Society Of Antiquaries Research Articles

Medieval Anglesey. By AntonyCarr. Second edition. Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Field Club. 2011. xvii + 317pp. £19.95.

Medieval Anglesey. By AntonyCarr. Second edition. Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Field Club. 2011. xvii + 317pp. £19.95.

America's "Cumbersome Democracy" in Print: Histories of Reading and Writing in Early America

America's "Cumbersome Democracy" in Print:Histories of Reading and Writing in Early America Antonio T. Bly Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelly, eds., An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840. Vol. 2 of A History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Pp. 697. $60.00. Konstantin Dierks , In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Pp. 376. $55.00. Book history, as Robert Darnton reminds us in The Kiss of Lamourette, is a complex field of historical inquiry. Covering a wide array of subjects—bookbinding and papermaking, publishing and copyright, foreign letters and types, authors and readers—"it might even be called the social and cultural history of communication by print, if that were not such a mouthful" (107). A branch of the social sciences in which "books" are treated as artifacts, Darnton explains, the history of the book investigates not only "how ideas were transmitted through print" but also "how exposure to the printed word" has affected society "during the last five hundred years" (107). In both Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelly's An Extensive Republic and Konstantin Dierks's In My Power, the richness, depth, and complexity of this steadily expanding field are on full display. An Extensive Republic is the second of five volumes in the American Antiquarian Society's History of the Book in America series. Masterfully edited, this collection of essays written by key scholars in the field reveals compelling stories of early America as a nation of readers who feverishly consumed books, newspapers, leaflets, and broadsides. In covering the expansion of public schools in America (Moran, Vinovskis, Monaghans, Grodzins, Jackson, and Kelly); the development of copyright and the American author (McGill and Shields); and the reading practices of rural, urban, German immigrant, African American, and Native Americans (Nipps, Larkins, Pretzer, Roeber, Gundaker, O'Connell, and Gross), this useful book reveals portraits of America between 1790 and 1840 as a cumbersome democracy in which Americans from many different walks of life consumed print and used it in multiple ways. In this narrative, mostly about books and readers, printers and publishers in the United States assumed a central role in the development of the new Republic. Indeed, central to those fresh starts were books, books that were meant to define the new nation as free and democratic. Shortly after the dust began to settle from the American Revolution, books and newspapers offered many Americans opportunities to begin anew. And as Scott E. Casper explains in his essay, "Case Study: Harper & Brothers," there was little time to waste. In the wake of independence, America needed literary "works of a [distinctly] American character" (129). For that reason, James and John Harper started a publishing company and took on the daunting task of writing the new nation into existence. Adopting British models, and initially British authors, the Harper brothers began issuing a multivolume series celebrating America's unique charm. By publishing such books [End Page 151] as Thatcher's Indian Biography, Pauling's A Life of Washington, Byrant's Selections from the American Poets, the Harper brothers were perhaps some of the earliest bookmen to engage in this business of nation building (128-36). Although useful in its account of how these two printers-turned-publishers helped to create through books an exclusively American character, Casper's essay is far too abbreviated. For instance, he does not fully explicate the strategies the Harpers' firm used to reach the public at large. Nor does he make much of the hundreds of agents, from clergymen to students on vacation, whom the brothers employed. An otherwise interesting story, Casper's essay also does not further explicate the various book-binding and advertising schemes the brothers used to get the word out. As a result, what emerges is a narrative in which the Harper & Brothers' multivolume series are circulated among only a select group—those who could buy books— thus overlooking an equally telling story of how their "Library" series found its way into the hands of less well-to-do Americans. David Paul Nord's essay "Benevolent Books: Printing...

Visual Materials in the Research Library

The success of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is based on a variety of programs that other libraries could imitate in order to exploit collections that for various reasons are not been utilized fully by scholars, teachers, and the general public. In the United States, there are libraries and historical organizations with vast collections of prints and photographs, but few of these visual materials reach the hands of scholars or teachers. CHAViC is a concerted effort by the governing board and senior administration of AAS to find new audiences for visual materials through an improved access to collections; workshops, seminars, and conferences; publications; and a dedicated fellowship program. The overarching goal of CHAViC is to encourage the use of visual materials by historians as evidence, not merely as illustration.1 Forour purposes, visual materials should be seen through the lens of history. This essay describes activities that we hope will lead to this outcome.

American Antiquarian Society (AAS): Historical Periodicals, Series 2-5

American Antiquarian Society (AAS): Historical Periodicals, Series 2-5

“Alas Good Browne!”: Commemoration and Community in Herrick's “Chorus”

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1In 1619 there were approximately only 130 students and fellows at Caius College (Morgan 2: 200). 2See, for example, Herrick's “The Widdowes teares: or, Dirge of Dorcas,” Martin 373–75. For an astute assessment of this poem's political moment, see Summers. 3See also Bray 93. For a lucid, recent account of the influence of Herrick's Devon “banishment” on Hesperides, through an Ovidian interpretative lens, see Pugh 57–83. 4Probably Richard Clayton, Dean of Peterborough. See Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses. 5The date of his ordination is given in an Archbishop's Institution Act Book, Inst. AB. 5, f. 129, Borthwick Institute Archives, University of York. Probate is recorded in Register Alchin, f. 399, Probate Index for Yorkshire Wills Held in London during the Interregnum, Borthwick Institute of Archives. See also Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society 4 (1896): 62.

Early Modern English Humanism and Antiquarianism: The Prosopographical Method and Reflections on Historico-Legal Tradition

This article aims to investigate some of the fundamental historiographical and methodological issues raised by the emergence of legal history as a branch of learning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It does so by contextualising the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and by deploying a prosopographical method to evaluate its connections with embryonic genres of historical writing and with the legal profession. It concludes by emphasising the need to distinguish the legal and historical concerns which underpinned the Society in the early modern period, and argues that the emergence of the Society constituted a significant stage in the formation of legal history as a discipline with certain distinctive methodological attributes.

Wendy Bellion. Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. 388 pp.; 12 color and 83 black-and-white illustrations, notes, index. $45.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewWendy Bellion. Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. 388 pp.; 12 color and 83 black-and-white illustrations, notes, index. $45.00.Georgia B. BarnhillGeorgia B. BarnhillCenter for Historic American Visual Culture, American Antiquarian Society Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Winterthur Portfolio Volume 46, Number 1Spring 2012 Published for the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/665509 Views: 17Total views on this site © 2012 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Heraldic Badges in England and Wales201245Michael Powell Siddons. Heraldic Badges in England and Wales. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press for the Society of Antiquaries of London 2009. , ISBN: 978 1 843834 93 9 £350/$695 4 vols (3 vols published in 4 parts)

Heraldic Badges in England and Wales201245Michael Powell Siddons. <i>Heraldic Badges in England and Wales</i>. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press for the Society of Antiquaries of London 2009. , ISBN: 978 1 843834 93 9 £350/$695 4 vols (3 vols published in 4 parts)

The American Literature Association Conference (review)

Reviewed by: The American Literature Association Conference Steven W. Thomas (bio) The American Literature Association Conference. Boston May 26-29, 2011. When it was suggested that I write a review of early Americanist activity at this year's American Literature Association conference, my instinctual reaction was to go look for examples of such reviews in the earlier issues of EAL to see what this peculiar genre of writing tended to look like. More colloquially speaking, I figured I'd best go find myself a clue. Significantly, I discovered that the annual ALA conference has never been reviewed before in the pages of EAL, and even more significantly there was not a single conference review of any kind in any of the issues before 2003. But it is not surprising why this is the case. Several things happened in the past decade that suggest important changes in the field both to our superstructure and to our base: EAL's website was created in 2000 and its issues became available through Project Muse in 2002; EAL added the new position of review editor in 2001, a position that Sandra Gustafson (now editor-in-chief) took on with a "mandate to broaden and expand the journal's review offerings"; and lastly a flurry of discussion in the form of conferences, panels, and forums took place about the broadening and expansion of the field. For example, the very first conference to be reviewed in EAL was the Summit of Early Ibero-Anglo Americanists in 2002 that signaled a "hemispheric turn" in early American studies (and notably was discussed by several contributors in three separate issues). Likewise, the History of the Book conference at the American Antiquarian Society in 2006 led to multiple reviews and conversations in the pages of EAL about our expanding archive of print, manuscript, and performative culture. Reviews of other, similar conferences, such as the Summit on Early Native American Studies, followed these two, some of them interdisciplinary, and all of them asserting various "turns"—hemispheric, transnational, transatlantic, [End Page 243] Black Atlantic, print cultural, and so on. Alongside these paradigm-changing conferences, one finds a review of new resources for graduate students at a Society of Early Americanists conference and a review of the many new Internet resources available to scholars. I summarize the past decade of reviews for two reasons. First, in contrast to the paradigm-changing agendas of the other conferences reviewed, the ALA conference might appear rather ordinary. After all, unlike those self-consciously special conferences, this one has happened every year since 1989, so what argument could I possibly make? My second reason suggests an answer to the first, for in many ways, the new work that we are seeing now is the fruit of the labors of the previous decade, including the creation of the Society of Early Americanists (SEA) and the subsequent EAL roundtables in 1994 and 1995 about "New Directions" and "Theories" in early American studies organized by Sharon M. Harris and Carla Mulford. Symptomatic of this legacy to our present is Leonard Tennenhouse's retrospective review in 2007 of William Spengemann's A New World of Words, Redefining Early American Literature, published way back in 1994. (Perhaps also symptomatic is that the indie rock of 2007 sounded just like the indie rock of 1994, and independent radio stations play the same music now that they played seventeen years ago, but I digress.) And so, in answer to my question why bother to write a review of the ALA conference, the answer is to assess the dynamic of tradition and innovation that is the hallmark of the SEA. What is important to remember here is the very intimate relationship between the ALA and the SEA, since, as the story goes, no sooner did the ALA first convene in 1989 than some of its participants saw the need to secure some space for the "early" stuff. Consequently, due to the magisterial efforts of both Leo Lemay and Alfred Bendixen, the second ALA conference reserved space for early Americanists. The current tradition of four SEA-organized panels at every ALA, one devoted to teaching, is something we may take for granted now, but it emerged...

The Acquisition and use of Norwegian Timber in Seventeenth-Century Scotland

This paper examines the importance of Norwegian timber for building construction in seventeenth-century Scotland. Firstly, it shows how new sawmill technology allowed for the mass production of timber in Norway. Using voyages taken by Scottish skippers to reconstruct the trade between south-western Norway and east coast Scotland, it has been possible to follow the timber from its source to its final use for building works. Secondly, this paper examines a number of buildings in order to illustrate how the timber was used. An important development in building construction was the use of longer-span timbers. This permitted larger buildings with bigger rooms, requiring roofing, flooring, panelling, doors, windows, plaster ceilings and furniture. All of these items required the technical knowledge and expertise of Scottish wrights, leading to an increase in their authority and influence amongst the other building trades in the period studied. The following is a revised version of a paper given at the conference 'New Insights into Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century British Architecture' held at the Society of Antiquaries, London in January 2011.

Folklore, Survivals, and the Neo-Archaic

This article explores three terms of reference connected to late-nineteenthcentury ethnographies of British vernacular life—folklore, survivals in culture, and the neo-archaic. These descriptive vocabularies came to characterize homeland material culture and each expression became entrenched in museumbased discourse. The Folklore Society (FLS) made an abortive attempt to found an independent Museum of Folklore, in anticipation of which they deposited objects in the Museum of General and Local Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge. Similar artifacts were acquired by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford where, under the auspices of Edward Burnett Tylor, they were characterized as survivals from an earlier age. Similarly, Arthur Mitchell donated neo-archaic finds to the collections of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, arguing that such items exemplified the material resonance of the past in the present. This paper examines the emergence, impact, and agency of these interlinking terminologies, addressing their formative role in museological practice.

Michael Powell Siddons, Heraldic Badges in England and Wales, 1: Introduction; 2/1: Royal Badges; 2/2: Non-royal Badges; 3: Ordinaries. Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, for the Society of Antiquaries of London, in association with Illuminata Publishers, 2009. 1: pp. xix, 314 plus 64 black-and-white and color plates. 2/1: pp. xvi, 263. 2/2: pp. xii, 341. 3: pp.

Michael Powell Siddons, <i>Heraldic Badges in England and Wales</i>, 1: <i>Introduction;</i> 2/1: <i>Royal Badges;</i> 2/2: <i>Non-royal Badges;</i> 3: <i>Ordinaries.</i> Woodbridge, Eng., and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell and Brewer, for the Society of Antiquaries of London, in association with Illuminata Publishers, 2009. 1: pp. xix, 314 plus 64 black-and-white and color plates. 2/1: pp. xvi, 263. 2/2: pp. xii, 341. 3: pp.

The Lucubrations of his Leisure Hours: William Roy's Military Antiquities of the Romans in Britain 1793

This paper traces the early history of Roy's interest in Roman military antiquities in the 1750s and looks at the plans of Roman forts and camps which he made at that time, and discusses a selection of the maps which form the engraved plates of the published work. A principal conclusion is that Macdonald's assertion (1917) that the Society of Antiquaries of London's manuscript set of Roy's plans is by Roy himself, is in error, and that these plans were made instead by a Board of Ordnance draftsman.

The Sense of an Ending?Nord, David Paul, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson, eds. The Enduring Book, Print Culture in Postwar America. (A History of the Book in America, vol. 5). Chapel Hill, NC: Published in Association with the American Antiquarian Society by the University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xvi, 618 pp. Illus. Cloth, $60.00 (isbn 978-0-8078-3285-1).

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview EssayThe Sense of an Ending? Nord, David Paul, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson, eds. The Enduring Book, Print Culture in Postwar America. (A History of the Book in America, vol. 5). Chapel Hill, NC: Published in Association with the American Antiquarian Society by the University of North Carolina Press, 2009. xvi, 618 pp. Illus. Cloth, $60.00 (isbn 978-0-8078-3285-1).Andrew NashAndrew Nash Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Volume 105, Number 2June 2011 Published for the Bibliographical Society of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/680779 Views: 14Total views on this site © 2011 by the Bibliographical Society of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

An Eastern Perspective: the Society of Antiquaries and Indian Antiquities in the 1780s

AbstractThough Britain was the predominant European power in India from the middle of the eighteenth century, British scholars at first lagged behind their European contemporaries in the study of Indian antiquities. There were, quite simply, no British counterparts to such celebrated figures as Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron and Carsten Niebuhr. This paper investigates the efforts made by the Society of Antiquaries of London to remedy this situation, as demonstrated in particular by the publication of two early eighteenth-century accounts of the cave temples at Kanheri and Elephanta near Bombay in volume 7 (1785) of the Society's journal, Archaeologia. It argues that the impetus for the Society's efforts was provided by its Director, Richard Gough, who had family reasons for an interest in India and the East, but that the Society's role was largely superseded when Sir William Jones founded the Asiatick Society of Bengal.

John Carter, FSA (1748–1817): ‘The Ingenious, and Very Accurate Draughtsman’

AbstractJohn Carter's newly catalogued papers and correspondence in the archives of King's College London throw considerable new light on his relationship with members of the Society of Antiquaries and his patrons, and include previously unpublished sketches of several of them. His memoirs show that a small group of wealthy antiquaries recognized his skills as an accurate and conscientious draughtsman and encouraged him faithfully to record historic – and especially medieval – buildings and monuments. Many of these buildings were later altered or destroyed, and his numerous surviving drawings are thus of immense value to scholars. The opportunity has also been taken to publish a postscript with additional comments and corrections to the Society's monograph, John Carter and the Mind of the Gothic Revival (1995).

In Retrospect: A centennial look at Thomas J. Westropp's field records of the promontory forts of north County Mayo

In August 1910 Thomas J. Westropp visited a number of promontory forts in north-west County Mayo, including two very impressive examples: Doonamo on the Mullet Peninsula and a fort he called 'Dun Kilmore' on the island of Achillbeg. With customary diligence he described and commented on his findings in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. The paper, Notes on the larger cliff forts of the west coast of County Mayo (Westropp 1911, 11-133) is the subject of this retrospective. These particular forts were visited to provide context for the multi-disciplinary Clare Island Survey of 1909-11, to which Westropp contributed the archaeological and historical section (Westropp 1911, section 1, Part 2, 1-2.78). The 'cliff forts' paper also formed part of a long series of articles by Westropp on Irish promontory forts, published in the journals of the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland between 1906 and 1922. 1 The protracted fieldwork involved the greater part of it carried out in the years 1906 to 1915 saw Westropp visit most of the (then) known promontory forts along the western and southern coast-line.2 Along the way he discovered or brought to official attention a great number of other unrecorded forts. Subsequent work on the Leinster forts was curtailed by his early death at the

Northern Visions of Race, Region, and Reform in the Press and Letters of Freedmen and Freedmen's Teachers in the Civil War Era, http://mac110.assumption.edu/aas/intros/scholars.html. Created and maintained by the American Antiquarian Society Online Resource, American Antiquarian Society. Reviewed Jan.-March, 2010

Northern Visions of Race, Region, and Reform in the Press and Letters of Freedmen and Freedmen's Teachers in the Civil War Era, http://mac110.assumption.edu/aas/intros/scholars.html. Created and maintained by the American Antiquarian Society Online Resource, American Antiquarian Society. Reviewed Jan.-March, 2010

The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America. Edited by David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, published in association with the American Antiquarian Society, 2009. Pp. xvi+618. $60.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐8078‐3285‐1.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsThe Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America. Edited by David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, published in association with the American Antiquarian Society, 2009. Pp. xvi+618. $60.00 (paper). ISBN 978‐0‐8078‐3285‐1.Johanna Drucker, Johanna DruckerDepartment of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles Search for more articles by this author , Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los AngelesPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Library Quarterly Volume 80, Number 4October 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/655870 Views: 8Total views on this site © 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Mosaics of Britain - (D.S.) Neal, (S.R.) Cosh Roman Mosaics of Britain. Volume III: South-east Britain. In two parts. Pp. xx + 606, colour figs, b/w &amp; colour ills, colour maps. London: The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2009. Cased, £200, ISBN: 978-0-85431-289-4.

Mosaics of Britain - (D.S.) Neal, (S.R.) Cosh Roman Mosaics of Britain. Volume III: South-east Britain. In two parts. Pp. xx + 606, colour figs, b/w &amp; colour ills, colour maps. London: The Society of Antiquaries of London, 2009. Cased, £200, ISBN: 978-0-85431-289-4.