Last summer volunteer Jenny Knight began work on the mammoth task of transcribing the indexes to the letter books of outgoing correspondence in the Chatto & Windus publisher’s archive. The early letter books are an invaluable source of information as loose files of correspondence were sent for salvage during the First World War and most pre-1915 letters written to the firm are gone forever. The index work that Jenny and other staff and volunteers are doing is enhancing our catalogue records, benefiting staff and researchers using our database.

Read Jenny’s blog post to find out some of the things she’s discovered from these one-sided conversations, while deciphering 19^th Century handwriting…

I was advised that the transcribing of the letter copies in the Chatto & Windus archive might be rather a dry and tedious business to volunteer to undertake. Slow, rather than tedious, might be true, but I have found it fascinating. The task is simply to record the name of the recipient and then the page numbers of the corresponding letters which the publisher had sent to them. The letter copies are handwritten, of course, on fragile tissue which requires care when turning the pages. The writing is beautiful copperplate, which unfortunately is sometimes quite difficult to read, so I frequently have to locate the individual letters to clarify and confirm the name. More often than not, I need to read some of the text too. I am discovering a snapshot of business life in the 1860s which is tantalizing; there are no records of replies to any of the letters, so there is room for conjecture as to the outcomes of the incidents mentioned, and on the background histories of the people who were communicating.

The first volume of letter records that I have been working on dates from the 1860s. The company was not called Chatto & Windus at that time; they were Saunders, Otley & Co. A couple of unexpected features (at least to me) are emerging. Firstly there is the international nature of the business, even as early as 1862. Letters were being sent to correspondents in America, particularly New York, to Australia and across Europe. In Europe there are a series of letters to Vienna and Paris – most intriguing are the letters to Versailles, where it seems a person at the very highest level of the French aristocracy was writing on dog breeding!

 An example of a letter from Letter book 1, ref. CW A/1

Secondly, it has become a cliché that women who made a living by writing were considered shocking and unacceptable in Victorian England; everyone remembers that the Brontes initially wrote under male pseudonyms. Yet here are numerous letters to and from potential and accepted women authors, all under their own names and with no suggestion that they should publish incognito. They are most certainly not in the majority, yet here they are, confounding expectations, and addressed with flowery Victorian politeness. A Miss Emily Thompson was advised that her novel “The Staff Surgeon” was not selling well. By February 1867 it had “not quite cleared expenses”. Poor Emily. I noted one instance, however, when the wife of a “Reverend”, i.e. a minister of the church, had items published. From the wording of a later letter in the sequence, it appears that a remuneration cheque was sent “care of” her husband, the minister, rather than directly to the lady herself. The details of the transaction cannot be known – but what a fascinating glimpse into the economic situation of women at the time.

Business practice in publishing seems to have changed little in the past hundred and fifty years. On a daily basis, potential authors are requested to amend and edit their texts, are advised that their manuscripts have not been considered suitable for publication, or that their book sales have been uneconomic and copies are being ”remaindered”. The luckier, more successful authors are sent payment. Debts are pursued with brisk and determined persistence. Lunches are arranged with colleagues in the trade. Here, too, is a mention of another company in publishing which was to become a household name – Saunders, Otley & Co were corresponding with W H Smith on a variety of topics; the relationship does not appear to have been without problems! Most amusingly, advertising accounts are paid in postage stamps, sent to local newspapers all over the country. What would modern publishers give for advertising accounts of 6 shillings (30p) to the Sheffield Times, 8 shillings (40p) to the Stockport Advertiser, or the highest sum of 10 shillings (50p) to The Scotsman? – I’m sure even the modern adjustment of these costs would still be very small to those in charge of 21st century advertising budgets!

I began reclassifying the Mark Longman Library 4 or 5 years ago as a background task.  I am a Library Assistant in the cataloging department at Special Collections and my priority is to support the librarian and the cataloguer and then Reading Room duty; much of my time is spent  fetching, returning and problem solving.  While it is a background task and low priority as regards some of the other collections the Mark Longman Library has become my child and very special.

The collection consists of around 4,000 books, pamphlets and journals on subjects related to the history of the book, including bibliography, book production, publishing history and practice, readers and reading, and literary biography.

Formerly the ‘books about books’ collection was donated to the National Book League by Maurice Marston, its first secretary; the collection was expanded following the launch of an appeal in 1972 in memory of Mark Longman, Chairman of the National Book League 1967-1971.

The collection passed to the University Library in 2002. It was classified in the Bliss bibliographic classification and maintained on a card catalogue.  While the collection did not require special conditions we decided also to keep in open access and browsable.  However, it was important for the catalogue to be electronically accessible as well.  So while I downloaded  the records I reclassified the books into the Dewey Decimal System instead.

This has meant I have handled every book in the collection. I have skimmed, flicked, browsed, read – not just to discover the subject  matter but because it was interesting or just plain beautiful!

Some have been so deep, profound or obscure I have almost abandoned them. I am not a trained cataloguer and sometimes the subject matter is not clear.  Nonetheless, these experiences have ensured that the task, considered by some as tedious or not required, has been and continues to be  for me  a labour of love.

There are also many pamphlets in the collection and it is tempting as they will be time consuming to put them in a box marked ‘pamphlets’. However these have proved to be as diverse and precious as the books; possibly containing unpublished literature by the famous and not so, that would otherwise be considered a mere leaflet, publishing literature or ephemera.

I was hoping to tell you about some of the gems I have discovered over the years, so maybe next time …

Written by Claire Wooldridge, UMASCS Graduate Trainee Library Assistant

Bookbinding work station in the old bindery

As the library graduate trainee here at the University of Reading’s Special Collections Service, I am fortunate enough to get lots of opportunities for training in all aspects of rare books, from manufacture and repair, to descriptive cataloguing, to their use in publications and for social media.

The sewing takes shape

In the last few weeks I have been having training sessions with Geoff, our conservation and preservation manager at the main campus library.  Geoff has been training me in order that I can assist him and his preservation team by conducting some small book repairs here at special collections.  In time I will be doing paper and binding repairs and preservation, including reattaching boards and sewing in gatherings.  Sadly old books do become damaged with time and use… an inevitable development but one which also provides me with plenty of material to work on.  Never fear – my practice books are strictly those withdrawn from circulation!

As Geoff has taught me – the most important part of preservation of rare books is using water soluble materials, meaning a repair can be reversed if necessary.  So that means Japanese paper and paste, no superglue or Sellotape!

In order to understand how to repair the book Geoff has been teaching and showing me how a book is made.  As a complete beginner this training is invaluable to me and is significantly improving my understanding and appreciation of all aspects of the importance of the book as a physical object, besides the significance of the content, author and so on.

Sewing around the tapes

Week one was an explanation of paper making, week two was the use of Japanese paper for repairs and this week we covered sewing.  Although the needle and thread were familiar… this was a little different from sewing I have done in the past!  Although for new books the gatherings are joined together by machine, in days gone by prior to the mechanization of printing this would have been done by hand.

Although it took me a few tries to get the hang of it – by then end of the morning I had produced a simple book, made of several gatherings of paper.  Sewing around pieces of tape gave the spine more strength.

With this experience I can go onto repair books here at special collections by sewing loose pages back in.  I look forward to my next training session.

This collection was moved back to Douai Abbey in September 2017.  Please contact them for more information: http://www.douaiabbey.org.uk/

In the first of a series highlighting a selection of our collections, here’s a look at our Turner Collection, featuring a bibliophilic monk and revolutionary war.

Turner Collection, University of Reading

Turner Collection, Lettre adressee au Roi, 1789, Vol. 22

Consisting of nearly 8000 items in total, the Turner Collection is an invaluable and fascinating source of pamphlets and political tracts directly relating to the French revolution.  The 2500 pamphlets in 275 volumes mainly concern the period of 1787-1806 covering the French Revolution and the revolutionary wars.  Many of the pamphlets were printed in Paris with the collection also featuring contemporary items printed in other major European printing centres, such as London, on the topic.

The collection is the work of Father John Turner (1765-1844) an English Benedictine monk.  In the mid 1780’s Turner was resident at abbeys in Douai (northern France) and Paris.  Turner became directly involved in events in revolutionary France, embracing the revolution in 1792 by taking the Oath of Liberty and Equality and joining the National Guard.  At that time the monastic way of life was no longer recognised in France.  Turner was later imprisoned in Sainte-Pélagie from 1793 to 1794, after the French declaration of war on Britain in early 1793 resulted in the arrest of British citizens in France.

Turner Collection, Edmund Burke with Turner’s notes, Vol. 25

Turner Collection, Thomas Paine, 1793, Vol. 27

In early 1795 Turner and others of his Benedictine community returned to their monastic life in Paris.  It was at this time that Turner began to collect and collate into volumes examples of the vast numbers of revolutionary pamphlets Paris had been flooded with during the revolution.  Turner was a bibliophile, he also collected older and rarer books of the ancien régime, in part to replenish the monastic library of his abbey which had been gutted during the revolutionary conflicts.

The pamphlets largely concern contemporary political and ecclesiastical matters, much of the material is of French publication but wider European contexts are also evident.  There are for example tracts by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, demonstrating the dissemination of revolutionary ideology through the printed medium across Europe and America at this time.  Many of the volumes also contain Turner’s handwritten notes and transcriptions.

Turner Collection, Turner’s handwritten notes

Douai Abbey today

When the Benedictine community to which Turner had belonged moved to England in 1903 (due to unfavourable anti-clerical legislation in France) they established themselves at Douai Abbey, near Woolhampton.  Turner’s collection also came to England and was deposited at the University of Reading by the Abbott and community of Douai in 1966.

As you can see – the collection and the story of its compilation by father Turner certainly packs a punch in terms of historical interest and intrigue!  For researchers of the French revolution and the revolutionary printing press the collection is a hugely valuable resource.  Contact us for more information or visit to view the collection and browse the card catalogue.