[Note: Frank Grizzard is an assistant editor in the Revolutionary War Series of the Papers of George Washington, a modern scholarly documentary editing project located at the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. He has written a dissertation in history on the 19th-century construction of Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village at the University of Virginia, which is being published on the World-Wide Web as an electronic database. Last year he won the Bibliographical Society's student book-collecting award. This year he is a graduate fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities at the University of Virginia. In the past he served as editor for three years of the Corcoran Department of History's journal, Essays in History, and he is currently serving a third term as co-editor of The Magazine of Albemarle County History.
The title of my brief talk this afternoon is by half a misnomer. That I have 500 copies (and more) of the same book, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, is assuredly true; that I have made any progress as a collector is, as you will perceive by the time I finish speaking, frankly dubious.
I know that I am in the presence of some of the country's foremost bibliophiles, yet perhaps even some of you might wonder why anyone would want 500 copies of the same book, even a favorite book. By way of self-defense, let me commence by saying that when I first began acquiring copies of Bunyan's classic some years ago I did not think in terms of the value of the book or of amassing a collection that might have some legitimate utility to the scholarly community. I bought the book simply because I liked it; I liked reading it; I liked the simplicity of Bunyan's allegorical descriptions; I liked the resonance of truth surrounding the predicaments that his central figure found himself in during his worldly pilgrimage. It was only later, after I had in my possession two or three dozen copies of the book, including several late 19th- and early 20th-century printings, with their elaborate bindings and powerful illustrations, that I began to understand that each one of the books is a unique physical object, and, in many cases, a distinct work of art; elementary knowledge, for sure, for any bibliographer, but then I was not (nor am I now) privileged to wear that appellation.
The discovery that each individual copy of The Pilgrim's Progress was encompassed to a degree by a larger and richer material and mental context only increased my desire to accumulate more copies of the book. After a while my yearning gave way to a more mature craving to amass a real collection, and, as the collection grew, so did the need for some intellectual justification for its existence. Thus I began to contemplate the potential scholarly value or use of a comprehensive collection containing various and even multiple copies of The Pilgrim's Progress. It did not take me very long to conjure up the notion that students of religion, literature, bibliography, and history could benefit from access to such a collection. For my part, I "swallowed the lie whole," and the existence of the collection itself then became the justification for sustaining its own growth; I only wish my wife could see the utility of this line of reasoning as clearly as I do.
Bunyan's classic, now nearly three centuries old, of course needs no introduction. Its printing/publishing history is one of the largest and richest of any single title in the English language. The book will be reprinted numerous times this year, as it often has since its debut in 1678, and new retellings of Bunyan's story will appear side by side with the older versions. A search of several electronic bibliographical listings, including the massive OCLC Online Computer Library Center database, reveals about 4,000 different records for the book, and from personal observation I can attest to the incompleteness of these computer-generated compilations. How many of these 4,000 or so records of The Pilgrim's Progress constitute separate editions is unknown, although perhaps not unknowable to a patient and earnest bibliographer. I suggest this approximation of the number of different forms of The Pilgrim's Progress in order to place the size of my collection into some perspective. A simple calculation shows that it represents roughly one-eighth of the approximate total. If I could continue to gather together copies of the book at about the same pace that I have in the past, and if resources were not an hinderance (which they are), I could expect to accumulate more or less a complete collection of the English-language printings of The Pilgrim's Progress in another 90 years or so, that is, if I overlooked the hundreds of issues that will be produced during the interval, and if I forgot about acquiring one of the eleven known 1st editions.
When preparing this account of my progress as a collector I asked myself what I thought were two simple questions: Why amass such a collection by one author in the first place? And why Bunyan? These reasonable but deceptive queries forced me to propose many other questions; questions that cannot be answered in a forum like this but which I do want to mention this afternoon, at least in passing.
To the first and more
general question of why amass a large collection of the same book,
I answer by assertion: we should consider a book's physical
properties as particular and changing expressions of the vehicle(s)
of conveyance for an author's mental constructs. Accept this one
proposition and it immediately becomes apparent that a large
collection of variant and multiple copies of the same work will
contain some valuable lessons that cannot possibly be learned
through other methods of textual or historical analysis. By
examining a large number of copies of one particular work, our
knowledge about that work can be confirmed or expanded. I
especially refer to what a large group of copies will reflect about
a book's publication and printing history--the dates, numbers, and
print-runs of editions, issues, and re-issues, the treatment of the
text itself, and the names and types of publishing houses that have
produced the work; I refer also to the elements that are relative
to the variety of formats--the sizes, binding, type styles, paper,
etc.--and to the artistic renderings of illustrations. Although
most of this type of information says more about the producers of
the volumes rather than the users, it must be admitted that the
producers did not manufacture the books without first giving
careful consideration to the preferences and wishes of the intended
consumers. Such knowledge gleamed from a thorough examination of
a collection like mine can help reveal how the work was received
and perceived by its audience over time, thus adding to our
understanding of why The Pilgrim's Progress, for instance,
has enjoyed such an obvious and lingering importance in the
religious and literary lives of so great a number of people.
The prominence of The Pilgrim's Progress in the literature and history of the English-speaking countries of the world is in fact the short answer to the second question, Why Bunyan? But that begs for elucidation, or at least leads to a host of more direct and specific questions that demand satisfaction; questions such as: Why has The Pilgrim's Progress had such an enduring publication history? Is it possible to calculate how many editions of The Pilgrim's Progress have been published? Why was the book's influence not confined to Puritan believers? What effect did the entrance of the book into the literary "mainstream" have on how it was published and received? Did people actually read the book? Or, was it, as Terry Belanger once quipped, the coffee-table book of the 19th century? What can the variety in sizes and formats teach us? Why have illustrations always been an integral part of so many editions of the book, and how many and which artists have attempted to illustrate it? What do dedications, inscriptions, and notations tell us about how the book was perceived and used? I raise these questions to stress the kinds of subjects that must be considered in order to adequately answer the question, Why Bunyan? And many of these questions, I think, can be answered only by an examination of large numbers of the book.
Although I will return to the last-mentioned topic, evidence of ownership and use that survive in the books themselves, I want to move beyond these questions and turn our attention to my collection specifically and describe some of its more salient features. With today's report in mind, I arbitrarily selected for examination the first 124 copies of The Pilgrim's Progress that I could lay my hands on without disrupting the whole household. This is roughly ¬ of the number of volumes that I have, which breaks down very neatly to about one-thirty-second of the aforementioned 4,000 entries. I think that the 124 copies are somewhat indicative of how the collection might appear if viewed as a whole, although I want to caution against likening this information to polling data, for the obvious reason that the copies are all different and new information undoubtedly will arise as more copies are examined. Moreover, I do not think the 124-volume sample adequately represents the 4,000 figure for several reasons, the most important being that I probably tend to own the more inexpensive and less rare copies of the book, all of which are printed from about the mid-18th century forward, and thus several decades away from the first and earliest editions. Classifications of the books made with these qualifications in mind, however, might safely instruct us.
Of the 124 volumes in my sample, 8 were printed in the 18th century, 55 in the 19th century, and 61 in the present century. Eighty-one of the books were published by traditional commercial printers and publishing houses, 34 by religious publishing houses, and 8 by Bible tract societies. There was also 1 special edition. Thus we can see a clear religious motivation behind at least one-third of the printings. The continued popularity of The Pilgrim's Progress shows us that the advent of a modern more secular society has not squelched interest in a book that is inherently religious, although it must be noted that many of the 19th- and 20th-century printings appeared during the era that saw not only the rise and ebb of the social gospel movement but an unprecedented growth in the number and size of commercial printing houses as well.
If I had brought in the 124 copies, or my whole collection for that matter, and placed them before you for our observation, the first thing that would be immediately visible to everyone would be the variety of bindings, 106 of which are hardback. The single most distinguishing feature, besides the sheer variety, is the stamped or embossed cover, which seems to have been popular from the 1820s through the 1920s; the next most frequent characteristic is the use of leather in binding.[Note 1] Other features that can be readily discerned in the collection, which I can mention only in passing, include the size of volumes, paperback editions, facsimile editions, children's editions, foreign language editions, educational editions, dustjackets, advertisements, multiple copies, musical scores, audio and video tapes versions, and games. An unexpected discovery was the fact that 16 of the copies (indeed more than 1 out of 8) appear in publishers' series that consist of unrelated works, like Hurst & Co.'s Arlington Edition, Belford-Clarke's Caxton Edition, J. M. Dent's Temple Classics, MacMillan's Golden Treasure Series, etc.[Note 2]
Between the books' covers the most striking feature, that is, if we discount the variety of editions and versions of the text as well as the numbers of different kinds of paper and type used, is the numbers and kinds of illustrations that appear. The very first edition of The Pilgrim's Progress contained illustrations, and so have many editions or printings since. Many are quite the works of art. Of the 124 volumes, 94 contain engravings, etchings, drawings, photographs, or other artwork in the frontispiece or other illustrations. 24 contain color plates or pictures of some variety; 57 contain only black and white illustrations, and 5 volumes contain hand-colored illustrations. The ambitious scholar who makes these illustrations and their artists the focus of their serious attention obviously will find a fantastic treasure trove in which to conduct research.
As I earlier indicated, I
want to return to the tell-tale signs of ownership that survive in
the books themselves, making a few remarks on their meaning in
passing, before I conclude. Recurring features like these always
are tantalizing to historians because they offer direct and
tangible links to past personalities. Although the sample is
self-limiting in the kinds of information it can provide, these
features are indicators of how the owners used, valued, and
perceived their copies of the book. Of the 124-book sample, an
incredible 40% contain some kind of written marks that reflect
ownership. Fifty have names, dates, or other inscriptions; 16
contain gift or presentation inscriptions; 10 have personalized
bookplates fastened therein; 8 have notes, underlining, or
scribbling; 7 have markings from a library, school, or sunday
school; 6 have personalized embossed or ink stamps; 4 contain
bookmarks or other cards; 3 contain newspaper clippings; 3 contain
floral and faunal material, including leaves and locks of human
hair; 2 have birth records set down in them; and 1 has drawings or
sketches by the owner.
What does this raw data suggest? As you can easily discern, the signs of ownership really make up a mixed bag. Much of the information, containing simply a name and date, and occasionally a place, reveals little beyond the who, when, and where.[Note 3] In a couple of instances the book was used to record important dates. Thomas Carrington's oversized mid-19th-century edition contains the date of his mother's birth, "Mother 28 April 1825," and in the back cover of an 1847 copy someone wrote the birthdates of Mary Burbidge and her brother Thomas, who were born on 3 October 1813 and 28 October 1814, respectively. Several of the copies were once part of personal or institutional libraries, including Baptist, Methodist Episcopal, Mennonite, and non-denominational churches.[Note 4] Ministers made several inscriptions, two examples of which are an 1853 edition printed in New York that contains the names, written at different times, of "Rev. John L. Gilbert" and "Rev. J. Kyle Gilbert," and a 1903 copy with the inscription "Presented to Marvin W. Noell, Jr., in recognition of his Faithful attendance and good work in the Friday Night Class for Bible Study for a period of Three Years. James N. Taylor pastor June 3/1928 Washington D.C." To identify these and other people named in the books is possible and would be a worthwhile but arduous task.
Although, for example, differences in gender of the owners, givers, or recipients of the copies favor males over females by a ratio of about 2 to 1 in the sample, gender seems less significant when considered in the context of other factors, the dates of the printings, the reasons for giving gifts, the parent-child relationships, the preponderance of male teachers and the larger number of male students in the classes and schools that awarded copies, the passing on of copies to the next generation, and so forth. If the inscriptions are any indicator, one significant development, that of presenting the book as a gift, developed around the mid-19th century, which might correspond to the increased sentimentalism of the era. Reasons for giving the book included friendship, religious encouragement, Christmas and birthday gifts, keepsake remembrances, and achievement awards for school, sunday school, and Bible class. Family members and friends gave the book to other family members and friends, ministers and teachers gave it to their students, and in one case a school class presented a copy to the teacher.
Another development, which can be identified chiefly as a 20th-century one, is the use of bookplates by the owners. In fact all but one of the bookplates in my sample date from our century. The bookplate in the 19th-century example is in the cover of an 1835 edition and reads "Presented to Mrs Lambert, from her son James. 13th October 1873." Owners especially liked to place their bookplates on older books. An edition published in 1775 contains Eleanor Butler's bookplate with the date 1932. Butler previously had signed and dated the book in 1930. Franklin A. Greene, Jr. of Baltimore signed his 1859 copy in 1950 when he placed a Greene Family bookplate inside the cover and apparently colored the illustrations with magic markers. An elaborate and colorful bookplate in the front of John Sheffield's copy shows that he received the book from the Salvation Army on 23 January 1900 "for good conduct diligence and regular attendance" in the "Junior War." Other examples include a 1902 copy containing A. H. Imhof's bookplate as well as a signature of another owner. John H. Barnes, whose library was dispersed across central Virginia after his death, placed a bookplate containing only his name in his little 20th-century facsimile of the book. Dan and Alice Williams of Scottsville placed their address sticker over the name in the bookplate that Thomas Orlando previously had attached to his 1964 Signet Classic copy.
Unfortunately, the most significant question that probably could be asked about the books is the one that we have the least evidence for, that is, How were the volumes actually used by those who possessed them? Even the finest example in the sample yields but little information. One T. Smith, or an earlier owner of a 1789 British edition, went through An Authentic Account of the Life and Death of Mr. John Bunyan that is bound with the volume and placed two dozen check marks beside references to descriptions of Bunyan's life, most of which dealt with Bunyan's preoccupation with sin before his salvation experience and the sufficiency of Christ's grace to bring salvation to sinners. Anna Tucker wrote her name, address, and date in a copy on 12 March 1905 with the note "English J.B." A well-used and much underlined copy contains the simple pencil note in the front cover "Purchased 1910." Unfortunately the book is so marked up as to reveal little about the thinking of the reader. On the back of the title page of an undated and unsigned presentation copy from the Alpha Tau Omega Library someone made a list of some of the figures and scenes from the book and another person wrote "Grace Abounding" beneath the list.[Note 5] Emma Clark underlined passages in a copy that she dated 3 March 1973. And finally, Mary Bickerton's 1893 edition has pencil drawings of a reposing adult watching children at play in Victoria Park in Leith that were sketched in both the front and back covers on 27 July 1913.
Some of the miscellany found in various copies provides by far the more interesting subject matter, and reveals what was at least temporarily important to the owners of the books. A 1775 edition contains a newspaper clipping glued to the inside cover about a 20th-century sale of a 1st edition copy of The Pilgrim's Progress that sold at a Sotheby's auction for œ1,475.[Note 6] An 1829 edition contains a note in ink that reads "Ashley J. Bells Book Bought at the sale of John Slater at Louisa Ct House the 13th June 1842." Someone later copied the note over twice in pencil, and E. Parker Brown II later printed his name in the book. An otherwise clean 1831 edition has some child's scribbling, a leaf, and the mysterious words "Don't do Tommie Don't do," written inside the cover. (Perhaps an admonition not to write in his book?) An 1847 edition has a newspaper clipping in the front cover entitled "Christening of the Infant Princess of Hesse." It contains a contemporaneous report of the christening of Victoria Alberta Elizabeth Matilda Mary, which "took place on Monday at one o'clock, in the Green Drawing-room at Windsor Castle, according to the rites of the Lutheran Church."[Note 7] In an 1857 copy a school child apparently practiced his penmanship by writing the capital letter of his first name over and over on the inside cover. The same copy has in its advertisement section a recommendation for another book, Cousin Cicely's Lewie, or the Bended Twig, in which the owner copied a quote praising it: "Let every youth peruse it, & we promise them they will find their hearts and lives improved by it.--Advocate, Batavia."
Inscriptions in the gift
and presentation copies are also most interesting but more
tantalizing than revealing. An 1856 edition has the note "Remember
me as often as you see this. Shilo." Shilo, from the Old
Testament, is Hebrew for tranquil, from the root word meaning
secure, happy, prosper, safety. An American Bible Tract Society
copy inscribed "To W. R. Abbot from his [illegible]
class--Brookhill May 20th. 1859." came from Bellevue, a school that
Abbot founded in Lynchburg. Another American Tract Society copy
presented as a gift during the War Between the States contains the
inscription "William L. Hardy--With best wishes for his happiness.
J. Hawes[,] Hartford May 25th 1864." Julie L. Stephenson received
her copy of The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable
from her mother for Christmas 1869. A 19th-century edition
contains a partly illegible inscription that reads "Presented To
[illegible] By his teacher Samuel [illegible] January 1 1874." A
late 19th-century edition was given to Robbie M. Clanahan from
"Brother Aleck & Sister Laura." A cheap late 19th-century edition
published by J. B. Lippincott Company has the inscription
"presented to Stella M. Edwards for untiring energy in one of the
duties assigned her and may your progress toward that Eternal Home
be more Successful than your Earthly progress, Is the prayer
of your thrue [sic] friend and teacher Augustus Stuart Houff Jan
20th 1890." Below the inscription is written in a shaky and
apparently aged handwriting, "To go to Connie Johnson from her Gran
Mother May 2 1942." This volume contains two locks of hair, one
blonde, and one auburn, a newspaper clipping from a Shenandoah
Valley newspaper about a local store owner, "Reminences of Henry
Ney,"[Note 8] a plain bookmark, and a
little folding card about 2
x 3 inches with a house on the front and flowers on the back, in
color, and 8 Old Testament verses on the inside for daily reading.
An 1894 edition has the inscription "Isa. 41-10. To Lieutenant Wood
With Best Wishes. From a Sincere Friend Feby. 13th. 1897."[Note
9]
A 1903 edition was presented "To Frank Knight from the Bible School
of the First Baptist Church of Mansfield, Mass. Xmas 1922." An
early 20th-century edition has the inscription "Many Happy
Birthdays Jake from Florence. Feb. 14. 1905." A 1933 edition has
the inscription "To--Chester Arthur From--Mothers Friend Mrs
Madden. Christmas 1946." (Obviously not the president, who died in
1886.) A second copy from 1933 contains the stamp "Presented by
#12,669 Salford Mennonite Sunday School Date__________
Name__________." A 1967 edition of Bunyan's The Holy War edited by
James F. Forrest contains Forrest's inscription "For Ed and Shirley Rose,
who know that Bunyan is important--Jim Forrest July, 1967."
The range and richness of the marginalia from the books sampled from my collection of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress reveals some of the kinds of patterns that might emerge through a systematic study of the entire collection, patterns that will yield the definitive kind of findings necessary to answer the questions, Why amass a collection of 500 copies of the same book? And Why Bunyan? Once answered, Bunyan might with relish be compared to the subjects of other large collections, like authors Alexander Pope and Owen Meredith, to name two close at hand.
