The Manuscripts Division has recently been able to acquire several important manuscripts and small collections on American history in the Revolutionary Era and Early National Period. This has been possible as a result of special funds made available to the Department of Rare Book and Special Collections for the purpose. These acquisitions are most welcome because the Manuscripts Division already has significant holdings for this time period. Faculty research interests in the Department of History have encouraged acquisitions in this area for more than a century. Most of these materials have come to the Library either as gifts of generous Princeton alumni collectors, such as Andre DeCoppet, Class of 1915, or by equally generous donors who have made acquisitions funding available to the Library. The Manuscripts Division’s extensive holdings of papers of the Livingston, Delafield, Blair-Lee, and other prominent political families help document American history through the Civil War.

The earliest of the recent acquisitions is Comte de Grasse (1723–88), Journeaux des Campagnes fait depuis 1756, 1757, 1759, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1765, 1767, 1768, 1772, 1776. [C0938, no. 723]. It is a densely written 178-page journal, which De Grasse kept in various places from February 1756 to November 1776. The journal is a detailed chronicle of his rise in the ranks of the French royal navy from lieutenant de vaisseau during the Seven Years’ War to ship’s captain by the end of this period. De Grasse was a native of southeastern France and entered naval service in 1741. He is best known as a French admiral during the Revolutionary War, when his fleet was active in American waters. His success at the 1781 Battle of Virginia Capes played a major role in the victory of General George Washington and the Continental Army at the Battle of Yorktown, and thus in securing American independence.

The journal helps document De Grasse’s earlier career. The volume begins on 26 February 1756 at Rochefort, an inland port in western France, aboard the 64-gun Infexible, built the previous year. Although not yet a captain, two tables within the journal list De Grasse (“M. de tilly”) in command of the Hardi-class ship of the line. During the campaign of 1757, he served in American waters near the islands of Martinique and Puerto Rico. On 2 July 1757, he reports on the arrival of the Berry’s regiment, en route to Quebec to reinforce General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, who would figure prominently in the 1758 defense of Fort Carillion (renamed Fort Ticonderoga). Of particular interest are De Grasse’s notes on the 1757 defense of Louisbourg. The journal ends in 1776, a year after the Revolutionary War began.

De Grasse kept his journal in a stationer’s blank book. The original binding was intact when the manuscript arrived at Princeton but needed conservation treatment in the Princeton University Library’s Preservation Office because the stiffened-paper wrapper had come apart. Book Conservator Mick LeTourneaux was able to repair the binding in such a way that the two eighteenth-century items used to stiffen the wrapper are revealed and readable. One is an uncut printed sheet of a dozen blank receipts from the French bookseller Pierre Faye, Rochefort. The other is a handwritten page of French accounting records that relate to the provisioning of an unidentified naval vessel and mention St. Vincent, most likely the West Indies island then claimed by both England and France. Although there is no bookseller’s ticket in the blank book, it is very likely that it had been purchased from Pierre Faye’s bookshop in Rochefort. The port was then home to a French naval base, arsenal, and school.

Future blog-posts will report on other acquisitions made possible by special funding. For information about other Franco-American historical manuscripts and archives, see “A Founding Father in Revolutionary Paris.” For general reference assistance, contact Public Services at rbsc@princeton.edu

De Grasse Journal

The saga of Martin Guerre continues, nearly five centuries after the birth of this obscure French peasant. His Basque family had settled in the southern French village of Artigat, where he married a local woman named Bertrande de Rois and had a son. In 1548, after being accused of theft, Martin disappeared suddenly at age twenty-four. Between 1548 and 1557, his whereabouts were unknown, and he was eventually presumed dead. But then a man claiming to be Martin appeared, looking enough like the long-lost Martin and knowing details of his earlier life so that Bertrande and many villagers in Artigat were convinced he had returned to resume married life with Bertrande. Martin and Bertrande did live as husband and wife. But Martin’s brother Pierre and others accused him of being an imposter and later identified him as Arnaud du Tilh (called “Pansette”), from a village in the area. The accusations resulted in court cases in 1559-60. During appeals to the Parlement de Toulouse (1560), the real Martin did indeed return as a war veteran with a peg-leg, and the judges condemned Arnaud to death for adultery with Bertrande. Then as now, the case made compelling reading—a morality tale with lurid details about love, abandonment, impersonation, betrayal, and ultimate punishment. These events were chronicled in two contemporary accounts. The most famous was an often reprinted account by the French jurist Jean de Coras (1515-72), one of the Toulouse judges, Arrest mémorable, du Parlement de Tolose (1561). The story would be retold for centuries and find a place in popular literature. It was even being turned into a movie, Le Retour de Martin Guerre (1982), starring Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye. And the story was reimagined during the American Civil War in another movie, Sommersby (1993), with Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. The most important scholarly study is The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), by Natalie Zemon Davis, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History Emeritus, Princeton.

The Manuscripts Division is pleased to have acquired an unpublished Italian account of the case by the Pistoia humanist and poet Giovanni Battista Forteguerri (1508-82), Processo et Arresto ò sentenza data dal Parlamento di Tolosa sopra d’un fatto prodigioso et memorabile, tradotto di lingua Francese nella favella per M. Giovanni Battista Forteguerri, Dottore Pistorese, con cento annotationi ornate et aggiunte da lui. The paper manuscript, still in a contemporary limp-vellum binding, is Forteguerri’s 1591 autograph draft of his Italian translation and revision of the published account by Jean de Coras. Forteguerri prepared the manuscript for presentation to Christina de Lorraine (1565-1637), Grand Duchess of Tuscany, for whom Galileo would later write his 1615 letter. Forteguerri added a dedicatory letter to the Grand Duchess (fols. 3r-4v), dated April 1591, which is followed by his Italian translation (fols. 16r-178r), with substantial additions and revisions. Forteguerri rewrote particular portions of Jean de Coras’s text and added extensive Greek and Latin quotations from classical texts, thematically related to the case. No doubt he had consulted early printed editions, which were probably available at Pistoia’s Biblioteca Forteguerriana, founded by Niccolò Forteguerri (1419-73). Interestingly, there is no Greek text in the French and Latin editions of Jean de Coras’s text. The manuscript includes marginal bibliographic annotations in Latin, authorial corrections scattered throughout the text, and a “Sommail del fatto” (a separately booklet replacing Jean de Coras’s Argument & Sommaire du faict in French printed editions). The manuscript was formerly owned by Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja (1803-69). It was sold at the Libri sale, at Sotheby’s, London, on 28 March 1859, no. 382. The great British collector Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), of Middle Hill, Worcestershire, purchased the manuscript at the Libri sale and assigned it the Phillipps no. 16321. It was later offered for sale at Sotheby’s London, in Bibliotheca Phillippica: Catalogue of a Further Portion of Sir Thomas Phillipps (1910), no. 343; and by the New York antiquarian bookseller H. P. Kraus, in List 203 (1960), no. 132. Princeton acquired the manuscript from a bookseller who had purchased it decades ago from Kraus.

For more impormation about this manuscript and other Renaissance holdings of the Manuscripts Division, please contact Don C. Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts, dcskemer@princeton.edu

Princeton MS. 230, fol. 46r.

The Manuscripts Division holds a wide array of archival resources documenting the history of African slavery in the Americas, chiefly for the United States and the Caribbean islands during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Relevant materials can be found in personal and family papers, subject-oriented open collections on African American slavery, and separately cataloged bound manuscripts. Most of this material may be identified in the Princeton University Library’s Finding Aids and New Catalog, generally by searching for subjects or keywords. In addition to “African American” and “slavery,” one can search for terms such as abolition, anti-slavery, colonization, manumission, plantations, slave, slave bills of sale, slave ships, and slave trade; or for specific personal and corporate names.

The oldest holdings on slavery in the New World are Spanish documents and business records pertaining to Indian slave labor on Latin American plantations and mines. Particular manuscripts and collections relate to slavery in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. But Princeton’s holdings are best for the African and Caribbean slave trade. Good materials on the importation of slaves into the Americas are contained in the four record books of the Brig Nancy under the command of Captain J. B. Cook (Oversize C0199 no. 1226f). The records document the operations of a slave ship operating between Rhode Island and the plantations of Surinam, 1791-96. Professor Mitra Sharafi (University of Wisconsin Law School), studied these records when she was a Princeton graduate student in the History Department and presented her findings in an article in Slavery and Abolition, vol. 24, no. 1 (2003), pp. 71-100. The use of slave labor in colonial Brazil, 1781-85, is documented in the Codex Diamond (C0938, no. 639). Efforts to monitor transatlantic slavery after the abolition of the slave trade are documented in the Papers of George W. Storer (1789-1864) (C1433), who served in the U.S. Navy for more than a half century, including his years as a captain and then commander-in-chief of the Brazil Squadron, 1837-50, which, in part, had the goal of preventing American ships from transporting African slaves. During his tenure as commander of the Brazil Squadron, the fleet frequently worked with the British Navy and captured four slave ships.

The Francis C. Brown Collection on Slavery in America (C0605) contains nearly a hundred individual documents and printed items relating to slavery, chiefly in Louisiana but to a lesser degree Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Alabama, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and the Carolinas. The collection amassed by Francis C. Brown, Class of 1958, includes so many representative examples that it is used regularly for class visits to the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. The finding aid has just been revised, with expanded descriptions. Similar materials are found in the Miscellaneous Slavery Collection (C1210). Another document collection, Louisiana Slavery and Civil War Collection (C0033), includes fascinating files on the estate of a manumitted slave named Marie Claire Chabert (1769-1847), of New Orleans. Mitra Sharafi explores these files in an article in Journal of Civil Law Studies, vol. 4 (2011), pp. 188-215, as evidence of the process by which slaves could buy freedom for themselves and family members. Slavery collections of this sort are complemented by relevant materials in the papers of eminent early Princetonians, such as Richard Rush, Class of 1797, within the Rush Family Papers (C0063); Samuel L. Southard, Class of 1804 (C0250); and John Miller, Class of 1836 (C0632).

Records of Caribbean slave plantations have been a growing area of strength in the Manuscripts Division. The earliest such collection is the Boarded Hall Estate Plantation Records (C1227), 1676-1887 (mostly 1712-1845). The records of this plantation on the island of Barbados were brought together by Sir George Harnage, Baronet, a captain in the British Royal Navy. An important recent acquisitions is the Sir John Orde (1751-1824), Collection on Slavery in Dominica and Jamaica (C1534), which is comprised of five boxes of accounts, land registers, letters, and documents pertaining to slavery and the plantation economy under British colonial rule in Dominica in the late 18th century and in Jamaica in the early 19th century. Sir John Orde was governor of Dominica, 1783-93; as well as lists of enslaved workers on the estates of Peter Campbell, Esq., plantation owner in the Jamaican parishes of Saint Elizabeth, Westmoreland, and Hanover, in 1817, 1820, 1823, and 1825. The John and Martha Bowen Letter Book concerning Bowen Hall Sugar Plantation (C1490) relates to the management of a Jamaican sugar plantation, including its varied finances, seasonal production and export of sugar and rum, and the treatment of slaves and “apprentices,” 1822-48.

Also relating to the later history of slavery and gradual emancipation in Jamaica is the Rae Family Estate Collection (C1222), covering the 1830s to 1850s. Account books of this Scottish family provide information concerning the slaves or “apprenticed labourers” who worked on their Jamaican plantations. Entries include the purchase of “negro hats,” medical bills for doctors who attended on apprentices and “free children,” the purchase or sale of apprentices, hospital bills, money paid to apprentices for attending funerals, money paid to constables or police officers for apprehending and returning runaway apprentices, or money paid for the freedom of apprentices. Also of interest is an 1818 manuscript appraisal of the Elizabeth Anne plantation estate with hundreds of slaves on Leguan Island in the Essequibo Islands-West Demerara region of colonial British Guiana (now Guyana), assigning monetary value to the enslaved workers, land, buildings, and livestock owned by Robert Gordon, Esq., a native of Aberdeen, Scotland (F-000052). Recently acquired are Antoine Guerry Duclaud’s documents and correspondence in French and Dutch, relating to his plantation and slaves in the Dutch colony of Surinam, 1771-75. Additional manuscript holdings relate to French plantations on Haiti. The Faure Family Coffee Plantation and Inventory (C1576) includes correspondence and a 10-page inventory (1763) pertaining to the management of a French plantation in the Dondon parish on Saint-Dominique (now Haiti), 1761-70; and business correspondence and documents relating to the Estillac Plantation, also on Haiti, 1758-82. Finally, two recently acquired journals document the illegal French slave trade from East Africa and Indonesia to the islands of the French West Indies, 1820-26 (C1614).

For information about research using these and other materials in the Manuscripts Division concerning slavery in the Americas, or about class visits by Princeton students, please contact Public Services, rbsc@princeton.edu

Kentucky slave bill of sale, 28 June 1825
Francis C. Brown Collection on Slavery
in America (C0605), Manuscripts Division

Precious little autograph material survives to document the life and work of William Shakespeare. Extant examples of his writing and signature in English Secretary cursive script are limited to a half dozen extant legal documents from 1612 to 1616 and perhaps three pages of the play Sir Thomas More, thought by some to be in Shakespeare’s hand. For centuries, the lack of autograph manuscripts of the plays and the dearth of documents about his life frustrated Shakespeare editors and would-be biographers. But at the same time, the situation tempted would-be forgers to fabricate manuscripts of plays, poetry, letters, and signed documents.

No Shakespeare forger was more successful, at least for awhile, than the enterprising William Henry Ireland (1775–1835), who in the 1790s began began forging manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as fabricating a ridiculous unpublished play Vortigern and Rowena and documents about Shakespeare’s life, loves, and literary estate. In 1794, William Henry Ireland told his father Samuel Ireland (1744-1800), a London writer and engraver, about his “discoveries.” Samuel Ireland became his unwitting accomplice and, convinced that the forgeries were authentic, published Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare…(1795). Some Shakespeare scholars and theater producers were initially deceived. But a disastrous single London performance in 1796 of Vortigern and Rowena, with several songs by the British composer William Linley (1771-1835), helped unmask Ireland. His clumsy efforts at recreating Elizabethan handwriting, language, and spelling were soon exposed.

In An Authentic Account of the Shaksperian Manuscripts, etc. (1796), William Henry Ireland confessed to his Shakespeare forgeries, though presenting them as a merry prank to determine “how far credulity would go in the search for antiquities.” Ireland also explained how he had imitated Shakespeare’s handwriting and wrote on old paper with a specially mixed ink, which when heated over a fire would turn the writing a convincing brown color, like ancient iron-gall ink. He was especially proud of having dreamed up various documents to provide a paper trail for the Bard’s life. Ireland had been concerned that a Shakespeare descendant might claim the forged manuscripts. Therefore, he dreamed up an imaginary Shakespeare friend, conveniently named William Henry Ireland, who supposedly had saved Shakespeare from drowning. Out of gratitude, Shakespeare left his literary estate to the forger’s namesake and ancestor. Other forged items included correspondence with Queen Elizabeth, the Third Earl of Southampton (his patron), Anne Hathaway, and contemporaries in the London theater world.

Ireland shamelessly continued to profit from his forgeries in later years by creating what might be called “authentic fakes,” often in the form of extra-illustrated printed confessions, incorporating copies of selected forgeries along with other materials. They aimed not to deceive, but rather to provide entertaining fare for bibliophile collectors who were fascinated by Ireland’s misdeeds. Princeton’s own Robert H. Taylor (Class of 1930) had an interest in the Ireland forgeries. The Robert H. Taylor Collection of English and American Literature (RTC01) has two such volumes. Taylor MS. 176 is an 1813 album containing The Confessions of William Henry Ireland: Containing the Particulars of his Fabrications of the Shakespeare Manuscripts…(1805), along with forged documents and illustrations. It includes manuscript sheet music for Linley’s Vortigern and Rowena songs. Taylor MS. 215 is an undated extra-illustrated volume containing mounted printed pages of Samuel Ireland’s Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare…(1796), interleaved with mounted forgeries of the complete King Lear(see below), a small fragment of Hamlet, and an assortment of forged letters and documents.

The four hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death is being marked in 2016 by an exhibition, “Remember Me”: Shakespeare and His Legacy, at the Princeton University Art Museum, October 1–December 31, including items from the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. For more information about relevant holdings in the Department, contact Public Services at rbsc@princeton.edu

William Henry Ireland, Forgery of King Lear.

Two of Princeton’s illuminated Byzantine manuscripts of the Gospels have been on view in an exhibition, Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, from 26 September 2016 until 8 January 2017. The two manuscripts are among over 200 works of art from some 60 lenders worldwide, including the Vatican Library and Bodleian Library. From the Manuscripts Division is Garrett MS. 3, Gospels, 12th century, gift of Robert Garrett, Class of 1897; and from the Scheide Library is Scheide M70, Gospels, 11th century, bequest of William H. Scheide, Class of 1936. The manuscripts were formerly in Greek Orthodox religious institutions in the Jerusalem area. Garrett MS. 3 was written in the Monastery of St. Sabas (Mar Saba), located in the Judean desert, east of Jerusalem, in 1135/36, according to a scribal note; and Scheide M70 was in the library of the Anastasis Church and later the Monastery of Abraham, both in Jerusalem, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. For descriptions of these and other Byzantine and post-Byzantine manuscripts in the Library, see Greek Manuscripts at Princeton, Sixth-Nineteenth Century: A Descriptive Catalogue, by Sofia Kotzabassi and Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, with the collaboration of Don C. Skemer (Princeton: Department of Art and Archeology and the Program in Hellenic Studies, in association with Princeton University Press, 2010). The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition focuses on the important role played by art in the spiritual lives of multiple faiths and cultural traditions that coexisted in the Holy City between 1000 and 1400. Nearly a quarter of the objects will come from Jerusalem itself, including loans from its religious communities. Almost a third of the items in the exhibition are manuscripts, including examples in Greek, Hebrew, Georgian, Armenian, and Arabic. Metropolitan Museum of Art curators Barbara Drake Boehm and Melanie Holcomb curated the exhibition and prepared the published catalogue.

Garrett MS. 3, fol 5r. Headpiece
for the Gospel of Matthew

History remembers Colonel George Morgan (1743-1810), a Philadelphia native and merchant, as an officer in the Continental Army, an American agent for Indian Affairs, and a speculator in Western lands. In his 1932 biography of George Morgan, the historian Max Savelle emphasized Morgan’s role as a “distinguished citizen” of America, which had to secure political and economic independence, tame the frontier, and forge effective relations with indigenous peoples. In 1779, Morgan organized George Washington’s meeting with Lenape (Delaware) Indian chiefs, and he also assumed responsibility for the education of three Lenape boys in Princeton. Morgan even became an honorary member of the Lenape. Also in 1779, he bought more than two hundred acres of land in Princeton, including the land now occupied by Prospect House and Prospect Gardens, and there he built a multi-storey stone farmhouse for himself and his family. Views of the farmhouse survive. Prospect Farm was a short distance southeast of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), which was then largely a residential college confined to Nassau Hall, with the President’s office, classrooms, dorm rooms, dining facilities, and the library. When John Witherspoon became President in 1768, his duties went far beyond administration. He preached sermons and taught moral philosophy, history, and other subjects.

Revolutionary times posed special problems for the town of Princeton and its leading citizens, beginning with the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. Morgan recorded in his journal (1762-1806), which is in the Manuscripts Division’s George Morgan Collection (C1394), that he planted rows of cherry trees, in part to replace those cut down by occupying British soldiers for firewood in the winter of 1776. In April 1780, he wrote a memorandum in his journal about planting rows of cherry trees along roads leading to his house, in part to remedy damage, and noted, “The British Army in December 1777 burned & destroyed all the Houses of the Farm & most of the Apple Trees for Firewood.” The cherry trees were also for the pleasure of Princeton undergraduates. At Prospect Farm, Morgan could be a gentleman farmer specializing in scientific farming and agricultural experiments, such as growing different varieties of corn. Bee culture and insect control were other interests. Morgan also rebuilt houses on his land as well.

The George Morgan Collection includes several letters that he wrote to Brigadier General Lewis Morris (1726-98), a fellow landowner and developer. Originally from Morrisania, New York, Morris was a Signer of the Declaration of Independence and a delegate to the Continental Congress. At the time the letter was written, Morris was living in Rocky Hill, near Princeton. Morgan opens an undated letter with an expression of his joy “on the late happy Events.” This probably refers to the recent surrender of the British army under Lord Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown (19 October 1781), after being defeated by Continental forces under George Washington and French forces under the Comte de Rochambeau. George Morgan asks Lewis Morris to a celebratory dinner and ball at Prospect Farm. In addition, Morris was to extend the invitation to a group of people on his side of the “Mountain,” a word no doubt referring to Ten Mile Run Mountain (geologically part of the Rocky Hill Ridge), east of the Millstone River. “We have fixed on Saturday,” Morgan wrote, “that we may not interfere with Trenton, where they have a Dinner & Ball on Monday. I expect the Cards from thence for your family, some time today. I have dispatched Beekman for the best Casks of Wine & Claret he can find in the City and have wrote to Mr. Shippen to come up with all his Musick, so that I hope your principal Trouble will be in your seat as President. All the Ladies, married and single, propose to wear an union Rose in their Breasts.”

On the verso of the letter is a “List of the Gentlemen & Ladies over & on the Mountain to be invited to a Dinner & Ball.” The invitees clustered in the area of Rocky Hill, in Somerset County, less than five miles northeast of Prospect Farm and Nassau Hall. The names of the grandees on the invitation list (see below) must be reconstructed because it omits first names and has alternative spellings for several surnames. Invitees appear to include Major John Berrien (1759-1815) and General Stephen Heard (1740-1815), with their wives and children. “Mrs. Berrian” was probably Margaret Berrien, mother of Major Berrien and widow of Justice John Berrien (1711-72), whose Rockingham home served as George Washington’s final headquarters during the American Revolution. Washington stayed there from August to November 1783, while Congress was meeting at Nassau Hall, and it was at Rockingham that Washington wrote his farewell address to the Continental Army. “Col. Vandike” was most likely Henry Van Dyke, a militia officer from Somerset County. “Mr. Rutherford” may have been John Rutherfurd (1760-1840), Princeton Class of 1776. Rutherfurd was a nephew of William Alexander, Lord Stirling (1726-83), a Brigadier General in the Continental Army; Rutherfurd later married Helena Magdalena Morris (1762–1840), daughter of Lewis Morris. Also invited were unidentified members of the Mercer, Lawrence, and Van Horne families. However the dinner and ball turned out, this was hardly George Morgan’s last chance to invite prominent people to Prospect Farm. On June 25, 1783, Morgan wrote to Elias Boudinot (1740-1821), President of Congress, to invite members of the Continental Congress, then assembled at Nassau Hall, to be his guests at Prospect Farm.

For more information about New Jerseyana holdings of the Manuscripts Division, see the recent blog-post, or contact Public Services, at rbsc@princeton.edu

George Morgan’s invitation list

From the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, educated people often used what we call “commonplace books” to store and retrieve bits of text and other information, chiefly gleaned from printed books. European readers filled blank paper notebooks with information organized under specific headings to facilitate later retrieval and use. While the word commonplace (from the Latin term locus communis) suggests learned themes or arguments, these notebooks could be used for information of any sort, from theology and natural philosophy, to popular songs and recipes, brief quotations and extracts, and practical information for working professional physicians and lawyers. Over the centuries, commonplace books became so ubiquitous in the western world that more than two hundred such volumes survive just in the Princeton University Library’s Manuscripts Division. They are of research interest not only for the information they contain, but also because of how that information was gathered, the variety of sources, and what the contents may tell us about the life and reception of particular authors, books, and ideas. Commonplace books are perhaps most fascinating and revealing when they act as a window into the minds, social milieu, and intellectual circles of people, whether famous or obscure, who kept and used them so long ago. We can see this vividly with the Manuscript Division’s most most recent acquisition, a commonplace book of medicine and secrets.

Bernardino Ciarpaglini (b. 1655), an Italian physician and experimental anatomist, kept this volume in Tuscany from around 1680 to 1730. His ownership is attested by an inscription written on the turn-in of the upper cover, which records his birth date and hour, as well as that of his brother Belisario. Ciarpaglini copied most of the entries in 23 alphabetical sections, within a blank stationer’s volume, using heavy laid paper with a tre lune watermark, especially popular with Venetian papermakers at the time. The text block was modified with a thumb index cut along the fore edge (see illustration below). Ciarpaglini was born in Pratovecchio and practiced medicine there until he relocated to Cortona, some 75 kilometers to the southeast. There he spent the rest of his professional life and even served for a while as one of the priori of the Communal Council of Cortona, 1716–22. To judge from the contents of the commonplace book, Ciarpaglini was something of a general practitioner, interested in everything from gout to plague. Ailments of women and children were part of his practice. At the same time, he developed a strong professional reputation, which was no small achievement at a time when physicians had to compete with charlatans and healers.

Ciarpaglini is mentioned positively in contemporary medical and scientific literature for his expertise on epilepsy, concerning which there is extended discussion in the commonplace book; fistulas of the tear ducts; and other disorders. While still living in Pratovecchio around 1679, Ciarpaglini conducted anatomical experiments, unfortunately on live dogs, to remove an entire spleen and a portion of the liver. In 1680, he was among the distinguished physicians who observed the Italian anatomist Giuseppe Zambeccari (1655–1728) performing an excision of a dog’s spleen. In 1723, he provided autobiographical information before giving expert testimony to the Sagra Congregatione de’ Riti about the state of the sacred body of St. Margaret of Cortona (canonized in 1728), including the condition of her head, face, eyes, mouth, arms, hands, and feet. His appearance as an expert witness was ancillary to the Church practice since the second half of the thirteenth century to call on respected physicians to testify in canonization processes in order to establish that miraculous cures had no natural explanation. Concerning such cases, see Joseph Ziegler, “Practitioners and Saints: Medical Men in Canonization Processes in the Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries,” Social History of Medicine, vol. 12, no. 2 (1999), pp. 191-225.

Our physician wrote his entries in Italian, always in a rapid but clear cursive hand. Some of the content was copied from published books, such as the reference on the turn-in of the back cover, mentioning Albertus Magnus (d. 1280), Liber mineralium (“Libro de minerali”). Many entries are credited to particular physicians and clerics in Tuscany, probably by oral transmission. There are recipes of every type, many of which are preceded by the Latin abbreviation Rx, indicating a medical prescription. There are preparations for a wide array of conditions and circumstances, such as to induce vomiting, help one fall asleep, clean teeth, facilitate childbirth, and suppress lactation. Particular remedies include a Chinese elixir said to have been used by King Louis XIV; an aphrodisiac ointment made from crushed ants; and a cure for sexual dysfunction, prepared from chocolate, orchids, champagne, and other ingredients. A few recipes were crossed out with critical notes saying that they were ineffective. Some recipes identify their source and note where and when they were transcribed. Secrets include alchemical transmutation of lead into silver, production of a liquid that would turn a person’s face black, removing stains, cleaning gold objects, fishing effortlessly, preparing tobacco, preserving wine, and making a woman tell the truth in her sleep. There is a five-page section on cryptology, accompanied by an separate cipher table and key written on a small piece of parchment, probably for use while traveling. Ciarpaglini notes that he had learned the cipher from Giuseppe da Contignano, a local Capuchin friar. There is also a loose paper copy of a 1599 recipe for wine vinegar, attributed to a certain Giacomo Buonaparte.

To identify relevant holdings in the Manuscripts Division, one should search for “Commonplace Books” (as a subject heading) in the online catalog, where bibliographic records are found by country and century; and in the finding aids site. One can also do a Subject Browse search in Blacklight. Please contact Public Services for other information, at rbsc@princeton.edu

Tabs in Ciarpaglini’s Commonplace Book

The Manuscripts Division is pleased to announce that the scrapbooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Class of 1917) and Zelda Fitzgerald are now online in the Princeton University Digital Library (PUDL). The Fitzgeralds’ daughter Scottie gave the scrapbooks to the Princeton University Library in the decades following the donation of most of the Fitzgerald Papers in 1950. F. Scott Fitzgerald saw life as raw material for literature. His gift for autobiographical observation and self-documentation can be seen in the way he kept his papers and scrapbooks. He chronicled his early life in “A Scrap Book Record, compiled from many sources of interest to and concerning one F. Scott Fitzgerald,” as he wrote boldly in white ink to label the volume. He traces his life from birth through Princeton and service in the U.S. Army during World War I, concluding with the acceptance of his short story Head and Shoulders for publication in The Saturday Evening Post (1920). Fitzgerald was perhaps inspired to keep scrapbooks by his mother, Mary “Mollie” McQuillan Fitzgerald, who chronicled his formative years until 1915 in The Baby’s Biography, by A. O. Kaplan, with Pictures by Frances Brundage (New York: Brentano’s, © 1891). Between 1920 and 1936, Fitzgerald compiled five other scrapbooks, in which he usually emphasized his published books and short stories, sometimes adding unrelated materials about his life, travels, and friends. Zelda Fitzgerald kept a scrapbook of her own until 1926, chiefly relating to her family and childhood in Montgomery, Alabama; and early married life with Scott and Scottie.

Scrapbook contents include newspaper clippings, book reviews, and interviews relating to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life and writing; tearsheets of magazine articles and short stories; dust covers and promotional announcements for books and collections; printed ephemera; formal studio portraits of the author, photographs of friends and acquaintances, and family photos (mostly small snapshoots) of the Fitzgeralds (Scott, Zelda, Scottie); memorabilia; and occasional documents and letters from authors, publishers, and friends. Many of the photographs and clippings are well known and have been often reproduced. But there are a few surprising items as well, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s check-stub book for the First National Bank of Princeton, October-November 1916, while he was a Princeton undergraduate; his grimacing self-portrait in a Photomaton coin-coperated photo booth, probably at a train station in the late 1920s; and his personal copy of the Directory of Directors, Writers etc. (1931), proudly kept because it includes his name in the company of Hollywood directors and writers. When Fitzgerald moved from Baltimore to North Carolina in 1936, he put the scrapbooks in storage, and though he later had them shipped to him in Hollywood, the author never again added to them.

The best resource for understanding the scrapbook contents, usually unidentified and undated, is Matthew J. Bruccoli, Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, and Joan P. Kerr, eds., The Romantic Egoists: A Pictorial Autobiography from the Scrapbooks and Albums of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974). This is because much of the contents was reproduced with commentary in The Romantic Egoists. Scottie Fitzgerald Lanahan noted (p. ix), “ninety percent of the illustrations in this book…was taken from the seven scrapbooks and five photograph albums….” Physical access to the original scrapbooks is restricted for compelling preservation reasons because all but The Baby’s Biography are largely made up of highly acidic newsprint pasted down on equally acidic album paper. The scrapbooks were digitized in 1999 as part of the Library’s Fitzgerald Papers preservation project, funded by the Save America’s Treasures, a grant initiative administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Over the past fifteen years, researchers have been able to consult the digitized scrapbooks in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. The inclusion of the Fitzgerald scrapbooks in the PUDL will now enable everyone to see and appreciate them, along with the manuscripts of This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Great Gatsby (1925). These materials and more can be found in the Fitzgerald Collection.

The online version of the scrapbooks has been digitally watermarked and provides information about “Usage Rights,” including form of citation, reproduction, copyright, and other issues. For information about reproducing selective images in the scrapbooks, please contact Public Services, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. rbsc@princeton.edu

First page of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
Scrapbook I, showing dust cover of
This Side of Paradise (1920)
and snapshots of Zelda.

The Manuscripts Division’s most important archival holdings for African American literature are the Toni Morrison Papers (C01491), the major portion of which are now open for research. But there are other relevant archival collections, chiefly in the archives of American publishing houses and literary magazines, and of American and British literary agenices. The most substantial for research are the author files for Richard Wright (1908-60), dating from 1938 to 1957, found in Selected Records of Harper & Brothers (C0103). These files include editorial and business correspondence with Wright, his agent Paul R. Reynolds, the publishing house’s editors, and promotional staff; reader’s reports; and review media relating to books published over several decades: Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), Native Son (1940), Black Boy (1945), The Outsider (1953), Black Power (1954), and Pagan Spain (1957), as well as books for which Wright supplied introductions. The Harper & Brothers files are complemented by the Wright files of the British literary agency Victor Gollancz Ltd. (C1467), which include correspondence, contracts, and readers’ reports for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Native Son, Black Boy, and American Hunger (1978). There are also Wright letters and photographs of 1946-49 in the Sylvia Beach Papers (C0108), as well as Wright’s novella The Man Who Lived Underground; and letters of 1945-56 in the author files of Story Magazine and Story Press (C0104).

Several other Harlem Renaissance authors are represented in holdings. For Langston Hughes (1902-67), the Manuscripts Division has occasional letters and photos in the Sylvia Beach Papers and Carl Van Doren Papers (C0072), and in the New Review Correspondence of Samuel Parker (C0111), the Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons (C0101), and the Archives of the John Day Company (C0123). Posthumous files (1968-72) pertaining to his books are found in the Archives of Harold Ober Associates (C0129), through their British affiliate Hughes Massie Ltd. Additional items are in the Franklin Books Program archives at Mudd Library. The Archives of Charles Scribner’s Sons has author files for Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), including 100-plus items, 1947-63, of which 25 are letters by Hurston, mostly pertaining to her novel Seraph on the Suwanee (1948). Some additional Hurston material is found in the Story archives. For the African American poet and editor Kathleen Tankersley Young (1903-33), the Manuscripts Division has correspondence with New York book designer and printer Lew Ney and his wife Ruth Widen, 1928-32 (C1273). Young was editor of Modern Editions Press and Blues: A Magazine of New Rythms during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Manuscripts Division has a folder of letters (1901-5) from the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) to Harrison Smith Morris, editor of Lippincott’s Magazine, in the Harrison Smith Morris Papers (C0003); as well as correspondence of the African American historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), with fellow historian Charles H. Wesley, 1925-50 (C1310). Woodson was the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History and in his writing called attention to W.E.B. Dubois and the Harlem Renaissance. Also in the Manuscripts Division are the correspondence files of the New York Urban League, 1922-79 (C0869). Three letters of 1905-6 about W.E.B DuBois’s Souls of Black Folk are found in correspondence between the Chicago publisher A. C. McClurg & Company and the London literary agent Charles Francis Cazenove (C1553). Also of interest is a small collection of papers of George Padmore (1903-59), a journalist born in Trinidad, including correspondence with Henry Lee Moon (1901-85), editor of the Amsterdam News (C1247).

Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) and Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) are the best-documented African American authors of the post-war generation in the Manuscripts Division. Ellison materials are primarily found in the archives of the Quarterly Review of Literature [QRL] (C0862). This literary magazine was edited from 1943 to the 1990s by the American poet Ted Weiss, who taught at Princeton, 1967-87. QRL‘s issue files include correspondence with Ralph Ellison, as well as corrected typescripts, and proofs of his second, posthumously published novel Juneteenth. Includes the following. (1) “The Roof, the Steeple and the People,” QRL, vol. 10, no. 3 (1959-60), relating to the nicoleodeon excursion. There are also proofs in box 6, folder 2, and a corrected typescript in box 6, folder 3; (2) “Juneteenth,” QRL, vol. 13, no 3-4 (1965), in box 8, folder 4; (3) “Night-Talk,” QRL, vol. 16 (1972), a movie-going episode in Atlanta, with an edited revision, box 11, folder 4. There are a few Ellison letters in the archives of The Hudson Review and in the recently acquired papers of Joseph Frank (1918-2013), Professor of Comparative Literature, who received a 3-page letter from Ellison in 1964, in which he explains the obscurity of the “pink hospital scene” in his novel Invisible Man by describing how he cut out a 225-page section from the middle of book. Gwendolyn Brooks is documented by 14 folders for the years 1944-58 in the Selected Records of Harper & Brothers (C0103), as well as additional materials in other collections. Recently, the Manuscripts Division acquired a sound recording and transcription of an interview that Playboy Magazine‘s articles editor James Goode conducted with James Baldwin (1924-87) in 1967 and Alex Haley (1921-92) edited and shortened for publication the following year (C1557).

Beyond African American authors, the Manuscripts Division holds some literary collections relating to the Afro-Carribean experiences. The best example is in the papers of the contemporary American author Madison Smartt Bell (C0771), Princeton Class of 1979, including manuscripts, corrected typescripts, and proofs for his trilogy about Toussaint Louverture and other leaders of the Haitian Revolution. The first novel was All Souls Rising (1995), which was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN Faulkner Award, and won the 1996 Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best book of the year. The novel was continued in Master of the Crossroads (2002) and The Stone Builder Refused (2004). Providing context for Bell’s writing is his correspondence with his publishers, agents, and friends. The Manuscripts Division also holds the correspondence of Professor Léon-François Hoffmann with the Haitian poet René Depestre, 1984-2003 (C1103).

Archival, printed, and audiovisual materials about African American literature and history can be found in the various divisions and collections of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. For general information about holdings, please contact Public Services, at rbsc@princeton.edu

Harper & Brothers files for Richard Wright’s
The Outsider.

The Princeton University Library is pleased to announce that the major portion of the Toni Morrison Papers (C1491), part of the Library’s permanent collections since 2014, is now open for research. The papers are located in the Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, in the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library. They contain more than two hundred linear feet of archival materials that document the life and work of Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate in Literature (1993) and Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities (Emeritus) at Princeton University. Morrison’s papers were gathered from multiple locations over more than two decades, beginning with the files recovered by the Library’s Preservation Office after the tragic fire that destroyed her home in 1993. Over the past eighteen months, the most significant of the papers have been organized, described, cataloged, and selectively digitized. The papers are described online in a finding aid.

Most important for campus-based and visiting researchers are some fifty linear feet of the author’s manuscripts, drafts, and proofs for the author’s novels The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1997), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008), Home (2012), and God Help the Child (2015). The only exception are materials for Song of Solomon (1977), which are believed lost. In the interest of preservation, by agreement with the author, all of these manuscripts have been digitized in the Library’s Digital Studio. Research access to digital images of Morrison’s manuscripts will be provided in the Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room. The study of Morrison’s manuscripts illustrates her approach to the craft of writing and help trace the evolution of particular works, from early ideas and preliminary research, to handwritten drafts on legal-size yellow notepads, and finally corrected typescripts and proofs. The early drafts often differ substantially from the published book in wording and organization, and contain deleted passages and sections.

A single yellow notepad may contain a variety of materials, including content related to other works, drafts of letters, inserts for later typed and printed versions, and other unrelated notes. Corrected typescript and printout drafts often show significant revisions. Material from various stages of the publication process is present, including setting copies with copy-editor’s and typesetter’s marks, galleys, page proofs, folded-and-gathered pages (not yet bound), blueline proofs (“confirmation blues”), advance review copies (bound uncorrected proofs), and production/design material with page and dust-jacket samples. In addition to documenting Morrison’s working methods, the papers make it possible to see how books were marketed to the reading public and media, and also to trace the post-publication life of books, as they were translated, repackaged, reprinted, released as talking books, and adapted for film.

Among unexpected discoveries that came to light during archival processing are partial early manuscript drafts for The Bluest Eye and Beloved; and born-digital files on floppy disks, written using old word-processing software, including drafts of Beloved, previously thought to have been lost. Morrison also retained manuscripts and proofs for her plays Dreaming Emmett (1985) and Desdemona (2011); children’s books, in collaboration with her son Slade Morrison; short fiction; speeches, song lyrics; her opera libretto for Margaret Garner, with music by the American composer Richard Danielpour; lectures; and non-fiction writing.

Also valuable for researchers is Morrison’s literary and professional correspondence, approximately fifteen linear feet of material, including letters from Maya Angelou, Houston Baker, Toni Cade Bambara, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Leon Higginbotham, Randall Kennedy, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, and others. Additional literary correspondence is found in Morrison’s selected Random House editorial files, where her authors included James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, and Julius Lester. Morrison also retained drafts, proofs and publication files related to two works by Toni Cade Bambara, which Morrison posthumously edited for publication; as well as photocopies of selected correspondence of James Baldwin, 1957-1986, and materials relating to Baldwin’s literary estate.

The remaining Morrison Papers are being processed and will be made available for research gradually over the next year, with arrangement and description to be completed by spring 2017. These include her Princeton office files and teaching materials, fan mail, appointment books (sometimes called diaries), photographs, media, juvenilia, memorabilia, and press clippings. Complementing the papers are printed editions of Morrison’s novels and other published books; translations of her works into more than twenty foreign languages; and a selection of annotated books. Morrison’s additional manuscripts and papers will be added over time.

Beyond the Toni Morrison Papers, the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections holds other archival, printed, and visual materials about African American literature and history. The best files are in American publishing archives. For example, the Manuscripts Division holds the Harper & Brothers author files for Richard Wright’s books Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), Native Son (1940), Black Boy (1945), Outsider (1953), Black Power (1954), and Pagan Spain (1957); Charles Scribner’s Sons author files for Zora Neale Hurston, chiefly pertaining to her novel Seraph on the Suwanee (1948); and the Quarterly Review of Literature files of Ralph Ellison’s corrected typescripts and proofs for three extracts from early working drafts of his second, posthumously published novel Juneteenth (1999).

For information about the Toni Morrison Papers, please consult the online finding aid. For information about visiting the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections and using its holdings, please contact the Public Services staff at rbsc@princeton.edu

Beloved early draft
Toni Morrison Papers (C1491)
Princeton University Library