photo-copy it and send it on to someone else, and then write a response story, copy that and mail it on in an endless flow...and because The Professionals was a UK show, you have the unique situation where this communication was crossing both cultural and geographic barriers."

Learn more about the Circuit Library (Circuit Archive) and its contents at http://fanlore.org/wiki/Circuit.

*Note: The materials in Series I are maintained in the same assemblage and order in which Morgan Dawn kept them. Stories from a particular author (or group of authors) or those comprising a particular series were collected in binders by Dawn; each binder was given an informal title which has been retained here. Individual stories for each binder (now each folder) are listed in italics under the general title of each story collection. Other stories, not tied to a particular collection, were individually bound (now individually foldered).

In addition, Series I contains several paper indexes to the various Circuit Library stories. There are also two CD-ROMs on which are stored (arranged in various fashions - i.e. alphabetically by title, author, genre, etc.) electronic versions of the CL's contents. The "Slash Fanfiction Archive 2010", in addition, contains a large variety of supplemental The Professionals reference documents, including episode transcripts, scripts, lists of episode titles and writers, fan-authored articles on the show, and scanned photographs and sound files.

Series II consists of more typical fanzines, although many are photocopies of the originals (suggesting that at least some of them existed originally on the circuit). A few are multimedia anthologies, containing stories that chronicle other media universes as well as The Professionals.

Dates

  • Creation: 1982-2010

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright restrictions may apply; please consult Special Collections staff for further information.

Biographical / Historical

Biographical

Morgan Dawn is a long-time fan who has been reading and writing fan fiction since her early teens. As she says herself, "I was a fan early on, I just didn't know it. Writing my own Starsky and Hutch episodes in my school notebooks seemed so very natural. Plotting out complicated adventures for Capt Kirk and Mr Spock was a given. My imagination took them (and me) everywhere."

In Dawn's late twenties, she stumbled across media fandom, and along with it slash fan fiction. From there, she began attending conventions, writing fan fiction, and moved into vidding (video editing.). She helped moderate the first slash mailing list and, as electronic fandom evolved from mailing lists to blogging, helped set up and administer several online fan communities. "I don't think there hasn't been an area of my life that fandom has not touched - from creating friendships with women across the world to teaching me technical skills in web design, video editing, and desktop publishing, to allowing me a chance to stretch my wings creatively, I owe it all to the women who first thought that there was more to Capt Kirk and Mr Spock than just two guys on a spaceship."

While the majority of the items in this collection are items that Dawn actively sought out and acquired, many were deposited with her by other fans. Dawn pays tribute to these fans by commenting "I owe my collection to the many women who were happy to have me hold their zines and fan fiction until I could find them a forever home."

Historical

The Professionals was a British-made crime drama broadcast by ITV from 1977-1983. The show chronicled the operations of the fictional government agency CI5 [Criminal Intelligence 5], which was tasked with law enforcement duties beyond the purview of the regular police, but which did not necessarily come under the authority of either the British military or MI-5 (the domestic security service). CI5 agents would be granted flexibility in their operations, allowing for frequent use of violence and other extralegal, unconventional activities.

The show focused on the adventures of two CI5 operatives: William Bodie (played by Lewis Collins) and Ray Doyle (Martin Shaw). Bodie and Doyle, in the tradition of cop shows, are temperamental opposites brought together in an unlikely partnership. Bodie is a former SAS paratrooper- tough, hard and ruthless, more willing than Doyle to bend the law and adopt the methods of the criminals he hunts. Doyle, on the other hand, is a former police detective, more open-minded and liberal than his partner but at the same time more impulsive. The two are supervised by CI5 director George Cowley (Gordon Jackson).

In the course of the show, Bodie and Doyle faced a number of different enemies, reflecting the flexible nature of CI5's mandate: episodes might involve spies, drug dealers, terrorists, or various other adversaries. The series is also marked by the contentious friendship between Bodie and Doyle, which attracted many fans to the show and had a major impact on the creation and development of Professionals fan fiction. It is this relationship that led to The Professionalsbecoming the first fandom that was founded specifically as slash-based.

While popular enough during its initial run, the series was criticized by some for what was seen as excessive violence, as well as for occasional usage of sexist and racist terms. The Professionalsended production in 1981, although episodes continued to be broadcast through 1983. An attempt in 1999 to update the show with a new series, CI5: The New Professionals, lasted a mere 13 episodes.

Extent

7.50 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

Collection of fanzines and items of fan fiction relating to the British crime drama The Professionals, including the print and digital contents of the fan-assembled 'Circuit Library'.

Method of Acquisition

This collection was donated by Morgan Dawn, in cooperation with the Organization for Transformative Works, in September-October 2010. It was processed in November-December 2010. It is added to continuously.

Related Materials

DAWN, MORGAN. Morgan Dawn Fanzine and Fanvid Collection, 1976-2010. 13.5 ft. Collection of fanzines and fanvids (fan-created montages of video clips from assorted media fandoms set to music) relating to numerous media fandoms, assembled by long-time fan writer and vidder Dawn. MsC403.

For other fannish collections, many of which contain materials relating to The Professionals, type “classification_uris: Fandom-Related Collections” in the search term bar.

Title
Morgan Dawn The Professionals Circuit Library and Fanzine Collection MSC0439
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
eng

Repository Details

Part of the University of Iowa Special Collections Repository

Contact:
Special Collections Department
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City IA 52242 IaU
319-335-5921
319-335-5900 (Fax)