Visible Still

As mentioned in my previous posting (Evidence of Mill’s Reading and of Reading Mill), among the books held in section D of the Mill Library are four bound volumes of article offprints.  Nearly all operating at a loss, nineteenth-century periodicals tended to economize on paper by allowing no dead space between articles, which means that Mill’s offprints sometimes start in the middle of a page with the final paragraphs of the preceding article above, or end with enough room for the following article to commence at the bottom of the final page.  If they begin on the even-numbered verso side of a given sheet, then the recto side of the first page of the offprint features the last full page of the earlier article; and, if they end on the odd-numbered recto side of a sheet, then the verso side of the last page of the offprint usually includes the first full page of the next article.

All of which can add up to a substantial amount of other writers’ text attached to the beginning, ending, or both of a review essay written by Mill.  At some point, much of this extraneous verbiage was struck through in heavy black ink and then papered over for good measure, leaving Mill’s printed words in sole possession of the field represented by the bound volumes in section D.  The question of who did this and when remains open, and is sometimes complicated by what remains visible still underneath the pasted-in sheet.

Often, it is possible to discern Mill’s hand-written record of the original publication details of his article through the covering paper, as with the following annotation at the top of the printed page immediately prior to an article written by Mill for the Monthly Repository in February 1833, and found in the JSM 1832-4 bound volume:

The presence of Mill’s hand at the top of the recto face of the first sheet of the article suggests that he was not particularly bothered by the layout consequences of early Victorian periodical publication.  Unless he came to believe that having the page to himself was more important than accurately recollecting the original publication details, then, it seems unlikely that he papered over his own annotation.

An even more problematic instance of the desire for printed order appears in the London and Westminster Review bound volume at the end of Mill’s “Radical Party and Canada,” which because it ends on p. 533, features a back side with another author’s typescript.  Predictably, this final verso face has been struck through and papered over:

Once lit from behind, however, it becomes clear than this decision was more than just an aesthetic one.  In fact, the entire verso side of the essay’s final sheet is covered in the most legible version of Mill’s own script:

Thus, whoever covered the back side of the final page of “Radical Party and Canada” thought the printed text more important than the handwriting, which, when fully transcribed (thank you RLP!), turns out to be the fair copy of the beginning of Mill’s next LWR article, a review of William Ware’s Letters from Palmyra (1838):

Art. V. Letters of Lucius Manlius Piso from
Palmyra to his Friend Marcus Curtius at Rome
Now first translated and published 2 vols 12mo
New York: 1837
Speaking of the difficulties which in
America retard the formation of a vigorous
and original National Literature and
of the copies and imitation mere echoes of
the inspired voices of the Old World, which
must in the mean time be accepted as great
things until a greater appear. Miss
Martineau says:*
“I met with one gem in American literature
where I should have least expected it in
the ‘Knickerbocker’ a New York Monthly
Magazine.
Last spring a set of papers
began to appear, called ‘Letters from
Palmyra,’ six numbers of which had been
issued when I left the country. I have
been hitherto unable to obtain the rest
but if they answer to the early portions
there can be no doubt of their being
shortly in everybody’s hands in both countries
Society in America vol iii p 216

To most modern scholars, it will probably seem extraordinary, even outrageous, to privilege reusable and much reproduced type over unique and previously unknown script.

Less shocking, but perhaps equally interesting, is what the presence of Mill’s fair copy for one article on the verso side of the final page of another article suggests about his valuation of his own offprints. Far from the sacred record of previous publication (how many of us have a shelf/box/drawer devoted to our own in-print acceptances), at least the back side of Mill’s LWR piece on the complex social and political circumstances of British Canada was valuable only as scratch paper, as a surface on which to work out what was not even an original system of logic or updated theory of political economy or impassioned apology for individual liberty, but instead a laudatory review of an American writer’s imitation of epistolary correspondence in Antiquity.

One might well wonder what Mill would have thought of the decision to bind his assorted offprints into book form in the first place, much less to attempt – happily unsuccessfully – to excise all signs of their original periodical context and attendant hand-written text.

—Albert D. Pionke, Project Director

Evidence of Mill’s Reading and of Reading Mill

Now nearing the end of my sixth data-gathering trip to Oxford, I have just completed photographing one third of the John Stuart Mill Library.  Which is to say that I have finished section D (of L), in which are shelved the numerous editions – American, English, French, German, Greek, and Italian – of Mill’s published works.  Also in D are select runs of the London Review, the Westminster Review, and the Examiner, as well as four bound volumes of article offprints, three arranged by year of publication and one devoted exclusively to pieces from the London and Westminster Review during the period (1836-1840) in which Mill was a prolific contributor as well as the de facto editor.

As one might imagine, many of these books and articles testify to Mill’s meticulousness as an editor of his own works.  The first edition of his System of Logic (1843), for instance, features a number of the editorial corrections and sentence-level revisions that appear in later editions, and that were subsequently documented by John Robson and his team at Toronto.  This is also the case for the first edition of Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848), and for many of the essays that he would go to feature in Dissertations and Discussions (1859 and later).

Much to the benefit of those who would become his later scholarly editors, Mill was impressively assiduous when it came to documenting his early newspaper writings.  Four of the five volumes of the Examiner held at Somerville contain painstaking lists like this one, handwritten onto the front flyleaf of the 1831 volume by Mill himself:

Similarly, in four of the five volumes, Mill has indicated the printed limits of the articles, themselves, by means of square brackets, as with this brief summary of “Foreign Intelligence” from p. 55 of this same volume:

He was quite obviously proud of his numerous contributions, which ranged from his series on “The Spirit of the Age” (which elicited Thomas Carlyle’s appreciation and became the basis for their friendship) to leading articles on French affairs to brief paragraph-length summaries of stories from other newspapers.

Once donated to Somerville, however, not all of these works were read with the same attention or intellectual priorities.  Rather than favoring early editions of Mill’s major works, students appear to have read the last published editions, provided, of course, that they were printed in Britain.  American editions of Mill’s books are virtually devoid of marginalia, even when printed more recently than their British counterparts.  And rather than marking and annotating with an eye toward revision and later republication, students seem to have sought out Mill’s pronouncements on induction or free-market capitalism in order to acquire the basic ideas and/or dispute the major premises.

The posthumous one-volume cheap editions of both System and Principles show signs of especially significant student use, despite the fact that their two-column format, smaller typeface, and flimsier paper make them less easy to read than previous versions.  For instance, dominated by scores of scores and a small army of marginal question marks, Principles moved one student to wonder about the text’s advice concerning taxation and the field of economics:

Whether this query was made in the era of Edward VII when the book was first donated or of George VI would be interesting to know, as “Economics?” would have meant rather different things before and after two world wars.

Mill’s periodical contributions, including his carefully documented newspaper articles, bear no obvious signs of being read by students at all.  Which makes my work easier, of course, but which also makes me wonder whether and how contemporary scholars’ considerable output of articles, essays, occasional writing, and reviews (to say nothing of blog posts) might be read by students of the future.

— Albert D. Pionke, Project Director

Repairing Democracy

Amongst the books treated during the conservation project were two volumes from a set of four of A. Tocqueville’s De la Démocratie en Amérique, volumes 3 and 4. The books were bound in half leather bindings with hollow backs and marbled paper sides as is typical in the 19th century, but the leather and tooling were different in volumes 3 and 4 and they were also more damaged. Each of the books had both boards detached and most of the spines missing, and the original plan was to re-attach the boards and make new leather spines. It was only after the two books were brought to the conservation studio for treatment that an envelope with fragments of the two detached spines was found in the library and they could be reunited with the books.

The repair of the books was very similar to the treatment described in the previous conservation blog: ‘The slot machine: Reuniting boards with books’. The remains of split paper hollows were removed and both spines were lined with aerocotton which strengthens the spine and to which the boards can be attached. To make sure the fabric was firmly fixed to the spine and not relying only on adhesive, the lining was sewn through to the outer quires as well and the books were ready for board attachment. In this case the lining extensions were pasted to the outside of boards, underneath the leather cover, and left to dry before making a tube hollow for each of the books. The spines were now ready for covering. When pieced together, the original spines were nearly complete with only very small fragments missing. This meant that only small portions of the any new spine covering material would be seen and that toned Japanese paper would be sufficient the cover the tube hollow and book joints. Once the original spines were pasted back, the books were finished and ready to join the others on the shelf.

 

— Katarina Powell, Conservator, Oxford Conservation Consortium

The Slot Machine: Reuniting Boards with Books

As books are handled and opened over time, one of the most common types of damage that occurs is that the joints break and the boards become detached. During our project conserving the John Stuart Mill collection, we therefore had the task of reattaching the boards of many books – such as this one, volume 10 of Jonathan Swift’s Collected Works:

Swift, The Works, Vol. 10 before treatment

There are multiple ways that conservators can reattach the boards of books, and each time we choose the option that best suits the needs of the particular object. A particularly strong and durable board reattachment technique is called ‘board slotting’, which was developed by Christopher Clarkson during his time working in the conservation department of the Bodleian Libraries. It involves using a specialised machine to cut a slot along the spine-edge of the boards, and then inserting textile flanges into the slots in order to reattach the boards to the text block. It is particularly suitable for books with ‘tube hollows’ – that is, where the leather is not directly adhered to the book’s spine, but instead to a tube of paper that has been glued to the spine beforehand.

Opening of a book with a tube hollow – note the way the leather moves away from the spine of the book as it opens.

Board slotting was judged to be the best option for a number of the books in the collection. First, the hollow of the book is split to allow access to the spine. The spine is then prepared by cleaning away the old linings and glue, and replacing them with layers of strong, flexible, archival materials: namely, Japanese paper and aerocotton. A spine-piece of toned aerocotton is then prepared and glued to the first lining to form extended ‘flanges’ of textile on either side of the spine. This recreates the hollow of the original structure while also forming the basis for the board reattachment.

OCC conservator Lisa Handke slotting a board using the Jeff Peachey board slotting machine.

The board slotting is done using a machine adapted by American conservator Jeff Peachey. The textile flanges are then cut to size and inserted into the slots with some adhesive, reuniting the boards in their proper place.

A textile flange trimmed to the right length, ready to be inserted into the slot.

The original spine can then be adhered back in place, giving a neat finish to the conservation treatment.

Swift, The Works, Vol. 10 after treatment

— Jess Hyslop, Conservator, Oxford Conservation Consortium

Conserving the Collection: An Introduction

Alongside the digitisation of the marginalia, the collection is also being conserved so as to preserve the physical objects for posterity. A knock on effect of digitisation projects is the increased interest in the objects themselves, and there are a number of treatment approaches that can strengthen the often fragile volumes. In conservation, we are not trying to make the object look ‘new’, but rather to use techniques that preserve as much of the original material as possible while still restoring a functionality to the volume. Often the books will look very much the same on the outside, but they won’t fall apart when you open them.

Poor handling of books in a library can cause a number of problems. Often spine pieces become detached when the book is continually pulled from the head edge, or when the covering material breaks and degrades. Missing spines can mean the loss of important information and makes the rest of the cover more vulnerable. Conservation can repair lost spine pieces and reattach fragments using toned materials, for example in this cloth bound volume:

Emerson, R. W., Essays (1841)

Before:

Spine of R. W. Emerson's Essays (1841) before undergoing conservation treatment

After:

Spine of R W Emerson, Essays (1841) After undergoing conversation treatment

The structure of a book is a brilliant and enduring technique for collating and protecting the otherwise fragile pages of a text. Many of the ways in which books get damaged  have to do with the mechanics of use, for example, broken joints where the book is constantly opened and splits in the spine where the book has been forced at a particular point. For example, this item has both boards detached and a split down the spine:

Mandeville, B., The Fable of the Bees. Part II (1725)

Before treatment, with detached boards:

Mandeville, B., The Fable of The Bees with detached boards prior to conservation

During treatment:

Mandeville, B., The Fable of the Bees (1725) During treatment, transverse textile spine linings are adhered and linen braids to consolidate the sewing supports.

After treatment, with the original spine back in place and the boards reattached:

Mandeville, B., The Fable of the Bees (1725) After treatment, with the original spine back in place and the boards reattached.

In this example I adhered kozo-fibre paper and textile spine linings underneath the original spine. These held together the split in the textblock, and formed part of the board attachment on the book.

The conservation treatments are carried out at the Oxford Conservation Consortium, where our busy team work for the library and archive collections of 17 Oxford colleges. We are also the custodians of the Chantry Library, a collection of conservation literature open to the public. You can read more about the Chantry here.

Nikki Tomkins, Conservator, Oxford Conservation Consortium