The Colonial Bookshelf: Proposal

The Colonial Bookshelf: Tracking the Reading of Colonial Nova Scotians, Phase 2

Topic:   Utilising a combination of new and existing research on book readership, we are building a digital research guide to what books colonial Nova Scotians were reading.

A prototype of the web-based guide can be viewed at: http://libraries.danieljosephsamson.com/nineteenth-century-nova-scotia-libraries/index

Research Grant Category: Cultural History

Support Requested:  $3102.20

Applicant: Dr. Keith Grant, Assistant Professor of History, Crandall University

Home Address: 106 Patricia Drive, Riverview, NB, E1B 5C8


Daytime Telephone Number: 506-858-8970, ext. 142

Submitted: 1 March 2019

Summary
We are building a web-based research guide to what was on the bookshelves of late eighteenth- and nineteenth–century Nova Scotia readers. This digital library will make it possible to “read over the shoulders” of colonial Nova Scotians, to be immersed in their world of books and ideas. Just as visitors to Nova Scotia museums can get a sense of the workaday world of colonial residents by walking through period homes, readers of our digital library will be able to page through the books that provided the mental furniture and intellectual vocabulary for their world. This project collects, digitally curates, and situates books found in Nova Scotia personal libraries in the 19th century. Using a combination of existing library lists (such as Richard John Uniacke’s from the Nova Scotia Museum) and recreated lists (such as those of Edward Manning and James Barry), and exploring possibilities in university special collections – notably Dalhousie University, University of King’s College, and Acadia University – and collections held in other Nova Scotia Museum affiliates, we envision building an interactive guide to begin tracking the reading habits of colonial Nova Scotian readers.

Suggested referees:

Gwendolyn Davies, PhD, DCL (Hon.), FRSC Professor & Dean Emerita
English & The School of Graduate Studies
University of New Brunswick
P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3

Tel. 506-460-1885
Email: daviesg@unb.ca

Jerry Bannister, PhD
Associate Professor; Co-ordinator, Canadian Studies Program
Department of History, Dalhousie University
Room 3170, Marion McCain Building, 6135 University Ave
PO Box 15000, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2

Phone: 902-494-1541
Email: jerry.bannister@dal.ca

The Colonial Bookshelf: A Proposal
Tracking the Reading of Colonial Nova Scotians

A: Introduction

Colonial Nova Scotia was a remarkably literate world, arguably far more so than we commonly acknowledge. To be sure, historians have described the early nineteenth century, in D. C. Harvey’s words, as Nova Scotia’s “intellectual awakening.” Scholarly literature on this period has emphasized the major literary productions of Nova Scotia writers and publishers in the fifty years after the American Revolution, centring on writers like Thomas McCulloch, Joseph Howe, and John Young (Harvey, 1933; and MacMullin, 1995). Yet existing scholarship is much less effective in getting at the perspective of readers. That is, we know a fair bit about the small volume of works authored and published in Nova Scotia, but little of literary consumption, and still less about how colonial Nova Scotians participated in the intellectual conversations that engaged the Atlantic world. Histories of print culture in Nova Scotia have expanded our knowledge about publishing, bookselling, and libraries—that is, on the production, distribution, and ownership of books (Black, 1999, 2004; Greaves, 1991; and Parker, 1994). There has been comparatively much less on readers, their responses to what they read, and the place of reading in the mediation and circulation of ideas.

Readers in Nova Scotia participated in what historians have described as a “reading revolution.” Though cultural historians of reading such as Robert Darnton and David D. Hall debate whether the approach to reading underwent a shift, they are agreed that in the early decades of the nineteenth century innovations in technology and transportation enabled a radical shift in print, from scarcity to abundance (Darnton, 1990; Hall, 1996; and Wittman, 1999). Readers gained access to books and periodicals on a scale unimaginable only a few decades earlier. This circulation of books and ideas meant that readers in locales seemingly on the colonial periphery—such as Halifax, Pictou, and the Annapolis Valley—and not only those in the major metropolitan centres, could follow important debates about Enlightenment ideas, agricultural improvement, or missionary expansion.

The reading of Nova Scotians suggests that they were already “awake” to these intellectual currents before the advent of a robust regional print culture, and that they were alert to a wider range of intellectual questions and literatures than only those generated in the province. As Michael Eamon’s recent scholarship demonstrates, colonial British North Americans eschewed a narrow, provincial identity, and thought of themselves as part of a cosmopolitan British world (Eamon, 2015). Or as the Museum’s Interpretive Master Plan puts it, “Nova Scotia’s strategic location has allowed it to develop a strong engagement with the wider world” - a theme that is particularly relevant to intellectual and cultural connections (Nova Scotia Museum, 2009). Nova Scotia, it seems clear, was no isolated backwater, but was another node in the rich Atlantic network of books and ideas.

A central trope in the literature of the Atlantic World and other globe-striding historiographies, “the circulation of ideas” provides an effective metaphor for plotting the major movements at a macro-level. Explored at the local level, among individual readers, however, circulation’s workings are poorly understood and suggest important limits on this movement. Colonial Nova Scotians lived in the Atlantic World. It is commonplace to acknowledge the circulation of ideas via major centres such as Glasgow, London, and New York, but this project explores communities in Nova Scotia—such as Pictou, Cornwallis, and Halifax—as other nodes in the same networks of circulation.

Our project began with Edward Manning, Richard John Uniacke, and James Barry, three figures for whom current research allows us a view of their libraries. Our research has also opened new libraries for Silas Rand, the Baptist missionary to the Mi’kmaq, Charles Prescott, the Hants County agricultural improver. We’re also delighted to have discovered a small, but very interesting, mother and daughter library for Sophia and Lucy Hutt of Lunenburg County. These colonial Nova Scotians purchased and read hundreds of historical and theological works through booksellers like John Howe in Halifax and James Dawson in Pictou, who in turn connected our readers to the larger centres of the trade. Our colonial readers then read the book, engaged in correspondence about them, loaned many to neighbours, and generally wrote about and discussed them. Tracking their reading helps us to understand them better as individuals, and increases our understanding of how the ideas and books that circulated throughout the Atlantic world came to be used, adapted, and debated in the culture of colonial Nova Scotia.

B: Methodology

This project will collect, digitally curate, and situate books found in Nova Scotia libraries in the 19th century. Using a combination of existing library lists, and additional research on other sources, we can build a series of virtual libraries that can help us get at colonial Nova Scotia readers and the circulation of books and ideas.

How do we know what colonial Nova Scotians were reading? Scattered references to reading, and discussions of what people were reading, exist throughout archival sources. For example, we can tell much of what John Young read by reading his Letters of Agricola (1822). We can see Adam Smith cited, but we can get a better sense of how Young understood The Wealth of Nations in letters to his son George where they discuss the book (Samson, 2005). Curated collections (such as the collection at Uniacke House) and probate inventories (for example, Field, 1990) are important sources for knowing what people read, while letters and diaries (as we note here with the examples of Manning and Barry) can be important sources for knowing how people understood and discussed what they read.

As one can see in our prototype page, we are using the Scalar platform based at the University of Southern California. Scalar is an easy-to-use platform for web-construction and is specifically designed for common uses employed by museums, archives, and teaching institutions, such as digital exhibitions and Open Access textbooks. The public first page of the website would be organised simply by reader. We would introduce the audience to each reader, offer a short biography, followed by an array of thumbnail images of the books, each of which is a link to a digital version of the text at the Internet Archive or other repositories, such as the Hathi Trust.

The site would also be searchable via the metadata for each title. Metadata is generated both manually (this has been the primary task of our first RA), and automatically via the digital repositories. Thus all titles can be searched by subjects or authors, for example. We also, however, envision more specialized local uses, and Scalar enables additional metadata to be added. Thus we are adding metadata, for example, on communities and on our readers. As the project develops, we can, where possible, also add booksellers—both locally and in the metropoles of Britain and America—and explore the shared and distinct features of reading in colonial Nova Scotia in a Trans-Atlantic context.

C: Work Schedule

Our overall work plan at this point is threefold.

1. Additional research time: particularly at the Nova Scotia Museum library, University of King’s College Special Collections, and Acadia University Special Collections. This Drs. Grant and Samson will conduct themselves. (July)

2. Data management: hiring and training an RA who can map the metadata and enter the data into the Google Sheet (Excel). Upon entry of our first 1500 or so entries, and some basic testing of search functions, we can launch our preliminary (“Beta”) version. If we can hire a student full-time for the summer, we can complete this. (June through September)

3. SSHRC Partnership Development application: preliminary discussions are underway with officials at the Nova Scotia Museum, Dalhousie University Libraries, and the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, among others, to partner in the creation of an interdisciplinary team of graduate students, faculty, and staff at these institutions. We would be applying for $150,000 to $200,000, sufficient to support two or three MA students, a PhD student (or perhaps a post-doc), and support costs for additional programming and technical support.

It is the first of these next three phases for which we are seeking the support from the Nova Scotia Museum Research Grant, even as we continue to seek funding from other partners and sources.

D: Budget

We plan to be in Halifax for two weeks in July. Our primary tasks will be arranging and coordinating the libraries, identifying additional relevant documents and collections, adding to the database of reader and library information we have been compiling.

The budget for this project is tied to travel and subsistence costs (not accommodations) for Drs. Grant and Samson for two weeks in the summer of 2019.

The project includes both traditional documentary research in the Nova Scotia Museum and other Nova Scotia archival collections, and a digital history platform to make this research widely available, in keeping with the Museum’s own goal to establish an interactive online presence for Nova Scotia history and culture.

1 Return flight, Toronto to Halifax (Samson)                                                     416.00[1]

Mileage, Moncton to Halifax (260 km, return @ $0.57/km)  (Grant)                   296.40

Per diem travel rates, two weeks (14 days, times 2 people @ $85.35/day)     2389.80                                                        

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                                                                                                                               3102.20

[1] Best non-stop rate found on Expedia.ca on 24 February 2019 for a flight on June 10th.

E: Interpretive Potential

More than a simple web exhibit, we envision this project as a digital research guide that would serve as an academic archive while also facilitating public engagement: an interactive digital guide to 18th and 19th century readers and their books. It would be a valuable research tool, enabling regional scholars to quickly access key texts from our readers’ worlds, while at the same time offering significant opportunities for use in Nova Scotia Museum sites, public engagement, and high school and undergraduate teaching.

Touring historic museum sites—be those older homes like Uniacke House, or industrial facilities such as the Balmoral Mills—offer rich opportunities to experience the material expressions of past culture—furnishings, architecture—and to see them situated in older landscapes, but seldom offer us avenues into the ideas and interests, much less the intellectual inspirations that motivated their owners and designers. In some cases, however, these figures have passed on clues to that world via their records - and in some cases their libraries—as to what they were reading and how that shaped the development of their ideas and practices. This digital library will make it possible to, as we like to say, read over the shoulders of colonial Nova Scotians, and thus to be immersed in their world of books and ideas.

Reading takes us to new understandings of the circulation of ideas. We know that major writers such as Adam Smith were influential, across the Atlantic World, but we have little sense of who read him, what they understood of him, and who else they might have read. The diaries of James Barry (1824 to 1906), a Pictou County miller, for example, reveal an avid reader with a library of over 200 books. He does not appear to have read Smith, nor someone like John Stuart Mill, but we know Barry was a democratic reformer and thus somehow a part of that mid-century liberal fluorescence (Samson, 2017). Or take the Cornwallis reformer, Edward Manning (1766-1851) whose extensive diary recorded decades of reading, mentioning hundreds of books and dozens of periodicals (Grant, 2016). Like many of his contemporaries, Manning became an energetic advocate for voluntary social organizations for causes as varied as agriculture, temperance, and education—convictions he adopted as a result of his reading in evangelical authors, rather than liberal social theorists. The library of Richard John Uniacke offers clues to how one of the colony’s leading jurists adapted Enlightenment ideas and British constitutionalism to his provincial environs, while also situating his very fashionable interest in political economy and agricultural improvement among some of the leading writers of the late 18th century (Cuthbertson, 2003; and Samson, 2003). The Enlightenment works these men read were clearly immersed in the British Enlightenment, but drew as much from works on evangelical political culture, British constitutionalism, and agricultural improvement as they did from writers like Smith and Mill.

The period books that grace the shelves of many Nova Scotia Museum sites were much more than decoration to their original readers—they were tools for intellectual labour, or windows opening onto imaginative landscapes. Our exhibit offers museum visitors, interpretive staff, and scholars a means of accessing these volumes in context (without causing wear to fragile bindings). We envision several possible applications. For museum sites that feature a library, a study, or a reading corner, an interpretive sign or display could provide a general overview of the historical subjects’ reading habits, a brief description of the provenance of the library, and examples of how this reading was adapted to their local situation. Visitors would also be invited to page through the digital version of the respective bookshelves, either on site with a computer monitor or by using a smartphone. Classroom teachers and students would be able to combine site visits with reading in the digital library, opening up the possibility of integration across several areas of the provincial education curriculum, as colonial Nova Scotians read widely in subjects as diverse as geography, law, mathematics, and literature.

The relevance of such a digital bookshelf is readily apparent to museum sites such as the Uniacke, McCulloch, Perkins, Prescott, and Cossit Houses, whose historical subjects were readers by profession, but as the example of miller James Barry suggests, sites such as the Balmoral Grist Mill or the Museum of Industry could also allow visitors to interact with historic texts on agriculture, navigation, or engineering, to see which ideas were circulated and adapted in those spheres of colonial life. As the Nova Scotia Museum’s Interpretive Master Plan observes, new technologies have changed the way that we communicate, gather, and process information (Nova Scotia Museum, 2009). Our digital project is a way to use those new technologies to complement museum and archival collections, making one aspect of daily colonial culture—reading—accessible in a new way.

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