Tag Archives: special collections

Questions that arise when comparing transcriptions of two versions of Metamorphosis; or a transformation of pictures, with poetical explanations, for the amusement of young persons. Philadelphia Joseph Rakestraw no 256 North Third Street: 1814 and 1817

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By Jacqui Reid-Walsh and Colette Slagle

 

This metamorphosis book is important in the development of the strip format to a booklet format since the 1814 edition is the earliest known publication that includes a note to the child reader. The notes shows a concern for the potentially terrifying movable images and dire words on the readers’ psyches.

1814 version with mending tape. (Photo courtesy of Penn State Libraries, Special Collections) For larger view see image gallery page of website.

 

Unfortunately, one line of the note is largely obscured with what appears to be mending tape, an intervention that was presumably performed by an earlier collector. Fortunately, special collections also owns an 1817 edition also published by Rakestraw. It has the same cover and the same order and numbering of verses. Since it is in better condition we can easily read the full text of the note:

 

“That we may not mislead our lit-

tle readers, it is desired they would

understand the Mermaid and Grif-

fin to be only creatures of fable, that

never did exist.  And although Death

is represented in the form of a hu-

man skeleton, yet this is only an

emblem ; for Death is not a being,

but a state.”

 

1817 clean version of note to reader. (Photo courtesy of Penn State Libraries, Special Collections)

In addition, we noticed discrepancies between the two versions that take us back to all four versions transcribed so far (1810, 1811 {in the Bodleian), 1814 and 1817). The most obvious change in the 1817 version is the spacing in the final set of verses (no. 21) that unusually are presented as one stanza.  In the three earlier versions no. 21 is split into three stanzas. Furthermore, the final punctuation mark has changed slightly among the versions. In 1810 the verses end with a question mark, in 1811 the final punctuation is an exclamation point. In 1814 and 1817 a period is used.  The different punctuation marks change how the sentence is read and casts a different inflection on the final message. The lines read: “How little of our little time is spent/ In pleasing God, for which that time was lent” Reading aloud together we could hear how the moral changes considerably with different punctuation. We move from a question that demands an answer, to emotional affect, to neutral observation.

1810 version last set of verses ending with question mark. (Photo courtesy of Penn State Libraries, Special Collections)

1811 version last set of verses ending with an exclamation point. (Photo courtesy of Bodleian Libraries, Vet. K6 f.92)

1817 version with one stanza instead of three, and the verses ending with a period. (Photo courtesy of Penn State Libraries, Special Collections)

An experience of transcribing two turn-up books: Metamorphosis; or, a Transformation of Pictures… 1810 and 1811

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By Colette Slagle and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh

 

As Jacqui and I continue our experimental foray into semi-diplomatic transcription, we have made several small observations along the way, both about the texts themselves, as well as reflections on the transcribing process.  One such observation came out of comparing two versions of the Metamorphosis; or, a Transformation of Pictures, with Poetical Explanations for the Amusement of Young Persons, an 1810 version published by Solomon Wiatt, and an 1811 version published by Jonathan Pounder.

 

We transcribed Jonathan Pounder’s 1811 text at the Bodleian Library in Oxford first, back in May of this year.  Earlier this month, Jacqui and I transcribed Solomon Wiatt’s 1810 text at Penn State.  We noticed that both texts listed the same publishing address (No. 104, North Second Street, Philadelphia) though the people who published the texts were different. Jacqui speculated what their possible relationship might be.

 

It is useful to give a bit of context about the nature of the texts first.  The verses on each flap of the turn-up books are numbered, instructing the reader in which order they are meant to be read.  As Jacqui has previously noticed, the first twelve numbered verses are part of the original poem—they clearly correspond with the flaps and the transforming images.  The following additional verses were added later, and though the numbers suggest they are a continuation of the original poem, the lines themselves read like an entirely different poem.  The flap order also changes with the additional numbered verses—the images seem irrelevant to the meaning of the text after the original twelve verses.

 

While transcribing Pounder’s 1811 version in England, I ran into a conundrum.  In Pounder’s 1811 text there are two 12s listed in his text.  One is obviously part of the original poem, while the second is located on the back of the artifact.  This second 12 includes 3 stanzas—the longest of any of the numbered verses on the text.  At the time, I was not sure where to put this second 12 in my transcript.  Did I put it after the first 12?  Was it meant to go at the end of the poem instead?  I decided to follow the order suggested by the numbers at the time, placing the two 12s next to each other, though it seemed a bit odd.  I read the three stanzas as a turning point in the poem, thinking that perhaps it was meant to act as a climactic moment in the text to help shift between the original 12 verses and the additional verses.

 

After transcribing Wiatt’s earlier 1810 version this month, it became clear that Pounder’s version was more than likely a misprint.  Instead of two 12s, the verse on the back of Wiatt’s version was labeled 21, placing these three stanzas at the very end of the poem.  Jacqui speculated that the printer likely set the type incorrectly in Pounder’s version—given it needed to be done upside-down and backwards—and simply left the mistake in due to its being an instance of “cheap print.”

Wiatt’s 1810 version with the correct numbering. (Special Collections, Penn State Libraries)

 

Pounder’s 1811 version with two sets of verses numbered 12.  (Bodleian Library, Oxford University Vet. K6 f.92)

Although a simple typographical mistake, it drastically changed the way I transcribed the text—and, perhaps, the way the text was read as well.

Back to Metamorphosis books: What is quasi-diplomatic transcription?

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By Jacqueline Reid-Walsh and Colette Slagle

Since coming back from England mid-May, one joy has been going to Rare Books once a week. When visiting home in Montreal over the summer, I went to McGill; now that I am starting back in State College, I am making my first visits to Special Collections at Penn State. While in Oxford I was encouraged to pursue my close comparisons of the Beginning, Progress and End of Man with the Metamorphosis books and with the homemade versions. Not the least important discovery is my learning of a German language tradition from collectors Mr. Alcock and Mr. Temperly, and through email on the project website to (retired curator) Sandra Stelts a German scholar Dr. Schultz who has written articles on the subject. These I can admire only in terms of the visuals but am looking for someone to translate for me for a modest sum.

 

One way to extend my project thinking is my aim to teach myself quasi or semi-diplomatic transcription since I realized that no two versions of the turn-up books were the same. My questions concern how to recognize which changes are trivial and which are important. To do this, I came to appreciate that apart from carefully photographing the items, I needed a detailed transcription of each text. I first became acquainted with this process when sitting in on Dr. Richard Virr’s classes in descriptive bibliography at McGill where they transcribed ornate title pages of early printed books. I thought, yes, it makes sense with those priceless objects, but what about 17th -19th century “cheap print” and children’s and families’ homemade texts?

 

In Oxford I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Giles Bergel and learning about his digital project devoted to the variants of the ballad, “The Wandering Jew” at:  http://wjc.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Apart from the fact he is a computer whiz and a literary scholar, his project is devoted to another “cheap print” text and one component is this kind of transcription. Here my question was—how detailed should this be? Just before leaving England, I copied a couple of Metamorphosis in the Bodleian in a cursory way along with my research assistant Colette Slagle. Over the summer I looked repeatedly at several copies of the Metamamophosis at McGill. First, I practiced normalizing the spelling and ignoring the font style of the verses, but soon realised this reduced the visual dimension and the characteristics and individual spelling of the verses.

 

What is semi-diplomatic transcription anyway? In “Electronic Textual Editing: Levels of transcription” by M. J. Driscoll on the TEI or text encoding initiative at http://www.tei-c.org/About/Archive_new/ETE/Preview/driscoll.xml, I found clear definitions and examples. Driscoll defines diplomatic transcription in the following way:

“[T]here are transcriptions which may be called strictly diplomatic, in which every feature which may reasonably be reproduced in print is retained. These features include not only spelling and punctuation, but also capitalization, word division and variant letter forms. The layout of the page is also retained, in terms of line-division, large initials, etc. Any abbreviations in the text will not be expanded, and, in the strictest diplomatic transcriptions, apparent slips of the pen will remain uncorrected.”

Recalling sitting in on Dr. Richard Virr’s descriptive bibliography class, I realised this is what the students were doing with the frontispieces of the early printed books they were examining.

 

Driscoll’s notes go on to state that the opposite process is fully normalized transcriptions, which hardly seem like transcriptions, especially with early materials. I discovered this with my attempts to modernize the spelling and fonts of the over 50 printed Metamorphic books since the verses are in many cases close to one another, so the differences reside not only in occasional verse alternations and additions but also in how they are represented by the printers over a hundred-year period.

 

The article says that the in-between method is called semi-diplomatic or semi-normalized—but how much in either direction? I looked over the list of aspects:  Forms of letters, punctuation, capitalization, structure and layout, abbreviations, corrections and emendations. I realise that although many of the examples are from scribal culture or early printed books, I would like to make the transcription as “diplomatic” as possible (love the pun).  My logic is that the visual aspect in the piece is as important at the verbal, and that the visual encompasses not only the woodcut illustrations but the presentation and the appearance of the verse.

 

Accordingly, I have decided that I want to reproduce the visual effects of typographical variants, such as the long s that looks like an f, capitalizations, abbreviations, the contractions, the punctuation and spelling, and importantly the structure and layout since the text is verse. Although this may be too detailed, it may help me understand the changes the text underwent over the years. Since the illustrations were often updated, I am interested in whether the temporal “modernizations” occurred on both the verse and the woodcuts together or not.  Now that I am back at Penn State looking at the published and homemade versions, I realise that the quasi or semi-diplomatic transcript is the format I need to learn to use.

As shown by the automatic spell check in the transcription, the word processor marks  a non-normalized word as an error. As I have come to realise, the contractions capture the informal tone of the speaking voice that would be erased by normalized spelling.

 

Another avenue of questioning, which we will address in a later blog, concerns the paratextual matter of the sampler-like letters and numbers that are also different in some books. I need to learn more about how they were printed. They surround the woodcut illustrations yet feature capital letters—were they set with regular type or special carved blocks?

Behind the scenes of a slowly unfurling performance

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Participating as guest curator on the “Playing to Learn; Learning as Play” exhibit has been a novel learning experience for me. I have always loved going to special collections displays as well as to art gallery shows and wandering around, gazing at the artifacts, reading the labels and signs, and pondering what story I see being told to the perambulating viewer. To be involved with such a display has been one of my non-secret dreams. The difference between imagining such a role and doing the role is vastly different and in some ways parallels the difference between being a library user or reader, an outsider role, and a worker in a collection, an insider role. The reference desk in a rare books room symbolizes the separation and is the liminal space between. I have now temporarily gone behind the desk to enter the secret library, the one that appears at night when it is closed to the public.

 

A number of times over the winter Sandy and I have stayed after hours or come in early before the library opens to work on the display: to search the catalogue, to decide on what materials to select, to sort objects in groups and one memorable day to gingerly lay the objects in a possible order on top of the closed display cases with another display still inside! This was in order to gain a sense of the visual impact of the items and their potential location within the cases and to understand the relation between the cases and so determine their numbering. The proximity and order helps us determine a potential route for a visitor and their movement amongst the overall display, which also includes posters on walls, high display cases, and a large screen. A daunting activity for me was when we had to write promotional material before the display was in its final form. This is the complete opposite of academic writing.

 

This turn-around world reminds me of a couple of things. One is a silly movie set in a large natural science museum at night—it had Ben Stiller as the lead actor—and the various prehistoric creatures had a busy and complicated night life. In our situation, the objects did not come alive when we were working as did his dinosaurs, but the idea of a secret world waiting to unfurl was very present. The experience also reminded me of working backstage with many others to create a slowly unfurling theatrical performance for the public who only see a finished product. Moreover, the display is not a static entity but an active constellation of objects temporarily fixed in a case. Still more are being added. And like any performance or instillation, it is temporary.

 

Come one, come all to our big show!

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game board masquerade blocks - verticalCome one come all to the display Sandy Stelts and I are co-curating in special collections at Penn State library! Images of old circus flyers and sounds of the old Ed Sullivan show merge in my head as I announce it.

Called “Playing to Learn, Learning as Play: 17th- to 19th-century ‘Play-things’ for Children” it is new exhibition on through June 3 in the Special Collections Library, 104 Paterno Library, on Penn State’s University Park campus. The exhibition features dozens of 17th- to 19th-century children’s ‘play-things’ — including toys, games and books once owned by busy, active children.

The materials range from geographic and moral board games to dissected maps or puzzles; from paper dolls to metamorphic turn-up books; and from antic harlequinades to complex movable books.

Some of these items enabled children to make artifacts themselves, as 17th-century philosopher John Locke urged in his famous dictum in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). Learning and playing had not previously been linked together, and Locke argued that children’s learning should be a playful, interactive experience.

The materials in the exhibition trace the interconnected European, British and American trajectory in the development of educational “play-things,” and they all invited participatory engagement with children who were readers, viewers and players. The invitation to participate actively was achieved in different ways: by working with drawing kits, construction toys, storytelling blocks and toy theaters, for example. To enhance this aspect, we displayed items, as much as possible, shown in process of being played with, whether a construction toy or story telling cards or paper doll book.

The library site also includes a couple of lovely photos that I include below taken by Jill Shockey. The first shows a board game with play in process. The Swiss puzzle “To the far west” invites you into the display and travel around winding through the 12 cases. It also shows the travel trajectory many of the items, from Europe to the United States. The second items are   masquerade blocks and flat wooden pieces similarly captured in play. They are three dimensional and two dimensional visual storytelling games, much like today’s head, body and tail books and toys.

My doctoral student Laura D’Aveta took a photo of me standing beside the poster outside the library. I was taken by surprise but thrilled as you can see. Imagine this blog entry as me hailing to one and all to come into our display. I will describe the items, categories, route of the display and the long genesis in later posts.

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