Welcome to the fifth issue of RED Letter. The Reading Experience Database is directed by Professor Simon Eliot at the Centre for Writing, Publishing and Printing
History, University of Reading, and was founded as a collaborative project by The
British Library’s Centre for the Book and the Open University. RED is designed to record evidence of every type of reading experience that occurred in the British Isles, or that was undertaken by those born in the British Isles, during the period 1450-1914.
The RED forms and an introductory pack are available from the Editor, and you may also input data via the Internet at: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/
We are also still looking for ‘designated readers’ to input evidence from either one of their favourite texts or from any of the texts that are on the ‘designated’ list drawn up by the steering committee. Contact: s.j.eliot@rdg.ac.uk
for further details.
As you may know we are in the process of transferring the records on RED from the old BRS database onto a new ACCESS one. The reason for this is that the BRS software is now rather old and we are the only ones using it at the Open University. It is also part of our long term aim to make the data accessible to all the members of the
RED project team and ultimately to all RED members.
The first thing I needed to do was to upload all the outstanding RED records, including those you have contributed via the web form and those entered by the
British Library from your paper forms. To date we have nearly 3000 records, an impressive number I think for the (still young) project.
This has now been done and David Wong from the Open University has moved the extracted records onto an ACCESS database held on a server at the O U.
Our next move will be to build the link between the RED website and the ACCESS database. This will require consultation with an expert in html and ACCESS.
In addition to the e-mailed records from yourselves we have some material from other sources to input: Teresa Gerrard is currently completing her PhD on nineteenth century readers and once submitted will give us a copy of her records of reading from working class autobiographies. Jonathan Rose's recently published The Intellectual
Life of the British Working Classes (Yale 2001) includes records of reading. Though
Jonathan's material hasn't been recorded in RED format, we are looking into the feasibility of incorporating his material.
Alexis Weedon http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue28/red/
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Oxford University Press has recently commissioned a five-volume History of the Irish Book, under the general editorship of Professor Bob Welch (University of Ulster at Coleraine). I am the co-editor of volume 5: The Irish Book in English, 1891--2000. The volume will contain a series of historical overviews covering reading and publishing in Ireland throughout the period. These will be backed up by shorter case studies of particular trends, publishing houses, themes etc.
The 'Reading' overviews will be a particular strength within the volume as Irish cultural and literary historians have rarely tackled this fascinating area. Contributors will be looking at reading in Ireland, and reading about Ireland (in Ireland and the UK). There are four chronological sections, divided with contributors as follows: Reading 1891-1921, Dr. Ben
Levitas (Drama Department, Goldsmiths' College, University of London); Reading 1921-1939,
Dr. Nicholas Allen (English Department, Trinity College, Dublin); Reading 1939-1969, Dr.
Frank Shovlin (Institute of Irish Studies, Liverpool); Reading 1969-2000, Dr. Ronan McDonald
(English Department, University of Reading).
Almost all of the 27 sections in this volume are now under commission but two have proved difficult to fill from this side of the Atlantic. These are: Reading Ireland Outside Ireland, 1891--
1939 (6000 words) & Reading Ireland Outside Ireland, 1939--2000 (6000 words) which might cover what the Irish emigrants to the English-speaking nations read; what people read about
Ireland overseas more generally; and the critical reception of Irish literature in the twentieth century. Countries which might be considered include the US, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. The US is, I think, essential.
I would be grateful if those interested in contributing, or supplying names of others who might be suitable, could write to me.
Dr. Clare Hutton, Institute of English Studies,
University of London, Senate House,
Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU
Email: clare.hutton@sas.ac.uk
The exhibition Commonplace Books: Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the
Twentieth Century , which opened on July 26 at the Beinecke Library, brings together a wide array of manuscripts and printed books, offering a broad, first-hand prospect of the history of reading and of the commemoration and organization of learning over 2500 years of Western history. The exhibition continues through September 29.
On Wednesday, September 12, 2001, the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Marie Osborn Collection will sponsor a lecture Commonplace Books and the Practices of Learning in Early Modern Europe by Anthony Grafton, Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University.
For further information about the exhibition or lecture, please contact:
Stephen Parks, Curator, Osborn Collection
Beinecke Library, Box 208240, New Haven, CT 06520-8240
Tel: 203-432-2967: Fax 203-432-4047
Stephen Parks (stephen.parks@yale.edu) http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/compb.htm
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How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn out appearance of, nay the very odour … of an old ‘Circulating Library’ Tom
Jones or Vicar of Wakefield! – How they speak of the thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight! [1].
Charles Lamb’s account of the delighted circulating library reader is an unusually enthusiastic depiction of an institution that was often treated with derision by his contemporaries. As James Raven has argued, depictions of circulating libraries and their customers created during the Romantic period reveal a tension between the
‘encouragement and fear of reading’ that is frequently reproduced in discussions of reading in novels and conduct books [2]. Historians of print culture have recently begun to pay close attention to representations of the circulating library in fiction and have begun to re-examine the contents of the few library catalogues that have survived, but little work has yet been done on the way in which such institutions are represented by the readers who used them in their autobiographical writings [3]. This article looks at one such account from the late 1790s.
Charlotte Francis (later Barrett) is perhaps best known as the editor of the diaries and letters of her aunt, Fanny Burney, published in 1842 [4]. The manuscript of her
'Journal of what passed in an excursion to Brighton' (now British Library Egerton
3706 A. Vol. XXXVI), was compiled between 16 August and 23 September 1799, when she was just 13 years old. It includes detailed information about the kinds of library available in the resort and of the use that she and her friends and family made of these institutions while on holiday. Francis regularly attended two libraries during her stay,
Fisher’s Circulating Library
and
Donaldson’s Marine Library
and, in the majority of entries, these institutions are referred to as centres of social activity rather than reading [5].
We went to Fishers where we bought some trifles and found the address of a
Mrs Pritchard an old [...] acquaintance of Mamma’s by the book for if you pay a crown you may write your name in the books & your address & your friends find you out so we called upon her. (f.14b).
This service, which helped to bring together friends who were staying in the resort, is referred to in a number of contemporary novels (including Austen’s Sanditon) and the
Francis family consulted ‘the book’ on several occasions during the early days of their stay to see who was in town. However, the main reason that the Francis family visited both Fisher’s and Donaldson’s was to take part in the ‘raffles’ that occurred in both libraries during the afternoons and evenings:
After tea we went to the rafle shops- first to Donaldson’s but that was so full we could not get in- then to Fishers- where we met Mrs Pritchard & Miss
Headington & went in with them. I put into the rafle [sic] with Mr Broome’s choice but lost [...] It is thus that I have spent my days since I have been here.
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Shopping of a morning rafles in the evening. (F.18a. Saturday 20 August
1799).
Francis always took part in the raffle when she attended the library and, as this entry suggests, she was often accompanied by a number of companions as well as her mother and brother. In a later entry Francis refers to ‘the rafle shop Donaldsons, or as he calls it the Marine Library’ in a way that suggests that gambling was its primary function and these entries suggest that it was possible for the circulating library to perform a social function that was in many ways entirely separate from its role in the dissemination of books. Such entries appear to support the assumption of contemporary satirists that almost anything went on in the circulating library except reading, and the fact that Francis represents the circulating library as central to the experience of being on holiday in Brighton is a useful reminder of the role played by reading within the commercialisation of pleasure in the late eighteenth century. Her programme of 'Shopping in the morning’ and ‘rafles’ in the evening does appear to have become tedious after a while, but on the whole the diaries give the impression that she thoroughly enjoyed the experience of gambling in the libraries and that her family approved of such an activity. Robert Bisset’s anti-Jacobin novel,
Modern
Literature (1804), similarly records that gambling was rife in the Brighton libraries and the difference in tone between the two accounts is very revealing. Francis’s spirited enjoyments of the pleasures of the library and Bisset’s outright condemnation of the library as ‘shop’ are at the opposite ends of the representational spectrum of their age [6]. Francis’s diaries thus help to recover the importance of the resort library as a thrilling place, packed with people, and full of exciting ‘trifles’ as well as books.
Despite this apparent lack of concern with the libraries as lending institutions, the diaries do contain some hard evidence about borrowing, reading, and the use of library space. Francis borrowed a copy of Voltaire’s plays from Fisher’s in order to practice her French and she read part of this volume aloud to her mother in their lodgings. She read aloud to her mother on several occasions during their stay in
Brighton but the diary also reveals an important tension; social engagements, which included visits to the libraries to gamble, did not leave enough time to read:
Saturday August 31 1799. The afternoon was very wet and dark. I read French
[…] wrote Journal and did some geography- this was the first afternoon I have had time to do any of them (f.28a).
This tension between ‘pleasure’ and ‘profit’ (in the intellectual rather than commercial sense) is one shared by many readers in this period.
We know from contemporary guides to the resort that the Brighton libraries included space for reading the newspapers ( A Guide to all the Watering and Sea Bathing
Places (1803), for example, records that in Brighton ‘the daily papers are regularly laid on the reading tables’ (p.78)]. Francis does not appear to have taken advantage of this service but her friends, the Middleton’s, certainly did:
Nobody goes to the libraries without subscribing but Mrs and Miss Middleton spend all their mornings there reading the newspapers & looking at all the things & yet neither of them subscribe & they excuse their meanness by
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saying that as Dr Hoopper forbade Miss M. to be out in the night air, & as she does not want to read there is no occasion. (ff.43a-43b).
This entry reveals that both libraries included spaces for reading in public similar to those depicted in the illustration of Hall’s library at Margate published in 1789- reproduced in both Kaufman’s Libraries and Their Users (1969) and Erickson’s The
Economy of Literary Form (1996)-, and that it was possible to enter library space in order to read texts taken from the open shelves without having to prove that you were a subscriber. To do so, however, was to transgress the social codes of a membership community and, as in this case, risked embarrassing exposure. The author of A Guide to All the Watering and Sea Bathing Places declared that ‘no amusement is so cheap at Brighton as is reading’, but he didn’t have this form of illegitimate entry in mind, and the subscription fees of 5s per month and 10s for three months would have been high enough to maintain social boundaries [7].
It is the aim of the Reading Experience Database to recover the reader from the archive. Diaries and other autobiographical sources often contain evidence about print distribution networks, and the appearance and use of reading venues that are difficult to recover from any other source. The journal of Charlotte Francis provides a glimpse into the sociable world of the resort based circulating libraries, but this was a reading experience determined by a particular form of commercialised pleasure- the family holiday- and as such provides a useful reminder about the ways in which context always impinges upon reading practice.
REFERENCES:
1.
Charles Lamb, ‘Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading’, reprinted in The
Essays of Elia (Oxford, 1901).
2.
James Raven, ‘From Promotion to Proscription’, in
The Practice and
Representation of Reading in England , ed. by James Raven et. al (Cambridge,
1996).
3.
Christopher Skelton-Foord, ‘Surveying the Circulating Library Scene’, in
Libraries in Literature , ed. by Peter Vodosek and Graham Jefcoate (Wiesbaden,
1999). The Cardiff Corvey project is adding details of the library catalogues to a database: www.cf.ac.uk/encap/corvey/contents.html
4.
Charlotte Barrett [Ed.],
Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay
(London, 1842).
5.
The following entries are taken from the Library History Database: Donaldson &
Wilkes' Marine Library 1798 [John Donaldson & ? Wilkes] - 1804. ESTC imprint,
1798. Hamlyn's Thesis, 1948; Fisher's Circulating Library 1793 [Frederick G.
Fisher] BBTI. Succeeded A. Crawford. Label in 1800 book? Sale cat 1805 (BL) ;
Gregory's Circulating Library 1791? [James Gregory] -1800. BBTI. Vignette on tp. of ESTC t211249.
6.
Robert Bisset, Modern Literature: A Novel (London, 1804).
7.
A Guide to all the Watering and Sea Bathing Places [in England and Wales],
With a Description of the Lakes; a Sketch of a Tour in Wales, and Itineraries
(London, 1803).
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Call for Papers
SHARP 2002: 10-13 July 2002 University of London
The tenth annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP) will be held in London between the 10th and the 13th of
July 2002. The lead institution is the Institute of English Studies in the School of
Advanced Study, University of London ; the British Library and the Wellcome
Library are co-sponsors.
Sessions will take place in Senate House (University of London), the British Library and in the Wellcome Library. Apart from the usual panel and plenary sessions there will be opportunities to visit archives, libraries and other sites of interest in and around London, including the publishers' archives at the University of Reading.
In the SHARP tradition, we welcome proposals for individual papers and entire sessions dealing with the creation, diffusion, or reception of the written or printed word or image in any historical period or place. We also seek to draw on the particular interests and strengths of the institutions organising the conference. To this end there are two specific themes on which we would particularly welcome submissions. The first is the history of the medical book; the second is digitisation as it impinges on book history.
Each panel will usually last one-and-a-half hours and will consist of three papers.
Each paper should last a maximum of twenty minutes, thus allowing ten minutes' discussion of each paper. Proposals for individual papers should be the equivalent of one page maximum (i.e. 450 words), giving the paper title, a short abstract and brief biographical identification. Session proposals should include a cover sheet explaining the theme and goals and separate sheets for each paper.
The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, 31 October 2001 . Proposals should be sent by email, if possible, to: ies@sas.ac.uk
Those who do not have access to email should send a hard copy of the proposal to:
SHARP 2002
Room 308, IES, School of Advanced Study
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
SOME RECENT PUBLICATIONS
H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (Yale University Press, 2001)
Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers, and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
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[RECENT PUBLICATIONS]
Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes , (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2001).
Kevin Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: the Politics of Reading in Early Modern England
(New Haven, CT. London: Yale University Press, 2000).
D.R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CUP, 2000)
David Vincent, The Rise of Mass Literacy : Reading and Writing in Modern Europe.
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).
Across Boundaries: The Book in Culture & Commerce , edited by Bill Bell, Jonquil
Bevan and Philip Bennet (Oak Knoll, 2000). Includes Bill Bell ‘Cultural Baggage:
The Scottish Emigrant Reader in the Nineteenth Century’.
The Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives , Edited by Bernadette
Cunningham & Maire Kennedy (Social History Society of Ireland, 1999) [ISBN
094789733X/].
The Moving Market: Continuity and Change in the Book Trade , edited by Peter Isaac and Barry McKay (Oak Knoll / St Paul’s Bibliographies, 2001) (Includes Maureen
Bell, ‘Reading in Seventeenth-Century Derbyshire: the Wheatcrofts and their
Books’). [ISBN 1-58456-052-5].
A Radical's Books: the Library Catalogue of Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1623-90 , edited by
Michael Hunter, Giles Mandelbrote et. al. (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999).
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