So, one day when I wasn't wandering the beach (sadly, I never did get to the beach) I had the pleasure of hearing a paper delivered by Jonathan Senchyne who is currently completing his dissertation at Cornell University. Senchyne presented on rag content in early modern paper and the textual evidences of that material reality in the poetry of Anne Bradstreet. (Take another look at "Author to Her Book," and you will begin to see that presence!) During his presentation, Senchyne offered us the startling image of a page from the Library of Congress copy of Tenth Muse with a piece of unprocessed rag still clearly visible in the paper. One of the great pleasures of doing book history scholarship in the archive is that there are still such revelations to be granted by the artifact. As Senchyne presents it, the rag in the page at the Library of Congress is beautiful emblem not only of the dependence of the paper industry upon domestic sphere but also a reminder that Bradstreet was – like other early modern readers and writers – savvy about the international, material contexts of print production.The image of this book put me in mind of another artifact. The American Antiquarian Society owns a 1678 Boston imprint of Bradstreet’s poems, and the covers of this volume are stiffened with printer’s waste paper. Clearly visible within the stretched leather edges of the inside cover are the discarded pages of what appears to be an Algonquian language catechism. Here we see Bradstreet’s poems, originally printed in England, now reprinted in New England with posthumous additions, all bound up in the materiality of European-Indian encounter and the rising local print economy. To me, this volume has always served as a material emblem of the early history of New England printing.
Hearing Senchyne’s account of the rags in the page, I was reminded that there are many such material emblems out there to tantalize our historical imagination. I began to think more about the role of the artifact in book history approaches to literary scholarship. Specifically, how do we deal with the serendipity and idiosyncrasy of the material archive? How broadly can we make claims based on individual cases? How do we put two disparate emblems – rags in a book and a book bound in an Indian language catechism, for example – into dialogue with each other? How do we theorize the meaning of what is extant and, more problematically, what is no longer extant?
Just some thoughts in my post-Bermudian, post-SEA glow. Chime in if you wish.
