Past is Present

The Torturous Tread-mill

Ever feel like running on a tread-mill is some kind of horrible punishment? Turns out, it is! According to a pamphlet titled The History of the Tread-Mill by James Hardie (1824), the tread-mill was first invented as a form of labor for prison inmates. The tread-mill had a dual purpose, in that it was used both as a way to prevent idle minds and bodies in prison, and was used to generate power or grind grain (hence the “mill” part of the word). According to the image from the pamphlet below, the original tread-mill more resembled our current day stairmaster.

The tread-mill was invented by William Cubitt in England in 1818, the first erected in the House of Corrections in London. Penitentiaries in the United States adopted the idea after hearing reports from the House of Corrections in 1822 that the presence of the tread-mill had “in every instance, proved highly useful, in decreasing the number of re-commitments, as many prisoners have been know to declare, that they would sooner undergo any species of privation than return to the house of correction, when once released.” That’s one powerful torture device!

When used in the United States, it was thought that the tread-mill would lead to moral reformation of the prisoners. Unfortunately, according to Hardie, all were “sadly disappointed.” While prisoners never experienced miraculous revelations of the evils of their ways while walking without really moving, the tread-mill did serve as a deterrent from returning to prison. Always looking for ways to prevent prisoners from having the time to “[indulge] in talking over their exploits in the paths of guilt” and “[suffer] to form new schemes for future execution”, the tread-mill certainly kept the prisoners busy, and made the idea of returning to prison far less appealing. Prison was a long, endless day at the gym, and who would ever want to return to that!

So next time you’re on a tread-mill thinking how torturous it is, remember you’re not alone. Hardie describes the act of being on a tread-mill as “constant and sufficiently severe; but it is its monotonous steadiness and not its severity, which constitutes its terror, and frequently, breaks down the obstinate spirit.” If prisoners from the 19^th century could see us now, what would they think of our voluntary work outs on their prison provided forced labor machinery?

The Acquisitions Table: Cuban Newspapers

Diario del Gobierno de la Habana. Aug. 11, 1812.

One of the gems of the AAS newspaper collection is its Caribbean newspaper holdings. During the summer of 2009, we took advantage of an opportunity to purchase almost 130 issues of early Cuban newspapers. The titles, dates, and number of issues we acquired can be found at the end of the online list of newspaper acquisitions for 2009.

Many of these Cuban newspapers highlight the mercantile activities (including slavery) of the region. Because of the harsh climate, the survival rate of early Cuban newspapers is very low and chances for acquisitions very rare. Besides Havana, AAS’s Cuban newspaper collection includes newspapers from the towns of Santiago de Cuba, Trinidad, Matanzas, and Puerto Principe.

Collection purchased from Adolfo Sarrias Enriquez. Harry G. Stoddard Memorial Fund.

You scream, I scream Part II: We all scream for parmesan ice cream?

So I must confess. I didn’t make the chocolate ice cream. I had my eggs and cream and, well, not the best French chocolate, but chocolate nevertheless, ready to go, when I read an even more intriguing recipe that I just couldn’t pass up. Fellow AAS staff member Paul Erickson sent along the following recipe for parmesan ice cream from Frederick Nutt’s The Complete Confectioner, 1789, and I just had to try it! (If anyone did give the chocolate recipes a shot, let us know how it turned out!)

Parmasan [sic] Cheese Ice Cream.
Take six eggs, half a pint of syrup,*
and a pint of cream; put them into
a stewpan and boil them until it begins
to thicken; then rasp three ounces
of Parmasan cheese, mix and pass
them through a sieve, and freeze it.

The preparation of the ice cream was surprisingly easy. Ice cream has always been the kind of dish I never imagined preparing myself, but when I pulled it out of the freezer, I was amazed that it actually looked like ice cream. Who knew I could make my own ice cream! Perhaps because there are appliances specifically for making ice cream, I’ve always imagined it was a much more complicated process than it really is. Granted the machines likely help with the whipping of the ice cream, thus adding air and making it more true to the ice cream consistency we’re used to, mine was pretty close to the real thing, no whipping or cranking necessary.

Then again, this is all coming from a cook in 2010. What truly made ice cream both difficult and novel in the 18^th and 19^th century was the work needed to actually freeze the ice cream. The hand cranking necessary, and needing to have the means to store ice and freeze the ice cream brings it to a whole new level. Combining the ingredients and popping it into the freezer and letting it sit overnight is nothing compared to what had to be done.

Now about the flavor. The combination of cheese and sugar didn’t seem too far fetched at first. Even though parmesan isn’t exactly a mild cheese, my initial expectation was that it would taste a bit like cheesecake. When I finally tasted the final product, at first it simply tasted like ice cream. No particular flavor, but the consistency and sweetness was there. But then a moment later was the flood of cheese flavor. Not horrible, but definitely not what I was expecting – frozen cheesecake it certainly was not! When ice cream was still a novel dish, I wonder if expectations were not dead set on a sweet treat. Perhaps folks were more experimental with their ice cream, as opposed to my expectations, having grown up with the soft serve twist.

Now that I know how easy is it to make home made ice cream, with our modern conveniences, of course, I’m certain I’ll be trying out many more recipes. I’ll just be staying away from the cheese!

To Do Tomorrow: Discover the Great Divorce

Tuesday, September 28 – 7:30 p.m.
Discovering the Great Divorce
by Ilyon Woo

In 1814, Eunice Chapman’s estranged husband stole away her three children and took them to live among the Shakers. At a time when wives and mothers had few rights to speak of, Eunice Chapman waged a colossal campaign for her children’s return, lobbying the New York legislature year after year, courting politicians, penning thrilling narratives about Shaker captivity, and finally rallying a mob to bring her children home. In the process she drew the attention of such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and Martin Van Buren and won unprecedented rights as a wife and mother.

Drawing on her newly published book The Great Divorce, Ilyon Woo will discuss this sensational story and the key historical evidence she found at AAS. You can read more about the book and find links to other Shaker resources on the book’s website at http://ilyonwoo.com/about-the-book/ or play the video below to see a 3:28 minute book trailer for The Great Divorce.

Ilyon Woo holds a B.A. in the Humanities from Yale College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. She conducted research for The Great Divorce at AAS in 2004-2005 as a Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellow. Information about the AAS Fellowship program is available online at http://www.americanantiquarian.org/fellowships.htm.

Tomorrow evening’s program is co-sponsored by Fruitlands Museum. More information is available at http://www.fruitlands.org.

More information about public programs at AAS this fall, plus directions to the library, are available online at http://www.americanantiquarian.org/publicpro.htm.

It’s National Punctuation Day!

Friday, September 24^th, is National Punctuation Day. Here at the American Antiquarian Society, we take our commas and semi-colons quite seriously. We hold in our collection numerous grammar manuals, essays, school books, and pamphlets on the correct use of the English language, dating from the 1780s right on up to 1875. However, being the curator of Graphic Arts, I am especially interested in the use of punctuation on broadsides in our collection. A typesetter’s box has space for all of the punctuation marks, but some printers seemed to be more inclined to use the marks to make, sorry for the pun, their point.

Advertisers, especially theater promoters and circus printers, are the most frequent users of excitable punctuation on their material. The designer of an 1860 broadside advertising a tight rope walker in Worcester increases the use of exclamation points as he moves down the sheet, using multiple points after each line. An 1845 broadside in the collection telling of a recent murder uses various sized type and punctuation to draw the eye. The large type at the top of the sheet is accompanied by an equally large exclamation point. Keep in mind that the $2,000 reward offered is the equivalent of $58,000 in today’s dollars – certainly something that merited exclamation!

In addition to the always eye-catching exclamation point, there are numerous ballad broadsides set in poetic lines ending with commas, semi-colons, dashes, and ellipses, including the 1772 song Love in a tub, or, –– The merchant outwitted by the vintner (commas and dashes right there in the title!). Early printings such as this example do not necessarily follow modern punctuation standards set forth by publications such as the Chicago Manual of Style, but they get the point across with solid attention to design, making it easy for the eye to read each line and indicating pauses.

So go on out and celebrate National Punctuation Day in whatever manner you choose. Last year, contestants made food in the shape of their favorite mark – a meatloaf shaped like a question mark was a popular entry. This year school students, copy editors, and writers are entering haiku poetry about punctuation on the National Punctuation Day website. As for me, I’ll be keeping an eye out for posters and signs, the modern equivalent of the early broadside. You never know when you might see multiple exclamation points crying out from the wall at the vet’s office (“Lost dog!!!!!!!”) or question marks on the side of a city building (“Did you vote today?”) or on a billboard for pest control looming over the highway on your commute (“Got ants?”).

The Acquisitions Table: Children’s Book with Paper Dolls

The History and Adventures of Little Eliza. Philadelphia: William Charles, 1811.

This imprint is among the earliest American editions of a book first printed in London accompanied by a set of paper dolls. The celebrated Philadelphia engraver and publisher William Charles integrated the images with the text as a picture book, complete with his subtle background clues. Eliza is a smart but disobedient little girl who runs away from home. She ultimately hits bottom as a street beggar before she is re-united with her parents. In the above illustration, we see Eliza before her travail, reading a book. She is a well-dressed little girl surrounded by potted plants, alluding to her pampered and sheltered existence.

Purchased from Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Co. Ruth E. Adomeit Book Fund.

The entire text of Little Eliza can be seen online at AAS’s exhibition: A Place of Reading.

The Acquisitions Table: German-American author Charles Sealsfield

The Karl J. R. Arndt Collection of Charles Sealsfield

Mrs. Blanca H. Arndt of Worcester has donated to AAS the remarkable collection of works by and about the German-American author Charles Sealsfield (1793-1864) formed by her late husband, Karl J. R. Arndt. Numbering some 250 volumes, with accompanying research files, the Arndt gift elevates AAS’s Sealsfield holdings from passable to world-class.

Although the Arndt gift contains few American imprints, its relevance for AAS is clear. Born Karl Postl in Moravia, Sealsfield entered a Prague monastery in 1814. By 1823 Postl had tired of the stifling religious and political climate and, breaking his vows, fled under threat of arrest to the United States. There he created a new identity as “Charles Sealsfield.” During the 1820s Sealsfield traveled widely in Texas, Mexico, Louisiana, and northward through Pennsylvania and New York, eventually establishing himself as a journalist, novelist, and canny observer of American life. His first novel, Tokeah, or, the white rose (1829) was written in English and published anonymously in Philadelphia to modest success. Though now a U.S. citizen, Sealsfield moved to Switzerland in 1830, where he spent most of his remaining years, his true identity kept secret until after his death.

In Switzerland Sealsfield wrote prolifically (now in German), publishing an entire shelf of novels before retiring in 1843. Drawing upon his American experiences, Sealsfield pioneered a new kind of “ethnographic” novel, taking as his theme the confrontation between white Americans and the various ethnic populations sharing the expansive American landscape. His novels proved enormously popular in German-speaking Europe, and when several were translated into English in the early 1840s, Sealsfield’s fame spread to England and back to the United States. No longer could the “Great Unknown,” as his readers called him, continue to publish his works anonymously, and the name Charles Sealsfield (sometimes “Seatsfield”) was henceforth added to their title pages. Although Sealsfield’s American reputation soon waned, he (and his later imitator Karl May (1842-1912)) introduced generations of German readers to the American West. Sealsfield’s influence upon American writers such as Longfellow is well documented, and his career epitomizes the dangers of defining “American” literature and authorship too narrowly. With the Arndt gift, AAS’s superb American literary holdings can be situated in a more properly nuanced context.

Karl Arndt (1903-1991), professor of German at Clark University, pursued many interests during a long and distinguished career. An AAS member, Arndt mined the collections heavily for many scholarly projects on Germans in 18^th– and 19-century America, most notably his studies of the Harmony Societies in Pennsylvania and Indiana, the German-language press in America, and, of course, Sealsfield. His many publications include the definitive bibliographies The first century of German language printing in the United States of America (1989), and The German language press of the Americas (1973-1980).

Like many comprehensive collections, Karl Arndt’s Sealsfield holdings were not formed one volume at a time. Rather, Arndt purchased the collections of Sealsfield’s two primary bibliographers—the American scholar (and Arndt’s mentor) Otto Heller (1863-1941) of Washington University in St. Louis, and Albert Kresse (1886-1961) of Stuttgart—and then he built upon that solid foundation. A scholar as well as a collector, Arndt used his library for a number of articles and as a resource for editing Sealsfield’s collected works (Hildesheim, 1972- ; 28 v. to date). Hence the copies given to AAS have already had a distinguished, sustained impact upon Sealsfield scholarship. And preserved in perpetuity at AAS, they will continue to do so thanks to the thoughtful generosity of Blanca Arndt.

Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika, nach ihrem politischen, religiösen und gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse betrachtet … Stuttgart & Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1827.

Sealsfield published his first book under the pseudonym “C. Sidons,” which he never again employed. The first volume offers an overview of American political institutions (including the rise of Jacksonianism), society, and culture, while the second takes the reader on an extended tour of the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys.

The Indian chief; or, Tokeah and the white rose. A tale of the Indians and the whites. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Carey; London: A. K. Newman, 1829.

Sealsfield’s first novel is set in the lower Mississippi valley during the War of 1812, where Creek Indians struggled to protect their lands and culture from unscrupulous whites. Originally issued in two volumes in Philadelphia, this rare three-volume second edition was printed in London and bears an unusual transatlantic joint imprint. Arndt knew of only one other copy—at the British Library—though a few others have since turned up.

Das Cajütenbuch oder nationale Charakteristiken. Zürich: Friedrich Schultess, 1841.

Das Cajütenbuch (The Cabin book) is Sealsfield’s best-known work and one of the earliest novels to be set in Texas. In a series of five tales related at a fictional dinner party, Sealsfield offers a portrait of Texas and its settlers during the struggle for independence from Mexico.

Ein Abenteuer in der Prärie, aus Sealsfields Kajütenbuch. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1944. (Die bunten Hefte für unsere Soldaten, 40)

This excerpt from Sealsfield’s Cabin book is one of several pocket editions in the collection that were published during World War II for the use of German soldiers. Printed in small format on thin paper, this 48-page pamphlet contains a calendar for 1944 inside the front wrapper and a space on the back wrapper for filling in a “Feldpost” mailing address.

Heller, Otto, and Theodore H. Leon. Charles Sealsfield: bibliography of his writings … St. Louis: Washington University 1939.

This interleaved copy was heavily annotated, first by Otto Heller and then by Karl Arndt, with additions, corrections, and notes.

Hidden Treasure of Hawaiiana

The vast collections at an institution like the American Antiquarian Society have been built and sorted over decades and, somewhat to the surprise of many scholars and readers, continue to be processed today. Bulk collections are constantly being inventoried and rehoused to address conservation concerns and, when the Society has the resources and staff available, many of these collections are cataloged to the item level to improve access. During a sweeping hunt for separately published engravings for our Prints and the Parlor project, visual material cataloger Christine Graham Ward and I are having a closer look at the Society’s U.S. Views Collection, which is a useful pictorial reference collection organized by state. (A box list is available online at http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/usviews.htm.) The U.S. Views Collection is quite a hodgepodge of visual material and includes printed ephemera, photographs, book illustrations, and engraved material showing street scenes, buildings, and landscapes.

While going through the folders concerning Hawaii, we discovered the simple drawing of the printing office in Honolulu shown here. The ink drawing features accents and shading done in graphite and is dated August 14, 1866. It shows a three story building with large windows. The printing office was built in 1841 out of bleached coral blocks cut from the reef in the nearby ocean. We were very excited to find the drawing, as the Society is home to outstanding examples of Hawaiian printing, including newspapers, books and maps. We also hold a collection of rare early Hawaiian engraved views produced by students at the Lahainaluna School on the island of Maui in the 1830s and 1840s. (An illustrated inventory of these images is available online at http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/hawaiianengravings.htm.)

We were chatting about how great it would be to add this newly discovered view of the printing office on Honolulu to the Drawings Collection at the Society, when I noticed the sheet was folded over. After unfolding, we discovered the second drawing inside, also illustrated here, showing the island of Maui from the water! This drawing is closely based on the Lahainaluna School engraving with the same title, already in our collection. Both are called “Maui from the anchorage at Lahaina” although the artist of the drawing has added the subtitle “A distant view” as well as marginalia featuring two small doodles of a carved stick with a wide-mouthed tiki head. We know the print was done by a student named Kalama after a drawing by K. L. Could this be the original drawing for the engraving? Or is this a later picture based on the engraving? The 1866 date on the accompanying drawing of the printing shop seems to argue for the latter. The drawing will be added to the Society’s drawing inventory and be made available online and we shall continue to work our way through the U.S. Views over the coming months. Who knows what additional treasures we may find!

You scream, I scream…

Even though the calendar says September, fall seems to be the last thing on our climate’s mind. Up here in Worcester, Massachusetts at least, we’re hanging onto to the summer weather, clocking a scorching 97 degrees last week! While I was excited to finally break out the cinnamon and pumpkin, I think it best to instead offer a final homage to the waning summer season. It’s time for some homemade ice cream!

This time around, I’ll be using a recipe from The art of confectionary: With various methods of preserving fruits and fruit juices; the preparation of jams and jellies; fruit and other syrups; summer beverages, and directions for making dessert cakes. This cookbook was published in Boston in 1866, and is a compilation of “recipes…from the best New York, Philadelphia, and Boston confectionaries.” A dessert dish will be a welcome change, and The art of confectionary agrees, stating that “while the preparation of soups, joints, and gravies, is left to ruder and stronger hands, the delicate fingers of the ladies of a household are best fitted to mingle the proportions of exquisite desserts.”

The ice cream recipes in this volume are fairly standard, all including milk and/or cream, sugar, and egg yolks. What’s interesting are the additions made to create the wide array of flavors. Classic variations include the addition of one ingredient, such as chocolate, strawberries or ginger. The more daring cooks out there could try recipes for Italian ice cream, which includes almonds, cloves, coriander, orange rind, and brandy, or bourbon ice cream, with almond milk, almonds, currants, candied orange peel, dried cherries, pineapple and vanilla. But I think I’ll try a classic chocolate recipe to start.

As a disclaimer, I think I should mention the presence of eggs in this dish. I’ve posted an alternative chocolate ice cream recipe without eggs. While the heating of the eggs with the cream may be enough to kill any bacteria, some folks may not want to take any chances. So take your pick! I’ll most likely cook both, but probably only taste one!

Happy cooking!

The Aquisitions Table: Amateur Newspapers

Two titles were recently added to AAS’s collection of Amateur Newspapers.

The Orb. Portland, ME. 1838. 3 issues. Adopted by Jo Radner.

The Liliputian. Canajoharie, NY. 1876, 1877. 22 issues.

Amateur newspapers were printed usually by teenagers, and more for the pleasure and experience rather than profit. The Orb (recently “adopted” by Jo Radner during AAS’s Adopt-a-Book event) is particularly interesting because of its early date. The editor had to find either the full-size equipment or a print shop to produce the newspaper. The Liliputian, in contrast, was published in the heyday of amateur newspaper publishing. Thanks to the invention in 1868 of the table-top press, many hobbyists could afford their own press, distributing their papers locally and trading with other amateur journalists.

You can read more about AAS’s collection of Amateur Newspapers on our website at http://www.americanantiquarian.org/amateurnews.htm.

There is also an online inventory of the collection (although not yet complete) available at http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/amateura.htm.

The Novel Reader

This image above of a woman reading in a busy interior, surrounded by household chaos appears in two gift books in the Society’s large collection, one from 1849 and one from 1853. The main figure sits completely engrossed in her book while the baby cries and a cat and a dog steal food. A tradesman demands payment and the lunch dishes are still on the table at 3:00. The illustration is a visual treatise on the dangers of novel reading. One does not even need to read the accompanying two page text to get the point that the editor of this particular annual was against novels for women. He describes the young woman as a figure of “ill-regulated mind, who has no appreciation of the value of a well-ordered household, or for the sacred duties of a wife and mother, and who delights only in the false excitement of an over-fed and pampered imagination.” Perhaps the young housewife is engrossed in a title such as The Monks of Monk-Hall: A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery, and Crime (published in 1845) or Hen-Pecked Husband, a Novel (published in 1848). These sound so much more compelling than your standard religious text, volume on housekeeping or cookery or other wholesome books with titles like Sketch of my Friend’s Family: Intended to Suggest Some Practical Hints on Religion and Domestic Manners (1848) or Sayings and Doings; or Proverbs and Practice (1849). Ho hum. Given the choice, I’d rather read a novel, too.

AAS has many texts on the dangers of reading novels, including an essay by a minister published in 1853 entitled, Pernicious Fiction: or, The Tendencies and Results of Indiscriminate Novel Reading. Novels were seen as a distraction from the moral seriousness of life, a waste of time when young women could be industriously improving themselves or their households. Fortunately for all of us who wasted hours this summer reading novels (myself included), the nineteenth-century naysayers were defeated by the overwhelming popularity of the novel which continues even today.

As I was preparing to blog about this image, which was revealed during our current Prints in the Parlor cataloging project, a series of events transpired here under the dome, which, while not unusual, did give me pause. The volume with the image was actually being photographed this morning and was removed from the office of our digitizer so I could quote from the text. As I was transcribing the quote above a reader approached the reference desk. He is working on a film about the history of dogs in domestic spaces and he handed me a call slip for the “The Novel Reader” image. Three people needing to access the same image (myself, the digitizer, and the reader) at nearly the same moment is a bit wondrous – perhaps I should write a novel about it!

Antiquarian News is Not an Oxymoron

Many of us begin a new academic or fiscal year this week. In the spirit of new beginnings and renewed vows of organization, AAS has added an RSS feed to our website. Those who have visited the AAS website recently have no doubt noticed how much content has been added, events promoted, books published, etc. The list of what’s new at AAS just from this past year is pretty impressive for an Antiquarian organization!

Here are just a few of the most recent examples:

Download Fellowship Applications

Applications for AAS fellowships are now online. The Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship and Fellowships for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers applications are due in October.

A Place of Reading

The new online exhibition A Place of Reading uses images and objects from the AAS collections to illuminate the spaces where reading happened in early America.

HBA Celebrated in Washington

A History of the Book in America editors David D. Hall, Scott E. Casper, Mary C. Kelley, and Joan Rubin discuss the project upon its completion. (There’s even a video clip!)

You can ensure you won’t miss out on any Antiquarian News by clicking here to subscribe to the “New at AAS” RSS feed. Whenever news is added to our website, you will receive a notification in your preferred RSS reader. We hope this feature will make it easier for you, our friends, to keep up with current developments at AAS.

If you haven’t already, you can also subscribe to Past is Present‘s RSS feed by clicking here. Or if you’re anything like me and feel more in tune with the past than the present, you can sign up to have Past is Present posts sent directly to your email by clicking here. Who knew the day would come so soon when e-mail could be considered the older technology?

The Mince Meat Throwdown, Part II

The Mince Meat Throwdown was a success! Unlike the chowder made from Mrs. Bliss’ cookbook, the mince pie actually held its own as a main course. The recipe could have easily worked as a dessert pie, being as sweet as it was. Even though there was beef in the pie, it certainly didn’t taste like it! In fact, I was quite surprised by the lack of any savory aspect in this dish. While it was obvious from the recipe there wouldn’t be anything savory about it, my mind still expected it. If anyone gives the recipe a try and is feeling the same way, I would suggest serving it up with some gravy to satisfy the sweet/savory combination.

I tried to remain as true to the recipe as possible, but must admit some adjustments were necessary. While suet can still be found in some grocery stores and butcher shops, I unfortunately didn’t find it in my local grocery store and instead went with the next best thing – Crisco shortening. While a bit turned off by the idea at first, after adding it to the beef, I saw it simply made the beef thicker and richer. It certainly won’t become a staple in my cooking, but it did the trick. Another adjustment I made was pure weakness on my part. After measuring out the necessary sugar for the recipe, I simply could not stomach adding as much as was called for, and ended up including about 2/3 of the needed sugar. And I’m glad I did, because I can’t imagine it being any sweeter!

What I’ve found I like best about cooking these old, historic recipes is the simplicity of throwing everything into one pot. Whereas now, we sauté first then combine, or cook a sauce in this pot, and sear meat in another. The process, while enjoyable, can become rather complicated, not to mention the amount of pots and dishes that need to be washed afterwards. Being able to throw everything together in no particular order and allowing all the ingredients to marry is a welcome change. One pot suppers and casseroles seem to be rather popular recently, so perhaps we are returning to some of these old ideas.

If anyone out there gives the recipe a shot, let us know how you like it! And I’ll be posting some new recipes soon. Happy cooking!

The Acquisitions Table: Amateur Newspapers in Chicago

Amateur city directory. Chicago: Warner Bros., 1876.
This rare pamphlet chronicles Chicago’s amateur press community as of 1876. Its publisher was 15-year-old Frank Dudley Warner, editor of the recently established Amateur Monthly—one of a burgeoning number of amateur newspapers then being published nationwide by hobbyists on table-top presses. Included is a directory of nearly a hundred Chicago amateur printers, a listing of 13 amateur newspapers (all monthlies) then being published in Chicago (“the combined circulation … is between Seven and Eight Thousand”), biographies of the Greater Chicago Amateur Press Association’s teen-aged officers, and advertisements for printing supplies. Quite expertly printed for an amateur publication, the Directory usefully supplements AAS’s superb collection of 19th-century amateur newspapers. Purchased on eBay. Francis H. Dewey Fund.
~ David Whitesell

Have You Seen This Woman?

The following conundrum for Past is Present readers comes from AAS reader Mary Fissell.

I’m writing a book about Aristotle’s Masterpiece, and have just spent a couple of very productive and happy weeks working with the AAS’s collection of 50+ editions. This book, neither by Aristotle, nor a masterpiece, is one of the longest-running popular medical books on either side of the Atlantic. First published in London on 1684, it was still for sale in sleazy London sex shops in the 1930s. While the text remains surprisingly stable — it is basically a 17th century midwifery book spiced up with a racy poem and half a dozen images of monster babies — the pictures in the book change over time.

For most of the eighteenth century, the picture at the front is of a hairy woman and black baby (see my WMQ article http://www.jstor.org/stable/3491495 for some thoughts on how this image worked), but in the nineteenth century, there’s a riot of new imagery associated with the work. It’s as if the book is a chameleon, taking on the coloration of whatever the publisher thought was trendy and might sell a few more copies. Shortly after their arrival in Boston, Chang and Eng Bunker, the so-called Siamese twins, were featured in the Masterpiece. (See the AAS copies G566 A717 A829 and G566 W926 W831 for examples.) And the borrowing was sometimes two-way; the Masterpiece’s “hairy woman” woodcut was re-used by Nathaniel Coverly in his 1770 Boston edition of the Mary Rowlandson captivity narrative!

Some of the images chosen by publishers or printers have a logic that I can follow — Chang and Eng Bunker fit right in with a text obsessed about unusual births. For others, I can’t figure out what the original image was, and here I beg the help of other readers of cheap print. For example, do any of you recognize this scene?

It’s the frontispiece to an 1831 edition of the Works, the omnibus volume that included the Masterpiece, held at the AAS (G566 W926 W831 Copy 2). What is happening here, and from where did the printer or the bookbinder borrow this scene? The AAS copy is the only one with this image that I have seen — other 1831 New England editions have Chang and Eng Bunker as the frontispiece. Could it be depicting a scene from a novel?

Or take a look at this picture. It’s the cover of an 1842 New York City edition of the Masterpiece (AAS Backlog 19C 0607).

The book looks like a number of other New York editions, seemingly made for a racier readership than many others. But I’d love to know where this image, probably from a painting by Alvan Fisher, came from. Looks like a captivity narrative, perhaps?

And lastly, here’s this lady of dubious virtue, who is the back cover of the same 1842 New York edition. What earlier publication did she adorn?

If you recognize any of these images, or have any ideas about what they may have illustrated originally, please send me an email: mfissell@jhu.edu. I’m very grateful for any leads!