{"id":693,"date":"2021-11-22T11:31:34","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T11:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/?p=693"},"modified":"2023-01-29T16:43:29","modified_gmt":"2023-01-29T16:43:29","slug":"animals-in-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/2021\/11\/22\/animals-in-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Animals in store: the Book Trade and Animal Histories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here, Sue Bradley<\/a> finds some half-forgotten animals and resolves to listen out for more. Sue is a member of the Newcastle University Oral History Unit and Collective and a Research Associate on FIELD (Farm-level Interdisciplinary Approaches to Endemic Livestock Disease) in Newcastle University\u2019s Centre for Rural Economy. Her article, \u2018Hobday\u2019s hands: recollections of touch in veterinary practice\u2019 appeared in <\/em>Oral History, vol 49, no 1, 2021.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

By the time I realised my boiler was broken, the papers stored in a carelessly open plastic box underneath were sodden through \u2013 heaps of interview extracts that had defeated me years before when editing a book from the British Library\u2019s Book Trade Lives oral history collection.[1]<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"https:\/\/i.pinimg.com\/originals\/99\/03\/2b\/99032b30ee103591973ccdd0cd0c0020.jpg\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Frank Stoakley, born in 1905, is one of the oldest Book Trade Lives interviewees.[2]<\/a> In 1920 he started work at Heffer\u2019s bookshop in Cambridge, where he later built a science department of international repute. Sometime before the first world war, his father, who ran the family bindery business in Green Street, had been shocked by the loss of rare books after \u2018some fool left the tap on\u2019 in rooms above the university\u2019s science laboratories. Together with his brother, an assistant to the professor of chemistry, William Pope, he had gone on to invent a technique for repairing flood-damaged books. This, Frank explained, had entailed bathing them in several solutions to separate and clean the pages before hanging them up to dry. I lifted soft wodges out of the box, peeled the sheets gently apart and pegged them on the washing line. Once dried, the print was blurred but still distinct, and there, exposed by the springtime sun, were animals that had been hibernating all along. I recognised Vicky the terrier, some leopards, and a cat called Bang who had lived with Leonard Woolf.                                     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However hard I tried, I hadn\u2019t been able to fit animals into that book without tagging them on like curiosities. Then, shortly before they re-surfaced, I had begun to read about animal history, a thought-provoking and increasingly influential field.[3]<\/a> It proposes a shift akin to the move to \u2018history from below\u2019 but, rather than hierarchies, it envisages networks where human and animal lives are dynamically interconnected.[4]<\/a> From that perspective I see that the problem of fit lay less in the structure of the book than in the original interviews, many of which I had been responsible for. As far as I can remember, I rarely asked directly about animals. They were interesting when they appeared but I didn\u2019t understand them to be historically significant, so if they came into the conversation it would be incidentally, not unlike women and domestic staff previously. At one time, oral historians researching home life were advised to ask specifically about the latter, as interviewees might not otherwise think to include them. Oral history has never precluded accounts about those who cannot speak for themselves; one person\u2019s recollections can help us imagine other lives too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Frank
Frank Stoakley with Sue, 1999 \u00a9 Mie Stoakley.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The volume I eventually produced contains a bookseller\u2019s description of men at work in the packing room of the London bookshop of Bumpus in the 1950s, where wrapping from in-coming goods was recycled for out-going orders: \u2018They would select pieces of paper and corrugated cardboard and make a parcel. It was all done by eye. And they used string in those days. Their packages were beautiful to look at.\u2019[5]<\/a> A room full of paper and cardboard and string? Why didn\u2019t I think to ask about mice? That might have led to other creatures \u2013 a shop cat? A customer carrying a marmoset?[6]<\/a> If recollections of animals had been embedded in context like that at the interview stage, they would have fitted naturally into the book and, more importantly, broadened the vision of life that the archive collection affords.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Re-reading Frank Stoakley\u2019s transcript, I am struck by yet another detail. His father, he says, was skilled in cutting images from coloured leathers to decorate the bindings for books of wealthy clients: \u2018The racing men wanted their star horse [\u2026] and ladies wanted their pet dogs.\u2019 It is a telling picture of the firm\u2019s client\u00e8le and the creatures that they prized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the possible cost of this painstaking work? Frank does not mention \u2013 nor did I think to raise \u2013 the question of anthrax, a lethal disease of animal origin prevalent at the time in the wool and leather-working trades.[7]<\/a> As Melanie Challenger says, we\u2019re fond of the notion that being human somehow provides \u2018a magical boundary\u2019.[8]<\/a> Yet human life does not exist apart from animals. Imagine the history that hears them in workshops and libraries and senses their traces in vellum and glue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> The British Book Trade: An Oral History<\/em>, British Library, 2008\/2010 was edited from the British Library\u2019s Book Trade Lives collection of audio interviews with publishers and booksellers: https:\/\/www.bl.uk\/collection-guides\/oral-histories-of-writing-and-publishing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Frank Stoakley interviewed by Sue Bradley, British Library catalogue reference: C872\/04.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> See https:\/\/www.britishanimalstudiesnetwork.org.uk\/<\/a>; https:\/\/animalhistorygroup.org\/<\/a>; https:\/\/networks.h-net.org\/h-animal<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> For a useful overview see Chris Pearson, \u2018History and Animal Agencies\u2019, in Linda Kalof (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies<\/em>, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Michael Seviour quoted in The British Book Trade<\/em>, 2010, p.72.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> Bumpus served a grand and bohemian client\u00e8le at a time when monkeys were not uncommon pets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> See Caroline Steedman, Dust<\/em>, Manchester University Press, 2001, pp. 23-25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Melanie Challenger, How to Be Animal: A New History of What it Means to Be Human<\/em>, Canongate, 2021, p.2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here, Sue Bradley finds some half-forgotten animals and resolves to listen out for more. Sue is a member of the Newcastle University Oral History Unit and Collective and a Research Associate on FIELD (Farm-level Interdisciplinary Approaches to Endemic Livestock Disease) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,9,166],"tags":[98,117,43,44,37,17,155,69],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflection","category-research","category-think-piece","tag-animal-history","tag-book-making","tag-book-trade","tag-life-history","tag-memory","tag-oral-history","tag-oral-history-collective","tag-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/oral-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}