Three Hundred Years of Ownership

As I mentioned in a previous post, last month I attended a book auction for the first time. This week’s book is one of the two that made up the only lot on which I was the winning bidder; nearly all of the other antiquarian books -- with the exception of these two -- went to a very aggressive bidder (I think possibly a dealer in fine binding books) sitting directly behind me. I only managed to win these by sniping a bid at the very last second before the auctioneer hammered it away. I think I may have caught the other bidder a bit by surprise because I heard him sigh and mutter when they didn’t call his number.

The book is a very stout little volume (about 7.5cm thick, though splaying wider than that at the fore-edge) containing an early seventeenth-century edition of Natalis Comitis

Mythologiae, sive Explicationis Fabularum, a Latin and Greek collection of tales from classical mythology that was perhaps the most popular contemporary source for Greek and Roman religious narratives in Renaissance Europe. As a testament to its success, it went through twenty-seven different editions through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (all in French or Latin, though the author himself was Italian).

Originally published as ten volumes in Venice (1567), this copy of the Mythologiae is of the Geneva 1612 edition. I’m not able to say precisely who published the edition, because the name has been cancelled on the imprint and is indecipherable; it was printed, however, by “Samuel Crispinus”, who was also responsible for publishing a later edition -- my suspicion, therefore, is that whoever the publisher originally was, he sold or transferred his rights to the book to the printer for some unknown reason.

The author of the book was Italian poet, scholar, translator, and historian Natale Conti (1520-1582) and his take on classical mythology is extremely gnostic; in his view, the myths were a deliberate sequence of highly complex allegories in which was encoded a secret all-encompassing, universal life philosophy that had been known to the ancients but had become lost over the centuries. Thus, after recounting each myth (and he manages to cover nearly every one that was known in his day), the book provides a three-part analysis for the tale, described by Kevin Curran as historical, “scientific”, and ethical. As John Mulryan puts it in his close study of translation and mythography in the Renaissance, Conti used classical mythology to examine “the moral well-being of mankind”.

This systematic approach was highly influential with many of his time (including Francis Bacon, who relied upon Mythologiae for much of his own 1609 De Sapentia Veterum, many late-sixteenth century fine and performing artists who adapted Conti’s versions of the tales and his commentary into paintings, ballets, and masques, and teachers -- including in Elizabethan England -- who used it as a textbook), though it was not without controversy (Scaliger famously scorned Conti’s approach and shrugged him off as “an utterly useless man”). Conti’s pedantic esotericism ultimately fell from favor with the passing of the Renaissance and in the Romantic era his view on the myths was ridiculed for being simply ridiculous and inaccurate.

Beside his Mythologiae, this particular volume begins with the dedication to his 1600 edition and also includes his verse De Venatione, Geofrey Linocier’s essay on Conti’s version of the muses (included with most editions of Mythologiae after Conti’s death), and an anonymous collection of commentary observations on some of the myths in the preceding volume (this commentary has been traditionally scribed to the classicist Frederick Sylburg). Also included are indices of plants, animals, and places.

The book is in its original vellum binding, which is chipped and a bit worn, but still in fairly good condition; the top of the spine is flaring slightly from pull-damage and the cords from the spine are pressing tightly into the spine vellum. The back board is splitting apart slightly and a slight gap inside the book at gathering k reveals some of the leather bands inside the spine. An early hand has written the title in ink on the spine.

Also inked onto the binding are some decorative lines and, on the back and faintly on the lower part of the spine, several different permutations of the Latin phrase “Taciti Opera” are inked in precise block letters (likely an early owner was testing his/her handwriting by copying out from the title page of an edition of the complete works [Opera Omnia] of Cornelius Tacitus [Cornelii Taciti]) (see below).

The pages measure 10.5cm x 17cm and are of a hand-laid linen paper bearing chain-lines that vary in spacing and alignment between different gatherings; no watermarks seem to be visible, but flecks of poorly processed rag show through on nearly every page, suggesting perhaps that the printer resorted to a fairly cheap stock (in several different batches) for the job. The material interconnections between the physical world from which the book emerged and the book itself are neatly captured in the form of actual pieces of hair (animal? human?) that were trapped in the paper-mould when the paper was being manufactured, reappearing as part of the text on one page of the book (see below).

Expressed collationally, the book may be described as follows 8^o: [#3] (:)⁸ a⁸-h⁸ i² k⁸-z⁸ A⁸-Z⁸ Aa⁸-Zz⁸ Aaa⁸-Mmm⁴ [π³]: $4. Signatures are given with Roman letters followed by Roman miniscule numerals for sheet numbers (for example, Aa3 is signed “Aaiii”).

The precise number of pages is thus 1,594, though the pagination itself ends with the text of the Mythologiae (at what is marked as p. 1123) and does not include any of the following texts (which, if marked, would run 126 pages, from 1124-1250). The true pagination of such a large handpress book is bound to present problems; here is a list of some of the errors I noted in checking the book over (many of the errors are good examples of the kinds of mistakes a compositor can easily make when setting type by hand):

12 as “22”, 130 as “30”, skips from [1]30 to 143, 181 as “118”, 261 as “262”, 7 in “337” inverted (see above), 9 in “349” inverted, 433 as “431” (across D-E sheets) and follows (into other sheets, suggesting sheets were set in sequence and not simultaneously), 545 as “549”, 635 as “35”, 670 as “700”, 761 as “716”, 783 as “781” (across Cc-Dd sheets, but does not follow), 793 as “739”, 806 as “736”, 814 as “772”, 874 as “847”, 916 as “616”, 924 as “914”, 962 as “928”, 1034 as “1024”, 1043 as “1034”, 1053 as “1035”, 1061 as “1601”, 1071 as “1069” (across Xx-Yy and follows), 1071 as “1073”, 1104 as “104”

As this selection of errors shows, using page numbers as reference points in early books is asking for disaster. Thus, most scholars and bibliographers prefer to use the (generally, though not always, more accurate) system of signatures and gatherings.

A number of other printing errors in the book bear noting for the bibliographic record: signatures kii and kiiii are set as “lzii” and “lziiii” respectively, pi is unsigned, and Miiii is set as “miiii”. Looking at the running-titles of a handpress book can also be informative; on some pages, the word “Mythologiae” is spelled with a Greek miniscule “y” or even a capital Roman “I” for the “y”. Likewise, errors in the running-titles on many pages (see above and below) indicates that Crispinus did not use a “skeleton forme” for printing the book (a skeleton forme consists of a separate setting of type for text on the outside of a sheet that does not change much or at all between sheets; it is meant to speed up the composing process), an oddly cumbersome choice for such a tremendously long book.

As noted in the collational formula, gathering i is only two pages; it is, in fact, tipped-in onto the final leaf of h. This corresponds to the skipped pages 131-142 noted above, suggesting that these pages are “cancellans” -- cancelled leaves, likely resulting from an egregious printing error, were removed from the book (either before or after printing) and replaced by hand.

One of the wonderful features of handpress-period books is how markedly unique each copy is, not just because of owner’s marks (on which, more below) but even from the manufacturing process itself. My copy of the Mythologiae shows unique evidence of how it was made. For example, “furniture” were small blocks of metal of various sizes that could be inserted into the frame that held the pieces of type (the “chase”) in order to keep everything tight and aligned; the furniture was not as thick as the type-face itself, so when the ink was applied it would not show on the page. In at least two places in my copy, however, the furniture must have not been inserted fully into the chase or it was not locked down tightly, because the inked impression of the pieces appears on the pages (see above and below).

Likewise, a small spacer -- a thin piece of metal lower than the type-face used to set the distance between letters and words -- was accidentally inked and appears on a catchword on one page (below). On one sheet, the chase itself was not firmly locked and the type along the inside of one page on the sheet has drifted out of alignment in the first few lines.

Post-production damage and evidence of use provides evidence of another part of the “circuit” through which the book has travelled. Inky fingerprints on Fff3v and some of the pages after it suggest where a reader held the book, perhaps with pen in hand (a student?) (see left). Some dried mud stains splattered on only one opening (between Nn5v and Nn6r) suggest it was once accidentally dropped by a careless owner. Several gatherings have detached completely from the binding (m, C, E [unstitched completely], Eee, and Ggg) possibly indicating that content on those pages caused them to be turned to more frequently than other places in the book.

There is no marginalia in the book itself, though there is a sequence of owners’ inscription that bear comment. On the verso facing the title page there is an almost entirely erased pencil inscription at the top of the page. Beneath it is a sequence of inscriptions, in different inks and hands. Perhaps most intriguing about this sequence is that the more recent the inscription, the worse the handwriting, Latin, and clarity of message. Perhaps this is merely a reflection of the declining importance put upon manuscript notations in books over the years; indeed, today we seem to be moving more and more enthusiastically toward digital books that make lasting reader interaction less and less possible (paradoxically, while making ephemeral reader interaction and the ensuing illusion of thought more and more accessible).

Joannes Junius haecer praemium tulit ab Academia Salmuriensi ob egregia nauatam literis operam in tertio studiosorus ordines Anno MDCXXXV Rectore Mose Amyraldo.

Joannes Junius bears this prize from the School of Saumur on account of distinguished enthusiasm devoted to work in the third [year of] studies. So ordered, 1635. Rector Moses Amyraut.

Amyraut (1596-1664; shown to the left), a major promoter of the spread of Protestantism in early modern France, was a famed scholar and teacher of a particular brand of Calvinist theology (the “School of Saumur”) at the University of Saumur in western France. This careful inscription clearly suggests that the book was given as a gift by the theologian to one of his prized pupils. Another celebrated pupil of his was William Penn, who adapted Amyraut’s principles of religious pluralism in the founding of the Pennsylvania Colony.

Joannes Junius hoc praemium tulit et mihi nepoli sui Dedit 1674. [Beneath this is an undecipherable monogram.]

Joannes Junius bears this prize and my grandson himself gave it 1674.

This is a real puzzle to me. Dated 39 years after Amyraut awarded the gift to Junius, it uses much of the same language as the original note. This same hand has written an illegible inscription that begins “Ex libris” on the inside of the front cover, on the pastedown; it, too, is dated 1674.

While I can’t quite make out the name, it is very clearly not Joannes Junius.

ex Libris Joannis Baptista pallimi [illegible word] Doctoris medici [three illegible words]. 1747.

From the library of John Baptista cloaked doctor of medicine . 1747.

It’s rather infuriating that such a late hand should be so unclear (though if Baptista was a doctor, it’s little surprise his handwriting was so atrocious); it’s also possible that the writer has made errors in the Latin (or confusedly mixed Italian into his Latin).

Samuelo Thorne togam virilem sumer[t?]i de amico suo. Noel Morse. 1925. [ornamental underline]

Samuel Thorne lawyer[?] manfully obtained on account of joining a friend. Noel Morse. 1925.

I’m sure that whatever it was that Morse was trying to say with this cryptic and bizarre message was completely clear to Thorne. Today, the identity of both these men, their relationship, and the meaning of this inscription is, however, a complete mystery.

These owners’ inscriptions, bearing witness to nearly three-hundred years of changes from within the preliminaries of a book, conjure up an image (however romantic) of the book actually being handed off from one owner to another over four centuries, ending (for now) with me.

A 19th Century Transliteration of a 16th Century Treatise on Transliteration

Most people -- myself included -- usually buy books that either appeal to a specific content area or topic about which they have an interest or that have some common bibliographic trait. Even rare book collectors, whose highly particular areas of specialization often range from the bizarre to the more bizarre, tend to allow a single compulsion to dictate their buying habits. But there is something to be said for the occasional eclectic and meaningless purchase. This week’s book, for example, was something I grabbed at a used book store for a bargain; even though it is about something I know essentially nothing about, I thought that it would be an intriguing addition to my bookshelf and, as it turns, I was right in more ways than one.

The book is Hart’s Orthography and is a "reprint" of the sixteenth century phonetician and Chester herald John Hart’s 1569 An Orthografie, conteyning the due order and reason, howe to write or painte thimage of manne’s voice, moste like to the life or nature (more specifically, it is a lithographed edition of the copy held by the British Museum -- today the British Library -- but transliterated, on which more below). It was published, sold by, and likely prepared, by Fred Pitman of the Phonetic Depot, at 20 Paternoster Row, London in 1850. As its name suggests, the firm Phonetic Depot specialized in texts presenting orthographic studies and transliterations of standard English works into specialized shorthand.

The book that is reprinted -- Hart’s Orthografie -- was originally published by William Sere “dwelling at the west ende of Paules [Churchyard], at the signe of the Hedge-hogge” (St. Paul’s Churchyard was the central book production and retail market for London from the start of English printing in the fifteenth century up until the devastating German blitz bombings of the 1940s). The original was probably imprinted by London printer Henry Denham. As the title suggests, the Orthografie proposed an inventive new system of writing that Hart felt would more accurately record the English language as it was spoken; his book set out the rules of this system and defended its need for sociological, pedagogical, and economic efficiency reasons.

The binding is a gray-brown cloth with Victorian style decorative blind tooling around the edges both front and back and a gilt title in the center of the front cover. The pages measure 9.5cm x 15cm and are in 4+ unsigned gatherings in duodecimo format. 

The pagination corresponds to the pages of the book being reprinted, beginning on the reprint title page (the second leaf after the edition title page) and runs [1]-78 with a blank flyleaf at the back. The final pastedown has almost entirely come up from the inside of the back board; the front cover is bumped on the corners and the spine is split so that, as with other books in my collection, the scrap-paper the printed used in the process of constructing the codex’s backbone is beginning to show (I can’t tell what the document once was but three identifiable phrases are “incorporates” “Freemen”, “of the Borough”, and “previous to the last”, all which suggest that it was a legal text). The spine damage is causing the book to open very loosely, though nothing is completely separated yet.

With the exception of segments of English and Latin text such as section and chapter headings, the dedication (to academic Jacob Bredan), the license and colophon, selected primary source quotations, and (most intriguingly) published marginal reference glosses, the entire text is written in what seems to be Pitman shorthand: the main text, the table of contents, the publisher’s prefatory note to the reader, the author’s note (titled, “To the doubtfull of the English Orthographie, John Hart, Chester Heralt, wisheth all health and prosperitie”), are all in Pitman, a system of writing developed by Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897) in the early nineteenth century and that resembles a cross between cuneiform, Hebrew, Korean, and Martian. The book’s contents (after the table of contents, dedication, stationer’s letter, and author’s letter) are as follows:

Preface: “The Preface, wherein is brieflye conteyned the reasons, causes, commodities, summe and effect of this Treatise”. The sections in this chapter are: “The first commoditie for the unlearned natural English people”; “Secondly for straungers, or the rude country Englishmen which may desire to read English as the best sort use to speak it”; “Thirdly for cost and time saved”; “And last, for a helpe for the learned sort which desire to pronounce other tongues wright.”

First chapter: “What letters are, and of their right use”.

Second chapter: “How some men maintaine our abused Inglish Writing”.

Third chapter: “Of the divers vices which use maintaineth in our writing, and how they are particularly by reason confuted.”

Fourth chapter: “Of the number of our vowels, and of their auncient sounds, in which they are always used, in the newe maner hereafter: by which their perfite use, our present abused sounds of some of them are found to be Diphthongs.”

Fifth chapter: “The number of consonantes & breathes which we use in our speech, with the leaving of superfluous letters, and receyving of such other as we neede: with example of their right use.”

Sixth chapter: “Of the accidentes unto vowels, to weete, time, tune, and breath, with Diphthongs, and Triphthongs, and an order of distinction and pointing used thereafter.”

Seventh chapter: “An exersiz of dat huir iz sed: huer-in iz declard hou de rest ov de consonants ar mad bei dinstruments ov de moute: huire var o-mited in de premiser, for dat ui did not mur abiur dem.”

Eighth chapter: “/exampls hou serten uder naisons du sound der leters, bod in Hatin, and in der muder tung, derbei tu kno de beter hou tu pronouns der spires, and so tu vid dem as de du.”

(The original edition, and the table of contents in this book, indicate that there should actually be nine chapters; for some reason this was printed with only eight -- there is a Pitman shorthand notation in square brackets on the final page that may explain the missing chapter, but I cannot translate it.)

That's right. The last two chapter titles are written in what sounds, today, like a pidgin German-English language. This is, in fact, Hart’s proposed system for more accurately spelling English words. Though it sounds ridiculous to us today, this provides fantastic evidence as to how “proper” English actually sounded to a sixteenth-century Englishman (such as, for example, Shakespeare). Of course, we must take into account the fact that many of the phonemes had different sounds then than they do today, and many of the letters likely resulted in different aural effects. Nonetheless, Hart’s work offers a unique look at how English was undergoing radical changes, most notably the Great Vowel Shift that completely revolutionized the language, evolving it from Chaucer’s Middle English of the middle ages to the Modern English of the Renaissance. 

My careful readers will have noted that the book was published by Fred Pitman and is written in Pitman shorthand: I can’t imagine that this is a coincidence, but I have no idea who this man was -- one of Sir Isaac’s two sons was named Alfred but he wasn’t born until at least eleven years after this book was published (it is worth noting that Sir Isaac was one of ten siblings, none of whom I have been able to learn more about).

The original book was printed in Latin and standard English (with the exception of the last two chapters, which were -- as they are in Pitman’s reprint -- written in Hart’s orthography). In addition, the original changes the order of some of the preliminaries, moves some of the paratext to the back of the book, and includes a “table” of key terms and their location in the book (essentially an early index).

My copy -- as with so many of my books -- is rich with evidence of use. On the title page a late nineteenth century hand has inscribed in thin brown ink “H Ellis”. Another reader has thoroughly marked up chapters 2-6 (with some minor marks in the other chapters, including attempting phonetic interpretations of Hart’s orthography in the final chapter), writing out notes, reminders, and attempted translations of the Pitman in the margins with a gray pencil. This reader has made a note at the end of the book that seems to be dated “4 June 1868”.

About Hart, I can do little more than quote in full Vivian Salmon’s entry on him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which provides also a good brief on the history of early modern orthographic scholarship:

Hart, John (c.1501–1574), herald and phonetician, belonged to a family of tenant farmers long settled at Northolt, near London; his father, John Hart, died about 1500. There are no records of his baptism and education, but his writings demonstrate that he was a well-read man, acquainted not only with classical languages, but also with several contemporary vernaculars. He may have spent some time at the University of Cambridge, since he had intellectual or personal links with three Cambridge scholars, two of whom, Sir Thomas Smith (d. 1577) and Sir John Cheke (d. 1557), were (like Hart) active in promoting spelling reform; a third, Sir William Cecil (d. 1598), was described by Hart as his ‘specially good master’. As a powerful figure in government circles, Hart's ‘master’ was in a good position to act as his patron, and he became by the 1550s a diplomatic courier, then in the 1560s an official of the court of wards and liveries and a herald pursuivant. He was finally promoted in 1567 to the highly prestigious rank of Chester herald at the College of Arms in London.

Hart wrote three treatises on spelling reform; the first (1551) was not published at the time; the second, An Orthografie (1569), was a more sophisticated version of this manuscript; and the third, A Methode (1570), instructs learners in the use of the ‘phonetic’ alphabet which Hart devised. A fourth work intended to provide a simpler alphabet was not completed. Hart proposed to reform English spelling because it was both inconsistent and irregular. A fairly standardized orthography had been developed in the fifteenth century by chancery scribes, whose obligation to send out legal documents, by now in English, to all parts of the country, and to speakers of regional dialects, required them to use a generally regular and comprehensible spelling system. But when Caxton set up his printing press in 1476, he abandoned the regularized orthography of the scribes—possibly because he had to employ foreign compositors—and his successors, even as late as 1551, were no more systematic.

Hart hoped to reform English orthography because it was an obstacle to the acquisition of literacy by, for example, protestants anxious to read the Bible for themselves in their quest for salvation. Furthermore, literate foreigners needed assistance in coping with the vagaries of English spelling, which were such a deterrent to comprehension. Hart's aim was to match graphs and sounds, taking as his standard the speech of the court and of London and its environs. Where necessary he provided new graphs where single characters representing single sounds were lacking in the existing alphabet, as with, for example, and . In Hart's system, one graph represented one sound and vice versa. He also explained, for the benefit of speakers of other dialects who needed to be conversant with the sounds of the standard language, how individual sounds were articulated. Consequently, he not only became a spelling reformer, but also developed into a phonetician of outstanding intelligence and insight.

Whereas the study of orthography in the classical tradition was based on the written representation of vowels, diphthongs, semi-vowels, and consonants (including a sub-category of mutes), Hart based his phonetic script on the spoken language, noting for the first time by any scholar several features of connected English speech, such as elision, assimilation, stress, and intonation; and in his study of individual sounds, he noticed such features as the aspiration which follows initial voiceless plosives, represented by Hart as in, for example, pheip, for ‘pipe’. These features are clearly visible in the phonetic transcription of some forty pages of text included in An Orthografie.

Hart was not the first English scholar to publish his ideas on spelling reform, since he was forestalled by Sir Thomas Smith, who published his De recta et emendata linguae anglicae scriptione in 1568, but he was the first (in 1551) to deal with it so subtly. Unfortunately his work did not meet with the lasting success it deserved, possibly because Richard Mulcaster published, in 1582, The First Part of the Elementarie, a proposal for reforming English spelling, without using new characters. It was based as far as possible on traditional and established spellings, and proved extremely popular, superseding Hart's more academic works.

Hart died in London on 16 July 1574, leaving a widow, Mary. She was still alive in 1578, when she presented a petition to Lord Burghley.

A final note about my book is worth making, and that is the question of scarcity. At least twelve research libraries list copies of the 1850 Pitman edition in their public catalogs: not an overwhelming number by most measures. A search of dealers reveals, surprisingly, nobody selling a copy of the 1850 edition (in 2009 Kessinger Publishing, a print-on-demand firm, made a reprint of the 1850 reprint available and these are not worth anything). In 1969, Scolar Press printed a octavo facsimile edition of Hart’s original (somewhat rare) and the Orthografie was also included in the two-volume John Hart’s Works on English Orthography and Pronunciation, edited by Bror Danielsson and published by Almquist & Wiksell of Stockholm in 1955-63 (very rare). I’m left, then, with an enigma: a book that seems quite lonely in modern collections, written in an alphabet I cannot understand, about a language no longer in use.

A Nineteenth Century Latin Textbook and a Look Inside a Bored Adolescent Girl's Mind

Any true bibliophile knows that stalking the shelves of a bookstore with a fellow-shopper who is both educated in the ways of books and informed in your own particular tastes is much more fun and productive than browsing alone. It helps to have that extra pair of eyes skimming the spines and to have another intelligent opinion with which to discuss potential finds. I’m quite fortunate to have both of those qualities in one person: my twin brother.

Recently he and I were browsing at Gabriel Books in Northampton, MA and he came across this little item. Most book-collectors would pass over it because the title is not particularly collectible and the cover is a bit beaten up, but my brother knew of my interest in marginalia and thought I’d enjoy adding this to my collection.

Many collectors can be quite close-minded about marginalia, feeling that unless the markings have associative value related to the book (for example, the signature of the author, or proof markings by a reviser preparing a subsequent edition, or notes written by a notable or famous owner) reader's markings actually devalue a volume. I'm not terribly impressed by these kinds of collectors: their interests are purely pecuniary, thus they lack both the inductive imagination and the intuitive curiosity that are the hallmarks of a true bibliophile. In some ways I'm glad for that, though; it means more of these great finds for those collectors who can best appreciate the stories they have to tell.

The book is a first edition of the textbook A Latin Grammar for Beginners, written William Henry Waddell, Professor of Ancient Languages at the University of Georgia, Athens. The book was published in February, 1871 by Harper & Brothers of Franklin Square, New York and is listed in the Editor’s Literary Record & Review of the November 1871 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Harper published a subsequent edition in 1873 which is much more common; the 1871 edition is rare and valued at approximately $20-$30.

The pages measure 11cm x 18.5cm; the book was printed in duodecimo, in eight gatherings signed [A1], A2-D2. Each initial gathering (A1, B1, C1, D1) has four leaves, each ultimate gathering (A2, B2, C2, D2) has eight leaves. The initial leaf of A1 is a blank flyleaf; two additional blank leaves (not part of D2) end the volume. The pagination runs [1-9], 10-86; the final five leaves are publisher’s advertisements, paginated [1]-2, [1]-[4], [1]-[4]. The binding is a soft red leather on light cardboard boards, with gold impressed title on the front, impressed double-line border on front and back, and impressed publisher’s monogram on the back; the page edges are inked red all around. The binding is worn slightly and the corners (particularly the lower, outer corner on the front) a bit beaten up. Inside the front cover my copy has a yellow bookstore sticker for “Leary, Booksellers” of 5th & Walnut, Philadelphia, a landmark of Philadelphia’s book trade from 1849 through its closure in 1968 (when it closed it was the largest used bookstore in the U.S.; its stock was so large that in the process of clearing it out for closure an original Dunlap printing of the Declaration of Independence was found and sold for $400,000).

A preface by Waddell presents the book as a companion to his previous Greek Grammar for Beginners (published by Harper in 1869) and explains that its target audience is the high school or “the lower classes in our American colleges”. Perhaps most intimidating is his suggestion that the book “be committed to memory, from cover to cover, the first time the pupil goes over it”.

As might be expected, the contents of the book are organized along an old-fashioned linear pedagogical course of Latin language education, starting with a section on orthography, moving through an extensive series on etymology (noun declensions, verbal conjugations, etc.), and ending with two brief sections on syntax and prosody (which uses Horace for a case study).

The advertisements at the end of the book (which run 10 pages--the same amount of space as is dedicated to the prosody section and five times as much as space as is dedicated to the orthography section) are for other classical textbooks published by Harper. These include Waddell’s Greek Grammar, Harper’s Greek and Latin Texts series of classical text editions, Harper’s New Classical Library series, Willson’s School and Family Readers, and Loomis’s Mathematical Series. As with most publisher’s advertisements from this period, these list basic physical features of the books (size, price, pagination), copious endorsement quotations from reviewers and scholars, features that make them educationally useful, and in the case of Harper’s Greek and Latin Texts a listing of professors who currently use the books, 

The Waddell family was a fixture at the University of Georgia in the turbulent years leading up to, during, and after the Civil War. William Henry (shown below) was the son of Moses Waddell, who had served as the fifth president of the University from 1819 through 1839. He was probably also related to James P. Waddell, tutor at the University from 1822 to 1824 and full Professor of Ancient Language from 1836 to 1856. Another James Waddell (different man) also completed his undergraduate studies at the University around this time and went on to become a lawyer and member of the Georgia state legislature. A John Waddell, also a lawyer apparently, was issued an honorary degree by the University in 1864.

William Henry had been a student at the University from 1848-1852 and a member of the campus branch of Phi Beta Kappa. His wife was Mary Bumby Sue Waddell.  According to the University’s Catalogue of the trustees, officers, and alumni, Waddell began teaching as a tutor at the University in 1853, moved up to adjunct in 1858 and was promoted to lecturer two years later; he was elected full professor in 1872, and resigned in 1878. During his tenure as professor, he was one of 11 faculty members at the University (including the Chancellor, Patrick Hughes Mell).  

Waddell was thus a lecturer during the years of the Civil War, at a time when the University granted permission to the Confederate government of the state to use part of the campus as an “ophthalmic” hospital. On June 19, 1864, Waddell expressed concern that the college would be unable to reopen that September because “the Dormitories [are] full of blind soldiers and Refugees.” According to a survey completed for the University’s Centennial Alumni Catalogue in 1901, Waddell died in 1880. His family name lives on as a street name near the campus and in the (misspelled) Waddel Hall, home of the University’s Rusk Center for International Law.

The advertisement in Waddell’s Latin Grammar promoting Harper’s Greek and Latin Texts notes that, “The volumes are handsomely printed in a good plain type, and on a firm fine paper, capable of receiving writing ink for notes...” These books were meant for practical purposes, meaning that many old textbooks often have interesting marginalia recording how their student-owners used them (or neglected to use them). This copy is no exception, though the markings suggest the original owner was less interested in the Latin lessons assigned to her and more interested in the schoolteacher assigning them.

The copious writing in the book appears to be from two or three owners, in multiple media (black ink, pencil, blue pencil, purple ink), but one late nineteenth-century hand dominates: Miss Jennie Venable. 

Jennie covered her book in many ramblings, very few of which are related to the content of the textbook, many of which are in verse, most of which center around her romantic fascination with “Mr. Willie Davis”, a man who, from the context, seems to have been her high school Latin teacher. The first several pages of the book are covered with flirtatious notes and poems about how handsome Mr. Davis is and how she hopes he will not forget her (some of the writing is in pencil and has been, perhaps in the interests of delicacy, erased). “Mr. Willie Davis is very handsome”, “Willie Davis is so handsome and dashing”, is a constant refrain.

When Jennie does attend to her Latin it is to scribble the word “amo” (I love) in various permutations and conjugations. Markings directly related to the content of the book (usually ticks and crosses by various lessons) vanish after page 39 (the second conjugation, subjunctive mood), suggesting either Jennie gave up on the Latin language for the second half of the school year or else the course did not proceed beyond that point (on the inside back cover an erased pencil note reads “<   > wish I could go home home home”). She does write some other remarks unrelated to the course or Mr. Davis (“Let virtue be your guiding star”, for example). 

Two verses on the verso of the front flyleaf are in different hands and are both addressed to, rather than written by, Jennie:

May happiness around thee shine

While germs of joy thy brow entwine

May lifes bright river gently flow

And all thy fortune brightly glow.

Laura

Forget me not I only ask

This simple boon of thee

And may it be an easy task

Sometimes to think of me

To Jennie

from Florence

An unsigned penciled verse on the verso of the title page is possibly in Jennie’s hand:

You I love and will forever,

You may change but I will never.

If separation be our lot,

Dearest one forget me not.

On the recto of the final flyleaf, another friend has inscribed a touching verse to Jennie:

Remember me when far away

Remember me when awake

Remember me on thy wedding day

And send to me a piece of cake.

The best wishes of a friend

Hattie Strickey

To Jennie Venable Miss.

A version of this poem--though slightly different--appears to have been written on the bottom of the flyleaf verso (beneath Florence’s poem) but subsequently erased. The name of Strickey appears elsewhere in the pages of the book as well.

A change in Jennie’s affections for Mr. Davis seems to have struck sometime over the course of the school year, by the time the class reached page 25 in the textbook (in the middle of the lesson on comparative adjectives). On this page she expresses her interest in “Cousin Newton Harrold”, who is “the sweetest sweetheart so he is”. On p. 27 this budding crush is reiterated more confidently: “I love cousin Newton so I do.”

On the recto of the penultimate leaf, Jennie provides a lengthy meditation on her incestuous plight:

Well I do love cousin Newton ofcourse [sic] it is to be expected

I would love my dear cousin my darling little Newton

my little genius, how could I help it. I do not

Harm any one for loving him except it does make

me jealous for any one to love cousin ofcourse I

love him only as a dear fond cousin + nothing

else on earth, but he is powerful sweet, yes he

grins so prettily + shows his beautiful pearly

white teehh teeth, I wish cousin Newt- loved

me. If he loved me like I loved him

his knife can cut our love in two.

Perpendicular to this, in pencil along the bottom margin of the page, is the somewhat histrionic exclamation:

Oh! Dear me what will be my f<   > [fate?]

But, alas, the heart of a young lady is ever fickle: yet another crush is expounded upon on the verso of this leaf as two different hands engage in dialogic note-writing back and forth.

Wallis D is much handsomer

than G------ I think.

Well he was called a

fool I don’t think in

my soul that he is

as big a fool as some

body else in Bridville.

The name of this bigger fool was apparently written below the comment but has been judiciously scratched out. (I haven’t been able to find a “Bridville”, but it may be a misspelling of “Bridgeville”, which is the name of a town in Delaware and a town in Pennsylvania, which may explain how the book ended up at Leary’s in Philadelphia.) This writing is then followed by an illegible, erased comment about Mr. Davis. Below that is another cryptic inscription, once again in Jennie’s hand and written in pencil:

I think Mr. Willie Davis is

handsome, but I think somebody

else a great deal handsomer.

As I finish transcribing these melodramatic lines, I can only wonder what Professor William Henry Waddell would think of his textbook being used as an outlet for such adolescent outbursts. And my eye is drawn to what is perhaps the most coincidental of the scribblings in this book pulled from the shelf for me by my twin brother. Written in Jennie’s ornate, purple-ink hand on the recto of the front flyleaf, is a random jotting that seems clearly to read: “Your Twin find.”