Rare Books @ NLS

I am Andrew Brown, I am currently a postgraduate intern working within Rare Books. My project involves working out the provenance of some of the books the National Library of Scotland (NLS) holds. Today I would like to talk about a book which has particularly interested me; Sydney Parkinson’s A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, a book which has a colourful history, and some remarkable contents which give us an insight into travel writing in the eighteenth century and some of the issues faced by publishers if the author died at sea.

Sydney Parkinson was born in Edinburgh in the early eighteenth century and had been commissioned by the botanist Joseph Banks to paint watercolours of materials brought back from earlier expeditions to Newfoundland and Labrador. Banks invited Parkinson on James Cook’s first voyage (Banks was the botanist) as part of his private team, during which Parkinson would be responsible for natural history sketches. Unfortunately, the second artist, Alexander Buchan who was responsible for portraits and topography, died early in the voyage and Parkinson had to do both jobs. Luckily, other crew members were able to help.

Parkinson died of dysentery at sea after contracting it while the ship was docked at Batavia (modern Jakarta). Nevertheless, during the voyage Parkinson had drawn over one thousand pictures, collected botanical samples and had written a journal, all of which came into the possession of  Joseph Banks.

An engraving of a Maori canoe from one of Sydney Parkinson's drawings

This is where it gets interesting. The expedition had circumnavigated New Zealand and explored the East coast of New Holland (modern Australia) and therefore anything relating to the voyage would be of great interest in Britain. This led to a dispute between Stanfield Parkinson, Sydney’s brother and Joseph Banks. Banks, believing he had a duty to allow the family to read the journal (although firmly in the belief that he owned all the rights to it) handed the book over to Stanfield who promptly arranged for its publication. John Fothergill, a family friend of the Parkinsons from their time in Edinburgh, was brought in to arrange a compromise between the two men. The book, however, was published by Stanfield in 1773 with an attack in the preface on Bank’s conduct during the affair.

Fothergill, when he discovered this, was outraged, and immediately bought all remaining copies. He added explanatory remarks to Stanfield’s preface indicating that Banks had done nothing wrong,  maintained his dignity, and made concessions to the Parkinson family throughout the whole affair. The final edition was published in 1784 after both Fothergill and Stanfield had died.

One of the four copies the NLS holds is also bound with maps and charts of the voyages of George Anson, Cook and George Anson Byron, cousin of the infamous Lord Byron. There is also a pamphlet from 1773 and an obituary of Captain Cook, who died in 1779, included in the book. There is a note just inside the back cover explaining that this was done in 1982, maybe in order to keep this collection of memorabilia together.

But perhaps the most interesting part included in the collation is a letter from Fothergill to the future bishop of Dromore, Thomas Percy while he was chaplain to the Duke of Northumberland. The letter is very important. It shows that this copy of the journal was an earlier republication of the 1784 edition. The letter also contains information that Fothergill’s remarks will be inserted into the Duke of Northumberland’s copy of the journal and that Percy, since he has connections to nobility he will be able to supply further copies to people he was acquainted with.

The 1784 edition of the book is not identical to the version in which we find Fothergill’s letter.  Parkinson’s journal was extended following his death and another copy within the Rare Book collection shows that the extended edition published in 1784 contains accounts of other scientific voyages of the eighteenth century, including an account of the circumnavigation of John Byron during the Seven Years War as well as the second and third voyages of Captain Cook. It appears that publishers wanted to cash in on the popularity of naval explorations during the eighteenth century.

Some Further Information

My name is Mary Crawford and I am an a postgraduate student from the University of Edinburgh currently interning in the Rare Books Department here at the National Library of Scotland. I am writing today to tell you about a really interesting item I found in the course of doing provenence research on the rare book collections. I came across a book by Conrad Schluesselburg entitled, The Catalogue of Heretics, by Conrad Schlusselburg, Doctor and Teacher of Theology, Book Eight. (NLS Gray.865). This book has several names inscribed on the titlepage foremost among which is the signature of John Donne in the bottom right hand corner.

Now you may be wondering, how do you know it is THE John Donne who owned this book and not just some other, less famous, John Donne? Well, we know because John Donne was a consistent and methodical book collector who always marked his books the same way. His books have three obvious marks.

First, his distinctive signature “J:Donne” always appears in the bottom right hand corner of the title page (as seen to the left). Secondly, his Italian motto, “Per Rachel ho servitor, & non per Lea” always appears at the head of the title page. (For more information on his motto, check out the article by Geoffrey Keynes cited below) And lastly, the margins of his books are often marked with small neat pencil ticks next to passages that Donne found particularly interesting. All of these marks are present in the Schluesselburg text (as seen below).

In addition to John Donne, the names, R. Baillie, M.R. Young and Hugo Blarus (Hugh Blair, no known relation to the Scottish literary critic) are also inscribed on the title page dating from the 17^th century. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find any record of M.R. Young or Hugh Blair but R. Baillie is actually Robert Baillie, minister for the Church of Scotland and Principle of Glasgow University from 1661 until his death in 1662.

Now, using these details it is possible to create a rough framework for the book. First and foremost, considering the book was published in 1599 in Frankfurt, how did it come to Britain? Since there is no evidence that Baillie ever went to Germany, this seems to suggest that it was John Donne who acquired it in Frankfurt during his travels and brought it back. So, assuming he got the book at that point and brought it back to England, it most likely reached its next author upon Donne’s death in 1631 when his library was dissolved and sold. From there it becomes almost impossible to trace other then to say that at some point it made its way up to Scotland. Robert Baillie seems a likely candidate for that movement because he lived mostly in Glasgow but made relatively frequent trips to London in the 1640s on church business. The next definite point we can trace is 1961 when the book was donated to the National Library of Scotland by the town of Haddington as part of the Gray Collection. This collection was largely made up of the books of Reverend John Gray former minister of Aberlady (in Lothian) who lived from 1646-1717 and donated his whole book collection to the town of Haddington upon his death. While we cannot be completely sure, it would seem likely that this book was acquired by Rev. Gray at the end of the 17^th century and donated along with the rest of the collection. (This would explain the lack of ownership inscriptions from the 18^th, 19^th or 20^th centuries.) Although we might never know all of the details of this book’s provenence, we can be absolutely sure that it had quite an interesting life before arriving at the National Library of Scotland!

Further Reading:

Bibliography of John Donne, by Geoffery Keynes (Oxford: 1973)

“Books from John Donne’s Library” by Geoffrey Keynes in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society (1949 Vol. 1 No. 1) avaible online through JSTOR (accessible through NLS licensed digital collections)

More Books from the Library of John Donne, by Hugh Adlington in The Book Collector (Spring 2012, vol. 61. No. 1)

This year’s Edinburgh Book Fair is taking place at the Radisson Blu hotel on Edinburgh’s High Street on 8 and 9 March. The Fair is jointly organised by the two professional bodies for the UK antiquarian book trade, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA) and the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA).

This is the biggest book fair in Scotland, attracting a wide range of book dealers from throughout the UK. So if you are in the vicinity and want to see (and buy!) lots of interesting rare books, this is the place for you! Entry is free to everyone. Hope to see you there!

We have reached the first milestone in digitising all our out-of-copyright books in Gaelic: the first 50 are now freely accessible and can be read in full on our website about Early Gaelic Book Collections! The digitised books were published between 1631 and 1900 and cover mostly literary and religious subjects from poetry and songs to translations of John Bunyan’s works, editions of the Psalms and the Bible, catechisms and Gaelic hymns.

That sounds like a lot of religious stuff, and it is! The first Gaelic book that was not concerned with anything religious was only published in 1741. That was a Gaelic-English Dictionary (H.M.109(1)), obviously the first of its kind. You can also access this Galick and English Vocabulary online.

One of the highlights of the first batch of 50 items in Gaelic is the second ever book printed in Gaelic. It is a translation of John Calvin’s Catechism,(F.7.g.5(2)) and ours is the only known surviving copy!

It is a remarkable fact that none of the 50 books now availble online have any illustrations.

Although NLS does not collect paintings, there are six hanging in our George IV Bridge building (though not in public spaces) and now you can see them all through the BBC — Your Paintings website.  They all relate in some way to the history of the Library. 

My favourite painting is this portrait of Thomas Ruddiman.  He joined the staff of the Advocates Library in 1702 and was appointed Keeper in 1730.  He retired — after almost 50 years in the job — in January 1752.  Arriving only 20 years after the first books were bought in 1682, he had a strong influence on the shaping of the Advocates Library, whose non-legal books and manuscripts were given to the nation in 1925 to help found the National Library of Scotland.

Ruddiman was a man of great energy and many talents.  Generations of school children knew his name as the author of The Rudiments of the Latin Tongue (1714) which in the 19th century was entitled Ruddiman’s Rudiments. He must surely have had this possibility in mind when he chose his original title!  You can get some idea of his reputation from the fact that James Boswell told Dr Johnson that he ‘had some intention to write the life of the learned and worthy Thomas Ruddiman’, to which Johnson replied ‘I should take pleasure in helping you to do honour to him.’ Unfortunately this never happened.

The digitisation of these paintings — 210,000 of them from over 2,800 collections all over the UK – is the work of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a registered charity set up for this purpose in 2003.

We recently acquired a copy of Thomas a Kempis’s famous devotional work De imitatione Christi (Bdg.s.950), which was printed in Mechelen, Germany, in 1885. The book is of particular interest because of its modelled goatskin binding:

The binding is in the style of the Scottish bookbinder Annie MacDonald (d. 1924), who invented the very technique for modelling leather for bookbindings. The design is traced onto the dampened leather and a small tool called a Dresden is used to carefully press the background and mould the relief design. Undressed goatskin mellows with age from white to the rich amber colour you can see in the image.

Annie MacDonald, who got her inspiration from medieval books, began teaching herself and others in the early 1890s. That group became known as the Edinburgh Arts and Crafts Club.

This binding was almost certainly done by an accomplished pupil of Annie MacDonald’s. A possible clue to her identity is given by an inscription on one of the front endpapers: Kathleen from M.D.M. ‘M.D.M.’ may be Mrs. Douglas Maclagan, one of the Edinburgh women binders.

Find out more about Scottish decorative bookbinding on our website. You can also view a selection of Scottish bindings.

George Augustus Eliott (1717-1790) may not be a very familiar name to many of us, but in the 18th century he was quite a celebrity. Born in Stobs, Roxburghshire, Elliot is best remembered for his leadership of the British garrison of Gibraltar. He arrived there as governor in 1779 and under his leadership the garrison managed to hold firm against the attack by French and Spanish forces until the lifting of the siege in 1783. The celebrated Scottish army officer, Lieutenant General and Governor of Gibraltar George Elliot later became first Baron Heathfield of Gibraltar (1717-1790). 

We recently bought a second edition of a German biography of Elliot. Entitled Elliots Leben (Elliot’slife) (AB.1.212.43), it was written by Johann Nicolaus Carl Buchenroeder. Elliot was still alive when it first appeared. The publication of a German biography of Elliot is a testimony to the role the Hanoverian soldiers played in the epic defence of Britain’s strategic outpost at Gibraltar. The book also has an added historical and geographical description of Gibraltar.

Find out more about George Elliot in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections).

We have recently bought an incunable. Incunabulum is Latin for “things in the cradle”, and the term means an item that was printed before 1501, i.e. during the infancy of printing with movable type.

A book’s title page as we know it, with title, subtitle, author’s name, publisher’s name, and date and place of publication, was only fully developed by 1500. Before that, the author’s name and the title of the book usually appeared in the heading of the first page and then the printer launched straight into the text. This is also the case with our new acquisition:

We don’t often buy incunables because there are no Scottish ones: printing in Scotland did not start until 1508. The reason why we purchased this one has to do with its topic. The book is by the Roman historian Tacitus (AD 56-117) and it contains the first printing of his biography of Agricola. Agricola was Tacitus’ father-in-law, and, more importantly, the Roman general and governor of Britain who extended Roman occupation northwards into Scotland. So, in this incunable we find the first substantial historical account of events in what is now Scotland! It also gives the first published account of a battle on Scottish soil: the Battle of Mons Graupius.  There is even a mention of the “objectionable climate with its frequent rains and mists”!

This incunable was printed in Milan in 1487. The text was edited by the famous Italian Renaissance scholar Francesco Dal Pozzo (Franciscus Puteolanus) (d. 1490), a professor of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Bologna.

The Library has acquired a collection of individual issues of the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser newspaper from 1787 through to 1788, which probably contain the first examples of Robert Burns’s work in print in the USA! Each issue prints a poem or song by Burns to give American readers a taster of his poetry. This happenend before the first American edition Burns’s Poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect was published in July 1788.
The appearance of Burns’s work in an American newspaper, just over a year after his poems were first published in Kilmarnock shows how rapidly Burns’s fame spread in the English-speaking world. It’s also a good indicator of how close the trade and cultural ties between Scotland and the USA in the late 1780s were.

The Philadelphia story

The American edition of Burns’s Poems was the brainchild of two ex-pat Scots based in Philadelphia: Peter Stewart, a printer and bookseller, and George Hyde, a bookbinder. Copies of the Kilmarnock, or, more likely, the 1787 Edinburgh edition of Poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect must have crossed the Atlantic soon after publication. As there were no copyright laws restricting the publication of the works of British authors in the new republic, it was a relatively simple matter to print an American edition without having to worry about prosecution or payment of royalties to the author. Rather than issue a prospectus for their work, Stewart and Hyde chose the tried and tested 18th-century method of having individual poems printed in a newspaper before publishing a full edition.
The Philadelphia-printed Pennsylvania Packet was America’s first successful daily newspaper. At the time Philadephia was the financial and cultural centre of the USA, and therefore an obvious choice to showcase the poems. 25 poems were published at regular intervals in the newspaper from 24 July 1787 to 14 June 1788. The poems selected for publication which are best known today are probably “The cotter’s Saturday night” and “To a louse”.
Stewart and Hyde’s aim was to portray Burns as a sentimental, God-fearing ploughman, at one with nature and sympathetic to the American colonists who had recently freed themselves from British control. They could also count on Scottish settlers’ feelings of nostalgia for their homeland. To further promote the forthcoming edition, the newspaper also printed Henry Mackenzie’s positive review of Burns’s work, which first appeared in The Lounger in Edinburgh in December 1786 and then in The London Chronicle, which did much to publicise Burns to a wider readership in Britain.
The 1788 Philadelphia edition of Burns’s poems was followed by a New York edition printed in December of the same year. It was also published by ex-pat Scots, J. and A. Maclean, formerly of Glasgow.

The collection in the National Library

The collection of Pennsylvania Packet issues acquired by the Library contains all of the poems by Burns to have been printed in that newspaper except for one: “Scotch Drink”. It also includes two issues (7 July and 16 July 1788) containing the original publisher’s advertisement for the first American edition, and an issue ( 28 August 1787) advertising “A select collection of the most favourite Scots tunes, with variations for the piano forte or harpsichord [sic]“, composed by Alexander Reinagle.
The newspaper issues were offered to the Library by Frank Amari Jnr., a collector and dealer of early American printing and manuscripts. Mr Amari has his own particular connection to Scotland, since his mother was born and raised in Edinburgh. Two of the issues have been donated by his mother in memory of her parents, the rest were purchased from Mr Amari.

You can read more about Robert Burns in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections), and in our webpage about Burns.

Today is National Poetry Day! I’d like to celebrate this event by showcasing how a poem can act as a link between nations, in this case between Scotland and Germany.

In 1802, Walter Scott published his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (Bk.5/1.3-4), a collection of “historical and romantic ballads, collected in the southern counties of Scotland”, as the subtitle said. One of these poems, ‘O gin my love were yon red rose’, was translated by Wilhelm Grimm, one half of the brothers of fairy tale fame, into German. He published this poem both in the Scots original and on the facing page in German translation along with two other Scottish ballads in a small booklet entitled Drei altschottische Lieder (5.637(13)),  i.e. Three Old Scots songs. A copy of this small book is on show in the Grimms Treasure display.

Here is a transcript of the poem ‘O gin my love were yon red rose’, which, according to the Lay of the last minstrel, comes from Mr Herd’s manuscript:

O gin my love were yon red rose,           �
That grows upon the castle wa’,       �
And I mysell a drap of dew,                                       �
Down on that red rose I would fa’.        �
O my love’s bonny, bonny, bonny;                         �
My love’s bonny and fair to see:
Whene’er I look on her weel far’d face,      �
She looks and smiles again to me.

O gin my love were a pickle of wheat,
And growing upon yon lily lee,
And I mysell a bonny wee bird,
Awa wi’ that pickle o’ wheat I wad flee.
O my love’s bonny, &c.

O gin my love were a coffer o’gowd,
And I the keeper o’ the key,
I wad open the kist whene’er I list,
And in that coffer I wad be.
O my love’s bonny, &c.

You can read more about Walter Scott in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessible through NLS Licensed Digital Collections).
Have a look at Edinburgh University’s Walter Scott Digital Archive for more information on the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.