Jane Austen’s Lost Books

This is a session that everyone has been looking forward to. It’s always good to return to Jane Austen,

especially to get an original interpretation. Sam Baker is

going to introduce the speaker. Just want to say afterwards there will be a

book signing downstairs in the lobby. Sam

Hi, everybody. I’m delighted today to introduce to you all my colleague Janine Barcus,

the lou-ann and Larry Temple Centennial professor in English literature here at the University of Texas

at Austin. Jeanne, spoken here at British studies before, most recently three years ago,

when she talked about the popular Will in Jane exhibition that she co-curated with Christine Straub

at the Folger Shakespeare Library. And I believe or are fortunate to have Dr. Straube, who is currently

a research fellow at the Harry Ransom Center, with us today as well and the audience.

Janine is also in a fellowship this year sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies

and ACL s Fellowship, pursuing a new project at what one could rent in the time of Jane Austin.

And with the emergence of that economic relation meant for the culture literature of the era. And

I looked online for more information about this fascinating project, Janine’s earlier. But it’s so new that all

I could find was Web sites proposing to rent me copies of the books that she’s written, which makes

sense since the 18th century, phenomenon of renting books through circulating libraries is a big part

of her interest in this topic. Material history of the book has long Virginians

research focus for first monograph was about graphic design and the 18th century British novel,

and it won the day-long Prize in book history from Sharp, the leading professional organization in that field.

In her second book, Matters of Fact and Jane Austen History, Location and Celebrity, geneen

demonstrated that Austin fought in 1775 was influenced by the then emerging

culture of celebrity. With this book and a fleet of related essays, including articles

in the popular press for The Washington Post, York Times and Los Angeles Review of Books,

Genius established herself as a leading Jayna. She now serves as president for the North American

Friends of Chatham House. The former home of Jane Austen’s brother Edward. And a great place to visit if you’re

in the south of England. Meanwhile, you can explore Jean’s recreation of Austin’s Millia

online at what Jane saw that dot org, a wonderful Web site, re-creating Austins Galya

going experiences. And you can see Janine’s collaborative contributions to the curatorial

arts downstairs here in the H.M.S. Gallery devoted to Austin and

Austin, which shows our favorite archive’s holdings in ostinato.

Today, Janine will discuss her just released book, The Lost Books of Jane Austen, which she describes

as mixing hardcore bibliography with the tactics of the Antiques Roadshow.

And as Roger mentioned, right after a talk today, she’ll slip downstairs to sign copies of this new book in

the Ransom Center lobby, where it is available for sale in the gift shop. Not just today, but every day

of January, I’m sure beyond that as well, in conjunction with the Austin and Austin exhibition.

So I’m very excited now to yield the floor to Janine to hear about her latest findings. Ever since

we recruited to Chicago a quarter century ago to work as graduate students with Bruce Redford and Paul Hunter,

I’ve been following In the footsteps 20th century studies to the point that some of you remember when she

was offered New Zealand safely at a safe distance earlier this semester. And my own talk here is characterizing

my own method as positively barca’s yen. Now, I’m delighted if we can see that method

practiced by its master, Janine Barcus herself, speaking to us again on the lost books

of Jane Austen.

Thank you, Sam. We’ve known each other a long time.

It is a pleasure. Can everyone hear me in the back? Yeah, that’s good. OK.

It is a pleasure to share some research from my new book

and I have copies. It just came out two weeks ago. So I thought

I’d bring some copies to, you know, tempt you into buying it downstairs and having me sign it

for posterity. So this project began

as a local curiosity and it grew into a decade of unconventional

book hunting. But the central idea has always remained steady and simple,

and that is that cheap books help make authors canonical. Cheap books

spread fame, but they also tend to be consumed rather than collected. And there’s the rub.

Cheap reprints of Jane Austen are lost books. Frustratingly, few

examples survive of what may be the best markers of her reception history.

And before turning to the technology of stereotyping that I want to teach you about today

that helped lower the costs of books during the 19th century. Allow me to begin

by showing you a smattering of Austin’s cheapest, most badly printed,

least authoritative and most neglected editions not to be found

among the jewels of the Ransom Center, at least not yet. And I had a lot

of necessary help from private collectors who have safeguarded these fragile survivors

of these under appreciated reprinting. For posterity. But I warn you,

this slideshow is not pretty. For cheap books, live hard

lives. So in the latter half of the 19th century,

cheap and shoddy versions of Jane Austen’s novels performed the heavy lifting of

bringing her work and reputation before the general public. Inexpensive reprints

and early paperbacks of Austen were sold at Victorian railway stations for one or two shillings,

traded for soap wrappers, squeezed into tight columns on flimsy paper for mere

pennies, awarded as book prizes in schools and targeted to

the working classes. Few of these hard lived books survive.

Yet scrappy versions of Austin’s novels made a substantial difference to her early readership.

These were the books bought and read by ordinary people. And these are the books that, due

to their low status and low production values, remain largely absent from the shelves of academic

libraries and thus unremarked by scholars. In Britain, the

wastepaper drives of both world wars ensured that many cheap editions deemed

unimportant were simply pulped. And in America, ill placed concerns

about acidic paper resulted in 19th century books being tossed by librarians favoring

storage on microfilm. My research challenges traditional valuations of what

constitutes an important version of a book. An effort to democratize Jane Austen’s reception

here history. And consider how books read by working class readers, by non scholars,

and even by schoolchildren impact literary reputation. My

insula interest lies not in abridgments or adaptations, but

in lowly versions of novels in their entire uncut and unfiltered.

Even when the words inside books are identical and the stories complete, shoddy versions

present Austins fame differently than do precious editions painstakingly safeguarded

by scholarly libraries and traditional collectors. Only low brow versions of

Austins novels can show scholars and fans alike that her burgeoning literary reputation

was not the tidy accretion of Polish status and starch. That history

has inadvertently made it out to be original, authoritative

and handsomely illustrated. Editions did help Austins early visibility, to be sure,

but so did the numerous unsung reprinting. At the very bottom end

of the book market, and in messy and startling ways, by literally cheapening

Austen, these versions showed an everyday writer whose public appeal

differed radically from the official canonical offer author proffered and supported

by those fine additions. When the ransom

center learned about my project in this category of books, discussions began

about collecting practices and I was allowed to gather

and I can’t believe they let me do this together. All of their holdings on Jane Austen and curated

the exhibition that is currently downstairs in the Stories to Tell Gallery through

the fifth of January. The exhibition traces the collecting habits of

the Ransom Center through the lens of a single author to ask how do certain books come

to be preserved in buildings like this? The exhibition, which I urge you to see afterwards

if you can pop by, is called Austin. And. And it’s located at the very far section

of the downstairs gallery. OK. Let me tell you a story.

This is the orthodox view and fairy tale of Jane Austin’s

reception history. It is well-known that Jane Austin’s reputation lay dormant

for the 15 years or so following her death in 1817. And the orthodox view

is that she reached a wide English audience only after Richard Bently revived

her work for his Standard Novels reprint series in 1833.

But publisher Bentley, although he was an important catalyst, is not the true

hero of our Sleeping Beauty story. His books were also not

as cheap and as accessible as scholars taking Bentleys advertisments at their word

have assumed. Bentley emphasized the inexpensive nature of his handsomely

produced compact volumes, ornamented with elegant fronts, pieces and title page illustrations.

Price Six Shilling and cheap addition.

He was an early adopter of publisher issued bindings and cloth, and his prices not only reflected

the paper savings of his three in one volume format, but the sudden freedom from traditional

leather bindings, scholars have amply recorded and praised Bently Reprint,

reprinting of Austin in his standard novel series, stressing their authority. After all,

he was the only one to pay for proper copyrights and stressing their importance as

Austins. Reputational turnkey Bently. It is said, unlocked her fame.

And as a result of this attention, Bently Sedate volumes are now highly sought after.

However, Bentley’s influence upon Austin’s recess reception may be greatly overplayed,

for his books were quickly joined by far cheaper versions with a much wider impact.

And the role of these less princely reprints has been largely ignored in this dominant fairy tale

version of Austin’s reception. So my research is not on the focus is

not on Bentley as well touted books, but on the neglected products of his downmarket competitors.

However, Bentley’s prices and claims to cheapness do help to calibrate everything that

came next. So let’s recap some facts and numbers in 18

eleven, the first edition of Sense and Sensibility had sold in three volumes for fifteen

shillings. In Bordes, a proper binding remained extra, and in December

of 1815, advertisments for the first edition of Emmah raised that price

by six shillings to a guinea or 21 shillings for its three volumes in boards,

and this four volume set of Northanger Abbey with persuasion

sold initially for twenty four shillings, which was a further three shilling top-up.

In other words, hand press books in Austins lifetime remained luxury

items, which explains why her novels appear in such modest runs,

possibly as low as seven hundred and fifty copies for Sense and Sensibility, and as high as two thousand

copies of Emma. It’s not a lot. And then in 1833, Bentley

introduced his well-made reprints of Miss Ostin in single volumes at six shillings

each and durable publisher’s bindings of plum colored linen with paper labels and Bentleys.

Runs were larger, four that were large for the time, about four thousand per title, and

his six shilling price tag was comparatively low by means of stereotyping. As I’ll show

explain in a moment. Bentley periodically continued to reissue identical Austin

volumes through 1866, briefly lowering his price still further in the

the cost for an upmarket first edition of a new novel in the three decade format made popular by

Sir Walter Scott, stubbornly held until the mid-nineties at £1

eleven shillings and sixpence, or thirty one and a half shillings for new fiction.

So no wonder, then, that scholars comparing Bentleys prices to those

first editions only have hailed him as Jane Austen’s reputational Prince Charming.

Bentleys, relative bargains and print run certainly pushed Austin’s visibility. But his six shilling

reprints were not within easy reach of a skilled worker earning twenty five shillings a week,

let alone an unskilled laboring laborer earning half that much. In the 1830s,

bookselling remained, in the words of publisher George Rutledge, quote, a peculiarly

rotten system of providing only for the select few Bentleys.

Much hailed cheap books were the purview of well-to-do Victorian clients, such

as socialite Lady Molesworth of Pen KERO, close friend of Thackeray and

Dickens, and known for the well-turned leg of her footman.

She owned a complete set of Bentleys reprints of Austin shown here, published in 1856

that she had bound and green cloth prettily stamped with a gilt design. These were

Bentley’s clients, and in 1846, after the copyright of Austin’s first

three novels expired and the competition by upstart publishers increased, the fastidious

Bentley was briefly forced to drop his price to two and a half shillings

a volume. The shame of it adjusted in 1848

up to three and a half shillings. He was slumming it in order to place his

standard novels, ostensibly, quote, within the reach of all classes of readers.

Surviving Bently copies of Austen from this period are extremely rare, but those in their original publishers

bindings shown here bear witness on their spines to his momentary drop in price

itself, a fraught response to the radical changes in the market place wrought.

To buy this cheaper fare in 1870. However, this is the

cheaper fare badly had abandoned the battle for the cheaper to others, having sold at auction

his plates for all his standard novels, only to climb safely back to his preferred six shilling

rung rung with a reset, an enlarged authorized edition by

then far cheaper versions of Austin, an astonishingly large numbers, an unprecedented

variety where the newly reaching working class audiences publishers such

as Sims and MacIntyre shown here Rutledge, Chapman and Hall were then

selling the forerunners of airport paperbacks out of railway stations and bookstores

for a mere one or two shillings, with some as low as six months.

Fluctuating production values, including paper quality, meant that not all of these other 19th

century versions have aged well and few have ended up in libraries. And yet

these reprints dismissed as dubious by all but the occasional antiquarian in favor

of the sturdier stuff of authoritative firsts or scholarly additions, nevertheless

enabled Austin’s global celebrity. OK,

a little technology to entertain you. Over the course of

the 19th century, books became drastically cheaper. Probably no. This due to a number

of innovations machine made pulp paper, new distribution channels enabled by

a national rail system and stereotype technology. All of these lowered production

costs, but the technology of stereotyping that complicates the valuation

and taxonomy that lie at the heart of bibliography. David

Gillson is a bibliography of Jane Austen remains the definitive inventory

consulted by libraries and collectors. Ironically, precisely due

to Gillson is rigorous bibliographical training, which has taught him to

ignore externals such as binding styles. His list of additions proves

far from comprehensive. Both book technology and taxonomy, therefore warrant

a brief explanation in order to understand why so many printings of a major

author. If not the second most major author and English have gone unrecorded

even by her finest bibliographies. Many 19th century books

claim to be new editions when they’re are actually preexisting books dressed in the frocks of

updated title pages and fresh paper wrappers or binding styles in cloth known as casings.

Sending a book, a new from loose type was time consuming. It cost a great deal and took up

much of a printer’s type stock for the production of a single work. But stereotyping

a technology fully adopted by the 1840s. So Mr Bentley was an early adopter,

enabled cheap books to flourish by allowing printers to mold and then cast in metal. The

labor intensive multiforme multi-page forms offset type. You can see

that happening here. A mold is being created from which a plate. This is not that

they don’t match. It has been made. And this plate

is that one was for an advertisment. So it’s attached to a piece of wood. So imagine it simply as a thin

plate. Publishers could then re order a text from these flat plates the

same printed one at intervals, whether whenever existing stock became

depleted. Individual print runs could then be reduced to several hundred copies instead of thousands.

Further lowering for the publisher both the risk of overexposure and the cost of inventory storage.

True, over time the stereotype plates wore down, lessening the sharpness of the type in later

impressions. But printers nonetheless hailed these big slabs of metal for their longevity

and capacity to retain their value over decades if carefully stored and handled.

Whenever a publishing firm thought its own market exhausted for a particular title or liquidated assets

for other reasons, it could sell these plates to another publisher via a private sale or public trade.

Auction and swaps and sales of plates occurred on both sides of the Atlantic.

Publishers of cheap books worked these stereotype plates to their limits, enthusiastically

reprinting and repackaging the same text year after year to make old books look

perpetually new. Now bibliographies prominently list additions,

and the key to bibliographical taxonomy turns upon the central text, which is

this. Here’s the question, which

in sort of the next assortment of eight books, starting

with with Bentley’s copy of Northanger

Abbey, so I’ve chosen the same book to show you what happens with the print. All

these books are. I’m sorry I didn’t linger on. What is an addition?

An addition. I’ve just explained to you what it is in these eight books.

They look different, but they are internally identical. They’re all printed

from the same stereotype plates that Bentley birthed in 1833.

Even if they’re printed by different publishers and with the same words, the same layout

and the same page numbers. So the taxonomic category of an addition

becomes in the age of stereotyping. Slippery because strictly

speaking, in addition, comprises all copies of a book printed at any time or times

from one setting of type without substantial change. An impression then refers

to a printing or reprint run of an addition made in one go without the type

being removed from the press. And these professional bibliographical terms were all constructed

with an eye to hand press books made during the entire sort of four centuries

or nearly four centuries between Gutenberg don’t’s to be seen downstairs

in the 14 fifties and stereotype technology by the 1830s, when Bently

is working with stereotyping. How much time then between print

runs from the same plates, even if under the direction of the same publisher, is enough to

warrant a separate bibliographic entry. Gillson, who records some additional runs

and series and as re-issues but not all shows that Feedly a graphical assessment

of 19th century books. The thing we hold ourselves to a scholars becomes

a judgment call about their importance to record or not to record. That is the question.

But more than semantics is at stake for the cheap volumes that get left out of formal

inventories reveal Austins active participation at the neglected the bottom

end of the book market, even as they muddy bibliographical waters. So

back to these eight non Bently copies tracked in the following slides.

While Biblio graphically identical on the inside, when it comes to their central text,

they differ in look in price and in virtue signaling all the features that we know determined

audience. Most of these copies are going to be undated, and as we view the slides

together, I want to convince you that each iteration of ostensibly the same book may offer

slightly different information about the history of Austins reception.

So just moving through the slides together, we start with Bently, who

in 1833 creates these plates with which he prints until

in the first page of text from North and Grabby and from Persuasion

that is packaged slightly differently for Bentley over those decades. But these are the first few

pages. Memorize them because you’ll see them again. Chapman and Hall

by 1870 has acquired the plates legally and with at least consent. He’d

just decided to go back up to that six shilling rung and just leave it to the chiefs.

The other people, Chapman and Hall, are those other people, the bottom

dwellers of the market and are printing one of these books is downstairs.

It’s super rare. I had to go to Monash University in Australia to find another one.

These are yellow backs. These are the books sold for one or two shillings and railway stations

and they look as I’m sure you recognize, as like penny dreadfuls.

This is Jane Austen as pop culture in 18 set in the 1870s.

Inside, there are advertisments for other things. They have the gumption to call it

a new addition, even though they’ve been used. They’re using Bentleys plates. Almost four

decades later. And indeed, on the inside. You recognise

that they are the same book made from the same plates. Page four page. They are the same.

And we continue Ward and Locke takes over from Chapman and Hall and they take over the plates as well. This

book has lived a very hard life, but you can imagine that it was once in good shape

with advertisings at the front lowering the cost still labeled as a new

addition at two shillings. It looks exactly the same. Then we’re seeing a

little bit of dodgy plate wear and on those particular pages we’re now in

you know, a little guilt, not Catholic or Jewish guilt. But the blingy guilt at the front here

for two and a half shillings. Now let’s go upmarket and make it a school book prize.

Gumption to call it a new addition when clearly we’re now well into this not being so.

But we have it part of a new series, price two shillings a volume with bling. It’s two and a half

and same pages. Word for word. Same books.

And Lock makes it part of other series. These books are now so rare because they were

thrown out that I couldn’t even find a Northanger Abbey persuasion. Even

though the advertisments suggests that they did the entire series and of course they would. Because the place

ended up staying together for decades. So that was part of the Royal Library

of Choice Books by famous authors Two Shillings and Red Cloth. Then the

Liley series comes along in 1888. It looks like this still has the gumption

to call itself a new edition. When, for now, for a shilling and a half,

you can still buy exactly the same book. So we’re now

printing circa 1890s and ward in lock hands.

This particular set of plates off to Grand Coliseum warehouse.

Yes. A great and famous establishment onshore in Glasgow,

which are printing for the colonial market. So these are British books that already serve

a certain kind of popular audience. They’re being reprinted, repackaged in a very stylish way

and then shipped off for a different market at a different price. And on the inside,

they did the whole Liley series for Ward and Lock. So they did this with permission.

It’s still the same book on the inside. Now, however, you can see some serious

placewhere on page twenty five. Buyer beware because I would never see him again.

I also may never see the end of the line and read the rest on board and lock takes

the plates back. Continues to print these nice little prize books,

a little gift series. And at least they’re not saying it’s a new edition. Lots

of advertisments, the whole series. And you can see this is really bad

paper. Now we’re really printing cheap stuff, but the book is still readable

and it’s the still the same book. And yes, you can still see that plate where on page 25.

And I just picked page 25. There’s also plate where on page 26 and twenty seven and twenty eight. But

this is just a good corner to show you. Ward and Locke also tried to sort of a little bit more upmarket

repackaging. So this looks really nice. Forget the the stain and just imagine

how gleaming it looks with that guilt. And lo and behold, new

edition. Or now, six decades into using those plates and reusing and recycling

them, you can really see the plate wear on those corners where things have been worn

and bumped and crunched. Still new additions, still selling it at railway stations now

in the 1890s. Advertisments, even in undated books, can sometimes

help us date the books. And we’ve definitely recognized the plates

as from Bentley and we decadent definitely recognize that the plate, whereas really

serious for comparisons. This is what it looks like. That page in 1833.

And now this is what it looks like in 1893. Or maybe even nineteen hundred

when this. So we’re now dealing with plates that have ah ah into their seventh decade

of use. And that is a stretch even for this particular

technology. But it explains why the bibliographies decide that,

well these this is the kind of rubbish you can just ignore. OK,

so it’s not all rubbish gets tossed because

everyone likes a bargain. And some of Austin’s most important critics and fellow

writers have encountered her in workman like copies. Celebrity celebrity

provenance has been the exception to standard collecting practices, allowing a few ordinary

copies of Austin to be made extraordinary by the people who own them.

For example, an unassuming and unrecorded late Victorian reprint of North and Grabby

once belonged to Samuel Clemens and is now a well-guarded treasure at the Mark Twain

Library in Redding, Connecticut, where it is indeed saved for Twain’s

celebrity and not Austins. Similarly, here at the Ransom

Center, we safeguard this unassuming ninety seven copy of Northanger

Abbey Persuasion. They were done in one volume throughout because it once belonged to

the Library of H.G. Wells. Wells. Inscribe the book to his

wife, Amy. Katherine Wells in the style of a mock school prize

and the inscription ornamented by him with a weak Crown Awards. The book somewhat condescendingly

to a C. Welles February 21, 1899 as prize

for Good Conduct. Another unlikely resident in this

building is this stained and shabby every man’s copy of Northanger IBM

Persuasion, which was owned by author T.H. White six

years before publishing the sword in the stone. White wrote a locked room mystery called

Darkness at Pemberley, in which murder menaces the descendants of Darcy

and Elizabeth, and notes inside this water stained copy of Austin.

Now, conservation staff wants me to point out it came this way to the building.

These notes prove that White was attentive to the works that she, in her turn

referenced in North and Arabie and such commonplace versions of Austin are preserved

because they offer clues to how other famous writers read and worked. But what of the ordinary

copies read by the so-called common reader? What might they tell us about who

read often and in what context? Now,

oh, these are his notes. You can see them downstairs in the exhibition.

If you want to get a closer look. OK.

What about the ordinary copies? So throughout my research, I

have been gobsmacked, not just by the unexpected range. A number of Austin novels at

low price points that had never been recorded by bibliographies, but the information

they still yield about reading habits and people. I freely admit that

my learning curve on this project has been steep and rather inelegant,

schooled in the bibliography of hand press books of the eighteenth century. Some of my own

first impressions of Victorian reprints proved well, dead wrong really in

the beginning of this project. I guessed wrong about price points. I thought things pretty inexpensive

when they weren’t on dates of publication, about aesthetics, about audiences,

often because it was so hard to shed my own anachronism and not judge the covers

of old books with either a modern eye or a bibliography as rigid categories,

some colorful specimens of publishers bindings which I thought these had. I thought them rather fancy

at first proved among the schlocky EST and most ill made examples of cloth bound

books. Aaron is nodding on a low market decorated with splashy

colors and bling to appeal to the magpie eyes of youth. Apparently. Such

books were printed circa nineteen hundred by a man named Richard Edward King, a true

bottom dweller of London’s publishing industry, about whom history therefore records

nothing printed on low quality paper using tired and worn stereotype

plates that had already served many prior masters. These glitzy but cheap

books, and I now think of them as fodder for a possible pimp. My book demo

were aimed at the school prized market in Britain and for working class children

who received these books. They were surely wondrous trophies, but

as they are neither authoritative nor well-made, these additions failed to gain regular

access to libraries or to the bibliographical record.

I was surprised by how many lowly cloth bound books were inscribed with names of prior

owners. Information derived from these names challenged

my sense of Austins 19th century reader, that nameless generic ghost

so often invoked by scholars, including myself. The names altered

my assumption of Austins history of gendered marketing and the ages of her presumed readers. In 1891,

it was M. Henry Bole who won this inexpensive Liley series copy

of Austins, Northanger a–the and Persuasion Bound in blue cloth with silver stamping

the Victorian language of flowers asigned symbolic significance to different flower species,

with the lily holding a special place in Christian iconography and signaling purity.

In other words, many floral designs were initially perceived by the parents and the teachers

who gave out these books as gender neutral as testified to by

surviving copies inscribed with the names of real teen readers boys as

well as girls, often ages 12 to 14. As I traced

the names of these real readers to census records by means of a few clicks via Ancestry.com,

I slowly discovered that prize. books too had a dark side.

Research proved that many such names belong to young working class readers whose gritty circumstances,

combined uneasily with the elegant Regency World of Austin stories or the bright

and sunny covers of these books. About 1910, Black

in Sons of Glasgow published Northanger Abbey in a popular

gift series that joined her to dozens of juvenile titles bound in similar cloth case

casings popping bright colors, each stamped with eye catching Macintosh

road design that is the hallmark of Scottish Art Nouveau. And in this series,

once popular, a school prizes but not as collection material for serious libraries. Austin

kept company with Dobb Crusoe, Hans Brinker, Swiss Family Robinson,

Little Women and the Wide, Wide World and printed from hand-me-down plates.

Although never Bentley’s, the central text of these juveniles was internally identical to

other Blackie versions ranging widely in production values. Blackie,

seen here, recycled its stereotype plates for decades to.

One copy has a book plate that identifies it as a school attendance prize

for nineteen tenant and eleven sanctioned by the Berg School Board and for

Far Scotland. A century ago, this book would have been even brighter than it remains today

and must have made a stunning prize for the Annie Munro named as proud recipient.

The name of another girl, presumably her sister, is written opposite in a childish hand. On top of the free

and paper, Florence Monroe for Market Street failed Far

Scotland even after an awkward self-correction. The town remains slightly

misspelled in spite of the misspelling. The specific street address and the two

full names made finding them in rows on four market street easy. According

to the 1911 census, the Monroe family consisted of two working class parents in their early

in ages from 19 to to Bain. Monroe, age 42, worked as a mechanical engineer

as an at an iron foundry, and the eldest daughter, Nora, 19, was a weaver of

linen and jute, while Florence, 16, is listed as dressmaker.

In other words, the older Monroe girls were already wage earners. Annie,

age 12, remained in school, along with Helen H7, the little Ossman Rose,

Alice, 4, and Jesse, two remained at home with their mum.

The handwritten inscription looks more childish than that of a 16 year old and a 4 years or

younger than Florence seems the likeliest person to have made her own prize over to an older

sister and as someone personally familiar with the complexities of barter economies

among siblings. I first hazarded that Annie, perhaps with great ceremony,

traded her fancy books book prize with her sister in exchange for a book she preferred to

Austen. Or I thought I perhaps Annie was, to paraphrase Elizabeth Bennet,

not a great reader, and had pleasure in other things. North and grabby

with a 15 year old heroine does seem more apt reading for 16 year old Florence than 12 year

old Annie. But all my guesses were innocent of Annie’s true circumstances.

Sadly, on the 5th of December, 1911, less than six months after receiving

this book and he died of diptheria and toxemia in the local hospital

at the age of 13 perhaps, and he valued her shiny bright prize

book so much that she gave it to her sister Florence just before her death, solemnly bequeathing it

with that shaky inscription and his colorful, prized book may have been brought to her in hospital

for reading aloud or as a comfort. Only 10 days later, on 15

December, little Alice Munro, aged five, also succumbed to diptheria

and the deaths of the two men. Royal girls were part of a wider diptheria outbreak for the entire.

The entry prior to Alices mentions another an eight year old boy dying of the same

disease four days earlier. Effective worldwide vaccination against the disease

did not begin until the 1920s. And among the overcrowded homes of the Scottish working classes

just before World War One. Many such outbreaks ravaged not just families, but whole towns.

And in the wake of such tragedy, many of Scotland’s working poor made their way to countries such as the United

States and Australia. Eventually, Florins also went to America, and

in 1915, an Outward Bound passenger list gives her occupation. Asked again dressmaker.

The highest level of education reported for Florence Monroe in her immigration papers to the United States

was that she completed elementary. Florence married Michael Mowers,

a carpenter in road construction from New York, and they had two daughters. As a naturalized American

citizen, Florence was buried in Madison County, New York. Leaving school by fifteen did

not prevent her from building a productive life in the context of these working class

patterns of girlhood. Book prizes had a different currency than the perfunctory role

they often serve. Today, at a time when girls turning wage earning women at 14 or

but the end of girlhood, the end of childhood, end of book learning. In Annie’s

case, this copy of Northanger Abbey may have been quite literally and brutally her very last

book. For me, this book was a reality check, telling the unvarnished story

of a real reader of Jane Austen. This research was no longer academic.

On a lighter note, cheap books challenged my ideas of good taste.

Then, as now, some marketing gimmicks or packaging proved bizarre even when

on the inside the careful transfer of property has here from one relative to another

suggested that the book had been treasured across generations, no matter how cheap it had

been. The late Victorian fashion for dressing English classics in a European interpretation

of Asian costume was surprisingly widespread, although thankfully of short

duration, the so-called shouldn wasreally designs for Jane Austen

from the 1880s and early 90s make for a strange assortment of books.

Only popular mass produced reprints can demonstrate how ordinary readers

encountered Austins literary works. It’s the extraordinary ordinariness

of these books that makes them such credible witnesses to the history of reading.

A few more examples. Even 20th century packaging requires local knowledge

or historical context to appreciate. In the 1940s, Hollywood movies became

book cover fodder for continental translations. Many early paperbacks

of Austin sold in Europe appropriated movie stills that today seem

haphazard at best. The Spanish copy, published in Barcelona in

as the Face of Northanger Abbey. The cover images

conscious marketing tactic rather than a naive gaffe. In 1940, Laurence Olivier had played

Mr. Darcy opposite Greer Garson in Pride and Prejudice, ghosting Austin’s proud hero

with memories of Bronte’s brooding creature from the year before with no equivalent

movie If Northanger to pilfer for Stills, The Panache Spanish Pulp Publisher neatly

manages to invoke the novel’s Gothic elements by eliding Austin and Bronte with a celebrity

photo of Libya. This is about selling translations of old books with Hollywood glamor

in a war torn Europe. Then, as now, marketing doesn’t demand interpretive accuracy

or a perfect match between celebrity and product. I have a few more doozies that I

added for you. This is persuasion. Maybe with John

Wilson. Certainly not

the movie Persuasion, and a colleague is still helping me try to identify

this text from nineteen forty five in Spanish. This is a Italian

edition 1956 with on the front of it a still

from an American Western. I thought you would appreciate that. Here it is. Devil’s Doorway. 1950

turned into Emaar and Highbury on the cover of

this 1950 16 edition. Italy. So it’s it’s a colorization

and a kind of a clever re-use of the movie. This one is also one of my favorites

because this is a Italian translation of Pride and Prejudice.

And yes, she does look rather rather something with that wig and

that wig. And you think, what movie? What? What? What is that? It’s a teen edition. It’s a very

famous movie in Italy. It is War and Peace,

starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda in 1956, which had

an American an Italian director and was kind of a spaghetti, not Western, but serious

movie. It was a huge hit in Italy. And for decades, it was a sort of matter of pride. So

these are things that you lose unless you really find them and look them up.

One last example for you. This is continental translations

of Austin that look comparatively understated can show us that even quiet

designs can bear witness to local readings. Here are two unassuming

postwar French translations of Northanger Abbey, published under the title of Catherine Moreland.

And the copy on the left appeared in Brussels in 1945, and the smaller one on the right. In 1946

in Paris. And the comparative austerity of these copies reflect dominant Prentis athletics as well

as war era scarcities. Both copies reprint the 1899 translation

by Félix Finial, a famous Parisian anarchist and art critic whose translation

disappointed his contemporaries. With one reviewer describing it as singular,

almost disconcerting. Finial nonetheless continued to lend polite

political excitement to Austen, whose novel he had translated

while in jail for blowing up a restaurant at a time when cheap reprints

of even old books were coveted commodities across war ravaged Europe. Fragile paperbacks

printed on poor quality paper were rapt, as you can see carefully, and tight paper bands

like cuffs that encircled the books to prevent eager thumbs from despoiling

num- before purchase. And these protective cuffs doubled as additional advertisments space.

The Belgian band straightforwardly offers the original English title of the book, while the French

one insists on Catherine Moreland as the most compelling young heroine in all

of Austin Lamplugh today. Did you fear DeJean stand now? That tagline

allows in the manner of all ad copy or banner headlines, a local play on words.

The phrase RASIAH of Theia idiomatically refers to a maiden to the sexually

uninitiated, asserting on its face that young Catherine Mallen is the most

true of Austin’s young heroines. The emphatic PLU perhaps protests

too much. In other words, this seemingly unassuming plain Jane copy

of Austin, when displayed in the book and magazine styles of war torn Paris, intended to titillate

Powder’s passers by with a cheeky promise of a daring coming of age story.

And with the band removed at purchase, the cheap book would regain its safe, po

faced composure as a serious classic. Original book bands

rarely survive because they were meant to be detached at the time of sale, so advertising too

can be lost. So to be sure, none of these books are authoritative editions

of Jane Austen. The French and Spanish versions are not important scholarly translations of her work

and the reader, the readers to whom all these books aspired were not high status.

But that is precisely the point. While Austin’s literary brand may be global now,

the hard work of building her elite reputation was achieved in the trenches of low brow

print culture, with books of engaged local constituencies and unique ways.

throw-away reads helped make Austin’s reputation robust.