The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home

373 Pages·2017·6.69 MB·English

by  Abigail Williams

The Social Life of Books
THE LEWIS WALPOLE SERIES
IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CULTURE AND HISTORY
The Lewis Walpole Series, published by Yale University Press with the aid of
the Annie Burr Lewis Fund, is dedicated to the culture and history of the long
eighteenth century (from the Glorious Revolution to the accession of Queen
Victoria). It welcomes work in a variety of fields, including literature and
history, the visual arts, political philosophy, music, legal history, and the history
of science. In addition to original scholarly work, the series publishes new
editions and translations of writing from the period, as well as reprints of major
books that are currently unavailable. Though the majority of books in the series
will probably concentrate on Great Britain and the Continent, the range of our
geographical interests is as wide as Horace Walpole’s.

Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund.
Copyright © 2017 by Yale University.
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Home Improvements
1. How to Read
2. Reading and Sociability
3. Using Books
4. Access to Reading
5. Verse at Home
6. Drama and Recital
7. Fictional Worlds
8. Piety and Knowledge
Afterword
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments I wish I could say I had
written this book at the kitchen table,
surrounded by the crumbs and chaos of family
life. But projects like this one are really born of
solitary hours in underfunded local record
offices, or in scholarly research libraries. I am
enormously grateful to all the archivists who
helped me find and understand the materials in
their collections, and especially those in the
record offices in Sheffield, Warwick, Somerset,
West Devon, Edinburgh, and Gloucester. In rare
book libraries, I thank in particular, Clive Hurst,
Sarah Wheale, Andrew Honey, and the staff at
the Bodleian library, Geoff Day and the library
of Winchester College, and Ralph McLean at the
National Library of Scotland. I have learnt a lot
too from working with colleagues in museums.
My understanding of material culture has been
energized by the work I have done with
Giovanna Vitelli and the university engagement
programme at the Ashmolean Museum, and also
by my valuable collaboration with Hannah
Fleming, Elyse Bell, and others at the Geffrye
Museum in London. My research time was
funded by the British Academy and the
Leverhulme Trust, and without it I couldn’t have
written the book. St. Peter’s College and the
Faculty of English have been generous and
supportive employers.
One of the most enjoyable parts of doing this project has been my time with
the friends and family who hosted me on my research trips, and made my
evenings such fun: Penny and Tony Cronin, Robert and Marion Hadaway,
Eleanor Collins and Fraser Macdonald, Rob Wyke, Bridget Thornborrow and
Mark Heap. I have also been part of two stimulating AHRC research groups, the
“Voices and Books” network led by Jenny Richards and Richard Wistreich, and
“Uses of Poetry” led by Kate Rumbold. Both have fed my thinking in significant
ways, and given full meaning to the social acquisition of knowledge. My friends
and my former students in my two book groups in Oxford and London have
reminded me repeatedly how enjoyable it is to talk about books as well as read
them. Other friends and colleagues have reviewed chapters or drafts for me, and
I am indebted here to Adam Smyth, Ros Ballaster, Alex Harris, Stacey
McDowell, Ros Powell, and Christy Ford, as well as to the anonymous Yale
readers and my editors, Chris Rogers and Sarah Miller. Many of my mistakes
and most annoying verbal tics have been gently ironed out by the copyediting of
Hilary Hammond and Paul Betz. I have had brilliant research assistants, who
have read, corrected and shown me things I couldn’t have found for myself:
Elyse Bell, Adam Bridgen, Christy Ford, Peter Huhne, and Rebekah King. Much
of what I have learnt about eighteenth-century reading has been built on the rich
scholarship of the late Stephen Colclough, to whom I owe a huge debt. Thank
you to Linda Bree, Antony Buxton, Bridget Clarke, Barbara Crosbie, Matthew
Grenby, Emma Walshe, and Charlie Withers, amongst others, for sharing your
research treasures.
One of my readers’ criticisms about an early draft of the book was that it didn’t
adequately recognize unhappiness and discord in the home. Thank you to Giles,
Eliza, William, Mum, and Laura for enabling me to make that elementary error.

The Social Life of Books
Introduction
Home Improvements
On 15 April 1802, Dorothy and William Wordsworth took one of the most
significant walks in literary history. They set out in blustery weather, across the
fells near Ullswater in the Lake District. It was misty and mild, with a strong
wind, and the first signs of spring were emerging in the hedgerows. Passing
Gowbarrow Park, they saw a few wild daffodils, and then as they walked along,
they discovered a whole belt of them, almost as broad as a road. Dorothy’s
journal entry reads:
I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones
about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a
pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if
they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake,
they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.
Brother and sister continued their walk and later found refuge in a tavern, where
they enjoyed a robust meal of ham and potatoes. After supper, Dorothy recounts:
“William was sitting by a bright fire when I came downstairs. He soon made his
way to the Library piled up in a corner of the window. He brought out a volume
of Enfield’s Speaker, another miscellany, & an odd volume of Congreve’s plays.
We had a glass of warm rum & water—we enjoyed ourselves & wished for
Mary.”1
There is much to say about this record of a day. Dorothy’s diary entry, fuller
than the extract quoted here, was to provide the basis for her brother’s more
celebrated poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” written two years later, in
which he describes the daffodils as joyful companions to a solitary poet-walker.