| a bibliographical newsletter Issue 9 August 2019 |
Since the last issue there has been little progress on maintaining the coverage of current output, apart from monitoring Devon and Westcountry titles in the British National Bibliography. The main emphasis has been working on a series of ancillary files: a listing of resource providers, a gazetteer and a thesaurus. This is to ensure that it is a complete package that is handed over with the bibliography itself. The article entitled "Re-imagining local studies in
Pages updated since the last issue of the newsletter include 2019 publications
New pages include: Resource providers and a draft page on Devon medieval manuscripts
Grants for heritage collections in Exeter
The Kent Kingdon Bequest has issued the following notice to potential grant recipients:
At the annual meeting of the Trustees of the Kent Kingdon Bequest held on 23 July 2019 it was agreed that the attention of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and the successors of the Exeter Free Library should be drawn to the continuing availability of grants to assist purchases. These grants are normally given as match funding and can include grants towards conservation or digitisation to make new grant-aided acquisitions accessible to the public by visit or online.
A grant application form is available on the Kent Kingdon Bequest website. If there is a tight deadline (for example an auction sale or an item offered on-line) an email can be sent to the Trustees, but applicants must fill out an application form before any payment is released by the Kent Kingdon Bequest. The Trustees may also alert grant recipients regarding items of potential interest.
For the purpose of making grants the following library collections are considered to be successors of the Exeter Free Library:
For the purpose of making grants the following library collections are considered to be successors of the Exeter Free Library:
- The Westcountry Studies Library in the Devon Heritage Centre, Exeter, administered by the South West Heritage Trust, Taunton.
- The Heritage Collections at Exeter Library, administered by Libraries Unlimited, Exeter.
Writing and marginalia
Congratulations to Exeter Library for yet another innovative project celebrating Devon's written and printed heritage. From 26 April to 27 August the British Library has been displaying the wide-ranging exhibition Writing: making your mark, tracing five millennia of the world's written heritage from the earliest cuneiform and hieroglyphic inscriptions in Egypt and Mesopotamia, through the scroll of classical times, the medieval manuscript codex and the printed book to the arrival of the digital age. Exeter Library displayed a set of the associated display boards and provided an activity trail for families and groups. It also put on its own display under the title Marginalia, showing how readers had left their mark over the centuries in some of the early printed books in the library's heritage collections. It was interesting to see an early edition of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the world, a stray from the Westcountry Studies Library, with a note that it was a copy which had been given to a friend by the author. Another item of interest which would have found a place in the display is an autograph inscription signed by Jonathan Swift tucked away in a bound volume of pamphlets which remains in the Westcountry Studies Library.
Printmakers' books
Printmakers' books
While private press books certainly fall within the remit of the Devon bibliography, with artists' book we enter more disputed territory. In a yurt in the grounds of Dartington Hall during the Ways with words festival which ran from 5 to 15 July there was a fascinating and beautiful exhibition entitled Picturing the word: printmakers' books. This displayed works produced by members of the Dartington Print Workshop over the past thirty years. While they were illustrated by engravings, lithographs, lino-cuts, silk screen prints and other reproduction methods used for publishing prints in limited editions, these individual prints were collected together in editions frequently of a single copy, or perhaps two or three. So can they be considered publications? A few of them have reached libraries such as the V&A National Art Library but most remain in private hands. In effect they are the modern equivalent of illuminated manuscripts. As the Devon bibliography extends its scope to non-archival manuscripts in its attempt to document Devon's written heritage over the past two millennia, it has been decided to include them in the Devon bibliography as artists' books. Also included in the bibliography is the catalogue to the exhibition, which gives technical details and illustrations of the books - but only rarely the date of production. An earlier version of this exhibition was shown in Bovey Tracey by the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in 2016.
The Rape of the Lock
Of course heritage collections in Devon, as everywhere, contain items that are certainly not books. The Fisher Collection on Exeter City football club contains a rattle, a football and players' shirts, the County Local Studies Librarian was offered a packet of Raleigh cigarettes for his collections during a twinning visit. Sabine Baring-Gould's writing desk, donated to Exeter City Library, is now deposited in Lewtrenchard Manor. And there is the strange case of a lock of hair ... This anecdote starts with with apologies to Alexander Pope:
The lock, obtain'd with Guilt and kept with Pain.In ev'ry place is sought but sought in vain ...
Lock of the hair of Napoléon Bonaparte loaned by the Royal Albert Memorial Museum. Nothing more is known about the provenance of this relic, but it is still displayed in a Victorian pill-box carton originally labelled by J. J.O. Evans, a Teignmouth pharmacist in the 1870s and 1880s.It was in fact from the Heber Mardon collection of Napoleana, given to Exeter City Library by the Teignmouth collector (previously a printer in Bristol) in the 1920s. It was originally kept in the case which housed Napoleon's death-mask but it became clear before 2005 that it had gone astray. Perhaps it was loaned with the death mask to be displayed at some time and inadvertently became separated from the cast of the head that had originally sprouted it.
... or perhaps not. A fascinating lunch-hour was once spent listening to a researcher who wanted it to be DNA tested. She espoused a conspiracy theory that it was not Napoléon who had died on Saint Helena but his double. Napoleon had slipped away, disguised as one of his servants, during a boozy new year's party and boarded an American submarine (constructed by Robert Fulton perhaps) which took him to a US ship waiting out of sight. He was conveyed to Europe and apparently lived out his life as a shopkeeper somewhere in northern Italy. It was agreed that the lock could be released for testing in the interest of science if she could persuade the owners of two other locks ascribed to Napoleon to do likewise. Nothing more was heard but it launched the conspiracy theory that the disappearance of the lock may have been connected with this undertaking.
But now it has been found, it may be opportune to discuss the future location of the collection which, beside the death mask and lock of hair, includes several hundred prints, a large collection of medals and assorted works of statuary. There is a catalogue of the print collection within the Devon bibliography. The collection used to be housed in the Westcountry Studies Library where the prints were catalogued, but various items of statuary used to adorn the Record Office in Castle Street. The collection remained in Exeter Library when the Westcountry Studies Library was shipped out to the Devon Heritage Centre but the present location of the statuary is uncertain. There may also be some framed pictures but there do not appear to have been any books in the collection. They may have been destroyed in the Blitz. Exeter City Library did have an excellent collection of works on French history of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, presumably acquired to support this collection. It includes the extremely rare multi-volume set of folio plates of ancient Egypt produced by the Imprimerie Impériale after Napoléon's expedition to Egypt. Unfortunately the accompanying text volumes were sold at auction following a weeding of Exeter Stack in about 2004 - but I think the text is available in digital form through Gallica. It would be best if all remaining items in the collection could be gathered together either in Exeter Central Library, the Devon Heritage Centre or RAMM and the hair grafted back on to the death mask.
Crediton Community Bookshop and Quay Words
All credit to Andrew Davey and his team for running an interesting and outgoing bookshop. It was especially pleasing to see it represented at the Quay Words literary festival which ran in the Custom House from 26 June until 4 August. There were workshops with writers, editors and publishers, storytelling and poetry reading events and a book fair with local publishers represented. At the heart of it was the bookshop with works by many local writers and a steady stream of shoppers. Look at their excellent website to find out more. They manage to locate many obscure local items and, like other bookshops across the county, need to be involved in the future development of the Devon bibliography. A recent visit to a similar bookshop in Totnes for example unearthed several publications that had escaped the British national bibliography and the Westcountry Studies Library.
Peterloo and the Viscount Sidmouth Archive
A fascinating afternoon was presented by Janet Tall at the Devon Heritage Centre on 19 August celebrating the conclusion of the project funded by the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust and the Friends of Devon's Archives to conserve what must be one of the most significant political archives in any county record office, the correspondence of Henry Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth. It was even possible to visit the conservation studio and see conservation of fragile paper documents in action. Addington was Home Secretary at the time of the Peterloo massacre in Manchester on 16 August 1819 just two centuries ago. Janet Tall described her hunt through the files of correspondence in search of his attitude to actions taken by the yeomanry and the nature of the radical threat in Britain. There was little evidence of radicalism in Devon from the correspondence although the magnificently named Devon MP Edmund Pollexfen Bastard (1784-1838) did write a letter to Addington on the circulation of seditious pamphlets.
Nevertheless there was a strong current of radicalism in Devon at the time. One of the most famous radical publishers was Richard Carlile who was born in Ashburton in 1790. He was one of the reporters at the Peterloo massacre on 16 August 1819. On 12 October 1819 he was fined and imprisoned for republishing Thomas Paine's The age of reason, and in all he spent nine years in prison for his publications. One of the radical periodicals which Carlile helped to distribute was the Black Dwarf which on 7 July 1819 printed a letter from an unnamed pamphlet seller in Exeter who had fallen foul of the authorities:
On Monday I opened a shop in South Street, for the sale of political pamphlets on the side of reform, and exhibited the contents of the Dwarf, on the outrage of the magistrate. In a short time it met the eyes of the parties concerned; and I had sold but few of them, when an officer of the excise, and a constable, entered the shop, with a warrant, and arrested me, not for selling the pamphlets, but for a fine of ten guineas for having sold cider, without a licence, some months ago! They made a seizure on the goods, and took me before the mayor, (a terrible fellow this mayor!) at the guildhall. He said it would have been better had I never been born; that I had done more injury to the morals of this city than I could do good while I lived. I was forthwith committed to the new prison, which had been opened for the first time that morning. Some friends immediately came forward, and opened a subscription to pay the fine, which was done on the Wednesday. At about five I went to the Mayor to demand my goods, but he told me it was an unseasonable hour, and I must wait until the following morning. When I saw him in the morning, he stated the inaccuracy of some points mentioned in the Black Dwarf, and I promised they should be corrected. He then endeavoured to persuade me to decline selling the publications; in reply to which I told his worship that I was determined to persevere in the sale, as I had fortunately some enlightened and able friends to support me. I was desired to name them; but I did not feel it necessary to satisfy his worship. My goods were delivered to me again, and I recommence business to-morrow.
Here is the entry for the issue of the Black dwarf in the Devon bibliography:
Expiring struggles of the Pitt faction at Exeter. - In : Black Dwarf ; 27:3, 7 Jul., 1819. - Columns 437-452 ; 28cm. -
Copies: WSL: pxB/EXE/098.1/BLA. -
Subjects: Devon. Exeter. Radical publications. Booksellers. Persecution. 1819. -
Goodbye but not (we hope) farewell
