{"id":1401,"date":"2014-04-15T08:45:54","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T13:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonsolusblog.wordpress.com\/?p=1401"},"modified":"2014-04-15T08:45:54","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T13:45:54","slug":"victorian-scrapbooks-rediscovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/2014\/04\/15\/victorian-scrapbooks-rediscovered\/","title":{"rendered":"Victorian Scrapbooks Rediscovered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here at The Rare Book &\u00a0Manuscript Library, seemingly simple reference questions often turn into much deeper discoveries.That was the case when a patron enquired about our material concerning one Martin F. Tupper. If you aren’t familiar with Martin F. Tupper (1810-1889), then you probably didn’t live in the mid-19th century; if you did, you likely would have ranked him alongside Wordsworth and Tennyson as one of the most brilliant contemporary English poets. Tupper originally rose to fame on the strength of his third book, Proverbial Philosophy<\/em> (1838), a collection of poetry expressed as quotable wisdom consisting of such gems as \u201ca good book is the best of friends, the same to-day and for ever”(\u201cOf Reading<\/a>\u201d)\u00a0and \u201cA wise man in a crowded street winneth his way with gentleness\u201d (\u201cOf Tolerance<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

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One of Martin F. Tupper’s voluminous scrapbooks (v. 58). His monogram is visible on the cover.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He was a prolific writer, full of patriotism and religious fervor, and he was always ready with a choice verse for every occasion, such as his paean to the Crystal Palace in 1851 (\u201cHurrah for honest Industry ! hurrah for handy Skill !<\/a>\u201d).\u00a0Part self-help guru and part religious revivalist, he might be considered the Victorian version of Mitch Albom, and he appealed immensely to middlebrow Victorian readers, who devoured his maxims. Alongside his poetry, Tupper also wrote novels and plays, as well as curious fare such as An Author\u2019s Mind: The Book of Title-Pages<\/em> (1841), sketching out fifty possible books that Tupper envisioned but lacked the time to write. By mid-century, however, Tupper\u2019s star had begun to wane, as critics took him to task for his \u201cempty vanities\u201d and derided his \u201ctea table literature<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0By the 1860s, \u201cTupperism\u201d and other variations on his name had become bywords for overwrought sentimentality and insipid moralization, and continued to be used critically for decades. Today, if Tupper is remembered at all, he is regarded only as an emblematic representation of Victorian culture and morality. What, then, does Tupper have to do with the University of Illinois?<\/p>\n

Tupper, like many of his contemporaries, was a devoted scrapbooker, and collected astonishing amounts of letters, newspaper clippings, drafts of poems, and memorabilia concerning both his literary career and his private life. Over the years, he filled some 43 scrapbook volumes, some of which he referred to as his \u201cliterary archives,\u201d with these items. By looking at the material he collected and his annotations, researchers find glimpses of some interesting and overlooked aspects of his life, including his friendship with Prime Minister William Gladstone and his campaign on behalf of Liberian independence. These scrapbooks, which were saved by his family, were made available to the biographer Derek Hudson, whose\u00a0Martin Tupper: His Rise and Fall<\/em> (1949) is still the only monograph written about Tupper.<\/p>\n

Soon after, however, the scrapbooks were sold, and in 1952 the University of Illinois acquired the entire collection, along with the 106 volumes of Tupper\u2019s collected works originally owned by his son, William Knightson Tupper. The collection also included other miscellaneous items such as\u00a0Tupper\u2019s journals, passports, and daguerreotypes, as well as Derek Hudson\u2019s handwritten index to his scrapbooks. I suspect that the Tupper purchase was related to the larger purchase of a portion of the archives of Richard Bentley, which the University acquired between 1951 and 1961 (Bentley published many notable Victorian authors, including Charles Dickens\u2014and Martin Tupper).<\/p>\n

The scrapbook collection in particular is a buried gem; like many items, it had been hiding in plain sight in our catalogue for decades, but does not appear to have been thoroughly studied by anyone since Hudson. Although scrapbooks are notoriously difficult for libraries to preserve, they are a direct source of material culture, and can provide detailed insights about the culture at large as well as about individual collecting habits. Moreover, Victorian scrapbooking has often been associated with women, and so the Tupper collection provides a good example of a masculine, or even a \u201cprofessional,\u201d scrapbook.<\/p>\n

As with many scrapbooks, they can be difficult to muddle through, but I was able to locate several interesting items, including correspondence with Samuel Morse and a sonnet composed in honor of his telegraph; letters\u00a0about Liberia exchanged with the American President Millard Fillmore; and my personal favorite, a newspaper clipping advertising a \u201cpoetical brochure\u201d against the practice of beard-shaving. As Tupper notes in his annotation, his sketch \u201cAnti-Xurion,\u201d published in The Author\u2019s Mind<\/em>, argued the same thing six years prior.<\/p>\n

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Martin F. Tupper’s sonnet in honor of Samuel Morse (v.16, p. 12) (click for detail\/transcription)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Millard Fillmore to Martin F. Tupper, March 22, 1852, recto (v. 58, p. 353) (click for detail\/transcription)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Millard Fillmore to Martin F. Tupper, March 22, 1852, verso (v.58, p. 353) (click for detail\/transcription)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Martin F. Tupper’s notes on beard shaving (v.11, p. 165) (click for detail\/transcription)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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There are undoubtedly more treasures waiting to be found in Tupper\u2019s scrapbooks, and they will provide a student of Victorian literary and material culture much fodder.\u00a0BD\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The following call numbers at The Rare Book &\u00a0Manuscript Library pertain to the Tupper collection. Not all of the scrapbooks have been fully catalogued, so please feel free to contact RBML staff<\/a> for assistance with this material.<\/p>\n

Tupper\u2019s collection of scrapbooks and miscellaneous items:\u00a0828 T8391<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tupper\u2019s collection of printed works, taken from his son\u2019s library:\u00a0828 T839<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A typescript catalogue of the Tupper purchase:\u00a0Q. 828 T8391b<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Derek Hudson\u2019s handwritten index to the scrapbooks:\u00a0828 T8391sup<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here at The Rare Book &\u00a0Manuscript Library, seemingly simple reference questions often turn into much deeper discoveries.That was the case when a patron enquired about our material concerning one Martin F. Tupper. If you aren’t familiar with Martin F. Tupper (1810-1889), then you probably didn’t live in the mid-19th century; if you did, you likely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,23,24,26,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bd","category-letters","category-manuscripts","category-martin-f-tupper","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3684,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions\/3684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}