Howard mid-‘yack’

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An outing to London last Monday when we presented Early Modern Letters Online at the Digital Transformations Moot, curated and funded by the AHRC. The day long event brought together digital humanists with thinkers and practitioners from other disciplines and sectors ‘to explore the possibilities of the Digital Transformations theme for new and exciting ways of working: to hack, to make, to break’.

The Moot did a great job of showcasing the very wide range of work (and attendant debates) currently being done at the intersection of the humanities and the technical, and in particular in highlighting and fostering new kinds of connections between digital technologies, arts and the humanities, and the creative and cultural industries (the latter being much more strongly represented than is usual at DH gatherings). It was also really interesting from the perspective of event design. Decked out in bracing, challenging terminology – debates were ‘moots’; delegates were ‘mootlings’; papers became ‘yacks’ – the day spread keynote lectures, panel discussions, software demos, and PechaKucha-style talks across multiple tracks and spaces in a kind of freeform digital smörgåsbord that rewarded curiosity and encouraged the creation of individual narratives and serendipitous connections between the sampled components. Further details on the Moot webpage, while the Twitter hashtag was #digitrans; videos of the various live streams will be posted the the webpage shortly.

While ferreting around in the archives of Trinity College, Oxford finalizing annotations for Volume IV of The Correspondence of John Wallis, I came across a letter from Robert Boyle, the eminent natural philosopher, to the theologian and physician Ralph Bathurst, whose papers I was exploring. This manuscript was previously missing; while the letter is included in the monumental 2001 edition of Boyle’s complete correspondence (and can be consulted in Electronic Enlightenment), the editors had to base their text on a version of the letter in a 1761 print edition of Bathurst’s papers, rather than on this autograph original. Here’s the letter:

Trinity College Oxford Archive, Fellows 2/1/1: A new Boyle original. Images reproduced courtesy of Trinity College.

The missive – described by Boyle as a ‘hasty blotted scribble’ – is an intriguing one, shedding fascinating light on a failed publishing project. It was sent in April 1656, one of those Oxford months when lots of things were happening (even Henry Oldenburg was in town, inter alia, to sample the rich scientific culture developing in and around the university). Unfortunately for Oldenburg, two giants of the local philosophical scene were absent when he arrived. His friend Robert Boyle, who had moved to Oxford around the beginning of the year (and would stay on and off until 1668) had gone to London. Likewise in the metropolis was John Wilkins, the warden of Wadham College, who had gathered around him an illustrious circle of like-minded practitioners, including Seth Ward, Thomas Willis, and Wallis.

Sender Robert Boyle

Recipient Ralph Bathurst

One of Boyle’s main tasks while in London was evidently to see through the press a promising book by Ralph Bathurst, one of the members of this glittering cadre of experimentalists. A fellow of Trinity College, who would go on to be College president and later vice-chancellor of the University, Bathurst had written three lectures on respiration as part of his examination as doctor medicinae in 1654; during the following two years, these texts were circulated scribally among the Wilkins circle, which evidently suggested revisions and emendations. Bathurst added numerous marginal notes to the manuscript of the Praescriptiones tres de respiratione and – notoriously reluctant to publish his work – was probably encouraged to do so by his celebrated friends. Boyle headed to the capital with the manuscript to spearhead the enterprise.

Bathurst’s letter book

Objects and Letter-Objects

In the absence of Boyle and Wilkins (the two men who had promoted the venture most strongly), however, Bathurst began to get cold feet. Probably around the end of March, in a letter that is now lost he wrote to Boyle in London to inform him of his change of heart and to request that the manuscript be returned. Boyle did not receive the letter immediately, for he had been invited by Wilkins to inspect some peculiar natural phenomena elsewhere. Writing back to Bathurst in the April letter, Boyle expressed his disappointment at the ‘unwelcome orders you send me, concerning your excellent Lectures’, which presumably placed him in an awkward position. Indeed, Wilkins was evidently hoping to get plans back on track, and instructed Boyle not to follow Bathurst’s wish ‘to have those Jewells sent backe to Oxford’.

The efforts of Wilkins and Boyle to save the book were to no avail; Bathurst’s Praescriptiones tres de respiratione first saw light of day when it was published posthumously – alongside this letter – in Warton’s The Life and Literary Remains of Ralph Bathurst (London, 1761). The collapse of the project to publish Bathurst’s Praescriptiones illustrates the close relations between knowledge-makers in Oxford and London at this time. The incident even came to the attention of Samuel Hartlib, who recorded in his Ephemerides ‘Mr Boyle knows one that hath an excellent Ms. De Respiratione which hee will not publish’.

We are extremely grateful to Professor Michael Hunter for confirming the originality of this manuscript and for additional help and advice on its background.

So, the evenings draw in, All Hallows’ Eve is upon us, and I find myself creeping through autumnal mists to the Bodleian’s Special Collections in search of ghosts.

There are many fleeting glimpses of hauntings in EMLO. In 1675, William Fulman asked Anthony Wood to confirm ‘the story of a ghostly funeral procession at night to St Peter le Bailey which terrified some of the Masters who were walking with the Proctor, but two which followed the procession to the Church door found the doors to open of their own accord, and then all to vanish and are since dead’. In 1706, Anne Griggs reported ‘the ghostly interview at Souldern Vicarage between the Vicar Mr Shaw and the apparition of his friend Mr Naylor on July 28… The apparition foretells the death of Mr Shaw…’ (sadly, Mr Naylor was a well-informed ghost; the Clergy of the Church of England Database [Person ID: 20286] reveals that one Geoffrey Shaw, rector of Soulderne, Oxfordshire, died on 17 November 1706, less than four months after this ghoulish encounter).

Bodleian Library, MS Ballard 1, fols 72–73: A seventeenth-century poltergeist. Images reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries.

One record above all others tempts me out into the damp October fog: on a handwritten index card from the Bodleian card catalogue that gives no year, and describes a John Mompesson writing to a Reverend Doctor (now known to be William Creed, Oxford’s Regius Professor of Divinity) on 6 December (now known to be 1662), are the words ‘supernatural beating of drums’. Calling up the letter, I encounter a spine-chilling tale of a seventeenth-century household terrorized by a poltergeist. Mompesson describes how, following his apprehension of a fraudulent drummer in Ludgershall (Wiltshire) and the confiscation of the latter’s instrument, his family home in nearby Tedworth (now Tidworth) was assailed by nocturnal thumps and noises so extreme that ‘the windows would shake and the beds’. His children were special targets; apart from a brief interlude of three weeks after his wife gave birth, their beds were beaten, and the family had to endure the tune ‘Roundheads and Cuckolds goe digge, goe digge’ (more on this popular early modern ditty here). Whatever ‘it’ was ran ‘under the bed-teeke’ and scratched as if it had ‘iron talons’, tossing the young ones in bed; it left sulphurous smells, it hurled shoes over the heads of adults, pulled the infants by their nightgowns and hair, and even threw a bedstaff at the rector of Tedworth, John Cragge (CCED Person ID: 21834, yet another cleric who died relatively soon after his brush with the supernatural). See the letter images above for the whole terrifying story.

A demonic representation of the Tedworth drummer from Glanvill’s 1681 treatise

Endorsements on the letter, including a cross-reference to a 1663 news book

The Drummer of Tedworth, it turns out, is a celebrated case within the historiography of witchcraft and the early modern occult; it was given a central place in Joseph Glanvill’s 1681 attack on scepticism, the Saducismus Triumphatus, its notoriety continued to grow in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it has even been subject to minor Disneyfication. The incident, its manuscript witnesses, and its complex appropriation and memorialisation by and within different intellectual traditions is analysed in detail in a 2005 article (pdf) by Michael Hunter, which includes a full transcription of this same 6 December letter collated from three known extant versions: a copy in Corpus Christi, Oxford; a now untraceable copy formerly in a private collection in Dorset; and a copy in the hand of Anthony Wood. The document thrown up by our cryptic Bodleian card record is almost certainly not Mompesson’s original letter – there is no seal, and the lines extending to the page edges on both sides of the folio are indicative of copying – but rather adds a fourth scribal copy into the mix, one that, judging by the endorsements in two separate hands, enjoyed a complex afterlife before becoming part of the Ballard collection, most likely via the papers of Arthur Charlett (on the scribal publication and circulation of newsworthy missives in early modern England see chapter seven of James Daybell’s recent monograph on the material letter and his podcast in our 2011 seminar series). Even if this account is second-hand, close the curtains, pull up a chair, and get reading; there’s nothing like a percussive poltergeist to add drama and intrigue to Halloween…

Letters in Focus with Miranda Lewis

Miranda is editing metadata from the Bodleian card catalogue of correspondence for our union catalogue, Early Modern Letters Online. On a regular basis, she brings us hand-picked and contextualised records.

The special issue publishes the proceedings of the day conference History Comes to Life: Seventeenth-Century Natural History, Medicine, and the New Science, organized by Anna Marie at The Royal Society in April (with the financial and logistical support of the project, The Royal Society, the Wellcome Trust, the John Fell Fund, and the BSHS). It features six fresh and fascinating articles from leading authorities on a wide range of topics at the intersection of seventeenth-century natural history, medicine, and science, including Buffon and animals, Francis Willughby and insects, and Jan Swammerdam’s abiding intellectual infatuation with frogs and toads. You can now enjoy early access to the articles online; the print version of the special issue will be available at the end of November. You can also listen to the podcasts from the conference. Congratulations to Anna Marie and the rest of the contributors!

The event, organized by Rhodri Lewis and Noel Malcolm and attended by a record audience of over 100 delegates, assembled an all-star cast of eighteen international authorities on early modern letters, who over a three-day programme explored and celebrated the ways in which intellectual interests and activities of all kinds were pursued and propagated through correspondence during the long seventeenth century.

Rhodri welcomes delegates and introduces the conference themes

Our largest ever audience packs the lecture theatre

Constance Blackwell, Philip Beeley, and Howard Hotson

Sir Keith Thomas and Anthony Grafton at the Scaliger Reception

Particular attention was paid to the epistolary experiences of groups and networks rather than those of particular individuals – and the role of letters in constituting these communities of practice – and to the ways in which exchanges of letters coexisted with, supplemented, or competed with other kinds of knowledge production during the period. Delegates were also treated to a demonstration of our union catalogue of correspondence, Early Modern Letters Online (video now on our infrastructure page); no fewer than two publisher-sponsored drinks receptions toasting exciting new publications and partnerships (details here); and an array of quiches, sandwiches, and cakes of unusual deliciousness crafted by Trevor and Cristina from the Organic Deli Café.

Miranda Lewis and Mordechai Feingold at the Scaliger Reception

Leigh Penman, Alexander Farquhar, and Noel Malcolm

A conference marches on its stomach: artisan quiches

Sandwiches on home-made bread also exceeded scholarly expectations

Videos of most of the proceedings will be available shortly; in the meantime, for further information, including speaker profiles and abstracts, check out the conference microsite. Details of further events in 2013 and 2014 will also be available in the coming months; to stay informed, please join our mailing list.

Following in the footsteps of a host of EMLO correspondents, students and lecturers the world over are currently acclimatizing themselves to a new academic year. With a plethora of challenges and possibilities beckoning, the beginning of university term is always exciting.

For many, it’s a period of upheaval, of relocation from one place to another, and of settling in, usually without home comforts, as Johann Freinshem reveals in a letter of 1642 to G. J. Vossius when he asks, for fear his baggage be detained, whether he might extract ‘books and furniture for his private use, which he understands other students have done’. Even the journey to the seat of learning itself is not without risk and a Danish student, Johann Wandalin, recounts to William Sancroft his misfortune as all his possessions were lost at sea en route to England.

This is a time when academics worry about funding, fees, and maintenance costs, and, like Polyander, might even fret over money promised for Hungarian students which has not arrived. Whilst some seek extra work to make ends meet, just as the Reverend William Stonestreet tells of a young student desperate for employment to help ‘eke out his subsistence’, others might go up in the world and take possession of bigger and more comfortable digs; we read of Francis Heardson, who in 1668 became a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, transferring from a student chamber to something significantly more commodious, describing ‘its advantages and the furniture which is in it’. Year after year at this particular moment, lecturers face a mountain of preparatory work and it’s no surprise to find Henry Dodwell advising on a forthcoming course in ecclesiastical history.

There are rocks to be navigated and opportunities which should not be squandered. Jacques Philippe D’Orville laments how certain students succumb to poor work habits and stresses ‘the importance of attentive listening to Professors’ lectures; and attacks students’ prevalent vice of inattention in its various manifestations; as galling to the teachers and coming home to roost with students in wasted opportunities and backwardness.’ Everyone is aware of the brickbats the terms ahead might hurl, yet not everyone is faced with an incident as dramatic as the ‘student Mr. Bonython being seized with madness’ who set fire to his chambers, nor the fate that befell Francis Bayly, a poor unfortunate Christ Church student who, according to John Keill, on the day that George Smalridge was installed as Dean of Christ Church ‘fell into the house of office & was suffocated’ (there was apparently a strong tradition of untimely ends in the latrines of early modern Oxford; see Philip’s recent blog post Death in the Privy for another sad example).

Such is the beginning of term. With so much to remember, so much to explore, so much to learn, good luck to all concerned. We hope you find EMLO useful in your studies; and look out for those treacherous toilets…

Letters in Focus with Miranda Lewis

Miranda is editing metadata from the Bodleian card catalogue of correspondence for our union catalogue, Early Modern Letters Online. On a regular basis, she brings us hand-picked and contextualised records.

The Correspendence of Joseph Justus Scaliger (8 volumes) has just been published by Droz. Edited by Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert, with supervision, advice, and coordination from Henk Jan de Jonge, Anthony Grafton, and Jill Kraye, the simultaneous appearance of all eight volumes of this major early modern corpus represents one of the most impressive scholarly achievements of modern times (work on Scaliger’s correspondence only started in earnest in 2004).

The critical edition contains nearly 1,700 letters sent to or by the French polymath, all of which are presented alongside a complete scholarly apparatus as well as English synopses. Scaliger’s correspondents include such luminaries as Dominicus Baudius, Tycho Brahe, Isaac Casaubon, the Dousa and Dupuy families, Daniel Heinsius, Johannes Kepler, Justus Lipsius, Claudius Salmasius, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, Marcus Welser, and Joannes Woverius. The edition was supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and (via Anthony Grafton’s Balzan Prize) the Balzan Foundation, with additional contributions from London’s Warburg Institute, the Scaliger Institute of the University of Leiden, and a number of Dutch societies and foundations.

No let-up in the pace: editors at work

The scene is set for the reception

The next generation of edition-makers

Rhodri Lewis and Sarah Rivett

This major publishing event was celebrated at the second of two publisher-sponsored drinks receptions at our latest conference Communities of Knowledge: Epistolary Cultures in the Early Modern World (20-22 September, 2012). Nearly one hundred delegates and guests assembled in the Bodleian Library’s magnificent Divinity School to toast the launch, where they were treated to wine, cocktail snacks, music from professional harpist Stephen Dunstone, ‘The Path to Scaliger: An Intellectual Journey’ (an animated presentation created especially for the occasion by Dirk), and speeches from Anthony Grafton and Max Engammare, Director of Droz. In related news, metadata from the edition is currently being prepared for inclusion in our union catalogue Early Modern Letters Online, while Dirk and Paul can be heard discussing the Scaliger corpus in their joint contribution to our 2010 seminar series.

Jan Loop, Noel Malcolm, and Dirk

Anthony Grafton’s address

Not pictured: four more volumes

Scaliger raises a glass

We congratulate Paul, Dirk, Henk Jan, Anthony, Jill, and Max (and thank them, as well as Wilma Minty and the rest of the Bodleian’s Historic Venues team, for their help with the reception), and wish the edition every success! For more information and to order online – in hard copy or electronic format – please visit the publisher’s website or download the flyer (pdf).

A leading journal in early modern studies, focusing in particular on close textual analyses of fresh sources and innovative interdisciplinary approaches, The Seventeenth Century is published four times per year. During the reception, over eighty delegates and guests assembled in the modern and airy senior common room and terrace of the Faculty of English to toast this new relationship over sparkling wine and delicious canapés provided by the Organic Deli Café. We were also treated to short speeches from Professor Richard Maber, General Editor of the journal and speaker at the conference, and Adam Burbage, Managing Editor at Routledge. In moves close to the Project’s heart, both described plans to increase the journal’s online presence, including the digitization of all back issues, full-colour publication online, a new digital submission and refereeing system for prospective authors, and a new journal website on Routledge’s cutting-edge platform.

Adam Burbage from Routledge samples some canapés

General Editor Richard Maber describes the new partnership

Guests circulate around the Routledge display table

Lilies, celebratory slides, sparkling wine, sparkling conversation

We congratulate Richard as well as Adam, Mark, Andrea, Rachel, and Louise from Routledge (and thank them for their help with and generous sponsorship of the reception), and wish The Seventeenth Century every success in its new home! Stay tuned to developments on the publisher’s website.

Post updated to include photographs

Our Martin Lister Research Fellow Anna Marie Roos has curated a small exhibition entitled ‘The Lister Sisters and the Art of Seventeenth-Century Science’, which will run in the Proscholium of the Old Bodleian Library from 18 August to 30 September (the poster can be downloaded here [pdf]). The free display showcases a unique set of drawings, prints, and copperplates of molluscs and their shells, (re)discovered among the library’s holdings by Anna Marie in 2010, which formed the basis for the illustrations in Martin Lister’s conchological magnum opus, the Historiae Conchyliorum (1685-92). Prepared by Lister’s teenage daughters, Susanna and Anna, the materials shed light on representational conventions within late seventeenth-century natural history, as well as on the gendered nature of illustrative practice in this boom era for lavishly illuminated scientific books. Anna Marie will also be giving a free lecture on ‘The Art of Science: The Rediscovery of the Lister Copperplates’ at 1pm on Wednesday 19 September in the Bodleian’s Convocation House (more info and booking on the library website). Further details of both events on The Conveyor.

Anna Marie in front of the display

Lecturing in Convocation House

In conversation with Stephen Johnston

The exhibition proves a hit