Houghton Library Research Articles

Designing Truth between Manuscript and Publication: The Eighteenth-Century French Vision of Peru in Marmontel’s Les Incas (1777)

This essay interrogates the tensions between historical fact and colonial fiction in Jean-François Marmontel’s Les Incas, ou le destruction de l’Empire du Pérou (1777). Through this study of deleted passages and publisher notes in the 1776 manuscript of the novel (Houghton Library, Harvard University), Marmontel’s concern with verisimilitude, truth, and objective reality belies the fantasy of conquest and the myths of American Indigeneity that are central to eighteenth-century French understandings and imaginings of the Inca Empire and the American continent as a whole. Politically, the novel served a dual purpose: to vehemently denounce the Spanish conquest of the Americas and to subversively critique the “fanaticism” of the ancien régime in the years leading up the 1789 Revolution. Across the Atlantic, the novel was read by generals of the Latin American Wars of Independence, and it shifted from an allegorical text to a direct call for revolution. Despite Marmontel’s aim of creating a philosophical and historical novel, Les Incas perpetuates the hegemonies and hierarchies of colonialism, falling back onto well-established tropes. In choosing what was considered in Europe as “exotic” as a vehicle for political critique, Les Incas maintains and reinforces the very systems against which the revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century fought.

Two Collections

The period often considered the golden age of American type design (ca. 1900–ca 1940) saw the creation of a number of library collections specialized for the study of printing history. The most important of these were the John M. Wing Foundation at The Newberry Library of Chicago (founded in 1919) and the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts at Harvard’s Houghton Library (established in 1938). Both took inspiration from contemporary advances in bibliography and textual studies and both set out to exemplify printing history with specimens of type on the page for scholarly comparison; but they had differing emphases from the start, determined by the personalities and programs of their founders. The will of journalist John M. Wing (1845–1917) specified a collection that would allow study of “every significant development of the arts of printing and book production.” The first curator, Pierce Butler (1886–1953) began with incunabula and collected typeface by typeface through the centuries. Harvard’s Philip Hofer (1898–1984) was influenced by Butler’s classification scheme, but as an art historian, he began with aesthetic categories and emphasized design issues like illustration. As the two collections developed there were additional divergences, but also parallel interests, and both collaborations and rivalry. All the curators involved (Hofer in Cambridge and three successive librarians in Chicago) responded to ongoing developments in textual studies and in some cases anticipated them, both in their collection building and in their publications on printing history.

DIMITRIE CANTEMIR ŞI CHIRURGIA

One of the most important works left by Dimitrie Cantemir, among his rich writings, was "INCREMENTORVM ET DECREMENTORVM AVLAE OTHOMANICAE SIVE ALIOTHMANICAE HISTORIAE A PRIMA GENTIS ORIGINE AD NOSTRA VSQVE TEMPORA DEDVCTATE LIBRI TRES", translated nowadays under the title "HISTORY OF THE INCREASE AND THE DECAY OF THE OTTHMAN OR ALIOTHMAN COURT (FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF THE NATION TO OUR TIME), IN THREE BOOKS". Among other information, it also contains a description of the land and the city of Avlonia - i.e. Vlora (dominated then by the Sublime Porta), as well as the Albanians from that region who had several qualities: fierce fighters, builders of aqueducts (without formal education) and healers of hernia by surgical operation. The surgery part has a special significance. In 1734 ”Incrementorum...” was translated into English by pastor Tindal, historian and translator. He used a manuscript in Latin given to him by Antioch Cantemir, son of Dimitrie Cantemir. The English text was translated into French by Fr. de Joncquieres. In 1745, a German translation appeared in the city of Hamburg, also using the English edition. In 1876, the Romanian Academy, published Iosif Hodoş first Romanian translation of the German edition. Fragments adapted from this edition were then used by Romanian researchers, including historians of medicine, such as Pompei Samarian, Dr. Vasile Sârbu. The original Latin manuscript of Dimitrie Cantemir's text was to be found not earlier than 1984 by Virgil Cândea at the Houghton Library in the USA. The Latinist Dan Sluşanschi published the manuscript and made its first translation from Latin into Romanian. The surgeon Dr. A. E. Nicolau published fragments of this translation, namely the passage regarding the surgical cure. În 2015, years after Dan Sluşanschi passing, the Romanian Academy published the text of the transcribed Latin manuscript and a translation version. In parallel, another academic and surgeon, Mircea Beuran, highlighted Cantemir's text, in a different form, exposing in the Floreasca Hospital on large, colorful, how inguinal hernia was operated in the 17th-18th centuries.

A text criticism of Hikayat Si Miskin: A textological study of writing and use of letters

This research aim to describe a textological study of the issue of how the Hikayat Si Miskin manuscript text from the Harvad University - Houghton Library/ ms_Indo_18-METS collection was translated into handwritten Arabic-Malay script, the appearance of which is much different from the standard form of the letters of this script. This is the most important part in the textological study of the subfield of philology before the editing of texts from the old Malay Arabic-Malay script into Latin script is presented. His identity as the author is not included at the front of his work, but at the end of the manuscript called the colophon. The presentation of a text that has been cleaned of all writing errors paves the way for further study of the content of the text from various aspects related to the existence of the form and content of the text being studied, such as a study of the structural content of the text, a study of linguistic aspects, a study of social values. and culture, it is even possible to examine historical elements, because manuscripts are historical documents that describe the life systems and patterns of old society. The method used to discuss text issues and content that can be studied in various related scientific disciplines is the standard text criticism method, namely a philological method that attempts to re-present classical texts by criticizing and correcting corrupt texts. In accordance with the focus of the discussion which focuses on writing and visual text writing, the research results found writing irregularities and errors in writing lacunae, substitutions, additions, transpositions, dittography, and haplography. The most common writing errors are substitution errors.

Understanding Frédéric Flachéron’s Paper Negative Process through Experimentation and Specular Reflection FTIR Analysis

Cultural heritage objects present a special set of challenges for chemical analysis. Often micro-sampling or even contacting the object is deemed an unacceptable risk to the object. This study examined if specular reflection FTIR, a non-sampling and non-contact analytical technique, can provide insight into chemical composition of the layered coatings on Frédéric Flachéron’s paper negatives (1848–1852) in the Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photography, in Houghton Library, at Harvard University. Specular reflection FTIR data confirmed the identification of beeswax and sandarac as the transparentizing media on Flachéron’s paper negatives, as previously published by Lee Ann Daffner. However, specular reflection FTIR analysis also indicated that some negatives had additional localized coatings of orange shellac in specific areas of the images. To understand why Flachéron retouched his negatives with orange shellac, modern experimental replications of the paper negative process were performed. Through modern experimentation with the paper negative technique, it was found that Flachéron’s coatings of shellac served as an integral part of his image-altering technique. The color of the orange shellac subtly alters contrast and density, but it does not mask an area the way an opaque watercolor or highly pigmented paint might. The fine adjustments to the negatives with orange shellac were an attempt to perfect the contrast in the print, and better render depth and detail. These discoveries add to a growing body of recent research that points to the historic and art historic importance of negatives and coatings in photography. The specificity with which specular reflection FTIR was able to nondestructively identify the chemical composition of the local coating, and specifically target the analysis on the areas in which it appeared, allowed for an understanding of Flachéron’s use of local coatings as a retouching method rather than a protective coating.

From Map Projection to Semiotics

Umberto Eco’s admiration for Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) for ... earning a living by drawing maps ... combined with the pleasure of knowledge given by the diving to the history of our cartographic discipline, reminded me of a relevant sixty-year-old text about the great scientist and authentic thinker – maybe the greatest of Logic of his time. It is based on unpublished (until then) manuscript material, in his collection of the same name in the Houghton Library at Harvard. The sixty-year-old mathematician Carolyn Eisele (1902−2000) – devoted scholar of Peirce’s work – wrote the text in the early 1960s; it was then published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. The subject of her text is the problem of cartographic projection. But what can a cartographic projection problem have to do with logic and its practical applications, which is the greatest challenge to Peirce’s thinking?

«Красная ржавчина» vs «Желтая ржавчина»: метаморфозы текста советской пьесы на Бродвее

The study focuses on the adaptation of a politically engaged dramaturgical work from Bolshevik Russia — Vladimir Kirshon’s and Andrey Uspensky’s play Konstantin Terekhin (Rust) — to the specific requirements of Broadway, the commercial theater of the USA, and the textual changes of the Soviet original associated with it. The basic principles of the Broadway theater creative and organizational model, drastically different from the repertory theater of post-revolutionary Russia, are defined — the primacy of commerce over artistry, the absence of state support and censorship, a respectable audience that does not accept radical political ideas. On the American stage the Soviet play was produced in 1929, with the changed title (Red Rust), and the text subjected to changes and distortions. The paper considers these changes in the context of American socio–economic life of the Red Thirties. The discrepancy between the original dramaturgical material and the specific requirements of the American commercial theater is analyzed. The free handling of the text from Bolshevik Russia in the US theater is due to the absence of copyright regulations between the two countries. The process of exporting the play to the United States — via Paris and London — is being reconstructed. Three sources that have carried out the textual transformation of the Soviet original are characterized: the authors of the French-language adaptation from Russian (Fernand Nozière and Vladimir Bienstock), British translators from French into English (Virginia and Frank Vernon) and Broadway stage director who previously visited Moscow and sought to introduce into the text what, in his opinion, Soviet censorship would not allow (Herbert Biberman). The study is based on the materials from the Beinecke Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts collections (Yale University), as well as documents from the Houghton Library (Harvard University), the New York Public Library for Performing Arts, the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (Moscow), and the museum of the Mossovet State Academic Theater (Moscow). The study is aimed at expanding the understanding of the stage history of the Russian drama in America.

Инкорпорирование театральных идей В.Э. Мейерхольда в сценическую практику США: режиссерская деятельность Герберта Бибермана

The study focuses on the incorporation of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s theatrical methodology to American stage practices specifically through the directing activities of Meyerhold’s follower in the US Herbert Biberman. The characteristic of the main ways for exporting Meyerhold’s ideas overseas are provided. Among them — the arrival of American theatrical figures in Moscow, studying with the master at the Meyerhold’s Moscow State Theatre, as well as the translation and publication of Soviet theatrical literature about the director and his method. The reception of Meyerhold’s stage work is given by theatrical figures of the USA (among them — Brooks Atkinson, Henry Dana, Norris Houghton). On the basis of Biberman’s first two productions, the material for which was Soviet dramaturgy — “Konstantin Terekhin (Rust)” by Vladimir Kirshon and Andrey Uspensky and “Roar, China!” by Sergey Tretyakov — the continuity of the stage practice of the American director to the Meyerhold’s theatrical principles is revealed. The Broadway production of “Rust” was distinguished by poster expressiveness and conciseness of style, generalized and relief techniques of the acting. In the performance based on Tretyakov’s play, Biberman built expressive, almost graphic mise en scene and acting angles. The author presents an analysis of “Meyerholdovsky” theatrical ideas overseas on the basis of materials from the collections of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (newspaper and magazine reviews) and the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI, Moscow), as well as documents from the Houghton Library at Harvard University and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The work is aimed at expanding both the understanding of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s theatrical ideas in the United States and the stage fate of Soviet plays in America.

Transfiguration: Southworth and Hawes, Reproduced Images and Body

The Harrison Horblit Collection at the Harvard University’s Houghton Library contains a remarkable daguerreotype plate by the Boston firm Southworth & Hawes. It reproduces an engraving after Raphael’s Transfiguration. Whereas reproductive printmaking normally seeks to produce multiples of a unique original, daguerreotype reproductions open a space of ambiguity between the categories of original and reproduction since daguerreotypes are unique objects. Much is lost in this translation, but what is gained? If reproduction of paintings normally renders the singular multiple, what happens when a painting is reproduced as a unique image? Why was this daguerreotype created? Southworth & Hawes specialized in portraits of celebrities and considered themselves artists. Why then did they make a daguerreotype of an engraving of a painting? And why this painting?Their image of an image of an image is at once simply duplicative and a meditation on photography itself – an expanded conception of photography that figures it as spiritual and conceptual practice, as is suggested in other conflations of image reproduction and transfiguration within Southworth & Hawes’ oeuvre as well. The logic of the Southworth & Hawes’ Transfiguration becomes less a conundrum when considered in relation to two of their other images, one of the branded hand of abolitionist Jonathan Walker, the other a self-portrait representing Southworth’s torso as a classical sculpture. Translation, transfiguration, body, soul and image are closely imbricated in all three of these daguerreotypes, each produced during the height of New England Transcendentalism. While Raphael’s Transfiguration epitomizes the intersection of the human and a divine being as Scriptural drama, The Branded Hand and Southworth as a Classical Bust allude to the spiritual realm through representation of the soul’s transcendence of the suffering body rather than direct reference to scripture. The Branded Hand detaches subject from the context of the body as a whole; Walker’s wound appears in the image as the silvery trace of the price paid for his abolitionist conviction. The portrait of Southworth separates an individual man’s identity from the more allegorical presence, while presenting suggestions of sorrow as emblems of spiritual elevation. But beyond this, the transmedial daguerreotype of the print of the Raphael announces itself as visual metonymy; the transfiguration of Christ in the painting also conveys the transfigurative power of the photographic medium itself.

Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London

Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London

Methodology Maximized: Quine on Empiricism, Naturalism, and Empirical Content

W. V. Quine calls some general methods of science maxims: general defeasible principles that call on us to approximate, maximize, or minimize a state and that are interpreted and weighed in context-sensitive ways. On my reading, his empiricism asks us to maximize accepting overall theories empirically equivalent to ours but to minimize accepting sentences that both do not affect the empirical content of our overall theory and do not simplify our overall theory. His naturalism asks us to maximize accepting sentences that are solely supported by standards that support our best current scientific theory. Drawing on the Quine archive at Houghton Library at Harvard, I support and apply these interpretations by investigating his rapidly evolving later work on empirical content and empirical equivalence, including some of his views on translation in this later work and his vacillation between what he calls the ecumenical and sectarian attitudes.

Short-Form Proust

Short-Form Proust Marta Figlerowicz IN AUGUST 1899, THE DREYFUS AFFAIR was at its height. France's Court of Cassation had overturned Alfred Dreyfus's original judgment as guilty, and the case had been referred to a military court in Rennes. The retrial began on August 7; on August 14, Dreyfus's defense lawyer, Fernand Labori, was shot en route to the courthouse. Proust, who was twenty-eight at the time, and a still-little-known writer, was not Labori's acquaintance. All the same, he was moved to send Dreyfus's lawyer a telegram. The telegram reached Labori on August 18, by which point Labori's condition was improving, and he was soon to resume his place on Dreyfus's defense. Preserved in Harvard's Houghton Library amid files related to the Dreyfus affair, it reads as follows (Figure 1): Hommage au beau géant invincible à qui cette consécration sanglante manquait seule pour que ce ne fut pas au figuré qu'on parlât pour lui de combat & de victoire & qui n'a même plus à envier à la gloire militaire le privilège magnifique des soldats donner son sang—Marcel Proust 9 Boulevard Malesherbes Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Marcel Proust, telegram to Fernand Labori. bMS Judaica 1.3 (140), Houghton Library, Harvard University. [End Page 25] Sending this telegram to Labori as someone unknown to him personally or by popular reputation, amid a presumed flurry of supportive gestures, Proust was performing, in some respects, merely another symbolic action. And indeed, this telegram may seem like a throwaway document that adds little to what we know about Proust. Among the few critics who mention it at all, Benjamin Taylor describes it, in passing, as "presumptuous."1 All the same, I would like to linger with this telegram as a suggestion of something more profound, a formal game with greater consequence for our understanding of Proust as a writer than may appear. Proust's message translates to "homage to the good, invincible giant who needed only this bloody consecration to be described, not merely figuratively, as engaged in combats and victories; and who now need not envy military glory, the soldiers' magnificent privilege of shedding their blood." This message is presumptuous, to be sure; it is also a florid, intentional attempt on Proust's part to play with the formal and generic limits of the telegram. Telegrams are proverbial for their brevity, a brevity predicated by their cost as well as by the speed at which the message is thus supposed to travel. "Nother [sic] dying come home father," reads the misspelled "blue French telegram, curiosity to show," about which Stephen Dedalus bitterly reminisces in Ulysses; it mirrors the analogous telegram Joyce himself had received about his mother, while studying in Paris, in April 1903.2 The Joyces were much worse off than the Prousts; but throughout In Search of Lost Time, amid the upper classes among whom Marcel circulates, telegrams also tend to be curt, to the point of being cryptic. When Marcel receives a telegram informing him of Albertine's death, for example, he cannot decipher its meaning because he misreads one of its crucial few words. One might think of Proust's telegram to Labori as a form of costly signaling, a conspicuous expense meant to signal the depth of his appreciation; but if that were his intention, flowers would have been much more conventional and showier, especially as sent to a (very busy) convalescent; from Proust's letters, we know that he liked to send flowers to his bedridden friends. Had he wanted to engage Labori in conversation, he could have sent him a letter, but he did not appear to have done or wanted that, either. Instead, this telegram is most striking because, while baroquely exceeding the conventions of its medium—not least with its overabundance of metaphors and adjectives—it also shows a winking awareness of the conventional form that a telegram ought to take. Grammatically speaking, though it goes on for many lines, beyond the borders of the standard blue sheet onto which these lines are pasted as well as beyond a telegram's standard word limit, the...

Attack by a Turkey: Learning to Write History from Bernard Bailyn

Attack by a Turkey: Learning to Write History from Bernard Bailyn

Pragmatism

In 1907, Charles Peirce attempted to write an article that would introduce his distinct variety of pragmatism to a general audience. He intended it initially for The Nation and later for The Atlantic Monthly, eventually producing more than five hundred handwritten sheets, but both ultimately declined to print any of it. Multiple preliminary drafts comprise the manuscripts that Richard Robin catalogued as R 319-322 and R 324, culminating in five major variants of R 318 as identified by the Peirce Edition Project and diagrammed by Priscila Borges (https://peirce.iupui.edu/resources/ms318_diag.pdf) with references to the page numbers assigned by the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism. The second is unfinished, while extensive portions of the third through fifth appear in the Collected Papers (CP 5.11-13, 5.464-496, 1.560-562) and The Essential Peirce (EP 2:398-433), including the beginning that is common to all five. This is the completed first version as transcribed from the high-resolution digital images provided online by Houghton Library at Harvard University (https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:fhcl.hough:12486126). It has never been published before and offers fresh insights into Peirce's thinking about semeiotic and pragmatism as it was evolving toward what he subsequently expressed in the lengthier and increasingly technical texts that scholars have thoroughly scrutinized. He even signed his name at the end, suggesting that he was fully satisfied with it at the time, although several illuminating quotations from a discarded draft are included here in footnotes. With minor exceptions, his original and sometimes idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation are preserved throughout.

Recent Books

Beyond Words: New Research on Manuscripts in Boston Collections. Ed. by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Lisa Fagin Davis, Anne-Marie Eze, Nancy Netzer, and William P. Stoneman. (Studies and Texts, 221; Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination, 8.) Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. 2021. xxxii + 362 pp. $150. isbn 978 0 88844 221 5. This volume arises from the conference accompanying the exhibition Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections in 2016. Includes: Patricia Stirnemann, ‘Gilbert de la Porrée: The Man and his Manuscripts’; Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, ‘Writing Culture and Society over the longue durée: The Charters of Sawley Abbey, from Medieval Yorkshire to Present-Day Harvard, Houghton Library’; Kathryn M. Rudy, ‘Boston Public Library MS q Med. 86 in the Context of Manuscript Production in Delft’; Nicholas Herman, ‘Jean Bourdichon’s Boston Hours and the Miniature-as-Object’; Anne D. Hedeman, ‘Rereading...

Вахтанговский последователь в США Леонид Снегов и его бродвейская постановка пьесы Д. Щеглова «Пурга»

The study focuses on the export of Eugene Vakhtangov’s theatrical methodology to American stage practices. The problem is specifically discussed based on the the acting and directing activities of Vakhtangov’s follower Leonid Snegoff. He staged the play by the Soviet playwright Dmitry Scheglov “The Blizzard” (“Purga”) on Broadway in 1929. The deep interest in Russian theatrical ideas and systems (Konstantin Stanislavsky, Eugene Vakhtangov, Vsevolod Meyerhold and Michael Chekhov) of the US practitioners in the interwar period are explained. The main two reasons are the absence of national acting school and thus theatre pedagogy. The characteristic of the main ways for exporting Vakhtangov’s ideas overseas are provided. Among them – the theatre tours abroad, translation and publication of Soviet theatrical literature about Vakhtangov and his method, the stage activities of Russian emigrant actors who studied with the Master or by him (Richard Boleslavsky, Rouben Mamulyan, Benno Schneider, Miriam Goldina). Theatre activities of Snegoff are analyzed along with the organicity of the poetics and the idea of “The Blizzard” play according to stage realization in the course of the Vakhtangov school. A brief analysis of the main productions of Scheglov’s play on the Soviet stage of the 1920s – in the Leningrad studio “Proletarian Actor”, Leningrad State Bolshoi Dramatic Theatre – BDT, Moscow Drama Theatre (former Korsh Theatre) and Studio of the Moscow State Maly Theatre – allows us to make a conclusion about the most successful of them. They were presented not in a ultra-realistic and naturalistic way, but in a Vakhtangov way – theatrically and conditionally. The author presents the analysis of Vakhtangov theatre ideas overseas on the basis of materials from the collections of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Houghton Library (Harvard University), the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, as well as documents from the Museums of the Eugene Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre and the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre.

"A Spirituall Song of Submission": The Eikon Basilike, Prayer and Poetry in a Seventeenth-Century Royalist Miscellany

"A Spirituall Song of Submission":The Eikon Basilike, Prayer and Poetry in a Seventeenth-Century Royalist Miscellany Francesca Cioni In its textual and material history the Eikon Basilike tells the story of the textual and material cultures of the loyal Royalists who composed, produced, read, and shared it. Despite official suppression by Parliament, the Eikon appeared in dozens of different imprints between Charles' death and the Restoration, in various forms and formats, for specific readerly uses: folios featuring the full text with lavish engravings; abridged duodecimos for pocket reference; versions digesting the Eikon into commonplaces, advice, or rhyming devotional verse.1 The variety of such printed forms bespeaks the broad and wide-ranging appeal and use of the Eikon by late-seventeenth century readers. The proliferation of scribal copies that circulated more easily without attracting notice of parliamentary censors offers an intimate glimpse into not only readers' use of and relationship to the text, but also the operation of the literary, political, religious, and social circles through which the Eikon circulated. MS Eng 625, a copy of Eikon Basilike held at the Houghton Library, is one of such text.2 A substantial portion of the Eikon is included, closely following the 1649 edition (a copy of which is held at the University of Illinois); the volume also includes several printed engraved portraits of Charles I, and a handwritten prayer of contrition. The composition of this manuscript Eikon represents an act of pious commemoration of the deposed monarch; tracing its compilation can tell us much about the reception of the Eikon in the late-seventeenth century, and its role in establishing Charles' reputation and the textual practices of Royalist loyalism. [End Page 3] But the volume tells another story. If we rotate the codex 180° and open it from the other end, we find a miscellany of original religious, commendatory, and philosophical verse, comprising an ambitious range of styles: acrostics and anagrams; hymns and songs; and long philosophical poems on human sins and divine mercy. Three prayers that begin the volume, collected under the heading "Orationes miscellane," suggest their writer's political and ecclesiastical loyalism (including the prayers "For ye king" and "For ye church"). These are followed by a collection of apparently autograph poems: "The Returne," a song; an occasional poem on the poet's recovery from smallpox; an anagram and an acrostic to the collection's apparent patron Mary Midmore; a "Spirituall Song of Submission" a version of George Herbert's "Submission"; and four long poems: "The Review," "The Grand Deceit, and the Great Evill under the Sun," "Divine Mercies Miracles," and "Gods method in curing Sinners." The variety of poetic forms gathered in the miscellany not only serve to demonstrate their author's literary skill of their author, but also perform, in their diverse ways, his religious and political loyalty to a monarchy and a church recently restored. From the relatively direct expression of royalist and Anglican beliefs in his prayers and longer theological verse, to the verbal and literary dissection of his patron and of Herbert's verse in the praise poems and "Song of Submission," Shirley's verse gives textual form to these loyalties. The volume's reproduction of the Eikon Basilike and assembly of images of Charles are acts of political loyalty; but it also materializes pious devotion in its reformulation of scripture, and social relationships in its praise poems to Mary Midmore. These social, textual, religious, and political acts are performed through diverse means of reformulation of particular texts and figures: its collator Drew Shirley and its apparent patron Mary Mid-more as well as George Herbert and Charles I, whose works, together with the Bible, form the volume's source material. Drew Shirley, whose name appears on the first leaf of the Eikon, and in whose hand the miscellany seems to be written, is not a prominent historical figure. He is not published in print, nor is he politically active, and he is only recorded in this manuscript and in records of his matriculation at Exeter College, Oxford in 1656, his will, and his burial.3 The latter both occur at Chiddingly, Sussex in 1707, in the same village where one...

News from the Field

Harvard University Houghton Library renovation completed ACRL Consulting Services launches Facilitative Support for Library Leaders MIT Press releases open monographs whitepaper EvenUP initiative launches Curated Futures Project imagines possibility of a “Third Library” Gale, British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies partner for ECCO access Penn State Libraries announce short story awards

Anderson, Emily Hodgson. Shakespeare and the Legacy of Loss.

Anderson, Emily Hodgson. <i>Shakespeare and the Legacy of Loss</i>.

Chronicles of Bailundo: a fragmentary account in Umbundu of life before and after Portuguese colonial rule

Abstract‘Chronicles of Bailundo’ is a fragmentary account of life in Bailundo, Central Angola. The manuscript, whose authorship and exact date are unknown, is available at the archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) at Houghton Library, Harvard University. It was written in Umbundu, the vernacular spoken in Bailundo, by North American Congregational missionaries between 1903 and the 1930s. Although the source mentions no dates, it refers roughly to the period between the seventeenth century and the gradual establishment of Portuguese colonial rule and Christian missions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It gives access to both the Umbundu then spoken in Bailundo and the perspective of Umbundu-speaking subjects on what it was like to live in this polity. The source addresses socio-cultural, political and economic aspects of life in Bailundo as well as significant historical events, such as the Bailundo War (1902–03). The text in Umbundu, published as supplementary material with this article, has been transcribed, translated into Portuguese and English, and annotated. The version published following the main introduction of the article presents an annotated sample of the source in English. The full version, published as supplementary material, comprises the complete original in Umbundu, its complete annotated translation into English, and a complete annotated translation into Portuguese. The article addresses the authorship, contents, form and context of production of the source.