I was there to deliver a report on the survey of STC books we've done here in the Iowa Special Collections over the last year or so -- a report that was part of a joint presentation with Rachel Stevenson, the undergraduate researcher who actually did the work of surveying the collection. Most of what I had to say has appeared here before, in a post I called "less known libraries" which considered the differences between our own survey of STC books -- which focused on used books -- and a previous survey conducted in the 1960s, which focused only on books of established literary merit. Rachel's part of the presentation was a distillation of the honors thesis she's been working on, which takes as its subject a copy of Spenser's 1679 Works annotated by an eighteenth-century woman reader (!). What follows here is a version of her conference paper, which, for a number of reasons, I'm calling "Her Book."
A year ago, I began a research project surveying the Short Title Catalogue collection in the University of Iowa Special Collections, focusing on books in English between 1540 and 1640. As I worked my way through the collection, I realized there is something special or weird or wonderful about every book. But that is the beauty of book studies: scholarship doesn’t have to end at the printed word. What I care about is why a reader would buy this book, use it, abuse it, bind it, and read it. All works great and small are given meaning by the readers who leave their mark, whether just with fingerprints or in ink. As the research project continued, Professor Hooks and I began to work with the “works of literary merit” and the not so meritorious works in our less known library. Early in the project, we examined Letitia Thomson’s Faerie Queene. I call it her book because she did.
This sparked my interest, because, even though I had seen about a
dozen other books with women’s provenance, there were none with such an active
female reader. The focus of my current
honors thesis project surrounds Letitia Thomson’s use of Johnathan Edwin’s 1679
Spenser’s Works alongside an
examination of the reading practices Spenser endows his female characters,
namely Una and Britomart.
This connection was fortuitous because of the interest Letitia
Thomson expressed in these two characters in her annotations.
On the title page of the 1679 edition of Edmund Spenser’s Works, a woman wrote “Letitia Thomson, her book.” Other men owned this book and marked it with their names—John T. Betts, Edward James, and Will Thomson—but none of these men left a record of reading the Works with the same care and intent as Letitia Thomson. She did not just read her book, she annotated it, interpreted it, and marked passages in it to remember and read again. The magnitude of cross-referencing, notation, and use of other literary works shows Letitia to be a conscientious reader. This book is useful to discuss because women’s reading practices are often overlooked and there is little evidence of women’s reading in early modern books. Even though Letitia is long gone, her writing informs mine, we communicate through her notes in her book, our hands turn the same pages, and we seek, as women, to understand The Faerie Queene.
My
study of Letitia Thomson’s response to The
Faerie Queene represents the way the two of us read differently according
to our situation in time.
Much
of my interpretation of the text is based on a close-reading of specific words,
such as boldness and chastity, in order to examine the ways the
language shapes female reading practices inside the poem and outside of
it. The
mid-18th century, when Letitia Thomson reads and writes in her book,
was the height of critical engagement with Spenser’s work. She draws much of her understanding of the
work based on the plot and Spenser’s intentions, according to the literary
criticism techniques of her time.
Changing ideas about reading practices require our attention, but it is
also expedient to discuss the ways the text as an object hinders or encourages
female reading, by examining the way Letitia Thomson used her book.
Within
the text, Letitia Thomson relies on Thomas Warton’s 1754 Observations on the Fairy Queen of Spenser as a reader’s guide
leading her through the dense language, religious allegory, and confusing
chronology of The Faerie Queene.
Letitia meticulously cites whatever source she uses and its section number, which is most usually Thomas Warton, who then directs her to other contemporary and classical sources such as Milton, Dryden, and Horace. In three instances, she makes notes in Greek and Latin, which come from Warton.
This may seem
insignificant, but her ability to copy out and recognize where to put the
citation as well as choosing which instances she wishes to write down in her
book, shows her to be a reader of unusual learning and discernment. Thomson is especially remarkable in her
attention to detail and cross-referencing, interacting with Warton’s footnotes,
his text, and the text of The Faerie
Queene.
An excellent example of
Thomson’s personal reading occurs on the front flyleaf of the Works, where she writes some overall
analysis taken from Warton about the twelve book structure of The Faerie Queene, Spenser’s intentions
for the work and some general notes concerning the chivalric romance
style.
But she also writes sixteen references to specific stanzas not set down by Warton for her particular study.
While Warton focuses on the traditional reading of Spenser’s literature: his motivations, history behind the story, style and form, Letitia highlights a more personal reading of the text. She does not write personal notes she wants to remember within the printed text of the story, but keeps her opinions on the prefatory pages.
