While looking through the stacks of the Sojourner Truth Library, I found some marginalia traces as well as a few newspaper inserts in one of the first 5 books that I looked in (a very lucky find). The book is titled A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. This book was written by Reverend Sydney Smith’s daughter, Lady Saba Holland, in 1855, 10 years after Sydney Smith’s death, and was published in London. Reverend Sydney Smith was a 19th century English clergyman and writer.
This book is the first of two volumes, with this volume having the title the Life & Letters of Sydney Smith.
The marginalia trace that I found is right before the title page of the book, on the inside cover page. So when I first opened the book, I immediately hit jackpot. It’s written in fountain pen, which was the biggest indication that this is a trace from the 19th century. This is probably the signature of the original owner of this book. From inspection, it looks like it says the name “Olive B. Sarry”. It bummed me out because I spent some time trying to research the name, but I couldn’t find any clues to help me figure out who this person was.
The other things that I found in this book were newspaper inserts that all pertained to Reverend Sydney Smith. They range from about 1945-1954. Though they’re not from the 19th century, I still thought that they were a really cool find. The first one that I found is pasted right on the title page. It’s an article called No Matter, talking about a man named Bishop Berkeley and his criticisms against Sydney Smith. I also found a couple newspaper inserts on page 448. One of them is from the Times Literary Supplement, a weekly literary review published in London.
Along with this, there were a few other little notes that I found written throughout the book. They seemed to be random numbers (or years?) written in pencil, so they might not be from the 19th century.
*Also, here’s my link to my submission to Book Traces!
I got carried away in the library looking for books that would meet the criteria for this project. I must have spent at lease two hours total searching high and low. I want to share some of my smaller discoveries in addition to the one that I think is the most substantial.
The first marking of interest came from a book called The Life of Laurence Sterne by Percy Fitzgerald. (1896, Downey & Co. 21 York St., Covent Garden, London) This book has a script (probably male?) name, “Letteme” in the first few pages under a black and white photograph of a man. It looks authentic (pen type and writing style, dark/light, etc.) but I’m not positive that it’s written and not copied or printed.
The second book I looked at was Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Othello, The Moor Of Venice, edited, with notes, by William J. Rolfe. (1886, New York” Harper & Brothers, Publishers, Franklin Square.) This book has a name and date “Nellie F. Bates March 1887” in the light, more frilly andornate feminine looking penmanship. This book also included many markings within the body text pages but it seems to be much more modern and probably done by students using the books for projects etc. I’m including a picture of these markings anyway because I still think they’re interesting.
It is my inference that both of these old signatures are just the names of the people who owned the books wanting to mark them as their property.
The third and most interesting marginalia I found went beyond just a name within the first few pages. This book, by Mark Twain, entitled Happy Tales (1892, New York: Charles L. Webster & Co.) has a note indicating that the book was a gift from one person to another as they were leaving. The note reads, (though I’m not sure I’m transcribing the names 100 percent accurately) “For Ada B. Richardiore from her friend Annie M. Amred. ‘Bon Voyage’ — April 30. 1892.” What I’m putting together is that this was a woman giving this book of short stories to her leaving friend, that they may not see each other for a long time or even ever again, and finally that she wants her friend to have “Happy Tales” of her own.
I was rather upset to not find anything for the Book Traces website. I find the overall idea and assignment super fascinating and hoped to find something interesting or at least authentic in my search but I unfortunately had no luck. I spent over three hours searching the stacks for a book with some sort of writing in it. I looked all through poetry, literature, letters, history, religion and more. I really felt confident that poetry or literature would have something and spent most of my time in the PR and PS section. Overall, I was really disappointed.
I found a few books with pencils markings and writing in them but I had no way of telling when that was done for example, The Life of Sterne by Percy Fitzgerald and Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin. One book The English Poets by T.H. Ward got me especially excited because it appeared to be marked all over with notes about the poems and inferred meanings behind certain symbols but on further examination I realized the writing was too current as on one of the final pages it was dated for a lesson plan. For a few others the writing was clearly done in ballpoint pen. I also found books that had what I thought to be markings but turned out to be printed that way like Life and Letters by Robert Browning which had what I thought was a signature but sadly wasn’t. One book tricked me because I thought it contained a handwritten letter from the late 1800s but the letter was bound into the book and was apart of the story. The closest I came to finding any sort of authentic ancient article was a receipt in a book from 2004. Everything else seemed to be a dead end.
I do not really understand how I did not find anything as I looked through a variety of books and focused on the two sections that seemed to have the most luck for other people. A section like poetry or literature would seem to have a lot of writing in it as people try to deceiver what the author is trying to say or as they make comparisons to their own life. There were also a few books that were about other languages such as Irish and Scottish books and I hoped that they would have markings about the translations or something along those lines but again nothing. In all, I enjoyed looking through the well over 50 books and wish I had found something but the appearance of the books themselves with interesting some had marble like patterns on the seems and one book had pink pages but I never found what I set out to find.
I have found some marginalia traces in the book Ancient Classical Drama from Richard G. Moulton. It was printed in 1898 by the Oxford Publisher at the Clarendon Press especially to the University of Oxford. The author was a English Literature professor at the University of Chicago, that also worked at the Cambridge University. The book talks about the origins and evolutions of the greek drama, well known as classical drama. The book analyzes both the Tragedy and Comedy styles, as well as the Modern Romantic Drama. There are a lot of fragments of greek plays along the book.
The traces are comments about the text, sometimes about the authors of the greek plays or even a reference to a previous page or another artwork. It seems that the same reader wrote most of the notes. We can recognize the same black pen, the same cursive handwriting and the Spencerian style. Some traces of this style that can be found in this book are the darker and lighter letters and the clear distinction between capital and lowercase letters, especially on the annotation “Songs of Solomon 2.11-13”.
Other marginalia notes were made by pencil. Though, it seems like the same reader has written them. It is suggested because those pencil traces usually are used to circle informations or to indicate examples. Moreover, they are usually together with traces made by the characteristic black pen. Therefore, it seems like that the pencil was used to highlight minor informations, such as complements to the pen highlights.
The project Book Traces encourages everyone to contribute uploading 19th century books that we find in a library and contains notes written in that period. So that, everybody can contribute to enlarge this digital archive, that can preserve the endangered books and help scholars and interested people. The platform just allows to upload five photos, so I will use the blogpost to show also the ones that I can’t include in the archive.
1 and 2) ll.36 + 37. / P. 82 (page 150, 151)
(It means: line number 36 +37 / the reader relates the fragment to another on page 82)
3) Act V. Sc I. Doct[or] (page 229)
(“Sc” means scene)
4) ____ I took from this page PLUS page 97! (pages 96, 97)
5) Aesch. Ag. (page 87)
(It means: The reader thought that the fragment of Alcestis sounded like a play from Agamemnon, a play from Aeschylus. Indeed, Moulton compares the two plays on the next page.)
6) highlight and circle around information (page 69) (related to photo 9)
7) ___aigh says [th]ere no [e]vidence for [su]ch recitations? (page 14)
8) Song of Solomon 2.11-13 (page 7)
9) give ex. / give ex. (Page 68) (related to photo 5)
My book is a copy of the Representative English Literature: From Chaucer to Tennyson, written by Henry S. Pancoast, published by Henry Holt and Company. This copy is dated at 1895, with the call number PR.85.P35. According to the book’s title page, Pancoast was an English literature lecturer. A Google search revealed his work on other English literary study books.
Based on authorship, title, and the book’s cover (although the binding is not original, the cover seemed to be, and without the dust jacket looks as if it was originally a volume in a series) led me to believe the book was used primarily scholastically. The book’s last pages had other reference and textbooks listed for sale by the publishing company, with topics ranging from History to Psychology. It’s kind of like something from the Norton Anthology series, an aid to literary study, and work compilation arranged by topic for a lit course.
So who owned this book? Who wrote in it? The front dedication page lists Adèle Duréey’s name, written in pencil. Pencil markings throughout the book exhibit her use of it as an academic book.
Today, Reuters is one of the most important news agencies in the world. In the article “Who is Mr. Reuter?”, the author tells the story of the man Mr Reuter. The report is contemporary to Mr Reuter’s life and career, which make it even more interesting for us, readers from the 21st century.
The way that Andrew Wynter introduces the topic is interesting, because it questions how could a single person do as much as an institution:
“If he be (a person), by what extraordinary organization does he manage to gather up over night a summary of events over the entire continent, and to place it before us as a startling interlude between coffee and toast at the breakfast-table?”
The author offers an explanation:
“Mr. Reuter’s history is like that of all courageous and energetic men, who, seizing upon a new idea,career work it persistently and silently, until one fine morning, from comparative obscurity they suddenly find their names famous.”
Mr. Reuter was convinced that a new era in correspondence had arisen as he saw the success of the first working telegraph on the continent — that between Berlin and Aix-Ia-Chapelle in 1849. He decided to work in the improvement of this communication system.
Paul Julius Reuter, the founder. Reproduction: http://historianet.nl/d Aix-Ia-Chapelle in 1849. He decided to work in the improvement of this communication system.
In that city of Aix-Ia-Chapelle Mr Reuter opened his first office. He employed a service of carrier-pigeons to gain time in the journey between Aix-la-Chapelle and Brussels. Concerned about the regularity and safety in the transmission, Mr Reuter required three different pigeons to despatch each message. As a consequence, the passage from Brussels to Aix-la-Chapelle would take about one hour to be completed.
However, when the line was extended, a gap of five miles remained between French and Prussian capitals. It resulted in an enormous delay in the correspondence. To fix this, Mr Reuter provided horses to forward despatches between the two points.
Reuters Commercial Department in London, 1938 Reproduction: http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/index.php/the-important-contribution-of-a-companys-history/o forward despatches between the two points.
Then, more lines were opened and after the connection between Calais (France) and Dover (England) was made successfully, in 1851, Mr. Reuter transferred his office to London. Since that moment, connections with the principal continental cities became possible.
As the writer tells, Mr Reuter analyzed that it was the moment to make the telegraph “the handmaid of the press”.
The Times was investing a lot of money to catch up on the news from all the world. So Mr Reuter offered them the telegraph system. However, they denied. There was some prejudice about the political telegrams, which frequently contained errors. Besides that, sometimes the telegram had to be translated into three or four languages before they reached the British public, so the newspaper wouldn’t like to risk publishing an imprecise information.
In 1858, he made another offer to the press. At this time, he has chosen a different strategy. He sent his telegrams for one whole month to all the editors in London, leaving it to their option whether they used them or not. The quickness of Mr. Reuter’s telegrams, and the accuracy of the information they contained, were appreciated by the press, and one newspaper after another became subscribers of Mr Reuter’s system.
Though, Mr Reuter’s telegrams still wasn’t noticed by the great public. One day, The Times published a French emperor speech, just one our later than the time it was pronounced. It wasn’t a regular speech: it’s meaning war was the following start of a war with Austria. The news has shaken the stock market and since then, everyone started looking for Mr Reuter’s telegraph system.
The war began, and Mr. Reuter sent special correspondents to the French, Austrian, and Sardinian camps.The telegrams were impartial and accurate, which made Mr. Reuter gain the confidence of the press.
The work of Mr Reuter continued. He had located agents to transmit news from America, India, China, the Cape and Australia. Wynter evaluates Mr Reuter’s contribution to the 19th society:
“What Mr. Reuter has already done for Europe, he is about to do for the other quarters of the globe. It will have been observed that all our earliest information from America, India, and China, the Cape, and even Australia, is derived from this gentleman’s telegramAs a conclusion, the author reflect about Mr Reuter’s importance to their future, that is, our present:
“The pedestrian, as he walks along Fleet Street and the Strand, will perceive high over head what might be termed the political spinal cord of the metropolis; every here and there it gives off right and left fine filaments; these are going to the Globe, the Sun, the Morning Post, the Herald, the Standard, the Telegraph, and all the other daily papers which line this great thoroughfare. These are the lines by which Mr. Reuter puts the whole British public in possession of the thoughts, and records the actions of the rest of the world; and as we watch the wires ruling their sharp outlines against the sky, for all we know they are conveying words which may affect the destinies of millions yet unborn.”
Read more about in: http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications8/socialbees-30.htm
Naturally, I was drawn to the clothing section of the Dictionary of Victorian London page. There was one thing that stood out to me the most in looking at this section : a rather strange accessory that women used called the bustle.
Here is a photo of what a typical bustle looked like. They were essentially a big padded piece of fabric that gave their rear end a lot of definition. They were worn under their skirts and were then covered by a dress or skirt that consisted of a lot of fabric. There’s no other explanation to why they wore these other than it being a trend. The article that I saw talked about a lady walking down the street wearing a bustle while walking her pet poodle, the bustle falls off, and a kind sir runs after her holding it and she scoffs at him, yelling, “NOT MINE!” I just thought that was so funny because I kind of had the same thing happen to me!
Me (left) with my best friend/cast-mate during “Hello Dolly.” Take a look at that bustle!
I was drawn to the topic of discussing this accessory because I, along with the rest of the female cast in a musical that I was in, actually had to wear one of these throughout the entire play. We had to sing, dance, act and run around all wearing these weird looking butt-pads.The play was set in the 1890s, which was why we were all forced to wear these things – and let me tell you- they were extremely uncomfortable to have to lug around behind you, especially while dancing, and they were just weird looking! I would definitely wanted someone to return my bustle to me in this situation, as it would be seen as an embarrassment to just leave it sitting on the stage after the end of a dance number!
Overall, I was happy that I discovered this article because it connected me with the glory of my high school musical days. If I could do it all over again, I probably would!
Traffic lights… we hate them with all our heart. They make us have to bring our car to a halt and force us to wait about two minutes so it can turn green again before we can carry on with our journey. Sure they prevent car accidents, but they’re just oh so inconvenient.
One may believe that the traffic light was invented after World War II when car culture in America was heating up. But you’re wrong, very wrong. The traffic light wasn’t even invented in the twentieth century, it first appeared during the (record scratch) Victorian Age? No no, that doesn’t seem right, are you serious? So who might you ask, invented these wonderful (yet annoying) devices?
Me during every commute
Well my fellow curious researcher, traffic lights were invented by J.P. Knight who installed the first one outside the House of Parliament in 1868. http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1460,00.html . Meanwhile the American Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression to some) ended just three years prior!
Truth be told, while browsing through the Victorian Dictionary, I was quite shocked when I saw this under transport. I knew that traffic lights existed before the Great Depression, but not this far back. But hey, you learn something new everyday.
It was described as;
a column 20 feet high, with a spacious gas lamp near the top, the design of which is the application of the semaphore signal to the public streets at points where foot passengers have hitherto depended for their protection on the arm and gesticulations of a policeman – often a very inadequate defence against accident.
Thou shall not pass
So even the blokes over a hundred years ago knew that vehicle accidents must be prevented and they were able to invent such a device that today, prevents numerous car accidents, even though they’re such an annoyance. You do have to give them credit for this though.
While looking through the “The Victorian Dictionary” I came across a piece that talked about children going to work that caught my eye. Much like in the U.S children of poorer/working class families went to work early in life. In the article I read they talked about a young lad named Tom who went to school at age seven and then at about age ten started being “useful” as they would say and becomes either a news-paper boy or a printing boy. What caught my eye is that not too long ago I saw a Broadway musical called Newsies and although it was about U.S paper boys the same was true that kids boys needed to bring money back to families and at young ages would often be news-boys. While continuing reading I read more into the news-boys and the similarities were astonishing. I noticed that like the American newsboys they lined up in front of the cage asking for the copies they needed and rushed out into the streets doing whatever they could to sell them; for what every they couldn’t sell they didn’t make a profit off and lost money. Attached I have a photo of a newsboy in Victoria London. I also attached a video to the song they sing in the musical about getting and selling the papers in America. Also this is the line from the article that describes what the kids did to get their papers. “The boys at once make a rush towards the cage, and the taller ones elbow their way up to it, while the small boys must be content to wait until their turn comes. “Fifty copies!” “One hundred copies!” “Two hundred copies!” Each bawls out the number he wants, puts down his money, and runs off through the moist, cold, morning air to”- Max Schlesinger, Saunterings in and about London, 1853
Now the two Victorian London accents I, most likely, just insensitively appropriated and horribly butchered were of the Costermongers and London’s Cadgers (beggars). While reading around Lee Jackson’s Victorian London Dictionary, in the Words & Expressions tab, I stumbled into a short piece about the different English accents just within the city of London itself. Everything from the metropolitan elite, to the poor, or to the (actual) meat butchers themselves have surprisingly distinguished manners of pronunciation, granted, just within the radius of a city.
book is a copy of the Representative English Literature: From Chaucer to Tennyson, written by Henry S. Pancoast, published by Henry Holt and Company. This copy is dated at 1895, with the call number PR.85.P35. According to the book’s title page, Pancoast was an English literature lecturer. A Google search revealed his work on 
