Joseph King's cheap circulating library in Norwich

 

One of our items is an 1841 edition of The Heiress and and her Suitors, which has a stamp from Joseph King’s Cheap Circulating Library in Norwich.

1841 is unusually early for the collection - we have very few books from the mid 1850s as the Athenaeum was only founded in 1863. What we do know is that many books were bought second hand from book importers some of whom bought up stock from failed circulating libraries in the UK.

Searches of those trade directories for Norwich and surrounding towns which are available online (principly via the Universith of Leicester) do not list Joseph King’s library

 ➜  a circulating library run by King and Baker in Bridewell is listed in the 1845 edition of White’s directory

 ➜ no circulating library owned by anyone known as King is listed in the 1854 directory

 ➜ no directories from the late 1850s/early 1860s are available online

with kind assistance from Darren Armstrong of the Norwich Heritage Centre, Belinda Kilduff of the Norwich records office, not to mention invaluable help from Hannah Henderson and Bethan Holdridge of the Norwich Museums service in pointing me in the right direction, I think I can now make up a story.

King and Baker’s circulating library was in business in the early 1850’s but was not listed in any trade directory after 1856.

The Norwich Heritage Centre actually holds a catalogue for King and Baker’s library which lists the Heiress and her Suitors as one of the books available.

Unfortunately the catalogue is undated.

However we can imagine the following scenario: 

• King and Baker were in partnership until sometime after 1854 when the business ceased. - King tried to continue the business but was unsuccessful and the stock sold 
• We know there were brokers who bought second hand book from circulating libraries, including failed ones, for export to Australia 
•  It’s more than a tenable suggestion that King’s stock was bought up and exported to Australia. 
• As the Athenaeum library did not start until 1863 it’s possible that the book may have been in use elsewhere and resold before coming to Stanley, but the evidence would seem to suggest that it would be one of the earler acquisitions in the historic book collection

Dust jackets

 Earlier today I tooted a link to an online article on the history of dust jackets - you know, these paper sheets folded around hardback books.

Working with historical library books up at the Athenaeum, I don't get a lot of time with dust jackets - those from the 1920s and 30s are mostly gone as are the majority of those on later books, although sometimes the dustjacket illustration has been pasted on the cover like this

which I'm guessing was just something someone did.

The interesting thing is that dust jackets didn't really appear until the 1920s.

Before then, while yellowbacks and other mass produced books had illustrated covers, sometimes in colour, more expensive books did not, although, perhaps following the trend for illustrated covers, increasingly hardback books did have some form of decoration on the cover, sometimes in monochrome, sometimes with a little colour.

Designs varied from simple floral designs

to illustrated

to those with a little colour in them

I'm going to wildly wave my hands here and suggest that sometime around 1920 the paper dustjacket was introduced, perhaps because that reduced production costs, allowing books to be produced with simple minimalist covers, and also, perhap because it was a way of making hardbacks as attractive as these pesky paperbacks that were making inroads into mass market publications...

Travels with an old surface

 We’re mid way through a road trip out west in the south west corner of WA.

Not the best time – what with the chaos in the Middle East and dodgy petrol supplies.

However, this is not what this is about. We had hired a little, and I mean little, rental MG that sips unleaded 91 with the frugality of an elderly aunt with a cup of darjeeling, so we are managing. Yes fuel is a lot more expensive, but so far it's not the big deal it might have been

However, this is not what this post is about.

It’s about what sort of technology I took with me, as this time I did something a little different. 

Normally I take an old laptop with me. This works fine for online banking, uploading photos from my camera - normally I take a little point and shoot iXus with me, it’s a little more versatile in bright light etc than my phone - email, and a little bit of writing. 

Usually I take a windows device, but there’s no reason why, just habit. Any of my Linux laptop would work just as well, and as Chrome’s now available for Linux there’s none of the dread ‘unsupported browser’ errors that you don’t want to see in the middle of some online banking.

Until it died on me I used to use my 2012 vintage MacBook Air, before that a little Linux netbook.

After the Air died on me I’ve been through a couple of refurbished windows machines, which work well, but do tend to be heavier and bulkier than my old Air, which is a consideration when flying as I usually take an old iPad with me these days to read the news and a bit of recreational surfing, not to mention a bit of streaming and casting.

One thing we’re increasingly noticing is AirBnB’s where there’s no antenna - you can watch the internet channels, or if the app for the service you want isn’t installed, cast from your iPad. (Usually they seem to have Netflix and Stan installed, plus the apps for the commercial networks, but no ABC or SBS)

The same goes for radio. Want to listen to the ABC morning news?

Download ABC listen and stream via your iPad.

Way of the world I guess.

We flew to Perth from Melbourne. 

On an end to end road trip it doesn’t matter what I take, there will always be space for a laptop and an iPad.

If you’re flying part of the way it’s a little different, especially since airlines started getting twitchy about the size and weight of cabin bags, not to mention the sheer hassle of taking a heavy bulky backpack through security.

So this time, as well as a checked bag, I took a smaller backpack, the sort of one you’d take on a day hike, say 30-35 litres, into which I stuffed an extra warm layer in case the plane was cold, an iPad, and my refurbished Surface, and other essentials that you don’t want to lose along the way, like the Surface’s charger (new ones don’t need a special charger, but my old refurbished device does), my glasses, diary, pens, paper and my kindle, as well as my phone and my wallet.

This made for a reasonably compact pack well within Qantas’s cabin bag guidelines, and everything else was in my medium size case that fitted into the back of our little rental MG.

As a solution this worked well. 

The Surface did everything I asked of it - not quite true, my portable SD card reader didn’t work with it for some reason, but it let me do our online banking, and a bit of writing, and was comfortable to use as long as I had access to a table. 

Public libraries are an absolute godsend in this regard.

And for everything else there was the iPad.

So, why not simply use my Chromebook?

Good question. After all I do use my Chromebook when we’re away for a night or two.

One, the Chromebook is heavier than an iPad - it’s about the same weight as the Surface, and it has only one single USB3 socket, which potentially makes uploading from my camera a bit of finger in the ear exercise.

There's also the problem that it needs reasonably decent internet to be more than a gray plastic brick. While things are definitely better with an internet connection the Surface can be used without connectivity.

Ergonomically, both are the same, near impossible to use on one's knees, or on a tray table on V/line or in Qantas economy (not that you can use a Chromebook during a flight due to Google not having implemented a flight mode option. Equally, the lack of wifi on V/line trains tends to render Chromebooks less than useful.)

The Surface had a single old style usb socket into which I could plug my SD card reader. The theory was that it would just work.

Unfortunately the theory was wrong.

If it had worked I should have been able to drag’n’drop as I would on a Windows or Linux laptop.

As it was it didn’t - I should have tested it and it’s my bad I didn’t.

And that brings us to the second reason for choosing the surface. It is fundamentally a general purpose Windows computer and I can run my preferred software ( Libre Office, Notable, Thunderbird) on it and save to one drive, which is my preferred storage solution…

A morning of puzzles

 

Today at the Athenaeum was most definitely a day of puzzles.

I’m continuing to work on either those books which were published anonymously, such as by ‘A Lady’ or those where the book has lost its title page and some detective work is required to trace the book.

First up was Mattie: - a stray by Frederick William Robinson, easy enough to track down with the new British Library catalogue, but all three volumes had very damaged labels from a circulating library I did not recognise

If you play about with the image you end up with something like this

And if you squint you can just make out the word Buzzard about two thirds of the way down.

Searching Google for phrases such as Buzzard lending library was frustrating. Put quotes around it and a search produced zero results. With out quotes, Google, in its AI powered clever dick way wanted to tell me about lending libraries, but I eventually tracked down an entry from a Sands and MacDougall directory from the 1860s that listed Buzzards Lending library as having been founded in 1853 and having a collection of over 5000 volumes – obviously Buzzards were a substantial concern in their time before Mullens dominated the Melbourne circulating library scene.

As a bonus, the Sands and Macdougall directory included an advert for Buzzards

Which was most definitely a win.

The other find was an 1841 edition of The heiress and her suitors. First published in 1838, The identity of the author has remained a mystery since publication. If you're curious to have a look at the book, following the link will take you to a digitised version on Google Books via the National Library of Scotland’s online catalogue.

As I said, the identity of the author has defeated generations of scholars, but when I opened up the book to catalogue it I found something almost as interesting,  this most impressive stamp from Joseph King's circulating library in Norwich in the UK:

While it clearly shows that the book had originally come from Joseph King’s circulating library in Norwich, I’ve not been able to trace the library in Bridewell Alley Norwich, but it’s interesting that such an early publication ended up in the Stanley Athenaeum on the other side of the world some twenty or thirty years after it was published…

A generic e-reader

 I've just bought myself a generic e-reader.

 It came from ebay for around a hundred bucks. If you search on ebay for 'ereader' you will see that various retailers are selling what looks to be basically the same device, sometimes branded, sometimes not.

This example was unbranded and came nicely packed in a decent box with some shock absorbing packaging around it. 

My reason for buying it was simple - to replace the dogfood tablet .

There are a lot of interesting nineteenth century traveller's accounts out there not to mention that a lot of golden age mystery novels are becoming public domain and available via Gutenberg, and while I have a kindle, and an iPad, I was finding that I needed a second simple e-reader for the public domain epubs.

The model I chose is fairly simple. No wifi or anything like that, you simply plug it in to a USB port on your computer and it presents as a USB file system

 and you simply copy files to it.

It has quite a nice colour e-ink screen, but it's not a touch screen meaning that navigation is via a set of clicky buttons on one side of the device.

 and, while I havn't investigated its capabilities, it claims to be able to play mp3 files, meaning that I could potentially use it to listen to downloaded podcasts.

No bluetooth of course,  but there's a headphone jack for a pair of old school wired earbuds.

The model I bought came with 16GB of storage and there is an option to add additional storage via a tf card.

Basically, the device is not much more than a 2026 re-imagining of my long gone Interead Cool-er.

As always with such devices, the real test will be how much I use it and how well it stands up to use. I'll provide an update in six months or so on how it's going 

 

Ah, the online safety act

Recently, I wanted to read a post by the historian Lucy Worsley.

Like some other people whose work interests me, she tries to monetise her posts by posting on SubStack - nothing wrong with that, I've even thought about doing that myself - but given that SubStack has gained a reputation for hosting some politically dubious material, I have never signed up for a SubStack account,

But the post was allegedly free to read, so as an experiment, I thought I'd create an account using a dummy email id  which I'd delete later. After all no money needed to change hands, and Ebeneezer Wallaby would count just as much as a click as yours truly.

Well, creating a dummy account worked, or rather it did until the Online Safety Act got in the way.

Australia, bless its little cotton socks, tries to protect young people from some of the excesses of social media by not allowing kids under sixteen to have accounts. 

Personally I have some reservations about this - it could make kids in rural areas who are a bit different - say they are interested in botany rather than footy - even more isolated as it shuts them out of online communities of like minded individuals, but overall the intention behind the act is good.

On the other hand, I've seen some things on the internet that I wouldn't like my niece's fifteen year year old daughter to see while she's still young and impressionable.

Substack, though it is not legally required to, now requires age verification to create an account, which is a good thing, and that either means a selfie or government id like my drivers licence or passport number.

Now I don't mind sharing a selfie - I'm an ordinary looking old bald guy who wears glasses

and my picture is probably scattered around the internet already, but I do object to sharing my government id for the simple reason that's what things like banks use to confirm that you are you and that's the sort of information I give out grudgingly.

However, at this point I decided I was on a losing wicket and abandoned the attempt, so I'll never know what Lucy Worsley wrote about Tudor personal cleanliness...

 

Fumigation

 It's a Friday, which in my case means a morning cataloguing up at the Athenaeum.

I'm finally on to shelf A1, which includes all these anonymous Victorian novels by 'A Lady' or some such anonymous pseudonym, plus quite a few novels where the spine has split and the title page has gone missing, and no one quite knew what to do with them.

Tracing these usually includes a bit of sleuthing, but usually, if the spine is at all legible, the British Library and National Library of Scotland list the editions - and sometimes you can work out the likely edition from habit of late nineteenth century publishers of putting adverts for upcoming new books in the rear of the book, which can give you the actual publisher and the approximate date of publication - for example, if the British Library records 'Daisy's cycling adventure' was first published in 1894 and had published an edition of the book you are trying to catalogue in 1893 and another edition in 1897, chances are you are holding the 1893 edition.

A bit hand wavy I know, but the best I can do under the circumstances.

I've also found a nice example of a library label that explicitly mentions fumigation

and which dates from the early 1930s and ties in with what I've already worked out about Hygenic libraries and how they functioned.

Otherwise, no really spectacular finds, a couple of Mullen's labels on older pre 1880's books that fits in with what I've already deduced, that they were sourcing books second hand from both Mullen's and overseas.

Now we know that a Mullen's subscription was a bit like a subscription to Netflix, and at a guinea a year (roughly equivalent to A$220 today and not that different from the cost of a standard ad free Netflix subscription today), but how much did a standard Victorian triple decker novel cost?

Well, I have not been able to trace the cost in Australia, but in the UK a three volume novel cost something around thirty shillings (£1.50) in 1870 which using the Bank of England inflation calculator come to roughly £150 or a little under A$300 today, making outright purchase something only the wealthy could afford.

(As a comparison the Aunt Mildred's of the 1870s, surviving on their fixed incomes of around £500 a year (roughly A$100000 today) might seem not to badly off and and able to afford a novel or two, but she would have to maintain a household out of her income - a ladies maid would cost Aunt Mildred £20 a year plus living expenses. Add a cook and a maid of all work to do the less glamourous tasks, that's probably a fifth of Aunt Mildred's income gone on domestic help. 

Under such circumstances it's not surprising that Aunt Mildred probably had a subscription to Mullen's, rather than buying books outright.

Inflation wasn't a real problem in the late nineteenth century, but by the early 1900's, advances in technology and increased competition meant that books were much cheaper, meaning that my grandfather's first wife, Catherine Gracie, who was a housemaid would have been easily able to afford a yellowback novel or two priced at between one and two shillings out of her £25 salary, while thirty or so years earlier, her mother would not despite earning similar amounts.)