Abstract
This chapter focusses on a certain type of imperial encounter: that of the weary traveller or colonial servant who meets, unexpectedly, with a misplaced book. In the late nineteenth century, when cheap, ephemeral, often pirated editions were scattered worldwide, such encounters were a common enough occurrence. For the book’s discoverer however, often starved of reading matter in his or her colonial solitude, its appearance is invested with an air of serendipitous mystery. Sometimes the book may be an old favourite: a haunting relic of a lost Britain. Sometimes it is entirely unfamiliar, and can set its finder off on exciting tangents of cross-cultural thought. Drawing on examples from India, Australia, Malaya and North America, Bubb proposes randomness as a paradigm for studying imperial reading cultures.
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Notes
- 1.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text; Backgrounds and Sources; Criticism, ed. Robert Kimbrough (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), pp. 37–38.
- 2.
Mark D. Larabee, ‘Joseph Conrad and the Maritime Tradition’, in A Historical Guide to Joseph Conrad, ed. John G. Peters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 70.
- 3.
John Anselm Griffiths, Observations on Some Points of Seamanship; with Practical Hints on Naval œconomy, &c. (Portsmouth: W. Harrison, 1824).
- 4.
Steamboats were in fact widespread in the 1820s, though Griffiths makes little reference to them.
- 5.
For the figuration of the colony as ‘anachronistic space’, see Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), p. 40.
- 6.
Conrad, Heart of Darkness, p. 38.
- 7.
William Hazlitt, Selected Essays, ed. John Sampson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), p. 61.
- 8.
Hugh Clifford, A Free-lance of To-day (London: Richards Press, 1897), p. 111.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 112.
- 10.
Hugh Clifford, ‘Alone’, in Bush-whacking: And other stories (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1901), p. 277.
- 11.
Victoria Glendinning, Leonard Woolf: A Biography (New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 70. Swanton’s 1939 Wisden is on display in the museum at Lord’s Cricket Ground.
- 12.
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 116.
- 13.
John Barnes et al., ‘A Place in the World’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume VI: 1830–1914, ed. David McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 597.
- 14.
Ibid., pp. 599–601.
- 15.
Ibid., pp. 612–613.
- 16.
The Foreign Reprints Act (1847) represented the earliest, failed, attempt at legislation. See Rimi B. Chatterjee, ‘Far-Flung Fiction: Colonial Libraries and the British Raj’, Jadavpur University Essays and Studies, 17 (2003), p. 70.
- 17.
Emily Eden, ‘Up the Country’: Letters Written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India (London: Richard Bentley, 1866), pp. 157–158.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 265. Emphasis Eden’s.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 265.
- 20.
Helen Small, ‘A Pulse of 124: Charles Dickens and a Pathology of the Mid-Victorian Reading Public’, in The Practice and Representation of Reading, eds. James Raven, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 276.
- 21.
Kylie Mirmohamadi and Susan K. Martin, Colonial Dickens: What Australians Made of the World’s Favourite Writer (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2012), p. 22. Of British possessions, Dickens visited only Canada (once) and Ireland. See Grace Moore, Dickens and Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 1, 12.
- 22.
Indeed, the colony as a whole was hungering for reading matter. Supposedly when the two Dublin booksellers, George Robertson and Samuel Mullen, arrived in Melbourne in 1852 they found customers already waiting at the wharf to buy their stock. See ‘Mullen’s: A Literary Centre’, Argus, 10 September 1921.
- 23.
James Demarr, Adventures in Australia Fifty Years Ago (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893), p. 119. For more on Demarr, see Mirmohamadi and Martin, Colonial Dickens, p. 8.
- 24.
Bret Harte, The Select Works of Bret Harte, in Prose and Poetry (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875), p. 489.
- 25.
Pioneer, 13 June 1870. Article found in SxMs-38/1/4/1 (Lockwood Kipling’s scrapbook). Sussex University Library Special Collections, The Keep, Brighton.
- 26.
The speaker is Wali Dad in ‘On the City Wall’ (1889), the reference being to Mr Mantalini in Nicholas Nickleby: ‘“I am always turning, I am perpetually turning, like a demd old horse in a demnition mill.”’ See Rudyard Kipling, Stories and Poems, ed. Daniel Karlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 41 and Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (London: Chapman and Hall, 1839), p. 322.
- 27.
Iser, Act of Reading, p. 107.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 125.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 116.
- 30.
Arthur Quiller-Couch, ‘The Commerce of Thought’, in Cambridge Lectures (London: J.M. Dent, 1943), p. 113.
- 31.
Ibid., p. 113.
- 32.
Ibid., p. 113.
- 33.
Jeffrey Auerbach has drawn attention to the overwhelming note of tedium sounded in colonial diaries, in ‘Imperial Boredom’, Common Knowledge 11:2 (2005), p. 284.
- 34.
Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 54.
- 35.
Mary R. Cabot, ‘The Vermont Period: Rudyard Kipling at Naulakha’, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, 29:2 (1986), p. 185.
- 36.
Public meeting of the American academy and the National institute of arts and letters, in Honor of William Dean Howells, President of the Academy from its Inception to the date of his Death (New York: American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1922), p. 15.
- 37.
Ibid., p. 15.
- 38.
Ibid., p. 15.
- 39.
W.D. Howells, Venetian Life (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1883), pp. 26, 29.
- 40.
For examples, see Rudyard Kipling, vol. 1 of From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches (London: Macmillan, 1900), pp. 24, 31, 35, 60, 176.
- 41.
Public meeting, pp. 15–16.
- 42.
Thomas Pinney (ed.), vol. 1 of The Letters of Rudyard Kipling (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990), pp. 286–288.
- 43.
Ibid., pp. 16–17.
- 44.
‘The Asiatic Society’, Times of India, 27 February 1867.
- 45.
Andrew Lycett, Rudyard Kipling (London: Phoenix, 1999), p. 36.
- 46.
Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 82, 88. For his subsequent citations of George Stephens’s work, see J.H. Rivett-Carnac, Prehistoric Remains in Central India (Calcutta: n. p., 1879), pp. 10–13.
- 47.
Esaias Tegnér, Frithiof’s Saga, a Legend of Norway, trans. George Stephens (Stockholm: A. Bonnier and London: Black and Armstrong, 1839), pp. 266, 284, 302.
- 48.
‘The Asiatic Society.’
- 49.
EI:2 (letter from Joseph to George Stephens, 12 February 1867). Huseby Archive, Linnaeus University Library, Växjö.
- 50.
EI:2 (letter from Joseph to George Stephens, 29 January 1868). Huseby Archive.
- 51.
EI:2 (letter from Joseph to George Stephens, 29 January 1868). Huseby Archive.
- 52.
Elaine Freedgood, The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 7.
- 53.
Matti Moosa, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction (London: Lynne Rienner, 1997), pp. 116–119.
- 54.
W.B. Yeats, Prefaces and Introductions: Uncollected Prefaces and Introductions by Yeats to Works by Other Authors and to Anthologies Edited by Yeats, ed. William H. O’Donnell (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 147. Italics mine.
- 55.
Iser, Act of Reading, p. 107.
Bibliography
Archival Sources
EI:2 (letters from Joseph to George Stephens). Huseby Archive, Linnaeus University Library, Växjö.
SxMs-38/1/4/1 (Lockwood Kipling’s scrapbook). Sussex University Library Special Collections, The Keep, Brighton.
Published Sources
‘The Asiatic Society’, Times of India, 27 February 1867.
Auerbach, Jeffrey, ‘Imperial Boredom’, Common Knowledge, 11:2 (2005), pp. 283–305.
Barnes, John and Bill Bell, Rimi B. Chatterjee, Wallace Kirsop and Michael Winship, ‘A Place in the World’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Volume VI: 1830–1914, ed. David McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 595–634.
Cabot, Mary R., ‘The Vermont Period: Rudyard Kipling at Naulakha’, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, 29:2 (1986), pp. 161–218.
Chatterjee, Rimi B., ‘Far-Flung Fiction: Colonial Libraries and the British Raj’, Jadavpur University Essays and Studies, 17 (2003), pp. 67–82.
Clifford, Hugh, Bush-whacking: And Other Stories (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1901).
———, A Free-lance of To-day (London: Richards Press, 1897).
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Demarr, James, Adventures in Australia Fifty Years Ago (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893).
Dickens, Charles, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (London: Chapman and Hall, 1839).
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Freedgood, Elaine, The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
Glendinning, Victoria, Leonard Woolf: A Biography (New York: Free Press, 2006).
Griffiths, John Anselm, Observations on Some Points of Seamanship; with Practical Hints on Naval œconomy, &c (Portsmouth: W. Harrison, 1824).
Harte, Bret, The Select Works of Bret Harte, in Prose and Poetry (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875).
Hazlitt, William, Selected Essays, ed. John Sampson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).
Hill, Edmonia, ‘The Young Kipling’, Atlantic, 157:4 (1936), pp. 406–415.
Howells, W.D., Venetian Life (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1883).
Iser, Wolfgang, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).
Kipling, Rudyard, From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches (London: Macmillan, 1900).
———, Stories and Poems, ed. Daniel Karlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Larabee, Mark D., ‘Joseph Conrad and the Maritime Tradition’, in A Historical Guide to Joseph Conrad, ed. John G. Peters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Lycett, Andrew, Rudyard Kipling (London: Phoenix, 1999).
McClintock, Anne, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York and London: Routledge, 1995).
Metcalf, Thomas R., Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Mirmohamadi, Kylie and Susan K. Martin, Colonial Dickens: What Australians Made of the World’s Favourite Writer (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2012).
Moore, Grace, Dickens and Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
Moosa, Matti, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction (London: Lynne Rienner, 1997).
Public Meeting of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, in Honor of William Dean Howells, President of the Academy From its Inception to the Date of His Death (New York: American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1922).
Quiller-Couch, Arthur, ‘The Commerce of Thought’, in Cambridge Lectures (London: J.M. Dent, 1943).
Rivett-Carnac, J.H., Prehistoric Remains in Central India (Calcutta: n.p., 1879).
Small, Helen, ‘A Pulse of 124: Charles Dickens and a Pathology of the Mid-Victorian Reading Public’, in The Practice and Representation of Reading, eds. James Raven, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Tegnér, Esaias, Frithiof’s Saga, a Legend of Norway, trans. George Stephens (Stockholm: A. Bonnier and London: Black and Armstrong, 1839).
Viswanathan, Gauri, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
Yeats, W.B., Prefaces and Introductions: Uncollected Prefaces and Introductions by Yeats to Works by Other Authors and to Anthologies Edited by Yeats, ed. William H. O’Donnell (London: Macmillan, 1988).
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Bubb, A. (2017). Reading by Chance in a World of Wandering Texts. In: Boehmer, E., Kunstmann, R., Mukhopadhyay, P., Rogers, A. (eds) The Global Histories of Books. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51334-8_4
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