The copybook itself is probably one of the most interesting books I have ever seen. A collector of books myself, it has never occured to me to purchase, as Dr. Long did, a sort of journal book that was kept by someone long ago and research the path it took to find me. Yet that's exactly what we've done during the course of this research project. The impasses to learning about the mysterious book were great in some ways, but the project has definitely opened my eyes to the creativity and feeling of excitement that is achieved through original research.
My journey with the copybook begins in earnest at Swem library, which is located at the College of William and Mary. My specific goal and assignment was to find out how copybooks were produced in the 19th century, what they were made out of, and how they were referred to. I knew exactly where to begin, or so I thought, and upon entering the library, traipsed down a flight of stairs to the rare books section. The suite of rooms which comprises the rare books portion of the library is small, dim, and titillates with scholastic endeavors. I have always felt at home there, treating important documents from long ago with utmost care and respect, as I pored over them, scribbling notes in pencil. My visit this time was no different.
I greeted the librarian who was on staff that day (who never remembers me until she sees my driver's license - collateral for the privalege of looking at the rare stuff) and she asked what she could help me with. I explained my quest, and together we sifted through the card catalog, searching under such numerous and ambiguous subjects as "copy books," "autograph albums," "friendship books," and "commonplace books," to name a few. I selected several, wrote down the call numbers and handed them to her. There were dozens, if not hundreds of examples of these types of books, and it would have taken quite a while to wade through all of them. Fortunately, the card catalog gave short abstracts of the books, and from these I was able to discard any that would be of no use to me: ones of a time period outside the nineteenth century, or else dealing with financial, personal, or business affairs. Some of the copybooks even explicitly stated "poems," and "different authors," and these I earmarked eagerly. But already I was beginning to get a feel for how many different names they went under, and how popular these books were in the mid-nineteenth century.
The librarian emerged from the (restricted) stacks with my selections, and after locking up my water bottle and ensuring that I had brought only pencil (no pen) to take notes with, she gave me a seat at one of the long tables and flicked on a lamp for me. I surrounded myself with the folders and one card catalog drawer, and feeling very much an original scholar, I began to search.
The trouble with researching a topic you have an interest in is that you can be easily dissuaded from the task at hand. The first tome I came to was warped badly with age, and I opened it eagerly, mindful only of the book's contents and not of its materials. I read poem after poem by Ann Sparshall, and once I tired of deciphering her fancy scrawl, I forced myself to take careful stock of the book.
The outside is faded with age, but still has a leather bound cover intact. The cover was signed by Ann Sparshall herself, as was the inside front cover, and this is apparently common practice. The pages are bound with string, and the paper is lightly lined vertically and seems thicker than normal paper. This paper, as I later came to understand, was probably rag paper, and I believe is the same paper utilized in our own book. I became very excited when I read on the inside cover a relatively new insert that stated "Purchased from H.W. Hunt, Norwich England," thinking that I had stumbled across the original publisher, but upon close inspection of the book I found that H.W. Hunt was simply the purveyor who had sold the book to a collector, sometime in the 1920's.
Discouraged, I moved onto the next book, which the card catalog deemed a "Letter Book Vea.," different from anything I'd seen before. This one had no cover, and at first the loose pages led me to believe it was not even bound, but it was, although only by a simple loop of string. The pages are newsprint, and the cover itself was most lkely paper or cardstock, if there ever was one. It is possible that Francis P. Lee, the owner of the book, bound the pages himself. These pages are distinctly more yellowed than the last book, and when I spoke to a research librarian in the upstairs portion of the library, I found out why.
It seems that the paper industry took a dramatic turn in the nineteenth century, when women ceased making paper themselves and it became a business, with laborers to oversee, and things for men to worry about such as cost and overhead. During these times it became popular practice to use newsprint, which does not last as long and has dyes and bleaches added that deteriorate the paper over time. Even now, some large newspapers print several copies of their daily offerings on rag paper to be catalogued by libraries, simply because the rag paper lasts longer.
Lee's "Letter Book" is dated 1829, and Sparshall's "Commonplace Book" is from 1792, so this discrepancy in dates allows for the vast difference in the respective quality of the books and papers. The newsprint of Lee's book reminds one of children's construction paper, and is not nearly so nice to the touch as is the Commonplace Book, with its leather cover and fine carefully bound paper.
The ink of Lee's Letter Book bleeds onto the other pages, so one must assume that Lee closed his book in a hurry without spreading anything over the ink to help it dry, or else that this book was subject to dampness over the years which caused it to bleed onto itself. Lee writes poems enigmatically attributed to different people (love interests, assumes the researcher), and he uses their initials for titles. The other interesting thing about this book is that it has many unfinished pages, which are less ragged than the others, which lends creedence to the idea that too much handling of pages does cause more deterioration, for obviously Lee fingered often the pages he had written on, and rarely touched the ones he hadn't. A small unidentifiable bug lies in infinite preservation between two of these unused pages; both the bug itself and a fossilized imprint on the opposite page are recorded forever. A biologist might find this an interesting query.
The most recent of the books I examined was from 1851, and it was also the most commercially produced and the most intact, although not, perhaps, of the highest quality. A hardbacked leather bound book with gilt edges, Pattesonia Saunder's "Friendship Album" has the gold embossed title on the front cover, although it is listed in the catalogue as an Autograph Album. Saunder's book is the only one which also contained a publisher: Hayes and Zell, number 193 Market St., Philadelphia PA. I asked my friend the librarian to search this publisher for other titles in her stacks, but the only other books by them were religious manuals.
The Friendship Album contains different colored pages, not just yellowed with age as the other once-white pages, but different colors altogether. It also is the only of the books which also contains illustrations, once every twenty pages or so there is a layer of tissue paper followed by some sort of moralistic cartoon (which fits with the publisher's other religious offerings). This book seems more geared toward the child or early adolescent, with its gold and bright blue inner-cover script. I would compare it to modern day journals geared toward young adults, with bright colors and embossed pictures of favorite movie or pop stars, while comparing Sparshall's commonplace book to the simple elegance of a plain journal as a grown woman might buy from Barnes & Noble, or perhaps somewhere not so commerically produced. And there is a more definite beauty in the latter.
The Friendship Album is not without its highpoints, however. It contains a wedding announcement of another Saunders, probably a relative of the journal's owner, and also a torn letterhead with a watermark reading "The Richmond and Backus, Detroit, Mich." Inside, the use of the Autograph Album is slightly different. Saunders apparently was moving, and asked her friends to inscribe poems and thoughtful words on the pages of the journal. Many different hands and ideas take to this album, and although some pages are left blank, they are intersparsed throughout the book, which meant that Saunders friends did not just sign the proximate page, but rather chose pages at random, which I found endearing.
My travels also took me to CNU library, where the computer database advertised a book of "Publishing in 19th century Massachusetts," but sadly, the book was nowhere to be found. Yet another roadblock for the happy researcher. I spent some hours poring over the different books at CNU, but found only a couple of them to be useful, facts from which I have included in this paper. There is very little documentation on this subject at all, for even on the internet my queries for paper processing and manufacture only took me to modern day webpages where I could buy and reserve paper in large quantities. I found these decidedly unuseful, as they contained no history or examples of their different products.
Thus my research lies mainly in hands on experience and discourse with
professionals in the field, and as I draw this report to a close, I must reflect that it
is likely the same method by which most original research gets done, for no book is
tailored to exactly what you need, and it is far easier to asses your topic when you have
it sitting in front of you. My research included quite a bit of trial and error (as the
internet was the first medium I exhausted and became frustrated with) so I can attest to
the fact that although it is not easy, it is certainly a worthwhile and interesting
pursuit.
Works Cited
Lee, Francis P. "Letter Book Vea." Call no. 65 L51, Rare Books Collection, Swem Library, 1829
McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Book - The Story of Printing and Bookmaking. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.
One Hundred Fifty Years of Publishing. 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1987.
Saunders, Pattesonia. "Friendship Album" Call no. MsV Auto9, Rare Books Collection, Swem Library, 1851
Sparshall, Ann. "Commonplace Book" Rare Books Collection, Swem Library, 1792.
Swem Librarian. Personal Interview, April 20, 2000
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