Afterlives of Little Goody Two Shoes 

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On the title page, a girl and boy walk hand and hand in a rural landscape

The History of Goody Two Shoes, between 1823 and 1830

The story of Margery Meanwell, or Little Goody Two Shoes, is a Cinderella-type narrative that is driven by morality rather than fairy godmothers. First published in 1765, the story begins when Margery and Thomas Meanwell are orphaned. Thomas is sent off to sea; Margery goes to live in the home of friendly neighbors. There, she is given a pair of new shoes, and her excited exclamations over the fact leads to her name “Two Shoes.” Goody means “goodwife,” or as we might say, “missus,” and is a fondly joking name to call a little girl. The rest of the story is presented as a series of vignettes in which Margery overcomes adversity to become a teacher and a respected community member. Margery catches the eye of Sir Charles Jones, and they marry, making her Lady Jones. During the wedding her brother returns. The siblings live happily, made prosperous by their industry.

The popularity of Margery’s meritocratic story led to numerous editions and alternate versions of Little Goody Two Shoes. Within Bryn Mawr’s collections, we have condensed versions, versions in rhyme, story books where Margery makes cameo appearances, and several derivative works. Two such derivative works are The Renowned History of Primrose Prettyface and The Entertaining History of Little Goody Goosecap.

A still life unrelated to the story includes a marble bust, a tennis or badminton raquet. a book, and drapery

The Entertaining History of Little Goody Goosecap, 1828.

 

Both Primrose Prettyface and Goody Goosecap were issued by John Marshall, a British children’s book publisher who followed in the footsteps of John Newbery. Newbery had published Margery’s story initially, and Marshall capitalized on the trend. However, despite the similarities in themes and nicknames, there are significant differences among the three.

Primrose Prettyface also loses her parents at the beginning of her story. She meets Lady Worthy, who provides her with books that Primrose uses to teach other children. Primrose later takes a position as a maid for the family of Squire Homestead. After leaving Squire Homestead, Primrose finds her way back to Lady Worthy, working as a maid, then as a lady’s companion. Eventually, Lady Worthy’s son returns from university, and after he and Primrose form an attachment, they marry. There are two child-deaths in Primrose Prettyface that function as moral stories. First, one of Primrose’s students, a little boy, wanders off and drowns in a river. The other instance is a house fire in which the cruel son of Squire Homestead and a footman perish.

Lady in elegant clothing speaks witha planly dressed girl

Lady Worthy, The Renowned History of Primrose Prettyface, 1783

Goody Goosecap also recounts the story of an orphan, “Fanny Fairchild.” Her neglectful uncle spends her inheritance and sends Fanny to a charity school. She is later adopted by Mrs. Bountiful who takes her to London and introduces her to society. After they return to the country, Mrs. Bountiful’s son returns from the East Indies and is attracted to the 16-year-old Fanny. In an unexpected stroke of luck, Fanny’s estranged uncle dies, leaving her a fortune of 10,000 pounds. Mrs. Bountiful becomes very sick and expresses a dying wish to see Fanny marry her son. But she recovers, and Fanny establishes herself as a teacher before her marriage, instructing local children on how to be both good and wise. Finally, after much anticipation, Fanny and Mr. Bountiful marry. Goody Goosecap also includes a cautionary incident. As in Primrose Prettyface, a little girl wanders off, but in this story her punishment takes the form of violent kidnappers.

These two derivative works differ tonally and thematically from Goody Two Shoes with their inclusion of loving marriage as a reward for industry and goodness. In Margery’s story, marriage comes as an afterthought; we know little of the man she marries except that he is older than she. Margery’s happy ending instead revolves around the return of her brother. The sons of Mrs. Bountiful and Lady Worthy effectively displace Margery’s brother in the narrative. All three men spend a significant portion of the stories abroad and only return once the heroine has matured.

Margery and Thomas Meanwell, beg for food. A woman brings a plate for them while a dog begs.

Marjory and Thomas Meanwell, The Renowned History of Goody Two-Shoes, 1845.

Replacing Tommy with a romantic figure simplifies the story. Unlike Goody Two Shoes, there are no longer two male companions competing for the heroine. It also transforms the stories of Primrose Prettyface and Goody Goosecap into more mature romances, as we see the growth of each relationship. Margery, in contrast, ends up exactly where she began at the end of her story, at her brother’s side. Despite being married to a gentleman, his character remains vague and the reader focuses more on the reunion of the siblings. The Little Goody Two Shoes narrative from the 1760s took on many different forms following its initial publication, and in Primrose Prettyface and Goody Goosecap, we see Margery’s story maintain its instructive status but also evolve as a romance.

Both derivative works are didactic; the boys who die and the girl who is kidnapped are not sympathetic characters, but rather rhetorical devices. The narrators urge us to scold the children for being naughty and disobedient. Whenever a child is harmed, the reader is meant to learn from their mistakes: do not disobey your parents or you might die a horrible death. By increasing the stakes in both stories, the authors privilege moralizing themes.

Good and bad children compared in The Entertaining History of Little Goody Goosecap, 1828.

All three stories teach their readers to be industrious and obey, as well as read (and, presumably, buy) more books in order to move up in the world. Margery, Fanny, and Primrose are paragons of industry and obedience, and therefore are rewarded. Margery gains material wealth and reunites with her brother by the end of her story. She no longer has to sleep in a barn because her virtues and knowledge make her eligible for a successful marriage. Primrose and Fanny find similar material wealth, but also achieve loving marriages.

Reading all three of these stories back-to-back made their similarities clear, but I also noticed how Marshall’s books deviate from Goody Two Shoes. Margery’s story is very episodic and therefore the characters are less developed and the story does not flow. I personally found Primrose Prettyface and Goody Goosecap more enjoyable because of their recurring casts of characters. Primrose and Fanny are also allowed more growth in their stories, as they develop relationships. Margery’s closest relationship is with her brother, who is absent for the majority of the story. Each book was written with the intention of teaching simple lessons on learning and industry to young readers, but the stories of Primrose and Fanny stand out because of their attention to relationships and character growth.

Several adults and a child gather around a church door, out of which Marjory steps. Caption reads, "The key was now applied to the door, and on its being opened, Little Margery walked forth."

Marjory Meanwell, The Renowned History of Goody Two-Shoes, 1845.

Elinor Berger, BMC 2022

The Entertaining History of Little Goody Goosecap: Containing a Variety of Amusing and Instructive Adventures. London: Printed for John Harris, & Baldwin and Cradock, by S. and R. Bentley, 1828.

Goldsmith, Oliver and John Giles. The History of Goody Two Shoes. Embellished with Col’d. Engravings. London: Published by R. Miller; Old Fish Street, 1823-1830.

Marshall, John. The Renowned History of Primrose Prettyface. London: Printed in the year when all little boys and girls should be good, and sold by John Marshall and Co. No. 4, Aldermary Church Yard, Bow Lane, 1783.

The Renowned History of Goody Two-Shoes, Otherwise Called Margery Meanwell: With Some Account of Her Brother Tommy. G. P. Nicholls, engraver, and Francis William Topham, illustrator. London: James Burns, 17 Portman Street, Portman Square, 1845.

Animating the Bryn Mawr Painter

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by Mallory Fitzpatrick, PhD student in Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies


I never knew how many things don’t get included in an exhibition until I started planning one. When my fellow committee members and I began browsing the Tri-Co Special Collections databases for Freeze!: Material Cultures of Movement, the exhibition accompanying Bryn Mawr College’s 13th Biennial Graduate Group Symposium, we worried it would be difficult to find objects that reflected the symposium’s theme, kinesis. But in truth, we ran into exactly the opposite problem—there were far more objects we wanted to include than we possibly could.

One such object was item P.95, a red-figure clay plate from ca. 500 BCE Attica. Perhaps the best-known item in Bryn Mawr’s collection of Greek pottery, this plate, which gives the Bryn Mawr Painter his name, features a bearded man, his arm extended as he tips his kylix—a large, shallow drinking vessel—forward. He’s playing kottabos, a common game at ancient Greek symposia, or drinking parties. The goal of the game is to flick one’s wine dregs at a target in the middle of a room, usually aiming either to knock a small disc from its stand or sometimes to sink small dishes floating in a bowl. (If you’re having trouble picturing this, check out Professor Heather Sharpe’s real-life recreation at West Chester University of Pennsylvania from a few years ago.)

Bryn Mawr’s kottabos player holds his kylix, ready to take his best shot. The plate didn’t make it into our physical exhibition, but I couldn’t quite let go of the idea of using it for our website. As a classics graduate student, this object with its Greek inscription (ΗΟ ΠΑΙΣ ΚΑΛΟΣ, “the beautiful boy”) found a special place in my heart, as it has for so many Bryn Mawr students and faculty over the years. We couldn’t display the plate itself, due to the constraints of our exhibition space. But, I thought, maybe there was another way to demonstrate its relevance to the symposium.

Though the theme of the symposium and initial guiding principle of the exhibition was kinesis, that is, movement and motion, all of our exhibition objects would sit in cases and frames. But using high-resolution images, Photoshop, and a tutorial created by Holly Barbaccia, there was another way to bring static images like the Bryn Mawr painter’s kottabos player to life: to animate the figure by turning it into a GIF.

Most of us are familiar with GIFs, or Graphics Interchange Format, from their ubiquitous presence on the internet. The idea to turn the kottabos player into a GIF came from projects like Image du Monde, which produced animated illustrations from medieval manuscripts. Using the guidelines on their website, I set about animating the kottabos player and other images from the exhibition.

It took me a few tries to get the hang of things. In the first version of the kottabos player I made, only his kylix moved. That was neat, but it wasn’t as forceful as I wanted. There was a certain stiffness—why would the cup fly through the air if his arm remained stationary? So I went back to the drawing board and got to work on an improved version.



 

Now the player throws his cup with enthusiasm, his arm completing the necessary movement and hurling the kylix with a much more lifelike motion. This version of the GIF captures the dynamism of the game. But…it isn’t exactly accurate. In a real game of kottabos, the cup wouldn’t leave the player’s hand. (Or at least, it wasn’t supposed to. We may perhaps imagine that sometimes players who’d had a little too much to drink may have accidentally released their drinking vessels, like our overenthusiastic friend pictured above.) The second version of the GIF gives the fullest range of motion to the player, which is what I wanted to highlight for the symposium’s theme of kinesis. But I also wanted to produce a version that was more accurately representative of the game, as seen below.

Now, our player tips his kylix in a more restrained manner with just enough force to hurl his wine dregs. Success! … At least, partially. According to the Greek comic poet Antiphanes, success in kottabos is all in the wrist, which I neglected to move in this animation.

 

 

 

 

But the kottabos player wasn’t the only image I animated, though it was the most successful. (And is my personal favorite.) As it turns out, Greek red figure pottery is particularly well-suited for this task. The simple color scheme, well-defined lines, and most of all the single, solid shade of the background allows animations like these to look relatively smooth and realistic.

It’s much more difficult to create the animated effects with varied backgrounds and color schemes. For instance, take this photo of an annular eclipse, an exhibition object which is generously being loaned from Haverford College’s collection:

I wanted to animate this photo to watch the stages of the eclipse happen one after the other. But this was much trickier than the kottabos painter. First there was the matter of the grainy pattern and uneven lighting of the photo’s background. I had trouble reproducing the variety of colors and texture.

After a bit of experimentation, I found a cloning tool in Photoshop that allowed me to replicate the background much better. But there were still challenges. The outlines of the eclipse aren’t as crisp and clear-cut as those of the kottabos player; the lighting of the sun creates fuzzier boundaries, so even when the background has been improved and the speed increased to make a more fluid movement across the sky, this GIF doesn’t quite capture the beautiful glow and luminous detail of the original photo:


My third and final experiment (for the time being, at least) came from Eadweard Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” photograph series. These photographs show sequenced images of people and animals in motion, like plate 617 below, which presents a nude man riding a horse:

Animating this image was a bit different. For the first two, I was only working with one image and moving individual parts of that image to animate it. Here, however, I had twelve images that I was trying to make into one. Instead of manipulating small pieces of a single picture, I separated each of Muybridge’s photos and stitched them together to show our horse and rider in action:


This one also isn’t as smooth as the kottabos player. Though I didn’t have to match the background the way I did for the eclipse, keeping the dimensions and angle of the Muybridge images aligned turned out to be challenging. With more time and work, I could probably clean it up a bit, but that’s a project for another day.

We’re still exploring the best ways to make use of these GIFs, be it on the exhibition website, the Triarte database, or more informal spaces like this blog. But they provide another way to think about stillness and motion, using images and themes associated with Freeze!, which can be enjoyed on campus in the Lusty Cup annex from March 25-June 3, 2022.

There are thousands of images waiting to be put into motion by amateurs like me—and you! From Greek pottery to medieval illustrations to photographs, what artwork will come to life next?

 

VISIT THE EXHIBITION!

Canaday Library, Lusty Cup Annex, March 25 – June 3, 2022

 

Love Letters

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19th-century valentine wiht two cupids carrying large heart between themHas Valentine’s Day made you think you should write a love letter? There’s advice on how to do so on the web, but if you would prefer some examples that jump right into the nitty gritty of courting a person you have seen in church but never been introduced to, negotiating class differences, or what to say to a lady when you know she has other suitors, you may want books that have stood the test of time.

 

Title page of the FormularioAlthough we hold a variety of books on writing both personal and business correspondence, we have only three devoted entirely to love letters. The earliest is Formulario de lettere amorose: intitulato chiaue damore – A Formulary of Love Letters, Titled, The Key to Love, 1527. The author, Eustachio Celebrino, was an artist working in the nascent book trade of early 16th-century Italy. Besides providing woodcuts, he hack-wrote a series of short vernacular works on topics that were likely to sell: calligraphy manuals, an introduction to the Turkish language, an essay on women’s cosmetics, medical advice including protecting oneself from the plague and curing syphilis in ten days, and works in verse. Most of the sample letters in his 24-page pamphlet on love letters are adressed by a male lover to a woman: thanking her for her letter, praising her beauty and goodness, asking for a face-to-face meeting. Some are less happy: the woman replies and refuses to consent to his demands, and he writes a “Letter sent to humble an obdurate woman.”

 

Frontispiece and title page of Lover's InstructorTwo hundred eighty-five years later, we have The Lover’s Instructor, or the Whole Art of Courtship (1812). This brief work begins with “Instructions in the choice of an husband” and the opening command is “Before marriage you cannot be too cautious and quick-sighted; nor afterwards too blind to your husband’s failings and imperfections, if he has any.” The next section, on choosing a wife, begins with a paragraph on calculating the likely benefits to the man of business from being linked with the prospective lady’s family and building connections within their alliances.

sample pages from the Lover's InstructorMost of the book is made up of sample letters; a few descriptions will hint at the breadth of topics covered: An assurance of love. From a Young Person in business to a Gentleman, desiring leave to wait on his Daughter. From a Daughter to a Mother on the same occasion. From a Young Lady to a Gentleman that courted her, whom she could not like, but was forced by her parents to receive his Visits and think of none else for her Husband (“I was obliged to an ambiguous behaviour, and durst not reveal myself further, because my mother, from a closet near the place were we sat, could both hear and see our conversation.”) From a Young Tradesman to a Lady he had seen in Public. Nancy to George – Flat Denial. William at Sea to Sally onshore.

Pages describing methods of secret writingAfter thirty pages of these middle class Regency concerns, the book suddenly plunges into a variety of methods by which lovers may communicate secretly. The most complex is a sort of finger signing to silently spell whatever one wants to communicate. An introduction to substitution ciphers and a short description of invisible inks follows.

Rules for women in marriedThe last two pages are devoted to rules “to be observed by the Ladies, for promoting Matrimonial Happiness,” emphasizing obedience, good nature, and sincere and constant attempts at improving one’s future conduct.

You can read our copy of The Lover’s Instructor on the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/lovers-instructor-kendrew-1812.

 

Cover of Noth's Book of Love letters. Within a frame of the extended title, a lady in a red dress stands at a windoe reading a letterNorth’s Book of Love Letters was published in 1867 and reflects the growing genre of self-help or autodidactic books. The publisher advertises other “Good Books” offering instruction in ballroom dance, horse taming, shorthand writing, household “receipts,” etiquette, card tricks, billiards, self-defense, and playing the banjo.

Partial table of contents for North's bookThe volume on love letters Includes 140 specimen letters “suitable for lovers of any age and condition… the whole forming a convenient hand-book of valuable information for the use of those who need friendly guidance and advice in matters of love, courtship and marriage.” After introductory chapters on confidentiality, mutual respect (“one of the most graceful accompaniments of courtship”), the responsibilities of marriage, the approval of parents (“where practicable, it should always be sought”), and secret marriages (“as a rule.. very objectionable”), we come to the letters.

With more than a hundred pages to fill, these include a wide variety of circumstances, letters and their answers, paired positive and negative responses depending on the feelings of one of the partners, and editorial commentary. The writers include a young gentleman, a middle-aged gentleman (to a lady the same), a soldier ordered to active service, a rejected suitor, a lover who will not take “no”, etc. There are letters to a desired  lady with whom the gentleman has religious differences, from gentlemen introduced at a ball, and to ladies with whom one became acquainted during a journey. Most of the correspondence originates with men, but some in initiated by women (“A Lady to Her Inconstant Lover”, etc.)

 

An exchange of letters between a lady who works in a chop and a man who presumes to make her acquaintanceOne of my favorite exchanges begins with a man who writes a lady who works in a shop: “I cannot explain to you how great a desire I feel that I should enjoy the very great pleasure of your acquaintance.” After acknowledging that they have no shared friends to introduce them, he asks if he may introduce himself. The lady’s first reply neither rejects nor accepts the offer, on the grounds that she has no idea who he is. He writes back that he thought she might have noticed him walking back and forth in front of the window, and proposes to raise his hat to her the next day . In alternative replies the lady either agree to say acknowledge his greeting if she sees him when she leaves the shop at six in the evening or sharply and humorously states that she wants nothing to do with him.

Letter on the topic of eqality in marriageAnother favorite is a letter addressed to a “Lady who Advocates the Equal Right of Women with Men” by a gentleman who says he agrees with her. This is followed by editorial snark, but at least the possibility of equality is broached.

 

With these examples to hand, you will surely have the confidence to write that special someone. We wish you all possible success in your amatory correspondence!

 

Celebrino, Eustachio. Formulario de lettere amorose: intitulato chiaue damore. Venetia: Francesco Bindoni & Mapheo Pasyni, 1527

The lover’s instructor; or, the whole art of courtship; containing ingenious letters from both sexes, on love, &c., the mode of conversing by the silent language, and the art of steganography; with rules and manners to be observed for promoting happiness, to which is prefixed directions in the choice of a husband and a wife. London & York: J. Kendrew, 1812

North, Ingoldsby. North’s Book of Love Letters. With directions how to write and when to use them, and one hundred and forty specimen letters, suitable for lovers of any age and condition.... New York, Dick and Fitzgerald, 1867

Behind the Scenes: African Art Storage

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A picture of the author in front of Racks 5 and 6. Photo: Marianne Weldon.

 

Hello! My name is Allison, and I am a graduate student in the Winterthur Art Conservation program at the University of Delaware. I received a summer internship placement at Bryn Mawr College to develop my preventive conservation skills. While treatment-focused conservation is concerned with knowing how to stabilize and repair individual objects, preventive conservation is focused on controlling the environment where those objects are stored and displayed through HVAC control, pest management, emergency planning, and storage and housing. With good preventive measures in place, there is a low risk for new damage to occur that may result in the need for specialized treatment. For this reason, a lot of museums and collections are focusing their efforts on preventive conservation, and it is a skill set I wanted to develop.

When I connected with Bryn Mawr Special Collections, the African collection and its storage layout was identified as one in need of evaluation and reorganization. Marianne Weldon, the Collections Manager for Art & Artifacts, and I discussed the following goals:

  1. To assess the layout of the collection space and reorganize the African collection objects to improve ease of access and safe handling.
  2. To examine the collection housings and determine where there was a need for adjustments or altogether new housing.

An overall view of Canaday 204 before my reorganization. Many types of objects from multiple collections are housed in this space.

 

 

 

When I began, I could see that all of the collections are overcrowded. But my project was focused on the African collections. These were located across five stationary shelving units, three rolling racks, and two cabinets with pull out shelves. Our main concerns were the proximity of some items to the ceiling, which can be a fire hazard, and the difficult nature of accessing some of the large but fragile objects, such as dance crests and headdresses with suspended elements. The priorities of the reorganization became regaining a ceiling clearance of 18 inches wherever possible and making retrieval and handling safer for the user and the object.

Some objects that are tricky to handle were stored on the highest shelves where they were hard to see and difficult to handle safely.

 

Work began in a hybrid format. My days on site were spent collecting data. I was given a list of the objects that comprised the African collections and slowly but surely I worked my way through it. I took notes about the objects themselves (materials, geographic origin, name and use) as well as about the housing they were in, be it contained within a box or wrapped in plastic or both. While this data collection was time consuming, by the end I had a good understanding of the materials I was working with and a good intuition for where everything was in the space.

A small snapshot of the numerous spreadsheets that kept me organized all summer.

 

 

At home I spent time researching methods to approach storage reorganization. Overcrowding is a problem that every collection ultimately faces, regardless of size, so I knew I didn’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel. Entire reorganization systems have been developed, and there are brief guidelines published by organizations like the National Park Service. As luck would have it, a comparison of the most popular methods was written in 20141 and this was a big help in determining the pros and cons of each approach.

After comparing some options, I had several takeaways.

  1. Accuracy is important and will save you time and effort
  2. Much of what has been published is designed with creating new spaces from scratch in mind, rather than making minor adjustments
  3. There is no one perfect system that can address the needs of every project

By far the most robust system I found is the RE-ORG2 program put together by ICCROM, the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage. This program is based on a workshop developed by ICCROM and UNESCO to introduce individuals with little prior experience to collection storage management and design. It lays out step by step, with worksheets included, how to assess the current state of a collection, makes plans for a redesign, and execute object moves and relocations. There is a survey that allows a user to examine four areas that impact collection storage (Management, Building and Space, Collection, and Furniture and Small Equipment) and get a score for how their collection ranks in each area.

A screenshot of  the RE-ORG program’s “scoring” chart for the African Collections at the onset of this project. Calculated scores are circled.

 

While I knew I had no control over most of these factors, I found the exercise of filling out the survey a useful way to get a handle on how many ways a collection can be impacted by its surroundings both from a material and managerial standpoint. I was pleased to see that in each category except for “Building and Space,” only minor adjustments were recommended. This solidified my decision to work with my own process, informed by the research I had done, but not prescribing to any one method because none exactly suited my needs.

Each box and item in the collection is a custom size, so I couldn’t make rough estimates based on standards. Because I was dealing with a relatively small space and a manageable number of objects, I decided that I needed to think at an object-specific level to find the best layout.

When I would talk about this project to friends and family, I would often say, “I’m basically playing a big game of 3D Tetris.”

 

From the measurements of each box and item, I knew I was going to have to change some of the heights on the shelving units to bring the taller objects away from the ceiling. What I needed was a quick and easy way to play with space and see what could fit where without having to move the shelves and objects ten times over. Enter the computer aided design (CAD) app Shapr3D3. Using my iPad, I could literally play 3D Tetris by modeling the whole storage room, shelving units, and objects to scale. From there I could adjust the heights of shelves move objects around and get a plan in place all without having to move a thing in the real world. Starting from zero CAD experience, this intuitive app was a game changer for me, and I can see it having many uses in my future work.

A screenshot from Shapr3D showing Racks 4-7 with adjusted shelf heights and specific objects in proposed locations. This is exactly where these objects ended up!

 

 

With a plan mapped out, it was time to enlist some help for the physical move. Margalit Schindler, a classmate in my graduate program, visited for a day to help adjust the heights of shelves and make some of the initial object moves. With a bit of muscle and a lot of clear communication and teamwork, we made the necessary adjustments and brought most of the fragile and hard to reach objects into their new locations. Having a second pair of hands and an outside critical eye was a huge help at this phase of the project. Over the next two days I finished the rest of the object moves, and I am pleased to say that all of my goals were met. Fragile headdresses from up-high traded places with sturdy boxes that were down low, heavy items that were moved to shallower shelves, and the ceiling clearance I wanted was regained nearly everywhere.

A view of Racks 4-7 after the reorganization. The objects that were once high up and on the back of deep shelves are now accessible from the floor with minimal reaching required. Photo: Joy Kruse.

With the big move complete, I was able to focus briefly on housing adjustments. When I was gathering measurements, I took note of the boxes and items I thought could benefit from new padding, wrapping or housing. With the help of Joy Kruse ’23 and Katie Perry ’21, we were able to implement these changes, improving visibility and better immobilizing some of the objects housed in boxes. We also got to discuss what the ideal conditions for objects housed within boxes are in general and the numerous methods and materials one can use to achieve them. It was a good chance for me to practice my teaching the skills and an excellent way for the students to be introduced to different aspects of collection management and preservation. In the end we adjusted more boxes than I had planned, and even built a brand-new box! Many hands truly do make for light work.

Joy and Katie working on different elements of a new box for the toy elephant pictured below.

Previously wrapped in tissue paper and resting on its side, the new mount on its underside holds the elephant upright, relieving pressure from its delicate ears and preventing it from tipping when the box is handled.

I am so grateful that Marianne and Bryn Mawr trusted me with this project. I gained project management and technical skills, while contributing to the preservation of an excellent collection. I am also pleased that this work can contribute to the overall efforts of Special Collections to confront the legacies of racism and colonialism within their collections. As a conservator, I ask myself two questions when I work on a project: how is my work benefiting the object(s) temporarily in my care and how is my work facilitating interactions with the object(s) be it for research, educational, spiritual purposes or otherwise? Preservation for the sake of making a thing last longer is empty without the motivation of human interaction or engagement with the object driving the work. My hope is that the improved access to the African collections will allow more opportunities for research that can illuminate the complex histories of these objects and aid in any relevant repatriation.

 Footnotes

1 Lambert, Simon & Tania Mottus. 2014. “Museum Storage Space Estimations: In Theory and Practice.” ICOM-CC 17th Triennial Conference, 2014 Melbourne.

2 RE-ORG: A methodology for reorganizing museum storage developed by ICCROM and UNESCO https://www.iccrom.org/themes/preventive-conservation/re-org/resources

3 Shapr3D is a computer aided design (CAD) app. During this project, the iOS version of the app was used on an iPad Air 4 with a 2nd generation Apple Pencil. https://www.shapr3d.com/

 

Allison Kelley is a graduate fellow in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. This project was completed in partial fulfilment of her second-year curriculum. All images taken or collected by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Five Years – and Counting!

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Cover of the book One Two Three Four. A leashed dog at the top of a short stairs barks at two kittens who are drinking milk from an spilled bowl on the step between them and the dog.At the beginning of May 2016, the first of 634 boxes of books arrived at the loading dock of Canaday Library. The enormous collection of 19th and 20th-century works for young readers had been bequeathed to the College by Ellery Yale Wood (Class of 1952).

Delivery worker dragging a pallet of 45 large boxes onto a dolly

The books arrived by the pallet-load.

Over the next three months six student employees unpacked, vacuumed, aired out, and roughly sorted approximately 17,000 books.

Student employees vacuum and shelve incoming books

First: unpack! Second: vacuum!

By the end of that summer, all the books had been sorted and organized by author.

Catalogers and student employees, in processing room, hold up the last book above a shipping box.

Last box of books!

In the succeeding five years, 37 of our student employees have worked on the Wood collection. They alphabetized. They helped identify duplicate volumes. They helped find books to answer reference questions and requests for images – a very difficult task before the books were cataloged and given call numbers. They shelved newly cataloged books, and retrieved and then reshelved books for readers and classes. They put acid-free covers on books with dust jackets, and measured books for the conservation boxes we use for fragile items. Three students – Toby, Kate, and Beck – did preparatory work identifying online records to save our professional catalogers time.

Student employee looks at one book while seated at a computer. A cart of books in the foreground.

Toby checked new books against those we already held, and annotated lists to help the catalogers.

Three of the students who worked on the collection in the first year wrote blog posts – on the Golliwog, Mrs. Molesworth, and Beauty and the Beast.

A stack of 40 books by Mrs. Molesworth.

Books by the once-popular, and very prolific, author, Mrs. Molesworth.

In addition to the students’ posts, we have blogged about the collection 26 times. This blog is the twenty-seventh.

Handmade doll with modern paper clothing made from magazine pages, superimposed on the mid-19th century book

Blog post on Paper Dolls and How to Make Them (1857) with a homemade doll dressed in modern clothing

Subsets of the collection – paper dolls, movable books, fairy tales – are large enough to provide significant resources for scholarly research. This year’s Friends of the Libraries intern, Juliet Smith, is the third student to work on the world-class sub-collection of books about Old Dame Trot. We currently have 62 individual historic books and 25 books which include the poem among other texts. Juliet’s efforts will result in an online bibliography and guide by the end of the summer. Two other students are working on Little Goody Two Shoes and The Butterfly’s Ball – and all of their imitators and derivative works.

Student employee examines a book in our reading room. A cartful of books is behind her.

Juliet works with the Dame Trot collection

The collection has been used by 28 Bryn Mawr and Haverford classes in our seminar room. Besides English courses, these include first year writing seminars, Russian Literature, Classics, Museum Studies, and History of the Book. In Fall 2018 a 360° cluster centered around children’s literature included English, Creative Writing, and Sociology courses, with classes and individual students using the collection repeatedly.

Pages from The Orphan Girl, showing the protagonist praying and selling flowers

The Orphan Girl (1812), used in the History of the Book class

We have presented two exhibitions of these books. To Increase Your Delight introduced the collection to the community in Fall 2016. Four students – Hannah, Isabella, Julia, and Cassidy – spoke on their experiences with the books at an event celebrating the exhibition.

Sign for the exhibtion To Increase Your Delight, with title, dates September to December 2018, and an image of a teenage girl reading to other girlsThe Girl’s Own Book ran through the 2020-2021 academic year; pandemic restrictions meant that most visitors experienced the show remotely. An online version included the full text of the show and links to online versions of many of the books.

Sign for The Girl's Own Book: Selections from the Ellery Yale Wood Collection of Books for Young Readers

Six students did background research and wrote draft labels for The Girl’s Own Book. Four helped install the show.

Student employee stands next to partially mounted exhibition signage.

Lucy helped hang the signs for The Girl’s Own Book

To date, 42 books from the Wood Collection have been fully digitized and shared globally on the Internet Archive. Because it is time-consuming, we digitize only works in the public domain that are not otherwise freely available.

Screenshot of search results for the EY Wood Collection books on the Internet Archive

Books from the Wood Collection on the Internet Archive

The most strenuous effort in processing any donation of books is cataloging – describing the books and entering them into the library’s public catalog. Historically, fiction – even children’s fiction – has been added to catalogs with little or no information about the major themes in the stories. In cataloging the Wood Collection we broke with tradition to include extensive lists of topics (“subject headings” in library-speak) in the catalog records. So books are not just described as “Juvenile literature”, but with terms like Problem children, Siblings, Orphans, Child labor, Dolls, Boarding Schools,  Dreams, Imaginary Voyages, Imperialism, Stereotypes, Adaptations. This deep cataloging has made it possible for students, staff, faculty, and researchers to use Tripod (our online catalog) find books on topics of interest – impossible to do otherwise in a collection of 13,000 books.

Compared screen shots showing 9099 results for the Tripod catalog search ' "juvenile fiction" yale wood' and 54 for the search ' "boarding schools" yale wood'

Extensive cataloging permits readers to find the books they need

Three catalogers and three cataloging assistants have worked on the collection. In the first two years Patrick Crowley, Katharine Chandler, Jo Dutilloy (BMC 2017), and Rayna Andrews (BMC 2011), working part-time, added records for 2750 books.

Starting in 2018, a generous gift from Ellen Michelson (P’09) and additional support from the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries made it possible to hire a full-time cataloger and a part-time assistant to work exclusively on the Wood Collection. Amy Graham and Maria Gorbunova together cataloged 10,811 books before their appointments ended March 31, 2021. Maria worked primarily on 20th-century books, although her extensive language skills helped us add Russian, Japanese, French, and German titles as well. Cataloger Amy Graham managed the cataloging project and concentrated on the earlier volumes.

Maria Gorbunova and Amy Graham in the Special Collections office, smiling. Maria wears a t-shrt printed "No Meta-Data No Future."

Maria (left) and Amy on their last day of work

Nearly 600 of the catalog records Amy created were “original” – she was not able to use another library’s description for the book, but needed to catalog it from the beginning based on the book itself and her research on its publisher, author, date, and contents.

Title page of the book La civilité puérile et honneste pour l'instruction des enfans.

La civilité puérile et honneste pour l’instruction des enfans (1736) – one of the books Amy cataloged “from scratch”

As of June 2021, there were 13,402 books cataloged in the Ellery Yale Wood Collection.

One densely packed aisle of the EY Wood Collection in the library stacks.The collection is still growing. Curator Marianne Hansen has taken over cataloging, to make information about additional books accessible. A relatively small number of books from the bequest still need to be added to Tripod. We have recently received three donations of twentieth-century picture books for young readers, totaling 125 books. Finally, we buy books to add to our collection – 50 in the last year – and those books must also be cataloged. We look forward to building the collection and making it available to readers for years to come!

Image from a book cover with a girl about eight years old, counting the fingers of a toddler. Below is written "One Two Three Four Five."

Confronting the Legacies of Racism and Colonialism in Special Collections

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For almost a year, we in Special Collections have been working on a statement documenting the ways in which we are trying to confront the legacies of colonialism and racism in our collections. In June 2020, Black students at Bryn Mawr and Haverford composed an open letter to the Bi-College community. Their letter, which demanded that Bryn Mawr Special Collections acknowledge the colonial racism present in Bryn Mawr’s African Collections and, where possible, create a plan to repatriate objects, represents ongoing, student-led anti-racism efforts at the College—efforts that came to the fore again with the Student Strike in fall 2020. The effects of colonialism and racism in the collections are part of the historical and present-day forms of racism and inequity at Bryn Mawr College that we are committed to addressing, foregrounding, and remediating in the department and at the College as a whole. In response to student voices, the concerns of the wider college community and society, and our own professional ethics, we began working on this statement. 

Tied to College and LITS-wide efforts towards diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, our statement, Confronting the Legacies of Colonialism and Racism in Special Collections, is meant to serve as a starting point for conversation. It is by no means complete or final, and we plan to continue to modify the document as we identify additional ways in which we can address racism and colonialism in Special Collections. As we’ve worked on the statement, we have shared it with some internal stakeholders—the LITS Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism Team, the BMC Collections Committee (which includes faculty and trustees), the President’s Diversity Leadership Group, BMC Alumnae/i Relations and Development, and members of the Bryn Mawr administration. We hope to create a space that allows for on-going discussion, including hosting community-wide conversations about the document in the coming year. 

In the meantime, Special Collections staff are engaged in work aimed at addressing the on-going effects of racism and colonialism in our collections, and at increasing the transparency around them. This is a multi-part, long-term project. In addition to addressing our current collection and how we are presenting the material we currently have to the community, we also need to think about future collections. This means identifying and redressing harmful language in descriptions and metadata, actively and ethically acquiring material from a diverse range of voices, and recognizing that we have a professional and ethical obligation to do this work. Special Collections, comprised at Bryn Mawr of Rare Books & Manuscripts, Art & Artifacts, and the College Archives, is primarily intended to be a teaching collection. As educators and caretakers of these collections, we have a responsibility to continue to learn and grow, and we welcome interrogation, critique, and insight into how we can improve our practice. 

Read the statement: Confronting the Legacies of Colonialism and Racism in Special Collections 

Current, concrete efforts towards this work include: 

New Summer School for Women Worker’s Digital Exhibition Launches

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by Beck Morawski ’21

Photograph of curator Beck Moraski '21 sitting at a table in Special Collections reading room.

Exhibit curator Beck Morawski ’21 sits at table in Special Collections reading room.

When I was brought on as a student curator to design an exhibit for the centennial of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry last April, I could not have imagined the journey this project would take me on. In putting together a digital exhibit that centers the lived experiences of often-overlooked students, I was able to engage with the history of Bryn Mawr College in ways I never expected.

The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, often abbreviated as the BMSSWWI, was a program that ran on Bryn Mawr’s campus during the summer from 1921 through 1938. It was intended to use the empty campus buildings during the summer months to educate industrial workers—such as factory workers or manual laborers—who sought to continue their education, since often their life circumstances had prevented them from finishing it. The unique program allowed for a two month retreat to the secluded campus to study not only Economic Theory, but also topics meant to enrich life outside of the workplace including Literature, Astronomy, and Music Theory.

Photograph of students looking on, situated right near the ivy outside of the cloisters, as an instructor reads from an economics textbook.

Image courtesy Bryn Mawr Special Collections. An Economics Class in the Cloisters. BMC-Photo Archives, Series I, PAE: Events and Groups, SSWWI. SSWWI_00195. https://digitalcollections.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/object/bmc60985.

While classroom lessons and lectures were instrumental to the students in attendance, some of the most formative experiences they recounted in the Summer School literary magazine Shop and School were of exploring the campus and experiencing life away from the smog and cramped confines of cities and mills. It was exciting to get to read these students’ stories and experiences attending college for the first time, and then to find a way to share them with the Bryn Mawr community today. By putting our current campus culture and experiences in conversation with our history, we can gain new understandings of how unique Bryn Mawr can be.

Developing a digital exhibit of photographs and documents was an interesting challenge to take on while working remotely. Working in Special Collections during my time at Bryn Mawr, I learned the importance and value of physical records to the day-to-day ongoings of campus and how they enliven history to those that study it. However, what does that look like when one can’t work hands-on with the many photographs, letters, and books that we have saved from the Summer School? Luckily, the influence of the School was wide-reaching and impactful. Even without going into Canaday Library I could find material that explored the history of the School from unexpected angles. I was also able to participate in conversations around the digitization of parts of our collections, hoping to make our holdings more accessible to those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access the materials we hold.

My exhibit—For Roses, Too—provides an overview of the Summer School program and its history, while asking readers what lessons they can take from its history to apply to Bryn Mawr College today. The BMSSWWI exemplifies both what progress Bryn Mawr has historically sought to accomplish and what that vision can achieve when embraced by the community. It is my hope that this exhibit can start new and exciting conversations about our institutional identity and its place in history at large.

Photograph of a group of women on the lawn in front of a campus building. One woman is looking through a telescope.

Image courtesy Bryn Mawr Special Collections. Students from the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry. BMC-Photo Archives, Series I, PAE: Events and Groups, SSWWI, SSWWI_00016. https://digitalcollections.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/object/bmc60806.

 

More Paper Dolls to Make

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If you would like to make your own Temple of Fancy paper dolls, based on the examples in the Ellery Yale Wood Collection of Books for Young Readers, you can download pdfs and print out as many copies as you like. We previously blogged on the History of Little Fanny dolls, with useful photos of the dolls under construction, and you can check that blog post for more extensive instructions on the project.Paper doll costume and head, Cinderella's weddingThe following dolls are available:

The History of Little Fanny, Exemplified in a Series of Figures. 6t London: Printed for S. and J. Fuller at the Temple of Fancy, Rathbone Place, 1810.
Book – https://archive.org/details/historyoflittlefanny1810
DIY Dolls – https://archive.org/details/historyoflittlefanny1810dollstomake

Sheet of paper dolls for Little Fanny

The History and Adventures of Little Henry, Exemplified in a Series of Figures. London : Printed for S. and J. Fuller at the Temple of Fancy, Rathbone Place, 1810.
Book – https://archive.org/details/history-and-adventures-of-little-henry-1810
DIY Dolls – https://archive.org/details/history-and-adventures-of-little-henry-1810-dolls-to-make

Sheet of paper dolls for Little Henry

Ellen, or The Naughty Girl Reclaimed, A Story, Exemplified in a Series of Figures. London, Printed for S. and J. Fuller at the Temple of Fancy, Rathbone Place, 1811.
Book – https://archive.org/details/ellen-or-the-naughty-girl-reclaimed-1811
DIY Dolls (2 sheets) – https://archive.org/details/ellen-or-the-naughty-girl-reclaimed-1811-dolls-to-make

One of two sheets of paper dolls for EllenCinderella, or, The Little Glass Slipper. London: Printed for S. and J. Fuller, Temple of Fancy, 1814.
Book – https://archive.org/details/cinderella-or-the-little-glass-slipper-1814/
DIY Dolls (2 sheets) – https://archive.org/details/cinderella-or-the-little-glass-slipper-1814-dolls-to-make/

One of two sheets of paper dolls for CinderellaFrederick, or, The Effects of Disobedience: Exemplified in a Series of Characters. London: Printed for S. and J. Fuller at the Temple of Fancy, and Juvenile Museum, Rathbone Place, 1816.
Book – https://archive.org/details/frederick-or-the-effects-of-disobedience-1816/
DIY Dolls (2 sheets, and with the head from our copy of Little Henry) –  https://archive.org/details/frederick-or-the-effects-of-disobedience-1816-dolls-to-make

One of two sheets of paper dolls for Frederick– Marianne Hansen, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts

TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections : a powerful new tool for research and exploration of the College’s history

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As we all find ourselves continuing to live and learn in a largely remote and virtual environment, digital collections provide an opportunity to engage with primary source, historical materials in interactive and exciting new ways. In fact, digital collections allow for methods of interaction that are not possible with physical materials. With digital content, we can do things like zoom in on digital images to see details up-close, do a full-text search of books and newspapers, and listen and view audio-visual content while following along with synchronized transcriptions and captions. Digital content can also be downloaded or mined for data to be used in research projects, exhibitions, or visualizations.

This is why Special Collections is thrilled to announce the launch of our new TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections site–the new home for both digitized materials and born-digital content, like audio and video–to the Bryn Mawr College community in time for the spring 2021 semester. This new site–which currently holds over 40,000 records–has been a work-in-progress, and a joint-effort of the Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore College Libraries, over the past several years. Building the site involved the daunting task of migrating digital collections and their metadata (description) from the former Triptych (CONTENTdm) site into an open-source Islandora software framework that is better designed to facilitate the management and discovery of digital assets. Over time, we will continue to grow and consolidate digital collections in the new site, with the goal of making more and more of our collections discoverable while improving findability, search functionality, and accessibility.

The following are some examples of collections and items you will find on the new site:

The Bryn Mawr College Photo Archives is a growing collection of 5200+ images from the College Archives documenting students, faculty, staff, and events at the College since its founding.

Photograph from the Bryn Mawr College Photo Archives

A photograph from the Photo Archives collection, showing the Bryn Mawr College gymnastics team, circa 1928. [Gymnastics team, 1928, Bryn Mawr College Photo Archives, PAE_Sports_Gymnastics_018, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections]

The Bryn Mawr College Scrapbook and Photo Album Collection includes 37 scrapbooks and photograph albums, dating from 1889 to 1952, assembled and donated by alumnae/i, documenting their years at the College.

Page from Amy L. Steiner photograph album, circa 1899

Page from the Amy L. Steiner photograph album showing students in theatrical costumes. [“Amy L. Steiner photograph album, circa 1899,” Bryn Mawr College scrapbook and photo album collection, Item 9LS 1 (SCP27), Bryn Mawr College Special Collections]

Explore the history of the Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, a residential summer school program that brought approximately 100 young working women—mostly factory workers with minimal education—to the Bryn Mawr College campus for eight weeks of liberal arts study between 1921 and 1938.

Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry photograph

Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry students sitting for a group photograph in the Cloisters, 1930. [Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, 1930, Bryn Mawr College Photo Archives, PAE, SSWWI_00035, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections]

View photographs collected by internationally recognized suffragist, feminist, and political activist Carrie Chapman Catt, documenting the American and international women’s suffrage movements.

Photograph from the Carrie Chapman Catt collection

A photograph from the Carrie Chapman Catt collection showing the Egyptian Delegates, Geneva Conference International Woman Suffrage Association, 1920. [Catt, Carrie Chapman (compiler), Egyptian delegates at the Geneva Conference, ca. 1913-1920, Carrie Chapman Catt papers, BMC-M15, Box 6, Folder 14, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections]

Explore College yearbooks from 1901 through 1949 (look for yearbooks through the late 1970s coming soon) and read all issues of the Bryn Mawr College News from 1914 through 1968.

Pages from 1942 Bryn Mawr College yearbook

Two pages from the 1942 Bryn Mawr College yearbook, shown in the new digital collections book viewer. The book viewer has page-turning functionality, zoom options, and full-text search. [“Bryn Mawr College Yearbook Class of 1942,” 9PY 1942, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections]

Read correspondence written by Bryn Mawr students during the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.

Page from the Bryn Mawr College News

Front page of the Bryn Mawr College News, November 7, 1918, with an article titled, “Quarantine Lifted Gradually.” [“College news, November 7, 1918,” Bryn Mawr College News, BMC-News-vol5-no6, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections] 

The new digital collections site isn’t just a space for historical materials; you will also find new collections documenting current and recent experiences at the College. Documenting COVID-19 at Bryn Mawr College is a community-sourced archive of personal experiences and reactions to the pandemic. (You can submit materials to the archive here.) Over the next few months, look for more collections that document the 2020 Bryn Mawr College Strike and the history of Perry House, as well as oral histories with alumnae/i providing first-hand accounts of their experiences at Bryn Mawr.

We hope you will find TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections to be a powerful new tool in conducting research and exploring the history of the College.

Do you have questions or feedback about the new site?: Contact Special Collections via email or use this form.