New Online Resource

We’re pleased to announce the availability of a new online resource: The Atlas of the Rhode Island Book Trade in the Eighteenth Century. The Atlas integrates a timeline and a map in an attempt to pinpoint as many participants in the book trade (from printers and booksellers to book binders and rag collectors) as possible in space and time. Dragging the timeline left or right (or scrolling a mouse wheel or double clicking at a point in time) adjusts the map view to show only members of the trade in operation at that point in time. The Atlas also features a searchable or browseable database and a number of viewing options, including the option to view the atlas overlaid with eighteenth-century maps of Newport and Providence.

Geographic visualization of all kinds of information abounds on the internet*, but what kind of questions does this resource answer? First, it’s a great way to get a sense of the spread and development of the book trade in the state over the course of the century. Here’s a rough dramatization of the process in twenty seconds of video:

But more particular elements in the story of the book trade become visible through a geographical lens as well. Take the case of Paul Mumford and Mary Maylem, two merchants and booksellers who, according to the Newport Mercury, were married in 1769. In itself not remarkable, but viewing a map of their locations indicates that they were neighbors, operating just across the street from each other. Romance perhaps aided by location. Or a glance at the static map view indicates how many of the book trade’s members operated in locations used previously by someone else in the trade.

Just considering previous posts from this blog, the Atlas offers a number of insights. In our most recent post, it identified the fact that Old Bet’s exhibition was actually taking place in the location used by the printer of the broadside. We can use the Atlas to chart the progress of  Thomas Truman’s exciting late-night experimentations with glowing water. We mentioned the sign of the bunch of grapes when it marked the location of Gladding’s department store, but you can also use the Atlas to find two earlier uses of the sign. And the broadside advertising the visit of a robot to Providence in 1796 gives “Mr. Todd’s bookstore” as one of the locations for ticket sales. Where was Todd’s bookstore at that time? That’s a perfect question for the Atlas.

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* For instance, find out what people think the boundaries of Providence neighborhoods are, based on their Flickr tags at http://boundaries.tomtaylor.co.uk/#2477058 .

 

The Elephant

Unfortunately, this post just missed Elephant Appreciation Day, but better late than never.

“The Elephant”* is a broadside advertising the display in Providence of “the most respectable Animal in the World,” a friendly (but paper-of-consequence-stealing) elephant on its way from Philadelphia to celebrate the Harvard Commencement. Displays like this one were certainly nothing new in an Age of Wonder like the late eighteenth-century: Providence residents had been entertained by an automaton the previous November. And many aspects of the November performance are in place here: once again children get half-price on the $.25 admission, and every effort has been made not to offend the “genteel Company”.

A place was apparently “fitted up” for the elephant in a store behind the Coffee House, which was located where the RISD Auditorium now stands. This also happened to be the location of the publishers of the broadside, John Carter and William Wilkinson, and the broadside offers an interesting example of the goings-on of a print shop of the time. A variant of the broadside depicted here also exists**, but in place of the woodcut illustration of the elephant is a line of type decorations, and the text describing the duration of the elephant’s stay (“till the 8th of July only”) reads simply, “where he will remain a few Days only….”

Thanks to a 1951 article by George G. Goodwin, we also know a lot more about the elephant itself: Her name (Old Bet)***, the fact that she was a two-year-old elephant brought from India and that she was the first elephant ever brought to America. We have Nathaniel Hawthorne’s father to thank, in part, for the account of Bet’s journey to America, as he was a passenger on the ship that made the months-long voyage, and he recorded the experience in a journal.

The end of Bet’s story in America is uncertain, but there is the possibility she was shot by a boy (possibly in Rhode Island) and killed. Whatever the case, Bet’s story is parallel in many ways to a much earlier travelling celebrity pachyderm:

 

Like Bet, the rhinoceros that was the basis for Durer’s famous illustration made a lengthy water voyage, in this case travelling from India to Spain in 1515. The rhinoceros became an international sensation, and for those who couldn’t travel to see it in person, Durer’s impressive (if not entirely accurate) woodcut illustration conveyed a sense of its strength and power. (Perhaps our elephant broadside filled a similar purpose in addition to its advertising role.) While on its way to the Pope, the ship carrying the Rhinoceros wrecked, and the rhinoceros was killed. (Listen to the full story in one of the BBC’s “A History of the World in 100 Objects” podcasts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tn9vp .)

Shipwrecks, gunshots and a host of other maladies have been the unfortunate side-effect of human interaction with astonishing  and impressive members of the animal world. Among many such cases is the story of the elephant whose difficulties were “heightened by the great quantity of ale the spectators continually gave it”:****

UPDATE: We should have mentioned this great documentary film project to tell “the story of what happens when elephants and Rhode Islanders meet”.

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* Broadsides, 1797. Alden #1532.

 

** Alden #1531.

*** Although the broadside refers to the elephant as male.

**** “An Antiquary of the Last Century,” Littell’s Living Age, 6th ser., vol. 2 (14 April 1894): 94-106.

Talk of the Town, 18th Century-Style

Thanks to the generous support from the following organizations:

Rhode Island Society of the Sons of the Revolution

Rhode Island Society of Colonial Wars

Rhode Island Society of the Sons of the American Revolution

General Society of Colonial Wars

a set of the earliest 101 broadsides in the RIHS collections dating from 1693 to 1777, which were previously not fully catalogued, are now fully accessible to researchers through our online catalog.

Broadsides are generally printed on one side of a sheet of paper and were either posted in public places or offered for sale.  They were used in early America by the government, businesses, and individuals as a way to disseminate information to the public.  They covered every topic conceivable from issues of general concern such as election results, proposed new legislation, and calls to arms to lighter subjects such as social events and theatrical performances.  The most famous example of a broadside is the printed version of the Declaration of Independence.  It was posted in a prominent location in the community to be read by all. The Society holds two Rhode-Island imprints of the Declaration and they were catalogued as part of this project.

The RIHS broadside collection is a truly unique resource.  Just like posters are used today, the majority of broadsides were created as ephemeral items to be posted outside for all to see for a specific purpose and then discarded.  As a result, very few examples of each broadside have survived to the present day.  Of the broadsides cataloged thus far, 46 of them are the only known copies in the world, 8 are one of only 2 copies known to exist, and 17 of these were unknown to scholars in 1949 when John Eliot Alden published his master bibliography: Rhode Island Imprints, 1727-1800. (New York, R.R. Bowker Company).

The broadside depicted here reveals the building tension between the American Colonies and the English Parliament that led to the American Revolution.  The broadside reports on the results of a Town Meeting of the citizens of Newport on January 12, 1774.  At that meeting, the citizens resolved to oppose the duty on tea by the English Parliament and the attempts by the East-India Company to forcibly land the tea at American ports in order to collect the tax.  They characterized it as “a violent attack upon the liberties of America.” The note at the bottom provides further proof of the widespread discontent among the colonists with England.  That town meeting apparently drew one of the biggest crowds despite the extreme cold and all of the resolutions passed without a single dissenting vote.  Only two copies of this broadside are currently known to exist—one at the RIHS and the other at the New York Public Library.

– Karen Eberhart, Special Collections Curator

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Image Citation:

Newport (R.I.)  Colony of Rhode-Island, &c. At a town-meeting held at Newport, the 12th day of January, 1774. Henry Ward, Esq; moderator. [Newport, R.I.]: Printed by Solomon Southwick, [1774].  Alden #543.  Call No.: G1157 Broadsides 1774 No.3

An Impartial Hand

In a recent New Yorker article on the history of debtor imprisonment*, Jill Lepore briefly mentions a 1754 Rhode Island imprint titled The Ill Policy and Inhumanity of Imprisoning Insolvent Debtors (Vault, Alden #142). An impassioned appeal for an end to debtors’ prisons, the only title page attribution is to “An Impartial Hand”. (Probably no relation to Learned Hand, Faithful Hand, Disinterested Hand, or any of these Hands.**) The short pamphlet is a mixture of religiously-based admonition (“How just is the Damnation of JUDAS, who for a little MONEY, betrayed Innocent Blood?”) and rational argumentation (“. . . the wise End of all Laws, is the Good of the Society for which such Laws are made. Is it not best therefore, that each Member in Society, should be employed in some useful Occupation . . .”). The author was well ahead of his or her time: as Lepore points out, it would take nearly a hundred more years for the United States to ban debtors’ prisons.

Although the authorship and publishing details are anonymous, it has long been accepted in bibliographies that this is an imprint from James Franklin’s shop in Newport (more about Franklin in an earlier post).

This copy (one of five known) includes evidence of ownership. A bookplate on the front pastedown identifies it as from the “Estate of William P. Sheffield,” most likely the former U.S. Senator from Rhode Island. The title page also includes pen trials (working on that perfect “of”) and the name Mary Marsh[?].

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* Jill Lepore, Annals of Finance, “I.O.U.,” The New Yorker, April 13, 2009, p. 34.

** The English Short Title Catalog lists 59 imprints with “Impartial Hand” as the author. Evan’s Early American Imprints includes A true narrative of a most stupendous trance and vision (requires subscription), written by “An Impartial Hand”. Apparently it was a popular sobriquet.

The Ardent Desire

Picking up on the discussion of broadsides in a previous post, today we’ll highlight another broadside from the collection: The Ardent Desire. No, this isn’t a delayed Valentine’s Day post; instead this broadside deals strictly with religious ardor. Printed in 1728, it is only the fifth item published in the state of Rhode Island*, and it was published by James Franklin, brother of Benjamin and the state’s first printer.

The Dictionary of Literary Biography** describes Franklin as “America’s first crusading editor and first major defender of press freedom,” but this broadside religious poem is not one of his more radical publications. Franklin brought Rhode Island its first press when he moved to Newport from Boston in 1726, and he continued printing there until his death in 1735. (His wife Ann took over after his death and ran the shop for thirteen years before passing it on to her son.) The transfers of location and ownership are evident on the page itself in the ornamental border surrounding the poem. The border is made up of various type ornaments, all of which James had used in Boston and then taken with him when he moved his shop to Newport. The crown and rosette combination in the upper left and right corners, for instance, is first used by James in 1719 in The Isle of Man and then again after the move to Newport in 1728′s Jesus Christ an Example to His Minister. In 1735, the year of James’ death, Ann uses the ornament again in A Brief Essay on the Number Seven; and, finally, James (James’ and Ann’s son) uses them in governmental publications of the 1750s.***

And one more reminder not to miss the opening of the exhibition “Rhode Island in the Time of Lincoln” at 7:00 this evening at the Aldrich House. More information available on the Society’s website.

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* See Alden, Rhode Island Imprints: 1727-1800. New York: Bowker, 1949, #5. Also:

** Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 43: American Newspaper Journalists, 1690-1872. Edited by Perry J. Ashley. The Gale Group, 1985. pp. 212-218. Also see Douglas McMurtrie’s “The Beginning of Printing in Rhode Island,” Americana 39.4 (1935): 607-629.

*** See Reilly, A Dictionary of Colonial American Printers’ Ornaments and Illustrations. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1975. Numbers 472, 473, 482, 672, 674 and 709. In the entry for the ornament discussed above (no. 709), The Isle of Man is incorrectly listed as a Newport, rather than Boston, publication.