Books

We can look forward to learning a great deal more about Jane Franklin  (1712-1794) when Jill Lepore’s book The Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin is published this October. In the meantime, one can savor the recent article by Lepore in the July 8 & 15 edition of The New Yorker.

Jane was the sister of Benjamin Franklin and the person that he wrote the most letters to during his lifetime.  Lepore stitches together Jane’s life – it’s “ordinariness” in spite of Jane being an obviously exceptional woman – from their lively correspondence as well as Jane’s unpublished “book”, described in the passage below:

“But she did once stitch four sheets of foolscap between two covers to make a little book of sixteen pages. In an archive in Boston, I held it in my hands.  I pictured her making it.  Her paper was made from rags, soaked and pulped and strained and dried. Her thread was made from flax, combed and spun and dyed and twisted.  She dipped the nib of a pen slit from the feather of a bird into a pot of ink boiled of oil mixed with soot and, on the first page she wrote three words:  “Book of Ages”—-a lavish, calligraphic letter “B”, a graceful, slender, artful “A”.”

The New Yorker’s digital edition gives one the chance to view pages from Jane’s Book of Ages and see her ‘calligraphic’ letters as she documents the arrivals, departures and marriages of her family.

“Book of Ages,” Jill Lepore

Lepore’s decision to write about Jane Franklin is quite personal, not only as revealed in her written article but also in the podcast:  ‘Out Loud:  Jane Franklin’s Untold American Story’.

If I could time travel, I would go back to the colonial days to talk with Jane and then move forward to October 2013, when I can hold Lepore’s biography of Jane Franklin in my hands.

The New Yorker, July 8 &15, Jill Lepore, “The Prodigal Daughter, Writing History, Mourning,“ The New Yorker, July 8 & 15, 2013, pgs. 34-40.

Time travel back to 1770 and Mary Ambler rightly sums up today, “A Rainy Day (very dull) if it were not for Books & knitting…would be at a great loss how to fill up the Day.”

The Female Spectator

Perhaps, Ambler was reading a collected edition of EIiza Haywood’s The Female Spectator  (April 1744-May 1746), originally published in monthly installments but due to its popularity later circulated in collected editions. Haywood rightly points out the many uses of books in the following passage:

“What clods of earth should we have been but for reading!—how ignorant of every thing but the spot we tread upon!—Books are the channel through which all useful arts and sciences are conveyed.—By the help of books we sit at ease, and travel to the most distant parts; behold the customs and manners of all the different nations in the habitable globe; may take a view of heaven itself, and traverse all the wonders of the skies.—By books we learn to sustain calamity with patience, and bear prosperity with moderation.—By books we are enabled to compare past ages with present; to discover what in our fore-fathers was worthy imitation, and what should be avoided; to improve upon their virtues, and take warning by their errors.—It is books which dispel that gloomy melancholy our climate but too much inclines us to, and in its room diffuses an enlivening chearfulness.—In fine, we are indebted to books for every thing that can profit or delight us.”

Thanks to my aids in time travel—Michelle Marchetti Coughlin steered me to Kevin J. Hayes’ book, A Colonial Woman’s Bookshelf.  Hayes’ book thoroughly examines the numerous books women either wrote or read during the colonial era.  Over the summer, I hope to read many of the books that these women read and do a bit more of time traveling.  Tomorrow more on the life of Eliza Haywood.

Kevin J. Hayes, A Colonial Woman’s Bookshelf, (The University of Tennessee Press, 1996), p.58, 69

Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, One Colonial Woman’s World The life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit, (University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), p. 85.

There is nothing like a page-turner, and better yet, nothing like a bewitching summer read, and for this I turned to Suzanne Ress’ The Trial of Goody Gilbert. Ress’ enthralling novel recounts the true story of her ancestor Lydia Gilbert, who was tried for witchcraft, “proven” guilty and subsequently hanged. Prior to her trial, Goody* Gilbert was a respected healer and helper to many in colonial 1654 Windsor, CT. Once the accusations began, many citizens came forth and the events quickly spiraled out of control.

* The term “Goody” and “Goodwife” were interchangeable and used as a form of address for women in Colonial America, as well as England and Scotland.

Goody Gilbert recounts:

Having spent my earliest years in my father the Printer’s shop.  A book is not a magical thing in itself—tis only the words therein that can have an effect on a man.  And then only if he knows how to read and to reason.  The power resides not in the object of a book, but in a man’s mind, and following that, the actions of a man.  Perhaps tis fear of the mindful power that we possess that makes men want to put this power, into objects such as books, or into animals or invented creatures.

For a summer scholarly read, one might want to put Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Good Wives Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 on the list.  Ulrich states “A married woman in early New England was simultaneously a housewife, a deputy husband, a consort, a mother, a mistress, a neighbor, and a Christian. On the war-torn frontier, she might become a heroine.” And using these ‘classifications’, Ulrich’s in depth research introduces us to many Goodwives and their various roles.

Suzanne Ress, The Trail of Goody Gilbert, 2012. , p 273. (Available by order at your local book store, or on Amazon, and for your kindle.)

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750, (Vintage Books, New York, 1982), p. 9-10

Perhaps a copy of Flora’s Dictionary would have been found on Emily Dickinson’s bookshelf, posits the scholar Judith Farr.  Dickinson’s letters sent to family and friends often contained a flower or leaf, and she wanted the recipient to decode its meaning.

In 1829, Elizabeth Washington Gamble Wirt (1784-1857) published her floral dictionary anonymously, ‘by a Lady.’  Wirt’s book not only includes quotes by prominent poets and writers for each plant, but also chapters on the “Structure of Plants,” ‘Structure of Flowers,” as well as a “Sketch on the Life of Linnaeus,” and a thorough chapter called “Notes” with the history of each flower.  The popularity of her book is revealed in the number of printings:  reprinted both in 1831 and 1833; in 1835, her name was finally revealed as “Mrs. E. W. Wirt of Virginia;” more editions followed in 1837; and finally, three editions in 1855 with the last edition complete with elaborately colored plates, the first one of its type in the United States.

One may see copies of Wirt’s book in the elegant exhibition Gardening by the Book: Celebrating 100 years of the Garden Club of America currently on view at the Grolier Club.   The book may be downloaded in its digitized form from Google.

Flora’s Dictionary

If I were to tuck a flower in a letter today, my choices currently blooming from the garden (with attribution by Wirt) would be:

White Daisy   Innocence

Iris                  I have a message for you

Peony             Anger, A Frown

Yarrow           To cure

Sage                Domestic Virtues

Fox Glove        A wish

Clover              Industry

Campanula    Gratitude

Judith Farr, Gardens of Emily Dickinson, (Harvard University Press, Boston), pgs. 47, 59, 66-67

On May 16, 1804, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was born in Billerica, MA.

She was the daughter of Eliza & Nathaniel Peabody and is the first of The Peabody Sisters, covered in Megan Marshall’s enthralling biography.  Eliza Peabody ran a girls school and as reported, “At the turn of the eighteenth century, teaching was the highest calling a woman could respectively aspire to, but it was near the bottom of the scale for a college-educated man, generally a prelude to a career in law, medicine, or the ministry.”  At that time, young girls were taught rudimentary reading and writing, as well as more useful skills:  needlework, music, nursing, cooking, conversation, and etiquette.

The New England Primer was used during the 18th century

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody followed in her mother’s footsteps and would later be recognized as the “founder of kindergartens in America.” In August of 1840, she opened West Street Book Store, and “filled the shelves with books in English, French, German, Italian Greek and Latin, selling at prices from 50 cents for pocket editions of Shakespeare’s plays to $65 for a handsomely illustrated forty-eight volume set of Scott’s Waverly novels.”   One could also join her lending library for a $5 fee. West Street Book Store would later serve as the meeting place for Margaret Fuller’s famous talks.

(Meghan Marshall recently published a biography of Fuller).

For the past two nights, I had the pleasure of attending poetry readings. Last night’s readings were organized by Dara Mandle for the National Arts Club’s annual evening of young poets. Afterwards during the Q&A, the poets–Mika Gellman, Andrew Hurst, Jennifer L. Knox and Jason Koo— were asked if they had concerns with using the language of our time–how it would be interpreted, or not, by later generations.  A unanimous “no” echoed forth and Jason reminded us that there are volumes written about Shakespeare’s verse. Next, they were asked which poets they read and admired. Andrew said he was reading an obscure poet from a tag sale book find.

I forage not only off our land, but at thrift stores and used book racks. At my library’s annual book sale, I rescued Anthology of American Poetry Lyric America 1630-1930, edited by Alfred Kreymborg.  In his introduction, he feels strongly about including the first colonial poem.  Here is the first verse:

Excerpt from first Colonial poem

Thankfully, we have the archaeology of words that clues us into the habits, ways, methods of past lives and work. As I try to find more information about who lived here, I am thankful to mine these sources.

Text from, Anthology of American Poetry Lyric America 1630-1930, edited by Alfred Kreymborg, (Tudor Publishing, NY, 1930), p.3