frontispiece — Rachel Hammersley's Blog

The exhibition poster. Image by Rachel Hammersley.

On 8th December 2023 the exhibition 'Encountering Political Texts 1640-1770' - the final event of the Experiencing Political Texts project - opened at the National Library of Scotland. I offered an appetiser for the exhibition in my last blogpost by discussing the various books bound by Thomas Hollis that were donated to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh, some of which appear in the exhibition. This month I offer a taste of some of the other items on display - focusing on the themes of materiality, genre and the debating of issues in print.

Materiality

Opening graphics on the wall of the exhibition. Image by Rachel Hammersley

The Hollis editions are interesting because of their elaborate bindings and handwritten marginalia, which reflect Hollis's own reading of the texts. Other items on display in the exhibition also reflect the importance of texts as material objects. At the other end of the spectrum from the lavish Hollis volumes are the examples of unbound pamphlets. Reading 'original' pamphlets today generally involves going to a Special Collections reading room and identifying the pamphlet within a volume of such material that was bound together in book form at a later point in time. This experience of encountering early modern pamphlets is very different from that of their original readers. Pamphlets would have been sold on the streets by hawkers. They will have varied in size and quality, but many will have consisted of just a few pages of text printed on flimsy paper, their ephemerality reflecting the fact that they were often interventions in specific (and sometimes fleeting) events - a bit like a social media post today. They were not really intended to last - and it is important that we remember this when reading them.

Other material from the seventeenth century takes a more elaborate physical form. A prime example here are the three volumes of Eikon Basilike that appear in the exhibition. This important work was published in the immediate aftermath of the execution of Charles I in January 1649. Said to be based on Charles's own thoughts and writings during his imprisonment, this was a powerful work which sought to transform the failed king, who had been executed by some of his subjects, into a martyr worthy of veneration. The frontispiece image reflects this aim in its depiction of Charles discarding his earthly crown and seeking instead the heavenly crown of martyrdom. (A more detailed analysis of the image is available here). I have seen at least one version of this image that has been hand-coloured, with the King's robe light pink and his sleeves a deeper maroon. (In fact, the striking pink colour scheme of our project - which is reflected in the NLS exhibition - was inspired by this). While the version of the image in our exhibition is in black and white, the title page of the work, which is also on display, includes red ink, which was more costly to produce and so again an indicator of quality. The NLS also holds a small version of Eikon Basilike which has an embroidered cover. Whereas the red type was the work of the printer, this cover was probably produced by the owner of the work, reflecting its importance and significance to them.

Infographic produced by Nifty Fox reflecting the reading group discussion on ‘Books as Physical Objects’ as displayed in the Encountering Political Texts exhibition. Image by Rachel Hammersley

This beautiful little book reminded me of the Reading Group session we held earlier in 2023, to which each member brought a book that was special to them. One participant bought along a book with a handmade cover, like the copy of Eikon Basilike on display. Others had marginalia or material pasted or tipped in by the owner - and again we have an example of this in the exhibition. One of several pamphlets on display that engages with the debate over the union between England and Scotland in 1707, Parainesis Pacifica; or, A perswasive to the union of Britain has a letter tipped in at the back.

Genres

Another theme of our project that is reflected in the exhibition is the variety of genres used to convey political ideas. While pamphlets that engaged directly with contemporary debates, and presented the argument or viewpoint of the author, were common at this time, political ideas could also be conveyed through texts originally intended for oral delivery, such as proclamations and sermons (which would be preached from the pulpit and then printed). We have a number of these relating to the Union debate on display in the exhibition. Fictional forms such as utopias, invented travel narratives, and imagined dialogues were also popular ways of conveying political ideas in the early modern period. In addition, humour could be deployed to convey an argument in a more forceful way, as in the case of The comical history of the mariage betwixt Fergusia and Heptarchus - a humorous take on the union debate - which is included in the exhibition.

For many years newspapers were a key vehicle for transmitting up-to-date political news and information. At the present time when these are shifting online and are at risk of being overshadowed as a news source by social media, it is interesting to look back to their origins. While newspapers as we know them are generally seen as emerging in the eighteenth century, the mid-seventeenth-century crisis in the British Isles prompted the publication of newsbooks which served a similar purpose. Like modern newspapers they took different political stances (there were both royalist and parliamentarian newsbooks) and often included an editorial as a preface to the account of current affairs. At the NLS exhibition there are examples of several seventeenth-century newsbooks including Mercurius Politicus, Mercurius Britanicus, and The Publick Intelligencer.

Debates in Print.

Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, by Andrew Birrell, published by Robert Wilkinson, after William Aikman, line engraving, 1798. National Portrait Gallery NPG D30937. Produced under a Creative Commons Licence.

As well as conveying and spreading knowledge of recent events, print could also be the site for political debate. The Union debate in the early eighteenth century generated a huge amount of printed material. Various examples are on display in the exhibition (some of which have already been mentioned). Sometimes individual authors would produce multiple responses and counter-responses to each other in print. In the exhibition are pamphlets attributed to Andrew Fletcher and James Webster produced in 1706-7. The initial pamphlet attributed to Fletcher did not explicitly oppose the idea of union, but suggested that a more equal union would be secured if each nation retained its own Parliament. On the other side, Webster, a Presbyterian minister who had previously been imprisoned for his religious opinions, argued against union on any terms, largely because of the impact it would have on the Scottish Kirk. Reading all the pamphlets in the debate gives a sense of how it unfolded and the different views it generated. We have to be careful too about authorship. Recent scholarship, as reflected in the article on Fletcher in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, suggests that although the pamphlet State of the Controversy betwixt United and Separate Parliaments was attributed to Fletcher, it was probably not written by him (John Robertson, 'Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun (1653?-1716)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

While this exhibition is the final element of our Experiencing Political Texts project, this first blogpost of the year is an opportunity to look forward as well as backward. We are already planning to explore the themes of the exhibition with audiences in Edinburgh at two workshops linked to the exhibition that will be held on Tuesday 27 February and Tuesday 9 April 2024. It should be possible to sign up for these events via Eventbrite soon. In addition, we are already exploring how we can develop the ideas generated by the Experiencing Political Texts project in a new project focusing on Political Education. We are holding an initial exploratory workshop for this project in Newcastle on 17 January 2024. I hope to provide further updates as the year progresses.

Ever since I volunteered, as an undergraduate, in the Coins and Medals Department of the British Museum, I have been interested in how complex ideas can be presented effectively to the general public. As a volunteer I sat in on an initial meeting to discuss plans for what would become the permanent Money Gallery. I remember the excitement of thinking about how to convey centuries of history accurately - but also accessibly - with a restricted number of objects and very little text. Though I ended up becoming an academic rather than a curator, that challenge has always appealed to me. For this reason, when applying for funding for the Experiencing Political Texts project, I was keen to include an exhibition as one of our outputs. In the end we decided to offer two - one at the Robinson Library at Newcastle University and another at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. The former opens this month and in this blogpost I hope to encourage you to visit the exhibition by providing a taste of its content.

Encountering Political Texts

An unbound pamphlet *The Last Newes from the North* (London, 1646). Newcastle University, Robinson Library, Rare Books: RB 942.062 LAS.

How do we encounter political ideas and information? How did early modern people do so? And what do we make of their political texts? A work like Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, a daunting volume that argues the case for the divine right of kings on the basis that all kings are descended directly from Adam, is likely to feel very alien and inaccessible to a modern audience. The regular use of Latin phrases, the grounding in Biblical learning, the long unwieldy sentences, the use of the long 's' (which looks like an 'f') all conspire to put the modern reader off. Filmer's text is still read today (indeed it appears in Cambridge University Press's 'blue text' series in an edition produced by Johann Somerville in 1991) and it has been the subject of an important recent monograph by Cesare Cuttica. Yet its survival owes less to its relevance today than to the fact that it acted as a provocation to at least three important political texts of the 1680s: James Tyrell's Patriarcha non Monarcha (1681); John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690) and Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government (1699).

Of course, not all early modern political texts took the form of, often lengthy, books. During the turbulent period of the British Civil Wars politics was increasingly conveyed to a wider public via newsbooks (the forerunner of the modern newspaper), pamphlets (short cheap publications usually engaging with a specific political issue), broadsides (a single page that was designed to be posted up on a wall), and even ballads (political songs). There were, therefore, lots of opportunities for people - even those with limited literacy - to gain political knowledge and engage with current affairs.

The Physical Book

A central theme of the Experiencing Political Texts project has been the idea that books are physical objects and that their materiality can contribute directly to their argument. Paying attention to features such as the the size, paper quality, typeface, and ink can contribute to our understanding of the message the author was seeking to convey and how it might have been received by readers. Moreover, changes in these features in different editions of a particular work can transform the reading experience and how the work is interpreted and understood. In the exhibition we explore these issues by displaying alongside each other several different versions of James Harrington's The Commonwealth of Oceana.

The Imagery of Politics

Thomas Hobbes, *Leviathan* (London, 1651), frontispiece. Newcastle University Special Collections and Archives, Bainbrigg: BAI 1651 HOB.

Authors can use images as well as words to convey their ideas to readers. Some early modern books (especially expensive volumes) began with a frontispiece illustration that conveyed the argument of the book in visual form. The exhibition includes two early examples of this: Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan and the Eikon Basilike. It also considers what authors did to present their argument succinctly when they could not afford a fancy illustration.

Editing Political Ideas

The Author’s Preface to John Milton, *A Defence of the People of England*, ed. Joseph Washington (Amsterdam, 1692). Newcastle University, Robinson Library, Bainbrigg: BAI 1692 MIL.

Important political texts tend to survive beyond their immediate context and might be reissued multiple times. Though the text itself usually remains relatively stable, editors will adapt the size, quality, and design to suit their intended audience and may also add paratextual material to make the text accessible to contemporary readers or to demonstrate the relevance of the ideas to the times. The exhibition uses editions of John Milton's prose text Pro populo anglicano defensio (A Defence of the People of England) to demonstrate just how an editor can influence how a text might be approached and read.

Editing Ancient Politics

Of course, early modern editors also produced their own editions of older texts, especially those from ancient Greece and Rome, which were viewed as providing important insights on political matters. As with editions of contemporary texts, decisions about design and production were used to direct the work to particular audiences and to influence how it was read. In particular, there is a distinction to be drawn between works aimed specifically at learned readers and those intended for wider consumption.

Politics in Periodicals

Periodical publications were one of the success stories of the eighteenth century. The number of titles expanded rapidly and their format and relatively low cost made them accessible for those beyond the political élite, including artisans and women. While part of their aim was to entertain, many also included a philosophical, moral, or political dimension, prompting us to ask whether these count as 'political' texts.

Thomas Spence’s periodical *Pigs’ Meat, or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude* (London, 1793-1795). Newcastle University, Robinson Library, Rare Books: RB 331.04 PIG.

Conversations in Print

Some periodicals also encouraged debate - inviting readers to respond to articles via letters or essays of their own. This idea of print as a forum for debate was also reflected in the 'pamphlet wars' of the early modern period in which two or more authors debated a particular issue or issues. The exhibition provides examples of both exchanges that occurred quickly, within a matter of weeks, and those that occurred over a longer period of time.

Experiencing Political Texts

Ultimately our aim is to encourage visitors to think more deeply about the nature of political texts. What makes a text political? How does its physical form contribute to that characterisation? We might even ask what constitutes a text? We are also keen to encourage people to think about how the form in which they read a work affects the reading experience. The experience of reading a text digitally on a screen is different from reading the same text in hard copy. But equally, reading an original edition of an early modern text is a different experience from reading a modern edition. It is even the case that reading an original edition today is different from the experience of reading it when it was initially produced. Finally, does this lead us to think differently about how we engage with politics today?