1870s American School Copy Book Handwritten Student Essays Victorian Americana For Sale

I\'m Jim Camp, the guy behind the synaesthesia press. I\'m a letterpress printer, a publisher of limited-edition books and broadsides, and a lifelong book collector. I\'ve been at this for close to 40 years, and most of what I\'m offering here has lived on my shelves for decades. Now it\'s time for these books to move on to new homes. When one finds its way to your shelf, it\'ll arrive quickly, securely packed, and with no extra fees for shipping or handling. Oh, and don\'t be afraid to make an offer!Offering: Easton, Mabel. Martin and Nelly Copy Books. Boston: Thompson, Brown, and Company, ca. 1870s. Manuscript student copy book.Good only. Original green printed wrappers, approximately quarto, with manuscript compositions throughout in ink and pencil. Wrappers worn with chipping, losses and separation along portions of the spine; corners chipped and worn. Interior leaves show handling, occasional spotting, staining and small edge tears. Manuscript remains generally dark and legible.Long before the laptop—and long before the typewriter became commonplace—there was the copy book. This wonderfully preserved 19th-century schoolbook belonged to Mabel Easton, whose name appears repeatedly inside, and contains pages of her carefully handwritten compositions. Subjects include “Newspapers” and “Think Before You Speak,” with Easton filling page after page in the elegant cursive that students were expected not merely to master, but to use while organizing their thoughts into proper essays. The “Newspapers” composition is especially charming, beginning with the observation that few people read the newspaper “who ever think about when, where and by whom they were first published.”The wrappers are nearly as interesting as the student work. The front advertises Martin and Nelly Copy Books, illustrated with a scene from the publishers’ Martin and Nelly Stories, while the rear is devoted to Atwater’s School Government, “The Teacher’s Friend”—a classroom discipline system employing merits and demerits represented by tickets resembling money. It’s a terrific little artifact of Victorian American education: handwriting, composition, moral instruction and classroom discipline all contained in one fragile survivor. Unlike an unused schoolbook, this one still preserves the thing it was actually made for—the handwriting and thoughts of the student who owned it.

A wonderful piece of 19th-century American schoolroom history, made considerably better by the fact that Mabel actually filled the thing up.

My best pieces never sit around for long, so click the heart on my store page to save me as a seller. I\'m also the publisher behind thesynaesthesia press, known for its limited-edition books and broadsides, so when you buy here you\'re buying from a collector and letterpress printer who\'s been at this longer than I\'d like to admit.
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