Early 1840s Research Articles

John and James Rivington, Booksellers: The Retail Trade in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London

Abstract: This article analyzes evidence from a manuscript ledger belonging to the London bookselling firm of John and James Rivington during the early 1750s. The ledger shows that the Rivingtons, at the center of the London book trade, frequently swapped or acquired books from other booksellers for retail sale in their shop. The price valuations in the ledger also reveal that the books traded between booksellers were valued at a much steeper discount off the retail prices than previous studies have found. This article concludes by suggesting that the wide range of booksellers in their inner circle and the steep discount of prices for those on the inside explains how the Rivingtons and others at the center of the London trade were able to maintain their monopoly and also why they underestimated the threat from booksellers outside their network. The swapping of books gives insight into the retail experience and shows booksellers stocking common books even before there was an established canon of English literature.

Type specimens of the species of Cycloramphus Tschudi, 1838 (Anura, Cycloramphidae) in the collections of the Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Museu Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro, is the oldest scientific institution in Brazil, created by a decree of the Regent Prince and future King D. Joo VI on 06 June 1818. In particular, the herpetological collection dates from the early 1870s and were studied by the first Brazilian herpetologists, namely Alpio de Miranda Ribeiro (18741934) and Adolpho Lutz (18551940). Currently, the Museu Nacional houses many type-specimens of amphibians, including species of the genus Cycloramphus Tschudi, 1838, with many problems and inconsistencies between the published data, the labels of the specimens, and the register books. In this paper, we analyse the type-specimens of Cycloramphus deposited in the Museu Nacional and Adolpho Lutz collections, described by Miranda-Ribeiro, A. Lutz, and many later herpetologists. With the purpose of contributing to the stability of nomenclature within Cycloramphus, we newly designate lectotypes for Cycloramphus eleutherodactylus var. variegata A. Lutz, 1929, Grypiscus lutzi Miranda-Ribeiro, 1935, and Iliodiscus lutzi Miranda-Ribeiro, 1929. Of the 14 nominal species treated, lectotypes for Cycloramphus eleutherodactylus var. variegata A. Lutz, 1929, Cycloramphus granulosus A. Lutz, 1929, Iliodiscus lutzi Miranda-Ribeiro, 1929, and Grypiscus lutzi Miranda-Ribeiro, 1935, are designated and figured; the holotypes of Cycloramphus eleutherodactylus var. strigillata A. Lutz, 1929 and of Cycloramphus distinctus A. Lutz, 1932, are figured; the identity of holotype and paratypes of Cycloramphus heyeri Segalla et al. 2021 is clarified. A new synonymy between Grypiscus lutzi Miranda-Ribeiro, 1935 and Cycloramphus brasiliensis (Steindachner, 1864) is proposed. Information on the type localities of all species is updated.

Banquo’s Daughters and the Lost #MeToo Macbeth, and Early Modern Alt-Media

Abstract This article investigates the disturbing accusation, first recorded in 1652, that Macbeth abducted and possibly raped a daughter of Banquo’s. Since Banquo himself was apparently fabricated by the Aberdonian chronicler Hector Boece in the 1520s to romanticize the Stuart dynasty’s origins, his daughter has no historical basis and tales of her grim fate likely represent a literary embellishment on the scene in which Malcolm reports Macbeth had confessed that kingship would awaken his insatiably lustful nature. These rumours, circulating at least by the early 1650s, would eventually culminate in an obscene prose romance entitled The Secret History of Mack-beth, first printed in 1708 shortly after the Acts of Union. Although the article entertains the tantalizing possibilities that Banquo’s daughter may have featured in the legendary uncut Macbeth, in deleted or censored additions to the play by Thomas Middleton (who created several female characters with the same name as Banquo’s daughter), or an unrealized adaptation planned by John Milton, the evidence proves too circumstantial. A safer assumption would be that the underground Macbeth was spawned by the radical press following Charles II’s coronation as King of Scotland at Scone in 1651. Nevertheless, this apocryphal legend illuminates some gaps in Shakespeare’s tragedy and affords an early example of how Shakespearean drama might be appropriated by an early modern forerunner of alt-media to feed a twisted sexual politics.

Fortunato da Costa Family

This paper reconstructs the history of the Fortunato da Costa family, from the first appearance of its constituting members in Portugal, during the Napoleonic invasion of 1808, through the nation’s political turmoil of the late 1820s and early 1830s, the family’s relocation to São Tomé and Príncipe around 1838-1839, amidst significant Creole-metropolitan tensions on the islands, as well as “intrusions” from the British Anti-Slave Trade Squadron, to its settlement in Angola during an intense period of illegal slave trading and the transition to legitimate commerce, until 1859, when the last known member passed away. The story of the Fortunato da Costa family is an odyssey stretching over half a century, marked by some of the most important processes in Atlantic history. Negotiating these historical developments was anything but easy sailing: in fact, for some it created a series of contradictions, at times leading to the kind of dark moments that families often face. Reconstructing the lives of this unique family thus also presents us with a particularly striking example of the human condition in all its frailties, with a story that is far from unilinear.

King George III and the ‘Smith Collection’ of Handel manuscripts

Abstract The run of morocco-bound manuscript scores of Handel’s oratorios and church music from the Royal Music Library, named the ‘Smith Collection’ by William Barclay Squire in 1927, was assembled as a set for King George III in the early years of his reign. Some of the volumes have year-dates for copying from the period 1766–70, but the sequence also incorporates earlier volumes that originated from the library of the king’s father (Frederick, Prince of Wales, d.1751), partially documented in a sale advertisement by a bookseller soon after Handel’s death. Squire believed that the series had been the property of John Christopher Smith and had been given to the king with the collection of Handel’s autograph scores in the 1770s. Newly identified documents from the Royal Library, now at Windsor, record payments for the copying of many of the scores and enable an alternative reconstruction of the history of the collection under the king’s influence, beginning in 1765–6. They also raise new questions about the identity of the music copyist ‘Mr Teede’. The completion of the series took place in the early 1770s, probably before the king received the autographs. For the shelves in George III’s library the oratorios were arranged in chronological order, but the diverse origins of the volumes had the result that, although the bindings were in similar styles, their sizes were not uniform.

The Glengarry Cairn and Highland loyalism in the British Atlantic world

ABSTRACT In the early 1840s, a monumental cairn was built on an island in the St Lawrence River by the Glengarry Highlanders Militia who were stationed in eastern Upper Canada and western Lower Canada during the Rebellions of 1837–1838. The cairn was officially raised to commemorate the Glengarry Highlanders’ supreme commanding officer, Sir John Colborne and to acknowledge the role the Glengarry Highlanders played in supressing the Rebellion. However, as a product of early Victorian Highlandism and its association with three generations of a transatlantic Highland regiment, the cairn was also a physical representation of the historic Highland Scottish military contributions to the British imperial project in the Atlantic world.

A Unique Copy of Alphabetum Russarum, Printed in Stockholm by Peter van Selow

ABSTRACT This paper describes a virtually unknown Russian alphabet table, Alphabetum Russarum. It consists of only two leaves and presents the Russian alphabet, including detailed pronunciation rules in Latin. The copy is damaged, the impressum is lost. It is clear, however, that the printer was Peter van Selow (1582–1650). The only known copy belongs to the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, where it functions as a kind of appendix to the Lutheran catechism, printed in Stockholm in 1628 by the same printer, Van Selow. Alphabetum Russarum was undoubtedly intended as an “international” counterpart to the well-known Swedish edition Alfabetum Rutenorum, although the former does not contain any texts from Luther’s catechism. Both tables appeared without a print date, but they were apparently issued in the late 1630s or the early 1640s. The unique Weimar copy of Alphabetum Russarum is also very special in another way: along with minor additions and corrections to the printed text it also contains a handwritten appendix in Latin, most likely written by Laurentius Rinhuber, the assistant to the first “Russian playwright” and author of the first court plays ever presented in Moscow (in the 1670s), the Lutheran pastor Johann Gottfried Gregorii.

‘Bound in Amity to All’: Euthanasia’s Cosmopolitan Ethic of Caring

ABSTRACT In Mary Shelley’s Valperga, the conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and the gradual corruption of Castruccio, reveal the destructive effects of ‘party spirit’ on human benevolence and the progress to political justice. By contrast, Euthanasia, fictional ruler of Valperga, embodies a cosmopolitan ideal that animated radical politics in the early 1790s whereby the principle of universal benevolence extended human rights across national borders. This article contends that, in her portrait of Euthanasia, Shelley builds on the ethical framework of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose works represented love of humankind as integral to her democratic convictions. Euthanasia personifies a cosmopolitan ethic of caring, considering herself ‘bound in amity to all’ by principle as well as sentiment, but she also wrestles with the ingrained allegiances and personal desires typical of human psychology. I argue that, through her resulting dilemmas and eventual fate, Shelley interrogates the viability of the cosmopolitan ideal in a world riven by party spirit.

Historical Necropolis of Jewish Subbotniks in the Town of Zima, Irkutsk Region

The Subbotniks, or gers, were Russian Sabbatarians. The article describes a necropolis of exiled Jewish Subbotniks founded in the village of Zima, Irkutsk Province, in the early 1830s. The Subbotniks shared the necropolis with the Jews since both exile communities maintained close routine and religious contacts. The research objective was to catalog the authentic tombstones of 1865–1947 and determine the influence of Judaism on the religious life the Subbotniks. The article gives a general description of the Sabbatarian sects that appeared among Russian peasants at the turn of the XVIII–XIX centuries and explains how they ended up in the Irkutsk Province. The author studied the Jewish burial and mourning practices adopted by the Subbotniks and compared the Zima necropolis with traditional Jewish cemeteries. The descriptions of tombstones and epitaphs were collected during the expeditions of 2017 and 2019.The surviving tombstones were cataloged, and the epitaphs were translated from Hebrew into Russian to compile a list of those buried in the cemetery during the period in question. The research also included the tombstones that belonged to the Jews who lived in Zima in the XIX – early XX centuries.

Предки Ураз Мухаммед-хана в истории Казахского ханства

Research objectives: To consider information from historical sources about the ancestors of Uraz-Muhammad khan and elucidate of their role in the history of the Kazakh Khanate of the 15th–16th centuries. Research materials: The work “Jami al-tawarikh” by Kadyr Ali-bek, medieval written historical sources, and historical research literature on the history of the Kazakh Khanate of the 15th–16th centuries. Results and scientific novelty: This paper presents information from historical sources about the ancestors of Uraz-Muhammad Khan and shows the role of each of them in the history of the Kazakh Khanate of the 15th–16th centuries. The name of his great-great-grandfather, Zhanibek Khan, was associated with education itself in the middle of the 15th century national state, the Kazakh Khanate. The great-grandfather of Uraz-Muhammad khan Zhadik-khan died in the struggle for the unification of the lands of the Kazakhs. His grandfather Shigai Khan, for a short time in the early 1580s, was the supreme ruler of the Kazakh Khanate. It is very important to note that Shigai Khan laid the foundation of the dynasty that ruled the Kazakhs for more than 200 years until the abolition of the khan’s power by the Russian Empire in the 19th century. The father of Uraz-Muhammad Khan Ondan-Sultan died defending the lands of the Kazakhs from the Kalmaks and had the honor of being buried in the Muslim shrine of the nomadic Turks –the mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi. In conclusion, it is clear that the ancestors of Uraz-Muhammad played an important role in the history of the Kazakh Khanate.

“Commercial and political needs demand the establishment of a Black Sea port”: Infrastructure development, opportunities and anxieties in an Eastern European periphery (1860s–1870s)

This paper is the biography of a failed infrastructural project: that of building a Romanian seaport and of linking it to the mainland via a canal and/or a railway. It details its rich life, its initiators and partisans, but also its (mostly foreign) contenders; “born” in the early 1860s in a certain geopolitical, economic or infrastructural environment, the initiative morphed in the coming years in close connection and in direct competition with complementary or rival projects. While the plan of having an “independent” Romanian Black Sea port remained central to the Jibrieni project, most of its other infrastructural components were continuously reimagined, so as to fit into the Romanian government's priorities and – with them – into the extremely dynamic transportation map of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1860s–1870s.

Наука и власть в политической философии Ф. Бэкона: от реформаторства к социальной критике

Introduction. The paper gives the analysis of the development of Bacon’s views on the problem of the interrelations between science and the state power. Theoretical analysis. The initial period of this development was linked to Bacon’s attempts of obtaining privileged position in the court circles during Elizabethan reign. In his treatises and speeches of 1580-90s Bacon started a propagandist campaign for the reform of science: in order to create the most effective tool of increasing its power and glory the crown had to realize the futility of scholasticism and the fraud of alchemical enterprises and to support the efforts of the researchers in improving technologies and discovering the laws of nature. This instrumentalist perspective however gained little support in governmental circles, first of all because of Bacon's sharp criticism of alchemical projects in which the most influential court men were engaged. The next stage of the development of Bacon's ideas started in early 1600s. In his treatises Bacon combined his attacks on alchemy etc. with an ethical & theological doctrine of the values of scientific research. During his spectacular career at Jacobean court Bacon exposed his doctrine to self-censure in order not to offend the monarch whose patronage he had successfully gained. However during his retirement he began a further work at this doctrine and made it the basis for his utopian novel, “The New Atlantis”. Conclusion. Baconian views on the interrelations between science and political power were shaped by his philosophical development as well as by his political experience that led his theories from administrative reformism to ethical analysis and further – to social criticism and utopianism.

International timber trade, merchants, and the business organisation of the sector: The role of Danzig and the southern ports of the Baltic Sea (1823–1913)

The aim of this work is to study the quantitative and qualitative changes that occurred in the timber trade and in its business organisation, between the early 1820s and the outbreak of the First World War, on the southern bank of the Baltic, paying special attention to Danzig. In particular, we will analyse the role of the merchants and the other social and economic actors involved, at different levels and with different functions, in the timber business: the forests’ owners, the local intermediaries, the transportation of the timber from the forests to the markets, and the workers.

Mutual Funds in Pakistan: Origin and Development

Mutual funds were born due to the financial crisis in Europe in the early 1770s. The first modern mutual fund emerged in the Netherlands in the second half of the 20th century. The apparent motivation for organizing the mutual funds was to provide diversification for small investors. The paper traces the history of mutual funds in Pakistan, from establishing a national investment trust in 1962 to developing exchange-traded funds in 2020. The findings of this research are based on a comprehensive review of existing literature and statistical data. The results indicate that the mutual fund industry in Pakistan has shown promising growth in recent year. The formation of mutual fund association of Pakistan in 2001, and development of non-banking finance companies rules 2003, brings a revolutionary change in the mutual industry of Pakistan. The industry is continuously growing as there were only 0.31 billion net assets in 2001, which was 662 billion in 2020.

‘My maine hope is, to begin the sport at Millaine’: Italy in Philip Massinger’s The Duke of Milan

Philip Massinger’s The Duke of Milan (1621) clearly sits in the tradition of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Italianate tragedy and is resonant of stories, ideas, theories, and characters from Italian history and its literary tradition. This essay discusses the play as one of the earliest examples of Massinger’s interest in Italy and its culture. It investigates the play’s Italian setting and examines the influence of the Italian cultural and political legacy to offer new insights into the development of Anglo-Italian relations and England’s home and religious politics in the early 1620s.

Rites and Wrongs: Anglican Ceremonies after Legal Weddings, 1837–57

The Marriage Act 1836 marked an important change in the rites required for a valid marriage, allowing couples to marry in a register office or registered place of worship. For some, however, these unfamiliar rites did not constitute a marriage at all, and in the early 1850s a particular controversy emerged regarding Anglican clergymen who ‘remarried’ couples who had already been legally married under the 1836 Act. This article examines three cases of such ‘remarriages’ and how two of the clergymen involved subsequently found themselves facing prosecution. It analyses the circumstances in which a rite might become a ‘wrong’ in the eyes of the law and traces the impact of these cases on the development of a new provision governing when an additional religious ceremony could take place and, more unexpectedly, on the form of register office weddings.

Victor Taki. Russia on the Danube: Empire, Elites, and Reform in Moldavia and Wallachia, 1812–1834

Victor Taki. <i>Russia on the Danube: Empire, Elites, and Reform in Moldavia and Wallachia, 1812–1834</i>

The Early Nineteenth-Century Unitarian Campaign to change English Marriage Law

The 1836 Marriage Act has received surprisingly little attention from historians of Dissent, despite its significance in permitting non-Anglicans to conduct legally recognized marriages according to their own ceremonies in Dissenting places of worship. The Clandestine Marriages Act (1753), better known as the Hardwicke Act, had limited valid marriages to the rites of the Church of England. Only Jews and Quakers were exempt. By the early nineteenth century the Anglican marriage service was objectionable to Unitarians because of the references to the Trinity. The struggle to change the Marriage Act was initiated by the Freethinking Christians, who engaged in a controversial and highly visible public protest during the marriage service. They successfully engaged the broader Unitarian movement in their campaign, who through the medium of the Unitarian Association undertook a remarkable, though largely fruitless, struggle to change the law until joined by the rest of Dissent in the early 1830s.

18세기 이후 독일 문학시장 형성과 번역업의 발전

Historian Rolf Engelsing defined the late 18th century as “a transitional period from intensive book reading to extensive reading.” But in the German-speaking world, domestic books alone could not fully satisfy the public's desire for reading. This is because people's cultural interests and tastes had diversified and increased. Therefore, the publishing world turned its attention to foreign literature and publications and began to translate foreign literature extensively. Until the early 1820s, translations were extremely rare. However, German writers and intellectuals migrated abroad due to censorship, leading to the shrinking of the German-speaking publishing culture. This contradictory phenomenon led to the growth of the translation industry in Germany, and the activities of translation factories were particularly active.

‘There is a religion in our love’: friendship and ecclesiology in the poetry of Katherine Philips, 1650-1653

ABSTRACT This paper considers the concept of ‘religion’ in Katherine Philips’s poems to her close women friends – Mary Aubrey (‘Rosania’) and Anne Owen (‘Lucasia’) – in the early 1650s, poems that find Philips adding a religious dimension to her more usual language of Platonic friendship. The paper argues that she does so in response to the religious conflict that embroiled her and her husband amidst Parliament’s efforts to propagate the gospel in Wales. The paper adds new historical information about the effects of the Propagation on Philips and about the marriage of Mary Aubrey, an event that Philips characterized as ‘apostasy’. If the Propagation set Philips to thinking about friendship between women as an alternative to sectarian conflict, Aubrey’s ‘apostasy’ obliged her to think in more nuanced ways about ecclesial power. Philips thus contributes to the archive of ecclesiological imagination that emerged from the 1650s.