An exhibition of material drawn from the Robinson
Library’s Special Collections
By Melanie Wood
Manuscript Album
The Manuscript Album began as fifteen letters which were gifted to the
Library in 1934. Then, the documents comprised eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury letters from such notables as the 1st Duke of Wellington. The
collection has since been augmented and today comprises almost two
hundred items.
Contents
The ‘album’ contains letters from some people of local significance, like Thomas
Bewick, Richard Grainger, George Stephenson, George Otto Trevelyan, and Robert
Spence Watson. Other letters are written by such household names as A.E.
Houseman, Horatio Nelson, William Wilberforce, Michael Faraday, Thomas Carlyle,
Charles Babington, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Hugo, Ellen Terry and Robert Southey.
The letters are diverse: there is a request for an address to facilitate the delivery of a
bear skin from David Walton (1859); an account of the pranks of the ‘Borrowdale
Bogle’ from J. Arkle (1856); the refusal to grant Madame de Bury’s request that an
officer in the Indian Army be promoted by Richard Airey (1860); a description of his
house in China by James Bruce Elgin (1860); and a discussion of French politics and
her newly-married life in the country by Frances (i.e. Fanny) Burney (1792).
The earliest item in the collection is a printed requisition notice for money to pay for
the victualling of the fleet, dated 6th June 1668 and signed “Albermarle” (i.e. George
Monk, 1st Duke of Albermarle). For the most part, the various documents date from
the Nineteenth Century. There is a small amount of twentieth-century material, the
most recent of the documents being an acknowledgement of the receipt of two
offprints which had been sent from C.H. Hunter Blair to Charles Clay in 1956.
Nelson, H. Letter to Rev. A.J. Scott.
st
31 July 1801. Manuscript Album, 14
Conservation and preservation
All Special Collections holdings are housed in secure, environmentally-controlled
stores but a good storage environment is only the first step towards best practice.
The preservation of documents for future use also depends upon good
housekeeping practices, appropriate packaging and careful handling. The documents
which comprise the Manuscript Album have recently been cleaned and re-packaged
by the Robinson Library’s Bindery staff. The letters have been placed in Melinex
pockets – an archival quality inert material – and these pockets bound into hardbacked folders. This way, the letters can be kept clean, be easily retrieved and are
afforded a greater level of protection from handling and reproduction.
Visibility
Unlike our monograph (i.e. book) holdings, manuscript material is not currently
catalogued online. Whilst a basic finding aid to the Manuscript Album is available on
the Special Collections web pages, few of our patrons are cognisant of the existence
of this resource. The idea for an exhibition came from a desire to promote the
Manuscript Album and the work which has been done to further collections care.
How, though, to celebrate such a heterogeneous collection of documents? The
names of correspondents have suggested broad themes, or pathways, thus the
exhibition is divided into ‘Science and Innovation’, ‘Politics and Society’, and
‘Literature and Culture’ but it has also been useful to set the ‘album’ in a context of
letter-writing history and to consider the value of letters as historical evidence.
Letter writing in history
Letter writing began with a need to
communicate business across distance, hence
professional letter writers and letter writing
manuals. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, letter writing had become so
commonplace that novels by Aphra Behn (Loveletters between a nobleman and his sister, 1684),
Samuel Richardson (Pamela, 1740 and Clarissa,
1749), Choderlos de Laclos (Les liaisons
dangereuses, 1782) and others pivoted on
epistolary frameworks which lent realism and
complexity to the narratives as intimate
thoughts were communicated without being
Heavy glass Victorian inkwell.
mediated by a narrator. Increased literacy levels
and the organisation of the postal service served
to democratise letter writing in the Nineteenth Century: published letters
became vehicles for publicly expressing opinions; letters were copied, saved and
collected; frequent letter writing meant that correspondence was used for
business but also for gossiping and serving a full range of social functions.
Secretaries
In early modern times, royalty and the nobility required men to whom they could entrust
sensitive information. The handling of private and confidential correspondence would
also become important to people who controlled trade and commerce. These secretaries
often enjoyed high status and necessarily had a good level of general education. At the
same time, itinerant scribes would write letters on behalf of the illiterate.
Manuals
Manuals providing templates for different forms of correspondence and offering
instruction on how best to compose a letter first appeared in the late Sixteenth Century,
given impetus by the growth of the business classes. The first English manual was William
Fulwood’s The Enimie of Idlenesse (1568). In 1586, Angel Day’s influential The English
Secretarie spoke of “Aptness, brevity & comeliness” as the key features of any good
letter.1 Day was a rhetorician – the first two parts of his manual were devoted to the
rules and correct forms of letter writing; the third part focussed on grammar and formal
language.
In ‘Letter-writing instruction manuals in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England’
(2007), Linda C. Mitchell describes two educational tools: grammar books and letter-
writing manuals. Grammar books provided pupils from the rising classes with a useful
foundation in basic literacy skills. Letter-writing manuals, on the other hand, were used
by schoolmasters as vehicles for teaching grammar, rhetoric and composition; for
preparing pupils for a vocation; and for instilling in pupils appropriate social conventions.2
Letter-writing manuals enjoyed particular popularity in the Nineteenth Century when
good penmanship and literacy were taken as indicators of sound character and breeding.
Typically, they contained a great number of model letters: The ladies’ letter writer:
consisting of letters in elegant and choice language, on friendship, courtship, love, and
marriage; forms of cards and complimentary notes; directions for addressing persons of
all ranks; and a plain and easy English grammar
(Glasgow: John Cameron, [n.d.]) reflects the Victorian predilection for written
communication, containing letters and responses such as ‘From a Mother in Town to her
Daughter at a Boarding-school in the Country, recommending the Practice of Virtue’;
‘From a Lady to her Lover, who is ordered to join his Regiment’; ‘From a Young Lady,
requesting a loan of Music’; and ‘A Lady’s Maid applying for a Situation’. Correspondence
was used for a wide range of situations, from soliciting work; to sending condolences;
making, accepting and declining proposals of marriage; and encouraging moral conduct
in children.
“Letters are the life of trade, the fuel of love, the pleasure of friendship, the food of the
politician, and the entertainment of the curious.”
The ladies’ letter writer ... (Glasgow: John Cameron, [n.d.])
Rare Books RB 395.4 LAD
Sending letters
In Britain, the Romans introduced a messenger system to deliver mail safely which
benefitted from the simultaneous programme of road building and the construction of
overnight shelters. Thereafter, the development of a postal system was very gradual: not
until the beginning of the Twelfth Century were there any significant changes. Existing
Roman roads continued to be used and, with letters being conveyed by messengers on
horses, the network of postal routes expanded and the number of coaching inns
increased. Royal messengers conveyed an annual average of 4,500 letters from Henry I’s
Exchequer but communication was generally becoming more crucial with the growth of
settlements and associated commerce. At this time, letters were fastened with ties. By
the Thirteenth Century, royalty, sheriffs and bailiffs had their own messengers but these
messengers would also accept a fee to deliver private documents for landowners (i.e. the
literate few). Much of the communication was between royal departments and
Parliament. In the early Fifteenth Century, literate people found it easier to write letters
as cheaper paper began to replace the more expensive vellum and parchment. Thus, the
nature of correspondence evolved from matters of governance and business to include
personal letters.
By the Seventeenth Century, the postal service was in great need of reform: postmasters
had not been receiving their salaries and the burgeoning population was burdening the
system. In 1635 Charles I addressed the problem of revenue by making the postal service
available to his subjects but it was not until 1657, under Oliver Cromwell, that the royal
courier routes were transformed into the General Post Office service. The first
Postmaster General was appointed in 1660 (during the reign of Charles II) and the
following year, hand stamps were used to document when letters arrived at post offices
(i.e. postmarks). By the end of the century, a pre-paid London Penny Post was operating
for the delivery of letters across the capital. Four years after the Act of Union between
England, Scotland and Wales, in 1711, the Post Office Act paved the way for a unified
postal service but it would be another fifty four years before the Penny Post would
include selected towns and cities outside London. In the late Eighteenth Century, John
Palmer established the mail coach service.
The second period of postal service reform occurred in the early Nineteenth Century. In
the 1830s, the opening of railways permitted the Post Office to transport letters more
efficiently. Then, in 1837, Rowland Hill published Post Office Reform: Its Importance and
Practicability and the Select Committee on Postal Reform was established. The following
year, travelling post offices were set up on trains so that letters could be sorted en route.
Further reform in 1840 saw the Penny Post being universally adopted and the first prepaid adhesive stamps, the Penny Black and the Twopenny Blue, made their appearances.
By the 1850s, people could buy stamps in advance; send Christmas cards; and drop
letters into pillar boxes on the street. This is also when rudimentary postcodes were
established for London. In 1870, the Post Office issued postcards which cost 1/2d to send.
By 1919 there was an airmail service and the Post Office had fleets of motorcycles and
vehicles. It was not until 1966 that postcodes were extended across the country and it
was in 1968 that a first-class and second-class two-tier system was put in place.3
‘General Post-office, St. Martins-Le-Grand’ in: The Illustrated London News, no.54, vol. III,
th
week ending May 13, 1843, p.319. 19 Century Collection 030 ILL
Published letters
There are two forms of published letters: those which were written privately, for an
individual recipient, which have retrospectively been collected and published (e.g. Letters
and journals of Lord Byron with notices of his life by Thomas Moore
[London: Murray, 1830]); and those which have been deliberately written for public
consumption. Pamphlets and tracts were a common form of publication by the
Nineteenth Century because they could be printed and sold, or distributed on the streets,
quite anonymously thus allowing the author to opine on censured or controversial
subjects. They could be written pseudonymously (Letter to the Duke of Newcastle by
Vindex [London: printed by Andrews, 1828]), the name of the author could be hidden
behind initials (The crisis: being a letter to J.W. Denison, Esq., M.P., on the present
calamitous state of the country by W.M. [London: printed by J.F. Dove, 1822]) or they
could be completely unattributed (The contempt of the clergy considered: in a letter to a
friend by an impartial hand [London: printed for R. Minors, 1739]). Published letters in
Special Collections can help researchers come to a better understanding of debates
around such subjects as public finances, armed forces salaries, foreign affairs, health,
slavery, marriage law, vegetarianism, and Catholicism.
Letterbooks
Newcastle University Library’s Special Collections has, on deposit, the letter books of
Charles Edward Trevelyan (1797-1870). Letter books are something of a curiosity today
and typically take one of two forms. They may comprise copies of letters which have
been sent and received by the compiler, or, they may comprise copies of letters which
the compiler has collected including copies of historic letters which were in circulation,
copies of published letters, and copies of letters written by famous people.
Letters as historical evidence
It is useful to bear in mind that a body of letters in an archive is unlikely ever to
be complete: letters may have been accidentally lost or destroyed; sometimes
they will have been deliberately removed by family members to avoid scandal or
the release of sensitive information into the public domain. Furthermore, the
correspondence is likely to be one-sided: in-coming correspondence will
dominate since people are more likely to keep letters which they have received
than to make copies of, or ask to have returned, letters which they have written
themselves. Letters may be scattered throughout an archive, or, correspondence
might form a ‘series’ within an archive. Letters might also be serendipitously
found tipped and pasted into books.
Letters can provide a largely unmediated glimpse of the past: they allow us to become
privy to a person’s (often candid) personal thoughts as they were committed to paper
and this can give historians and biographers a very different view of a person than is
suggested by their public work or utterances. For example, a letter to Miss Owen
provides comment on the health of William Wilberforce, the abolitionist (September 16th
1831): he thanks God that he is able to respond to Miss Owen’s enquiries by telling her
that both he and his wife are “pretty well” but goes on to explain that, due to a weakness
of his eyes, he will be sparing with his pen. He nevertheless fills two and a half sheets of
paper and is quite effusive in signing off with friendly respects and remembrances. (Mary
Frances Owen had become Mrs William Wilberforce in 1820 so “Miss O.” could be one of
his wife’s relatives.) In contrast, in a letter sent from Cambridge, July 25th 1926 to an
unidentified recipient, the poet A.E. Housman wrote: “I do not feel able to refuse your
request, and I have copied and signed two poems. If I do not say that I hope this will do
the good you expect, it is because I have one thing in common with Keats and am
incapable of hope”. Houseman was in a similarly pessimistic vein when, on January 7th
1927, he wrote to a Mr. Wilson: “As to your enquiry about my lectures, some of them
have been published, and they are all very dry”.
Letters can also provide an individual perspective on events. Having regretfully declined
an invitation, Viscount James Bryce wrote to Constance Flower of the Irish situation. His
comments contradict newspaper coverage, teaching the researcher to question the
impetus behind the writing of both printed and manuscript sources and showing the folly
of relying upon public accounts or limited sources. “The condition of Ireland, serious as it
is, is not so bad as the English papers make it out: and there seems to be a ...[?]
agreement as to what the Land bill ought to be.” The letter is undated but the first Irish
Land Act was passed in 1870.
Furthermore, a manuscript item is unique, thus providing greater scope for original
research. A letter is more than words on a page: there are inferences to be made from
the quality of the paper it is written on (weight, embossing, edging, &c.); the handwriting
style (an exercise in ciphering or a hurried scrawl); whether or not the letter has been
enclosed within an envelope or simply folded and sealed with wax; how much of the
page has been filled (white space, writing on the page in two directions); and whether or
not it is in draft form.
Effective interrogation of a letter follows the usual rules of asking who? What? Where?
When? And why? An historian will try to identify the sender and recipient and to place
them in some sort of social context before deciding what form the letter takes. Addresses
can help with issues of chronology or relevant events may have occurred in that same
place. Additional tools might be required in order to understand weights and measures,
trades and place names or dialects. Inevitably, it will take a researcher time to acquire
palaeography skills or to familiarise themselves with the quirks of a particular person’s
hand.
“Among other things, letters are the lifeblood of history, the beating heart of biography.”
Schiff, S. ‘Please Mr. Postman’ in: New York Times Sunday Book Review.
http:\\www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/books/review/Schiff-t.thml
(accessed 24/05/2011)
Letter forms and themes in the Manuscript Album
Business letters are common. A letter from engineer, George Stephenson, sent from
Killingworth Colliery, June 7th 1816 discusses the ‘Geordie’, or Stephenson, safety lamp:
When you make any of our lamps you must put caps upon the glass perforated with
holes a little larger than the bottom holes the Caps must be done with hard solder.
you [sic] must let none go away without the caps on; the cylinder glasses, I think I
shall be in town tomorrow, to give orders, for more.
A letter from the engraver, Thomas Bewick, sent from Newcastle, October 25th 1816
illuminates his business relationships, especially “the painful & disgraceable [sic] affair of
Catnach’s” (i.e. James Catnach of the Catnach Press). Bewick explicity states that he
distrusts Catnach, had been cajoled by the recipient and Mr. Bell into providing wood
cuts for The Hermit of Warkworth and is angered that he has not received full payment
for his work. The work had come to 44 pounds 13 shillings and 8 pence but the only
payment had been 6 pounds and 10 shillings, leaving an outstanding balance of 38
pounds, 3 shillings and 8 pence (approximately the spending worth of £957.11 today).
Employment is another topic commonly encountered in historic correspondence. The
Manuscript Album contains a letter from William Ingram, to Mr. Smiles, April 29th 1804
regarding the possibility of a vacancy for a surgeon at the Newcastle Infirmary and
advising him on how to apply. “I am inclined to think that no vacancy will immediately
take place as I find that refusals have been given to the application made in behalf of Mr
Robertson in three or four instances, yet it is right for you to be prepared, in case a sudden
resignation shd happen ...”. A list of surgeons at the Infirmary later includes Mr. Edward
Smiles so one presumes his application was successful.4
Likewise, William Wyon, chief engraver at the Royal Mint, described to ‘dear Louisa’ the
process for being admitted to the Royal Academy:
The mode of obtaining admission to the Royal Academy is for the Young Man to
send in a drawing or model of his own performance with a Letter from an
Academician or some one of respectability speaking of his moral character – if the
drawing is approved by the Council he is admitted as a Probationer for three
months – he then makes a drawing in the Academy which is also submitted to the
Council which if approved he receives a ticket as a Student.
Letters can be used as vehicles for self-publicity. A letter from the actress, Ellen Terry, to
Newcastle bookseller, Joseph Barlow, on September 26th 1899, is written on paper which
has been printed with the details of a provincial and American tour which she was
undertaking with the Lyceum Company. (The tour had visited the Tyne Theatre,
Newcastle-on-Tyne on September 18th.) Ellen Terry does not overtly refer to the tour
herself but does thank Mr. Barlow for his good wishes for her journey. She also encloses
a picture for a little girl but, this picture now being absent, the twenty-first-century
reader can only guess that it may have been a photograph of Ellen.
Dear Mr. Barlow - Many thanks for your good wishes for my journey – when you
have sent all the books off to London for me please let me know exactly how many
vols have been despatched. I have 3 with me: Kind regards to yrsister & the
enclosed picture is for the little girl who gave me the pen-...[?].
Thank you letters are another form of correspondence represented in the Manuscript
Album. A black-edged postcard from Princess Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore to Mrs.
Yorke, December 28th 1901, reads: “I think it so very kind of you to have sent me for Xmas
that charming little book stand, which will be so useful to me, & for which I send you my
best thanks”.
There are also descriptive letters, such as that sent from Hong Kong by James Bruce Elgin,
August 23rd 1860. In his letter to Madame de Bury, he describes his house and discusses
Chinese military defences: “I answer from a kind of penthouse room which forms one of
the appendages of a ... [?] House A row of hideous genii or deities – many of them with an
... [?] countenance wh is intended to inspire terror occupies three sides of my dwelling –
The fourth side is almost entirely open ...”.
Or from Frances Burney, writing to Dr. Charles Burney:
I am called to a sweeter contemplation, - little Willy, whom you will love very much,
is just arrived. I have been playing with him till I am breathless, & I have ... [?] now
made him over to M. D’A who, most opportunely, has lately treated himself with a
wheelbarrow, - & upon this he has placed a certain blue coat lined with fur, made
for a winter journey in keen cold, & a pillow at the head, & the little man is there
seated, with an exulting delight that no future pleasure can ever succeed, if equal.
M. D’Arblay is his coachman, & his little face is bright with joy, while his voice
shouts its full contentment.
The following three themed sections profile some of the correspondents who are
represented in the Manuscript Album.
SCIENCE AND INNOVATION
Joseph Swan (1828-1914)
Joseph Swan was a Sunderland-born physicist and chemist who helped to place
the North East at the forefront of modern invention through his pioneering
experiments with photography and electric lighting. He was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society in 1894 and, in 1904, was knighted.
th
Swan, J.W. Letter to Mr. Worsnop. 9 November 1897. Manuscript Album, 147
Photography
It was while he worked for John Mawson that Swan experimented with photography,
improving the permanency, definition and contrasts of images by refining the wet
collodion process of exposing and developing photographic plates and by introducing
backing paper. Unsatisfactory dry plates were available from 1871 but Swan also
improved this method after realising the importance of heat in the preparation of silver
gelatine emulsion. Swan also developed bromide printing paper onto which negatives
could be printed under artificial light. In layman’s terms, Swan’s experiments represented
significant contributions to photography: improving image capture, making photography
more accessible, making enlargements possible and even helping to revolutionise
astronomical photography.
Electric lighting
In 1860, Swan created a crude bulb comprising a partially-evacuated glass bulb with a
carbonised paper filament. It soon expired. The lamp which he demonstrated to the
Newcastle Chemical Society in 1879 and at the Literary and Philosophical Society of
Newcastle, in 1880, took advantage of Charles Henry Stearn’s work on vacuums having
an almost completely evacuated bulb with a carbonised thread filament. Little residual
oxygen meant the bulb was practical – it glowed white-hot without catching fire or
causing blackening.
There was great interest in Swan’s experiments – the Swan Electric Light Company was
established in 1881 and yet, on 24th December 1880, in a letter to Robert Spence Watson,
Albert, Earl Grey pre-emptively wrote:
“If there is any chance of taking up shares in Swan’s Light Cy I would be very much obliged
to you if you wdremember me.”
th
Grey, A. Letter to Robert Spence Watson. 24 December 1880.
Spence Watson Papers SW 1/7/38
Swan truly made a name for himself with electric lighting and, in doing so, achieved a
number of ‘firsts’ for the North East: his house in Low Fell was the first private residence
to have electric light when he installed incandescent lamps in his drawing room; Mosley
Street in Newcastle was the first public road in the world to be electrically lit (1880);
Newcastle became one of the first towns to be so lit; and Benwell was home to the first
light bulb factory in the world. Lord Armstrong’s Cragside mansion was the first house in
the world to be lit by hydroelectricity; in 1880 he installed Swan’s light bulbs in what was
then the largest and most complete application of Swan’s method of lighting.
Writing to Mr. Worsnop, a photographer in Rothbury, in 1897, Swan reflected on the
installation of his lights at Cragside seventeen years previously:
Yes so far as I know Cragside was the first house in England properly fitted with my
electric lamps – I had greatly wished that it should be & when I told him so he [i.e.
Lord Armstrong] readily assented. There had, previously to the introduction of the
incandescent lamp into the house been an arc lamp in the picture gallery – that
was taken down & my lamps were substituted, but was a delightful experience for
both of us when the gallery was first lit up. The speed of the dynamo had not been
quite rightly adjusted to produce the strength of current in the lamps that they
required – the speed was too fast & the current too strong, consequently the lamps
were far above their normal brightness; but the effect was splendid & never to [be]
forgotten
th
Swan, J.W. Letter to Mr. Worsnop. 9 November 1897.
Manuscript Album, 147
In 1883, Swan went into business with the
American, Thomas Edison, after a period of
rivalry. Both men had apparently made similar
but independent developments in electric
lighting. This merged company came to be known
as “Ediswan” and relocated, in 1886, to premises
in London.
th
Early 20 century (turn of the century) light bulb etched Ediswan,
220-16-A-29
Rayon
In pursuit of an improved carbon filament for his lamps, Swan experimented with
cellulose. Cellulose (derived from wood pulp which has been treated with chemical
reagents) forms a viscous solution when added to carbon disulphide and sodium
hydroxide. In 1883, Swan passed his solution through the perforations of a spinneret into
an acid bath to form fibres of ‘artificial silk’. While Swan used the fibres for his filaments,
his wife created fabrics and these were exhibited in London in 1885. In 1889 a French
chemist, Louis Comte de Chardonnet, developed the process for the textile industry.5 By
1924, artificial silk had become known as rayon and today it is widely used, for example,
in the production of clothing and surgical products.
Swan was a scientist first; businessman second although his inventions had lasting
commercial applications:
If I could have had the power of choice of the particular space of time within which
my life should be spent I believe I would have chosen precisely my actual lifetime.
What a glorious time it has been! Surely no other 78 years in all the long history of
the world ever produced an equal harvest of invention and discovery for the
beneficial use and enlightenment of mankind.
Swan (1906) qtd. in Clouth, p.[1].
The Brunels:
Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849)
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859)
Marc Isambard Brunel was an architect, civil engineer and inventor whose
machines played significant roles in the industrial history of Britain. He is perhaps
best-known for having designed the first sub-aqueous tunnel: the Thames Tunnel.
He was a brilliant inventor but a poor businessman, lacking an aptitude for
commerce and spending time imprisoned for debt. Sadly, some of his ventures
failed specifically because of his lack of acumen. He was knighted in 1841.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, also a great engineer, worked on his father’s Thames
Tunnel project. Later, inspired by George Stephenson, he was responsible for the
construction of 1,000 miles of railway. He tackled long-standing engineering
problems with mixed success although his ideas were often innovative. The
bicentenary of his birth was widely celebrated in 2006.
Brunel, I.K. Letter to unidentified correspondent.
th
18 April 1840. Manuscript Album, 18
Brunel, M.I. Letter to L. Kennett.
th
30 April 1827. Manuscript Album, 22
Pulley blocks
Marc Isambard Brunel was compelled by his Royalist sympathies to flee his native France
during the Revolution. A successful career in New York followed before he moved to
Britain where he first set to work improving docks and naval ships. He also invented
machines which increased and improved production whilst, at the same time, reduced
the number of required workers – turning his attention to the sawing and bending of
timber, the knitting of stockings, making of boots and printing.
One of his significant successes was his design for automated pulley block machinery. A
pulley block guides the sails of large ships and the British Navy used approximately
100,000 blocks each year. In 1805, more than a hundred skilled dockworkers were
employed in Plymouth to craft the pulley blocks. Brunel and the Navy installed a series of
forty five steam-powered machines which reduced the required workforce to just ten
unskilled men. Industrialised mass production had arrived.6
Thames Tunnel
His greatest feat was achieving the ‘impossible’ with his design for the Thames Tunnel.
Quicksand had caused previous attempts to construct a tunnel to fail (1801, 1807) but in
1818 Marc Isambard Brunel patented his tunnelling shield, a cast-iron structure which
enabled safe tunnelling through water-bearing strata as it moved forward as the ground
was cut and allowed bricklayers to build the double tunnel behind.
Work began on constructing the tunnel in 1825, with Isambard Kingdom Brunel as the
resident engineer. Conditions were dangerous: marsh gas ignited and water flooded into
the tunnel. When the tunnel flooded in January 1828, Isambard Kingdom Brunel rescued
several men but was himself seriously injured. The tunnel opened in 1843 and is today
the oldest tunnel in the London Underground system. It is a horseshoe design, stretching
from Rotherhithe to Wapping, and measuring 7m x 11m x 406m. More than one million
people passed through the tunnel in its first month and in 1865, trains began to use it.
The letter which is found in the Manuscript Album, addressed to L. Kennett, 30th April
1827, concerns arrangements for public access to the tunnel:
Mr. Brunel’s compliments to Miss Kennett and begs to inform her that there is no
necessity whatever for any ticket to see the tunnel, the public being admitted on
the payment of a Shilling per person.
th
Brunel, M.I. Letter to L. Kennett. 30 April 1827.
Manuscript Album, 22
Prospectus for the Thames Tunnel
Manuscript Album, 23
Clifton Suspension Bridge
When he was aged just 24, Isambard Kingdom Brunel won his first major commission and
was appointed project engineer on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Brunel’s design had
won a competition which arose from a bequest of £1,000 from William Vick, merchant.
Vick had wanted a stone bridge but although the interest from his bequest performed
well, a stone bridge remained too expensive and an Act of Parliament permitted
deviation from his will. Today, the bridge is a grade I listed landmark and copes with daily
traffic of up to 12,000 motor vehicles but it had a somewhat beleaguered nascence.
Work began in 1831 but financial difficulties and political challenges, such as the Bristol
Riots, brought about a cessation. Work on the bridge resumed in 1836 and the towers
were completed before work again halted and the bridge was abandoned in 1843. The
bridge finally opened in 1864, five years after the death of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and
having claimed the lives of two workmen. Spanning 213 metres across the River Avon, at
the time it had the longest span of any bridge in the world.
After his design for the Clifton Suspension Bridge found favour with the project
committee, Brunel wrote:
Of all the wonderful feats I have performed, since I have been in this part of the
world, I think yesterday I performed the most wonderful. I produced unanimity
among 15 men who were all quarrelling about that most ticklish subject – taste.
Brunel, I.K. to Benjamin Hawes (1831) qtd. in Pudney, p.28.
Great Western Railway
When Bristol’s status as a major port was threatened by Liverpool, the city’s merchants
decided to build a railway. The Great Western Railway Company was established in 1833
and Isambard Kingdom Brunel became its chief engineer, building railways in the West
Country, Midlands, South Wales and Ireland. The first section of the London to Bristol line
opened in 1838 and the line was completed in 1841. Viaducts at Hanwell and
Chippenham; the Maidenhead Bridge, the Box Tunnel and Bristol Temple Meads Station
are particular highlights of the route. Branch lines from Bristol to Exeter and to
Gloucester soon followed.
Writing to an unidentified recipient, in 1840, Brunel discusses travel arrangements for a
journey to Didcot, now in Oxfordshire. The Great Western Railway line to Bristol had
reached Didcot in 1839 but its Brunel-designed station would not open until 1844.
The ….[?] will do perfectly well particularly if you let us have one empty truck to
ride in – we are in no particular hurry – should like to start by ¼ to 4 – so as to be at
Dudcot [i.e. Didcot] at 5 –
th
Brunel, I.K. Letter to unidentified correspondent. 18 April 1840.
Manuscript Album, 18
Unfortunately, Brunel developed the broad gauge railway, thinking that it would
accommodate large wheels outside the body of rolling stock and thus give better highspeed performance. The lack of a nationally-standardised gauge meant that some
railways used the standard gauge developed by George Stephenson. Where lines interconnected, there were problems, as with Brunel’s Bristol to Gloucester route. Brunel’s
broad gauge met the standard gauge and everybody had to decant onto a different train
in order to continue their journeys. Broad gauge was not appropriate for Euston Station
so Brunel designed Paddington Station as the London terminus for the Great Western
Railway. However, in 1846, the Gauge Act declared that all new railways must use the
standard gauge and, in 1892, the Great Western Railway converted.
Transatlantic shipping
Isambard Kingdom Brunel used his good stead with his Great Western Railway employers
to argue for expansion into transatlantic shipping, namely travel by boat from Bristol to
New York. Thus the Great Western Shipping Company was formed. Measuring 72 metres,
The Great Western, designed by Brunel, was the largest steamship in the world when it
first sailed in 1837. There had been concerns that such a large ship would require too
much fuel to make the journey cost effective but, not only was it the first ship to hold the
‘Launch of the Great Britain,’ in: The Illustrated London News, no.65, vol. III,
th
week ending Saturday July 29, 1843, p.73. 19 Century Collection 030 ILL
Blue Riband but it’s
low coal
consumption
proved the
practicability of
commercial
transatlantic steam
travel.
The Great Britain
was Brunel’s
second ship. In
1843 it was the first
iron-hulled
propeller-driven
ship to make the
transatlantic
crossing. Whilst it was successful, The Great Eastern floundered in 1852. Envisaged as a
passenger ship and fitted out with luxury rooms, it ran over-budget and behind schedule.
Measuring 210 metres, it was the largest ship to be built until the early Twentieth
Century.
POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Joseph Cowen (1829-1900)
Joseph Cowen was a formidable political force in the North East: using the press
to promote radical causes; aligning himself with the mining class; and
representing Newcastle upon Tyne as its Liberal M.P. from 1874-1886. In the
wider political sphere, he championed European revolutionaries; sympathised
with Irish Nationalists; and fought for the abolition of slavery. His independence
brought him into conflict with the Liberal Caucus and split the party into radical
and moderate factions. He served on the committee of the Arts Association of
Newcastle upon Tyne, sat on the Newcastle School Board and took a leading role
in the founding of both the Tyne Theatre and Opera House and Newcastle Public
Library.
The Chronicle press
In 1858 the Newcastle
Chronicle had been relaunched as the Newcastle
Daily Chronicle but, when a
commitment to daily
publication proved too
onerous, it was sold to Joseph
Cowen. The newspaper was
already well-established as a
political vehicle, with a
middle-class readership and
influence over the Whigs.
Cowen invested heavily in the
paper and launched the
Newcastle Weekly Chronicle
– printed on a new rotary
press and including sports reports, serialised literature, and features on mining
communities and co-operatives. By 1873, daily sales exceeded 40,000 and it claimed to
be the largest-selling regional newspaper. The Evening Chronicle launched in 1885.7
Cowen, J.[?] Letter to G.O. Trevelyan[?] [n.d.] Manuscript Album, 189 ii
The repeal of tax on advertisements, duty on paper, and stamp on news led to the
increased production of newspapers and Cowen took full advantage.8 He used the
newspaper to garner support for the establishment of a College of Science in Newcastle;
for selling the benefits of his Co-Operative Union; publicising the take-up, by prospective
employees, of shares in the Ouseburn [engineering] Works; to highlight the plight of
female agricultural workers; and, generally, to promote radical causes.9 The Chronicle
press allowed him to influence public opinion significantly.
Northern Reform Union
Cowen reinvigorated radicalism in the North East when he established the Northern
Reform Union, in 1858. After three months, membership had grown to 481. The Union’s
aims were disseminated and Cowen travelled around the region delivering addresses,
courting the middle classes and informing the working classes about various abuses.10 As
the Union gathered impetus, its members lobbied M.P.s, organised petitions, utilised the
national radical press, and exposed electoral corruption but it failed to make the desired
impact or to effect change.
Manhood Suffrage Committee
The Reform Act of 1867 extended borough boundaries and enfranchised some
inhabitants who had previously been disqualified from voting. However, very few miners
had suffrage conferred upon them. Whilst some anomalies were resolved in the
barrister’s courts, there was agitation in support of addressing the discrepancies between
borough and county qualifications in order to secure the vote for miners living both
within and outside the borough limits. The various trade societies joined forces with the
Miners’ Union and formed the Manhood Suffrage Committee, which was chaired by
Joseph Cowen. It was decided that the most effective means of influencing public
opinion was for the miners, trades, and friendly societies to process, with banners, from
the Central Station, Newcastle to a rendezvous on the Town Moor. Thus, on Saturday 12th
April, 1873, nearly eighty thousand people gathered to argue for an extension of
suffrage, re-distribution of Parliamentary seats, and support for Liberal candidates at the
forthcoming general election.11
The Committee successfully re-politicised the miners following the conscious political
abstinence that had followed the Chartism movement of the 1840s. It also brought
together reformers from both the middle and working classes and it was with
considerable support from the workers that Cowen was elected to Parliament in 1874.
Appeals for continued agitation were well-met through the creation of flyers, regional
platforms for speakers (including Cowen), and the holding of miners’ galas. In July 1873,
George Otto Trevelyan introduced a proposal for a county household suffrage which
Prime Minister Gladstone intimated support for. Household suffrage would give the vote
to the male heads of every (‘respectable’) household. Responding to the political climate,
Cowen became Chair of a reconstituted Northern Reform League and the objective was
changed from achieving manhood suffrage to the achievement of household suffrage,
which was seen as a tactical stepping stone. The borough and county franchises were not
equalised until 1884.12
Member of Parliament
When Joseph Cowen Snr. died, in December 1873, a vacancy was created in the
Parliamentary representation of Newcastle. The Liberal electors requested that Joseph
Cowen announce his candidature in the forthcoming election against the Conservative
candidate, Charles Frederic Hamond. Cowen won the election on 14th January 1874, with
a majority of 1,003.13 Unexpectedly, Parliament was dissolved on 23rd January, meaning
that another contested election would be held. Again, the Liberals selected Joseph
Cowen as their representative but leaders of a more moderate faction of the party
supported Thomas Emmerson Headlam. Polling, on 3rd February 1874 saw Cowen win
with 8,464 votes to Hamond’s 6,479 and Headlam’s 5,807.14
Another General Election was held in 1880 and Cowen’s supporters thought it integral to
the national Liberal Party that he be re-elected. (Ashton W. Dilke was selected as the
candidate for the second seat.) There was dissent in the party over Ireland and foreign
policy but again, the self-professed “National Radical” retained his seat: the results were
11,766 votes for Cowen; 10,404 votes for Dilke; and 5,271 votes for the Conservative,
Hamond.15
For the 1885 General Election, Cowen isolated himself by choosing to campaign without
the usual machinery of support and by refusing to canvass for votes – a practice which he
believed to be contrary to the principles of representative government. Still popular with
the people, he was returned as senior Member for Newcastle: Cowen 10,489 votes;
Morley (Liberal) 10,129 votes; and Hamond 9,500 votes.16 However, Cowen’s
“divergence” from Liberal policies met with the disapproval of members of the local
Liberal Association and Cowen was hurt by the vindictiveness he perceived in local
politicians during the campaign. He vowed not to contest the next election and retired
from politics and all public life the following year.
Cowen clashed with the Liberal Party throughout his political career and even
outspokenly opposed key Gladstonian policies. He was an effective orator who
encouraged political debate and persuaded the working classes and whole communities
to participate in local, national, and even international political struggles, from electoral
reform to fighting alongside Italian revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi.17
‘Master Joseph offends the caucus in his great speech on England’s Foreign Policy’ in: [North Country Elections from 1826],
collected by R.W. Martin, Rhondda House, Benton.
Rare Books collection RB 942.8 ELE Quarto
Ireland
Key to Cowen’s success in the elections was the support he found from the Tyneside Irish
community. By the late-1860s/early-1870s, the British Liberal party was evolving and
appealed to the Irish constitutionalists. When Cowen was first elected, in 1874, European
agricultural prices dropped, leaving many tenant farmers unable to pay their rents. The
Irish Land League was founded in 1879 – the same year that famine struck. The Land
League, of which Cowen was an executive18, sought to abolish landlordism in Ireland and
to help poor tenant farmers become the owners of the land they worked on. Cowen
sympathised with Irish nationalism and supported calls for Home Rule. (Gladstone also
championed Home Rule but it was a divisive issue within the Liberal party and the
proposal to repeal the Act of Union, by which Irish M.P.s sat in London, in favour of the
creation of an Irish parliament, failed to win widespread endorsement.) Furthermore,
Irish issues were given considerable coverage in Cowen’s Newcastle Daily Chronicle.
Cowen’s radical agenda and those of the Irish nationalists were closely aligned.
George Otto Trevelyan served as Chief Secretary for Ireland from May 1882 until October
1884, following the brutal ‘Phoenix park murders’ of Lord Frederick Cavendish and T.H.
Burke who had been hacked to death by the ‘Invincibles’. Trevelyan enforced a new
Crimes Act but the maintenance of law and order remained challenging. The Manuscript
Album contains a letter which is thought to have been written by Joseph Cowen to
George Otto Trevelyan (it is written on House of Commons paper but is unsigned,
undated and the recipient is identified only as “Trevelyan”). The letter refers to a “night
search for arms and documents” and possibly relates to Ireland:
The L.L. – had come to the conclusion that a ... [?] to search for arms and
documents – at night was unnecessary ... [?] would, in the .... [?] for arms,
documents and so forth, and would in the ... [?] .... [?] to search at night for the
purpose of discovering an ... [?] where there was ... [?] existed.
The Northern Echo carried this tribute upon Cowen’s death:
The death of Mr COWEN is an event which deprives this country of a vigorous mind
and intellectual influence, always exerted according to conviction, and of a
philanthropist many of whose public-spirited sacrifices for the good of his race are
more than half-forgotten.
Northern Echo, 20 February 1900.
(Special Collections holds almost two thousand pamphlets which were formerly owned
by Joseph Cowen. Books which he owned have been dispersed across the Special
Collections and general Robinson Library holdings but can be identified through his
pictorial bookplate depicting Stella Hall. Additionally, amongst the papers of Robert
Spence Watson is further manuscript correspondence from Cowen and a shelf register of
his library is held in the Miscellaneous Manuscripts.)
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898)
th
Gladstone, W.E. Letter to Cyril Flower, 10 October 1889.
Manuscript Album, 58
Lord Salisbury described William Ewart
Gladstone as “a great Christian
Statesman”. Religion underpinned
Gladstone’s politics, although, at times,
not straightforwardly, and many
contemporaries failed to see the nuances
in this relationship. First a Tory in Robert
Peel’s cabinet, he later made a name for
himself as a Liberal statesman. He held
the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer
four times and served as Prime Minister
on four occasions. Committed to reducing
public spending and to electoral reform,
he is particularly remembered for his
removal of protectionist tariffs and his
crusade for Irish Home Rule. He had a
strong sense of duty which manifested
itself in charitable deeds.
Private and public communication
Gladstone was a prolific diarist who began to maintain a daily journal as an Eton
schoolboy, in 1825, and continued the habit, almost without interruption, until 1896. For
the most part, entries record his reading habits, list people he has corresponded with,
and make reference to secular and religious activities but offer little by way of
reflection.19 They account for how Gladstone spent his time but cross-referencing a letter
in the Manuscript Album with the corresponding diary entry achieves nothing more than
confirming that Gladstone wrote to the recipient that day; there is nothing that provides
further elucidation of the letter’s content.
The letter is addressed to Cyril Flower, a Liberal politician:
I received the inclosed [sic] this morning from a stranger. You will know
whether it is worth any attention. Do not have the trouble to reply.
I receive with pleasure your prediction as to the North Bucks Election for
which I had previously had only favourable anticipations to rely on.
Hubbard ...[?] very handsomely about the scandalous leaflet.
th
Gladstone, W.E. Letter to Cyril Flower, 10 October 1889.
Manuscript Album, 58
The enclosure is absent. Evelyn Hubbard was a Conservative politician who was chosen to
stand in the North Buckinghamshire election in 1889 but who failed to hold his seat,
being defeated by the Liberal Edmund Hope Verney by two hundred and eight votes.20
Gladstone was famed as an orator, his skills having been refined in the Oxford Union
Debating Society. W.T. Stead wrote “Mr. Gladstone is great in Parliamentary cut and
thrust and parry. He is wonderful in a great debate, and beyond all rivalry as a platform
orator”.21 Writing in the New York Times, on the other hand, Walter Bagshot accused
Gladstone of delivering “nearly perfect expression[s] of intellectualized sentiment, but
[wanting] the volcanic power of primitive passion”.22
As mentioned in the section on letter writing in history, pamphlets were a common form
of public communication in the Nineteenth Century. They were not subjected to the
same censure as newspaper articles and published books and could be written
pseudonymously or anonymously thereby allowing pamphleteers to confront
inflammatory issues. Circulation was widespread. Not only was Gladstone an impressive
speaker but he was also an effective and prolific pamphleteer. In November 1874 he
produced an anti-Catholic pamphlet, The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil
Allegiance, in which he refuted papal infallibility. By the end of the year, 100,000 copies
had been sold.23 His emotional pamphlet campaign opposing Disraeli’s pro-Turkish
foreign policy ignited popular public opinion, turning the British against the Turks when
they massacred the population of Batak in retribution for an uprising by the Bulgarian
nationalists in 1876. He authored many more pamphlets on the papacy, Balkans, and on
the Irish question.
‘Rescue work’
As a founding member of a Tractarian-minded, high-church Anglican brotherhood called
‘The Engagement’24, Gladstone was expected to undertake some form of regular charity
work – what he referred to as ‘rescue work’. In the mid-1840s he concerned himself
chiefly with The House of Charity (or House of St. Barnabas-in-Soho as it was renamed in
1961) which existed to provide a short-term place of refuge for the homeless and
destitute. It was run by Anglicans and beneficiaries had to commit to daily church
attendance. By 1848, Gladstone’s involvement with the charity had become “too timeconsuming”.25
Philanthropy was common in the Nineteenth Century as the more fortunate felt a moral,
often Christian, obligation to help the ‘deserving poor’. Gladstone was certainly one of
those ‘do-gooders’. His obsession with prostitutes is well-documented: Gladstone
mentions more than two hundred fallen women in his diaries.26 He sought, primarily, to
rehabilitate them – sometimes paying for their education or emigration, finding them
appropriate employment, or suitable marriages. However, it has also been argued, by
H.C.G. Matthew and others, that Gladstone courted temptation and craved exposure to
sexual stimulation.27 Related episodes of self-flagellation are also recorded in the diaries,
thought to have been a physical form of penance whenever his longings for the women
were such that they warranted chastisement.
Gladstone contributed 12-14% of his income to28, and raised funds for, a number of
charitable causes including hospitals and voluntary societies, but he had a particular
involvement with education. Whilst serving as President of the Board of Trade he was in
the habit of absconding to teach in the Bedfordbury ragged school29 and, as Prime
Minister in 1870, he oversaw the introduction of an Education Act which made school
attendance compulsory for children up to ten years old.
Finance: free trade and the tax structure
In 1843, the Conservative Prime Minister, Robert Peel, appointed Gladstone President of
the Board of Trade whereupon he found himself having to engage with the free trade
debate. Persuaded by the argument in favour of free trade, he wanted to see a gradual
reduction of tariffs and provided financial evidence to support tariff-reform budgets in
1842 and 1845.
In a Peelite-Whig-Liberal coalition, under the leadership of George Hamilton-Gordon, Earl
of Aberdeen, Gladstone became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1852. In his first
budgetary speech, he promoted the free trade campaign by reducing one hundred and
thirty three tariffs and abolishing another one hundred and twenty three. This was
compensated for by a seven-year continuance of income tax (lowering the threshold at
which the tax was levied) and an extension of succession duty (a tax placed on the
acquisition of property when it is transferred from a deceased predecessor to another
successor).30
The Crimean War prompted him, in 1854, to raise income tax and other, indirect taxes.
Condemnation of the government’s handling of the conflict led to the resignation of
Aberdeen and his ministers. Gladstone subsequently became Chancellor of the
Exchequer in Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston’s government, but soon resigned. He
did not return to the exchequer until 1859, again at the invitation of Palmerston, this
marking his final political break with the Conservatives. A major achievement of
Gladstone’s in this period was his bringing of public accounts under Treasury control – in
the words of H.C.G. Matthew, “plac*ing+ free trade probity, balanced budgets, and
retrenchment at the heart of British public finance”.31
In his budget for 1860, the shilling duty on corn was retained but all other protective
tariffs were abolished. Indirect taxes were greatly reduced. It therefore became, by
design, politically difficult for central government to increase expenditure.
Ireland: Home Rule
In 1868, influenced by the vigour of European nationalist movements and by a practical
need to unite the Liberal Party, Gladstone began a legislative campaign to pacify Ireland,
intending that Westminster would be amenable to reasonable demands. One of his first
actions, passing the Irish Church Bill, addressed the grievances of Irish Roman Catholics
and Presbyterians by disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland. Catholic farmers no
longer paid tithes to the Church and its property was given to a poor relief fund. In 1870,
he forced the first Irish Land Bill through Parliament. Although this legislation was largely
ineffectual, it gave tenants in Ulster a legal interest in their holdings.
Gladstone’s second term as Prime Minister came about when Ireland was suffering
agricultural depression and public disorder. Both intellectually and politically Gladstone
did not finally commit to Home Rule until the mid-1880s, although he hoped that social
order could be restored more quickly by ameliorating the land crisis and brought about a
second Land Act in 1881. The Act, intended by Gladstone as a ‘conservative’ measure to
strengthen the existing social order, delivered the Irish Land League’s objectives of fair
rent (fixed in court for 15 years), fixity of tenure (with evictions only on failure to pay
rent) and free sale of leases to anyone who wished to abandon farming but, with land
redistribution involving the state and landowners still owning the land, the League was
undermined.32 In the same year, Gladstone introduced the Coercion Act which
suspended Habeas Corpus in Ireland and which was used to imprison Charles Parnell
when he attacked the Land Act in the pages of his newspaper, the United Ireland.
Gladstone was also working towards extending the franchise in Britain and Ireland and, in
1884, the Representation of the People Act gave substantially more votes to the (largely
rural) Irish electorate.
Gladstone left office in June 1885 but led the Liberals into general election victory in
November 1885. The Irish problem was a prime motivation for his remaining active in
politics, even aged 76.33 Although he had not campaigned on a home-rule programme,
Gladstone used the opportunity of serving as Prime Minister for a third time to resume
his commitment to it. The first Home Rule Bill, in 1886, proposed that a separate
parliament be established in Dublin which would be responsible for dealing with
domestic affairs; that Britain would have a continued remit for dealing with Irish foreign
affairs, trade and defence; and that Irish representation at Westminster would cease.34
The Bill was defeated partly because it ignored the interests of the Ulster Protestants and
partly because the British middle class abhorred the violence which they perceived
Gladstone to be giving in to.
Whilst in opposition, Gladstone appended a number of mainland reforms to his Home
Rule agenda. In 1892, the Liberals were returned to power and Gladstone was invited to
form a government for the fourth time. He introduced the second Government of Ireland
Bill in 1893 but it was rejected by the House of Lords. It was left to a later Liberal
government to further Gladstone’s efforts. Under Premier Herbert Henry Asquith, the
Third Home Rule Bill was enacted by parliament as the Government of Ireland Act (1914).
However, its implementation was delayed by the outbreak and prolonged nature of the
First World War. After the War a coalition government headed by David Lloyd-George
eventually granted Home Rule to the six counties which made up Northern Ireland in
1921. In December of that year the Anglo-Irish treaty agreed to the formation of the Irish
Free State (which came into existence in 1922) with dominion status in the British
Empire. This was the forerunner of the Republic of Ireland which declared independence
from the British crown in 1949.
‘A big fire for an old woman to put out,’ political cartoon on the front cover of: Puck, Vol. VIII, no.200, January 5 1881
th
(New York: Keppler & Schwarzmann, 1881) 19 Century Collection 941.5081 PUC pamphlet
LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Walter Besant (1836-1901)
Walter Besant was primarily a novelist who not only made full use of the popular
publishing formats of the Nineteenth Century, but also campaigned for authorial rights
and was one of the earliest authors to employ a professional literary agent. His novels
demonstrate a keen sense of place and this comes across in his various London
histories too. Like Gladstone, he was a philanthropist and dedicated himself to social
reform. He was knighted in 1895.
Besant, W. Letter to J. Cotter Morison, [n.d.]
Manuscript Album, 89
Publishing in the Nineteenth Century
Many nineteenth-century authors established themselves through writing serialised
fiction. That is, the issuing of instalments in newspapers, like the Illustrated London News,
and popular magazines, like The Strand, or, as ‘part serials’ i.e. discreet monthly parts.
Serialisation impacted upon the novel form: the more an author wrote the more
handsomely they were paid but there was also a need to engage readers with every
instalment and authors would adapt plots according to reader responses. Illustrations
were another important feature. Serialisation made book-buying affordable for the
middle-class because it spread the cost of purchasing a novel over an average of eighteen
to twenty months, with each instalment selling at an average of 1 shilling – a little over
£2.00 in today’s spending worth. Typically, when the final instalment had been acquired,
the parts were stripped of their paper wrappers and advertisements, trimmed and bound
in leather or fine cloth. Thus it is rare to find novels as part serials today but we are lucky
enough, in Special Collections, to have examples by Charles Dickens, George Eliot and
William Makepeace Thackeray.
Walter Besant’s writing career also gathered momentum through serialised fiction.
Initially collaborating with James Rice, their first serialised novel, Ready-Money Mortiboy
(1872) sold steadily. It was first published in Once a Week from January to June, 1872 and
was published in three volumes later that year. Subsequent collaborative serialised
novels, such as The Chaplain of the Fleet (published in The Graphic December 1880 – June
1881 and in three volumes in 1881) and By Celia’s Arbour (published in The Graphic
between September 1877 and March 1878; published in three volumes in 1878), were
also very popular. Rice’s periodical, Once a Week, was a useful vehicle for publishing the
work but after his death, Besant continued to issue solo work in serialised form: All Sorts
and Conditions of Men was serialised in Belgravia from January to December 1882; The
Orange Girl was published in the Lady’s Pictorial from January to June, 1899; and The
world went very well then appeared in the Illustrated London News from July to
December 1886.35
Another form of publishing in the Nineteenth Century was the three-volume novel,
aimed at a borrowing, rather than a purchasing readership. The three-volume novel was
ideally suited for circulating libraries since the first part whetted readers’ appetites for
the subsequent two volumes and helped to cover the printing costs thereof. The average
price was half a guinea, or ten shillings and 6d – approximately £24 in today’s spending
worth. Besant’s novels, like The
Golden Butterfly (1876), were often
published as three-volume novels
after they had been serialised.
Besant, W. The world went very well then (London: Chatto & Windus, 1891)
th
19 Century Collection 823.89 BES
Publishers met the growing demand
for cheap literature by often
reprinting three-volume novels in
cheaper one-volume editions. The
Golden Butterfly and other works by
Besant appeared in serialised, then
three-volume, and finally cheap
one-volume formats. Special
Collections holds a few of Besant’s
works in yellowback format.
Yellowbacks take their names from
the colour of their covers – often a
lurid yellow paper with
melodramatic cover illustrations.
Yellowbacks were sold for around
two shillings (not much more than
£4.50 in today’s spending worth)
and competed with ‘penny
dreadfuls’ and ‘shilling shockers’.
Novelist
During the period of their collaboration, James Rice effectively played the role of
unsalaried literary agent. Professional literary agents did not really exist until the 1880s
and when, in 1883 he decided to employ A.P. Watt, Besant became one of the first
authors to have an agent.36 The rise of the literary agent came about as opportunities to
be published increased. An active campaigner for authors’ rights, Besant was also a
founder of the Society of Authors and accepted the Chair at the first meeting, in 1883. His
aims for the society were to campaign for the reform of copyright legislation, to protect
literary property and to promote the writing profession. He secured the Poet Laureate,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson as the society’s President and gave nascence to the society’s
journal, The Author.37
The letter held in the Manuscript Album discusses author-publisher negotiations. It is
addressed to J. Cotter Morison, an essayist and historian, and refers to Daldy (a
publisher) and Underdown (a lawyer).
I wrote to Daldy this very morning on the lines of your letter wh: is rather a
coincidence. Yesterday I had a long talk with Underdown on this & various other
matters. He wants the adhesion of Daldy & a sight of his bill wh: I have asked for.
The first thing for us to do is to make authors resist the agreements with publishers.
This will end in the better sort of them trying to buy up books altogether – a
favourable arrangement at first, for authors. But the whole subject, as Underdown
will show you, is surrounded with difficulties created by publishers’ treacheries and
assumptions. I hope we shall have the office and secretary in a week or two when
we shall be able to move.
Besant, W. Letter to J. Cotter Morison [n.d.]
Manuscript Album, 89
The moralistic yet, perhaps far-fetched and adventurous plots of Besant and Rice’s
collaborative novels proved commercially successful. Their first triumph, Ready-Money
Mortiboy, explored the themes of greed and selfishness.
Although he also wrote historic fiction set in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
as a solo writer, Besant focussed on contemporary social conditions. All Sorts and
Conditions of Men tells the story of Angela Messenger who moves into lodgings in
Stepney so that she can understand the poverty of London’s East End. It is a far cry from
her wealthy background and it captured the hearts and consciences of its readers.
Historian
Besant also displayed a strong interest in the history and topography of London, the city
he lived in. The 1890s saw him publish works on Westminster, and South and East
London. An ambitious project to publish a significant multi-volume study of London,
based on John Stow’s sixteenth-century study, suffered from under-investment and the
encyclopaedia was issued posthumously from 1902-1912. The first seven volumes treat
the history and topography of the city; the remaining three volumes look at the
architecture.
Reformer
Like Gladstone, Besant was one of the great philanthropists of the Nineteenth Century.
He set up the Home Arts Association which offered evening classes in various handicrafts
(the idea had been piloted by Charles Leland in Philadelphia); and helped to found the
Women’s Central Bureau of Work which aimed to help middle-class women find
employment. Whilst he explored issues surrounding poverty in his novels, he actively
campaigned on behalf of sweatshop workers in London’s East End, and for the poor in
the parish of St. James’ Ratcliffe. He supported the work of the Salvation Army, Ragged
School Union, London Hospital and public libraries.38
(Special Collections has thirty-one works by Walter Besant, held in the 19th Century and
19th Century Novels collections.)
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
As the daughter of political philosopher, William Godwin, and feminist, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley was exposed to an education and level of discourse which
was exceptional and which fostered in her a keen imagination and awareness of
contemporary socio-political issues. Her father described her as “singularly bold,
somewhat imperious, and
active of mind”.39 Her
passion for writing began in
childhood and, during the
course of her literary career,
she was a novelist,
dramatist, travel writer,
essayist and biographer. Her
marriage to the poet Percy
Bysshe Shelley inspired her,
brought about opportunities
for collaboration, and
widened her circle of
Romantic literary friends.
th
Shelley, M. Letter to Rose Stewart, 17 March 1844.
Manuscript Album, 93
Literary outputs
Mary Shelley wrote in the introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein:
“It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary
celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing. As a child I scribbled;
and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to ‘write
stories’.”40
Despite this, she was soon overshadowed by the literary career of her husband, Percy
Bysshe Shelley. In Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, Anne K. Mellor
describes an episode when a box containing Mary’s writing was left in Paris when Jane
Clairmont, Percy and Mary departed for Switzerland:
“Mary’s first impulse … was to establish her own literary credentials … and to
assume a role as *Shelley’s+ intellectual companion and equal … No sooner is that
voice uttered than it is lost, considered not worth taking along, even though Percy
carefully carried with him the books he wished to read”.41
Her seven novels fall into the literary camps of Gothic novel (Frankenstein) and historical
novel (The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck; Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of
Castruccio, Prince of Lucca).
Often, readers interpret her work as autobiography – in The Last Man (1826), Percy
Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron are fictionalised in the characters of Adrian and Lord
Raymond although the disguises are thin: Adrian is motivated by philosophy and drowns
when his boat sinks whilst Lord Raymond is motivated by passion and campaigns for the
Greeks against the Turks, dying in Constantinople, just as Byron, who died two years
before the publication of The Last Man, fought for Greek independence and died in
Missolonghi. The novel therefore stands as a literary memorial to the Romantic circle
which Mary had lost but she also used it as a vehicle to explore, and reject, some major
Romantic ideals.
Although her work may be inspired by her life it cannot be dismissed as mere fictional reworkings of her friends and experiences; she explores gender relations, Enlightenment
and Romantic ideals, contemporary politics and theological institutions. The intensity of
Mary’s sense of bereavement, following the deaths of three of her children and the
drowning of her husband, contributed to the bleakness of The Last Man in which Mary
offers what was then an original and disturbing vision of the destruction of humankind in
the late Twenty-first Century. It begins with the unidentified narrator visiting Naples, in
1818, and discovering a manuscript written by Lionel Verney in 2079. The novel follows
Verney from his humble beginnings to friendship with the heir apparent to the English
throne, through a military campaign and ultimately, his becoming the last man on Earth.
In his introduction to The Last Man (1965) Hugh Luke asserts that “By ending her story
with the picture of the Earth's solitary inhabitant, [Mary Shelley] has brought nearly the
whole weight of the novel to bear upon the idea that the condition of the individual
being is essentially isolated and therefore ultimately tragic”.42
She also penned countless short stories, particularly for annuals and gift books, such as
The Keepsake. Critics have judged her short stories to be pedestrian but she saw writing
for magazines as profitable. Advising Leigh Hunt to follow suit she wrote: “I write bad
articles which help to make me miserable – but I am going to plunge into a novel, and
hope that its clear water will wash off the dirt mud of the magazines”
(9 February 1824).43
In her short story, Transformation (1831), she returned to the macabre and supernatural.
Transformation is the story of Guido who returns home to claim his sweetheart, Juliet.
However, having squandered his wealth leading a hedonistic lifestyle abroad, Guido finds
that Juliet’s father, Torella, will not permit the union. He reacts with petulance, plots to
abduct Juliet and, when his plan is discovered, is banished. Whilst plotting revenge,
Guido witnesses a tempest, out of which storm emerges “a misshapen dwarf, with
squinting eyes, distorted features, and body deformed, till it became a horror to behold”.
Guido overcomes his revulsion to strike a bargain with the dwarf: he agrees to loan the
dwarf his body for three days, in return for a sea-chest full of treasure:
I felt myself changed to a shape of
horror, and cursed my easy faith and
blind credulity. The chest was there –
there the gold and precious stones for
which I had sold the frame of flesh which
nature had given me.
‘Frankenstein,’ frontispiece in: Shelley, M. Frankenstein: or,
The Modern Prometheus. Revised, corrected, and illustrated
with a new introduction by the author
(London: Richard Bentley, 1839)
th
19 Century Collection 823.79 SHE
Three days pass and the fiend fails to
return, and all the while Guido’s soul is
‘caged’ in the dwarf’s body. Guido
dreams that the fiend is wooing his
beloved Juliet and (correctly) fearing
that there is prophecy in his dream,
returns to Genoa. A tussle with the
dwarf in which both are stabbed, sees
Guido live to inhabit his own body once
again, and to reclaim his Juliet. The
transformation teaches Guido to be a
“fonder and more faithful husband” and
he wonders if the fiend were in fact a
good spirit “sent by my guardian angel,
to show me the folly and misery of
pride”.
Critically acclaimed in her own day, although she is not neglected, Mary is perhaps
remembered today as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and the author of Frankenstein
(1818), her most enduring novel. The circumstances of the novel’s genesis are wellknown: Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, John Polidori, P.B. Shelley, and Mary Godwin (as she
was then) passed a stormy night in Geneva, June 1816, inventing ghost stories. Mary’s
contribution, inspired by a dream, would be published two years later as Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheus and marked the birth of the science fiction genre. Victor
Frankenstein raids graveyards to acquire the parts he needs to create life but his
experiment goes horribly wrong and he rejects his nameless creation. Denied
companionship, the monster endeavours to destroy his maker. The novel explores
themes which would characterise much of Mary Shelley’s subsequent work, such as
alienation and solitude; justice; the purpose of life; destiny; and social class as it relates
to political power.
Editor
P.B. Shelley failed to achieve widespread recognition for his work during his lifetime and,
upon his death, Mary set about editing it for publication. Some of his work soon
appeared alongside her own in The Liberal. When she published P.B. Shelley’s
Posthumous Poems in 1824, Sir Timothy Shelley (her father-in-law) withdrew the
allowance which he paid towards the upkeep of his grandson, demanded that the volume
of poems be withdrawn, and prohibited Mary from further publication of his son’s
work.44
Mary Shelley nevertheless remained determined to publish P.B. Shelley’s work and can
be credited with having positioned him as a significant writer of the Romantic Period and
praised for the usefulness of her annotations. Thanks to John Gregson (the Shelley
family’s new solicitor) Mary Shelley and publisher Edward Moxon issued four volumes of
The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839), two volumes of Essays, Letters from
Abroad, Translations and Fragments by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839), and a single volume
of Shelley’s poetical works (1840).45
By Mary’s own account, editing P.B. Shelley’s work was no easy task:
“I feel sure among other things that the copy right of the Posthumous Poems must
be entirely mine. The M.S. from which it was printed consisted of fragments of
paper which in the hands of an indifferent person would never have been
deciphered – the labour of putting it together was immense – and the papers were
in my possession & in no other person’s (for the most part) the volume might be all
my writing (except that I could not write it) …”
th
Shelley, M. Letter to Edward Moxon, 7 December 1838.
Qtd. in Bennett, Selected Letters, p.275.
Travel writer
One of two letters written by Mary Shelley which are held in the Manuscript Album
enquires about the history, religion and politics of Bohemia. One of her last-known
projects was a partial translation of a novel by German author, Ida Hahn-Hahn, called
Cecil (1844). The letter was written in March 1844 and it is also the same year that her
final full-length book was published: Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and
1843.
The other day I sent you some books by a friend going to Paris - & I enclosed
a letter for you to another friend which I hope she will present. Meanwhile I am
going to intrude upon you, asking for some information which I think you can give
me.
I want some account of the old Kings of Bohemia & the fire worshippers of
that country – of Jerome of Prague of the Hussites of Bohemia – of Zizska - & also
of
the manner in which Bohemia is at present governed. Of course such
information might easily be found in German – but I cannot read German - can …
[?] it in any other language & in what book? Will you tell me & perhaps I can get
the book here.
Pray forgive me for giving you this trouble – but you know every thing - . . .[?]
living among the learned - I (not knowing German) know nothing - & live the life of
a recluse.
I shall be very glad to hear how you are - I hope quite well – with
compliments
to Mr. Dunbar, I am very truly yours.
th
Shelley, M. Letter to Rose Stewart, 17 March 1844.
Manuscript Album, 93
Rambles in Germany is an epistolary work describing journeys which Mary made with her
son, Percy Florence, and some of his friends. Mary used the travelogue as a vehicle to
explore and comment upon politics, war, cultural characteristics and historical outlooks
as well as, by visiting places associated with P.B. Shelley, examining her own roles as a
widow and mother.
The same philosophical perspective was prevalent in her earlier travel writing: in their
collaborative journal, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817) P.B. Shelley and Mary Godwin
considered the effects of politics on war in France, the revolutionary legacy of JeanJacques Rousseau and infused it with political idealism.
With thanks to Dr. John Gardner for much-appreciated help and support regarding the
profile of W.E. Gladstone.
Notes
1. Folger Shakespeare Library. ‘Letterwriting Manuals’ in: Letterwriting in Renaissance
England (exhibition: 18/11/2004 – 02/04/2005)
http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=1598
(accessed 03/05/2011)
2. Mitchell, L.C. ‘Letter-writing instruction manuals in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth
Century England’ in: Letter-Writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the
Present, Ed. by C. Poster and L.C. Mitchell, Historical and Bibliographic Studies
(Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2007) pp.178-199.
3. Bath Postal Museum. History of the Post,
http://www.sparxtechnologies.com/clients/BPM/index.php?id=20
(accessed 30/06/2011)
4. Mackenzie, E. A descriptive and historical account of the town and county of Newcastle
upon Tyne: including the borough of Gateshead
(Newcastle upon Tyne: Mackenzie and Dent, 1827) p.513.
5. Kirkpatrick, A. A short history of man made fabrics,
http://andy-kirkpatrick.com/articles/view/a_short_history_of_man_made_fabrics
(accessed 08/07/2011)
6. Block making machine by Marc Brunel,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/zzVuNAIYSTi4qEApK0o5NQ
(accessed 08/07/2011)
7. Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland, Gen. eds. L.
Brake & M. Demoor (Ghent: Academia P; the British Library, 2009)
8. Duncan, W. Life of Joseph Cowen (M.P. for Newcastle, 1874-86) with letters, extracts
from his speeches, and verbatim report of his last speech, Introd. by R. Welford
(London; Newcastle-on-Tyne: Walter Scott Publishing, 1904) pp.39-50.
9. Allen, J. ‘”Knowledge is Power”: Community politics, associational life and the press,’
Joseph Cowen and Popular Radicalism on Tyneside, 1829-1900
(Monmouth: Merlin P, 2007) pp.51-78.
10. Ibid, p.45.
11. Fynes, R. The miners of Northumberland and Durham. A history of their social and
political progress (Blyth: John Robinson, Jun., 1873) pp.269-277.
12. Maelh, W.H., Jr. ‘The Northeastern miners’ struggle for the franchise, 1872-74,’
International Review of Social History, Vol. 20, issue 2 (1975) pp.198-219.
13. Duncan, p.79.
14. Ibid, p 85.
15. Ibid, p.116.
16. Ibid, pp.148-151.
17. Allen, p.6.
18. Ibid, p.11.
19. Matthew, H.C.G. ‘Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898),’ Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online ed. May 2011)
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10787 (accessed 07/07/2011)
20. ‘Election Intelligence’ in: The Times, 6th September 1889, p.5.
21. Stead, W.T. The Review of Reviews, Vol. V, April 1892, pp. 345-362,
http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/reviews/glad1.php (accessed 11/07/2011)
22. Bagshot, W. ‘Mr. Gladstone’s Oratory’ in: The New York Times, 17 July 1881.
23. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, p.24.
24. Lynch, M.J. ‘Was Gladstone a Tractarian? Gladstone and the Oxford Movement, 183345,’ in: Journal of Religious History 8 (1975) pp.364-398 and Matthew, H.C.G. ‘Gladstone,
Evangelicalism and “The Engagement”,’ in: Garnett, J. and Matthew, H.C.G. (eds.) Revival
and Religion since 1700, Essays for John Walsh
(London: Hambledon Continuum, 1993) pp.111-126.
25. Matthew, H.C.G. ‘William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898): his work with “fallen
women”,’ The Victorian Web: literature, history, & culture in the age of Victoria,
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/pms/gladwom.html (accessed 08/07/2011)
26. Matthew, H.C.G. ‘Strawberries at bedtime: after 25 years, Professor Colin Matthew
has finished editing the Gladstone diaries. He reflects on this very eminent Victorian,’ in:
‘The Sunday Review Page,’The Independent, 2 October 1994, p.44.
27. Matthew, ‘Fallen women’.
28. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, p.15.
29. Matthew, H.C.G. ‘The Legacy of Gladstone,’ in: Liberal Democrat History Group
Newsletter Seven, June 1995, pp.1-4.
30. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, p.10.
31. Ibid, p.14.
32. Ibid, p.30.
33. Ibid, p.32.
34. Bloy, M. ‘Gladstone and Ireland 1880-1886,’ A Web of English History,
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/ireland/gladire2.htm (accessed 26/07/2011)
35. Shattock, J. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Vol. 4 1800-1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000) pp.1455-1465.
36. Eliot, S. ‘Besant, Sir Walter (1836–1901),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online ed. Jan 2008)
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30736 (accessed 01/07/2011) p.2.
37. Ibid, p.3.
38. Ibid, p.2.
39. Bennett, B.T. ‘Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1797–1851),’ Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25311 (accessed 30/07/2011) p.2.
40. Shelley, M. Introduction. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, Revised,
corrected, and illustrated with a new introduction by the author
(London: Bentley, 1839) p.v.
41. Mellor, A.K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters
(New York: Routledge, [1989]) p.23.
42. Luke, H.J. Introduction in: Shelley, M. The Last Man, edited with an introduction by
Hugh J. Luke Jnr. (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, [1965])
43. Shelley, M. Letter to Leigh Hunt (9 February 1824) quoted in: Bennett, B.T.
Introduction, Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995) p.xii.
44. Godwin, W. qtd. in: Bennett, p.6.
45. Williams, J. Mary Shelley: A literary Life, Literary Lives Series
(New York: St. Martin’s P, 1999) pp.162-163.
Bibliography
Allen, J. Joseph Cowen and Popular Radicalism on Tyneside, 1829-1900
(Monmouth: Merlin P, 2007)
Bagshot, W. ‘Mr. Gladstone’s Oratory.’ The New York Times. 17 July 1881.
Bath Postal Museum. History of the Post.
http://www.sparxtechnologies.com/clients/BPM/index.php?id=20
(accessed 30/06/2011)
Bennett, B.T. ‘Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1797–1851).’ Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004)
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25311
(accessed 30/07/2011)
Bennett, B.T. Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995)
Block making machine by Marc Brunel.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/zzVuNAIYSTi4qEApK0o5NQ
(accessed 08/07/2011)
Bloy, M. ‘Gladstone and Ireland 1880-1886.’ A Web of English History.
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/ireland/gladire2.htm
(accessed 26/07/2011)
Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland.
Gen. eds. L.Brake & M. Demoor (Ghent: Academia P; the British Library, 2009)
Duncan, W. Life of Joseph Cowen (M.P. for Newcastle, 1874-86) with letters, extracts
from his speeches, and verbatim report of his last speech. Introd. by
R. Welford (London; Newcastle-on-Tyne: Walter Scott Publishing, 1904)
‘Election Intelligence’. The Times. 6 Sept. 1889.
Eliot, S. ‘Besant, Sir Walter (1836–1901).’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online ed. Jan 2008)
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30736 (accessed 01/07/2011)
Folger Shakespeare Library. ‘Letterwriting Manuals’ in: Letterwriting in Renaissance
England (exhibition: 18/11/2004 – 02/04/2005
http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=1598 (accessed 03/05/2011)
Fynes, R. The miners of Northumberland and Durham. A history of their social and
political progress (Blyth: John Robinson, Jun., 1873)
Gladstone, W.E. The Gladstone diaries with Cabinet minutes and prime-ministerial
correspondence. Vol. XII 1887-1891. Ed. by H.C.G. Matthew
(Oxford: Clarendon P, 1994)
Hugman, J. ‘Print and Preach: The Entrepreneurial Spirit of Nineteenth-Century
Newcastle.’ Newcastle upon Tyne: A Modern History. Ed. by R. Colls and
B. Lancaster (Chichester: Phillimore, 2001) pp.113-132.
Kirkpatrick, A. A short history of man made fabrics.
http://andykirkpatrick.com/articles/view/a_short_history_of_man_made_fabrics
(accessed 08/07/2011)
Lynch, M.J. ‘Was Gladstone a Tractarian? Gladstone and the Oxford Movement,
1833-45.’ in: Journal of Religious History 8 (1975)
Mackenzie, E. A descriptive and historical account of the town and county of
Newcastle upon Tyne: including the borough of Gateshead
(Newcastle upon Tyne: Mackenzie and Dent, 1827)
Maelh, W.H., Jr. ‘The Northeastern miners’ struggle for the franchise, 1872-74.’
International Review of Social History. Vol. 20, issue 2 (1975) pp.198-219.
Matthew, H.C.G. ‘Gladstone, Evangelicalism and “The Engagement”.’ Garnett, J. and
Matthew, H.C.G. (eds.) Revival and Religion since 1700. Essays for John Walsh
(London: Hambledon Continuum, 1993)
Matthew, H.C.G. ‘Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898).’ Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004; online ed. May 2011)
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10787 (accessed 07/07/2011)
Matthew, H.C.G. ‘William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898): his work with “fallen women”.’
The Victorian Web: literature, history, & culture in the age of Victoria.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/pms/gladwom.html (accessed 08/07/2011)
Matthew, H.C.G. ‘The Legacy of Gladstone.’ Liberal Democrat History
Group Newsletter Seven. June 1995. pp.1-4.
Matthew, H.C.G. ‘Strawberries at bedtime: after 25 years, Professor Colin Matthew
has finished editing the Gladstone diaries. He reflects on this very eminent
Victorian.’ ‘The Sunday Review Page. ‘The Independent. 2 October 1994.
Mellor, A.K. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters
(New York: Routledge, [1989])
Mitchell, L.C. ‘Letter-writing instruction manuals in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth
Century England.’ Letter-Writing Manuals and Instruction from Antiquity to the
Present. Ed. by C. Poster and L.C. Mitchell. Historical and Bibliographic Studies
(Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2007) pp.178-199.
Shattock, J. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Vol. 4 1800-1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000) pp.1455-1465.
Stead, W.T. The Review of Reviews. Vol. V, April 1892. pp.345-362.
http://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/reviews/glad1.php (
accessed 11/07/2011)
Shelley, M. The Last Man. Edited with an introduction by Hugh J. Luke Jnr.
(Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, [1965])
Shelley, M. Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Revised, corrected, and
illustrated with a new introduction by the author (London: Bentley, 1839)
Williams, J. Mary Shelley: A literary Life. Literary Lives Series
(New York: St. Martin’s P, 1999)
g/dtp/specialcollections/manuscriptbooklet