Category: Audience

As I established in my last blog post, the physical construction of The Historie of Fovre-Footed Beasts and The Historie of Serpents shows clear signs of frequent use—and occasional abuse—by past readers. A rebinding and damage ranging from scratched-out illustrations to ripped-out pages, abundant marginalia, and scribbling suggests that, while the book was well-consulted, as Topsell hoped, it was not always well-treated (Figures 1, 2, & 3).

Figure 2

Figure 1

There is abundant evidence of a readership for Beastes, but I can deduce little else; uncovering who these folks might have been has proven to be a difficult calculus. It was my initial hope that by working my way backward from the most recent owner of this book, I could perhaps find one of its first. Beastes once belonged to Edwin E. Willoughby, Dickinson alumnus, former Chief Bibliographer of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and scholar of early printed Shakespeare works and the King James Bible. After his death in 1959, his sister and executor, Col. Frances Willoughby, coordinated with the College archivist and librarian Charles Sellers to donate Beastes along with Edwin’s dizzying collection of over four hundred rare books; it was his wish that future students—like myself—could learn about bibliography through these books. And what a gift. I only wish Beastes and the Willoughby files accompanied accession documents, bills of sale, receipts, anything, as without them, I cannot trace ownership past the Willoughbys—alas, a dead end. (I have reached out to the Folger Shakespeare Library to see if, by chance, they possess any pertinent documentation which is unlikely. I have not yet heard back. Hopefully, they do. I can use whatever they find to establish this book’s ‘afterlife’ in my next and final blog post).

Figure 3

In working on the previous blog post, I did discover a reader who inscribed his name in ink in the front matter: a “Johnathan Yates,” signed 1660 (Figure 5). If he is the same as the one found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ‘John Yates’ (c. 1586–1660) was an Anglican clergyman, theologian, and physician (“John Yates,” 2004)(Sprunger, 697-698). He was admitted as a sizar to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1604, matriculating the same year, and earned his B.A. in 1607/08, M.A. in 1611, and B.D. in 1618, and was a fellow of the college from 1611 to 1616. Yates was ordained deacon and priest in September 1614 and later served as a preacher at St. Andrew’s, Norwich, from 1616 to 1622. In 1622, he became rector of Stiffkey, Norfolk, where he remained until his death in 1660. I cannot determine definitively that the present John Yates is the same who inscribed his name in Beastes, as the accompanying date—1660—is the year he died, and ‘John,’ though an abbreviated form of ‘Johnathan,’ is not necessarily the same name. Notwithstanding my inability to corroborate his relationship to this book, John Yates might yet serve as a point of departure from which to hypothesize the likely reader of Beastes.

Yates was by all accounts a learned and notable controversialist: as an author, he wrote many theological works; he also had a license to practice medicine in 1629, presumably issued by the Royal College of Physicians—I cannot, however, determine the capacity in which he exercised this license for we know so little about his local ministry (“John Yates,” 2004). If this Yates is indeed the same individual, his position as a clergyman and scholar would suggest that he was part of the audience Topsell hoped to reach with Beastes: the “learned men” of England. As an educated man no doubt with interests in intellectual stimulation and spiritual edification, Yates would have been drawn to Topsell’s bestiary, especially given its theological overtones. More generally, Yates’ interests in “practical theology” would have aligned well with Topsell’s conception of natural philosophy, which often connected the study of animals to both spiritual and medical concerns (Springer, 702, 704-706). 

 Yates likely would have been interested in the systematic approach that Topsell and Gesner both advocated. However, contrasting the ‘notes to readers’ in Beastes with the ‘note to readers’ in Serpents provides more clues about the intended audience and their relationship with the author. Topsell’s objective with the publication of Beastes, as he states in “To The Learned Readers,” was not only to gather all that had been written of beasts into one “Dictionary” for the consultation of “learned men” in their vulgar tongue but also to show to his “countrymen” the moral instruction God provides in all animals. To achieve this goal, Topsell, somewhere between tribute and theft, lifted his text and woodcuts almost wholesale from Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium, including a famous broadside of “The Rhinoceros”––a woodcut which Gesner himself ‘borrowed’ from Albrecht Dürer (Kusukawa, 311) (Figure 4). Topsell was indeed an assiduous compiler but a profoundly unoriginal man.

Figure 5

Figure 4

Topsell recognizes that a compilation as ambitious as his must yield to a certain tentativeness; it is better, he believes, to publish an incomplete treatise than to let it languish unprinted in the potentiality of his untimely death. Therefore, he appeals to readers to contribute insights, add information, or correct mistakes. And his readers did just that: since Topsell published The Historie of Fovre-Footed Beastes in 1607 and The Historie of Serpents in 1608, one—or several—of the proprietors bound them to create a more complete reference book (when they did this, however, I cannot determine). Topsell responded in kind to his readers: in the “To The Reader” preface to Serpents, Topsell acknowledges the many protestations he received from the readers of Beastes because of the typographical mistakes therein; Serpents, he assures readers, features no such errors. 

This dynamic between Topsell and his readers reveals something about the intellectual context in which audiences received Beastes. Readers like Yates, whoever they may have been (scholars, clergymen, aspirant zoologists––we may never know definitively), were far from passive consumers of Beastes and Serpents: they actively engaged the text, provided feedback, pointed out errors, inscribed their names, marked passages for later use, and even altered its material form through rebinding. While we cannot identify the readers of Beastes, they were as instrumental in shaping it as Topsell himself. Indeed, this book was not a static receptacle for animal lore but a dynamic, material space where reader and author cooperated—at times, competed—to articulate and cultivate knowledge. 

WORKS CITED

Kusukawa, S. (2010, July). The sources of Gessner’s pictures for the Historia animalium. Annals of Science. 67 (3): 303–328. http://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/pdf_files/128/1286404337.pdf. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Sprunger, Keith L. “John Yates of Norfolk: The Radical Puritan Preacher as Ramist Philosopher.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 37, no. 4, 1976, pp. 697–706.

“John Yates.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30193?rskey=Aup4DQ&result=1. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

WORKS CONSULTED

Carpo, Mario.  Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory (2001 translation), p. 110.

Heltzel, Virgil B. “Some New Light on Edward Topsell.” Huntington Library Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1938): 199–202.

Isaac, S. (2018, March 16). The familiar and the fantastic: The Historie of Foure-Footed beastes by Edward Topsell, 1607. Royal College of Surgeons. https://www.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/the-familiar-and-the-fantastic/. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Lancaster, James A.T. “Natural Knowledge as a Propaedeutic to Self-Betterment: Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Natural History.” Early Science and Medicine 17, no. 1/2 (2012): 181–96.

Lewis, G. “Topsell, Edward (bap. 1572, d. 1625), Church of England clergyman and author.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 1 Nov. 2024.

Ong, Walter. “Writing Restructures Consciousness: The New World of Autonomous Discourse” in Orality and Literacy: 30th Anniversary Ed. Milton Park OX: Routledge, 2014. 77–114.

University of Washington. University Libraries. “The Historie of Serpents.” Edward Topsell, 1608. https://www.lib.washington.edu/preservation/preservation-services/conservation/topsell. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Westhrop, H. (2007, March). Edward Topsell, The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, 1658. Special Collections featured item for March 2006 by Helen Westhrop, Rare Books Library Assistant. University of Reading. https://collections.reading.ac.uk/special-collections/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2020/01/Featured-Item_Topsell_compressed.pdf. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.

Ai Lettori: To the Readers

Who were these readers?

I am studying a 1615 English Edition of The Secrets of Alexis. The book was originally published in Italian under the name De’ Secreti del Reverendo Donno Alessio Piemontese in 1555 (WorldCat). This book was printed by William Stansby in London. It is a book of recipes for medicines, dyes, cosmetics, alchemy, etc. For more information on the physical book or the people who helped make it, please see my previous posts The Secrets of Alexis  and The Secrets of … Who?.

In my last post, I looked at the “To the Reader” and the way the author describes himself in it. This time, I want to look at how he views the reader, or rather, readers. In the Italian, this section is titled “Ai Lettori,” meaning “To the Readers,” the “i” at the end of both words indicating plural readers. With the vast popularity of the book, I feel the Italian offers a more fitting heading.

Alessio spent his life collecting these “secrets,” reaching a point where he was “assured that few other men [had] so many as” him. He had originally kept these recipes secret because out of “ambition and vain glory, to know that which another should be ignorant of.” He changed his mind, however, after a man had died of something he might have cured because he was too proud to share the remedy, and the physician was too vain to let another man help his patient. He wanted these “secrets” made public so that no one else would die in vain. In this way, his target audience is everyone and anyone possible—as many people as possible.

With so many print runs in so many languages, The Secrets of Alexis was certainly successful in reaching a wide audience. In 1894, an article from The Hospital notes how people would carry copies cheaply bound in blue paper with them to country fairs and such from the mid-16^th into the early 17^th century. This indicates, firstly, that the book was a staple for home remedies and amateur alchemy for almost half a century, and secondly, that historians have used The Secrets study the medical understanding of people at the time of its publication and the peak of its popularity. In a way, the historians are another, though unanticipated, audience of the book.

Charles C. Sellers, c.1970

As for this specific copy, I know for certain of only two owners: Dickinson College and Charles Coleman Sellers. Sellers was born in Overbrook, Pennsylvania March 16^th, 1903. He attended Haverford College, graduating in 1925, and then earned his Master of Arts at Harvard the following year. In 1957, he received his doctorate from Temple University. He worked as a historian and a librarian for various libraries and institutions. These include Wesleyan University (1937-1949), American Philosophic Society of Philadelphia (1947-1951), Dickinson College (1949-1969), and Waldron Pheonix Belknap Jr. Research Library of American Painting (1956-1958). He was also the editor for the American Colonial Painting (1959), as well as an esteemed author. Much of his work focused on early United States art history. He published three books on Charles Willson Peale in 1947, 1952, and 1969, as well as Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (1962) Dickinson College: A History (1973), and Patience Wright (1976). Sellers was married twice. His first wife was actress Helen Earle Gilbert (m. 1932-1951), whom this volume was donated in memory of.  In 1952, after Gilbert’s passing, Sellers married Barbra S. Roberts.

This book was donated at some point between his first wife’s passing in 1951 and his own passing in 1980. There does not appear to be any further information on Sellers and how he got The Secrets, what he thought about it, when or why he donated it to the college, etc. It seems that because he worked in the archives, he felt such fanfare for his own donations were unnecessary, much to my dismay.

I imagine Sellers was not the first nor only owner of this book because it was printed nearly three centuries before he was born. Moreover, I noticed pencil markings on several pages, drawing attention to specific recipes. These markings may have been made by Sellers, but because of a trend I noticed in these recipes—that more than a third of them relate to sexual issues (menstruation, pregnancy, boils on the groin, etc.)—I think the book may have been read by someone researching or interested in the history of people’s understanding of sexual health. This would most certainly not be the audience that Alessio intended The Secrets for because these recipes were supposedly added in later additions, likely by a publisher or William Ward while he was translating the work to English (Martins). Also, I think this “other reader” was a woman because they underlined “in the nature of” referring to a woman, highlighting the difference in the way men and women were described in this remedy.

Interestingly, the pencil markings are mostly in the second part of the book, meaning more recipes relating to sexual health in the third part were not marked. The other recipes marked look at various topics: serpents, lizards, dogs, sunblock, warts, wild beasts, “marvelous dreams” etc. It is possible that these recipes were marked because they seemed a little impractical or impossible and the reader was amused by them. Branches put in a person’s ears, for example, do not prevent sunburn on the top of a person’s head. The trend I noticed above might actually be coincidence, and so many of these recipes were marked because there was so much faulty understanding about this topic, especially about women. A toad tied to a woman’s neck will not end her menstruation quicker, nor will any herb make a woman more likely to bear sons than daughters.

Works Cited

“Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980).” Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections, 2005. https://archives.dickinson.edu/people/charles-coleman-sellers-1903-1980. Accessed 2 December 2024

“De’ secreti del reverendo Donno Alessio Piemontese. Prima [-terza] parte.” Internet Archive, 2 March 2018. https://archive.org/details/BIUSante_pharma_res018694/m ode/2up. Accessed 2 December 2024

Martins, Julia. “The Secrets.” Cems KCL Blog, 14 July 2023. https://kingsearlymodern.co.uk/ key-texts/the-secrets. Accessed 21 November 2024

Ruscelli, Girolamo. The Secrets of Alexis [Pseud.]: Containing Many Excellent Remedies against Divers Diseases, Wounds, and Other Accidents. With the Manner to Make Distillations, Parfumes … and Meltings … Newly corrected and Amended, and also Somewhat more enlarged in certaine places, Which wanted in the former editions., Printed by W. Stansby for R. Meighen, 1615. ¹

“The Secrets of Alexis.” The Hospital vol. 16,407 (1894): 313.

1. This is the citation for the edition of The Secrets I worked with based on the Dickinson College Library Catalogue, which, like many catalogues, accredits the book to Ruscelli.

Authors do not write books in a vacuum. As Michel Foucault theorized, authors craft books within a capitalist market framework that guides them to write first and foremost to sell their work, as seen with the previous examinations of David Humphreys’ 1730 book as a material work and historical item (Foucault, 291). In this sense, authors explicitly construct their books for their intended audience, oftentimes prospective buyers. In the case of the 1730 work An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Containing their Foundation, Proceedings, and the Succeses of their Missionaries in the British Colonies, to the Year 1728 the author addressed British King George II to maintain royal funding for the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The author, David Humphreys, was an active member of the Society who composed the work on behalf of the organization. The organization organized missionary efforts in the British colonies in North America, evangelizing mainline Anglican Christianity at a time of continued royal concern over Catholicism. As recently as 1700, the English Parliament mandated that all English monarchs be Protestant and explicitly forbade Catholics from ascending to the throne (Act of Settlement).

In the milieu of continued religious fervor and a growing British empire in North America, the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts served the royal goal of advancing Protestantism in the colonies. So important was this Georgian conversion objective that King George II and his predecessor King George I personally funded the Society. In fact, most of the Society’s funding originated from royal coffers, only supplemented by income from a Barbados plantation (Humphreys, vi-vii). Given the financial situation of the Society, Humphreys wrote An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society to justify the organization’s work to its primary donor: King George II. In the introduction, Humphreys clearly states the goal of An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society by noting “It is hoped that the reader upon peru[s]ing the following Papers, will find Cau[s]e to be much plea[s]ed with the unexpected Succe[s]s of [s]o great a Work. E[s]pecially if it is con[s]idered, that this Society hath no publick Income or Revenue.” (iv-v). Humphreys goes so far as record the Society’s missions in North America as “royal intentions” (xxx).

Despite Humphreys’ intention of justifying continued royal funding for the Society’s mission in North America, this copy of An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society’s primary audience became students at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, nearly four thousand miles from London. Between the 1730s and 1760s, Isaac Norris Jr., the son of Philadelphia politician, merchant, and noted book collector in his own right Isaac Norris Sr. acquired An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society. The book passed to Isaac Norris Jr.’s daughter Mary after Isaac’s death in 1766 (Korey, 8). Mary married John Dickinson, the namesake of Dickinson College, who in turn obtained An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society alongside the hundreds of other books Isaac Norris Sr. amassed. John Dickinson donated the work to Dickinson College in 1784 (Korey, 21).

Until 1934, An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society was accessible for Dickinson students and faculty at the normal shelves of the Dickinson College Library. Instead of King George II, young Dickinson College students read An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society. These students (including myself) read the work to learn about the religious demography of early modern North America and how the British elite viewed North America from a religious perspective. Many of these Dickinson students likely studied theology, especially in the nineteenth century as the Second Great Awakening spurred religious fervor on Dickinson College campus in particular (Revival of Religion).

Undoubtedly, numerous students read the book across centuries, as indicated by the poor condition the tome exists in today. No front cover remains, and few parts of the spine endure. There is no physical evidence of repairs to the book, indicating that after its move to the Dickinson College Archives in the 1930s, conservators prioritized repairing/rebinding other more well-known works or those in even worse condition instead. In the future, a new audience may emerge for An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society, possibly scholars focusing on eighteenth century British/North American religious history rather than King George II or Dickinson College students.



Works Cited

“Act of Settlement” UK Parliament. Accessed 1 December 2024.

legislation.gov.uk/aep/Will3/12-13/2/data.pdf.

Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?.” The Book History Reader, edited by David Finkelstein

and Alistair McCleery, Routledge, 2002.

Humphreys, David. An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts Containing their Foundation, Proceedings, and the Succeses of their Missionaries in the British Colonies, to the Year 1728. London: The Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1730.

Korey, Marie Elena. The Books of Isaac Norris (1701-1766) at Dickinson College. Carlisle, PA, Dickinson College, 1975/1976.

“Revival of Religion.” The Religious Intelligencer, 18 Jan. 1823,

proquest.com/docview/137429704/pageviewPDF/A2297C93E1CB46F4PQ/1?accountid=10506&sourcetype=Magazines. Accessed 15 October 2024.

In my previous two blog posts I discussed both how the written text of An Almanack feels, looks, and functions, as well as exploring its previously known owners Hatty and Alice Bird French. An Almanack is not a real almanac at all but is rather The New England Primer; a children’s literacy pamphlet. The pamphlet too must have been a successful form of teaching language to children as its reader, Alice B. French, would become a doctor with her degree from Boston University in 1877. Even with its misleading title, An Almanack intended to teach children how to read and used religion to do so.  

The book contains a section meant to teach the alphabet and uses biblical references and images to help children connect to the letters. For example, in figure 1, to teach the letter A the book includes an image of Adam and Eve and reads, 

Figure 1 Illustrations and text that accompany the first letters of the alphabet

In ADAM’S Fall We finned all.  

And for the letter B, 

Heaven to find, The Bible Mind. 

This continues for every letter of the alphabet. 

The imagery in this alphabet section is very skillful as well, especially for working in a tiny, confined space of an inch and half an inch. This imagery could have been helpful for children learning how to read because images are more appealing and easier to understand than words are, at least when learning a language. I will include images of each of the letters with their drawings and biblical references as they are highly skilled and intriguing to study. (fig. 2) What makes these images particularly interesting is the ability to communicate a story in such a small space and with minimal detail. I also find the difference in font and spacing to emphasize the key portions of the text to be a valuable tool to learning the alphabet in this way. The phrases are also noticeably in a rhyme scheme which could have been to help with the memorization of them, both teaching the alphabet and key biblical stories.  

Figure 2 Illustrations and text that accompany the letters of the alphabet

The book also includes common names of men and women, so that children can learn to spell their names, and actually does specify this use case where the names are located in the text (fig. 3). One of these names is Alice; her sister Hatty does not appear especially due to the odd spelling. This is a fascinating find, as the first pages of An Almanack include the repeated spelling of the girls’ names- perhaps as they practiced their spelling. This to say that the book, at least in the case of the French sisters, reached its intended audience, and may have even been the cause of their learning how to read and write. And with Alice becoming a medical missionary later in her life, teaching through church stories may have been successful in encouraging youth to be church–minded.

Figure 3
List of common names of women, with the intention of teaching children to spell their names

In doing research for this section, I was finally able to find the gift plate that accompanies books given to the Dickinson archives documenting who donated the book. In the case of An Almanack, the Thompson family and Thompson’s Bookstore donated the book to the archives (fig. 4). Thompson’s Bookstore was a shop in Carlisle listed in the Carlisle directory from 1980. The store was located at 56 West High St. and was one of four bookstores in town (fig. 5 & 6). Thompson’s Bookstore however is not in the Carlisle directory from 1985, so the shop closed at some point in the years between 1980 and1985. The building that formerly housed Thompson’s Bookstore in town is now Georgie Lou’s Retro Candy.  

Figure 6
The former location of Thompson’s Bookstore on a modern map

Figure 5
Thompson’s Bookstore information in the Carlisle Directory of 1980

Figure 4
The gift plate for An Almanack

What is interesting about the gift plate itself is the design; the archives only used it between 1973 and 1987. In 1987, Dickinson had an international competition asking for a gift plate redesign. So, no books that entered the archives after the year 1987 would have the retired design that is on An Almanacks gift plate. An Almanack was likely to enter the Dickinson archival collection between 1973 and 1985 based on the timeline of the bookstore and the gift plate. The Dickinson archivist James Gerencser too shared that when Thompson’s Bookstore closed, they had an auction of the books that remained. Whether the archives bought this book at auction for the archives, or the Thompson family truly gifted it is unknown. Regardless the book entered the collection after previously being a part of Thompson’s Bookstore in Carlisle. 

An Almanack is a unique little book. Its title does not encompass the text that is within it, and within its pages the book can be contradictory. There are multiple publication dates, multiple title pages, multiple authors, and multiple publishers; which makes the book an interesting collaboration between authors across time. The handwriting left behind helped in gain insight into how the previous owners read this book, and their accomplishments in life showed just how effective this text may have been. The Dickinson archives are incredibly lucky to have An Almanack in its collection.  

Works Referenced  

AncestryLibrary. Ancestry.com, ancestrylibrary.com. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024. 

Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections. Dickinson College, archives.dickinson.edu/. 

Newman, H. (1843). An almanack containing an account of the Coelestial Motions, Aspects, &c. For the year of the Christian Empire, 1691. Ira Webster. 

Divine Songs for Children, or more specifically, its full title Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language For the Use of Children, reveals its intended audience plainly and immediately.

Printed by Archibald Loudon in 1812, Divine Songs is aimed at young, religious readers.  The context of the book is straightforward; it has a title page, twenty-eight hymns, and lastly the Ten Commandments.  There is nothing else.  The children who would have used this book are not interested in anything else, more information or filler is boring to most children.  One exception to this is illustrations.  There is only one illustration in the book (a frontispiece); it is small, only taking up about a third of the page.  Likely no other illustrations were added to keep production costs down, and the final price low as well.

Keeping in mind the intended audience, Divine Songs was likely not very expensive.  This is further supported by the modest craftsmanship of the book itself.  It is simply bound; no boards were used, it is only held together with stitching.  The text printed throughout the book was not done meticulously.  The margins are irregular.  On some pages, the text goes fully to the bottom of the page with no lower margin.  On others, the text starts immediately at the top.  The same inconsistency occurs with the size of the gutter.  Considering that Divine Songs was deliberately made like this for its audience, its uncomplicated craftsmanship likely allowed the price to be kept relatively low.  This way, the book could be realistically accessed by children.

The book is very small, measuring 10.25cm x 6.8cm x 0.2cm.  To visualize, when closed Divine Songs is a little shorter than the size of my hand.  I have not tried it myself, but I imagine any pocket that can fit my hand would very easily fit Divine Songs.  It is currently in a fragile state (212 years will do that to any boardless book), so I would not recommend anyone try it.  However, being pocket-sized would have applied itself well to a life of travel, perhaps back and forth between church and home?  

Hymns are songs meant to be sung in worship and are very commonly used during official services.  Divine Songs has twenty-eight hymns printed in it.  Some songs are more broad, such as “A general song of praise to God” and “Heaven and Hell.”  Others are a lot more specific and likely personal to a child, such as “Love between Brothers and Sisters.”  It has something for every occasion.  The book was very likely intended to be owned and read by a child and brought back and forth from home to church or school.  Hence the content and the small and easily portable size.

We know from the title that Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language For the Use of Children was intended to be used by religious children.  But looking further at the author, Isaac Watts can give us a more specific understanding.  Isaac Watts was a protestant minister, born in England in 1674, he is sometimes known as the “father of English hymnody” (Watts).  Given that he is a very well-known protestant, the book was probably made for other protestants.  However, the Church of England did not approve of hymns until 1820 (Divine Songs was published in 1812), so Anglicans likely will not purchase the book (Hymn).

We have an idea of the type of person who would have owned Divine Songs.  Unfortunately, we do not have information on who this owner actually was.  There is a name written in the book, very likely the name of the owner, but it cannot be read with certainty.  I have talked more in-depth about Sarah in a previous blog post.

Works Cited

“Hymn.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc, 2020.

“Watts, Isaac.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc, 2020.

Baedeker travel guides were premiere copies bought and loved by millions of travelers from the mid-19th century onwards. Baedekers raised the standard for modern-day guidebooks, their content, format and organization informing what we understand to be an excellent guidebook by today’s standards.

Bookseller and publisher Karl Baedeker’s creation of these informative travel companions was sparked after taking a trip to Paris. He found that the guidebooks he came across were severely lacking in terms of enriching cultural content, linguistic aids and illustrated maps. Baedeker pursued his passion project of creating a premiere set of guides complete with detailed maps of each region to facilitate easy navigation for travelers, a star rating system to inform level of luxury, transit information to allow travel via the growing rail networks, as well as advice on how to navigate local customs.

The explosive success of Baedeker fueled an uptick in mass tourism from the mid to late 19th century. These travel guides made traveling for leisure accessible to ordinary people, bought by both aristocrats and travelling explorers as planning tools to explore the world’s most renowned tourist destinations. Independent travelers empowered with the information to craft their own journeys abroad embarked on trips pocket-money friendly, not having to rely on the Grand Tour, an expensive expedition only

With the publishing of travel guides like Palestine and Syria, Karl Baedeker’s empire opened the door to millions of ordinary travel hungry people. The practice of travel previously privileged only to young, aristocratic men now opened up to include all sorts of different people. Originally printed in German, as Baedekers gained popularity they were translated into Italian, French and English for readers across Europe to enjoy.

Bibliography

Dawson, David. “The History of Baedeker Guidebooks.” Gothic Futurism, 1 Jan. 2024,
gothicfuturism.com/travelling-the-world/the-history-of-baedeker-guidebooks/.

Sorabella, Jean. “The Grand Tour: Essay: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Heilbrunn Timeline
of Art History.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Oct. 2003,
www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/grtr/hd_grtr.htm.