Book Traces

Book Traces findings or lack there of.

~ Annie Swafford

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.

19th Century Book Study :Representative English Literature

~ Annie Swafford

Cover/ PhillipsMy DHM Book Spinebook 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.

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Book Traces ~ A History of Reading

~ Annie Swafford

                        Combing through our libraries archive was an awesome experience. My search for marginalia didn’t yield many results yet a lot can be inferred from the few instances I managed to stumble upon. My findings which I submitted to Book Traces, were from the script of playwright Richard Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals which was published in 1912 (first in 1775). The play is a “comedy of manners” that tells the story of a rich bachelorette named Lydia Languish and her search for love in a lower social class.

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As you can see, the script was pocket sized and had been rebound.

    The marginalia that was inside seemingly belonged to one reader, whose notes lead me to suspect he/she was an acting as a character in the play. Although these instances of marginalia are anonymous and minor they reveal the common practice of using marginalia to write cues for the actor has been around for awhile.

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Its hard to make out from this image, but the actor/actress wrote in sigh* cues for themselves
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Here the actor/actress leaves themselves the instruction “open”.

Seeing marginalia that concerned acting cues rather than mere highlighting or textual analysis showed a whole new perspective of the readers interpretation of the play. Looking through an actor/actresses notes to themselves involving their roles is a great way to see inside their art form. Unfortunately there truly werent enough instances of acting notes for me to characterize the acting style and character portrayal the original reader had. If done on a large enough scale an archive of scripts with marginalia could potentially reveal the trends and evolution of acting as an art form.

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The reader writes “Purpose of these ladies” seemingly to summarize the characters monologue.

 

 

Droysen Translated

~ Annie Swafford ~ 2 Comments

When I was looking through the stacks upon stacks of novels, from all different centuries, I found it difficult to find a novel that had the guidelines needed for Book Traces. That was until I discovered a red novel, only a little bit bigger than a diary, and pulled it off the shelf. With only nine minutes left of class, I was worried I would not find anything; but after opening the novel and seeing it was published in 1897, I knew I was on the right track of finding the book I needed. I proceeded to search further into the novel, and right before the contents page I noticed an insert. I opened the insert, and sure enough, it was a handwritten letter written in German! Although it was not the typical marginalia (as in hand written notes or underlining’s), it was still such an interesting find!

My nineteenth century novel is titled Droysen’s Principles of History, and is originally written by Johann Gustav Droysen but translated by E. Benjamin Andrews. Published in 1897 by Ginn and Company, in Boston, this novel is the “Outline of the Principles of History…with a biographical sketch of the author” (as stated on the cover page). Although I cannot translate this letter, due to the scripted handwriting and being written in German, I read the Translator Preface as a reference, and sure enough it became very clear to me why there was an inserted letter in this book. I learned that this letter in fact has nothing to do with the content of the novel, but it rather gives Andrews (the translator) permission to publish Droysen’s Historik in English. Since Andrews did not want to take away the fact that Droysen originally wrote the content, he wanted to ask his permission to see if he would be able to translate the content and publish it. When permission was granted in 1884, Andrews had planned on publishing the novel right away, but with a lot of translating to be done, he found it more suitable to publish the translation years later.

Andrews inserted the letter right before the contents page so that readers would recognize Droysen’s interaction with him, and how Droysen, himself, contributed to making this publication a reality. In respect for Droysen, Andrew wrote a biographical sketch about him and added it to the novel right before the “Outline of the Principles of History” starts. This gives readers taste of the kind of writer Droysen was and the kind of life he lived. Also unique to the translation is the way Andrews took some of Droysen’s complex ideas and broke them down in a way that readers would understand and respond to.

When I decided to Google Droysen, I learned that he was a German historian and often wrote about the “great men” of his era. Ironically enough, Droysen passed away in 1884, the same year he granted permission to Andrews for publication. At the end of this project not only did I learn about Droysen and Andrews, but as well as the physical attributes of a nineteenth century book and what to expect when finding one. Although I could not translate the letter, I still find it remarkable that I found an insert-something I didn’t even know could be!

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Discovering a Dedicated Wordsworth Fan

~ Annie Swafford

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In this book, published in 1908, I could immediately tell that the previous owner was very passionate about the works he/she was reading. Even in just the table of contents, we can immediately see his/her fascination with the works he/she was about to read or even re-read. I found myself wondering if the work underlined was his/her favorite, or if the check marks next to certain works meant something significant to him/her. IMG_2793

In thumbing through some of my own personal favorite Wordworth works, I found descriptive marginalia left by whomever else had enjoyed the romantic poems of Wordworth. IMG_2790The writing in this book shows that the person who had previously owned/read this book was very interested in deciphering the true meanings of the writings. IMG_2791Sometimes Wordsworths’ sonnets can be difficult to interpret, but the previous owner shows his dedication in trying to understand what he was reading. IMG_2792The stains in the book also show how invested the person mustve been in what he was reading. IMG_2794I am a huge Wordsworth fan myself, and being able to find interesting book traces in a book that I was interested in reading myself was very exciting. Though the marginalia didnt directly tell me anything about the previous owner, it reminded me alot of myself and the way i read. No matter what i am reading, i am constantly using the margins to clarify what I am reading, even if occasionally i may be wrong. This assignment also excited me with the thought that maybe someday my notes in a book may become something to marvel at.

Music of the Past

~ Annie Swafford

The late 1700’s was a very well-known time for musicians, such as Ludwig Beethoven. Often, I had found that a majority of the books with musical compilations had told of the years that the music was published, not the book itself. Within the book “Contemporary Composers” by Daniel Gregory Mason (published by The Macmillan company in 1918), it shows multiple moments where someone has underlined certain points.
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In the first portion of the underlined section the person who had underlined the text made a point to take notice of what was written there. This section mentions how even though a musician knows what they are playing, an “untrained” listener, or a listener who is not so widely educated in the ways of music, will not know exactly how in depth the music goes. As a musician, I have found this to be true in multiple forms, and often forget that the audience does not truly understand the music. Knowing exactly the extent of the audience’s listening and comprehending abilities can help the musician to alter their performance in such a way that the audience will be as close to the same level as the performer.
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Continued from the pervious page to the top of page 139, the underlined section also goes on to talk about how music is not just about playing the notes correctly and with the right inflections, but the emotions that are laced into the notes. The composer does not create these emotions entirely; that is entirely to the performer. A good performer can change a song that is typically known as a slow and beautiful piece, to music that is riddled with fear and despair. The composer is a guide, the performer is the leader.

Mystery of Marginalia: A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before

~ Annie Swafford

After flipping through the brittle pages of countless old books published before the year 1920, I finally came across the book A New Voyage Round the World by a Course Never Sailed Before written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1895 by J.M. Dent & Co.

On the top of the first page of the book I found the name of a previous owner. It reads: Oliver B. Seamau, 1948 (I may not have read this name correctly as the handwriting is difficult to make out). I googled this name (and a few variations of it) but found nothing about this man.  As for the year 1948, that was the year that Ghandi was assassinated, that the Berlin Airlift began, and that British Railways was created.  The book itself is about a group of English voyagers sailing around the world and trading with people from different countries. Digital Defoe, a study and archive of Defoe’s work, calls this book “a work of capitalist pornography, in which clever and enterprising merchants reap astounding profits.”  The creation of railways in Britain in 1948 increased national income and supported economic growth.  Thus, we know railways in Britain were a significant element in British capitalism, which is the main focus of this book.  The owner of this book may not have even made that connection, but it is fascinating to look back in history and make such connections.

In addition to the name and date written on the first page, I also found two newspaper clippings and a magazine article pasted into the book. The two clippings were pasted onto the second page and the article on the second last page.  The first clipping on the top of the second page refers to Defoe as a “great literary figure,” and it discusses the excavation and proper reburial of his remains.  The second clipping mentions some of Defoe’s other literary works including the ever popular Robinson Crusoe.  The owner of the book seems to admire Defoe and have a keen interest in his works.

The article on the second last page is titled Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731). It raves about Defoe and calls him “the first real news reporter” and it claims that he had a “remarkable ‘nose for news.'”  This article, like the previous one, reviews many of Defoe’s works (again, Robinson Crusoe).  While most of the article praises his different books, one of the paragraphs in the article mentions Defoe’s personal life–he was the son of a butcher whose last name was Foe, a name that Defoe dropped at the age of 40 when he began to sign his works Defoe.  Altogether, the owner of this book shows that he is tremendously fascinated by Defoe, his works, and his personal life through marginalia.IMG_4266 IMG_4200IMG_4267IMG_4202

 

Works Cited:

“On Teaching Another Defoe.” Digital Defoe. Digital Defoe, 2009. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.

Exploring Ideas of “The Self” in 1902

~ Annie Swafford

For this assignment, I intentionally pursued psychology books of the 19th century, curious to see how people would react to psychological perspectives of the time. Charles Horton Cooley’s “Human Nature and the Social Order” was my book of choice and had some interesting marginalia. The book was published in New York in 1902 by Charles Scribners’ Sons and describes early social psychology and sociological view points. Throughout the entire book, there is underlining of key points, but one particular chapter titled “The Social Self – Various Phases of I,” I found marginalia.

 http://www.booktraces.org/book-submission-human-nature-and-the-social-order/

On page 193, the marginalia says “Cut out Cooley’s babies,” following a phrase that had been underlined. The phrase speaks to the idea of the ego of an author slipping through their written work in a way that has no connection to the work itself. The written comment, “Cut out Cooley’s babies” could be a note to the reader to remember to overlook Cooley’s own examples of personal anecdotes slipping into the text at hand. I researched Charles Horton Cooley and could not find anything about him that related specifically to babies. In the Amazon.com review of this book, Cooley is described as a pioneer of sociological views on American culture. His ideas were the catalyst for change in how sociology revolving around the self was approached pedagogically. The passage that is underlined on page 193 suggests that the reader be a critical thinker for not just content, but for the perspectives of authors writing the content.

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On page 227 in the same chapter about Various Phases of “I,” the following sentence is underlined:
Thus the passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self.” The marginalia beside the underlining says “self-aggrandizement becomes moral.” This trace of a reader’s idea seems to be the summary of the sentence that resonated most with them. The concept of “self-aggrandizement” means process of promoting oneself as being powerful or important. The marginalia therefore is a synopsis of the idea that as one’s sense of self grows and becomes more attached to one’s morals, self-aggrandizement therefore becomes moral.

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Finally, on page 231, at the end of the chapter, the sentenced underlined is “The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.” This description of the self that is underlined is referring to the later idea of the self and the marginalia says “misery of old age.” This summarizes the underlined phrase concisely and quiet honestly as well.

 

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Book Tracing

~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

Searching through shelves of old books is a thrilling experience. I was unsure of what to expect at first with this project. I questioned whether or not everyone was going to be able to find marginalia or some sort of vintage markings in the books. My plan was to write down call numbers of books that seemed promising – books in the genre of philosophy, history, poetry or religion. I searched through all of the books I had written down with no luck in margin notes or other handwritten surprises. It was then when I decided to navigate the shelves by myself to seek out something interesting.

 

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Alas! Something worth writing about. I should mention that of all the books I carefully thumbed through prior to finding Alexander Pope by Leslie Stephen, there was a lot of underlining. I kept searching through other books until I found some sort of notes written in the margins because that was the most rewarding find. The author of this 1901 biography is Leslie Stephen, a 19th century British philosopher. This book is about the life of Alexander Pope who was an 18th century English poet. I tried to examine who wrote the marginalia in order to better understand it. Someone who may have been a philosophy or English student or generally interested in poetry or philosophy may have been the source of the minimal marginal notations. Unfortunately there did not appear to be any cryptic messages or names to decode in the notes. Anything written down in this book seems to have been a confirmation or agreement/disagreement of what was read. Aside from the handwritten cursive margin notes, there was also a vast amount of underlining all throughout the text.

 

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The first bit of marginalia I encountered reads, “money not to protestants”. In this passage the author is describing how Pope had “a conscientious objection” to supporting the Protestant government and saved money himself. The margin note reminds me of something one would write if they were trying to remember a certain point being made to relocate quickly back to that part of the text. Sometimes when I read I benefit from writing down a terse reiteration of the point in the margin so that I can easily find the part in the text I am looking for. Perhaps the person who wrote this was a teacher or explained the book to other people.

 

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The photo above shows a starred sentence and a simple marking of “good” next to a sentence. There is an obvious agreement with a statement and marking of something that is deemed important by whoever scribbled in the book. The sentence that is underlined and has a star in the margin reads, “Waller, Spencer, and Dryden were, he says, his great favourites”. These three English poets were Pope’s earliest inspirations. Stephen writes how Dryden “naturally exercised a predominant influence upon his [Pope’s] own mind”. This sentence is labeled as being “good”. Perhaps the person who wrote the notes admired the work of Dryden also and felt that the influence he had upon Pope was a good thing. Or maybe the person simply enjoyed the flow of the sentence? They may have also agreed that the work of Dryden strongly influenced the work of Pope by comparison.

 

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I attempted to decipher the illegible cursive words in the above photo but had difficulty in doing so. In this passage the author is describing how Pope can be pungent but never simply playful. This line and most of the paragraph about Pope’s personality is underlined. Even though I cannot read exactly what the margin note says, I feel that it is an important part of understanding who the source of margin notes is. If we look at what types of things they marked up it may show a pattern of thinking or a way of teaching. The other margin writings are about Pope’s financial habits, his childhood inspirations, his personality, and in the last photo below his love life. One can surmise that the author of the marginalia was certainly interested in the very personal details of Pope’s life. To try and understand the person writing the short margin notes is a challenge given what they have left. Creating my own perception about who they were given the evidence I have is a tantalizing journey. The further I read into the marginalia, the more I want to figure them out.

 

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Something interesting about this last bit of marginalia is its vertical positioning and rather large size. Compared to the other bits of text this note is much larger and oriented differently in a way that is kind of curious. The adjacent paragraph talks about Pope’s romantic life and how he was too jealous and mean of a man to marry. Why the marginalia is written differently is unbeknownst to me. My guess is that the person either fervently wanted to remember this portion of the text about his love life and wife situation, or it was strikingly important in another way to them. There are other examples of marginal notations and underlining on later pages in the book but they are mostly illegible doodles in comparison to the ones I chose to highlight in this blog post. With all of the evidence in my hands, and a lot of time and thought, I have conjured up an idea of what the person writing all of these notes had in mind. I envision them to be a male, considering the fact that philosophy and poetry of the 19th century seem to be predominantly male dominated fields. They were most likely either a teacher or a student of philosophy or English, interested in the life and work of Alexander Pope. This person was probably mysterious and cerebral since the majority of their notes were short. They were also probably interested in love and desire. The “wife” marginalia was the largest note in the text and it reflected a particular interest in the writing about love. This analysis is basic and lacking true proof of who the person was, although it was a fun adventure figuring them out myself.

Book Tracing is a unique and interactive experience that allows us to get inside the minds of readers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is an opportunity to get lost in a book in a different way. It gives the student the chance to explore early ideas of love, art, history, and other topics. I found this assignment engaging and exciting and had a fun time browsing the library to find something so interesting. Now I will always peruse the shelves of a library with an open eye to catch any torn spines or handwritten titles.

~ Annie Swafford

After a good half hour of searching through books that are older than my grandparents and have a distinct “old book” smell, I finally found the perfect,margin marked up, before 1923, book.  Stacked on the  PS shelf, it was staring at me:  E. Barrington’s The Ladies!, published in Boston 1922.

 

Although it was not the book I originally set out to look for,it was from the same time period and the same subject, women, plus the spine of this book looked promising.

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On one of the first pages  had “NPN” branded into it, meaning this book was part of the New Paltz collection from before it was SUNY New Paltz. This book belonged originally to New Paltz Normal School– the college when it was a teaching school back in the early 1900s.

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Even though this book was not extremely marked up, I found a few marginalia worth noting. Just from the cover page, someone was kind enough to note the Author’s full name- Emilie Isabel Wilson Barrington. The Person also wrote “Beck L.M.A.” I researched what this could mean and came up with nothing solid other than it may possibly be the name of the copyright.

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In the back of the book I found someone left a simple math equation: 500+268= 768. Could someone have been multitasking reading and math homework?

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One piece of Marginalia I found worth looking into was a simple, neat check mark next to the quote, “Indeed, Ma’am, I did my part as well as others.”  After reading the before and after parts of the book I came to conclude this could be an important part to the plot because the duchess who says this line is defending herself to “her majesty.” Since the Duchess’s superior tried to make a joke of the girl, asking if she actually believed the duke would come for her, the Duchess stands up for herself with this quote that means  yes, she did think so because she did everything she was supposed to, he is in the wrong.  Considering women were not granted suffrage until 1920 and this book was published in 1922, it is very ballsy for this woman to take such a stand– and perhaps the person making this mark thought the same thing.

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Looking for marginalia in old books turned out to be much more interesting than I expected. It leaves you wondering who left these marks and what they were really thinking, can our hypothesizes be correct? Leaving marks in books is like leaving a mystery legacy, you will never know who will find it, and no one will ever know you left it.