For the past few weeks, I have been working to identify each illustration and create a finding aid to assist readers who wish to study the set. What were at first a dizzying number of Crusoes in shaggy outfits and mostly naked “savages” have since sorted themselves in my mind into distinct series of images, each with its own personality: Phiz’s giddy seamen, Griset’s dark forests, de Sainson’s convincing scenery, etc. But there are still a few sets of illustrations in the edition that elude identification, and that, dear reader, is where you come in. The following images lack attribution, making them difficult to place. Can you identify the illustrator, engraver, or publisher of any of the illustrations below? If so, please leave a comment and I shall be forever grateful to you.

1. The long “s” in the caption to the following illustration indicates that it is from a relatively early edition of the novel. Interestingly, plates that look like this only appear in Vol. II of Penn’s edition (The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe).

“R. Crusoe saves the Crew of a Ship that took fire at Sea.”

2. Based on the images in David Blewett’s helpful volume, The Illustration of Robinson Crusoe, I believe the following image comes from the earliest illustrated edition of the novel published in French: La Vie et les aventures surprenantes de Robinson Crusoe, Amsterdam: L’Honoré Chatelain, 1720.  However, the illustrations were published again with a few variations in 1761 by Chez Cailliau, Dufour et Cuissart, Paris. Since the plates lack any sort of attribution and I have been unable to find an online version of either the 1720 or the 1761 edition, I am unable to determine which printing the plates are from. Like the early English edition above, Penn’s edition only has plates of this kind in Vol. II.3. The following set of images gives me even less information to work with than the previous two. There are only a few illustrations of this kind in Vol. I of our edition, and they are neither attributed nor captioned. Their style dates them to the 18th or very early 19th century.

Crusoe prays

Crusoe discovers human footprints

4. Last but not least, what is perhaps the most frustrating of the remaining mysteries: a set of very small illustrations, some which are signed Whimper. Josiah Wood Whimper (or Whymper) was a water-color painter, wood engraver and illustrator working in England in the mid-19th century. A few illustrations in our copy have Whimper’s named clearly marked at the bottom of the plate, as below:

Crusoe’s ship tossed at sea (attribution in bottom left corner)

With this signature, I was able to find an edition of Robinson Crusoe illustrated by Whimper and published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, an organization he worked for regularly. An online version of this edition allowed me to identify some of the plates without attribution in Penn’s copy as Whimper’s. But there are other plates in Penn’s copy that are clearly part of the same set (similar size and style) and are not a part of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge’s 1850 edition, as far as I can tell from the e-book. I have as yet been unable to find another edition of Crusoe that includes Whimper’s plates. Did Whimper illustrate another edition of Robinson Crusoe? Perhaps he reused some of the plates from the SPCK’s edition and created a few new ones to form the set present in Penn’s copy. Or perhaps his illustrations were used in an edition that also included works by other artists (this oftened happened with Crusoe). Below are a few unattributed plates from the series.

The fainting priest from Vol. II

Crusoe in his habitation, Vol. I

Hopefully the mysteries will be solved and the finding aid complete soon. Thank you in advance for your help!

Ellen Williams is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently working in Rare Book Cataloging and exploring ways to use Archivists’ Toolkit to create finding aids for printed ephemeral collections and serial publications.

Such was my coworker’s joy at teasing me about my latest finding aid project.

It’s hard to imagine that a monthly called The Adult: The Journal of Sex could be anything but “smut.” But open to the first page of Vol. I and you will find that the “organ of the Legitimation League” is hardly a dirty magazine. Instead, George Bedborough, The Adult’s editor, declares that the journal’s pages will “be open for the discussion of important phases of sex questions which are almost universally ignored elsewhere.”

The Legitimation League was founded in England in 1893 for the purpose of securing the legal rights of illegitimate children, rights which were still very much in question in late-Victorian Britain. By 1895, the League had voted to shift its agenda away from advocating for illegitimate children and toward advocating for adults in relationships considered illegitimate by conventional Victorian morality. The new agenda included the promotion of free unions, or cohabiting without marriage; some members of the organization also promoted free love. The Adult was founded in 1897 as a vehicle for advancing this new sexual morality.

The cataloging team was initially drawn to The Adult as a candidate for a finding aid by its eccentricities. Early issues include intriguing personal ads:

“A middle aged gentleman wishes to correspond with a lady aged 25 to 30 with a view to a permanent union on Ruedebusch’s principles. Please write in confidence with photo to Lyric, c/o Legitimation League. (In 1896 Emil F. Ruedebusch published a volume called The Old and the New Ideal: a Solution of that part of the Social Question which pertains to Love, Marriage and Sexual Intercourse.)

Later issues fill in white space with jokes such as these:

“‘Darling,’ he cried, in tender tones, ‘I never loved but thee!’ ‘Then we must part,’ the maid replied; ‘no amateurs for me!’”

But what really drew me into the project, and what makes The Adult invaluable research material, is not the jokes or the personal ads, but the discourse—the interchange of ideas—contained in its pages. In the journal’s introduction, Bedborough states his intention “to make The Adult a vehicle for the interchange of ideas, and a means for the removal of difficulties which may arise in connection with the experiences of those who favour freedom in sexual relationships.” He “requests the co-operation of all interested in the important subjects discussed in the columns of The Adult. Correspondence is invited…” He encourages those interested to contribute their thoughts to the journal and write with their personal questions, even if the letters are not intended for print.

Bedborough acknowledges from the beginning that there is much to be discussed in The Adult’s pages: many questions must be raised and addressed on the road to a coherent morality of sexual freedom. Topics range from birth control and the interplay of music, religion and sex to prostitution’s possible role in developing a society open to free love and the renewing of the  Contagious Diseases Acts in India. Such issues are raised and discussed openly in the journal’s pages. Often contributors write in answer to one another, arguing multiple sides of a complicated issue like birth control and honing their opinions along the way. In The Adult, conclusions are not foregone—as you read, you can see the contributors genuinely struggling together to form new positions, supported by creative scientific and philosophical thinking. Reading The Adult is exciting—the reader can see a new way of thinking emerging right before her very eyes. I was drawn in by the concept of a truly open format where people who cared about the same set of issues but didn’t necessarily agree on the conclusions tried to work them out together in writing, sharing their thoughts with the public.

But all good things must come to an end, and The Adult met its end rather quickly. A year or so into its publication, George Bedborough was arrested for selling a copy of Dr. Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion to an undercover policeman. While Ellis’s volume, the first scientific study of homosexuality published in English, was indeed scandalous, it seems the police were interested not in the book but in the Legitimation League. Surveillance of the group’s activities had left the police without a case: the content of The Adult was ‘within the law’ (not smut!) and ‘there was never any suggestion of indecorous behavior at League meetings.’ But the police worried that the success of The Adult and the growing popularity of the Legitimation League gave support to more dangerous groups. Though Bedborough’s friends organized to help him stand his ground, he plead guilty to the charges against him. An anarchist friend of the Legitimation League, Henry Seymour, stepped in to edit The Adult, but with financial difficulty and lack of direction, it quickly disintegrated, as did the Legitimation League itself.

I was genuinely sad to read to the end. Though I came for the unusual personal ads and the provocative title, I stayed for the creators’ honest desire to un-taboo “tabooed topics”—to discuss sexual morality and freedom in a public way—and the fascinating history of the people involved.

Penn holds a full run of The Adult. My finding aid, which lists the contents of every issue and gives more detailed background on the publication, can be found here.

Ellen Williams is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently working in Rare Book Cataloging and exploring ways to use Archivists’ Toolkit to create finding aids for printed ephemeral collections and serial publications.

Edith Barbara Tranter was secretary to W. T. H. Howe (1874-1939), president of the American Book Company in Cincinnati, and subsequently administrator of his estate. She appears herself to have collected books and manuscripts; her library was sold at auction by Parke-Bernet on March 18, 1952.

Penn Libraries call number: EC8 B7898 W857g

Motto: Invia virtuti via nulla (No way difficult for the virtuous)

Call Number:  AC8 G2877 833n

I am currently studying ancient Greek and Latin in the post-baccalaureate program in classics at the University of Pennsylvania, and traditionally post-bac students are good fits for rare book cataloging due to our prior language work and flexible schedules.  I came to Penn with a B.A. in Classical and Near Eastern Civilizations from Creighton University in Omaha, NE and two semesters each of college-level ancient Greek, Latin, and German.  With these qualifications I earned my position as a rare book cataloging assistant at the Van Pelt Library.  In general I work about 4 hours each day.  The general date range for the material I have worked with ranges from A.D. 1500 to 1800, apparently referred to as the “regular, boring” stuff since by this period printers had generally figured out the rules of their game and there was far less experimentation.

My first assignment was cataloging a bound series of decrees from the French National Convention in 1793.  In the midst of these completely ordinary laws I found a single judgment from the Revolutionary Tribunal ordering the execution of numerous enemies of the revolution, prime among them Georges Jacques Danton.  Curious, I researched further into the matter and discovered that Danton was one of the foremost figures of the French Revolution, and his execution in many ways marked the high-water mark and beginning of the end for Robespierre and the Jacobins.  It was quite a jolt to discover that all of these laws I was cataloging had been passed during the height of the Reign of Terror.  How bizarre it felt to know that every day 28+ people were being introduced to the “National Razor” out front while the National Convention passed laws for things as simple as regulating the price of cheese, or setting up pay tables for public employees.  The juxtaposition of ordinary government business and barbarism is a sure recipe for a surreal feeling.

Having finished the French Revolution decrees I moved on to the much more staid German legal scene with broadsides printed during the reigns of Karl I and Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, both of them dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg near the end of the Holy Roman Empire’s tenure.  As if in keeping with the German stereotype these were the most uniform and delightfully formulaic documents I’ve yet worked with.  Even their topics seemed to be formulaic.  As if according to a schedule, every two years or so another cattle plague would sweep the duchy.  One of the most entertaining moments I’ve yet had occurred when I found a decree relating to such a plague published “July 4, 1776.”  It was rather quirky to know that the day the Continental Congress adopted our Declaration of Independence, across the pond the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg was neck-deep in diseased cattle.

The German Culture Class collection has also introduced me to the world of seals and sigillography.  Oftentimes broadside copies that were signed directly by Karl I and his secretary would bear the ducal seal.  While cataloging seals may be a nightmare processing of minutiae for some, I have greatly enjoyed going in with a magnifying glass and making out the inscriptions and details of Karl’s coat of arms, and entering that into a special 590 note.  For much the same reason I have enjoyed rare book cataloging in general from Day 1.  I love the feeling of organizing things and setting them in order, whether it is describing a seal according to a set formula and putting that description in its right place or fixing a series of errors in an entire collection.  In other words, it feels good to bring order to chaos to help future generations of grad students and scholars.  I have also greatly enjoyed the increases to my knowledge that rare book cataloging has prompted.  Out of curiosity I have looked up the biographies of Karl I and Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand and the histories of Braunschweig-Lüneburg and of the Holy Roman Empire so as to better understand the context of the materials I am working with.  Thanks to this I have increased my knowledge on subjects that fall outside my chosen field of study, and even found surprising places where they intersect.  For example, I discovered that Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand made the acquaintance of Johann Winckelmann, one of the greatest art historians and archaeologists of the 18th century, while in Rome.
In addition to my work on the French and German materials I have also catalogued a series of Italian bando from Bologna concerning its public infrastructure and commerce laws in the 16th-18th centuries.  I went from being stranded overnight in that city’s train station this past summer to learning about its legal history during its time as a member of the Papal States.  These were quite a change-up from the German laws I had become accustomed to, as the Italians were, again as if according to stereotype, neither as neat nor formulaic as the Germans in their titles, document layouts, and contents.  I have also recently begun some work on the Spanish Culture Class collection, where I have run across records of documents from the prolific Spanish playwright Lope de Vega, and the sheer amount of records bearing his name are witness to that fact!

Looking back over my time so far as a rare book cataloging assistant, I must say my experience has been diverse, not just in nationality but also in content.  I have encountered things ranging from the surprising to the expected, and the exciting to the mundane.  I have seen the seemingly inexplicable practices of catalogers before me (why would someone painstakingly write the clearly legible dates of many of the German broadsides again in pencil at the foot of the document?) and no doubt left some of my own that will puzzle future ones (why did he think *that* detail was worthy of a 590 note?).  I have wondered equally how Penn came to be the final resting place for so many of Braunschweig-Lüneburg’s ducal laws, and why it has something called the “Early Printed Binding Waste Collection.”  Each experience has been a fun new milestone on what I believe I can fairly call an adventure, and I am very excited to continue it in the 2013 academic year.

From Chaff

Miss Leslie’s Magazine

Found in Emerson Bennett’s Dollar Monthly, Volume 1, Number 9, page 392.

Call Number: AP85.Em356 860b

From Miss Leslie’s Magazine, Volume 1