Library Discovery Shines A Light

On 19th Century Culture

By Nancy K. Crevier

A Newtown gentleman settles into his chair, the gas lamp on the desk casting a dim glow onto the magazine that sits in his lap. Nearby, his wife and daughter take up their knitting in the falling dusk and wait expectantly as he opens the latest issue of the 1864 Harper’s Monthly magazine and begins to read.

The English author is famous, having already published The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol, so the family is eager to hear “Our Mutual Friend,” by Charles Dickens. “Book First, The Cup and The Lip,” he begins to read. “In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise….”

It was a scene that was repeated all over Newtown and towns nationwide each month when coveted monthly magazines arrived at the homes of fortunate subscribers, beginning in the mid-1800s, and now patrons of the C.H. Booth Library can tumble backward in time with the discovery in the library’s attic this summer of a cache of dozens of Harper’s Monthly, Scribner’s Monthly, Century, and Atlantic magazines, from the late 19th Century through the early 20th Century.

“This one made me realize what we had here,” said Town Historian Dan Cruson, as he displayed the leather bound volume containing the publication of “Our Mutual Friend.”

“It was significant to me because I had heard that Charles Dickens had first published his stories in serial form, but this was the first time I had ever seen it,” he said.

Mr Cruson has spent “many, many pleasurable hours” browsing the volumes of magazines since library staff uncovered the dusty tomes tucked away on shelves in the attic. Initially earmarked to go to the Friends of the C.H. Booth Library for the annual Book Sale in July, Mr Cruson caught wind of it and began to thumb through the issues. “I immediately put the kibosh on that idea when I saw what we had here,” he said.

The value in preserving these magazine collections and making them available to the public lies in the fact that they serve as a literary and social history of the United States from the 1850s to the turn of the last century, Mr Cruson said. “It’s a virtual digest of 19th Century life and culture in letters,” he said.

The mostly three-quarters leather bound volumes of magazines were put together for the Newtown Library Association, explained Mr Cruson. Private patrons who subscribed to magazines — and not everyone could afford to do so at that time — would save the magazines and have them bound in volumes and gifted to the library. A few of the volumes still bear the binding stamp affixed to the upper left hand corner of the front covering, indicating the name of the binder and where the volumes were bound. “These are a legacy of the early library,” Mr Cruson said, which was located in the Scudder Building on Main Street across from today’s C.H. Booth Library.

“The volumes remained there until the early 1900s when the library moved into the Beech Memorial Library at the top of Main Street. That closed in 1934, with a little overlap of the opening of the Booth Library in 1931. They were probably moved to the Booth, put into the attic, and forgotten. Someone got as far as putting book plates in the front of each volume commemorating the gift to Booth from the Newtown Library Association, but that was as far as they got,” Mr Cruson said. It was most likely a space issue that prevented the magazines from going into general circulation, he said. “They weren’t closeted, and they were very much appreciated gifts when received, but very few knew or remembered that they existed up there in the attic until this summer’s discovery,” he said.

First publications by other well-known authors have come to light as Mr Cruson has paged through the magazines. In an 1874 issue of Scribner’s is the first installment of Jules Vernes’ “The Mysterious Island,” later published in novel form. What is unusual about this discovery, said Mr Cruson, is the inclusion of illustrations originally intended for publication in the magazine. “It was heavily illustrated with pictures not published in the first editions of the book. The exciting thing, too, is that this is the first appearance of this story, anywhere,” Mr Cruson said.

Twenty-First Century readers can run their fingers over the pages of Scribner’s publication of Thomas Hardy’s first American appearance, where in 1878 “The Return of the Native” appeared in serial form. And readers in the know will recognize what Mr Cruson did when he came across the story, “An Open 43 Days in a Boat” by Mark Swain.

“I knew ahead of time what I was looking for,” confessed Mr Cruson. “I had been researching Mark Twain and in scouring his bibliography I came across a notation that his first publication in 1866 in a national magazine included a typo of his last name. Mark Swain is indeed Mark Twain,” he said.

“One of the things I love about reading these magazines is that you have Mark Twain, but you also have other members of the Nook Farm group — Charles Dudley Warner, who was editor of the then Connecticut Courant, and Catherine Beecher, the sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example,” Mr Cruson said.

The other big discovery within the aging pages was poetry. “Poetry was published much more frequently than it is today, and here in the 1879 Harper’s you’ll find Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Iron Pen,” and “The Shifting of Peter.”” There are also examples of fiction and poetry from Brett Harte, along with the discovery of authors that have now slipped into obscurity, he said. One such author, Edward Everett Hale, penned “Man Without A Country,” and was a popular author in the 19th Century.

What has struck the town historian is the quality of the magazines. “Harper’s was considered a general reading magazine, such as Reader’s Digest would be today, but the writing level was never written down to the lowest common denominator. The scientific articles were very scholarly,” he said, comparable to today’s Scientific American.

He has also been impressed with the illustrations that accompanied the articles, including many by Sandy Hook illustrator William Hamilton Gibson. “These are very detailed nature drawings, and just beautiful,” said Mr Cruson.

Several volumes remain to be examined, with a number of them not yet even brought down from the attic, and Mr Cruson is sure there are more literary discoveries to be made. “These are a gold mine for anyone who wants to poke through 19th Century literature. Here, they will find obscure poems, as well as great poems, nonfiction, and fiction,” he said. “It’s fantastic that it’s a part of our library heritage.”

The bound volumes of magazines are not in general circulation, but can be perused by the public in the reference section of the C.H. Booth Library, third floor. The volumes are shelved on the east wall of the room, near the Newtown Authors and Illustrators section.