A Place of Reading

A Place of

Reading Three Centuries of Reading in America ~ An American Antiquarian Society Online Exhibition

2010.

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A Place of Reading

In Memory of

Isaiah Thomas

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A Place of Reading Contents Introduction Background Isaiah Thomas, Reader

Part I – The Exhibit: Three Centuries of Reading Places The Colonial Home Revolutionary Taverns Personal Libraries of Early Presidents: Washington (1732-1799) Adams (1735-1826) Jefferson (1743-1826) NSEW: Newspapers, Periodicals & the Popular Press Reading at the Front: The Civil War Conclusion

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Part II: Image Bank of Reading Places Reading Music in the Music Room and Beyond Reading in the Kitchen Reading in Bed Reading at the Bath Reading at Work Reading in Reading Places Reading in Prison Libraries Reading in Public Spaces Women Readers Little Readers Reluctant and Imaginative “Readers”

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Bibliography About

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A Place of Reading

Figure 1.1 The Spirit of '76.

A print depicting a Revolutionary War scene engraved by H. S. Sadd from the original painting by T. H. Matteson. Note the newspaper in the nursemaid’s arms to the right and the almanac hanging on the wall by the door.

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Introduction

goal of this exhibition, and one of the goals of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) itself, is to engage scholars in the study of the history of the book. The history of reading is but one component of this broad and dynamic field of scholarship. It is also an exceptionally difficult one. In highlighting the locations where individuals performed the act of reading in America, through the use of images and objects from the AAS collections, we hope to tell a story. It is not a definitive story by any means, but a story of three centuries' worth of individuals 'caught' in the act of reading in homes, taverns, libraries, military camps, parlors, kitchens, and beds, among other places.

At times we can see a person reading in a specific location; at other times people tell us where they are reading; and sometimes we have to perform leaps of faith and imagine, for example, a cookbook being read in the kitchen. It’s the only logical location. Or is it? Our hope is that this exhibition will encourage other students of the history of the book to expand on this topic in as many imaginative and varied ways as the Society’s collection permits.

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Figure 1.2 South Side, Main Hall, 2nd Building of the American Antiquarian Society, 1854–1910.

The American Antiquarian Society has always offered a space for readers. This archival photo of the second Antiquarian Hall shows reading tables in the room to the left and couches scattered about the interior.

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Background he United States of America is a country founded by readers. Lots of them. And even though historical literacy rates continue to be debated by scholars, all agree that they rose in the years following settlement. From the early 1600s until 1690, perhaps as many as 60 to 90 percent of urban males of European descent were literate. And women’s literacy was quick to follow. By 1800 about half of the female population was literate. It is believed that by 1850, that number had nearly doubled to 90 percent. A few years later, African Americans were finally afforded the opportunity of instruction in reading, and they too leaped at the chance. Somewhat like the Internet today, books, broadsides, magazines, and newspapers were novel and exciting objects that entertained, educated, and kept readers abreast of the happenings in the world they lived in. Many such publications were read to pieces. Literally.

During the early colonial period, books were seen as rarefied objects, most prohibitively expensive, and some almost impossible to obtain no matter what the cost. In time, presses were established, trade improved, machines were invented, paper became affordable, and, finally, the price of books went down.

But books were still cherished; they were read, saved, and handed down. By the early 1900s the vast majority of the American population—rich or poor, black or white, male or female—were readers. This is their story.

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Figures 1.3-4 History & Adventures of Little Eliza.

Children’s books were notoriously read “to pieces.” Little Eliza is an example of a well-read book, with many torn pages and careful hand stitching used to repair them.

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Isaiah Thomas, Reader

he History of Reading at the American Antiquarian Society begins not with a place, but with a person by the name of Isaiah Thomas. In the course of history Isaiah Thomas (1749–1831) has been called many things: printer, patriot, philanthropist, bibliophile, author of the first book on printing in America (it was titled History of Printing and appeared in1810), and, of course, founder of AAS. Above all, however, he was a reader. It was Thomas’s passion for the printed word, and the freedom to print the written word, that motivated him throughout his life.

Thomas’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Thomas, wrote in 1874 that although his grandfather was busy with business, Thomas “always found some time for reading and study. He was strongly attached to the art, [to] which for nearly half a century, he had been devoted.” Although Thomas himself is strangely quiet on the topic of reading, the monument he built to facilitate this act speaks volumes. Today the American Antiquarian Society holds some three million books, manuscripts, newspapers, prints, and ephemera. Antiquarian Hall is a notable space for reading.

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Right Figure 1.5 Ethan Allen Greenwood’s portrait of Isaiah Thomas Sr. (1749–1831), June 1818.

Left Figure 1.6 Bookplate belonging to Isaiah Thomas, Early American Bookplates Collection.

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A Place of Reading

Part I: The Exhibit

Three Centuries of

Reading Places

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The Colonial Home

rior to the nineteenth century, few homes had spaces dedicated exclusively to reading.

From the time of the first settlements in Jamestown (1607) and Plymouth (1620) until the establishment of a few early institutions of higher learning and subscription libraries in the 1730s, the private home library remained the primary place devoted exclusively to reading. Most individuals, however, could not afford lavish libraries in their homes, so the open kitchen hearth was often the most practical reading space. A sunny window, a lantern, or a single tallow candle provided enough light to pursue one’s reading pleasures, whatever the location in the house.

Children learned to read in the home, and once proficient at reading, colonials continued reading at home until death or poor eyesight rendered this activity impossible. [figure 2.1] “She did her Self approve where ever god by his providence did cause her to remove a careful mother eke She was unto her children all in teaching them gods word to read when they were but Small in reading of gods holly words most diligence She was ” Deacon John Paine’s Journal, 28 April, 1704, in The Mayflower Descendent, 1906.

2.1 The Holmes House, Cambridge , in Homes of our Forefathers, 1879. This fine example of a 1730s colonial home was the birthplace of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Most colonial homes, especially in the early period, were much cruder, two-room structures with few windows and little natural light.

2.2 The Careful Mother Instructing her Children, 1764. This engraving by Isaiah Thomas illustrates a mother’s religious and social responsibility in teaching her children to read.

A Place of Reading Mothers, entrusted with the care and wellbeing of their children’s souls, faithfully sat them down and taught them to read at home.

Reading the scripture and devotional texts was the first step in the long process of religious enculturation. The Puritan minister Increase Mather (1639–1723), of the prominent Massachusetts Mather family, came from an elite, educated household. Still, he wrote, “I learned to read of my mother.” Rich or poor, mothers were expected to teach their children to read. [figure 2.2] Following the English practice as noted by Francis Bacon, children were taught to read through the “ordinary road of Hornbook, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible.” These and other instructional reading texts were frequently imported and then reprinted in the colonies. [figure 2.3] The Bible, however, was the staple instructional reading text. The most humble of homes usually possessed a Bible or two with which to instruct children and to engage in daily religious devotions. In fact, by the early eighteenth century, the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut helped provide a Bible for those too poor to buy one themselves.

Children were considered ready for further educational instruction outside the home once they had mastered reading the Bible, but not before then. Fathers and/or grammar schools typically taught boys to write, a job-related skill not deemed essential for girls. Thus a typical colonial girl and boy could both read, but only the boy could also write. [figure 2.4]

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2.3 The Holy Bible , 1782.

This is the first complete English Bible printed in America and bears an American imprint; item has resolutions of Congress bound at the end of the Old Testament.

2.4 The vvhole Booke of Psalmes, 1640.

The Holy Bible , 1782. This archival photo shows the first book printed in America, commonly known as the Bay Psalm book, and the first complete English Bible printed in America.

A Place of Reading Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) certainly learned to read at home. He wrote that his “early readiness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read)” prompted his father to send him to grammar school to learn to write and cipher in preparation for the ministry. After only two years, the expense of educating his youngest son became a burden to the family. Eventually Franklin was apprenticed to his elder brother, James Franklin, a printer.

Continuing to improve his reading and writing skills as an apprentice, Franklin borrowed books from a bookseller and recalled how “often I sat up in my room reading for the greatest part of the night, while the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, least it should be missed or wanted.” Franklin’s story reveals not only where he read and how he obtained books, but also when a typical working man/boy could find time for reading. “My time … for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays when I contrived to be at the printing house alone.” [figure 2.5] Not only was reading taught and mastered in the colonial home, but the home was the primary place of reading throughout people’s lives. For those of Protestant faiths, morning and evening devotions required reading and contemplation of religious texts, and often families and neighbors gathered in the home for further religious study. Cotton Mather

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2.5 Birthplace of Franklin, Milk Street, Boston, in The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin 1916. Early twentiethcentury artist’s depiction of the home where Franklin learned to read.

2.6 Catalogue of Books bought

by Dr. Cotton Mather of Harvard College, undated. This catalogue of books owned by Cotton Mather affirms his expressed interest in reading and books.

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(1663–1728) wrote a section in his diary titled “How My Time is Taken Up,” which makes it clear that, at least in the Mather household, reading took place at home throughout the whole day. [figure 2.6] In the morning: “Going down to my Family, I read a Portion of the sacred Scriptures, and fetch a Note out of every Clause, and then pray with them, turning what I had read, into prayer.”

Around noon: “At the Table, when I come to Dinner, I am solicitous to contrive some Discourse, by which the Minds of my Family will be edified. I rarely sit down, without relating to the Children some Story out of the Bible, from which I inculcate some Lesson upon them, or, it may be some other Story.”

“Going to Bed”: “I carry some agreeable Book with me; and read until I fall Asleep; which is rarely much before eleven a clock: oftener after, than before.”

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that reading in the colonies was restricted to religious texts. Classical and humanist works were popular reading matter, just as in Europe, along with newspapers, almanacs, chapbooks, novels, and books on proper conduct. [figure 2.7 and figure 2.8]

2.7 The Ladies Library, 1732.

Although they were not numerous, books written by women, for women, did exist during the colonial period.

Conduct books were popular books for female readers.

Benjamin Franklin presented this volume to Jane Mecom.

2.8 A Catalogue of Books, 1765. This broadside reflects the wide array of reading matter available to eighteenthcentury readers. Scattered among various texts are a pocket and a universal dictionary.

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Revolutionary Taverns uring the late colonial and early revolutionary periods, taverns became increasingly popular throughout colonial America, especially in New England. The tavern was a place to gather, have a pint of stout, share a newspaper, peruse the latest broadside or pamphlet, and engage in friendly—or not so friendly—banter concerning the latest news and gossip. Here oral and print culture collided. Newspapers were delivered by post to taverns, and the literate patrons eagerly read them aloud to their illiterate neighbors. [figure 3.1] Dr. Alexander Hamilton states that he “returned to my lodgings at eight o’clock, and the post being arrived, I found a numerous company at Slater’s [tavern] reading the news … [and their] chit-chat kept me awake three hours after I went to bed.” In a time when news traveled slowly, all were eager for its arrival, literate or not.

Inside the colonial tavern time stood still. [figure 3.3] The stout frothy. The talk local or of distant England — unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Slow. [figure 3.4] Things became more interesting when, for example, the Massachusetts General Court held its sessions in a local tavern as it circled about its district hearing cases. Lucky patrons of James Pitson’s Boston King Street Tavern

3.1 Verses for the Year, 1790.

Newsboys delivered this carrier’s address to the subscribers of the New York Weekly Museum on New Year’s Day of 1790. The relief cut depicts the newsboy delivering the paper to either a home or a tavern.

3.3 Prince Stetson & Co., 1805–1810. This trade card announces the reopening of a tavern and advertises that “those who favor them with their custom shall experience every convenience and attention which they command.” Reading material, especially newspapers, would be one such convenience.

A Place of Reading might help themselves to one of the eightyeight books and thirty-one pamphlets resting on his barroom bookshelf. [figure 3.6] But there was no rush. The Sugar and Stamp Acts of the early 1760s, however, changed everything. Time might stand still in the tavern, but things began to happen outside faster than many could grasp. News was vital, full of consequence, political. Are you a Loyalist or a Patriot? Do you support the English Crown or American independence? Rumors abounded, and the presses were hot and would be hotter still.

Weekly newspapers were now common, but news needed to travel faster than that.

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3.4 Wm. B. Bradford, Jr., 1816. A business billhead documenting the transaction and goods exchange at William Bradford's at Fanueil Hall in Boston; note the barrels in the lower left which reads "supplies for public houses".

Broadsides littered doorways, covered walls, and hung on posts, serving people’s need to keep up. Pamphlets sprung out of nowhere.

Anonymous. Filled with sedition or freedom, depending on the reader’s perspective.

Taverns became breeding grounds for the Revolution. Reading was essential to the revolutionary process.

Imagine, for a moment, that you were a patron of Boston’s Green Dragon tavern in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War and through the war itself. [figure 3.7] From the vantage point of your table, the war would unfold before you in printed form and through heated debate. Discontent over the Sugar Act and Stamp Act would provoke the ire of rum drinkers and readers alike. The Sons of Liberty would join you at your table,

3.5 Glorious News, 1766. This broadside, published by all four of Boston’s newspapers, announces repeal of the Stamp Act and notes that “there was a meeting of the principle merchants concerned in the American trade…to consider of an address of his majesty of the beneficial repeal of the late stamp act.”

A Place of Reading insisting that you too boycott English goods.

News of the repeal of the Stamp Act in April 1766 would bring joy and relief—temporarily. [figure 3.5] The New York Assembly’s consent to fund the British military leader Alexander McDougall’s angry response in a broadside titled To the betrayed inhabitants of the city and colony of New York led to discontent on both sides. Irate British soldiers soon after struck down a liberty pole belonging to New York patriots and a violent skirmish ensued.

As the news traveled north, Boston patriots in the Green Dragon Tavern would have cheered at the realization that New York was finally swinging to their side.

But too many English troops were crowding Boston’s streets. Riots broke out. Shots were fired. Neighbors died. Paul Revere engraved The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston to commemorate that event on March 5, 1770, as propaganda against England to further the Revolutionary cause. [figure 3.10] He and fellow Sons of Liberty secretly filed into the Green Dragon tavern and plotted revenge. Three years after the massacre, East India Company tea was ceremonially dumped into Boston Harbor in protest of the tea tax. Letters and statesmen went to England to plead the colonies’ case.

The King’s replies—increasingly irate—were printed on broadsides, read aloud, and then hung in public places. [figure 3.11] Certainly newspapers, broadsides, and tongues discussed the battle of Lexington and

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3.6 American Jest Book, 1796. This frontispiece depicts a man reading to his drinking companions in what appears to be a tavern.

3.7 The Green Dragon Tavern, 1773. A drawing of the tavern where Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and other Boston Sons of Liberty secretly plotted against the British. The manuscript at the bottom reads, “Where we met to plan the consignment of the few shiploads of Tea Dec 16 1773. John Johnson 4 Water Street Boston Mass, 1773.”

A Place of Reading Concord and the start of the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775. News couldn’t reach the Green Dragon Tavern fast enough.

Throughout America the residents of other colonies rallied behind their Massachusetts brethren at war. Word of fellow tavern patrons spread north from the Raleigh Tavern in Virginia, especially when Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia was passed around. All were desperate to know what the Continental Congress was doing in Philadelphia. When Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense was published, it became an instant bestseller, further uniting the colonies as it clearly laid their troubles on King George III’s head. When Loyalist James Chalmers of Maryland replied to Paine with his pamphlet Plain Truth, it may well have made it onto the Green Dragon essential reading list. But with its obscure literary language and infuriatingly unpatriotic sentiments, it was probably not read by the common man.

Finally, however, Paine’s sentiments were reinforced on July 4, 1776, when the Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence and ordered its publication and distribution. [figure 3.15] Jefferson’s fame was ensured for ever after.

Ministers read the text throughout the new nation. It was posted on tavern and meetinghouse doors and was reprinted again and again.

News, of course, doesn’t stop here. A war was still waging, loved ones in danger, a

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3.10 The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston, 1770. Eight hundred copies of Paul Revere’s engraving were originally published in late March 1770; the engraving was later reprinted as a broadside with text.

3.11 The King’s Speech, 1775.This broadside is one example of King George III’s response to his discontented colonists in America.

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nation at stake. A Yankee Doodle ditty needed to be sung. [figure 3.17] The Green Dragon tavern would provide news of all this and more. People talked, read aloud and silently, and prayed fervently for success.

New England’s taverns were truly Revolutionary reading places. >> Due to space constraints not all images were displayed in the book version of A Place of Reading. To view all of the images, please visit:

www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Reading/revolutionary.htm

3.15 In Congress, July 4, 1776. A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America , 1776. This broadside is of particular interest because it contains the legislative order noting how the document should be distributed. Each church was to receive a copy, and the ministers were “required to read” it to their congregations. The attached note by E. P. Cummins states that this copy was sent to the town of Charlton, Massachusetts, on July 17, 1776, and read by the Rev. Caleb Curtis “as directed.” This and similar copies would have been hung on tavern and/or meetinghouse doors.

3.17 The Yankey’s Return from Camp, 1788. The Yankey’s Return to Camp is one version of the popular ballad “Yankee Doodle.” This song was sung after the battles of Lexington and Concord and for years thereafter. It was not just a New England song but was also published in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

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A Place of Reading Personal Libraries of Early Presidents: Washington (1732-1799)

lthough Thomas Jefferson is today the most noted early presidential lover of books, he was not the only one. George Washington and John Adams also had a strong penchant toward reading. As committed readers, they each helped usher in a new era—a new nation— founded on humanist texts and Enlightenment ideals. This was no easy task.

In a time when libraries were rare repositories of knowledge, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson went about systematically collecting books. They needed to know what Cicero thought of the Roman Republic, what Adam Smith had to say on the economy, what political theories were proposed by John Locke or David Hume; they even sought from books advice on the most effective way to reap crops. It is clear that as their fame and prosperity grew, so did their libraries.

Washington perhaps built his out of necessity, Adams out of duty, and Jefferson out of insatiable need. All became readers of the very highest order.

Although George Washington never went to college and acquired little formal education, he was not an uneducated man. [figure 4.2] Largely taught by his father and then his

4.1 Washington bookplate, n.d. This copy of George Washington's bookplate is from the Early American Bookplates Collection.

4.2 George Washington, First President of the United States.

Lithograph published in Boston, 1825–1828.

A Place of Reading brother, Washington learned much of what he needed to know to be accepted into the local Virginia gentry. Private reading helped further pave the way. He did, however, feel his lack of formal education acutely later in life, when he was surrounded by university men, and this may be what prompted him to become, if not an insatiable reader, at least a competent one, amassing a large and diverse library of his own. [figure 4.1] Although Washington’s reputation as a reader suffers in comparison to that of Adams and Jefferson, his books suggest otherwise. Being a man of action, he rarely, if ever, spoke of his personal reading habits.

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4.3 Mount Vernon. Residence of Washington, 1848–1851. A lithograph of Washington’s Mount Vernon as depicted by Augustus Kollner in the mid1800s.

Mount Vernon housed Washington’s books. [figure 4.3] At the time of his death, it was recorded that his library contained 884 books and pamphlets and 100 charts and maps.

Many more were perhaps scattered about.

Today a personal library of this size would be considered quite fine, and in 1799 it was a collection of books worthy of great pride.

Washington’s private study (like other great things) was completed in 1776. It quickly became his refuge, his private domain. No one was to enter without express permission.

Washington even installed a dressing room off to the side and a private staircase leading to his second-floor bedroom. From his library he privately read books of all sorts, but books on agriculture were favorites as he improved his farm. He also wrote prodigiously, leaving at least 121 bound volumes of letters concerning both personal matters and matters of State.

4.4 Cato: A Tragedy, 1787.

This copy of the popular classical play Cato, printed by Isaiah Thomas for N. Coverly, features a copy of the Tonson and Draper London edition’s frontispiece.

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[figure 4.5] Like many men of his stature, Washington had a library that was deeply indebted to both classical and contemporary authors whose books lined his shelves. One of his favorite books, however, was not a treatise on agriculture but a play titled Cato by the Englishman Joseph Addison. [figure 4.4] Washington, like many other new Americans, found resonance in the play’s depiction of the Roman statesman Cato’s struggle between Republican virtue and Caesarean tyranny.

Cato, faced with the choice articulated famously by Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death!” chose death over subjugation. Washington quoted liberally from Addison’s Cato in his correspondence, as well as in his Farewell Address. In 1778 he even went so far as to order it played for him and his troops at Valley Forge.

4.5 The History of Spain, 1793. George Washington was the former owner of this two-volume history of Spain in the AAS collections. It reflects the fact that Washington was interested not just in plays and agriculture but in a broad spectrum of other subjects as well.

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Personal Libraries of Early Presidents: Adams (1735-1826)

I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough. … The more one reads the more one sees we have to.

John Adams to Abigail Adams, December 28, 1794.

I am mostly intent at present, upon collecting a Library, and I find, that a great deal of Thought, and Care, as well as Money, are necessary to assemble an ample and well chosen Assortment of Books.

Diary of John Adams, January 30, 1768

ohn Adams was born into a modest Massachusetts family of farmers who, though not well educated themselves, valued both education and reading. [figure 4.7] Because he was the first in his family to attend college, much was expected of the young Adams. At his father’s insistence, he attended Harvard to become a minister, but John Adams became a schoolteacher instead. Later, finding teaching unsuitable to his temperament (and wishing to have more time for his books), he went on to study law. After completing his apprenticeship, he returned to Braintree to become a prosperous provincial lawyer who would in time become internationally renowned.

4.6 John Adam's signature , 1804. Signature and annotation of John Adams, second President of the United States inside the AAS copy of the 1782 A Collection of statepapers which is relative to the US and Netherlands.

4.7 John Adams, Second President of the United States. 1825–1828. This lithograph of John Adams was published in Boston; it is from the original series by Gilbert Stuart.

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Having obtained a formal education, Adams was well versed in both classical and contemporary texts and could read both Latin and Greek. Given his role as a lawyer, revolutionary, and statesman, he pored over books of law, history, and political theory. In 1780 he wrote to his wife Abigail, explaining his why he read what he did: I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. ~ John Adams to Abigail Adams, May, 12, 1780 Creating a nation was a burdensome business that Adams felt left him little leisure to read for enjoyment or general edification, although he would eventually find time to do so.

Adams was not a born reader. As a child he found reading a chore. It was only as a student at Harvard that he discovered his passion for books. There was no Adams family library when he was growing up, just a bookshelf piled with a few essential texts. As a young lawyer he finally began the long, and expensive, process of creating a library of his own. He may have lamented the process, but he knew it was essential to personal success.

4.8 Library Catalogue, 1755.

Inside this catalogue of books belonging to Ebenezer Thayer and dated December 11, 1755, is a list of “Books Lent.”

Thayer, a Harvard tutor, notes that a book of sermons was lent to “Mr. John Adams of Braintree (Lawyer).”

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He was determined to “furnish myself, at any Sacrifice, with a proper Library: and Accordingly by degrees I procured the best Library of Law in the State.” Adams did eventually acquire a fine law library in his Braintree home. As an American diplomat in Europe, however, he realized how limited his reading material really was. Regardless of price, he snatched up books while in Europe.

In three months alone, Adams managed to purchase twenty titles, most of which were multivolume sets of European works. Adams’s library continued to grow by leaps and bounds. [figure 4.8] Sadly, it was not until his retirement in 1801 that he had a chance to fully enjoy the library he spent thirty years creating, but enjoy it he did. At the age of eighty-one, he sent a letter to Jefferson noting that he had read some forty books that year. In 1822 he gave 2,742 books from his library to the Adams Academy. Almost a century later, the Boston Public Library acquired this collection. A good deal more of his library remains in the family home. [figure 4.10] Adams the reader eventually became Adams the writer. He wrote numerous essays on government, including his Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. [figure 4.9] In addition to writing professionally, Adams was a prolific journal and letter writer. He kept a diary for most of his life, and he and his wife Abigail (1744–1818), from whom his travels often separated Adams, exchanged over 1,100 letters. He also wrote an autobiography. And

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4.9 A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1788. This title page is from one of the works of John Adams printed in London in 1788 defending the newly formed government of the United States.

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unlike any other president, Adams talked to his books! [figure 4.6] His marginalia are notorious. Adams’s pen left doodles and argumentative diatribes alike on the printed pages of his books.

4.10 A Collection of State Papers, 1782. An example of a text by John Adams printed at the Hague; this copy features his signature and annotations on an interior page. John Adams was also the former owner of this text.

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A Place of Reading Personal Libraries of Early Presidents: Jefferson (1743-1826)

“I labour grievously under the malady of Bibliomanie.” Thomas Jefferson to Lucy Ludwell Paradise June 1, 1789.

“I had understood that Mr. Randolph had directed that you should have the free use of the Library at Monticello or I should have directed it myself. I have great pleasure in finding an opportunity of making it useful to you.” Jefferson to James Ogilvie, Jan 31, 1806.

“I cannot live without books.” Thomas Jefferson to John Adams. June 10, 1815

homas Jefferson was a lifelong lover of books. [figure 4.12] For Jefferson, reading was as vital to survival as the air he breathed. As the son of a Virginia surveyor and prosperous landowner, he was well educated, having been tutored from the time he was five years old. Despite his father’s death when Jefferson was fourteen, his guardians continued to indulge their precocious charge with the finest tutors and schools to be had in Virginia. After attending the College of William and Mary, he, like Adams, studied law and went on to became one of the nation’s founders. [figure 4.14]

4.11 Thomas Jefferson's signature, n.d. Signature of the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson inside the AAS copy of Communication from the president of the American Antiquarian Society to the members, October 24, 1814. The volume was purchased at the sale of Thomas Jefferson's library in 1829.

4.12 Thomas Jefferson, ca.

1825-8. A lithograph printed in Boston of Thomas Jefferson from the original done in a series by Gilbert Stuart.

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Throughout Jefferson’s life he read widely, becoming a gentleman scholar steeped in classical tradition. From Aesop and Euclid to Coke upon Littleton, he delved deeply into his books for the lessons to be learned by a man leading his state on the road to revolution and in founding a new nation.

So great was Jefferson’s love of books that he amassed not just one library but four, two of which he housed in his suite of rooms devoted to learning at the beloved home he called Monticello. Jefferson’s first library consisted of a cherry bookcase filled with fewer than fifty books on law, history, travel, geography, and religion, which he inherited from his father. Over time he added books of his own to this collection. When this library, and his father’s Shadwell house, burned to the ground in 1770, Jefferson was devastated by the loss of his books. Soon, however, Monticello was built—and with it a library that included a Book Room, Book Room Annex, Portico, Cabinet, and Bedchamber, each of which were created to give Jefferson opportunities to read, write, and experiment in a manner conducive to such gentlemanly acts. After the British burned the Congressional Library during the War of 1812, Jefferson sold this library—6,487 volumes in all—to Congress.

But never one to abide a house bereft of books, Jefferson once again began acquiring books to restock his empty shelves. His socalled Retirement Library contained a respectable 940 volumes that he was devoted to until his death in 1826. [figures 4.11 and 4.13] Jefferson also had one more library

4.13 Communication from the President of the American Antiquarian Society to the Members, October 24, 1824.

As a supporter of books and book collections, Jefferson was an early member of the American Antiquarian Society.

After receiving this communication from the Society, he had it bound with other documents in his personal library. This book was sold at the sale of his retirement library in 1829; Charles Henry Taylor donated it to AAS in 1925.

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squirreled away at his mountain retreat, Poplar Forest, in the Virginia hinterland. This library housed nearly 1,000 volumes. All told, Jefferson bought between 9,000 and 10,000 volumes in his lifetime and created one of the finest personal libraries of the early Republic.

4.14 Thomas Jefferson's Ivory Notebook, n.d.

Courtesy of Monticello/Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. Jefferson carried around ivory notebooks, which could be written on in pencil and then later wiped clean, to make notes on things that caught his interest throughout the day.

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North, South, East, West: Newspapers, Periodicals and the Popular Press hroughout the Union— North, South, East, and West—the states were soon awash in print. [figure 5.7] Advances in printing technology, transportation, lighting, and education, combined with lax postal regulation, nonexistent international copyright laws, and intense marketplace competition, helped facilitate the proliferation of cheap newspapers, periodicals, and popular books in antebellum America. This freedom from restraint spawned exuberance in the market and on the printed page. One social reformer was so concerned he complained that “The world is almost deluged with books.” Others celebrated the fact that “papers are to be found in every street, lane, and alley; in every hotel, tavern, counting house, shop, etc.” [figure 5.1] Reading was no longer a luxury confined to the few but a pastime enjoyed by the many. [figures 5.4] As America grew following the Revolution, so too did newspapers. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing speed, printers began to paper the land with news. By the 1830s, dailies had sprung up in big cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Charleston. [figures 5.3] Meanwhile, country papers continued to serve those more southerly and westerly bound. Kentucky,

5.1 Franklin House, Bd’wy, 1835–1839. A lithograph of men lounging and reading the news at a window.

5.3 The Daily Pioneer Press.

Late-nineteenth-century trade card shows the migration and flowering of the press across the nation.

A Place of Reading Tennessee, and Ohio at first, and then across the Mississippi with the Louisiana Purchase, presses and publications moved ever westward through Texas and on into Mexico, or across the Great Plains, traveling the Oregon Trail to the Pacific Coast.

But it was the big cities back east that set the tone and pace of the newspaper business.

New York publications soon cornered the market with cheap penny papers. Boy criers hawked penny papers filled with local news, sensational stories, and dramatic human interest features. Circulation rose to unprecedented levels. In 1836 the New York Public Ledger noted, “In the cities of New York and Brooklyn, containing a population of 300,000, the daily circulation of the penny papers is not less than 70,000. This is nearly sufficient to place a newspaper in the hands of every man in the two cities, and even of every boy old enough to read.” By 1850 circulation had more than doubled, and America had the highest per capita newspaper circulation in the world.

As in the past, the majority of what people read was politically or commercially based.

However, what really caught the hearts and minds of readers were racy papers, filled with sensational news. With names like Scrutinizer (1826), New York Flagellator and Police Bulletin (1828), Flash (1841–1843), Libertine (1842), Subterranean (1843–1844), and Life in Boston, Sporting Chronicle,and Lights and Shadows of New England Morals (1849), these papers were sure to catch the reader’s eye. [figure 5.8] Even the more

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5.4 Portrait of the Husband, Who is Always Reading the Newspaper, undated. Loose print, probably from a periodical, that pokes fun at the obsessive reading of the news by husbands.

5.7 “Out. Damned Spot. Out, I say!” Harper’s Weekly, November 9, 1872. Although it dates from a later period, this Thomas Nast political cartoon offers insight into the relationship between politics and the press during the nineteenth century. Those in power found the press to be an increasingly potent vehicle in reaching the mass reading public.

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mainstream New York Herald celebrated its “sauciness” and drew moralist ire with its “reckless depravity” in covering crime news, illicit sex, and tell-all scandals and by generally upsetting Victorian-era moral sentiments.

The most blatant expressions of newspapers’ popularity and of the advances made in print technology were not so much risqué editions as mammoth, larger-than-life newspapers. [figure 5.9] Composed of blanket sheets—as big as 4.5 × 10.8 feet—these papers were usually “Extras” or Saturday editions made possible by the newly available cylinder press.

More often resembling periodicals than newspapers in content, they catered to all audiences. Touting something for everyone, from pirated works of drama and fiction to political debate, they were intended for communal reading and public display. Their popularity, though short-lived and confined to the late 1830s to early 1840s, was so great that at one time they could boast over 20,000 subscribers.

Like newspapers, periodicals crisscrossed the nation as they catered to both mass audiences and special interest groups. Some, such as Harper’s Weekly, rose to unprecedented heights of prominence, but the vast majority of Saturday and Sunday miscellanies, magazines, and journals were obscure, short-lived ventures circulating for just a year or two. Despite these large failure rates, they remained popular venues for authors. In 1833 a few hundred periodicals

5.8 The New York Sporting Whip , Racy Newspaper Collection. Example of a Racy Newspaper.

5.9 Detail from masthead.

Boston Notion, 1839–1842.

The Boston Notion was a three foot tall newspaper that occasionally printed double sheets humorously called Double Notion and even larger sheets called Quadruple Boston Notion.

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were published, and by 1860 this number had increased to well over a thousand in print at any given time, attesting to their popular—if ephemeral—success.

“In a parlor fifteen feet by fifteen—in some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany center-table, lamp on it with green-paper shade … several books, piled and disposed, with cast iron exactness, according to an inherited and unchangeable plan; among them, Tupper, much pencilled; also, ‘Friendship’s Offering,’ and ‘Affection’s Wreath,’ with their sappy inanities illustrated in die-away mezzotints …; current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey’s ‘Lady’s Book.’ ” Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883.

Women, in particular, benefitted from the rise of the periodical press. Godey’s Lady’s Book (1830–1898), for example, was an almost immediate success in both the North and the South with its hand-colored engravings of women’s fashions, sentimental stories and poems by American authors, music, and health and beauty advice. Annual gift books for women also served as popular works of art and literature, and they conferred status upon the reader. Such works reinforced white, middle-class values of domesticity for women, but they also offered cautionary tales that warned women against overindulging in reading and consuming inappropriate texts.

This was somewhat ironic, of course, as circulation for Godey’s Lady’s Book alone rose to 150,000 by the 1850s. [figure 5.13]

5.13 Godey’s Lady’s Book, Cover, July 1850. Cover page of Godey’s Lady’s Book, showing a mother reading to her children, Godey’s, although it catered to the female sex, was also read by men and included not only sentimental stories but works of literature by prominent American authors as well.

5.15 The Liberty Tree, January 1, 1844. Abolitionist papers were not confined to the Northeast. The Liberty Tree was the first antislavery newspaper to emerge from Chicago, Illinois.

A Place of Reading Periodicals famously catered to certain niche markets. Most notably, religious groups published their own annual quarterly, monthly, or weekly periodicals, but professional and trade groups also published relevant journals. [figure 5.14] Perhaps the most controversial periodicals were antislavery papers and journals generally published in the North in the hope of encouraging a change of heart in Southern readers. [figure 5.15]

“Quarter past twelve and the “breakfast things” still on the table! The cat is in the cream-jar; the dog stealing the day’s dinner, through the open window; the child crying in the cradle … the husband coming in from his work, and the mistress still reading her novel which she took up as he went out in the morning. Ah, unhappy man!” N. P Willis, “The Novel-Reader” in The Winter Wreath, 1853.

Novels also became increasingly popular, and they could frequently be found serialized in newspapers and periodicals or in cheap pamphlet form. [figure 5.17] Often the novels were pirated works of British fiction such as the popular Waverly novels by Sir Walter Scott, but the writings of American novelists George Tucker, Caroline Howard Gilman, and Catherine Sedgwick, along with works of poetry and literature by such authors as Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson were also available to meet

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5.16 First Meeting of Uncle Tom and Eva , 1860–1861. A lithograph promoting Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin attest to readers’ participation in literate society.

5.17 [Woman Reading], 1831–1833. This hand-colored lithograph portrays a woman reading while lounging comfortably. The seductive nature of the reader’s clothing and her dreamy gaze suggest that she is reading a romance novel. Reading for women at this time was both promoted and chastised, depending on the reading material in question. Romances were assumed to be corruptive, whereas religious and moral texts were regarded as uplifting.

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the demands of the eager reading public.

However, it was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) that captured the hearts of American readers, at least in the North. Numerous binderies raced to produce enough copies to meet public demand, and the book became an advertiser’s dream as the “brand” was sold to various audiences in multiple formats. [figure 5.16]

“Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me an inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell.” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, 1845.

“I do not know that anything impresses a visitor more strongly with the amount of books sold in the States, than the practice of selling them as it has been adopted in railway cars.” Anthony Trollope, North America, 1862.

Despite laws and cultural taboos against teaching slaves to read, thousands of slaves learned to read in antebellum America. [figure 5.18] Understanding well that literacy was power in a white man’s world awash in print, many slaves taught themselves how to read or “stole” this knowledge from others—more often than not from the children of plantation owners. [figure 5.19] Christian slave owners sometimes taught their slaves to read (but not to write), following proper religious principles that all should be able to read the Bible for themselves. Literacy, however, was still very low for slaves, at about 5 percent. Of course, neither slave teacher nor slave reader would

5.18 Freedom’s Journal, March 30, 1827. Freedom’s Journal was the first newspaper in America published by African Americans with the intent not only of abolishing slavery, but also of serving its local New York community.

5.19 Fourth of July Celebration, or, Southern Ideas of Liberty—July 4, ’40.

Wood engraving. The institution of slavery was often couched in satire to further abolitionists’ goals. The great irony found in the Fourth of July Celebration, or, Southern Ideas of Liberty, is the bound slave reading the Declaration of Independence.

A Place of Reading openly admit to teaching or acquiring literacy, and this enforced secrecy has left the literacy rate for slaves open to much debate. The Alabama house servant Sarah Fitzpatrick recalled how enslaved readers hid their literacy: “de ke’ dat up deir sleeve, dey played dumb lack de couldn’t read a bit till after surrender.” In the years following the Civil War, former slaves and free blacks alike would make great strides in acquiring literacy and education, accelerating from 70 percent illiteracy in 1880 to 70 percent literacy by 1910, completing the circle of literacy for nearly all Americans in the early twentieth century.

As exuberance in reading manifested itself across the nation, it created a totally new and unique place of reading, the railcar. [figure 5.21] Many industrious newsboys came off the streets and into the railcar peddling newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlet novels to travelers with time on their hands. [figure 5.22] Soon whole industries grew up around this traveling phenomenon. Booksellers quickly assembled newsstands in train stations, and publishers such as George Routledge and George Putnam issued railway “classics” or “libraries” in a compact and portable paperback form designed to sell at reasonable rates. >> Due to space constraints not all images were displayed in the book version of A Place of Reading. To view all of the images, please visit: www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Reading/north.htm

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5.21 “The Street Car Question Again,” Harper’s Weekly, February 1, 1868. This humorous illustration shows how reading infiltrated railway cars. The caption reads, “Singularly Studious Appearance of the Gentlemen in our Cars whenever a Lady gets aboard and there are no Vacant Seats.”

5.22 “A Patient Railroad Traveler,” Harper’s Weekly, March 14, 1847. This image depicts the newsboys’ habit of dropping copies of books and magazines onto travelers’ laps. They later collected either the book or the purchase price, depending on the customer’s wishes.

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Reading at the Front: The Civil War

“[A] man hungry for something to read will do the same as a man hungry for something to eat; if he can not get good he will take bad.” Daniel Wait Howe, Civil War Times, 1861–1865, 1902.

“Some are pursuing old Waverlys, and others amusing themselves with Harper’s cuts, one has a volume of Shakespeare with his mind following intently the dramatic play of Edward ‘three times.’” Daniel L. Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 1868.

6.1 The Soldiers Home, the Vision, 1862. A woman falls asleep while reading a letter from her husband, a Civil War soldier, and dreams of him.

“That library back of the railing has many interesting books, find the one you like, have it recorded, and return it in five days.”

Lemuel Moss, Annals of the United States Christian Commission, 1868.

s the large and increasingly active reading public took to their Northern and Southern corners at the outbreak of the Civil War (1861– 1865), they took their reading habits with them. Moving from a unified Republic largely littered with books and papers to cramped and miserable military quarters bereft of the most basic of creature comforts was unimaginable for many men.

They, like the women who nursed them,

6.2 Camp Scene. Civil War Envelope. This Civil War camp scene, derived from a photograph, includes a man reading a book.

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escaped into novels, benefited from manuals, and eagerly sought news from home. For those left behind—mostly Northern and Southern women, children, and the elderly— isolated behind lines of war, the news and letters were like balms to the soul. [figure 6.1] Men sat in camp and read what was at hand, while those at home read what they could about their reading men in camp and in battle. [figure 6.2] In camp, with much time on their hands as they awaited the call to battle, men had access to all sorts of reading matter. Bibles, and the religious reform tracts that complemented them, were ubiquitous, but books on warfare, classics, histories, and novels were also generously represented. [figure 6.5] The newspapers and periodicals so well loved before the war remained popular and “were passed from one soldier to another until literally worn out.” [figures 6.3] Much work went into ensuring that these fighting men had access to printed texts.

These books were acquired from the publishing industry that printed cheap dime novels and increasingly timely news, from the U.S. Christian Commission that sought to save souls, and from the Union and Confederate armies who wanted to divert men from the horrors of war and provided camp “libraries” in canteens and hospitals. Some men brought books with them, others bought their own books or papers or acquired them through conquest, still others traded at night with

6.3 Gunnery Instructions, 1863. Books such as these instruction manuals by Edward Barrett were valuable tools for officers in the United States Navy.

6.5 Distinguished Militia Gen’l During an Action, circa 1861.

A humorous depiction of a Union general who, in the midst of battle, reads a book on military tactics. Humor aside, reading books on how to perform in battle was a serious endeavor.

A Place of Reading daytime enemies, and a few especially enterprising literary soldiers published their own newspapers on the backs of wallpaper or wrote their own stories on scraps of paper.

Even prisoners usually had access to print in some form or other, if only the standard Bible and religious tracts. [figures 6.7]

“The mail arrangements for this department are miserable. Our letters are often wet and sometimes unsealed when we receive them.” Harry F. Jackson, in Back Home in Oneida: Hermon Clark and his letters (Syracuse, NY: 1965).

“But let me say if those who envy the war correspondent were once brought into close contact with all the realities of war—if they were obliged to stand the chances of getting their heads knocked off by an unexpected shell or bored through with a minie ball,—to stand their chances of being captured by the enemy,—to live on bread and water, and little of it, to sleep on the ground, or a sack of corn … to walk among the dying and dead … to hear all around sighs, groans, imprecations, and prayers—they would be content to let others become the historians of war.” Charles Carleton Coffin, in Famous War Correspondents, 1914.

As much as men escaped into books and periodicals, nothing was more longed for than letters from loved ones back home. As early as mid-1861, the United States Army required that female nurses working in Union army hospitals be able to read and, even

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6.7 Libby Prison, 1863. This print, drawn “from nature,” reflects not only the prevalence of books and newspapers in Libby Prison, but also the high level of literacy during the Civil War. At Libby Prison, Richmond newspapers could be purchased from a “mulatto” news carrier called Old Ben, and shipments of books came in from the United States Christian Commission.

6.8 Civil War Envelope - Floyd, The Abstractionist. Example of a politicized Civil War envelope that depicts reading.

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more important, to write. One newly recruited nurse wrote, “Too inexperienced to nurse, I went from one pallet to another with pencil, paper, and stamps in hand and spent that [first] night in writing letters from the solders to their family and friends.”

Thousands of letters such as these and letters from the soldiers’ own hands survive, attesting to a great many things, but certainly to the citizens of a literate nation reaching out to one another through words when words were all they had. [figure 6.12] At home, letters from soldiers were often slow to be received and, upon receipt, terribly out of date. To keep abreast of the happenings at the front, a cadre of eyewitness correspondents flocked to scenes of battle.

Lack of censorship allowed for unprecedented access. New York newspapers filled one-third of their space with news of war made much timelier via the telegraph, even with the severed lines and governmental takeovers of the wires. Newspapers and periodicals across the now-divided nation, with the significant exception of Godey’s, which ignored the war altogether, had their authors, publishers, and presses attuned to matters of slavery, secession, war, and abolition. Thus, even in a country sorely divided, North and South did band together, if only in reading about each other. [figures 6.13] >> Due to space constraints not all images were displayed in the book version of A Place of Reading. To view all of the images, please visit: www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Reading/civil.htm

6.12 News from Home, 1862– 1865. A soldier reading his letter from home.

6.13 “Plan of the Battle of Five Oaks,” The New York Times, Friday, June 13, 1862.

Unlike weeklies and monthlies, daily newspapers ran few illustrations during the Civil War, except for the occasional woodcut portraying a general or a fort. However, battlefield maps made more frequent appearances and were prominently displayed.

A Place of Reading Conclusion & the Future of Reading rom colonial times until the Civil War, America was full of readers. They read in their homes, in taverns, and in private libraries, and when technology was sufficiently advanced, they read everywhere that print was provided. These men, women, and children all helped pave the way for the reading Republic we see today. Although it is beyond the scope of this exhibition, understanding the who, what, when, where, and why of reading practices today, with all the technological changes that are under way (the so-called third revolution) remains a vitally important endeavor for the future of our nation and of the world at large.

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A Place of Reading

Part II:

Image Bank of

Reading Places

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Reading Music in the Music Room and Beyond Musicians read music as readers read text. Soon after it made its appearance in the United States in the 1790s, sheet music became a fixture in the American home. Tune books with sacred music were printed earlier, and by the 1850s the music industry had become a serious business. Following the trend of cheap printed material outside the music industry, the prices of sheet music not protected by copyright dropped in 1855, prompting “the greatest revolution in the music trade,” according to contemporary accounts. While chaos ensued within the music publishing industry for years to come, musicians and singers enjoyed a broad variety of musical offerings: from religious hymns to Beethoven to “the most superficial, trashy stuff that is in vogue: the negro melodies, the namby-pamby sentimental ballads, the flashy fantasias, polkas, waltzes, marches, &c.,” as a critic in Dwight’s Journal of Music characterized popular music in 1855. A few individuals set rooms aside specifically for musical performance, but most families simply had a piano located in their parlor. Outside of the home, churches usually had at least a piano or organ, and congregations used hymn books.

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Estey Organ Co., 1870–1900. Brattleboro, Vt. Home Education – Lithograph. between 1865-71.

I’se Gwine Back to Dixie, undated. White, C.A A Father Reading the Bible, undated. Bufford, Lithf.

The Ledger Polka, undated. Duval, Lithf.

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Reading in the Kitchen Ample evidence of cookbooks, or manuscript commonplace books filled with recipes, suggests that plenty of reading (and documenting) of recipes occurred in America’s kitchens.

Early cookbooks such as American Cookery and The Virginia House-wife; or Methodical cook attest to the popularity of cookbooks in America. Despite the commonsense notion that women have been reading recipes for ages, there exists little visual material prior to the twentieth century to substantiate this claim through imagery of women “caught” reading in the kitchen. However, with the rise in popularity of the novel in the nineteenth century, women were often admonished not to neglect household duties in the kitchen because of their preoccupation with light reading. Sometimes this advice was offered with visual representations of women reading novels in the kitchen.

6. The American Meat and Vegetable Chopper, circa 1875.

7. “The Novel Reader” T.H. Matteson. M. Osborne in Gem of the season, for 1850, c1849.

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Reading in Bed Reading in bed was a luxury few could afford throughout most of America’s history. The young might steal enough time to read a few pages at the expense of sleep while lying in bed, but days were often filled with work, and exhaustion would soon set in, not to mention the difficulty in obtaining adequate lighting. Inadequate lighting must also have hindered reading among the elderly and the infirm, who might otherwise have read to their hearts’ content while confined to bed. It was during the nineteenth century, when the values of the rising middle class offered some respite from the relentless pressure of work, that reading in bed became more common.

8. The Chimney Corner Almanac, 1869.

9. Frontispiece from Memoir of Catherine Brown. J.R. Penniman del. W. Hoagland, sc. 1825.

10. Anna Parsons, photograph. Undated.

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Reading at the Bath Reading while lounging in a private bath was not likely to occur until the end of the nineteenth century, if even then. It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that private baths first appeared in America. By mid-century cleanliness was viewed as a necessity, and by the end of the nineteenth century, baths were much more common.

However, if reading in baths did occur, the historical record is strangely silent. Yet public baths, such as the Turko Russian Bath in New York City, did offer reading rooms in their facilities, suggesting an association between reading and relaxation that makes one wonder whether these two activities did not more often go hand in hand.

11. Advertisement, American Enterprise, No. 1, 1870.

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Reading at Work Throughout history, certain occupations have always been intimately tied to the act of reading. This is perhaps most clearly true of the book trade, but ministers, teachers, merchants, and other professionals also read at work. And many in other occupations found time for reading at work in spare moments or surreptitiously.

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“Edward Leonard, The Fruit Seller of the Old South,” The Boston Notion, Saturday, May 1843.

Subscribers to a Literary Institution, 1843–1849.

New York Book Bindery, 1843–1846.

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Reading in Reading Places Libraries (private or public) and bookstores are obvious reading places, even if just for browsing. Private libraries and bookstores have existed in America almost since the colonies’ inception. The eighteenth century saw the rise of lending, circulating, and subscription libraries, and the nineteenth-century movement to establish free public libraries changed the landscape of American towns, creating even more designated reading places.

15. In the Public Library, post 1890.

16. “Saturday Night” [at the New York Mercantile Library], Scribner’s Monthly, February 1871.

17.The largest old book store in America Edwin S. Stuart no. 9 South 9th St. Phila.

18. Father and Child, 1849.

19. “D. Lothrop & Co.’s New Bookstore—Interior View” (Boston) from American Bookseller I (1 June 1876).

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Reading in Prison Libraries The early-nineteenth-century prison reform movement, in its effort not merely to warehouse criminals but also to educate them, resulted in the creation of many prison libraries. By 1840 most prisons had libraries for inmate instruction. Reading was considered essential to the rebuilding of character, and for most of the nineteenth century only Bibles and pious tracts filled these library stacks.

20. “The City Prison at Midnight,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 16, 1874.

21. “A Prison Library at the Tombs,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, September 19, 1874.

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Reading in Public Spaces Reading in public is a time-honored tradition. From town criers proclaiming the news off printed broadsides to urban landscapes littered with advertisements, printed material often made its way into public spaces. The rise of big urban centers in the nineteenth century— New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco—saw more public reading material than ever before. On the streets, printed paper money was exchanged for printed newspapers in the shadows of buildings covered in signage and graffiti. Reading in public was an essential part of the urban American experience.

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Entrance to Cornhill from Washington Street, 1826–1835.

The Bill Poster’s Dream: Cross Readings, to Be Read Downwards, 1862.

Sketch at the Forest Garden Passaic Falls, 1825–1828.

All in my Eye. Akin, James.

Outward Bound, Lithograph,1854.

Homeward Bound, Lithograph, 1854.

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Women Readers Women have always to some extent been readers in America, but it was not until the nineteenth century that they experienced a reading "revolution." Literacy for women sharply rose, almost doubling between 1800 and 1850. Publishing firms quickly stepped in to meet the reading needs of the female sex. The culture of refinement, or, in the South, "gentility," supported intellectual pursuits, and literary societies emerged, many concerned with the social issues of the day: public health, temperance, and abolition. Women also increasingly became schoolteachers and authors. As reading women sought to serve the world, the world was at first overly concerned about women’s reading "addiction" - to "trashy" novels in particular. Despite such concerns, women’s love of reading prevailed.

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“Miss Louisa May Alcott,” Hearth and Home, Saturday, January 16, 1875.

Scraps, from divers artists, 1832.

Vignettes published by Charles Magnus, undated. Scraps, after Devéria, 1832.

Scraps, after Devéria, 1832.

Clarissa, 1848.

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Little Readers Children have always been little readers making up their own market for books. In the colonial period Bibles, primers, catechisms, and hornbooks were offered for young readers.

Then, in time, more and more books would be devoted not only to teaching children basic reading skills and presenting religious instruction, but to providing amusement as well. It was during the nineteenth century that the children’s literary market, like publishing everywhere, saw exponential growth, fueled by the popularity of picture books for young children, periodicals, and juvenile books, not to mention books printed to supply the burgeoning public classrooms. Children read both at school and at home, sometimes taking part in evening “literaries” where family members gathered to read favorite quotations to one another. Participating in a wide array of instructional games on spelling, geography, and history also played a major role in children’s reading practice.

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Historical Amusement, A New Game, undated.

Excursion! To Leominster, 1852.

E. P. Dutton & Co. New illustrated books for children, 1883.

Little Students, 1872.

Fairy Tales, 1856–1866.

One no. 1…, before 1876.

The Young Teacher, 1858.

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Reluctant and Imaginative “Readers” In spite of the great emphasis that parents, publishers, preachers, and society at large placed on learning to read, some children severely resisted the act of reading. “ Naughty” children disrupted classroom instruction, just plain refused to read, or treated books with contempt. Other people utilized books in ways not previously imagined. Parents made booster seats out of stacked books to help small children reach the table, men made “pillows” out of a book or two to rest weary heads, and newspapers were turned into paper hats, insulation, table cloths, and wrappings for slabs of meat.

40. The Schoolmaster: A Very Popular Glee, 1839.

41. Attention, Company! William Harnett, 1878. Courtesy of the Amon Carter Museum.

42. Freaks and Frolics of Little Girls and Boys, 1887.

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Bibliography Isaiah Thomas, Reader Thomas, Benjamin Franklin. Memoir of Isaiah Thomas By His Grandson/Benjamin Franklin Thomas. Boston, 1874.

Thomas, Isaiah. The History of Printing in America. Worcester, 1810.

The Colonial Home Amory, Hugh and David Hall, eds. A History of the Book in America, Volume One: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2000.

Bowman, George. “Deacon John Paine’s Journal.” In The Mayflower Descendent, 1906.

Facsimile Reprint. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1995.

Davidson, Cathy, ed. Reading in America: Literature and Social History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Finkelstein, David and Alistair McCleery, eds. The Book History Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1916.

Hall, David D. Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996.

Joyce, William Leonard et al., eds. Printing and Society in Early America. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1983.

Massachusetts Historical Society, Seventy Series—Vol. VII: Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681– 1708. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1911.

Monaghan, Jennifer. Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.

Williams, Julie Hedgepeth. The Significance of the Printed Word in Early America: Colonists’ Thoughts on the Role of the Press. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

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Revolutionary Taverns Amory, Hugh and David Hall, eds. A History of the Book in America, Volume One: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2000.

Archiving Early America. July 2009. <http://www.earlyamerica.com/>.

See especially: “Freedom Documents” ”Lives of Early Americans” “Boston Massacre” “World of Early America” Conroy, David. In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Edes, Henry Herbert. “Memoir of Dr. Thomas Young, 1731–1777.” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 11. Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1910.

Goss, Elbridge Henry. The Life of Colonel Paul Revere. Boston: J. G. Cupples, 1891.

Hayes, Kevin J. The Road to Monticello: The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Lowance, Mason and Georgia Bumgardner, eds., Massachusetts Broadsides of the American Revolution. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976.

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: The History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 years, 1690–1940. New York: Macmillan, 1949.

Personal Libraries of Early Presidents

Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. The Massachusetts Historical Society. August 2009. <http://www.masshist.org/>.

Adams National Historic Park. August 2009. <http://www.nps.gov/adam/john-adamsbiography.htm>.

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Amory, Hugh and David Hall, eds. A History of the Book in America, Volume One: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2000.

George Washington Birthplace National Monument. July 2009. <http://www.nps.gov/gewa/index.htm>.

George Washington’s Mount Vernon Garden and Estates. August 2009. <http://www.mountvernon.org/>.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Libraries, Leadership, and Legacy. Papers presented as part of the symposium. June 21–27, 2009. <http://www.adamsjefferson.com/papers.htm>.

See especially: Kevin Hayes, “Jefferson’s Vacation Library.”

Heather Jackson, “John Adams’ Marginalia Then and Now.” Mary Kelly, “Commentator: Libraries and the Enlightenment.”

Marcus McCorison: “Adams and Jefferson as Book Collectors.”

Beth Prindle: “Thought, Care, and Money: John Adams Assembles His Library.”

Jeff Looney: “ ‘I shall not retain a single one.? The Limits of Thomas Jefferson’s Library Catalogues.”

Mark Dimunation: “ ‘The whole of recorded knowledge?” Jefferson as Reader and Collector.”

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Touchstone/Simon &Schuster, 2002.

Nash, George H. Books and the Founding Fathers. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1989.

Thomas Jefferson’s Libraries, August 2009. <http://tjlibraries.dataformat.com>.

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. August 2009. <http://www.monticello.org/index.html>.

Toner, Joseph M. Some account of George Washington library and manuscript records and their dispersion from Mount Vernon. 1892. American Libraries/University of California Libraries. July 2009. <http://www.archive.org/details/someaccountofgeo00tonerich>.

North/South/East/West Casper, Scott, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds., A History of the Book in America. Volume Three. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007.

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Chronicling America: America’s Historic Newspapers. Library of Congress. September 2009. <http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/>.

Cornelius, Janet. “‘We Slipped and Learned to Read’: Slave Accounts of the Literary Process, 1830–1865.” Phylon. Vol. 44, No. 3 (3rd qtr 1983): 171–186.

Davidson, Cathy, ed. Reading in America: Literature and Social History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Kevin Hayes. “Railway Reading.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Vol. 106, Part 2. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1997.

Lehuu, Isabelle. Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Rediscovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: The History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years, 1690–1940. New York: Macmillan, 1949.

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womenhood, 1820–1860.” American Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, Part 1 (Summer 1966): 151–174.

Willis, N. P. “The Novel Reader.” In The Winter Wreath. New York: Leavitt and Allen, 1853.

Reading at the Front - The Civil War Bullard, Frederic Lauriston. Famous War Correspondents. Boston: Little, Brown, 1914.

Casper, Scott, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. A History of the Book in America. Volume Three. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007.

Kaser, David. Books and Libraries in Camps and Battle: The Civil War Experience. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: The History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years, 1690–1940. New York: Macmillan, 1949.

Nelson, Michael C. “Writing during Wartime: Gender and Literacy in the American Civil War.” Journal of American Studies, Vol. 31. No. 1 (April 1987): 43–68.

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Reading Music in the Music Room and Beyond Crawford, Richard and D. W. Krummel. “Early American Music Printing and Publishing.” In Printing and Society in Early America, ed. William Leonard Joyce et al. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1983, 186–227.

Casper, Scott, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. A History of the Book in America. Volume Three. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007.

Reading in the Kitchen Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words, Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Willis, N. P. “The Novel Reader.” In The Winter Wreath. New York: Leavitt and Allen, 1853.

Reading at the Bath Bushman, Robert and Claudia Bushman. “The Early History of Cleanliness in America.” The Journal of American History, Vol. 74. No. 4. (March 1988): 1213–1238.

Reading in Reading Places Carpenter, Kenneth. “Libraries,” in Scott Casper, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. A History of the Book in America. Volume Three.The Industrial Book, 1840–1880,. . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007, 303–318.

Reading in Prison Libraries Sullivan, Larry E. “Prison Libraries.” In Encyclopedia of Library History,. Wayne Wiegand and Donald David, eds.. New York, Garland Publishing, 1994, 510–515.

Reading in Public Spaces Henkin, David M. “City Streets and the Urban World of Print,” in Scott Casper, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. A History of the Book in America. Volume Three. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007, 331–345.

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Women Readers Hackel, Heidi Brayman and Catherine E. Kelly, eds. Reading Women: Literacy, Authorship, and Culture in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Sicherman, Barbara. “Ideologies and Practices of Reading.” In A History of the Book in America. Volume Three. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880, ed. Scott Casper, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007, 279–302.

Thomas, Amy. “Literacies, Readers, and Cultures of Print in the South,” in Scott Casper, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. A History of the Book in America. Volume Three. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880,.. . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007, 373–390.

Sicherman, Barbara. “Sense and Sensibility: A Case Study of Women’s Reading in Late Victorian America.” In Reading in America: Literature and Social History, ed. Cathy Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Little Readers Monaghan, Jennifer. Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.

Stevenson, Louise. “Homes, Books, and Reading.,” in Scott Casper, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. A History of the Book in America. Volume Three.

The Industrial Book, 1840–1880,. . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007, 319–331.

Sicherman, Barbara. "Idealogies and Practices of Reading," in Scott Casper, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. A History of the Book in America. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007, 279–302.

Reluctant and Imaginative “Readers” Casper, Scott, Jeffrey Groves, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship, eds. In A History of the Book in America. Volume Three. The Industrial Book, 1840–1880. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, and Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2007.

Kaser, David. Books and Libraries in Camps and Battle: The Civil War Experience. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

A Place of Reading About Curated by Cheryl Harned, Summer 2009

The following individuals assisted in the preparation of this exhibition: Georgia Barnhill, Director, Center for Historic American Visual Culture Lauren B. Hewes, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts Jaclyn Donovan Penny, Graphic Arts Assistant and Site Designer Constance Day, Copyeditor Caroline W. Stoffel, Online Services Librarian

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