Critical Response 1:
As I wrote on the sheet of paper when we first sat in the Rare
Books Room, I still feel as though I should not be in the room. I feel as
though the room is reserved to someone of great power and that no one ever
should be in there. All the books look so old and remind me of “fake” books as
one would put on a bookshelf to decorate one’s home. Everything from the books
to the very chairs that we sit in to read and enjoy seems as though I should
not even begin to touch them as they may fall apart.
Although I only looked through two of the volumes of Household Words, I was
able to find many interesting pieces of information about the Victorian period
and of the judicial system as it was in those days. During the hour I
researched information surrounding the courts, although I did take to noticing
many other articles throughout each volume. It was interesting to note that the
stories or articles or whatever one may find in the volumes that they were all
listed alphabetical and it seemed as though I was reading a very long book but
each part or story of it had its own special section.
In these two volumes, one could find anything from stories of
travel, to what it was like to be a war prisoner to variations of different
advertisements and many stories that one now a days would find in a collection
of short stories. It did seem as though they did not have an sort of direction
being that it was all put in alphabetical but as reading Bleak House, it seems
during that time period, there wasn’t much direction of anything at all, mind
you that the courts seem to jump around and adults do not take to looking after
their own children.
There were some very interesting articles that I did find and one
in particular was that there was a section titled “Letters to the High
Sheriff”. These were basically individuals writing to the sheriff that they
were interested in the position of “hangman”. I found this a very interesting
way of doing things and that such information was made public to everyone.
Reading these small, as you would say “resumes” gave me direction and allowed
me to create my own for our eperiodical.
Casey Weitz
Critical Response #1 by Rebecca See
I’ve never been in the rare books room before. Once I was
given a book to handle, I didn’t know how to handle and hold the book for fear
of damaging the book even more than they were already. Reading from these books
was a new experience for me and I was awe-struck how I felt like I was being
transported back in time as I was reading out of Household Words and All
the Year Round. Walking into the rare books room, I felt like I also
was transported back in time with how the room felt and looked. All the books
and articles in the room were from decades ago so I in turn felt like I was as
old as those pieces. It was surprising to see how the books back then were
bound and made differently than they are today. Most covers had a marble design
on them to catch a reader’s eye. Some covers were either a quarter or half
leather to also catch a person’s eye on the bookshelf. In the two books that I
looked at, there were no illustrations in them but some periodicals would
include them in it as well.
As I was reading out of the two books, I mostly was looking for
articles that fit my role in the courts. I found many on murder trials or even
the price of keeping the prisoners in the jail each year. As I skimmed through
a couple volumes, I noticed that the way fiction and nonfiction articles don’t
flow well together, they become somewhat choppy in the sense that when an
installment of a book ends, then the next article that may come after could be
irrelevant to the installment. I noticed that most of the short articles
contained either cases of what happened in the past few weeks or some complaint
that the author felt needed to be published. When I was reading through the
table of contents in each of the volumes, I noticed that some of the titles to
articles were far out there, like “Pet Prisoners” which referred to the
conditions of the prisoners and the amount of food the prisoners received
compared to workers in a workhouse (see image). It had nothing to do with pets,
which I thought it may. Another title that I interpreted wrong was called “The
Murdered Person” which talked about the different laws that one could get away
with and laws one can’t. So some of the titles that appealed to me or that I
interpreted would be not interpreted the same as the Victorians. I also noticed
that some article titles that were listed in the table of contents were
actually not articles themselves but are sections within an article. I did like
however, at the end of an installment that there was usually some sort of
cliffhanger that kept the reader thinking and interested until the next one
came out.
Critical Response 1:
Reading in the Rare Books Room was a very interesting and
thought-provoking experience. I felt that reading from the physical
journals was a very different experience from reading the electronic
versions. I felt much more connected to history with the physical
books. I loved flipping through the pages of the original copies that
people just like me did over 150 years ago. Reading All the Year
Round and Household Words helped transport me to the
Victorian era; it helped me really understand the context of Victorian novels
like Bleak House.
Although we had already mentioned this during class, the
incredibly wide variety of topics really struck me. Nowadays, if a person
reads a magazine, it probably is one that focuses on a specific topic, like
health, beauty, cooking, etc. He or she would pick up that magazine to
read about their particular interest or hobby. The periodicals, on the
other hand, are so much broader. I wonder if it was because people were
more well-rounded during that time period. Did they take a genuine
interest in things that the average person in the modern world wouldn’t care
about? They might have put more value in being well-read on a variety of
subjects than we do. Personally, I believe the Victorians had a thirst
for knowledge and understanding that is severely lacking in today’s society,
even though we have access to amounts of information that would astound the
Victorians.
I came across many
interesting, amusing, or odd articles in Household Words and All
the Year Round. There was everything from articles about life in
Africa to poetry. One article was entitled “Happy as a Princess”.
It opened by describing every little girl’s dream: being a princess, wearing
beautiful gowns, and being rescued by a gallant prince. However, the
article then struck a harsh contrast between the fantasy and the real world,
giving examples of real-life princesses who certainly did not have easy
lives. Another article was called “American Theatrical Experience”, and
bluntly stated: “Neither art, nor the drama, nor literature, nor criticism, can
be expected to stand very high in a new country where the population is of a
mixed race…”. The author was clearly of the opinion that Americans either
created very poor quality art, or largely stole from the Europeans.
Reading in the Rare Books Room provided an amazing
insight into the past – what the Victorians would have learned about, what they
cared about, what issues were important to them. It was also very
interesting to compare to modern-day views about the world.
- Hannah Swart
Critical Response 1:
In class on January 10th, my group was given the
opportunity to examine the journals published by Charles Dickens, Household
Words and All the Year Round in their original forms
in the Rare Books Room. I chose to focus on examining Household
Words following my research in the online databases the day
before. I found that the research I had done prior to going into the Rare
Books Room helped me focus in on what I was looking for, and what I did and did
not need to spend time reading. The first volume of works I looked at was Household
Words: Vols. V-VI, 1852-1853.
In my first flip through
the volume, I found articles about post-office money orders, a Sunday morning
lecture—“The Camera Obscura”—and a report on a shipwrecked sailor who was held
prisoner in Ceylon on the island of Kandy and made a daring escape back to
England all in just the first issue. Additionally, there was Chips,
what appeared to be an ongoing story in each weekly installment of Household
Words. As I moved to the next issue, I found more articles vastly
different from even the first few. In the second issue I examined, there
was an article about a children’s hospital, a possible “apparition” (ghost
sighting), and a song called “King of Dirt” and “adapted to a slow sanitary
movement”. Each issue of the journal has a multitude of articles and
fiction and nonfiction piece.
I did begin to see a pattern though. Each weekly installment
had at least one news article, a human interest article, some sort of poem,
song or lecture, and a fiction piece of writing. It seemed as though
Dickens, as the editor, made sure to lighten the load of the potentially
“heavier” readings, like the news articles or human interest pieces, by
interweaving poems and stories. (See image for example of this incorporation)
The Victorians, as far as I can tell, were people who loved differentiated
instruction; they sought to experience it all. This was obvious through
the inclusion of multiple different pieces about different cultures and their
governments. China, France, India, and Spain were all mentioned within
the volume’s table of contents.
My experience in the reading room often reminded me of my
experience at the Hoover Library and Archives last J-term. The opportunity
to delve into the documents in their original form is so unique, and I truly
appreciate it. Reading and handling the original copies really enhances
the experience, and makes it easier to connect with the people we’re spending
so much time learning about. The volume of Household Words was
very intimidating to me, however. It was sometimes hard to imagine Household
Words in its single installment form, like a modern magazine
would be published.
- Kelly Wedlake
Critical Response #1
Being exposed to original documents is always
interesting. Just knowing that they are from a time and place way different
that your own is something that is always worthy of being looked into. This
week we examined All The Year Round and Household
Words which are journals that Charles Dickens, along with others,
worked on in the mid to late 1800s. These original documents are very different
than what is seen today. First off the pages just feel older because of the era
in which they originated and also the pages are more ornate. When looking at
all the documents as a whole I can see that the pages make a design that is
also very interesting. This may have been part of the binding process but
nevertheless time was spent to make these documents special because that is
what they are. When looking at Household Words, the pages are also
sometimes different colors. I have taken a picture to show how some of those
pages have a bluish hue to them while there is a pages directly opposite to
that one that has a pinkish tint to it. This is something that may draw readers’
attention in a more blunt way in a time where colored pictures weren’t really a
popular thing from just looking at these journals.
When reading the articles in this week, there
were definitely some differences compared to those ways that we get information
in today’s society. The topics were really different and definitely reflected
the times that were back then. There was one article in which I took an excerpt
from that showed the support for the South in the Civil War. This is very
interesting seeing an article in which the British were taking the side of the
Confederates and explaining their tactics and success that they were having in
that war. This really stood out because when you think of the Civil War
we really think of it from the American perspective and not really consider how
it impacted those who were outside of the country. A country like England would
have loved to see the Union go down because they had previously been defeated almost
a century earlier in the Revolutionary War.
Another thing that I noticed as well was the different between Household
Words and All The Year Round. In Household Words,
there was more of a newspaper feel to it. It felt more like a local newspaper
with pictures and advertisements that the average person could be seen reading.
When I opened All The Year Round, it felt more like a scholarly
journal. There were articles that pertained to everyday society and important
issues, along with the serials that were in the journal as well. This journal
had more of a New York Times feel to it. No pictures were
found in the issues that I explored but it was still an important journal
because of the articles that were in there. There were articles that had
different types of music with actual note music written on it. There were also
issues of law that I looked at along with prisoner treatment and the study of a
convict that was currently in the prison system.
-Nicholas Estrada
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