Catharine Parr Traill: Three Bibliographical Questions
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Catharine Parr Traill: Three Bibliographical Questions Rupert Schieder The Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts was established in 1979 to pro- vide for contemporary readers reliable texts of classics of Canadian litera- ture in English written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In my work for the Centre on Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains, finished by Catharine Parr Traill in 18 50, I have come upon several biblio- graphical curiosities. I am not suggesting that they are unique. They are worth noting, I believe, because they illustrate different ktinds of questions that occasionally confront researchers and editors. The first was encountered during the attempt to establish the date of the first publication of Canadian Crusoes. Standard bibliographies of Canadian writing such as those by Morgan, Staton and Tremaine, and Stuart Wallace give the date as 1852.1 The first edition of R.E. Watters' A Check List of CanadianLiterature, published in I 959g, has the following entry: THE CANADIAN CRUSOES. A Tale of Rice Lake Plains, Ed. by Agnes Strickland. London, Hall, 1852- 368p [Also: Toronto, McClelland, 1923. 322p Other edi- tions have title: LOST INTHE BACKWOODS. London, Nelson, 1882. Etc] [BM BVaU NSHD OTP QMM 2 There are two errors here, in the form of the title and the name of the pub- lisher. The definite article was used only in the title of the American edi- tion, published in I853 (probably pirated), and subsequent impressions of that edition. The London publisher was not Hall, but Hall, Virtue. The date of the first publication is correct here. The second edition of Watters, published in 1972,3repeats the entry from the first edition, with two changes. For the OTP (Toronto Public Library) location, OLU (University of Western Ontario Library, London) is substi- tuted. More important, the I852 date has been changed to 1850. Having checked with the British Library and with the four Canadian locations listed, I found that none held an 'I850' edition. None appears to have existed. How, then, can one account for the error? It may simply be a printer's slip, not caught by the proofreaders who must 9 Schieder: Catharine Parr Traill have had an extremely difficult task. Perhaps one of Dr. Watters' team of researchers recorded the bibliographical details inaccurately from the book, if it was actually in front of him. Since most of the research depended on cards, there may have been an error on the card or the error may have been made during the transcribsing of the card. There is one other possible source of error, illustrated by an entry in the National Union CataloguePre-1956 Imprints. This entry reads: Traill, Catharine Parr (Strickland) I802-I899. The Canadian Crusoes; a tale of the Rice lake plains, by Catharine Parr Traill, ed. by her sister, Agnes Strick- land. Boston. Woolworth, Ainsworth [I850], 376p oclw4 The composer of the file card reproduced in this entry appears to have sup- plied the 1850 date in sqluare bracktets. He probably took his cue from Mrs. Traill's dedication dated 'I5th Oct. 1850,' the day she finished writing her story, which she then sent to her sister Agnes in England, to bse published two years later. The Woolworth, Ainsworth impression of the novel is actu- ally undated. However, from entries in the American Literary Gazette and Publishers' Circular, it can be established that this impression was issued some time between 1864 and 1870 when these partners operated in Boston.s The source of this Woolworth, Ainsworth impression was the 1853 Ameri- can edition. The error was probably introduced through the good intentions of a researcher who tried to be helpful by adding the date, 1850, in square bracktets. The [I850] 1ater became 1850. Other errors in the bsibliographies of Catharine Parr Traill can bse accounted for by the failure to retain sqluare bracktets, with the result that a suggestion becomes a bibliographical 'fact.' The qluestions raised by another non-existent edition or impression are answered with even less assurance. These arise from the listing of two extremely 'rare' copies that have their source in a much later edition. In 1867 Thomas Nelson and Sons of Edinburgh bought the copyright of Cana- dian Crusoesfrom Mrs. Traill.b Their edition of the book finally appeared in 1882, with substantial changes, under the title Lost in the Backwoods: A Tale of the CanadianForest. Six later impressions of this edition, which can be distinguished only by the dates on their title pages and by the casings of the various Nelson's series in which they appeared, were published in 1884, 1886, 1890, 1892, 1896, and 1901. Having inspected copies of the 1882 edi- tion and these later impressions, I then turned to investigate an entry in The National Union CataloguePre-1 956 Imprints: Traill, Catharine Parr (Stricktland) 1802-1899. Lost in the backtwoods. A tale of the Canadian forest. By Mrs. Traill ... London and New York, T. Nelson and sons, 1880. NBUG NRU7 10 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada xxIv I wrote to both libraries indicated in the entry. The Rare Bookts Librarian of the University of Rochester (NRU) replied that the library did not hold a copy of this 'I880' edition. The Grosvenor Reference Division of the Buffalo and Erie Public Library (NBuG) did have a copy. Unwilling to send the book by interlibrary loan, they supplied xeroxes of the casings and the first few pages. The casings, except for the colour, were similar to those of the 1882 edition and the I886 impression and different from those of the other five impressions, all of which belonged to various Nelson series. The pages inspected were exactly the same as those of the 1882 edition and the six sub- sequent impressions, with one prominent exception. The title page, other- wise the same, bore the date 'I880.' Strangely, the preface, like that of the 1882 edition and its impressions, was dated '1882.' In addition, on the title page and on the upper casing and spine, Mrs. Traill is identified as the 'Author of "'In the Forest",' a version of the title of another of her works, Lady M~ary and Her Nurse, that did not appear until 1881. So I turned my attention to the date on the title page. The 'O' of the 'I880' seemed to be a lit- t1e irregular, but the xerox copy did not provide a clear reproduction. I drove to Buffalo where I was able to see the copy in qluestion. The 'O' did indeed look qluite irregular. An eraser applied by the Rare Book Librarian revealed that the 'O' had been tampered with; it appeared to have been, originally, a '6.' Later, by the use of an eight-powered type magnifier and other colla- tional tools, members of the staff of The Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts were able to identify this 'I880' copy as part of the 1886 impression. One can only speculate about the motives of the individual who altered this one digit, making this copy extremely 'rare.' The bibliography of the works of Catharine Parr Traill presents another illustration of qluestionable motives, or perhaps one should say, ethics, this time on the part of a publisher. Whereas in the former example, one ques- tionable copy was involved, here the legitimacy of a whole edition is open to qluestion. This example presents the puzzling relation of three qluite separate but obviously interrelated bookts, two by and one attributed to Catharine Parr Stricktland. In 1830 Harvey and Darton, the Quaker firm of 55 Gracechurch Street, London, published Sketches from Nature; or, Hints to Juvenile Naturalists.8 No author was named. Instead the writer was identified on the title page as 'The Author of the Young Emigrants - The Step-Brothers - Prejudice Reproved - Juvenile Forget Me Not - Nursery Fables, etc,' all works that can with confidence be attributed to the young Catharine Parr Strickland. It was the custom of the Stricktland sisters, Elizabeth, Agnes, Jane Margaret, Catha- rine, and Susanna, to have their works issued anonymously, perhaps for the sakte of genteel privacy. Unfortunately, this anonymity has led to several instances of confused attribution. II Schieder: Catharine Parr Traill Sketches from Nature comprises a four-page preface in which the writer states her aims and points out the benefits to be reaped by her audience; an eight-page autobiographical 'Introductory Address to my Young Readers'; two hundred and sixteen pages of text, divided into seven chapters of detailed descriptions of the characteristics and habits of domestic animals and birds, and a two-page 'Conclusion,' in which the writer repeats her aims. The book is marked by characteristics that appear consistently in all the workts of Catharine Parr Strickland and Mrs. Traill published over seventy- seven years: passages of autobiography, an insistence on the piety and morality that lead to responsibility and industry, precise details of natural history documented by footnotes and Latin terminology, and an emphasis on authenticity. This last is underlined by references to, qluotations from, and paraphrases of such authorities as Buffong and Linnaeus,'o and to writers in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Although she does not qluote directly, she appears to have had access to the 1797 third edition of the Britannica,for the wording of her section on 'Columba, the Pigeon,' is closer to that edition than to the subsequent fourth (18I0), fifth (18I9), and sixth (1823) editions.11 In her conclusion she speaks of the possibility of 'a future volume,' with 'The H-istory of My Sister's Barbery Doves,' 'The Tortoise that lived in an old lady's garden in our village ...,' 'The Hedgehog, Peter, that lived in the potato-pit,' 'The History of my Dormice,' and 'a variety of other subjects.'' Copies of Sketches from Nature are rare.