Exhibit: "Reading Sentences: Prison Libraries and Literature"

Beyond punishment for social wrongs, imprisonment has long functioned to silence or remove voices from the public forum. As we have seen with figures from Cervantes to Martin Luther King Jr., however, prison can also give inmates copious time to articulate their thoughts and the fame or notoriety necessary to draw attention to them.

This exhibit examines both the literature consumed and produced by prisoners as well as the evolving depiction of the prison in popular culture. Its scope spans hundreds of years and thousands of miles, from the chivalric romances dreamed up by imprisoned knights (and aspiring knights) of the medieval and Renaissance eras to the cheap, sensational prison dramas peddled to the working classes and the reformist prison library catalogs whose titles sought to educate and equip inmates with secular knowledge and employable trade skills in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New England. It highlights the electrifying prison manifestos of several prominent civil rights leaders and concludes with contemporary artist and children’s books which grapple with the psychosocial impact of incarceration.

The exhibit was curated by Sophie Chadha, Edward Connery Lathem '51 Special Collections Fellow at Rauner Special Collections Library. The poster was designed by Chadha and Max Seidman, Exhibits and Graphic Arts Designer for Dartmouth Libraries. It will be on display in Rauner Special Collections Library's Class of 1965 Galleries from April 6 through June 19, 2026.

Wealth of Nations at 250

We have a lovely first edition of Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations published 250 year ago in March of 1776. A lot happened that year and the Enlightenment was having a pretty dramatic (one might say revolutionary) impact across Europe and into the colonies. Oddly, it had never occurred to me to think of Wealth of Nations as a product of the Enlightenment until about ten years ago when a faculty member in the Economics department asked me to talk about the book next to Diderot's Encyclopédie. At first I was confused, then it all made sense.

You see Adam Smith was one of the book buyers for the University of Glasgow and he persuaded the university to invest in the acquisition of Diderot's epic project to create an encyclopedia that would wrest control of knowledge from the church and the monarchy and put it into the hands of anyone literate and able to gain access to his encyclopedia. Smith would have been an avid consumer of the work, so is it any wonder that his first and most famous example of the division of labor came right out of the Diderot's project? You can look at Wealth of Nations alongside the fabulous illustrations of pin manufacture presented in volume 4 of the plates of the Encyclopédie. This is old news to anyone well versed in the history of economics, but for me it was an enlightening experience that made me rethink the rise of capitalism.

To see the first edition of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ask for Val 330.1 S643i 1776. For Diderot's Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers you'll want Rare AE25 .E53 (ask for volume 4 of the plates).

A Small University

When Daniel Webster 1801 said that Dartmouth was a "small college," he wasn't kidding. These words, uttered during Webster's successful defense of the college during Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward in 1819, have become an important part of the school's identity over the last two centuries and more. This week, while looking through our broadside collections in preparation for a history class on the Revolutionary War, we found evidence of just how small Dartmouth was at the time.

In January of 1800, or perhaps 1799, a small broadside was published that listed the names of the members of Dartmouth's class of 1801, including Daniel Webster and his high school and college roommate James Bingham. A total of thirty-four names are listed in both print and manuscript; some names are crossed out, indicating their departure from the school, while a few late arrivals have been inked in by an unknown hand. This little document is fascinating to us because it underscores how tight-knit and intimate each Dartmouth class must have been at the time (no bigger than a large seminar class nowadays, perhaps). We're also intrigued by the various additions and deletions from the sheet, especially the removal of a mysterious John Russell, for whom we can find no other archival records as of yet. Of most interest to us, however, is that the document states that it is a catalogue of the members of the sophomore class of "Dartmouth University". We dug a little deeper and found a similar catalogue of the class of 1788 that also identified the school as a university, less than two decades after the founding of the school and sixteen years before the controversy that sparked the Supreme Court showdown.

This little detail has left us with many questions, some that can be answered and others that will never be: At what point had the College begun to call itself a University long before the schism of 1804 that caused the creation of two rival institutions, Dartmouth College and Dartmouth University? Did Webster and his classmates also call it that when they were students, and if so did it seem odd to him to call Dartmouth a "small college" in 1819? Regardless, the school had clearly left a deep impression on him and his small cohort of classmates during their time in the wilderness.

To see the list of members of the class of 1801, come to Rauner and ask for Broadside 799101.

New Additions to our Collections!

In addition to our current collections of phenomenal books and manuscripts, we are always collecting new amazing items that we know will be used eagerly by students in our classrooms. The breadth and depth of our teaching across the curriculum is represented in the following list of recent acquisitions, all of which were added to our shelves over the last three or four months. If you'd like to visit us to see any of them in person, place a request via the linked catalog record and then come to Rauner!

Codex 003545: A 17th-century manuscript scroll containing the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important texts of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism.

Incunabula 171: A single sheet from a 1483-84 almanac printed by Johannes Angelus, a prominent physician/astrologer/astronomer who practiced his trade in Vienna in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. This particular page provides advice on how to pair medical treatment with beneficial astrological signs  for the coming year.

Presses L876lokn: Book artist Angela Lorenz created this volume, titled Known no-bodies, in 2025. The work displays seven original watercolor paintings of "portrait-like figures, each with aspects of a face and a body with various fanciful modifications".

Rare CT3202 .B4 1804: Matilda Bethany's Biographical Dictionary of the celebrated women of every age and country was printed in 1804 and contains short biographies of famous women from antiquity to the present day, organized alphabetically.

Rare RM184.5 .K45 1753: A book printed in 1753 and written in Chinese with Japanese reading marks that explains the locations and relations of fourteen meridians and acupuncture points using woodcut illustrations.

Rare PA6801 .A2 1502: The 1502 Strasbourg printing of the works of Virgil, sometimes known as the "Grüninger Virgil" after the name of its printer. The work contains 137 original full-block woodcuts that were influential for artists and printers across Germany, Italy, and France for several centuries.

Rare G2355 .N577 1666b: Japan's first atlas published in Kanbun 6 (1666), consisting of 1 preface and 16 provincial maps. The accompanying text describes routes on the maps and includes such information as statistics for rice production and distances between various points by land and sea.

“A wise man is never surprised”: Decoding a 200 year old cipher

One of my responsibilities at Rauner is ingesting PDF scans of archival material into our digital repository for long-term preservation. If you request a scan of an entire folder from us, after it is delivered to you, it will almost certainly pass through my laptop. We scan and deliver thousands of pages of files a year, and I don’t read them all, but if something happens to spark my curiosity, I do like to take a look. This is how I came across this surprising find earlier this year. Hidden in Box 4 Folder 1 of the Dinsmoor family papers, I found a secret message.

This is what cryptographers call a grille cipher. In a grille cipher, the message is hidden in a grid of letters. Decoding the message requires using a stencil or grille with holes cut out, which, when aligned in the right spot on the grid, blocks the filler letters and leaves only the letters of the message visible.

It should go without saying that discovering a secret message hidden in a collection of 18th century papers is about as exciting a find as an archivist can make. It is basically the plot of National Treasure. I couldn’t help but wonder what piece of information was so sensitive that Silas Dinsmoor took the time to construct this cipher, writing out these letters in a neat grid and carefully cutting out all these windows. Buried treasure seemed unlikely, but maybe it was something else: a family secret, a confession, a message to allies in wartime? I was determined to decode it.

Unfortunately, the paper was fragile and creased, making it hard to flatten the grille and align the windows without tearing the page. Fortunately, we have access to a crack team of conservators here at Dartmouth Libraries, and they were able to repair the paper and make it usable again. Assistant Conservator Matt Zimmerman explains how he did it:

“I humidified it in a humidification chamber made from a photo developing tray for about 45 minutes; then I further humidified the more stubborn creases by brushing ethanol into them, then I put the whole piece under weight between spunbonded polyester and blotter; once dry and flattened, I mended any tears with a very thin (3gsm) remoistenable Japanese tissue.”

With the pages back from Preservation and carefully enclosed in protective mylar sleeves, I sat down to decode the message. Starting with corner A of the grille in the top left corner, I aligned the two leaves and started writing down the letters I saw. When I reached the end of the grid, I rotated the grille so that corner B was in the top left, then C, then D. Then I flipped the page and decoded the text on the back. It was exciting to see the message start to reveal itself:

It is a ma
xim com
monly rec
eived t
hat a wise
man is ne
ver surp
rised…

Readers, I am sorry to disappoint, but there was no secret confession or clues to buried treasure hidden in this cipher. It is just a Samuel Johnson quote. Why Dinsmoor decided to encode it we may never know. Perhaps he enjoyed the challenge. Perhaps he wanted to prank us from beyond the grave. 

To decode the rest of the cipher yourself, request MS-40 Box 4 Folder 1 and come to the reading room.

This post was written by Charlie Langenbucher, Processing Specialist at Rauner Library.

Will that be Cash or Beef?

When Hanover decided to erect a new meeting-house in 1794 it needed to find a way to pay for it. The meeting-house would serve many uses: a church, a place for important speakers visiting town, a venue for political debate. It was to be the focal point for the life of the town separate from the College that had come to dominate. In classic New England fashion, they allowed select pews to be claimed for a set amount of money or goods. Pledging to purchase a pew would let you assert your family's status at every church service and every town event.

What struck us were the options for how to express your support. Cash was always welcome but, if you were a person with forested land, you could also pay with lumber or, if you were without means, each day's labor on the building went into your account. And, well naturally, there was the option to pay with commodities: beef, pork, and grain were welcome payment. This broadside issued in 1794 by Dartmouth's first librarian, Bezaleel Woodward (who was on the select board at the time) spells out the payment options so Hanover's citizens could pledge their resources. And a select few could claim their pews of distinction.

To see it, ask for Broadside 001501.

Oh, the Glory of it All!

When the second edition of The American Gazetteer came out in London in 1762, it was a pretty quiet event. There was nothing really new, just a three-volume compendium of statistics, descriptions of fortifications, notes on natural and political history, some nice maps, and other factual tidbits concerning the new world. But somehow it inspired an Italian printer who decided it was worth translating and embellishing. Suddenly it was a lavish production perfect for the arm-chair colonialist. From the comfort of a nice Italian villa, a gentleman could tour the Americas in all of their glory.

It is worth your time to stop by and take a look--and then think about how the Italians were thinking about the English thinking about the Americas! Ask for Il Gazzettiere Americano, Rare E14 .A54 1763. 

Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions

This week's book is John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities: Chiefly Illustrating the Origin of Our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions (1813). Originally published in 1777, then edited and rearranged by Henry Ellis, the two-volume set lays out the British calendar year and its accompanying popular antiquities, now better known as folklore. It devotes about 60 pages to Christmas traditions, some still familiar and others rather unrecognizable.

One custom Brand lists is the hunting of the wren on the Isle of Man: "'On the 24th of December, towards evening, all the servant in general have a holiday; they go not to bed all night, but ramble about till the bells ring in all the churches, which is at twelve o'clock: prayers being over, they go to hunt the wren; and, after having found one of these poor birds, they kill her, and lay her on a bier with the utmost solemnity, bringing her to the parish church, and burying her with a whimsical kind of solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call her knell; after which, Christmas begins.'" This tradition took place in other parts of the British Isles as well. It continued in various iterations long past Brand's lifetime and died out in the first half of the 20th century, before being revived more recently using a fake bird.  

To read about this and other holiday traditions, ask for Ticknor LEH B73o.

Exquisitely Stenciled

This book is so cool, we can't believe it. It is a liturgical guide for feast days produced in the Benedictine monastery of Ambronay in 1740, and it is neither print nor traditional manuscript. Instead, the entire text was created using stencils on vellum. If you look closely, you'll see every letter is cut to make it hold together for inking. Imagine the work that went into creating this!

Extra interesting for us is that the illuminated decorations were never completed. That allows us to see the process they employed to create the book--sketching out the decorations, then carefully filling them in. It is another case of a devotional book being created as an act of devotion. Stunning, inspirational, and a joy to handle.

                                            

Come in and ask for Codex MS 003530 to experience it for yourself.

Rambling Boys and Ballads Migrant

In 1889, William Butler Yeats published his poem "Down by the Salley Gardens," based on a half-remembered song he'd heard sung by a woman in the village of Ballisodare, Ireland. The general consensus is that the song was probably the folk ballad "Rambling Boys of Pleasure" (Roud Index 386). The earliest identified versions of "Rambling Boys" in print are dated from the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. However, our collections have a curious instance of this song that dates even earlier. 

Joseph Goffe was a New England minister and member of Dartmouth's Class of 1791. We have a few manuscripts connected with him -- primarily letters and sermons. We also have his 1783-85 notebook where young Goffe did some accounting for the labor and costs of building a new sawmill in Bedford, N.H. At the back of this notebook Goffe transcribed a few songs, one of which is "Rambling Boys." The manuscript is discussed by the Vermont-based ballad collectors Helen Hartness Flanders and Marguerite Olney in their 1953 book Ballads Migrant in New England, as well as in modern folk song indexes. As far as we can determine, Goffe's notebook represents the oldest surviving version of the song. 

The intentional collection and recording of folklore gained momentum in the 19th century, influenced in part by nationalism and concerns that the lore of rural people, passed along by oral tradition rather than in writing, would be corrupted or lost in a rapidly changing world. While this premise was flawed and led to a lot of questionable academic practices, it also led to a mass recording of beliefs, crafts, music, and other ways that people engaged with their world. Goffe recording "Rambling Boys" at the back of his sawmill ledger established a small fixed point -- how one version of this song went at this specific time, and that a teenage boy liked it well enough to write down the words. 

To see the manuscript, ask for Mss 783626. To see Ballads Migrant, ask for Alumni Alcove F9296bal.

How much is that in Beavers?

While prepping for a class this Winter, we stumbled on an amazing 18th-century chart of prices. It has the typical merchandise you would expect for sale at a remote trading post: cloth, glass beads, shoes, guns, pots and pans, blankets, and other things you might need. But what makes this one so foreign, is that everything is priced in beaver pelts!

A yard of broad cloth would run you two beavers, and a gallon of rum four. One blanket was six beavers, and a pair of cargo breeches three. It seems like a luxury, but two ivory combs were just one beaver.

This system was put in place by the Hudson Bay Company and it radically disrupted the economic world for Indigenous tribes throughout the area, leading to the "Beaver Wars" and upending traditional cultural systems and practices.

The trade goods were a powerful incentive, and the impact on the beaver population can be seen by the annual harvest recorded by the Hudson Bay company in the same report.

To take a look yourself, ask for John Strange 1749 Report from the Committee, Appointed to Enquire into the State and Condition of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson’s Bay, and of the Trade Carried on There : Together with an Appendix (Stefansson  F1060.4 .G774 1749).

Jamaican Pepper and Turkish Figs

We recently acquired two humble yet fascinating little manuscripts that shed an impressive amount of light on the capitalistic and exploitative foundations of British colonialism: early 18th-century London grocery bills. Both of these folio pages supply a wealth of information about what England was bringing home from its colonies abroad for Great Britain's upper class. At the top of both invoices, grocer John Cosins boasts that he "sells the best coffee, tea, chocolate, [with] all sorts of Grocery at reasonable rates."

In this circumstance, these superior groceries had been sold to Sir Thomas Sebright, 4th Baronet of Beechwood Park, in the late 1720s. Sebright was an English politician and landowner whose father-in-law was the Lord Mayor of London. Sebright was also implicated in the notorious "South Sea Bubble" stock market crash; he and other politicians had received gifts of stock in the South Sea Company, which had artificially inflated its value through similar schemes.

Despite his questionable ethics, Sebright seems to be doing quite well for himself years later as he enjoys the fruits of other's labor: pepper from Jamaica, figs from Turkey, and Asian spices like cloves and nutmeg. To have a look at a colonizer's shopping list, inquire at Rauner's reference desk. These items haven't been catalogued yet but soon will be.

On Ribs and the Bible: The Implications of Christianity and Colonialism for Native Women

“I find very great Profit by having the other Rib join’d to my Body for it hath taken away all my Housework from me. But I had very hard spell geting it up here Rocks and Hills almost broke it into Peices two or three Times”.

Eleazar Wheelock created Moor’s Charity School in 1754. The goal for this school is apparent through Wheelock’s writings - the objective was to “civilize and Christianize” the Native American students as well as make them instruments of Christ, but also of Wheelock. The instruction of this school focused on Native young men and taught them reading, math, and geography, as well as putting them to work on his farm. Around the late 1750s, Wheelock concluded that when the Native men left his school they would resume the path of a ‘savage’, he had to figure out a way to keep them from turning Indian.

Wheelock began to admit young Native women into his school in 1761. Hannah Garrett was a Pequot resident and student at the school from 1763 to 1766. Based on Wheelock’s intention and goal for his female students to marry to “...prevent a Necessity of their [Native male students] [from] turning savage in their Manner of Living…”, Garrett was the only successful student. In this post, I will discuss one of the only remaining accounts about Hannah Garrett and deconstruct the gender and religious stereotypes placed upon her, as well as how she navigated these factors. The lens through which we’re viewing her is that of her husband David Fowler since her accounts are greatly limited.

At the time of their marriage, Garrett was around 17 years old while Fowler was around 30 years old. Fowler had succeeded in finding a wife, however, Garrett was the third woman who attended Moor’s Charity School that he tried to marry. Fowler wrote to Wheelock in search of a wife whom he could take on missions; Fowler had his hopes set on Amy Johnson. He wrote: “I know you love her as much as you do me, all she desires will be given… (if Mr Wheelock, Don’t love my Rib as well as my whole Body”. The reference to her as a Rib is a Biblical allusion to Genesis 2:22-23.

²² And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. ²³ And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

By referring to Johnson as “my Rib” he describes how he believes his wife should act – as a fixed extension of himself. The visual of the rib is a staple that Fowler held onto during his search for a wife and its prominence in his writing is a testament to the Christian influences of Wheelock. 

After Fowler had moved on from Johnson, he set his mind on another female student at Moor’s Charity School, Hannah Pyamphcouh. He wrote to Wheelock “If she won’t let her Bones be joined with mine. I shall pick out my Rib from your House”. He’s determined to follow Wheelock’s plan and marry a Native woman. His use of words like “pick” and “rib” objectifies the woman he wants to marry, creating a bond that ultimately engulfs his partner. In the end, Hannah Pyamphcouh doesn't marry him and Fowler is forced to look for a new rib.

A short time later, in a letter to Wheelock after Fowler has left for his mission with his new wife, Hannah Garrett, Fowler writes:

“I find very great Profit by having the other Rib join’d to my Body for it hath taken away all my Housework from me. But I had very hard spell geting it up here Rocks and Hills almost broke it into Peices two or three Times”.

The language used is objectifying while also lacking compassion and a sense of companionship. From this moment on, Fowler almost exclusively refers to her as his wife or rib. By not calling her by name, he exerts ownership over Garrett: there’s no autonomy in a rib as it serves to protect and support the body of which it’s a part. In the same breath, however, Garrett is forever cementing her name in history and is now attached to her husband's legacy. This begs the question of what it says about women in that period and how they were valued in their communities. Garrett was made to move between the culture of her tribe to adapt to the often demanding and demoralizing pressures of Wheelock’s school.

The juxtaposition between Garrett being successful and the struggle for autonomy brings up the question of how Garrett viewed her experiences. Returning to the biblical verse, God took the rib out of man to make woman, removing her from the inner workings of man. They’re still united but God gave her form, no longer assigning her to the role of supporter and protector. The line “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” adds to this commentary because it’s saying that the woman’s bone and flesh are the same as the man’s. However, given the context of the time and views on women, the phrase “my” in the verse allows for the assertion of beliefs of how a woman should act and how they should serve their male counterparts. In Fowler’s letter to Wheelock, he writes the phrase “joined to my Body” which takes on the meaning of ownership instead of realizing partnership, inadvertently moving away from the message of God to fulfill a socially constructed gender role reinforced by religion. Although no pieces of writing authored by her exist today, she still survives in history and her life is an example of the complex effect of colonialism and the spread of Christianity in the 1700s and 1800s.

To read the letters quoted in this post, visit Rauner Library and ask for Mss 766652.2, Mss 765302.2, and Mss 766313.1; or read the letters about Amy Johnson and Hannah Pyamphcouh on the Occom Circle website. For a compilation of letters like these, see The Letters of Eleazar Wheelock's Indians by James Dow McMcCallum. To read about Moor's Charity School in Wheelock's own words, request A Plain and Faithful Narrative... (1763).

Posted for Sydney Hoose '25, recipient of Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2023 Fall term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the College's past. For more information, visit the program's website.

Not THAT Josiah Bartlet

Dartmouth counts many famous people connected to the school. For the Fourth of July this year, we feature Josiah Bartlett... no, not the fictional one "t" President Bartlet on West Wing who taught economics here, but his actual namesake, two "tt" Josiah Bartlett, first Governor of the State of New Hampshire, the state's delegate to the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration of Independence. A successful doctor, he was also a trustee of Dartmouth and was awarded an honorary degree at the 1790 graduation where he spoke.

We have a wonderful stash of letters in his papers (MS-181) that includes this gem perfect for the day. Writing to Bartlett from Exeter in August, 1776, Nathaniel Folsom enthuses:

The Declaration is well receivd here, has been duely published etc. As to myself and some of my particular friends with whom I have the happiness to agree in almost every publick measure it was extremely agreeable--it will (I doubt not) have a happy tendency to unite us in the present glorious struggle for by it many of the objections of wavering (tho' perhaps otherwise well disposed) persons are entirely answered--In short, it is the first principle of every virtuous man to keep a conscience void of offense toward God & man, it is the second thing he has in view to make it appear to the World. By the Declaration you make evident to the World that you are neither ashamed to own the Cause of Liberty nor afraid to defend it, and I doubt not it will be defended even against the Ultimo Ratio Regis.

The last line a reference to the news of most of the remainder of the letter which was almost exclusively concerned with the state of the troops, the building of a new fort and equipping a powder mill. We will be closed for the Fourth, but come in this week and look over Bartlett's communications as the country formed.

Elevating the Art of Wood Engraving

What is wood engraving exactly? It's a method of illustration printed from blocks of wood where the image has been carved into the end grain. Unlike other wood cuts, which are made by carving along the grain, the benefit of engraving is its hardness and durability. An engraved wood block could be used to print images in far more detail and would deteriorate far more slowly, even when applied in a printing press alongside metal type.

It wasn't until the 18th century that this technique was really embraced for illustration. It had previously been utilized to a degree but, to quote one account, "it can scarcely be said to have existed, except in its ruder forms. Tasteless emblematical ornaments and tail-pieces, diagrams and rough designs for magazines, illustrations of an elementary character for a few books." An English artist named Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) was responsible for the turnabout. Deeply in love with nature and with making art, a fourteen-year-old Bewick was apprenticed to the engraver Ralph Beilby, whose business was making such miscellanies as described above. He excelled at the work and, among the rest, began to take on commissions for children's books. With his own practice, he continued to develop his technique and eventually began writing his own books and illustrating them with wood engravings with a "singular technical dexterity."

Today's item is an 1807 edition of A General History of Quadrupeds, Bewick's first original text. A natural history book aimed at children, the General History is both informative and humorous. One description states that the porcupine, though "denied the privilege of making offensive war, it is sufficiently armed to resist the attacks of animals much more powerful than itself." Meanwhile, the zebra is "one of the most beautiful, and also one of the wildest and most untameable animals in nature... its liberty has heretofore remained uncontrouled." The book was massively successful with its intended audience, as well as with adult readers.

To see a charming book that helped kicked off wood engraving as a serious art form, ask for A General History of Quadrupeds, Illus B468be.

An Almanac for America

Almanacs have been in existence since at least the second millennium BCE; their annual predictions of weather and other calendar-related natural phenomena were vital tools used by numerous professions, including farmers, sailors, and astronomers. When Europeans began to settle on the American continent in large numbers, the colonists needed almanacs that were aligned for to their particular area of the world.

The first American almanac for New England was printed in 1639 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was the second document printed in the English colonies in America. In the mid-1700s, an almanac published by Nathaniel Ames became the the most popular brand for nearly fifty years. A medical doctor by trade, Ames was known as a bit of a renaissance man as well as an eccentric. In 1725, when Ames was just seventeen, he published the first edition of his almanac; after his death in 1764, his son continued publishing the almanac for another ten years.

One of the utilitarian modifications that 18th-century colonists made to their almanacs was to interleave blank pages between the printed pages. On those sheets, they would record all sorts of information that was relevant not only to the weather but also to their immediate lived experience, including deaths, births, marriages, and other community occurrences. Here in Special Collections, we have a run of Ames almanacs from 1741 until 1762. Nearly every single printed page is interleaved with a previously blank one that now contains copious notes about the actual weather, deaths, births, and other goings-ons. We don't know who the original owner was, but he was clearly a resident of Portsmouth, NH: he mentions among other things the death of the minister of Portsmouth's South Church, Rev. William Shurtleff III, on May 9, 1747.

To journey back in time and space through the eyes of a colonial New Englander, come to Rauner and ask to see Rare AY53 .A8.

The Philosophy of Botany

As spring creeps in, we're taking a look at some of the more exuberant botanical books in our collection. Today, it's Robert John Thornton's 1799 The Philosophy of Botany, This volume contains an exploration (lavishly illustrated) of the different kinds of seeds one can observe in nature, the casings those seeds tend to come in, and the transformation of a seed into a plant. Later in Philosophy, the focus shifts to cross-sections of roots and branches. The illustrations become increasingly geometric and abstracted in attempting to show their audience a microscopic view of plant structure, until at the end they snap back out and devote several pages to recognizable, whole plants.

To see something lovely, come in and ask for Rare Book QK92 .T5 1799.

Happy New Year's Eve?!

Tomorrow is New Year's Day! Well, at least, it would be here in the former English colonies if not for an Act of Parliament in 1750 that firmly established January 1 as the start of the "New" New Year. This was a necessary law because of the widening discrepancy between the dates of the Julian calendar, which was only still used by England, and the Gregorian calendar, which had been in use by the rest of Europe since 1582. Fiercely Protestant at the time, England had rejected the Pope's calendrical fiat and stuck with the Old Style system.

Well, at least, partially; March 25th remained the first day of the legal year (akin to July 1 being the start of the fiscal year for some institutions like Dartmouth), but everyone generally accepted January 1 to be the start of the real New Year because of the need to synch up important celebratory dates with the rest of Europe. So, often, English documents from 1582 until 1750 used a double-dating system to note both Julian and Gregorian systems.

Moreover, by the 1750s, the two calendars were more than ten days out of sync with each other because of their use of different strategies to account for their system's inability to perfectly match the actual orbital cycle of the earth around the sun. 

Whew. Are you still with me? It's okay if not; all that's important for this post is that the British powers-that-be called a halt to the madness by instituting a multi-step changeover to the Gregorian system that was finished in 1752. Despite previous Protestant pushback against the Pope's preferred program, at least one group of dissenters saw the change as a chance to remind its followers about what they viewed as textual idolatry. In a broadside addressed to "The Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends in Great-Britain, Ireland, and America", the group's standing representative body encourages its members to embrace the use of numbers instead of names for months and days so that they would no longer give "honor to the idols of the heathen."  The document then spells out the sources for all of those names. Although you're probably familiar with some of these attributions, some of them may be new to you. One detail that I had never really considered, but that makes perfect sense, is that Sept-ember, Oct-ober, Nov-ember, and Dec-ember are named after their previous chronological place in the Julian system (since February was the twelfth month of the year, not December!).

To read the entire document denouncing pagan months and days, come to Special Collections and ask for Presses F854f.

Cymbal Scion

Four hundred years ago, in the city of Constantinople, an alchemist named Avedis discovered a revolutionary means of treating alloys. Avedis belonged to a family of metalsmiths and cymbal-makers, and his innovative process immediately became a closely-guarded secret that was passed down from father to son over the centuries. Today, the family business is thriving: it is the oldest manufacturer of musical instruments in the world, one of the oldest continuously operating global companies still in existence, and the largest cymbal and drumstick maker in the world. The organization is still family owned and operated, and does business under the surname originally bestowed upon Avedis by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire: Zildjian or, in Armenian, "Family of Cymbal Smiths". Numerous legendary 20th-century drummers use or have used Zildjian cymbals, including such musical luminaries as Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Ringo Starr, Keith Moon, Neal Peart, Dave Grohl, and many others.

Interestingly enough, one of the scions of the house of Zildjian attended Dartmouth College before returning to the family business. Robert Zildjian was a member of the class of 1945, where he majored in History and Philosophy, was a member of Chi Phi fraternity, and participated in Le Cercle Francais. In 1981, after a dispute with his brother over the company, Robert left the Avedis Zildjian Company and founded Sabian Cymbal in New Brunswick, Canada. Sabian Cymbal is today considered one of a handful of dominant cymbal makers, alongside Zildjian, Meinl, and Paiste. To read more about Zildjian, both the company and the man, come to Rauner and ask to see the alumni file for Robert Zildjian '45.

Awe-some Bibles

This week the New York Times published an article about how experiencing awe might be good for your mental and physical health. Well, we just acquired a few awe-inspiring books if you want to get a dose of this wonder drug: a first printing of the King James Bible from 1611; and a copy of the “Aitken Bible,” from 1782, the first English Language bible printed in America. It is hard to overstate the importance of the King James Bible to the religious lives of the English-speaking world, but also to its literary and cultural realms. Setting this book next to our copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio from 1623, you can see the sources for so many of the common idioms of the English language, as well as understand the literary significance of this translation. Similarly, when it's placed next to our first printings of the Geneva Bible and the Great Bible, you can see the development of the Protestant Reformation in England. It is a truly monumental work.

The Aitken Bible, so much smaller in stature, has a great story behind it. Great Britain had a monopoly on English-language Bibles in its colonies, but the Revolutionary War cut off the supply and the warring colonies found themselves with a shortage of Bibles. So, in 1781, Robert Aitken petitioned the Continental Congress to allow him to print a Bible. The book, issued as a defiant act of independence, helps us better understand the publishing world in colonial America, but also helps situate our copy of the earlier Eliot Bible (the first Bible printed in the new world, notable because it is a translation into an Indigenous language and was printed nearly 120 years before the Aitken Bible) as the unique artifact that it is. 

To be awed ask for the King James Bible at Rare BS185 1611 and the Aitken Bible at Rare BS185 1782 .P5.