{"id":638,"date":"2024-12-30T20:20:25","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T20:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/?p=638"},"modified":"2024-12-30T20:20:25","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T20:20:25","slug":"an-almanack-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/2024\/12\/30\/an-almanack-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"An Almanack: Audience"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In my previous<\/a> two blog posts<\/a> I discussed both how the written text of <\/span>An Almanack<\/span><\/i> feels, looks, and functions, as well as exploring its previously known owners Hatty and Alice Bird French. <\/span>An Almanack<\/span><\/i> is not a real almanac at all but is rather <\/span>The New England Primer<\/span><\/i>; 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, <\/span>An Almanack<\/span><\/i> intended to teach children how to read and used religion to do so. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 1 Illustrations and text that accompany the first letters of the alphabet<\/p><\/div>\n

In ADAM\u2019S Fall We finned all.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And for the letter B,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Heaven to find, The Bible Mind.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This continues for every letter of the alphabet.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The imagery in this alphabet section is very skillful as well, especially for working in a tiny, confined space of <\/span>an inch and half an inch. This ima<\/span>gery 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. <\/span>I will include images of each of the letters with their drawings and biblical references as they are highly skilled and <\/span>intriguing to study. (<\/span>fig. 2)<\/span> What makes these images particularly interesting is the ability to communicate a story in such a small space and with mini<\/span>mal detail. I also find the difference in font and spacing to emphasize the key portions of the text <\/span>to be a valuable tool to learning the alphabet in this way. The <\/span>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. <\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 2 Illustrations and text that accompany the letters of the alphabet \"\"<\/p><\/div>\n

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The book also includes common names of <\/span>m<\/span>en and <\/span>w<\/span>omen, so that children can learn to spell their names, and <\/span>actually does<\/span> specify this <\/span>use case<\/span> where the names <\/span>are<\/span> located<\/span> in<\/span> the text<\/span> (fig. 3)<\/span>. <\/span>One of these names is <\/span>Alice<\/span>;<\/span> her sister <\/span>Hatty<\/span> does not ap<\/span><\/span>pear<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>es<\/span><\/span>pecially <\/span>due to the<\/span>\u00a0odd spelling.<\/span> This is a fascinating find, as the first pages of <\/span><\/span>An Almanack <\/span><\/span>include the repeated spelling of the girls’ names- perhaps as they practiced their spelling.<\/span> 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 <\/span>with Alice becoming a medical missionary later in her life, teaching through church stories may have been successful in enc<\/span>ouraging youth to be <\/span>church<\/span>–<\/span>minded. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 3
List of common names of women, with the intention of teaching children to spell their names<\/p><\/div>\n

In doing research for this section, I was finally able to find the gift plate that <\/span>acco<\/span>mpanies<\/span> books given to the <\/span>Dickinson <\/span>archives documenting who <\/span>donated the book<\/span>. In the case of <\/span><\/span>An Almanack<\/span>,<\/span><\/span> the Thompson family and Thompson\u2019s Bookstore<\/span> donated the book to the <\/span>archives (<\/span>fig. 4)<\/span>. Thompson\u2019s Bookstore wa<\/span>s a shop in Carlisle <\/span>listed<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>in the Carlisle directory from 1980. The stor<\/span>e was <\/span><\/span>l<\/span>ocated<\/span> at <\/span>56 West High St<\/span>.<\/span> and was one of four bookstores in town<\/span> (fig. 5 & 6)<\/span>. Thompson\u2019s Bookstore however is not in the Carlisle<\/span> directory from 1985, so the shop closed at some point in the years between 1980<\/span> and<\/span>1985. <\/span>The building that formerly housed Thompson\u2019s Bookstore in town is now Georgie Lou\u2019s Retro Candy.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Figure 6
The former location of Thompson\u2019s Bookstore on a modern map<\/p><\/div>\n

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Figure 5
Thompson\u2019s Bookstore information in the Carlisle Directory of 1980<\/p><\/div>\n

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Figure 4
The gift plate for An Almanack<\/p><\/div>\n

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What is interesting about the gift plate itself is the design; the archives <\/span>only used it between 1973 and 1987<\/span>. 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 <\/span>An Almanacks<\/span><\/i> gift plate. <\/span>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.<\/span><\/i> The Dickinson archivist James Gerencser too shared that when Thompson\u2019s 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\u2019s Bookstore in Carlisle.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An Almanack <\/span><\/i>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 <\/span>An Almanack<\/span><\/i> in its collection.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Works Referenced\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

AncestryLibrary<\/span><\/i>. Ancestry.com, ancestrylibrary.com. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections<\/span><\/i>. Dickinson College, archives.dickinson.edu\/.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Newman, H. (1843). <\/span>An almanack containing an account of the Coelestial Motions, Aspects, &c. For the year of the Christian Empire, 1691<\/span><\/i>. Ira Webster.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5527,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audience","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/historyofthebook2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}