One of the lovely things about being the temporary owners of thousands of books, as they pass through our hands on their way to new homes, is the stories that ownership marks can tell.
One such volume in stock at the moment is this marvellously patinated leather bound volume of Horace. Inside there is a little story to tell. The book contains the name label of Katharine Elizabeth Boulton which is to the front endpaper with a pen date of 1840. Katharine Elizabeth Boulton was the daughter of Matthew Robinson Boulton and the granddaughter of the engineer Matthew Boulton who with James Watt perfected the steam engine, the power house of the Industrial Revolution. She grew up with her father managing the Soho works in Birmingham with his father and James Watt. Her grandfather was a founder member with Joseph Priestley of the Luna Society. She went on to marry James Patrick Muirhead, lawyer, writer and the biographer of James Watt. In a less academic vein one of their sons, Herbert Muirhead, played in the 1872 FA Cup Final, the very first FA Cup Final, for the Royal Engineers. So far, so interesting.
We can take this story a little further however. In 1840 Katharine was 21 and past the age of schooling yet she was buying (or receiving as as a gift) works of the Roman poet Horace in the original Latin. Whether as a gift, or a self-purchased book, it was clearly valued and read as it is heavily annotated. So, this volume has notes throughout in the same hand and ink as the 1840 written on the endpaper and they are presumed to be Katharine’s notes.
It is interesting that in this distinguished family of male scholars, engineers, authors and inventors that the daughters too seem to have been encouraged to read and study as Katharine was clearly working on her Latin beyond her school years (she was 21 in 1840). The notes on some of the works are extensive, in both English and Latin, and often reference other classical authors.
Similarly, I have previously had in stock a beautiful *tree-calf bound copy of The Student's Flora of the British Islands stamped in gilt with the arms of a school and inside handwritten 'Adelaide Berry Cambridge University Prize 1890’ to prelim. Research showed Adelaide Berry, of 49 Rokeby Road, Greenwich, sat the UCLES Senior Certificate exams (school age exams) in 1890 aged 15. She would have sat the compulsory subjects English grammar, Arithmetic and Religious Knowledge and Cambridge University archives kindly shared that she also chose to do English, French, Natural Science and Drawing. She achieved the equivalent of basic ‘pass’. This volume is now SOLD.
In an era when intelligent women were still along way from being allowed to graduate it is lovely to see women whose families and schools still valued their achievements. The quality of the bindings in both case speak to respect (or self-repsect) in which the recipient was held. Whilst this educational good fortune was clearly not available to many women, it is still lovely to have the evidence of Victorian women's intellectual lives passing though our hands.
*highly polished leather treated with acid which gives a very attractive tree-like pattern to the book's boards.
Pictured:
Q. Horati Flacci [ Horace ]: Opera Omina, 1840. John R. Priestley, 1840. This book is still for sale at time of writing.
Hooker, J. D,, The Student's Flora of the British Islands. London: Macmillan, 1884. Tree-calf contemporary binding by Bickers & Son. [SOLD]
Gosden, P. H. J. H. (Editor), How They Were Taught: An Anthology of Contemporary Accounts of Learning and Teaching in England 1800-1950. Oxford: Blackwell, 1969 [includes sections on women’s education and teacher training]. This book is still for sale at time of writing.
Also of interest on women's education in the Victorian era:
Fletcher, Sheila, Victorian Girls: Lord Lyttelton's Daughters. London: Hambledon Press, 1997 This book is still for sale at time of writing.
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