A Panoply of Primers

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For centuries, children’s literature consisted almost exclusively of didactic texts designed to teach basic skills like reading and writing or to impart religious lessons. During the Middle Ages, the vast majority of these texts were still written in Latin. Hornbooks with the Lord’s Prayer and the alphabet were the most common forms of children’s literature in the 1400’s, and alphabet books began showing up in Russia, Denmark, and Italy during the following century.

In the 1600’s, the concept of childhood shifted: children were no longer thought of as miniature adults, but as separate beings with their own juvenile needs and preferences. Publishers began printing books exclusively for children, though these, too, were often didactic. The seventeenth century also saw the rise of Puritanism, which again shaped people’s views of children. They were viewed not as young innocents, but as moral savages who needed stringent moral instruction.

It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that children’s literature came into its own as a genre. A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744) by John Newbery is considered the first book published for children’s pleasure reading. As technologies improved and it got cheaper to produce books, the industry blossomed. Even as pleasure reading became popular, the publication of educational materials maintained its momentum. Literacy rates began to improve, increasing the demand for, and interest in, primers and similar educational pieces.

Today, collectors can build quite extensive collections around educational materials printed for children. The broadest category of these is the primer. The first known use of the word “primer” was in the fourteenth century. The term derives from the Latin primarium, meaning “primary,” and was the name for a layperson’s prayerbook. At the time, literacy was relatively uncommon, but people did need to read their prayers. This book was often the only one in a home, so it was used to teach children to read. Eventually the term broadened and referred to any small book intended to teach reading. Today a “primer” may refer to a short, introductory piece about a specific topic or to a brief, informative piece of writing.

A Selection of Primers

We’re delighted to offer a selection of primers in a variety of subjects and time periods. Should you have a question about an item, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

The London Vocabulary

Grammarian James Greenwood published the first edition of The London Vocabularly, English and Latin in 1713. After working for years at the Hackney Academy, Greenwood opened up his own boarding school in Essex in 1711 and was later appointed surmaster of St. Paul’s School in London. He’s best known for his An Essay on Practical Grammar (1711), which received much positive praise from a number of scholars and critics, including Isaac Watts. The London Vocabulary went through a number of editions, both English and American, of which this is the seventeenth English edition. Details>>

The Instructor

A quite popular primer, George Fisher’sThe Instructor appeared in numerous editions, both throughout the United Kingdom and in America. Like many educational books at the time, it purportedly offered an easier method of learning than other primers. And also like many educational books at the time, it reminds us of just how little people really knew about geography at the time, and that this truly was an age of exploration and discovery. In this Glasgow edition, printed in 1786, California is still an enigma: “Northward, on the Pacific Ocean, is New Mexico, and the island of California; but of these we know but little.” ESTC records five holdings of this edition. Details>>

The Young Child’s ABC

Written by Alexander Anderson and illustrated by Samuel Wood, The Young Child’s ABC (1806) contains a horn book-style alphabet and a syllabary. Letters are illustrated with objects in alphabetical order. This children’s chapbook was the first item published by Wood, who would go on to have an illustrious and prolific career in the trade. He had thousands of titles under his imprint. Although four copies of later editions have come to auction in the last three decades or so, none of this first edition have come to market. It’s quite rare in the trade. Details>>

A Book Explaining the Ranks and Dignities of British Society

Charles Lamb is best remembered for his collaboration with his sister, Mary Lamb, on Tales from Shakespeare. But he also anonymously published A Book Explaining the Ranks and Dignities of British Society in 1805. The charmingly illustrated children’s book delineates the hierarchy of the nobility, clergy, army, navy, government & professions; with their history & origins, forms of address, order of precedence, honors, with their coronets & coronation robes described, etc.This is the second edition, published in 1809. The book has been occasionally at auction these last 30+ years, though not since 2003. It’s scarce in the trade. Details>>

Le Livre des Enfans

Le Livre des Enfans was published in Quebec in 1834. Illustrated with woodcuts, the work begins with two alphabets, which are followed by the usual primer material. The cover features a short verse by Racine. Le Livre des Enfans also includes thirteen pages of animal descriptions, such as Le Zebre, Le Cheval, and Le Hibou. It’s scarce in the trade. Details>>

The New England Primer

Published around 1840, The New England Primer bears quite a drop title: Containing the Assembly’s Catechism; The Account of the Burning of John Rogers; A Dialogue Between Christ, A Youth, and the Devil; and Various Other Useful and Instructive Matter. With a Historical Introduction, by Rev. H. Humphrey, D.D. Rogers was a biblical translator and commentator, and the first English Protestant martyr under Mary I. He was burned at the stake for heresy in February 1555. This primer bears a frontis of Isaac Watts. Though this copy has some wear to its wrappers, it’s in good condition. Details>>

Girls’ and Boys’ Primer, Part II

Girls’ and Boys’ Primer, Part II was published around 1850 by Rufus Merrill in Concord, New Hampshire. The alphabet is illustrated with woodcuts. The primer features the usual material: alphabet, poems, and lessons in spelling and writing. This copy is in the publisher’s original buff paper wrappers with ornamental border to front and rear wrappers and the signature of “Eastman & Bogart.” Though there’s light wear and soiling to the wrappers, this is a very good copy. Details>>

A Farewell Present to a Female Scholar, on Going to Service

Thanks to the Enabling Act of 1799, dissenters could teach without subscription to the Church of England. The London Sunday-School Union was formed in 1803 with the aim of educating poor children and became a very active publishing organization. One of its publications was A Farewell Present to a Female Scholar, on Going to Service (ca 1828). An apparently unrecorded little work, it offers counseling a young lady regarding her pending move to the world of ‘service,’ “a useful and important station in society ” and outlines a number of ‘rules to live by’ follow, including “Fifthly- Always observe a respectful and obliging behaviour towards those with whom you live, and endeavor to go about your work with a cheerful air, as a pleasure rather than a burden to you.” It appears to have served as a sort of primer for young women entering domestic service. Details>>

Fleet Fact Book

Fleet Fact Book (ca 1906-1910) is separated into four sections: The “Dreadnaught” (2 text pages & 1 photographic image); Submarines (1 text page & 5 photographic images); Torpedo Boat Destroyers (1 text page & 2 photographic images); and The Fleet / Dreadnaught Types (1 text page summarizing the fleet strength, including ship types/numbers & 5 color postcard-type images of diverse dreadnaught types). In short, the volume offers a custom ‘primer’ for the Royal English Navy, ca 1910, with all indications the book created for the use of a senior Naval official, or senior political figure associated with the Royal Navy. Details>>

Puff and Dick

Pictured are the main characters from this famous primary reader: Dick, Jane, Spot, Puff & Baby. This is a rare unused printed sheet of a tale from the highly-collected Dick & Jane reader series, published in the 1950’s. Details>>

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Charles Dickens and Capital Punishment

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The sensationalization of public executions was a long-standing tradition by Dickens’ day. This account of William Page’s “robberies and adventures” dates to 1758.

On February 24, 1807, three convicted murderers were to be executed at Newgate: Owen Haggerty, John Holloway, and Elizabeth Godfrey. The fact that three people were going to be executed (and one of them a woman) was extremely unusual. The event drew a huge and rowdy crowd. The crowd reached a point of hysteria, and authorities could not even penetrate the throngs to help those caught in the melee. In the end, 27 people died and 70 were sent to the hospital with serious injuries.

Though that magnitude of injury was unusual, the excitement over public executions certainly was not. By the time Charles Dickens was born five years later, execution as entertainment was firmly entrenched in British culture. Though Dickens, too, would be morbidly fascinated with public executions, he would eventually argue for private executions.

Broadsides Outsell Even Dickens

By the 1840’s, Dickens was the most popular novelist in England. His monthly shilling numbers consistently sold in the 10,000’s–quite an impressive figure at the time. But the cheap penny broadsides advertising “popular” murderers regularly outsold Dickens by 100 to one. These accounts often included lurid details of the crimes, partially or completely fabricated by the printers. They were undoubtedly the most widely read material in England and had been for decades.

“The Dying Speech of James Shepheard” is known in five different editions. Only four other copies of this one are recorded.

The broadsides fueled a long-standing obsession with death and criminality. Following execution, it was quite common for Madame Tussaud’s to make wax figures of the deceased. Sometimes Tussaud would even buy clothing and other artifacts from the hangman to make the wax figure more realistic. Death masks were also sometimes made. In the case of William Corder, who was hanged on August 11, 1828 for the “Red Barn Murder” of Maria Marten, a cast was taken of Corder’s face and a copy of a book about the trial was bound in Corder’s own skin. William Burke’s death mask, taken on January 28, 1829 clearly shows an indentation from the noose on Burke’s neck. Phrenology, the study of the skull’s shape as a guide to one’s personality, was all the rage in the nineteenth century, and people were enthusiastically interested in studying the skulls of criminals.

But undoubtedly the most prurient and popular entertainment was attending the execution itself. Ordinary citizens would walk miles to attend executions. In smaller towns, executions would be held on market days to facilitate attendance. By the 1850’s, special trains had actually been laid on to transport people to executions. School groups were even made to attend executions as morality lessons; the rationale was that watching such a brutal punishment would deter spectators from committing the same crimes.

Dickens Attends His First Execution

Dickens worked as a court reporter from 1829 to 1833, a position that exposed him to the world of criminals and capital punishment. This experience likely had a significant impact on Dickens’ attitude toward crime, punishment, and justice. But the first execution that we know Dickens attended was that of Francois Benjamin Courvoisier, on July 6, 1840. By this time, it was not fashionable for nobility to attend executions, but Courvoisier’s case was an exception: he’d been convicted of murdering Lord William Russell. Over 40,000 people attended the execution, including William Makepeace Thackeray. Profoundly disgusted by the experience, Thackeray would later describe the experience in great detail in “Going to See a Man Hanged.”

Dickens seemed more inured to the event, but he later said in a letter that he witnessed “No sorrow, no salutary terror, no abhorrence, no seriousness; nothing by ribaldry, debauchery, levity, drunkenness, and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes.” Experts hypothesize that seeing this execution influenced Dickens’ portrayal of the bloodthirsty hangman Ned Dennis in Barnaby Rudge, published in 1841.

That same year, Dickens tried to reach an agreement with Mackey Napier, editor at the Edinburgh Review. The two had met during Dickens’ visit to Scotland, and Napier had invited Dickens to write a piece for the journal. Such invitations were difficult to come by; the Review was the premier intellectual publication at the time. But the Review was also definitively a definitively conservative, Whig publication, quite at odds with Dickens’ own politics. He proposed a number of ideas, including a piece about the sordid state of public executions, even conducting substantial research on the topic.

Ultimately Dickens decided that the Edinburgh Review wasn’t a great fit for him. Five years later, he published a series of letters in the Daily News, a periodical dedicated to “free trade” politics. Dickens remained editor of the paper for only twenty days, but he published five letters on capital punishment during and after his tenure. Critics argue that it’s the best-researched and -written non-fiction that Dickens ever wrote. He addresses Courvoisier’s execution in the second letter. In the Daily News letters, Dickens speaks out against the death penalty altogether.

The Manning Executions

But Dickens managed to attend yet another sensational execution on November 13, 1849. Maria and Frederick Manning were executed at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in front of a crowd that numbered between 30,000 and 50,000. Executions at Horsemonger Lane were particularly popular spectacles; the gallows were on the rooftop. It was said that on execution days, local tenants could let the rooms with windows facing the gaol. Dickens rented such quarters and held a late dinner party there on the night before the execution. He walked around and observed the crowd afterward.

John Leech’s “Great Moral Lesson at Horsemonger Lane Gaol” appeared in ‘Punch’ magazine after the Manning execution and turned a critical eye not to the gallows, but to the crowd below. Leech, who had illustrated ‘A Christmas Carol,’ attended the execution with Dickens.

Tormented by the thought of a mad crowd, Maria Manning tried to stab herself in the throat with her own fingernails the day before her execution. Thwarted, she appeared before the mob in an elegant black satin gown and veil. Her outfit merited mention from countless spectators, including Dickens, and black satin remained out of style for the next thirty years. Dickens shares his recollections of the public hanging in an 1852 essay called “Lying Awake,” which appeared in Household Words. And he evokes Maria Manning in Bleak House’s Mademoiselle Hortense. Dickens also wrote a letter to The Times about the appalling scene at the execution. His letter did much to raise interest in the abolitionist cause. Meanwhile, abolitionist George Jacob Holyoake wrote an ironic commentary in his journal The Reasoner, decrying the unchecked crowding at executions.

But opponents defended the execution circus, arguing that it was a public duty to make the criminals’ last moments as miserable as possible. One proponent wrote, “The merciful object of ever punishment which the law inflicts is not so much to revenge past crime as to prevent its recurrence”; that is, capital punishment was necessary because it deterred spectators from committing the same crimes. Such a mindset was hardly contained among the uneducated. Even clergymen could get overzealous. One inflicted serious burns on a female inmate after holding her hand over a candle to simulate the fires of Hell that awaited if she didn’t repent.

Grisly Executions Sway Public Opinion

The most famous hangman of the 19th century, William Calcraft completed around 450 executions. An illustrated account of his life was published in 1871.

While Dickens consistently comments on the horrors of executions, that didn’t dissuade him from attending more. In Pictures from Italy (1846), Dickens describes in graphic detail a guillotining he watched in Rome. He observed that the “ugly, filthy, careless, sickening spectacle” showcased the very worse of humanity. And he recounts another beheading, this time in Switzerland, in Household Words. These passages certainly made a mark on public opinion.

So did the grisly execution of John Gleeson Wilson on September 15, 1849. Around 100,000 people came to Kirkdale to witness the spectacle. The case had received so much attention, broadside publishers had changed the name of the street where the crime occurred to curb publicity. Unfortunately or both Wilson and the spectators, accomplished executioner William Calcraft was indisposed. He’d been replaced by a seventy year old with little experience. Calcraft’s substitute made the drop too short, and he didn’t pull the cape down far enough; Wilson’s face was exposed to the crowd. Rather than having his neck immediately broken, Wilson strangled to death–and it took a full fifteen minutes. Spectators watched in horror as his eyes bulged and his face turned purple. Numerous individuals fainted at the sight.

Abolitionists Gain Considerable Traction

Throughout the 1850’s, the abolitionists gained more sympathy. It fell completely out of fashion for both nobility and the upper middle classes to attend executions. But while more and more people were coming to believe that the death penalty should be eliminated, Dickens’ sentiments were swinging the opposite way. He’d lobbied for complete abolition of the death penalty in the late 1840’s. But in 1859, upon hearing about the potential reprieve of convicted murderer Thomas Smeghurst, Dickens wrote “I would hang any home secretary, Whig, Tory, Radical, or otherwise, who would step in between so black a scoundrel and the gallows.”

He confirmed this stance in 1864, admitting, “I should be glad to abolish both [public executions and capital punishment] if I knew what to do with the Savages of civilization. As I do not, I would rid Society of them, when they shed blood, in a very solemn manner but would bar out the present audience.” Thus Dickens came to support the death penalty in cases of violent crime, which was concurrent with English law at the time. In 1861, the Criminal Law Consolidation Act reduced capital offenses to murder, high treason, piracy, and arson in a Royal Dockyard. Other than one case of attempted murder, no one had been executed for any other offenses since 1837, so the law finally caught up to common practice.

As Britain’s first “railway murderer,” Franz Muller drew considerable attention.

On November 14, 1864, over 100,000 people gathered to watch the execution of Franz Muller. The King of Prussia had written a letter to Queen Elizabeth on Muller’s behalf, but to no avail. The German tailor had been convicted of killing banker Thomas Brigg. Brigg’s colleagues had discovered bloody clothing and hat in Brigg’s compartment, and the man was found on the railroad tracks shortly thereafter. He was still carrying a considerable amount of money, but his pocket watch and chain had been stolen.

The bloody hat had been traced directly back to Muller, while the pocket watch turned up at a local pawn shop. The proprietor said that a man with a German accent had brought it. By this time, Muller had already boarded a steamship for New York. The inspector boarded a faster ship, intercepted Muller in New York, and returned him to England. Muller was found guilty in less than fifteen minutes.

At the time, people were especially preoccupied with the safety of rail travel. The crowd was boisterous on execution day. Multiple people were violently trampled to death, including a woman and her infant. By this time, public opinion had shifted; Victorians were more evenly divided over the efficacy of public executions. Abolitionists pointed out all the crime that occurred in the very shadow of the gallows. They commonly quote a chaplain’s report that of 167 criminals he’d interviewed on execution day, only three had never witnessed a public execution. Clearly this form of punishment did not deter future criminal behavior.

Legendary Authors Influence Legislation

Along with the Quakers, both Thackeray and Dickens would be credited with changing public opinion on capital punishment. The 1864 Royal Commission on Capital Punishment spent two years deliberating on the issue and finally ruled that there was no case for ending the death penalty altogether. But they did decide to make executions private. On May 11, 1868, the Capital Punishment Amendment was read into Parliament.

A number of factors led to changes in England’s capital punishment laws, but we shouldn’t underestimate Dickens’ role in changing public opinion. The Inimitable One consistently exerted an uncanny influence over his contemporary readers.

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The California Gold Rush, Slavery, and the Civil War

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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.

A Selection of Primers

The London Vocabulary

The Instructor

The Young Child’s ABC

A Book Explaining the Ranks and Dignities of British Society

Le Livre des Enfans

The New England Primer

Girls’ and Boys’ Primer, Part II

A Farewell Present to a Female Scholar, on Going to Service

Fleet Fact Book

Puff and Dick

Broadsides Outsell Even Dickens

Dickens Attends His First Execution

The Manning Executions

Grisly Executions Sway Public Opinion

Abolitionists Gain Considerable Traction

Legendary Authors Influence Legislation

Territory of Untold Value

The Gold Rush Undoes Many a Prospector

California Slavery Divides Congress

A Racist Abolitionist

A Help for the Republican and Abolitionist Cause

Eight Missing Years of Medical Training?

A Landmark Publication in Medical History

A “Tone of Mere Banter”

“The Garb of Fiction”

A Hoax Fit for a Senator

“Bought Up at Almost Any Price”

“Hoax Is Precisely the Word”

A “Check to the Gold Fever”

Featured Items in Manuscript

Rhode Island Light Infantry Company Records, 1818-1873

Journal Across the Atlantic

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

Amergin the White Stag

Somerset Mss Rent Book, 1690-1755

Robert H Barton Family Correspondence Collection, 1849-1871

The Album of Sarah Knight

Areopagitica (1644)

Fanny Hill (1748)

Candide (1759)

The Rights of Man (1791)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Animal Farm (1945)

Green Eggs and Ham (1960)

A Childhood of Privation

Early Financial Responsibility

A Scandalous Little Writing Habit

Heeding the Call to Duty

A Parisian Affair

Challenging Gender Stereotypes

Resigned to Writing “Moral Pap”