Author Archives: tavistock_books

The California Gold Rush, Slavery, and the Civil War

California_Gold_Rush

On January 24, 1848, Swiss immigrant John Sutter’s employee James Wilson Marshall found gold at the Sutter Mill. The result was the largest migration in American history, along with bitter debate over the issue of slavery. California would eventually enter the Union as a free state, but not because its delegates thought slavery an abomination. Figures like Hinton R Helper, himself a failed prospector, only exacerbated strained relations between the North and South.

Territory of Untold Value

When the US and Mexico went to war over California in 1846, the region’s population included about 6,500 Californios of Mexican or Spanish descent; 700 mostly American foreigners; and about 150,000 native Americans (whose population had been cut in half since the arrival of Spanish conquistadors). The war

Published pseudonymously, “The Miner’s Ten Commandments” reminds miners to respect the Sabbath–a rule that had fallen out of practice in many a mining town.

was ended in favor of America on February 2, 1848, with the ratification of the Treaty of Guadelupe Hildago. Neither side was aware of Sutter’s discovery, so the incredible value of the territory was not yet completely clear.

Indeed, people as close as San Francisco were quite skeptical until entrepreneur Sam Brannen marched through the city waving around a vial of gold. By the middle of June, San Francisco was a ghost town; most men had gone south to the mines. Military governor Colonel Richard B Mason took a tour of the gold fields shortly thereafter. IN his report, he noted that two miners had found $17,000 in gold in three days at Weber Creek. A team of six miners and fifty Native Americans had mined 273 pounds of gold. Sales at Sam Brannen’s mercantile exceeded $36,000 in May, June, and early July combined. Mason sent the report to Washington, DC with a tin of gold as additional proof. It wouldn’t arrive for months.

Word arrived sooner in places that were accessible by ship from San Francisco. Immigrants immediately began arriving in droves from the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Peru, Chile, China, and Mexico. Europeans followed. When the first accounts of newfound wealth appeared in East Coast newspapers in the summer of 1848, they invited much incredulity. It wasn’t until December 5, 1848, when President James K Polk announced Mason’s report in his State of the Union address, that Easterners began to take the Gold Rush seriously. The exodus began almost immediately. Men headed West in record numbers, hoping to escape the wage labor economy and strike it rich. Women were mostly left at home to raise families, tend farms, and run businesses on their own. Countless families took out loans or spent their life savings in pursuit of their dream.

The Gold Rush Undoes Many a Prospector

By 1849, the non-native population of California had reached almost 100,000. Prospectors soon learned that mining was grueling, dangerous work. It wasn’t uncommon for them to die of disease, accident, or even malnutrition. Hiram Pierce held a funeral for one young man who died of gangrene after accidentally shooting himself in the leg. Despite these conditions, miners continued pouring into California. And how could they resist? In 1849, mined gold was valued at $10 million. The following year, that figure was $41 million. In 1852, $81 million worth of gold was mined in California. (Not everyone was convinced that this westward migration was worth the risk; in 1849 Edgar Allan Poe even undertook a bizarre hoax to dissuade people from going.)

‘Das Goldland Californien’ (1850) includes the sad tale of one German emigrant who lost his fortune in his quest to strike it rich.

Competition grew increasingly fierce, and soon Anglo-American miners were growing territorial. They often resorted to violence, forcing others of different nationalities from their land. As the surface gold disappeared, miners found themselves with no option but to work for larger mining corporations with the technology to mine gold deeper underground. A wage labor economy had again emerged, and after 1852, revenue from gold fell steadily until 1857, when it held at about $45 million per year.

The vast majority of men who went in search of gold failed to strike it rich. One such failed prospector was Hinton Rowan Helper. Born on December 27, 1829 outside Mockville, North Carolina, Helper was apprenticed to a printer. He went to the gold fields in 1850 and returned after only a matter of months. Helper said that after working the same claim for three months, he’d made less than 94 cents Though Helper didn’t find gold, the experience did give him material for Land of Gold: Reality vs Fiction (1855).

Helper’s account was hardly reality; he garbled and fabricated statistics to support his argument. Gary F Kurutz, Director of the Special Collections Branch at the California State Library and author of a descriptive bibliography on the Gold Rush, calls Land of Gold “one of the most famous, oft-quoted, and entertaining books of the Gold Rush.”

California Slavery Divides Congress

Helper also took up another hot-button national issue: slavery. He advocated the expansion of slavery to California, scolding the “meddling abolitionists” who interfered with whites’ ability to exploit blacks to work the mines. Racism ran deep in California, and one would think that Helper was not alone in his pro-slavery sentiment. Such was not the case; the issue was much more complicated. White southerners had first brought slaves to California mines in 1849, but that practice wasn’t popular. However, no laws banned slavery in the early days of the Gold Rush.

After the US won California, a bitter dispute ensued over whether the state should be a free or slave state. There were fifteen states in each category, and California would tip the scales. By September 1849,

1849_Monterey_Convention_Spanish_Edition

Details of the 1849 Monterey convention are among of the most important documents in California history. This is a Spanish translation.

California delegates were tired of waiting. They gathered in Monterey and voted to enter the Union as a free state. This wasn’t because they supported the abolition of slavery. On the contrary, many delegates were miners who hailed from the South. The majority felt that slaves actually had an unfair advantage in mining work because they were more accustomed to heavy labor. Thus, they voted against slavery for their own financial gain.

However, in Washington, DC, the North and South were deadlocked. Debate raged on for six months, and in one instance one senator even pulled a pistol on another. Finally Congress reached the Compromise of 1850: California would enter the Union under the state delegates’ terms, as a free state; New Mexico and Utah would become territories, and the legality of slavery there was undecided; the slave trade was banned in Washington, DC; and the Fugitive Slave Law was strengthened. California would ratify its own version of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1852.

A Racist Abolitionist

By this time, Hinton Helper had moved to New York. The issue of slavery remained at the forefront of US politics, and Helper didn’t help matters when he published The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It in 1857. Helper’s thesis was that slavery impeded the economic development of the South because it helped to concentrate wealth in the landed class. He wrote in defense of non-slave owning Whites, whom he saw as economically disadvantaged, and who comprised about 75% of the white population of the South. But Helper’s publication had unintended consequences; it was adopted as an abolitionist work and helped to get Abraham Lincoln elected in 1860. Some experts even place The Impending Crisis of the South alongside Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in terms of its influence as abolitionist literature.

The Impending Crisis of the South includes about 150 pages of statistics from the 1850 census, which Helper had hoped would illustrate the economic disadvantage of the slave states. These had little influence. But what did stick with readers was Helper’s branding Southern slaveholders as “robbers, thieves, ruffians, and murderers” and his exhortations that slaves should escape from their owners by violence if necessary. The summer after the book was published, New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett gave President Buchanan a copy and warned him that “There is gunpowder enough in that book to blow the Union to the devil.”

A Help for the Republican and Abolitionist Cause

Conflict over slavery again reached a fever pitch, as it had when California entered the Union. Then Republican party leaders moved to print a compendium of The Impending Conflict of the South to distribute in the 1860 presidential campaign. The “Speakership Fight” in the House of Representatives resulted, lasting from December 5, 1859 to February 1, 1860. The battle gave Helper’s book far more national attention than it really deserved, as did the resulting endorsement from the Republican party.

Lincoln won the election, even though he wasn’t necessarily the most popular candidate. For example, California citizens increasingly sympathized with the South as farming overtook gold mining. Yet Lincoln won in California because Democratic votes were divided between Northern candidate Steven Douglas and Southern candidate John Breckenridge, while Republicans were unified in their vote for Lincoln.

In January 1861, the Herald declared that Lincoln’s victory had been due to “this very work of Mr. Helper, and kindred speeches and documents.” Much later, historian James Ford Rhodes would note that the book “proved a potent Republican document, especially in the doubtful states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, where it was easier to arouse sympathy for the degraded white than for the oppressed Negro.” Helper’s screed had had unintended consequences. The author found himself suspect in the South and scorned in the North. He couldn’t find employment, faced public ridicule, and feared physical violence. Helper turned to Abraham Lincoln for a consular appointment, which Lincoln granted. In November 1861, Helper went to Buenos Aires as the consul to Argentina. While there, he married Maria Louisa Rodriguez.

When Helper returned from Argentina, he settled in Asheville, North Carolina. He would later live in New York and St. Louis. He wrote five other books, three of which were extremely racist. By 1890, Helper’s grip on reality had all but evaporated. His wife had gone blind and returned to South America with the couple’s only son. Alone, Helper grew more and more unstable. He committed suicide and was buried in a donated, unmarked grave. The Authors Society of New York paid his funeral expenses.

Hinton Rowan Helper made a mark on history that he never could have predicted. His own history shows how inextricably the events of regional and national history are so often intertwined. Helper’s work proved a malignantly divisive one, exacerbating the conflicts that pushed the nation to the brink of Civil War.

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Richard Morton, Dissenting Minister Turned Legendary Physician

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The history of medicine is rich with fascinating stories and personalities. One of these was Richard Morton, an ousted minister who turned to medicine as a second career. The source of Morton’s medical education remains somewhat mysterious, but he nevertheless managed to distinguish himself in the profession, even rising to be the physician-in-ordinary to the king. Today Morton is remembered primarily for his contribution to the study of phthisis, more commonly known today as pulmonary tuberculosis.

Eight Missing Years of Medical Training?

The son of a minister, Morton was baptized in 1637. As a young man he resolved to follow in his father’s footsteps, and after earning a BA at Oxford took a position as the Vicar of Kinver at Staffordshire. The post was a comfortable one, and Morton would likely have remained in it indefinitely–were it not for the Restoration. A dissenter, Morton could not comply with the requirements of the Act of Uniformity. In 1662 he was ousted from his living and forbidden from reentering the ministry, along with 2,000 other ministers would could not give “unfeigned consent and assent” to everything contained in the Prayer Book.

For the next eight years, there is no record of Morton’s activities. Scholars guess that he went to Holland to study at the University of Leyden, which was then the most famous medical university in Europe. Morton’s expertise in phthisis would suggest that he studied under Silvius, the leading medical professor at the University of Leyden. And his subsequent patronage from Prince William of Orange also suggests a strong connection to the Netherlands.

The fact that there are no records of Morton’s medical training have led some experts to postulate that Morton was entirely self-taught. Indeed many clergymen of the era taught themselves medicine to serve their congregants. Meanwhile, Morton also mentions, “My dear Father, who was himself a very skilful Physician.” It’s possible that Morton first discovered medicine through the books in his father’s library and, being interested in the subject, turned to medicine when the ministry was no longer an option. But his advanced knowledge of anatomy simply could not have been acquired in books.

Wherever Morton got his training, he had no trouble establishing a practice in London in 1670. Here, he had some help from Prince William of Orange, who nominated him for a medical degree from Oxford. William attended Morton’s nomination ceremony while visiting England to collect on a debt owed by Charles II. By 1670, Morton had established his own practice in London. Only eight years later, Morton was elected a Fellow in the Royal College of Physicians.

In 1686, Morton’s politics again got him into a bit of trouble: his was one of four names omitted from the list of renewals to the College charter. James II thought that Morton might be politically unreliable because he’d accepted patronage from William of Orange. Morton was barred from participating in College activities and debates for the next three years. But with the accession of William and Mary in 1689, Morton was restored to the Fellowship and eventually rose to the rank of physician-in-ordinary to the king.

A Landmark Publication in Medical History

But it’s for his Phthisiologica that Morton is remembered in the history of medicine. The book, dedicated to William of Orange, was perhaps inspired by William’s own respiratory problems. When the book was first published in London in 1689, it was presented in Latin. The first English edition appeared in 1694, with at least two subsequent editions in 1719 and 1720. Multiple continental editions followed in Frankfurt (1690); Ulm (1714); and Helmstad (1780). Thus Phthisiologica maintained prominence for about a century.

Morton was certainly not the first to address phthisis, which at the time was defined rather broadly as any wasting disease (and is now defined only as pulmonary tuberculosis, mainly because our powers of differential diagnosis are superior). In seventeenth-century England, tuberculosis always loomed a specter. John Locke addressed the illness in De Phthysi (1685) and estimated that the ailment caused about 20% of the deaths in England.

Before Locke, Christopher Bennett (1617-1655) had explored phthisis, though his explanations for the disease were hardly based on facts. Bennett suffered from phthisis himself and argued that this fact made him the authority on the condition. But many of his statements were anecdotal, and he frequently ignored evidence that contradicted his claims. Next was Thomas Willis (1617-1675). Willis was appointed Sedlian Professor of Natural Philosophy at Oxford in June 1660. His Practice of Physick, published posthumously, included an entire chapter on phthisis. And Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689) illustrates how little seventeenth-century physicians really knew. He enthusiastically advocated horseback riding as a treatment for phthisis.

What set Morton apart from his predecessors and contemporaries, at least in terms of diagnostic observation, is that Morton presented evidence that lungs affected by phthisis would often have both ulcers and tubercles. He saw these tubercles as glandular parts that were ordinarily too small to be detected with the naked eye, and which grew inflamed with infection. Such an observation could be made only through post-mortem observation of patients who had died of phthisis. The idea of desecrating a body in such a way was hardly popular at the time. It was common practice in Europe–and later in the United States–to threaten dissection as punishment for wrongdoing, as a punishment even worse than death.

Another fascinating aspect of Phthisiologia is that it contains virtually no references to other medical texts. Though Morton incorporates a few aphorisms of Hippocrates, he doesn’t allude to any pre-existing or contemporary medical theory. It’s clear that his conclusions are all drawn from his own firsthand observations and experiences. Morton’s case studies demonstrate that he was an able physician, especially given the lack of medical tools and knowledge available at the time. His work even predates Auenbrugger’s discovery of percussion as a diagnostic tool. Thus Morton worked only with his own power of clinical observation and deduction, along with the occasional palpation.

Richard Morton’s Phthisiologia is truly a seminal work in the histories of science and medical literature. Though Morton obscured the antecedents of his medical knowledge, he left behind a work that perfectly captures both his own aptitude as a physician and the contemporary approach to medical practice.

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Famous Figures in Culinary History: Hannah Glasse, Susannah Carter, and Amelia Simmons

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At first, cookbooks were largely written by men. Their intended audience were the individuals who ran restaurants and the households of the wealthy. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that this trend began to shift. Perhaps the most notable cookbook of the century is Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery (1747), which Glasse wrote for “the lower sort,” that is, domestic servants. Unlike her predecessors, Glasse used a conversational tone and an expository approach that appealed to an incredibly broad audience.

Glasse could not claim all the delicious recipes in The Art of Cookery as her own; she had borrowed thoroughly from other cookbooks. Meanwhile, her own book would be pirated and plagiarized plenty of times. Even during her lifetime, Glasse discovered “new editions” of her book that contained sections she had not even written! Her publishers were to blame for some of that; they wanted to update the book to fit with changing tastes. The tactic worked; The Art of Cookery would become the definitive English cookbook for the remainder of the century, and now the various editions an incredibly thorough representation of the foodways of eighteenth-century Britain.

Glasse is undoubtedly a major figure in culinary history, but it was a lesser known personage whose cookbook would successfully “cross the pond” from Britain to the New World. Susannah Carter, author of The Frugal Housewife (c 1765) takes that honor. Carters work was significant because it was overtly aimed at housewives, rather than servants and chefs, and because it was one of the earliest printed American cookbooks–and certainly the most successful.

Unfortunately we know little about Carter, save that she hailed from Clerkenwell, in London. We know much more about the publishing history of The Frugal Housewife, which is interesting unto itself. In London, the book was published by Francis Newbery (the nephew of John Newbery) in the printing enclave near St. Paul’s Cathedral. The same year, the book appeared in Dublin. The Frugal Housewife didn’t make its way to the colonies until 1772. It was published by Benjamin Edes and John Gil and illustrated with prints by Paul Revere. Edes and Gil were known for publishing the works of Revolutionary writers, and they played a significant role in instigating the Boston Tea Party.

As colonial booksellers, Edes and Gil had little bargaining power with British publishers. They desperately needed British titles to stay in business, and they couldn’t offer many interesting colonial works in return. Thus British booksellers would often force their colonial counterparts to buy less desirable works–such as a cookbook–in order to acquire more literary titles.

Cookbooks were a burgeoning field at the time, so Newbery may not have predicted that colonial publication of The Frugal Housewife would be profitable. Thus it’s quite possible that Newbery essentially forced the American publication of The Frugal Housewife, unwittingly created something of an American cookery phenomenon.

One of the earliest cookbooks printed in America, The Frugal Housewife made no mention of colonial cooking or American ingredients, and it presumed access to cooking tools and technologies that were all but impossible to acquire in the colonies. Despite these obvious shortcomings in the colonial market, The Frugal Housewife sold quite well. The book remained in print in 1803. That year, an appendix was added that contained American recipes like Indian pudding, buckwheat cakes, and pumpkin pie.

Carter certainly did not write these; it appears that they were borrowed from a Swedish cookbook called Rural Oeconomy. (The exact same appendix showed up in the 1805 edition of Glasse’s The Art of Cookery! It’s likely that publishers decided this supplement would make both cookbooks more appealing to American audiences.) In 1832, Lydia Marie Child republished the cookbook as The American Frugal Housewife, and it would be reprinted multiple times over the next two decades.

Thanks to Carter, a number of traditional English dishes made their way into American foodways. But she didn’t do it on her own; she remains in debt to Amelia Simmons, who wrote the first truly American cookbook, American Cookery, in 1796. Simmons was heavily influenced by Carter and borrowed entire passages verbatim from The Frugal Housewife.

The interplay of culinary texts from Glasse, Carter, and Simmons superbly illustrates the rich history–and interaction–of global foodways. Each of these women’s cookbooks significantly impacted colonial cookery.

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Andersen’s Visit with Dickens Less than a Fairy Tale

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Legendary children’s author Hans Christian Andersen was born on April 2, 1805. Though the Danish author published work in a number of genres, he’s best remembered for his fairy tales. Stories like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “The Nightingale” are beloved by readers of all ages, all over the world. Thanks to Andersen’s authorial reputation, he could rely on wealthy patrons to support him. He lived his life as a permanent house guest. Experienced visitor though he was, Andersen still managed to ruin his relationship with Charles Dickens during an extended stay at Gads Hill.

Andersen published his first book, The Improvisatore, in 1835. An autobiographical novel, the book met with immediate acclaim when it was translated into English and published in the UK. Soon after, audiences had discovered–and delighted in–Andersen’s fairy tales. Between 1845 and 1847, at least five anthologies of Andersen’s stories had been published in English. Andersen’s London publisher, Richard Bentley, decided to capitalize with a publicity tour. In 1847, Andersen made his first visit to England.

By that year, Charles Dickens was already a literary titan. Bentley thought that a meeting between Andersen and Dickens could be advantageous for Andersen’s reputation, so he arranged it. Countess Blessington, a close friend of Lord Byron and a generous patron of the arts, provided the perfect opportunity. The countess was a bit of a scandalous figure; she openly lived with her stepdaughter’s husband, none other than Count d’Orsay, the famed soldier, painter, and fashion icon. There were also rumors about the true nature of Countess Blessington’s all-night parties.

But the party at which Dickens and Andersen met was much more mundane. Andersen had fallen in love with Dickens’ work when he read Oliver Twist and considered Dickens “the greatest writer of our time.” The two immediately hit it off and resolved to see each other again before Andersen left England. But due to his busy tour schedule, that proved nearly impossible. At one point, Dickens visited Andersen’s lodging, and finding the author away, left twelve presentation copies of his books for Andersen. (Some of these books remain unaccounted for.) Andersen finally visited Dickens’ home on his last night in England. By all accounts, the visit was quite enjoyable. Dickens and Andersen began a long, if sporadic, correspondence, and Dickens invited Andersen to visit on more than one occasion.

Gads Hill

Andersen finally took Dickens up on his offer in 1857. By that time, Andersen had grown accustomed to staying in grand homes with dozens of bedrooms. It wasn’t quite the same at Gads Hill, where Dickens had just moved his family. At the time, eight or nine of Dickens’ ten children were still living at home, and his marriage was falling apart. Though Dickens was wealthy by the standards of the era, his lifestyle was still squarely middle class (largely because he had so many progeny to support).

Andersen had promised Dickens, “I shall not inconvenience you much,” but he stayed five weeks instead of the agreed-upon two. He also made a strange request: that one of the older Dickens boys shave him every morning. Dickens refused to indulge that request, which was undoubtedly related to Andersen’s libidinous urges for boys.

There is no thorough account of the visit, but it couldn’t have been an easy one: Andersen spoke little English, and Dickens was often away from home. He had just completed Little Dorrit and was producing Wilkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep as a benefit to his friend Douglas Jerrold. Ellen Ternan was in the play, and the affair between her and Dickens was blossoming. It’s possible that Dickens actually invited Andersen to extend his stay so that he could attend the opening of The Frozen Deep. Andersen may have offered his criticism a little too freely, or the two could have discovered other artistic differences.

It’s more likely, however, that the rather awkward Andersen unwittingly committed some faux pas in front of the Inimitable’s impressive literary circle. At any rate, when Andersen finally left Gads Hill, Dickens reportedly wrote on the mirror of the guest room, “Hans Andersen slept in this room for five weeks–which seemed to the family AGES.” Dickens’ daughter Kate called Andersen a “bony bore,” a characterization that perhaps inspired Dickens when he created the character of Uriah Heep.

The final straw for Dickens may have come after Andersen departed. Andersen published an account of his stay with the Dickens family in Germany, without Dickens’ permission. He gave a glowing report of his stay and had particularly warm words for Mrs. Dickens. But that may have been a fatal mistake; by the time the account appeared in English in 1858, Dickens and his wife were already separated.

Though Andersen continued to write to Dickens after his stay, Dickens was generally unresponsive. Andersen’s popularity grew in the ensuing years, and he would travel throughout Europe. But he would never return to England. Meanwhile, some critics see Andersen’s influence in Dickens’ works, especially his Christmas stories. At any rate, the whole episode perfectly illustrates Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism, “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

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The Six Hoaxes of Edgar Allan Poe

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The origins of April Fools’ Day are unclear. Some experts suggest that when the French shifted the New Year to January to correspond with the Roman calendar, rural residents still kept celebrating with the beginning of spring, which often fell around the start of April. They came to be known as “April fools.” This theory, however, doesn’t take into account that the new year would have been celebrated around Easter–which isn’t associated with April first. It’s more probable that our April Fools traditions grew from age-old pagan celebrations of spring, which included adopting disguises and playing pranks on one another.

But some pranksters simply aren’t satisfied to confine their exploits to a single day. One of these was Edgar Allan Poe, who was unabashedly fond of hoaxes. He approvingly called his time the “epoch of the hoax.” During his lifetime Poe would attempt a total of six different hoaxes. Most modern anthologies fail to acknowledge that these stories were originally published as non-fiction.

A “Tone of Mere Banter”

In June 1835, “The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall” appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger. It was purportedly the text of an odd note that had been dropped from a hot air balloon over Rotterdam. The note, supposedly written by Hans Pfaall, recounted his journey to the moon, which he undertook to escape creditors on Earth. Pfaall claimed that he had spent five years living on the moon with its native inhabitants. He’d sent a lunar inhabitant back down to Earth with a promise that he’d tell his story if his creditors would forgive his debts. But the lunar inhabitant had been spooked; he dropped the note and fled back to the moon.

Yan Dargent’s illustration about Poe’s ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall’ for Jules Verne’s ‘Edgar Poe et ses œuvres ‘ (1864)

Poe’s first attempt at a hoax hardly fooled anyone; even Poe himself admitted that the article’s “tone of mere banter” rendered it less than credible. Then a similar–but much better executed–version of same hoax appeared in the New York Sun. It was such a successful ruse, Poe decided to abandon his own effort altogether.

“The Garb of Fiction”

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was inspired by the spirit of exploration that gripped America in the early- to mid-1800’s. The US Navy had recently organized the Wilkes Expedition to South Africa and Antarctica. Poe played to America’s great interest in such expeditions with The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

Poe published the story serially in Southern Literary Messenger in January and February 1837. Though the serial edition was written “under the garb of fiction,” he added a preface to the novel, claiming the tale was faction. That device was certainly not uncommon; indeed, eighteenth-century authors were in the habit of self-conscious narration, whereby the author would step in to assert the veracity of the story.

Poe based his tale on the theory of John Cleves Symmes, who believed not only that the earth was hollow, but also that it was inhabited. He was constantly trying to raise money for a polar expedition to prove his theory. Poe’s take on the story was so odd, most readers immediately recognized that it was fictional.

A Hoax Fit for a Senator

The Journal of Julius Rodman appeared from January to June 1840 in Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine. It detailed the adventures of the eponymous explorer as he made his way up the Missouri River and into the Far North. The journal was dated 1792, which would have made Rodman the first European to cross the Rocky Mountains. To lend the journal authenticity, Poe actually penned the entire thing. He also borrowed details from Washington Irving’s Astoria and Lewis and Clark’s History of the Expedition.

This time, Poe managed to fool at least one person. US Senator Robert Greenhow specifically mentioned the journal. That chance mention obviously made others believe that the journal could actually be real–but not for long. Poe’s motives for this hoax are unknown.

“Bought Up at Almost Any Price”

The Great Balloon Hoax was almost certainly Poe’s best work as a prankster. A broadside appeared in the midday issue of the New York Sun on April 13, 1844. It included an announcement that the famed European balloonist Thomas Munck Mason had just completed a transatlantic journey in his balloon, the Victoria. The advertisement stated that Mason had departed from England, bound for Paris. But a propellor accident had pushed him off course. An illustration of the balloon accompanied the text.

Mason was a real person, and he had flown a balloon from London to Weilburg, Germany in 1836. He’d documented the trip in Account of the Late Aeronautical Expedition from London to Weilburg. Poe borrowed the illustration from the frontispiece of a pamphlet that was published anonymously and generally accepted as Mason’s, called Remarks on the Ellipsoidal Balloon, Propelled by the Archimedean Screw, Described as the New Aerial Machine (1843).

1844_Sun_newspaper_story (1)

On the day of publication, Poe stood on the steps of the Sun’s office and revealed his own hoax to the crowd. But that did little to quell their clamoring for the paper. He reported, “I have never witnessed more intense excitement to get possession of a newspaper. As soon as the first copies made their way into the streets, they were bought up, at almost any price.” Poe couldn’t even get a copy of the paper for himself. Despite this furor, the Great Balloon Hoax was quickly revealed to be false. Nevertheless, it likely inspired Jules Verne to write Five Weeks in a Balloon and Around the World in Eighty Days. Vern was a great fan of Poe and even published a study of his work.

“Hoax Is Precisely the Word”

The December 1845 edition of American Whig Review included “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” an account of an unusual experiment to test whether hypnotism could stave off death. A terminally ill patient with only hours to live, one M. Ernest Valdemar, was placed under the care of a hypnotist. Valdemar slipped into a hypnotic trance, his pulse stopped, and his breathing ceased. Yet somehow he was still able to gurgle short responses to questions. After a full seven months, Valdemar’s doctors decided the experiment had run its course. The hypnotist brought the patient out of his trance. His body immediately collapsed and became “detestably putrid.”

Valdemar’s case was reprinted all over Europe and the United States. Robert Collyer, a prominent hypnotist, even corroborated the story. He claimed that he’d once revived a man who had died from overdrinking. When a Scottish correspondent wrote to inquire about the case, Poe openly admitted, “Hoax is precisely the word suited to M. Valdemar’s case.”

A “Check to the Gold Fever”

News of “Von Kempelen and His Discovery” appeared in The Flag of Our Union on April 14, 1849. German scientist Von Kempelen claimed that he’d discovered the alchemical process to turn lead into gold. Few fell for the ploy, much to Poe’s chagrin. He had wanted to dissuade people from migrating west in the California Gold Rush. Poe wrote to Evert A Duyckinck, “My sincere opinion is that nine persons out of ten (even among the best informed) will believe the quiz (provided the design does not leak before publication) and that thus, acting as a sudden, although of course a very temporary, check to the gold fever, it will create a stir to some purpose.”

Even though Poe’s motives may seem odd or obscure, his hoaxes live on as a quirky and fascinating part of literary history.

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Select Acquisitions: In Manuscript

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Manuscript. “A work written by hand” informs Glaister, synonymous with “holograph.” Or, as is often abbreviated, Ms.

A two-letter abbreviation that can cause the collector’s heart to flutter; the curator’s eye to gleam; the author to despair of ever finishing.

Why this reaction? Is it the unique aspect inherent to the term? A printed book, by its very nature and concept, can be expected to be encountered in multiple copies; not so the manuscript that gave rise to the book. It is, more often than not, expected to be found in no more than one copy, with additional the variant, not the norm.

With this in mind then, Tavistock Books presents our list for March, In Manuscript. It consists of thirty items all created “by hand”: letters, book manuscripts, ledgers, journals, diaries, sketch books,a nd even a few pencil sketches [to round out the numbers].

Temporally, the items range from the 17th century to the 20th. As is our custom and wont, subjects represented are diverse, from rent records, to transatlantic travel, to baseball. Prices range from $125 to $20,000.

We invite you to peruse the list! Should you have any inquiries, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We thank you for your attention, and we hope that you find something of interest while browsing these offerings.

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Rhode Island Light Infantry Company Records, 1818-1873

The Rhode Island First Light Infantry Company was formed in 1818 as a state militia company based in Providence, Rhode Island, and was affiliated with the Second Regiment of the Rhode Island militia. It became the First Light Infantry Regiment in 1863. This regiment saw no active duty, with its activities more in consonance with a social club vice a well-trained military unit. However, per the RIHS notes on this organization, the 1st Light Infantry Company did play an important role in providing trained soldiers when circumstances required. The Company helped suppress the Olney’s Lane race riots in 1831, primarily by arresting white rioters.

The Company was also involved in suppressing the Dorr Rebellion, a fomentation and later a short-lived, armed insurrection led by Thomas Wilson Dorr agitating for changes to Rhode Island’s electoral system. In the case of this particular Rebellion, there were militia members on both sides of the fight! Pages 61 through 66 of Volume 2 discuss the events of May 19th, 1842. Many of the Company members also served in the American Civil War in Companies C and D of the First Regiment, Rhode Island Detached Militia.

The activities recorded herein, written in pen and by necessity by many different individuals given the span of time involved, are detailed and informative accounts of the daily, weekly, and monthly meetings of the Company, most often held at the Armory in Providence. Together, these four volumes are the primary source for the history of the First Light Infantry Company, and are invaluable for understanding the inner workings of the Company and their [occasionally] significant role in Rhode Island history. Details>>

Journal Across the Atlantic

“On Board the Eagle from London to / Philadelphia. / John Ker Captain – Born in Ireland.” So begins this interesting diary recorded by an unidentified male passenger making a transatlantic voyage on this ship. The first written page of the journal records the significant personages of the crew, including their nationality, from Captain Ker to “Sam A Sailor Born in America” and “George. The Cook A Black from Bengall”. Passenger names are noted: four in the passenger cabin, with five more in steerage.

The diary records shipboard life, almost daily, for the next two months, beginning with leaving London for Gravesend, and like many passengers, “On Entering the downs I began to be Sick in the afternoon… … Fraser sitting upon the Binacle going down to the Steerage over the Sailors asleep Read with an audible voice a Chapter or two out of the word of God as so unusual affair disturbed the men below who arose in a passion and an uproar ensued whitch Occationed the Interference of the Captain — and where is the wonder! … Saw a Grampus (?) Whale along side of us very near this day and he made his appearances several times as he passed from us. June 20 – 1785. Monday. Saw a sail at a distance. … Tuesday 21 … saw a sail ahead of us.”The ship was Spanish, and the diarist continues with a description of an at-sea meeting between the two vessels.

The diarist continues in such a vein, recording passenger activity – “Fraser and Mark Denison play at Cards until Dark” – and observing crew interaction – “The mate then thought his dignity insulted…” In late July, another vessel rendezvous is recorded .. “They offered us some oranges and fruit…” By this time, the tone of the journal has tended towards patience, with food [“potatoes gone”] and water [“… drink dirty Water”] becoming an issue…. “But I keep as much an Equanimity as possible and more I Flatter myself than any on Board.”

The last entry of the journal is “Saturday morn July 30th”. “A many moths or Small Butterflies came on board – a dispute whether they Bred on board – Cox [steerage passenger] maintains the affirmative but they were never seen coming with the wind it was thought very improbably and tho he supported his theory [?] only it is Carried against him – …” So ends this record of a transatlantic voyage… an illuminating peek into a passenger’s shipboard life while en route the New World. Original mss journals such as this are rare in commerce. Details>>

Autograph Letter Signed with Steel Plate Engraving of Charles Dickens and Photograph of Gadshill

This delightful Dickensiana is matted and framed in a simple black, wooden frame. The label on the frame’s reverse appears to be pre-World War II. Charles Dickens, writing to an unknown correspondent, tells of of his son Charley’s stay and schooling in Germany, with one Professor Muller who supervised “the classical part of his studies.” Dickens continues, “I was in all respects well satisfied,” though Charley “considered him ‘a Dragon in respect of his ardour for work.'” This letter is partially published by Storey & Tillotson in Volume 8 [p. 206] of the Pilgrim Letters, with their abbreviated text coming from a 1901 Walter M Hill catalogue. The actual letter, here offered, has a concluding five-line paragraph not previously recorded. Details>>

Amergin the White Stag

Sven Berlin was a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a dancer and a writer. His 1962 roman-a-clef novel The Dark Monarch was written with the prime motive of venting his anger over the hypocrisies of an over-close and competitive art St. Ives art colony. It was not well received by his fellow art colony members, who all too easily recognized themselves within the pages. The book was withdrawn after four successful libel actions.

Contrary to what some writers report, Berlin did not abandon the genre of fiction following the unpleasantness that The Dark Monarch brought. In 1964 he published his novel Jonah’s Dream: A Meditation on Fishing, a volume full of Berlin’s accomplished and sensitive vignettes of fish and fishermen, and in 1971, his knowledge of the gypsy counter-culture emerged in his novel Dromengo: Man of the Road. It would be a full seven years before Amergin appeared. The story is a mystical fable of encounters between a man, a woman, and a stag in “The Great Forest in the South.”

Many of Berlin’s publications drew upon personal experience. Berlin was part of the D-Day invasions of World War II, having rejected his former stance of conscientious objector, but the experience led to a breakdown and he returned to Cornwall to find restitution through his art. From that time on, the redemptive, restorative and spiritual power of art and nature would remain his guiding principle. The same theme runs through his works, including the two volumes of his ‘autosvenography’: The Coat of Many Colours and Virgo in Exile, that being a belief in the abstract and mystical forces that guide both nature and humankind. His writing is rich in imagery and metaphor, exhibiting an often dream-like quality. This manuscript is no exception. Details>>

Somerset Mss Rent Book, 1690-1755

Apparently this volume was originally intended and begun as a medical text, to be comprised of thirteen volumes, or chapters. Pages [i-iv] contain the index for the medical entries, in Latin. The pages, corresponding to the entry in the index, are captioned with the appropriate heading. Turning the volume over and beginning with the final unnumbered page and working back to page 457, the text is comprised of accounting entries of amounts paid for things such as bread for orphans, for scavenger, stocker, water, and the parson. There are entries for the window tax, poor tax, the king’s tax for the land lord, lamps, etc.

The year is divided into four quarters: Lady Day Quarter, Midsomer (midsummer) Quarter, Michaelmass Quarter, and Xmass Quarter. The entries in these ten pages are the earliest, dating from 1690 to 1708, and provide a fascinating glimpse into the economy and financial obligations of the citizenry of this time.The volume is then turned over again and the entries pick up at page [v] continuing to page 115 with entries for rents and mortgages collected in the parish of Norton Fitzwarren, Taunton district, Somerset, England.

While many entries are written in the first person — “Then I rec’d the first rent myself” — the identity of the individual or individuals making the entries is not recorded. The financial entries for 1720 on appear to be by a different individual than those of 1690 through 1709.The text as a whole provides a fascinating glimpse into the economy and financial obligations of the citizenry of Norton Fitzwarren, providing important and valuable information as to the cost of living at the end of the seventeenth century to the mid-point of the eighteenth century in one English parish. Many of the same names appear for the 65 recorded years of rents and mortgages, and by consulting parish records one can see the relationships between the citizens through marriages; the life cycle of the parish through births and deaths. Details>>

Robert H Barton Family Correspondence Collection, 1849-1871

Robert Barton, of Providence, Rhode Island, left his wife Julia Anna Bennett Barton and four children –William, Emily, Harriet, and Julia–in the winter of 1849, headed for the California gold fields. The collection begins with Robert’s departure in 1849, and continues through 1871. Of the 72 letters, six are from Robert –one to his wife, and five to his son. The remainder are to Robert, from divers family members, and even his pastor, all with the common theme of “come home.”

From this correspondence, and the fact Robert Barton is not buried with the rest of his family in the North Burial Ground, Providence, Rhode Island, it is questioned whether the man ever did leave California and return to Providence 9even though the RI census notes his presence). Robert writes to his wife of his good intentions for heading to California, and consistently states “if he is permitted to return home “; however, it is fairly clear that he never intended to do so. In one letter to his son, he says that William should look to a gentleman there in Providence for advice and guidance, discourages him from coming to California, etc.

And while Robert’s letters contain a smattering of comments on his efforts to find gold, and the account statement from Gregory & Waite Groceries & Provisions gives a glimpse into the daily fare of a ’49er, this collection’s value lies elsewhere than California. The collection does extensively chronicle the history of one Providence, Rhode Island family, their struggles and successes. Herein then lies the richness of the archive, which documents the life of this Providence family, after the “man of the house” succumbs to gold fever. Details>>

The Album of Sarah Knight

To S. K. —“Deign to accept the boon tis all I ask/And if thou think’st I fall too far behind/Let abler pens hereafter meet the task/And yield thee something suited to thy mind.” From our study of this splendid little volume, it would appear to have been used similar to an autograph album wherein friends would pen a poem, or a snippet from such for the owner. Some of the poems may have been copied by the owner into the album. Several of the entries have been illustrated in watercolor or thinned black ink, by an accomplished hand. The writing is in almost all cases very legible, and penned by those who had obviously received high marks for penmanship.

From the entries we have gleaned that this volume was owned by at least three individuals: Sarah Knight, T. M. Knight, and M.S. Conard, with the latest entry (1860) being penned by Conard. In conducting research, we can find several women named Sarah Knight who lived in Philadelphia and New York. We can also find a G. Coggshall (the presenter of the album), a Sophia Mix, and an Arabella Clark–all names given in the volume–living in either Philadelphia or New York at the same time, but without more to go on, we cannot pinpoint with any certainty the exact identity of these individuals. There was a Sarah Knight, of Philadelphia, who was born around 1804, which would have made her around 21 when this volume was given to her, which would seem fitting. The poems herein are typical for the 1820’s, and the illustrations are exquisite. It’s quite a lovely little example of early 19th Century autograph/ friendship books. Details>>

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A Look Back at Book Censorship

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On March 25, 1955, US Customs Department officials seized 520 copies of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Printed in England, the book had been deemed obscene by the US government. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who owned the publishing house and book store City Lights in San Francisco, decided to publish Howl in the autumn of 1956. He was almost immediately arrested on charges of obscenity. The ACLU bailed him out and took the lead in his defense. Nine literary experts testified at Ferlinghetti’s trial, and he was found not guilty. Unfortunately, this episode is only one of many in the history of book censorship.

Areopagitica (1644)

By 1644, John Milton had already successfully teamed up with Presbyterians to abolish the Star Chamber. That year, the activist poet turned his attention to the Licensing Act of 1643, which prohibited publication without the permission from the government. In Areopagitica, Milton makes an incredibly eloquent and impassioned plea for an end to government censorship. But he didn’t receive support from Presbyterians, so essentially stood alone in his campaign. The work was banned, and England would not attain freedom of the press until 1695.

Fanny Hill (1748)

Fanny_Hill_1910_cover Considered the first pornographic novel published in English, Fanny Hill is every bit as lurid as one would expect from the fictional memoir of a Georgian prostitute. Even more scandalous: the eponymous protagonist enjoys the work of earning “profit by pleasing.” Author John Cleland and the book’s original publisher were immediately thrown into jail after the book was published. And in America, Fanny Hill was the subject of the country’s very first obscenity trial: in 1821, two men were charged with printing an illustrated version. That edition and subsequent contraband editions became hot collector’s items; even Benjamin Franklin was said to have a copy. The book found its way back to the US Supreme Court in 1963 after Massachusetts banned the book. The Supreme Court found the book lewd–and ruled that it was protected by the First Amendment.

Candide (1759)

Thanks to the book’s catchphrase “Let us eat the Jesuit, let us eat him up” and myriad other irreverences, Voltaire’s Candide was banned by the Great Council of Geneva and the Parisian government just after the book’s release. But 30,000 copies still sold within a year.–much to the delight of Voltaire. The Comstock Law of 1873, later renamed the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, forbade the sending of obscene materials by US mail. Under this law, the US Customs Department seized Harvard-bound copies of the book in 1930. In 1944, the US Post Office demanded that Candide be dropped from Concord Books’ catalogue. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio’s Decameron (1350-1353) and a host of other literary works would fall prey to the Comstock Law.

The Rights of Man (1791)

Thomas Paine had already made a name for himself as a dissident with Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776). In The Rights of Man, Paine vociferously objects to the divine right of kings the inherent right of any family or social class to govern. He also argues that governments should be guided by the will of the people, pointing to France and America as prime examples. The English crown found Paine’s latest work downright treasonous and issued a warrant for his arrest. Paine fled to France, but was found guilty of libel and treason in absentia. He was sentenced to death should he ever enter England again. All copies of The Rights of Man were regularly seized and burned for many years after.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

What could possibly be offensive about Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? In 1931, General Ho Chein, governer of the Hunan province of China, decided that the book should be banned because its characters included anthropomorphic animals. The general argued that it was “disastrous to put animals and human beings on the same level.” Surprisingly enough, similar arguments have been used in the United States to justify banning Charlotte’s Web (EB White, 1952) and Winnie-the-Pooh (Milne, 1926).

Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Often considered John Steinbeck’s greatest work, The Grapes of Wrath was published to heated outcry. Steinbeck was accused of exaggerating the plight of the poor and unfairly vilifying the wealthy. This reaction was, to some extent, Steinbeck’s intention: he wrote that he wanted to “put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for the Great Depression.” Those who denounced Steinbeck most enthusiastically were the Associated Farmers of California, who called the novel a “pack of lies” and “communist propaganda.” The novel was temporarily banned in parts of the United States–and even burned publicly in some places. The censorship of Grapes of Wrath was pivotal in the creation of the Library Bill of Rights.

Animal Farm (1945)

After George Orwell finished Animal Farm in 1943, it took him two years to find a publisher. The book openly criticized political leadership in the USSR, an important British ally during World War II. After the book was published, it was banned in the USSR and other Communist countries. In 1991, Kenya banned a theatrical adaptation of Animal Farm because it criticizes corrupt leadership. The book was also banned in the United Arab Emirates for containing scenarios and ideas (namely, a talking pig) that conflict with Islamic values. Animal Farm is still banned in Cuba and North Korea, and censored in China.

Green Eggs and Ham (1960)

Theodore Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, admitted that he was “subversive as hell” and had no desire to write children’s books that simply modeled good behavior. His books show kids how to question their surroundings and explore new things. Green Eggs and Ham is one of Seuss’ best known works…and it was banned in Maoist China in 1965. According to the Chinese government, the book was a portrayal of Marxism. The ban was not lifted until after Geisel passed away. Meanwhile Yertle the Tertle (1958) was removed from schools in British Columbia in April 2012 because of a single line that carries a political message. And The Lorax (1972) earned a ban from a California community for its negative depiction of loggers.

Many of these banned books have become beloved classics for the very reason they were originally banned–they push us to consider uncomfortable ideas that challenge the status quo. Their place in the literary canon has bolstered their desirability among rare book collectors, especially in cases where early editions were frequently confiscated and destroyed.

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Louisa May Alcott: Abolitionist, Suffragette, and Mercenary

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When Louisa May Alcott published Little Women in 1868, she immediately found the fame and fortune she’d sought since childhood. The legendary author is best remembered for this and other children’s books, but her true authorial passion was for writing cheap thrillers. Unbeknownst to most of her adoring readers, Alcott undertook her now classic novels only as a means to support her family. Indeed, Alcott has proven a much more complex individual than most of us would guess.

A Childhood of Privation

Born on November 29, 1832, Louisa May Alcott was the second of four daughters. Her mother, Abigail May Alcott, hailed from a distinguished Boston family. Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was a farmer who’d educated himself in philosophy. The members of the Alcott family were quite progressive for their time. In 1834, Bronson set up a school with a controversial co-ed curriculum. He managed to find students, but the community was soon turned off by his disciplinary tactics and frank discussion of religion. The final straw was when Bronson refused to dismiss a black student he’d admitted. White parents withdrew their children from the school, and Bronson was forced to shut down.

The progressive curriculum at Bronson Alcott’s Temple School

The family remained ardent abolitionists, participating in the Underground Railroad. When she was seven years old, Alcott opened an unused stove to discover a former slave hiding inside. The man was initially terrified that he’d been discovered, just as Alcott was frightened to find a man in the oven. Alcott taught the man to write his letters. This experience and others would eventually compel Alcott to serve in the Civil War so that she could contribute to ending slavery.

Among the family’s closest friends were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Alcott grew up with their mentorship, studying in Emerson’s library and getting botany lessons from Thoreau. Despite this rich intellectual life, the Alcotts were quite poor. Bronson worked hard, but didn’t pay much attention to actually earning a living. His family often subsisted on nothing but bread and water, and they frequently moved–by the time they settled at Orchard House in 1858, the family had had around thirty temporary homes, and they could afford the home only with the support of relatives and Emerson, who wished Alcott’s sister Beth to pass her last days in comfort and security.

Fruitlands was strictly vegetarian. Residents were not even supposed to till the soil, as they might injure a worm.

When Alcott was ten years old, the family undertook a radical experiment. Bronson co-founded the utopian community of Fruitlands with English reformer Charles Lane. Their goal was to survive without animal products or any commodities that had been generated by slavery, including coffee and tea. After only six months, the project had obviously failed. The Alcotts were completely destitute, and Bronson was on the brink of suicide. Alcott resolved that she would one day be rich and famous. At first she wanted to be an actress, and she soon began writing, directing, and acting in plays.

Early Financial Responsibility

Alcott began keeping a journal when she was eight years old, and she wrote her first novel at age seventeen. Heavily influenced by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the novel would not be discovered and published until over a century later. Though Alcott wrote prolifically in her off time, she also worked hard as a teenager to help support her family. She had a series of jobs: teacher, governess, laundress, and even household servant. Her mother took work with an unemployment agency, and the family encountered women who had to take the roughest jobs. Moved by the plight of these illiterate immigrant and African American women, Alcott, her mother, and her sister Anna offered free reading and writing instruction.

Bronson, on the other hand, did little to support the family. He embarked on a long speaking tour–only to return with a single dollar in his pocket. The family, it seemed, would never escape poverty. The family’s dire straits gave Alcott a unique vantage point as a female author; most women writers of the era came from much more privileged backgrounds. It also hardened Alcott’s resolve “to turn my brains into money by stories.” In her early twenties, Alcott began writing romances for local papers. She rapidly learned how to tailor her writing for different markets and to experiment with different genres.

A Scandalous Little Writing Habit

Alcott also knew that writing such sensational stories would tarnish her own reputation, and she was not confident in the quality of her writing. She wrote these stories either anonymously or pseudonymously, thus protecting her own reputation. Harriet Reisen, author of Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind ‘Little Women,’ noted in an interview with NPR, “Louisa made herself a brand. She suppressed the fact that she had written pulp fiction that included stories about spies and transvestites and drug takers.”

It wasn’t until after her death that the full breadth of Alcott’s work was revealed. But Alcott found writing such potboilers quite thrilling, admitting that when she wrote them she slipped into a kind of “vortex” where time, food, and sleep simply didn’t exist. Scholars hypothesize that these stories were also an excellent outlet for Alcott, who never married and spent much time worrying about her family’s well-being.

Heeding the Call to Duty

Then the Civil War broke out in 1861. Alcott reported to the Concord town hall, where she sewed uniforms and made bandages. As soon as she turned thirty, Alcott entreated family friend Dorothea Dix to let her become a field nurse even though she wasn’t married. Dix relented, and Alcott went to Washington, DC, where she ministered to soldiers after the Battle of Fredricksburg. Alcott fell prey to pneumonia and typhoid fever, cutting short her tenure as a nurse. Her treatment included doses of calomel, which contained mercury. It left Alcott weak and sickly for the rest of her life.

Unable to continue serving as a nurse, Alcott decided to support the war effort through her writing. She adapted her letters home into Hospital Sketches, and the book immediately became a bestseller. It represented a dramatic departure from Alcott’s other authorial endeavors–and it was published under her real name. The book’s success renewed Alcott’s confidence and resulted in new interest in her writing.

A Parisian Affair

Alcott had always wanted to travel, and in 1866, she had the opportunity to travel to Europe as a companion to an invalid. In Switzerland, she met Ladisas Wisniewski, a Polish freedom fighter who was thirteen years her junior. The pair managed to overcome the language barrier, passing a fortnight together in Paris. Cavorting with a twenty-year-old man without a chaperone certainly raised a few eyebrows, but Alcott dismissed the allegations of impropriety, pointing out that she was 33 years old.

Alcott affectionately called Wisniewski “Laddie,” and he would be one of the inspirations for the character of Laurie in Little Women. The other was Alf Whitman, who was also much younger than Alcott. The two met at the Concord Dramatic Union (now the Concord Players), where they played Dolphus and Sophy Tetterby in Charles Dickens’ Haunted Man. Alcott doted on Whitman, and the two remained friends long after Whitman had married and had children. Alcott wrote to Whitman, “I put you in my story as one of the best and dearest lads I ever knew. ‘Laurie’ is you and my Polish boy [jointly].”

Challenging Gender Stereotypes

Though Alcott would have multiple ambiguous relationships with younger men, she claimed never to have loved them. In an 1883 interview with Louise Chandler Moulton, Alcott said, “I am more than half persuaded that I am a man’s soul, put by some freak of nature into a woman’s body…because I have fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never once the least with any man.”

Alcott’s choice to remain a spinster was an unusual one for the time, even for a woman who had become a caregiver to her family. Yet Alcott had seen how dependent her mother had been on her father–and how poorly her father had provided for the family. “I’d rather be a spinster and paddle my own canoe,” she once wrote. That same sense of independence drove Alcott to campaign tirelessly for women’s suffrage. She attended the Woman’s Congress of 1875 in Syracuse, New York. In 1879, Alcott successfully campaigned for women’s suffrage in the election of the Concord school committee. The men of the town boycotted the vote, and Alcott was one of twenty women to cast a ballot.

Resigned to Writing “Moral Pap”

Alcott returned from Europe to find her family, predictably, in debt. Now able to “earn more from my pen than from my needle,” Alcott decided to write her way into fortune. She wrote in her journal in May, “Father saw Mr. Niles [of Roberts Brothers publishing house] about a fairy book. Mr. N wants a girls’ story, and I began Little Women. So I plod away, though I don’t enjoy this kind of thing. I never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting.”

Alcott went about Little Women methodically over the course of a few weeks, with none of the joy she found in her thrillers. The first edition was published in 1868, when Alcott was 35 years old. It met with instant success, and Alcott’s fate as a writer was essentially sealed; she would build her career writing what she considered “moral pap for the young” because that’s what would support her family. Though Alcott was not upset to be “the goose that laid the golden egg,” she took a rather cynical view of her writing: “Money is the means and the ends of my mercenary existence.”

Alcott_Quote Because Little Women was so obviously based on Alcott’s own childhood, her family gained celebrity along with her. Bronson was quite fond of the attention. Now wealthy and widowed, he sported fine clothes and toured the country as “The Father of the Little Women.” He started publishing (very verbose) volumes of philosophy. Alcott built him the Concord School of Philosophy, so that he could again enjoy lecturing to an audience. His exploits were curtailed by a stroke, and he was forced to retire to a beautiful home in Louisburg Square, provided by his dutiful daughter, who visited almost every day. Alcott, however, wanted nothing to do with fame–perhaps because she saw so little merit in the books that had made her famous. Tourists shamelessly came calling at Orchard House, and Alcott would often pretend to be her own maid to avoid their attentions.

Then tragedy struck the Alcott family yet again. Alcott’s sister Anna Alcott Pratt had married into a wealthy family. While she was in Europe, her husband died unexpectedly, leaving her with two small children and no income. To ensure their financial comfort, Alcott again put pen to paper, this time writing Little Men. She assigned the royalties to her nephews, who would live with her until she passed away ten years later. When her sister May died in childbirth a few years later, Alcott took custody of the infant, who was named after her. Nicknamed “Lulu,” the child would call Alcott “Mother” and live with her until Alcott’s death.

When Alcott’s own health began to fail, she sought both traditional treatment and explored alternative medicine. In 1888, she went to a Roxbury convalescent home, convinced that proper rest would extend her longevity. That March, she visited her father for what she knew would be the last time. He passed away on March 4, 1888, and Alcott followed two days later.

Thomas Dorr’s Treasonous Stand for Voting Rights

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The Rhode Island First Light Infantry Company was formed in 1818 as a state militia company based in Providence. Affiliated with the Second Regiment of the Rhode Island militia, it saw no active duty. Indeed, for the majority of its history the company’s activities were more like those of a social club than of a militia–with a notable exception. The company helped to quell the Dorr Rebellion, even though some of its members actually fought alongside the rebels. Led by Thomas Wilson Dorr, the rebels sought to extend suffrage to the working class. Although Dorr was eventually convicted of treason, his ideas were influential enough that Rhode Island finally revised its archaic voting requirements.

A State Ripe for Revolution

In 1833, Rhode Island’s voting regulations were over 200 years old. Thus the only people who could vote were white, natural born males who owned land. But Rhode Island’s demographics had shifted; the population had grown, but the number of landowners had increased only by a small percentage. Self-educated carpenter Seth Luther was among the first to protest the old voting laws. His “Address on the Right of Free Suffrage” (1833) pointed out that 12,000 working people were at the mercy of Rhode Island’s 5,000 landowners, whom he called “mushroom lordlings, sprigs of nobility…[and] small potato aristocrats.” Luther urged his fellow citizens to stop cooperating with the government, to refuse to pay taxes and serve in the militia.

The People’s ticket was designed to connect the Dorr Rebellion with the American Revolution.

As support for voting reform grew, a somewhat unlikely champion for the cause emerged. Thomas Wilson Dorr was an attorney who hailed from a relatively wealthy family. Dorr served in the Rhode Island General Assembly, and in 1834 he attended a convention at Providence to discuss the issue of universal suffrage (then defined as “voting rights for all males.” But the legislature failed to pass any reforms. By 1841, Rhode Island one of only a few states that hadn’t adopted universal suffrage for white males. it was also the only state that had not adopted its own written constitution. That year the Rhode Island Suffrage Association was founded, and the organization sponsored a demonstration on the streets of Providence.

That year, both the Dorrites and the conservatives drew up their own constitutions. The conservative constitution maintained the same voting requirements as the 1663 charter. Meanwhile, at the “People’s Convention,” Dorr and his faction drew up a constitution that permitted all white males to vote. Dorr’s version got approval in referendum, but that was ruled illegal since it hadn’t been called by the government. The government’s constitution was defeated in a separate referendum. It seemed that Rhode Island had reached a stalemate. The Dorrites then decided to put their constitution to a vote. About 14,000 people voted for it, including 5,000 landowners; it won the majority even among only those who were currently allowed to vote. Although the vote was illegal, it did show the government that its citizens supported universal suffrage.

Dorr’s gubernatorial portrait

In 1842, both factions went so far as to hold their own elections, and two separate governments emerged. The conservatives were based in Newport, and the Dorrites established themselves in Providence. Dorr ran for governor unopposed and, with 6,000 votes, was elected in April 1842. Obviously this election was also illegal, and Rhode Island’s rightful governor petitioned President Tyler to intercede. He invoked a clause in the US Constitution that permitted the federal government to provide troops to control local rebellions at the request of the state government.

Undone by Racism

This broadside was published only one day before Dorr staged his rebellion.

Undeterred, the Dorittes held an inauguration ball for Dorr on May 3, 1843. The parade included not only local workers, but even members of the local militia! The parade marched through the streets of Providence. Shortly thereafter, the People’s legislature convened. Dorr’s next move was ill calculated. With the support of many local militia members, Dorr staged an attack on the state arsenal. But it ended quickly and disastrously when a cannon misfired. The government immediately ordered Dorr’s arrest on charges of treason, and Dorr was forced to flee Rhode Island.

And the People’s party had made another terrible move; despite the protests of Dorr and other members, their constitution extended voting rights only to white males. The Rhode Island government used this to its advantage, promising that any new voting legislation would allow blacks to vote. Soon black men were volunteering to join the Law and Order militia, which had been organized to quell the riot and defeat the faction that would deny them the right to vote.

When Dorr came back to Rhode Island, he found that although he had several hundred men ready to fight for his cause, they were far outnumbered by the Law and Order militia. Dorr went back into hiding to regroup. Martial law was declared in Rhode Island. At least 100 rebel soldiers were captured and taken to prison in Providence–after they were put on display, of course.

Rebellion Leads to Reform

Though it appeared that the rebellion had been quashed, legislators now fully appreciated the support for amending suffrage requirements. They drafted a new constitution. The vote was extended to include not only property owners, but also those who paid a one-dollar poll tax. Naturalized citizens could vote if they held at least $134 in real estate. Then elections were held in 1843. The Law and Order group still met opposition from Dorrites, but used intimidation to get people to vote. The conservatives still lost in industrial areas, but got the votes in more rural zones. Ultimately the Law and Order group won the major offices.

That year Dorr returned to Rhode Island and was arrested on the street in Providence. He soon went to trial for treason, and the judge instructed the jury to put aside all political arguments and to ignore Dorr’s motives. They were to reach a decision only on specific, overt acts. Dorr had, of course, admitted to all his actions, so he was speedily convicted. The judge sentenced him to life in prison and hard labor. But Dorr would spend only twenty months in jail; the new Rhode Island governor thought it wise to pardon him, rather than let him languish in prison as a martyr.

The Dorrite cause still had support even after the rebellion had been quashed, as evidenced in this 1844 polemic.

A Last Stand at the Supreme Court

Though the Dorrites had been defeated, they remained in public consciousness for many more years, most notably through a landmark Supreme Court case. In Luther v Bordn (1849), Luther made a trespassing suit against the Law and Order militia. He alleged that the People’s government was truly a legitimate, elected government in 1842. Daniel Webster defended the militia, arguing that granting such legitimacy jeopardized the very existence of government and could lead to total anarchy. The Supreme Court ruled that it would defer to the President and Congress in matters of war and revolution, a conservative stance.

This period was certainly a dramatic one in Rhode Island history, particularly for members of the local militia. The company journals of the Rhode Island Infantry Company, which we’re proud to offer, capture these events as they were experienced by militia members at the time. Handwritten by a series of members, the four-volume set of records stretches from 1818 to 1873, providing exceptional context for quite a long era in American and local history.

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Charles Dickens the Copyright Confederate

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In 1854, Sigmund H Goetzel arrived in Mobile, Alabama and immediately got to work setting up a bookstore. A German immigrant who’d been naturalized as a US citizen, Goetzel was intent to establish himself as a prominent member of the city and a vital member of the publishing community. During the Civil War, Goetzel’s publishing house would make waves regarding international copyright law–an issue near and dear to Charles Dickens’ heart. That copyright policy likely contributed to Dickens’ decision to support the South during the Civil War.

An Enterprising Publisher

Goetzel set up shop with silent partner Bernard L Tine, who owned a local clothing store. They called their outfit SH Goetzel & Company. Goetzel would drop the “& Company” once he repaid his debt to Tine in 1863, five years after their partnership had actually expired. Though he remained in the business only eight years, Goetzel proved quite industrious, publishing not only maps and broadsides, but also pamphlets and a number of books. Although many of the books were simply reprints of English or northern titles, a significant number were also original titles.

Confederate-era sketches of Mobile, Alabama, from Harpers Weekly

By 1860, the publishing industry in Mobile had grown by leaps and bounds, probably due to increased wealth and an influx of residents. The city was prosperous and cosmopolitan; approximately 50% of its white, male residents were foreign born. Meanwhile in the late 1850’s, Goetzel had consistently garnered praise for the high quality of his publications. SH Goetzel & Company was a thriving part of the Cotton City.

The onset of the Civil War in 1861, however, presented new challenges. Materials, particularly paper and ink, became increasingly difficult to procure from the North, and Union blockades prevented the import of materials from Europe. Goetzel’s main competitor, William Strickland & Company, was driven out of business due to accusations that the firm’s principles were “incendiaries,” that is, abolitionists. By the middle of the war, publishers and printers had either shuttered their shops, or stretched the limits of their ingenuity; thus, wallpaper became a common book covering material when paper and other materials ran out.

Copyright Controversy

Yet Goetzel persevered, anxious to prove to the world that the Southern publishing world would not be undone. His first endeavor was a new edition of William J Hardee’s Hardeen’s Revised and Improved Infantry and Rifle Tactics, which Hardee had revised at the request of Jefferson Davis. Goetzel soon found himself embroiled in a copyright lawsuit, as the work was immediately pirated both in the North and the South. He began printing “THE ONLY COPYRIGHTED EDITION” directly over the title.

The following year, Goetzel announced that the firm would issue an edition of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story. Scheduled to start in time for Christmas and New Years, it was issued in numbers. Goetzel published the numbers with such astonishing rapidity, that editors at the Mobile Advertiser and Register noted that the printer’s resources “exceeded expectations.”

By this time, the Confederate States of America had already established a strong stance on international copyright. On May 21, 1861, the CSA Copyright Act was ratified, granting reciprocal copyright and royalties to foreign-born authors. The legislation was a calculated move, designed to appeal particularly to the British, French, and Germans. And it did garner goodwill tin Europe, particularly in England, where Charles Dickens and other authors had been proponents of copyright law reform for decades.

Thus Goetzel had indeed written to Bulwer-Lytton to obtain permission to print A Strange Story and offer him a payment of $1,000. But thanks to the blockade, the letter never arrived. Bulwer-Lytton announced that the only royalties he’d received had come from his New York City Publisher, Harper & Company. Goetzel wrote a letter of self-defense to the editor of the Mobile Advertiser and Register, arguing that he’d sent Bulwer-Lytton payment and had only recently received confirmation of its arrival.

These issues did little to slow Goetzel’s prodigious output. In 1863–the height of the war–Goetzel published five new book-length titles, along with a map, three pamphlets, and a handful of reprints of earlier titles. One of these was an edition of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, which was bound in wallpaper. It’s now an incredibly scarce volume. The following year, Goetzel executed six new titles, each about 320 pages.

Dickens’ Sympathies Shift to the Confederates

The Civil War had aroused vehement debate in England. Charles Dickens, then the editor of the popular periodical All the Year Round, simply couldn’t remain neutral. Furthermore, Dickens had already taken a decidedly anti-American stance following the debacle of his first visit there. Though American Notes only cast aspersions on the American institution of slavery and the press, Dickens was much more aggressive in Martin Chuzzlewit. The works only served to alienate him further from his American audience.

Dickens personally published on the war in All the Year Round only once, on March 1, 1862. He simply republished a number of controversial passages from American Notes with the following note: “The foregoing was written in the year eighteen hundred forty-two. It rests with the reader to decide whether it has received any confirmation, or assumed any color of truth, in or about the year eighteen hundred sixty-two.” The comment implies disdain for both the North and the South. But it also served to vindicate Dickens’ original (and somewhat unpopular) stance in American Notes.

But All the Year Round saw at least 25 pieces about the Civil War. Ever the attentive editor, Dickens carefully supervised every aspect of his publications. That extended to the publication’s political stances which we know thanks to his public announcement following the mid-war printing of Charles Reade’s serialized novel Very Hard Cash, which attacked the Commissioners on Lunacy (which included Dickens’ dear friend John Forster). Dickens said that he took responsibility for the political stances presented in All the Year Round–with the exception only of noted authors’ serial novels that appeared in the periodical.

Appealing to His Readership

Dickens relied on All the Year Round for a substantial portion of his income and had to consider his readers’ interests to ensure sales. Therefore he leaned toward narratives and “true accounts” of the Civil War, rather than news and political commentary. On December 29, 1860, a summary review of Frederick L Olmstead’s A Journey into the Back Country appeared. The book chronicled the most horrifying aspects of slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley, the least cultured area of the South. The review descried the South’s purported intention to reopen the slave trade.

An article published on July 13, 1861 denounced the South for commissioning privateers to harass British ships delivering goods to the North. Such interference with foreign trade was simply a barbarous tactic. Then on October 26, 1861, a story about an English doctor who treats a runaway slave appeared. It includes all the usual elements: bloodhounds, sketchy Southerners, and a doctor who notes how “wonderfully” the Southerners’ minds have been warped by slavery. A West Virginian character in the story opines, “I only wish we could have a hand on them philanthropists (abolitionists)…A load of brushwood and a lucifer-match will be about their mark, I calculate.”

Spence the English Confederate

By the end of the year, however, the editorial bent of All the Year Round had become decidedly pro-Southern. What happened to change Dickens’ mind? First, he read James Spence’s The American Union, Its Effects on National Character and Policy with an Inquiry into Secession as a Constitutional Right and the Causes of Disruption. Dickens’ copy is inscribed by Spence himself, and the work would deeply impact Dickens’ view of the war.

Historian of the South Frank Lawrence called Spence’s book “the most effective propaganda of all by either native or Confederate agent.” Spence also became active in agitating for the South among England’s working class. He would organize meetings and rallies to counter those held by the Foster-Bright abolitionist groups. So Dickens wasn’t the only British citizen swayed by Spence; he was simply one of multitudes–but perhaps the only one with such a public platform for endorsing Spence’s views.

Dickens was so anxious to review Spence’s book in All the Year Round, he mentioned it more than once in his letters to his assistant editor. After it finally appeared (in not one, but two issues), he was dissatisfied with it. Written by Henry Morley, the review harshly criticizes the Northern cause and contends that the United States is too large to govern honestly and effectively.

A Change of Heart

Dickens was so taken with Spence’s arguments that he espoused them almost unquestioningly. In a letter to his Swiss friend WF de Cerjat on March 16, 1862, Dickens outlines his own views on the war…which are almost entirely borrowed from Spence. He argued that abolition was merely a pretext for other economic aims and “in reality [had] nothing on earth to do” with the Northern war effort. He went on to say, “Any reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and that until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy for him was the cause of the war, it hated the abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale.”

Spence grounds his arguments in the tariff debated that had gripped America even before the South had seceded from the Union. The Morrill tariff, passed on March 2, 1861, replaced the Tariff of 1857, which strongly favored Southerners. The Morill tariff, in contrast, gave preference to industrial workers and placed the South at a considerable disadvantage (hardly a surprise, given that by the time of its ratification, the Southern representatives had left Congress). It also impeded trade with Europe. Two subsequent tariffs during the Civil War helped raise necessary funds for the war.

While Dickens openly adopted Spence’s views, there’s another reason he may have shifted his allegiance: international copyright law. After all, his perspective shifted after the CSA’s Copyright Act had been ratified. And Dickens had long advocated stronger international copyright law; indeed, his first visit to the United States was spoiled because he refused to dismount his copyright law hobby horse and act graciously toward his American hosts and interlocutors. Instead, Dickens pushed his agenda at every opportunity, even using a dinner in his honor as a platform to galvanize fellow authors to his cause.

This issue would have been an emotional one for Dickens, but not one that would garner him much empathy from readers. Better, then, to repeat other, more popular arguments. Thus, it’s quite possible that Dickens privately sympathized with the South because the South seemed to sympathize with his own cause. Whatever his motives, the Confederate imprint of Great Expectations remains a work that will undoubtedly continue to evoke questions and enrapture collectors.

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