Chicken-rearing and the Revolution – August 2015

17 August 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s classic ‘fairy tale’ about animals in revolt and allegory of the Russian dictatorship, Animal Farm. Orwell – real name Eric Arthur Blair – wrote the book in 1943/44 at his small cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire. His friend and fellow author, Jack Common, ran the village shop in nearby Datchworth.

George Orwell BBC

George Orwell

Common was born in Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1903. He moved to London in 1925 and later worked at The Adelphi magazine, where he met Orwell in the mid-1930s.The pair struck up an uneasy friendship – Common was North East working-class, whilst Orwell, was (in his own words) “lower-upper-middle class” and Eton-educated. Despite their differences, the two remained friends until Orwell’s death in 1950. Orwell became Common’s literary mentor, regarding Common’s collection of essays, The Freedom of the Streets (1938), as:

‘the authentic voice of the ordinary working man, the man who might infuse a new decency into the control of affairs if only he could get there . . .’

Jack Common died in 1968, and his papers were deposited at the University Library in 1974. They comprise photographs, diaries, notebooks, manuscript, and letters.

JC/4/1/8

(JC/4/1/8) Jack Common

This 1962 letter (shown below) to Common (COM 3/3/38), from London bookseller Anthony Rota, is about the purchase of a selection of Orwell’s letters. Rota, obviously looking for insights into Orwell’s writing, isn’t impressed with some of the content:

‘Like you, I find Orwell’s absorption in the minutiae of chicken-rearing well worth reading about but, in terms of hard cash, it does not mean as much as any comment he makes on how and why he wrote his books.’

Rota offers Common a poultry £75 for the letters.

But perhaps the letter should maybe not be dismissed so lightly. Orwell – a keen angler and gardener – strove for self-sufficiency and reared his own livestock in his Wallington garden. His chickens and goats are the animals that provided inspiration for characters in Animal Farm.

Common replied, expressing his disappointment at the offer. Rota’s response of 8th August 1962 (COM 3/3/39) presses home his disinterest in Orwell’s Good Life interests:

‘From our point of view the trouble is that he writes too much about chickens and not enough about his work.’

The two eventually agree on £85 for the letter.

(COM 3/3/38), letter from Anthony Rota to Jack Common, 3rd August 1962

(COM 3/3/38), letter from Anthony Rota to Jack Common, 3rd August 1962

150 years of Alice in Wonderland – July 2015

Front cover of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922) [20th Century Collection, 823.8 CAR]

This year celebrates the 150th anniversary of jam tarts, rabbit holes, mad hatters, secret doors, tea parties and even more ‘curiouser and curiouser’ delights in Lewis Carroll’s fantasy children’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Published in 1865, the tale follows Alice, a seven year old girl, who falls asleep and enters a world full of nonsense. Upon following the White Rabbit, she encounters many iconic characters whose symbolism aim to teach children lessons surrounding growing up, identity and curiosity.

Lewis Carroll is a pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Born in the village of Daresbury, Chesire, he was the eldest boy in a family of eleven children. Carroll was educated at home, until the age of twelve when he was sent to Richmond Grammar School in North Yorkshire. In 1851 he registered at Christ Church, Oxford, where he excelled at maths. He received the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855, which he continued to hold for the next twenty six years. However, he is best known as an adept storyteller; spinning new tales to entertain his friends.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was inspired by real events and a real child. The story occurred in 1862 during a river outing with Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and his family. Along the journey Carroll spoke of a bored little girl called Alice who goes looking for adventure. Alice Liddell (one of three daughters on the trip) loved the story so much that she asked for it to be written down. Carroll agreed and he eventually completed the story two and a half years later.

Reproduction of a tipped-in colour plate by Gwynedd M. udson depicting the Made Hatter's tea party
Reproduction of a tipped-in colour plate by Gwynedd M. udson depicting the Made Hatter’s tea party [20th Century Collection, 823.8 CAR]

The enchanting tale has charmed both children and adults through numerous re-prints, theatre productions, film adaptations and more. Special Collections hold a version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that was published in 1922 by Hodder and Stoughton and contains twelve reproduced illustrations of highly detailed tipped-in colour plates by Gwynedd M. Hudson. Each illustration contains specific scenes from the story, including Alice receiving advice from the Caterpillar, Alice and the Queen of Hearts playing croquet, and Alice meeting the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle. Hudson passed away at the age of twenty six but, despite her short life, she is noted for her remarkable illustrations in J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy as well as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Reproduction of a tipped-in colour plate by Gwynedd M. Hudson depicting the Alice with the Caterpillar
Reproduction of a tipped-in colour plate by Gwynedd M. Hudson depicting the Alice with the Caterpillar [20th Century Collection, 823.8 CAR]

Isaac Taylor’s Scenes In America, an Exotic Moral Voyage for ‘Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers’ – June 2015

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A map of America and frontispiece from Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers
A map of America and frontispiece from Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers (Rare Books, RB375 9 TAY)

‘ONCE again your friend a hearing

Claims from you, my little miss;

With a volume neat appearing,

Full of pictures, see, ‘tis this.

Long ago he gave a promise

O’er America to roam;

Travelling far and wide, tho’ from his

House ne’er moving, still at home.

Yet o’er many a volume poring,

Such as you could hardly read;

Distant realms and climes exploring,

Your enquiring minds to feed.

He has travelled thro’ and thro’ them,

Often wearied with his toil,

That at ease you here might view them,

Gath’ring knowledge all the while….’

These verses open Isaac Taylor’s Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers (1821). Scenes in America was part of the wider Scenes series, ‘a series of armchair traveller books for children’.Other titles included Scenes in Europe (1818) and Scenes in Africa (1820), as well as several other titles.

The books in the Scenes series follow a standard pattern: ‘three small, coloured engravings appear on each page of illustrations, and they are linked by captions to the scenes which they represent. As for the text, it is rather light in tone, mixing prose and verse with the instruction which was its putative purpose’.

Isaac Taylor was a man of many talents. He was a talented engraver and artist, a popular Church pastor, an ardent educationalist, and a successful children’s writer. Taylor’s educationalist outlook was both a major part of his life and his literary work. As deacon of an Independent congregation in Lavenham, Suffolk, Taylor had founded a Sunday School, where his ‘successive workrooms doubled as schoolrooms for his own children and later for those of neighbours too, Taylor giving instruction from his engraving stool as he worked’. When the family moved to Colchester, ‘he began a series of monthly lectures for young people, delivered free of charge in the parlour of his own house; these proved extremely popular and the programme continued for several years’.

Taylor’s belief in education and the stimulation of young minds can be seen as a driving force in his production of the Scenes series. However, Taylor’s moral and educational instruction could also take on a more overt form. Taylor was an ardent opponent of slavery and the slave trade. Scenes in Africa had spoken out against slavery, and Scenes in America reinforced those sentiments. Taylor was keen to explain to his young readers that, although they may have won a victory by abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire, they had not yet won the war against slavery:

‘Although the slave trade is happily put an end to, so that no more can be brought over; yet there are many thousand negroes who are still slaves. It has made no difference to them, except that their masters are not so oppressive to them, as they cannot easily replace them if they die’. P.61

The moral decay slavery caused in those who took part in it was evident the ‘masters’ who only cared for their profit. This moral dimension was of course part of Taylor’s moral education of his readers. But he also mentioned the physical brutality and callousness of slavers: ‘To every party there is an overseer, who stalks among them with a long whip, ready to lash any who do not work fast enough to please him’. The images this passage conjured would no doubt have made an impact on his young audience.

As J.R Oldfield has suggested, ‘most children’s books published between 1750 and 1850 were unashamedly moralistic and concerned, above all, with inculcating a compassionate humanitarianism’. Taylor’s abolitionist message in his books certainly fits this wider trend, but it also within the more specific trend of attempting to create an anti-slavery consensus ‘through the education of young and impressionable minds’.

Yet Scenes in America was far more than a moral instruction book. It was meant to evoke a sense of wonder in the reader, of this faraway world and the flora and fauna it contained. There were strange animals found there, like the ‘dreadful serpent’ the rattlesnake, the ‘passionate’ hummingbird, and, ‘glowing with celestial light’, the firefly. He showed the reader societies of people with different customs and ways of life. Taylor devotes sections to several difficult indigenous groups, and the engravings provide tantalising glimpses of these exotic lands to stimulate the minds of child readers (the accuracy of these descriptions and engravings, is of course, another matter). No doubt some of these are sensationalised or included for dramatic effect, such as the section ‘Sacrificing a Child on its Mother’s Grave’. Yet there are also sections on ‘Hunting the Buffalo on the Ice’, ‘Indian Sagacity’, and ‘the Pipe of Peace’. For those interested in studying European perceptions of indigenous Americans, Taylor’s work provides an example of an attempt to show the cultural diversity of Native American societies, while at the same time never quite seeing them as worthy or as equal as his own.

Page from Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers  (Rare Books, RB375 9 TAY)
Pages 28 and 29 from Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers (Rare Books, RB375 9 TAY)

Scenes in America was also an abridged history of European involvement in the New World. The narratives of the Spanish conquistadors of course provided an exciting tale for his readers, from Columbus’ contact to the conquests of Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro. Indeed, the history of what we would call Latin America takes up approximately half of the book, so Scenes is in no way a glorified account of English and British settlement. But North American history was also discussed, with sections ranging in content from religious emigration to the New World, to the American War of Independence, with sections on Canada and, as we have seen, the West Indies.

Pages 68 and 69 from Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers
Pages 68 and 69 from Scenes in America, for the Amusement and Instruction of Little Tarry-at-Home Travellers (Rare Books, RB375 9 TAY)

It wasn’t just the grander narratives of history that Taylor included. He discussed the daily lives of the ordinary settlers and tried to portray a sense of their daily lives, with sections such as ‘New Settlers First Log House’, and ‘Cultivating Tobacco’.

The fruits of Taylor’s educational mission can be seen in the literary and artistic abilities of his own children. Indeed, the family have been labelled as ‘amongst the most famous and prolific children’s authors and illustrators of the early nineteenth century’.

Ann and Jane Taylor were successful children’s poets, with Jane in particular achieving prominence. Her works include the still famous classic (and often anonymised) Twinkle Twinkle Little Star). Jane was also well regarded as an essayist and literary critic. We hold several of Jane’s works here in Special Collections, including Original Poems for Infant Minds and The Memoirs, Correspondence, and Poetical Remains of Jane Taylor, edited by her brother Isaac.

Isaac himself was known as a writer on theology, philosophy, and history. He was also a talented artist and engraver (indeed, he collaborated with his father to produce the illustrations for Scenes in America). We hold a number of his works here in Special Collections. These include The Natural History of Enthusiasm, the work that made his name, and Home Education, a work clearly influenced by his own experiences.

Jefferys Taylor, the youngest child, also gained prominence as a children’s writer, producing numerous works of varied character over a number of years. Like his father’s writings, Jefferys’ works ‘were overtly educational in purpose’, but their message was delivered through fictional or adventurous settings. Like his siblings, he also engraved some of the illustrations for his own books.

One of the verses in the conclusion contains a pearl of Taylor’s wisdom that is perhaps even more relevant today than then, and that we would all do well to remember:

 ‘Geography true is delightful,

To know it impatient I burn;

And ignorance here too is frightful,

So easy it is now to learn.’