Scribal Publication of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson's Commonplace Books

Abstract

Scribal Publication of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson's Commonplace Books Chiara Cillerai (bio) According to scholars of book history, print did not replace the production of manuscript writing during the early modern period. On the contrary, it encouraged an increase in writing by hand.1 The manuscript books of Philadelphia poet Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson contain ample evidence of how print inspired the continuous production of handwritten material. The remaining six manuscript copy books that Fergusson composed from the early 1770s to the late 1790s have a miscellaneous content. They include Fergusson's poetic compositions, those of other poets, personal letters, as well as newspaper articles and extracts from printed books.2 The volumes that Fergusson designed and revised during the last three decades of her life provide evidence of her perception of her audience, her purpose in writing and selecting materials, and her idea of publicity. Fergusson's books reveal her active engagement with eighteenth-century cultural and intellectual life among Philadelphia's literary and social elites. Although poetry constitutes the bulk of her work, her letters and other writings reveal the span of her interests. Her correspondence with the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush, for example, shows her interest in and knowledge of philosophy, education, and medicine. Her poetic correspondence with Francis Hopkinson lasted many years and culminated in the production of a long mock-epic [End Page 75] poem that Fergusson dedicated to him. One of her copy books is addressed to Annis Boudinot Stockton, Fergusson's lifelong friend and fellow poet. For many years, she also corresponded with the English Juliana Penn and John Fothergill and dedicated poems to both. Each of her connections was a member of intersecting networks of readers that formed the literary culture of eighteenth-century Anglo-America. Her books are hybrid compositions that cross over from the commonplace book to the miscellany to the copy book.3 Each manuscript book was designed and revised according to the specific recipient, and if a poem was reproduced, one notices adjustments reflecting shifts in audience, place, time, and culture. In this essay, my analysis of some materials in two of Fergusson's extant manuscript books shows how her selections and marginalia are evidence of how her writing, and especially re-writing, reflect and reproduce various aspects of the salon manuscript literary culture that had formed her as a writer. Fergusson's authorial identity emerges in the conversations that the writing in the page of the book establishes with the past, other authors and their work, and her prospective audiences. Beginnings Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson belonged to a prominent Philadelphia family. Her mother was the stepdaughter of Pennsylvania governor William Keith, and her father an influential figure in Philadelphia social and political life. In her late teens, Elizabeth met William Franklin and began a long engagement that ended when Franklin left her for another woman.4 During the years before the war of independence began, Fergusson and her family ran a well-known salon that, in a commemorative essay, Benjamin Rush described as being "for the entertainment not only of strangers, but of such of her friends of both sexes as were considered the most suitable company for them. These evenings were, properly speaking, of the Attic type."5 When the war began, however, Fergusson's life collapsed. Her loyalist husband, Henry Fergusson, whom she had secretly married a few months before the death of her father in 1771, almost caused Elizabeth to lose the ownership of Graeme Park, the family ancestral residence. As he was trying to leave for England in order to escape prosecution, Fergusson was caught and detained. And when he was eventually released and able to leave Pennsylvania, his wife refused to join him. She never saw him again. Instead, she spent many years fending off the government's attempts to confiscate the family property and the accusations of treason. Elizabeth Fergusson never recovered from the loss of her reputation among her friends and acquaintances and spent the rest of her life in a self-imposed exile from public life.6 [End Page 76] Despite this retirement from the public life she had led before the war, Fergusson continued to write poetry, transcribe it in...