Americas and Oceania Collections blog

Exploring the Library’s collections from the Americas and Oceania

Introduction

The Americas and Oceania Collections blog promotes our collections relating to North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Oceania by providing new readings of our historical holdings, highlighting recent acquisitions, and showcasing new research on our collections. It is written by our curators and collection specialists across the Library, with guest posts from Eccles Centre staff and fellows. Read more about this blog

30 October 2023

Tales from the Philatelic Crypt: The ‘Haunted Canada’ Postage Stamp Series

Halloween’s origins remain obscure, yet it is the calendar event where humanity’s fascination with the supernatural is openly celebrated. Millions of individuals commemorate Halloween every year by attending fancy-dress parties, going trick or treating, watching horror movies, visiting ‘haunted’ sites or narrating ghost stories. Whether a believer or sceptic, the supernatural is in reality an economically significant cultural phenomenon generating millions of pounds each year for the tourist, publishing, merchandising and entertainment sectors. As central component of humanity’s visual, material and print cultures, postage stamps are unsurprisingly replete with depictions of ghosts, creatures, myths and legends. Canada Post leads the way having issued several visually striking, innovative stamp sets as mini-sheets chronicling the nation’s rich heritage of hauntings and ghostly sightings (Figure 1). Not released for Halloween, the content of these ‘Haunted Canada’ stamps is nevertheless a perfect accompaniment to a Halloween blog.

A Canada Post mini-sheet showing 5 stamps on Haunted Canada
Figure 1: Canada Post's mini-sheets of Canadian hauntings

The first series released on Friday 13th’ June 2014, comprises five separate designs developed by Lionel Gadoury and Terry Popik from the illustrations of Sam Weber and C. H. J. Snider. Manufactured by the Canadian firm, Lowe-Martin using a lithographic printing process two stories centre upon particular sites rather than specific individuals. One, labelled ‘Ghost Bride’ depicts a veiled woman and candles in the background. It refers to reported sightings of a ghostly figure wearing a long flowing dress descending the staircase of the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel (Figure 2). Many believe she is the apparition of a bride who tripped and fell to her death from the staircase on her wedding day. The second, ‘Ghost Train’ illustrates a steam-train with a ghostly spectre in the background and takes inspiration from sightings of a ghostly glowing light known as the ‘St Louis Light’ in the Saskatchewan River Valley (Figure 3). This unexplained phenomenon is locally associated with the tale of a long dead Canadian National Railway Conductor decapitated by a passing train whilst examining the track-line with a lantern during the 1920s.

Two illustrated stamps. Figure 2 is on the left showing a ghostly female figure. Figure 3 on the right shows a steam train with ghostly spectre in the background
Figure 2 and Figure 3

A second series was issued on 14 September 2014, all printed by the Canadian Bank Note Company using a lithographic printing process. The set includes five stamps designed by Lionel Gadoury and Kammy Ahuja using illustrations from Sam Weber as well as Photography from Peter Bregg. Two stamps chronicle hauntings centred on particular individuals from local history. One depicting a woman standing above a gibbet with two phantom trees refers to the spirit of Marie-Josephte Corriveau (Figure 4). Executed for murder in 1763, her remains went on public display in Levis, Quebec as a warning to others. Local residents have encountered her sprit walking the road at night, frightening unwary travellers. Moving on, the ‘Caribou Hotel’ stamp reveals a clothed skeleton representing the ghost of Bessie Gideon, one-time owner of the historic gold-rush era hotel situated in Carcross, Yukon (Figure 5).

Two illustrated Canada Post stamps. Figure 4 is on the left and shows a woman (Marie-Josephte Corriveau) between two haunted trees. Figure 5 is on the right and shows a clothed female skeleton and is labelled as Bessie Gideon
Figure 4 and Figure 5

On 8 September 2016, the third ‘Haunted Canada’ series lithographed by Colour Innovations in Toronto went on sale. Lionel Gadoury developed each stamp, from Sam Weber’s illustrations and Peter Bregg’s photographs. The ‘Lady in White’ Stamp presents the evocative image of a woman standing in a lake with a skeletal reflection (Figure 6) in reference to the tale of Mathilde-Robin, whose spirit haunts Montmorency Falls, Quebec. Following the death of her fiancé during the Battle of Montmorency in 1759, she committed suicide. Finally, 'Dungarvon Whooper’ narrates the legend of a cook brutally robbed and murdered at a logging camp near the Dungarvon River in Renous, New Brunswick (Figure 7). Upon discovering the body, some lumberjacks buried the remains within a shallow grave. That night they were horrified by hideous screams and whooping sounds emanating from the new grave during a snowstorm.

Two illustrated Canada Post stamps. Figure 6 shows a woman in a lake with a skeleton reflected and is anntoaed as being Mathilde-Robin. Figure 7, on the right, shows a man with an axe above a cooking pot over a fire, with a hand rising out of the pot. It is annotated as being Dungarvon Whooper.
Figure 6 and Figure 7

Contemporary to the release of these stamps was the publication of a series of books titled ‘Haunted Canada,’ recounting some of these tales. Beyond their entertainment value, each stamp is also inherently didactic, showcasing Canada’s topography, histories, myths and legends. In doing so, they buttress national identity within Canada whilst becoming ambassadors for the nation’s wider cultural diplomacy. The British Library’s Philatelic Collections would like to wish everybody a fun, spooky and scary Halloween!

By Richard Scott Morel

Curator, British Library’s Philatelic Collections

16 October 2023

Carybé, Mario de Andrade and the Brazilian ‘hero without a character’

Rafael Pereira do Rego is the Interim Programme Manager and Area Specialist in the Eccles Centre for American Studies

In the previous blog post, I discussed the wonderful experience of hosting the 100th celebratory edition of the Bilingual Brazilian Book Club at the British Library and the exquisite publications created by the society Cem Bibliofilos do Brasil (100 Bibliophiles of Brazil) including Machado de Assis’ O Alienista, illustrated by Candido Portinari. (And I admit my pleasure at imagining the fancy gala dinners at the Country Club in Rio de Janeiro with its auctions of the original illustrations signed by distinguished visual artists to celebrate the work of the canon of Brazilian literature!)

Another publication from their collection, which was included in the Library’s show-and-tell at the Book Club event, is Macunaíma, by Mario de Andrade. Originally published in 1928, the 1957 edition was illustrated by Carybé, an artist born in Argentina, but who grew up in Rio and later in Salvador, Bahia, where he consolidated his work. Some of Carybé's work can be found in the Afro-Brazilian Museum in Salvador: 27 cedar panels representing different orixás or divinities of the Afro-Brazilian religion candomblé.

Watercolour on white paper representing Afro-Brazilian rites of Candomblé
Illustrations by Carybé for the exquisite ‘Iconografia dos Deuses Africanos no Candomble da Bahia’ (Iconography of the African Gods in the Candomblé of Bahia' with texts by Jorge Amado, Pierre Verger and Waldeloir Rego. (BL shelfmark 37/Cup.408.rr.7 )

Carybé was a versatile artist portraying many themes and motifs, but his main forte was the exploration of Afro-Brazilian culture and its influence, especially in the state of Bahia, Northeast of Brazil, which inherited much Brazilian African heritage as a result of the transatlantic slave trade. Carybé had famous literary friends such as Jorge Amado, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario de Andrade, and illustrated many editions of their work. Among his paintings, you can also appreciate the urban and natural landscapes of Bahia, as well as popular festivities and practices such as soccer, capoeira and Carnaval. And below is Macunaíma, the Brazilian modernist anti-hero – as you can see in the subtitle of the book, ‘o herói sem nenhum caráter’ (the hero without any character).

Macunaima
Andrade, M. (1957). Macunaíma, o herói sem nenhum caráter. Aguas-fortes de Carybé. [By M. de Andrade.] ([Publicações da Sociedade dos Cem Bibliófilos do Brasil. no. 11.]). British Library shelfmark C.106.l.11
Macunaima
Exclusive edition for the British Museum (British Library shelfmark C.106.l.11)

Macunaíma’s author, Mario de Andrade, was one of the instigators of the Week of Modern Art in 1922 in Brazil, an avant-garde movement that disseminated Brazilian Modernism in literature, visual arts, music and architecture. He travelled to many parts of Brazil, writing travelogues and researching Brazil’s multiple sounds, voices and dialects, which enabled him to develop an extensive familiarity with the country’s linguistic and cultural variations. As a careful listener with a great sense of musical composition (he was trained as a musician), he applied the Brazilian linguistic diversity to prose fiction within a sort of rhapsodic, speech-patterned writing he had developed previously in the poems of Pauliceia Desvairada (translated in English as Hallucinated City), his second poetry collection. This novel is his major work in the context of those experimentations, and it is our Brazilian Odyssey (or perhaps our Ulysses – a modernist response to James Joyce).

 The book is a shapeshifting novel about an Indigenous man, ‘the hero without a character’, from a tribe in the northern Amazon who crosses the country in search of his amulet stolen by a cannibal giant. He arrives in the sprawling urban jungle of São Paulo on the verge of modernisation, learns the ‘official’ languages —both Portuguese and Brazilian, as the novel says —and goes for a ‘whirlwind tour of Brazil, cramming four centuries and a continental expanse into a single mythic plane’, as stated in the beautiful new translated edition, published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo editions (2023). The book magically intertwines Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian, European and Indigenous heritage and the country’s folklore, dialects, anthropology, mythology, flora, fauna, and pop culture – thus, examining Brazilian multifaceted identity in the context of rapid urban transformations. 

Mario de Andrade gave birth to this novel over six delirious days in a state of creative trance; he famously locked himself in a remote farm in Sao Paulo in order to work continuously. But this is, of course, not an improvisational piece. It is the consequence of years of research and the process of writing was inspired by Northern repentistas in Brazil – popular spoken poets and musicians whose compositions are seemingly improvised at first glance, but in fact, nothing is unpremeditated. The form and content come from careful research and experimentation that builds up the scaffolding of patterns, sounds and ideas feeding the creative mind for the final ‘impromptu’. Mario de Andrade is then engaging with popular culture in the very process of writing the book.

Black ink drawing on whitepaper
British Library shelfmark C.106.l.11

What I find interesting about the novel is the capacity to blend dialects and urban and rural rhythms that Andrade was collecting in his research, attempting to convey in language Brazil’s conflicted racial and cultural identity. It embodies a new style of prose creating a new rhapsodic and playful language which justifies the comparison between James Joyce’s Ulysses and Mario de Andrade’s novel, both published in the 1920s: the Brazilian Odyssey is full of Amazonian gods and demi-gods and historical figures, interplayed in a musical composite, and yet preserving a narrative overturn. The novel also mixes vivid descriptions of the jungle and the sprawling metropolis with abrupt turns towards fantasy – an emerging sign of the trend towards magical realism that would be consolidated in Latin America decades later.

Following Brazilian modernist tradition, Andrade also incorporated notions of primitivism learned from European modernism embedded with the principles of indigenous cannibalism introduced here as one of the novel’s thematic forces. Macunaíma was published in 1928, the same year that O Manifesto Antropofago (The Cannibalist Manifesto) by Oswaldo de Andrade (no familial relation) released the main tenet of Brazilian Modernism, which is the hugely influential concept of antropofagia. It postulates the Brazilian culture’s capacity to ‘digest’ the coloniser, to incorporate foreign influences and to turn them into something new and ‘originally’ Brazilian (and, in many cases, into something national, and sometimes stranding to utopic nationalism – as much as problematic this course can turn out to be).

Indeed, this is the main modernist tension in Brazil: the desire to bring European values and traditions but sometimes within a nationalist framework or with the perspective of building a nation that is separate from the coloniser’s influences. And perhaps that has also been the main tension in the construction of Brazilian cultural identity since the Portuguese arrived in 1500 and encountered the Tupi-speaking indigenous people (portrayed in the first European books about Brazil as practitioners of cannibalistic rituals): an 'existential' ambivalence between adopting European cultural codes and striving for a 'unique' identity which is memorably encapsulated in the manifesto by the famous aphorism 'Tupi or Not Tupi – that is the question'. 

Black ink text on white paper. Magazine cutting with a contour line drawing at the centre of the page.
Manifesto Antropófago in Revista de Antropofagia by Oswald de Andrade in 1928 (reedited text available at the British Library under shelfmark L.45/389). Image at center is a contour line drawing by Brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral of her 1928 painting Abaporu.

The concept of antropofagia is a good stepping stone to our next collection item, Cobra Norato, by Raul Bopp who drank from the same well as Mario de Andrade, and I will explore this further in the next blog post. Before then, I will just mention that, although Macunaíma was initially regarded as a sheer strange piece of work with a perceived untranslatable complexity for foreign audiences, it became recognised as a modernist masterpiece and national cultural icon. It is impressive to see that in 2023 alone there have been two English translations of the novel; one by Katrina Dodson, published in the UK via Fitzcarraldo Editions, and the other by Carl Engel (published by King Tide Press).  These will accompany E.A. Goodland’s 1984 version for Random House, also available at the British Library. Additionally, it is worth checking Andrade's first novel To Love, Intransitive Verb, translated into English in 1933 as Fräulein – the title alluding to a German governess in a nouveau-riche family in Sao Paulo during World War I – but now available in a new translation by Ana Lessa-Schimidt. 

I hope the new directions of this novel for an English-speaking audience will bring to life again the work of an unquiet modernist, endlessly curious about the complexities of Brazilian culture. But the novel’s importance perhaps goes beyond the country’s geographical limits to shed light on the conflicted and fragmented post-colonial subject – playful and transgressive, yet always unfinished and full of possibilities that are never quite met. 

10 October 2023

Grenada, 1973-83 | Beginnings of a Revolution, Invasion, Aftermath

Join us in the one-day symposium bringing academics, creatives, activists and community-based researchers to share research, ideas and reflections on the Grenada Revolution.

Online event | Fri 27 Oct 2023 | Free

In 1979, Grenada became the first and so far only revolutionary socialist nation in the history of the English-speaking world. The Revolution arguably began with the emergence of the New Jewel Movement in 1973, initially a coalition and coalescing of diverse radical Black energies, and ended dramatically and violently with the USA’s invasion of the island ten years later.

This conference invites researchers from across academic disciplines, creative practices, and other forms of knowledge-making to present new thinking about the Grenada revolution, its origins and its aftermath.

Organized by Nicole-Rachelle Moore and Philip Abraham (British Library), Hannah Ishmael (King's College London) and Kesewa John (Goldsmiths).

The event will be delivered via Zoom. Please register here (Passcode: 510004).

A selection of books placed against a work table.
A selection of British Library collection items on the Grenada Revolution

 

Draft programme:

12.00 – 12.10 Welcome and Housekeeping

12.10 – 13.25 Panel 1

Steve Cushion | By Our Own Hands: A People's History of the Grenadian Revolution.
Jacob Fairless Nicholson and Nathaniel Telemaque | The Grenada Revolution on Radio Free Grenada.
Shantel George | ‘Spiritual Baptists in Grenada Have No Say’: African-Derived Religions and the Unfinished Revolution.
Asya Ostroukh | Kelsen’s Legal Theory as Doctrinal Source of Law in Common-law Courts: Is Kelsen law in Grenada?

13.25 – 13.40 Break

13.40 – 14.55 Panel 2
Oliver Benoit |The Grenada Revolution (1979-83): the nationalism perspective.
Patsy Lewsi | A Multi-dimensional exploration of size in the Grenada Revolution.
Shalini Puri | Demilitarizing Memory of the Grenada Revolution: Unarchived Pasts, Possible Futures

14.55 – 16.00 Break

16.00 – 17.15 Panel 3
Nyala Thompson Grunwald | Grenada in the Caribbean: Exploring Creative Resistance and Cohabitation in Revolution.
Yndia Lorick-Wilmot | A Revealing Fire: Grenadian Diasporic Memory and Reflections on the New Jewel Movement and the Future of the Isle of Spice’s Sovereignty.
Suelin Low Chew Tung | Visual art, memory and memorialisation.
Angus Martin | A Grenada Revolution Museum and Archives: A Must for the Next Generations.

17.15 – 17.25 Break

17.25 – 18.40 Panel 4
Laura Calkins | Grenada’s North London ‘Twin:’ Caribbean Revolution and the Shaping of British Leftism in 1980s Islington.
Zach Myers | ‘Heirs of Marryshow’: Federation, Regionalism and the Grenada Revolution.
Eric Selbin | The Grenadian Revolution: The Paris Commune of the West Indies.
Amandla Thomas-Johnson | Racial Capitalism and the route to the Grenadian Revolution.

18.40 – 19.00 Closing remarks and discussion

We are looking forward to welcoming you!

If you have any questions please email [email protected].

27 September 2023

On the Trail of the Contemporary Singing Voice

Diane Hughes is a Professor in Vocal Studies and Music at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, and was a 2022 Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow at the British Library. 

My research as an Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow was undertaken at the British Library during April to May, 2023. I arrived with a long list of sources to examine - recordings, historical references, and a range of interviews. I am passionate about music and singing. The aim of my current project is to document the evolution of the contemporary singing voice and its intersection with, and the influences of, American and British popular singing. This includes the conceptualisation and contexts of contemporary singing that centre around questions of voice and identity and sociocultural perspectives of song and of singing. It also involves diverse perspectives of contemporary voice and related technologies.

At the British Library, I discovered and listened to first-hand accounts related to crooning and orchestrated singing, along with more contemporary types of singing.1 This furthered my understanding of the historical significance of the musical arranger, of different recording technologies, and of various creative intents and interests. As recording technologies adapted to enable singers to be isolated from surrounding musicians, or in recording sound booths, more nuanced styles of singing emerged.2 Such nuanced audibility is often attributed to the communicative capabilities of “the microphone”, however, my research identified that this equally related to artistic objectives and to modes of audience engagement.

Several reflective accounts by touring and established singers, and by musical arrangers, provided detailed information on specific career trajectories.3 These accounts also contained commentary on changing musical styles, vocal delivery and on individual artistry. They assisted in contributing to a timeline of why and where transition points in contemporary singing occurred–broadly involving the strident sounds of vaudeville, the smoother crooning styles, the resonant singing of orchestrated standards, the personally expressive singer-songwriters, the stylistic influenced revival of skiffle, the innovative vocalisms of jazz, and the contemporary characteristics of rock ‘n’ roll, rock, and pop. I found it exciting to further explore these transitions through “captured” singing in broadcasts and recordings, through to singing in “live” performances.

A red book cover with the author and title in black print.
Miriam Spier, The Why and How of Popular Singing: A Modern Guide for Vocalists. New York: Edward. B. Marks Music Corporation, [1950]. British Library shelfmark: 7889.b.4

During my research, I uncovered several unexpected sources. These related to mid-20th century definitions of popular music,4 and pedagogical publications on contemporary singing.5 In 1950, a renowned pedagogue of her time, Miriam Spier, offered aspiring singers the salient advice to use “the best artists as your guides, analyze and experiment; do not merely imitate”.6 This exploratory approach is still relevant today and has much to do with the evolutionary nature of contemporary singing styles and sounds. Other sources alluded to the progression and succession of popular styles, where rock ‘n’ roll/rock was hypothesised as having “the characteristics of a temporary craze”7 or where the development of contemporary jazz singing followed an exploration of vocal sounds and words.8 Many sources referenced the popularity of singing in relation to individual or communal listening and, as such, the value of singing clearly extended beyond the performer to their audience.

The opening page of a chapter on 'Voice Appeal', with a drawing of 7 people at the top and text on the bottom.
Miriam Spier, The Why and How of Popular Singing: A Modern Guide for Vocalists. New York: Edward. B. Marks Music Corporation, [1950]. British Library shelfmark: 7889.b.4

The evolution of the jazz and popular singing voice in Britain and the USA is complex and multilayered. Each is highly influenced by creativity, technologies, sounds, styles, and people, and will adapt and evolve as vocal exploration continues.

My sincere thanks to the Eccles Centre at the British Library for the opportunity to conduct this research and to the librarians at the Sound Archive for their assistance during my visit.

References

1. Stan Britt Collection. Sound and Moving Image Catalogue. This is a collection of interviews with a range of jazz and popular music performers undertaken by Stan Britt during the latter part of the 20th century.

2. See, for example, Peggy Lee interviewed by Stan Britt (23/07/1977). Stan Britt Collection. Sound and Moving Image Catalogue. C1645/238.

3. Stan Britt Collection.

4. Peter Gammond and Peter Clayton,  A Guide to Popular Music. London: Phoenix House, 1960. British Library shelfmark: General Reference Collection 2737.c.3. Music Collections REF M.R.Ref. 781.63.

5. Frank Sinatra in collaboration with John Quinlan, (c1946), Tips on Popular Singing. For the British Empire (excluding Canada and Australasia) and the whole of Europe, the property of Peter Maurice Music Co. Limited. Music Collections VOC/1946/SINATRA; Miriam Spier, (1950), The Why and How of Popular Singing: A Modern Guide for Vocalists. New York: Edward. B. Marks Music Corporation, [1950]. British Library shelfmark: General Reference Collection 7889.b.43.

6. Spier, p.41

7. Gammond and Clayton, p.177.

8. Norma Winstone [interview] (1994). Oral History of Jazz in Britain. C122/206-C122/207.

 

26 September 2023

Verse and Reverse: Uncovering the work of the Toronto Women’s Press Club

Occasionally, you come across an item in the British Library that can open up a new pathway through our wider collection. One such item is Verse and Reverse, the title of two collections of poetry, printed in 1921 and 1922, written and published by the members of the Toronto Women’s Press Club.

In April 1921, the Toronto Women’s Press Club, a regional branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club, held a poetry night. Members anonymously submitted poems, which they read aloud to each other. Pleased with the experiment, the membership decided to gather the poems together and publish a booklet, repeating the endeavour the following year. The British Library holds both collections, bound together, at shelfmark 1168.c.57.

Verse and Reverse
The cover of ‘Verse and Reverse’ (1168.c.57).

Since I first read about the Canadian Women’s Press Club, its members and history have intrigued me. Founded in 1904, the Club emerged out of the relationships forged when sixteen women working in the Canadian press achieved sponsorship to report on the World’s Fair in St. Louis, USA. It was during their ten-day railway journey they formed the idea of a professional network to support, promote and advocate for its members. With writers working in both French and English, it was the first nationally recognised club of its kind, founded long before women achieved suffrage in Canada.

At the start of the twentieth century, the nature of the literary marketplace for women drew almost all writers into the orbit of newspapers and periodicals. As such, the Canadian Women’s Press Club was a broad church. As one might expect, members included pioneering journalists, like founder Kit Coleman, the first Canadian woman accredited as a war correspondent, and suffragists Nellie McClung and Emily Murphy. Yet, novelist Lucy M. Montgomery, author of the bestselling Anne of Green Gables (1908), also served as a regional vice president of the club. Another active member was E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), the daughter of a Mohawk chief and English mother, who performed poems and stories about Indigenous experience. Historians have documented the compelling story of the club’s founding, most recently Linda Kay. Yet, there is much more to uncover about its regional branches and evolutions across the twentieth century. I was keen to see what the Toronto Branch’s Verse and Reverse might illuminate.

In the 1922 ‘Prefatory Note’ to Verse and Reverse, Isabel Eccleston MacKay observes there ‘are few things more delightful than to turn to the fresh-cut pages of a new miscellany’. I certainly agree. There are familiar figures among the contributors to Verse and Reverse, (Montgomery has poems in each booklet), but it is the less familiar names that intrigue. While the poetry collected is interesting, what I find exciting about something like Verse and Reverse is that it gathers the names of many forgotten writers working in Toronto in the 1920s together. This makes it a great starting point for further research, which the British Library’s wider collection is able to support.

Our Canadian holdings are remarkably rich. Much of this owes to the process of colonial copyright deposit to the British Museum Library. This undiscriminating process meant, for a time, the accrual of items published in Canada was not as subject to the ideologies of taste and the financial constraints that can shape acquisition. As such, I found it was easy to order up a sample of other titles from the lesser-known Verse and Reverse contributors. Gathering together works of ephemeral popularity, what starts to emerge is a snapshot of women’s cultural production at the start of the twentieth century in Toronto; not the luminaries preserved across time, but the disparate and largely forgotten output of everyday, professionally organised women who earnt their living through their pens.

Pictures of book covers. All are text except 'After the Honeymoon' which shows a well dressed man and woman flyiung above the earth in a hot air balloon.
The covers of books ‘Etiquette in Canada’ (YA.1987.b.1605), ‘A Canadian History for Boys and Girls’ (09555.aa.3), and ‘After the Honeymoon’ (08416.bb.82)

Although all their contributions to Verse and Reverse were poems, the Toronto members of the Canadian Women’s Press Club worked across literary genres. Some of the books I ordered cohered to my expectations: non-fiction writing on conduct, etiquette and instruction. For example, member Emily P. Weaver’s A Canadian History for Boys and Girls (1900) is a chronological survey of Canada complete with black and white illustrations by her sister. Gertrude Pringle’s Etiquette in Canada, first published in 1932, was new to me, offering advice for a gamut of social situations from picnics to the opening of Parliament. Another lovely discovery was the beautiful cover of Louise Mason’s After the Honeymoon: One Hundred Hints on Husbandry, which offers a selection of comedic snippets of marriage advice.

Picture of book spines. The cover for 'Grey Knitting' depicts a woman knitting with the yarn reaching and connecting to a solider.
Covers for the books ‘Grey Knitting and Other Poems’ (11686.ee.46), ‘The House of Windows’ (012621.cc.34) and ‘Savour of Salt’ (NN.13499)

However, other titles I ordered were more unusual and unexpected. I am intrigued now, for instance, to delve more into The House of Windows (1912), MacKay’s own novel about the fates of an overworked department store shop girl. Member Katherine Hale’s Grey Knitting, and Other Poems (1914) is a collection about women’s experiences on the Home Front during World War I. It reminded me of a more recent Canadian acquisition, the textile work I Sit and Sew (2019) by artist Lise Melhorn-Boe. The Library holds member Florence Randal Livesay’s novel Savour of Salt (1927), which chronicles the experiences of Irish immigrants to Ontario. Mother of the award-winning poet Dorothy Livesay, Florence was clearly interested in the Canadian immigrant experience, collecting and translating a number of Ukrainian folk takes in her lifetime. The British Library holds her posthumously published collection, Down Singing Centuries: Folk Literature of Ukraine (1981), with striking illustrations by Stefan Czernecki. In summary, Verse and Reverse provided me with an avenue to open up a whole range of intriguing work I did not know we held and would otherwise have been hard to discover.

Double page spread with one full page colour illustration showing two men b y the edge of a pond with frogs and waterlillies, and a nude male and female figures bathing in the pond
Example of an illustration by Stefan Czernecki from ‘Down Singing Centuries’ (L.45/3357). The image accompanies Livesay’s translation of ‘Song of the Forest’ by Leisa Ukrainka (Olga Kossatch)

There are no grand conclusions to reach with a short project like this. However, it is indicative of the work one can achieve with ease thanks to the strength of the British Library’s Canadian collection. Much more work could be done with our microfilm, newspaper, and e-resources, where, armed with their names, one could pull together more of the work of Press Club members. Indeed, within our e-resources collection we hold digital copies of publications from branches of the Canadian Women’s Press Club in Alberta and Calgary. Each provides their own starting point to enrich our understanding of localised literary marketplaces, the ways in which women constructed their careers, and female authorship in Canada. The founders created the Canadian Women’s Press Club to foster professional solidarity and promote its members’ work. It is fitting, then, that Verse and Reverse, long past the point of the Club’s existence and the Toronto Branch’s poetry night, can continue to serve as a means through which we can draw their cultural production together and begin to bring the members their due attention.

Further Reading

  • Hale, Grey Knitting, and other poems (1914) held at 11686.ee.46.
  • Kay, The Sweet Sixteen: the journey that inspired the Canadian Women’s Press Club (2012) held at YD.2013.a.83.
  • Livesay, Savour of Salt (1927) held at NN.13499.
  • Livesay, Down Singing Centuries: folk literature of Ukraine (1981) held at L.45/3357.
  • MacKay, The House of Windows (1912) held at 012621.cc.34.
  • Mason, After the Honeymoon: One hundred hints on husbandry (1922) held 08416.bb.82.
  • Melhorn-Boe, I Sit and Sew: with poem by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (2019) held at RF.2022.a.75.
  • Pringle, Etiquette in Canada: The Blue Book of Canadian social usage (1949) held at YA.1987.b.1605.
  • Toronto Women’s Press Club, Verse and Reverse (1921, 1922) held at 1168.c.57.
  • Weaver, A Canadian History for Boys and Girls (1900) held at 09555.aa.3.

By Hannah Graves 
Curator, North American Published Collections (post-1850)

13 September 2023

Machado de Assis, Portinari and the Bilingual Brazilian Book Club at the British Library

Rafael Pereira do Rego is the Interim Programme Manager and Area Specialist at the Eccles Centre for American Studies

It was a great pleasure for the Eccles Centre to welcome the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club to the British Library during the celebration of their 100th edition on Saturday 15th July. The Embassy of Brazil has been running the Book Club for the past nine years with a wide network of international members and friends. This special edition at the Library was an opportunity to deepen ties between our two institutions and to celebrate and invite discussion and reflection on Brazilian literature and culture through the Library’s collections.

A group of ten participants standing in front of the Klencke Atlas at the British Library.
Some of the attendees of the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club event during the tour of the British Library.

 

The star of the event discussed during the Book Club – and for which we brought a special edition for the show-and-tell presentation – was the classic novella O Alienista (translated in English as ‘The Psychiatrist’ or ‘The Alienist). Originally published in 1882, by the illustrious Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, it is a wonderful short satirical work with an elegant and concise style centred on Dr Bacamarte, an alienist – the designation of psychiatrist in the nineteenth century, from the French ‘aliéniste’ – and his scientific experiments in the town of Itaguai, near Rio de Janeiro. There he established the Casa Verde (Green House) – a cross between a 19th century prototype of a psychiatric asylum and a scientific laboratory – to conduct experiential studies on the human mind. Dr. Bacamarte used his scientific power to define which denizens of the town should be confined to the asylum according to his shifting ideas of normality. As the narrative unfolds, the alienist gets lost in a madness of his own making. O Alienista was included recently in Machado de Assis: 26 Stories (2019) translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson, which among other translations of the title, are available at the British Library.

Machado de Assis is the most celebrated classic Brazilian author, so it is natural that the Library’s holdings will encompass some of his works, but it was very exciting to see the scope and depth of our collections reflecting the interest that his books have attracted from the time of their first publications in Britain. There are over 300 copies of various works by and about Machado de Assis, including some of his earliest works acquired in the nineteenth century, many of which are rare volumes. Nadia Kerecuk, the creator and convenor of the Book Club, very kindly made a list of all of our holdings available. For instance, the British Library holds the first edition of one of his most famous novels Dom Casmurro published in 1889, and the poetry collections Chrysalidas (1866), and Phalenas (1869). In addition, we have some beautiful editions including the 1948 version of the novella with illustrations of one of my favourite Brazilian artists, Cândido Portinari1.

 

title cover of the publication with an illustration by Candido Portinari; black print on white paper.
Machado de Assis, C., & Portinari, Cândido. (1948). O Alienista. Illustrado por Candido Portinari. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional. British Library shelfmark: L.R.416.r.18

 

Last year when I visited my hometown, Rio, there was a lovely and comprehensive exhibition at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil providing an overview of the various facets and languages explored by Portinari – and including some of the illustrations that are present in the selected 1948 edition, as well as from other illustrated editions of Machado de Assis’ Memoria Postumas de Braz Cubas and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha.

Both Machado de Assis and Cândido Portinari had this incredible capacity to capture the human condition and Brazilian-ness in ways that feel both universal and culturally specific. Portinari was a keen enthusiast of Machado de Assis’ work and both lived in one of the neo-colonial elegant houses in Cosme Velho, a bucolic neighborhood in Rio and perhaps one of my favourite areas of the city. They came from a rather deprived childhood but with unwavering talent and determination, came to represent big names in literature and visual arts.

Huge neocolonial houses within a square with tropical trees and plants
The Largo do Boticário (Apothecary's Square) is a square in the Cosme Velho neighborhood in Rio where Machado de Assis and Portinari lived.

 

The 1948 edition was sponsored by the bibliophile and executive Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya (1894-1968). It is part of a wider collection named Os Cem Bibliófilos do Brasil (100 Bibliophiles of Brazil) named after a bibliophilic society created by Castro Maya. The society was composed of a hundred personalities of the time, among intellectuals, executives and society figures, which met annually to produce and publish works by great authors of Brazilian literature, illustrated by notable visual artists. In 30 years, they published names such as Machado de Assis, Guimarães Rosa, Jorge Amado, José Lins do Rego, Lima Barreto and Mário de Andrade, with their literary work illustrated by major visual artists such as Di Cavalcanti, Portinari, Iberê Camargo, Cícero Dias, Carybé, among others.

The Brazilian media tycoon Roberto Marinho was part of the select society, alongside names that might be very familiar to Brazilians, such as Walter Moreira Salles, Maria do Carmo de Melo Franco Nabuco, Horácio Klabin, Gilberto Chateaubriand, Francisco Matarazzo Sobrinho, Lineu de Paula Machado, D. Pedro Gastão de Orléans and Bragança, Celso Lafer, Clemente Mariani and Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt.

The artisanal publication of these beautifully illustrated editions was an important initiative, which resulted in the publication of authors and artists portraying Brazil in a variety of themes and motifs. At the same time, it is revealing of the Eurocentric references of Brazilian elites, importing values, techniques and cultural codes to the ‘developing’ country. Castro Maya based this collection on European publishing trends, especially from France where he lived. The publications were generally composed by hand and printed on manual presses. The paper had great quality specifications with rough texture and watermark, supplied by French manufacturers. Many books were engraved with different techniques such as etching, dry point, xylography and lithography.

 

Book image with engraved illustration by Portinari; black print in white paper.
Machado de Assis, C., & Portinari, Cândido. (1948). O Alienista. British Library shelfmark: L.R.416.r.18

 

Each edition took about a year to be completed and each member of the society would receive their own exclusive copy with their names identified and within loose sheets, so the binding could be personalised according to the owners’ tastes. Print runs were limited to about 120 copies. The Society launches took place at gala dinners at Rio’s most exclusive Country Club – established by British executives in 1916 and since then the meeting point of the crème de la crème of carioca society – when auctions were held of the original illustrations not included in the final edition. I was very pleased to find out that the British Library has 20 published copies of the collection Os Cem Bibliófilos do Brasil! Rare and exclusive copies of the beautiful pas-des-deux between classic authors of Brazilian literature and notable visual artists. I hope you can explore more the collection available at the British Library.

After the show-and-tell presentation, O Alienista was specifically addressed during the hybrid meeting of the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club, with members joining from overseas via MS Teams. Nadia Kerecuk prepared a historical background of the publication and a series of questions to direct the engaging discussion with the members of this successful bilingual and bibliophile ‘society’ with the welcomed accompaniment of delicious snacks and wine. Notwithstanding the indisputable differences between the Country Club in Rio and the British Library in London, we could say this was an exclusive gala afternoon!

Attendees of the event seating around a rectangular table; online attendees are joining the event with their images projected on the walls of the room.
Participants of the Book Club discussing O Alienista in the Foyle Room at the British Library.

Notes:

1To learn more about Candido Portinari’s work please check the five-volume catalogue raisonné available at the British Library organised by his son Joao Candido Portinari as part of the major Portinari Project which has the aim of cataloguing thousands of paintings, drawings and printings, as well digitally processing images and oral history outputs. Some of the audiovisual content of this project is also available via the online platform here.

08 August 2023

Cold War Whiteness: Literature and Race between Canada and Czechoslovakia

Františka Schormová is a post-doc researcher at the Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences and an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Hradec Králové and was a 2023 Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow at the British Library.

To be a scholar outside of US/Canadian studies outside of North America means a transcultural perspective is a part of what we do and who we are. It allows us to think about the culture and region afresh and to reflect on our positions as mediators as scholars, educators, and public intellectuals. To be a scholar of US/Canadian studies from Central Eastern Europe and other regions outside of the usual trajectories of prestige might also mean that sources for our research are more difficult to obtain. This is why I went to the British Library to research Czech immigration to Canada.

In my previous research project, Translation and the Global Fifties: When the African American Left Went to Prague, I looked at the transnational journeys, exchanges, and allegiances between the African American Leftist intellectuals and early Cold War Czechoslovakia. One of the translators and mediators of African American literature in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Czechoslovak writer Josef Škvorecký, later became one of the almost twelve thousand people who fled to Canada after the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion to Czechoslovakia in 1968. Following Škvorecký and his wife, Zdena Škvorecká-Salivarová to Canada opened up a new set of questions for me some of which I tried to answer during my time in the British Library.

Škvorecký was awarded the Governor General's Award for English Language Fiction for The Engineer of Human Souls, a novel translated by Paul Wilson. This cultural moment became my entry point in the Canadian cultural field in the 1970s and 1980s. I explored magazines and journals I found out about in the United States and Canadian Newspaper Holdings in the British Library Newspaper Library (for example, Nový Domov: The New Homeland)1, conference proceedings from the time, fictional and autobiographical accounts of the Škvorecký’s and other Czechoslovak authors, diverse secondary sources on culture and politics of the era, multilingual sources published in various places. What I was looking for were interconnections between Canadian literature, quickly developing at this time as its own discipline tightly linked to the nation state, the official politics of multiculturalism, and the position of the so-called ethnic writers within this cultural field.

These interconnections support my broader project in the framework of which I look at how the notion of whiteness has operated within the Canadian cultural field in the late Cold War in connection to various immigrant groups coming to the country. It builds on critical whiteness studies but also asks whether these concepts can be applied and/or translated to Central Eastern European contexts. The ambiguous status of the Slavic and other groups in and from this region has been noticed by scholars such as Ivan Kalmar or Zoltán Ginelli; the historians of immigration have also noted the various ways racial discourses have transformed throughout the 20th century. The Cold War has introduced new challenges, trajectories, and allegiances, race refigurings, and vocabularies of whiteness that has shaped how both the immigrants and the domestic populations in Central Eastern Europe were perceived.

I found some of the answers I was looking for: yet I left with further questions. The British Library is its own little universe. In the weeks of the fellowship, one wanders in awe through the various reading rooms and the packed hallways. As a visiting researcher, one is not left to navigate this world on one’s own: the fellowship also gives one the opportunity to talk to the Eccles staff, people who work and research in the British Library and know many of its secrets. And while they are incredibly helpful, it is better to come prepared (the sheer quantity of the material at your fingertips can get intimidating!) but also keep one’s eyes open for surprising turns the research route might take.

The cover of a piece of sheet music, with a Black man in profile and writing that includes a couple of title words decorated with stars and stripes.
Image 1: Dvořáček, Jiří. I, too, am America : 7 songs on the poems of Langston Hughes, for a woman's voice, a man's voice, the trumpet and the piano (1966). Panton 1978. British Library shelfmark: Document Supply MUSIC H01/3169.

Searching through my keywords one day, I found sheet music based on the poetry of Langston Hughes, the African American poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and social activist . It was a 1966 composition by the Czech composer Jiří Dvořáček with lyrics in Czech, English, and German, published in 1978 (Image 1, above). Despite having dealt with Hughes’s Czechoslovak connections extensively, I have never known this sheet music existed and I could not help but hum the melody (albeit very quietly). Hughes was one of the writers Josef Škvorecký also translated before emigrating to Canada. This multilingual, translational, transmedial cultural artifact reminded me that it is important that our scholarship can cross the linguistic, cultural, and national borders in a similar way.

Notes:

Nový Domov: The New Homeland. Toronto. Vol. 9, no. 19 etc. (10 May 1958 - 21 March 1970). Imperfect. British Library shelfmark: General Reference Collection Microform MFM.MC271.D

02 August 2023

Antislavery Print Culture in Nineteenth Century Canada West

Nina Reid-Maroney is Professor of History at Huron University College and was a 2021 Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow at the British Library.

In the summer of 1861, the physician, editor, and Black abolitionist, Dr. Martin Delany returned from a scientific expedition in west Africa to his home Chatham, Canada West. Immersed in the news of the American war, preparing for a lecture tour, and at work on the second section of his serialized antislavery novel, Blake, or The Huts of America, Delany found time to oversee a corrected edition of his Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party, first published in 1860. His preface reviewed the work’s publication history, noting that the previous edition, left in the hands of a friend in England who had subsequently taken ill, found its way into print without important endorsements, editorials, and the table of contents. Delany’s attention to the details of the text and his concern that “many things of much importance, which should have been included, were omitted” speaks to his engagement in abolitionist print culture not only as an author, but as an editor and publisher who understood the activist power of print across a transatlantic network that he had helped to build.1

The 1861 Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party is part of a significant body of British Library material - including scientific writing, ethnography, literature, freedom narratives, sermons and memoir - created by Black abolitionists and their antislavery allies based in nineteenth century Canada West. Starting from the recognition that each book is an archive, my Eccles Centre fellowship focused on the material history of abolitionist texts linked to Canadian abolitionist communities. The project examined copy-specific features, variations among editions, endorsements, advertisements, illustrations, and typography. Using the insights of history of the book and a comparative approach to copies of texts on both sides of the Atlantic, the project helps to reframe Canada’s antislavery history by tracing Black activist networks constituted in print.

From this perspective, familiar texts and authors appear in a new light. The 1851 London edition of Josiah Henson’s narrative is one of three versions and multiple editions of Josiah Henson’s autobiography published between 1849 and 1883. The British Library’s copy of the London edition, part of the third thousandth print run, varies significantly from the Boston edition of the text on which the 1851 edition was based. The London edition includes an account of the Black abolitionist community and school that Henson helped to found, placing Henson’s emancipation narrative in the context of the activist network of underground railroad and the practical resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Introductory material from its editor, the Congregationalist minister and antislavery reformer, Thomas Binney, focuses on Henson’s visit to Britain as an exhibitor at the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace. The paratextual materials of Preface and Appendix and advertisements help to situate Henson in British antislavery networks a year before the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the subsequent long and tortuous association of Josiah Henson with that work’s title character.

Title page of a book; black print on white paper.
The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a Slave, as narrated by himself with a Preface by T. Binney. London: Charles Gilpin, 1851. British Library shelfmark: 10880.a.7.

Ephemeral texts from the Library’s collections add depth and detail to the study of antislavery print culture, revealing connections between the aural culture of Black abolitionist work in Britain and the antislavery networks of the Great Lakes borderlands.2 In 1861, the Reverend Thomas Kinnaird, Black abolitionist and minister in the British Methodist Episcopal Church in Hamilton (Canada West) produced a four-page pamphlet distributed in support of his lecture tour in Britain, raising funds for a new church building and school. The pamphlet, one of only two extant copies, gathered recommendations from a long list of antislavery supporters in Canada West, London, and Glasgow. Its content maps an antislavery network grounded in small Canadian communities and extended across the Atlantic world, while its physical form, creased as though folded and tucked into a pocket and carried home, speaks to its material history and circulation as an antislavery text.

Title page of a book; black print on white paper.
Thomas Kinnaird, Fugitive Slaves in Canada. [An appeal on behalf of Mr. Kinnaird's mission.] 1861. British Library shelfmark: 8175.l.17.

Other works draw attention to the period beyond the 1850s and 1860s, and to the continued conversation across the Black Atlantic in which a new generation of Black authors amplified and gave fresh resonance to voices of the antislavery movement. In 1889, Black activist S. J. Celestine Edwards met the Canadian Bishop of the British Methodist Episcopal Church, Walter Hawkins of Chatham. Hawkins’ time in the UK working on behalf of the BME Church brought him into the activist circles of Edwards, who used his activist platform as a writer, lecturer, and editor to address contemporary issues of race, civil rights, and identity. Edwards’ biography of Walter Hawkins (From Slavery to a Bishopric: The Life of Bishop Walter Hawkins, 1891) is often discussed in relation to the traditional genre of “slave narrative”; when placed alongside Edwards’ other writings in the British Library’s collections, the Hawkins biography can be read in new ways. A fragile copy of Edwards’ lecture titled “Political Atheism”, delivered, as the title page announces, to an audience of 1200 people and published in 1890, helps to situate From Slavery to a Bishopric in the context of Edwards wider political work, and points to an emerging historiography in the post-Emancipation Black Atlantic, in which Walter Hawkins narrative spoke with a voice of resistance that reached beyond the geographic, temporal, and ideological scope usually afforded early narratives histories of the underground railroad.

Title page of a book; black print on white paper with a decorative surround.
S.J. Celestine Edwards, Political Atheism, A Lecture. London: J. Kensit, 1890. British Library shelfmark: 4018.c.18.(2.).

The project has implications for teaching antislavery history in my home institution of Huron University College, which has links to evangelical Anglican antislavery work, and is situated close to historical abolitionist communities in places such as London, Buxton, Chatham, Dresden, Amherstburg, Lucan (Wilberforce) and Windsor. In February 2023, I was able to share research with Huron students and colleagues, as part of a transatlantic undergraduate research project on colonialism, slavery, and resistance in history and memory. Following in the footsteps of Martin Delany, Samuel Ringgold Ward, Josiah Henson, and William Howard Day, whose activism brought them from London (Canada) to London in the years leading up to the American Civil War, students used methodologies of place-based history and history of the book to trace the complex transatlantic world of Black activists. In a workshop facilitated by the Eccles Centre and Huron colleague Scott Schofield (English and Cultural Studies, Huron University) students were able to compare editions and copies of antislavery texts at the British Library with works they had consulted in the Archives and Research Collections Centre at the University of Western Ontario. Steven Cook, Curator of the Josiah Henson Museum of African Canadian History in Dresden, Ontario, accompanied Huron students and faculty on the research trip, and spoke of the importance of the workshop in reconnecting community memory to the complex textual history of Josiah Henson.

Students and teachers around a table looking at books.
Huron University College students and faculty at a workshop on antislavery print materials in the British Library, February 2023. Image, author's own.

The Eccles Fellowship has also laid the foundation for a new research partnership with the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society, Scott Schofield (Huron) and Deirdre McCorkindale (University of Guelph). Using research from the British Library as well as ongoing work with the Archives and Research Collections Centre at Western University, we are building a comparative database of rare antislavery books linked to nineteenth-century Chatham. The Fellowship demonstrated the significance of reconnecting books - material artefacts of the nineteenth-century's greatest struggle for human freedom - with the historical communities and context in which they were written, published, read, reprinted, and circulated.

Notes

1. Martin Delany, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party. New York, Thomas Hamilton; London, Webb, Millington & co; Leeds, J.B. Barry, 1861.
2. R.J.M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall : Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983; Hannah-Rose Murray, Advocates of Freedom : African American Transatlantic Abolitionism in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
3. Douglas A. Lorimer, “Legacies of Slavery for Race, Religion, and Empire: S.J. Celestine Edwards and the Hard Truth (1894).” Slavery & Abolition 39 (2008): 731–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2018.1439670.