A different kind of cover

Did you cover your school books? We did, usually in brown craft paper - sometimes even with grocery bags, as I remember. Then we'd spend the next few months doodling on them, decorating them, writing coded messages and jokes that seemed hilarious at the time. I haven't thought about that in years. I haven't covered a book in years. (I'm an archivist, not a librarian, so I never learned to do real book conservation).

Inspired by Audrey and Jane, I pulled Margery Sharp's The Eye of Love off the TBR shelves (partly in preparation for the arrival of the book on the left).

My copy is a first edition (third printing), and at almost 60, looking its age. It arrived without the dust jacket, which I don't mind at all. But the top of the spine is broken - luckily not yet completely detached. Someone probably have grabbed it from the top once too often. I've done that myself, pulling a book down from a shelf, and noticed how vulnerable the binding there can be. I do know enough not to try and tape a book back together (I could show you horrors of bad taping in my archives). So I decided to go the old-fashioned route and make a book cover. Not out of acidic brown paper, though, I used a sheet of acid-free paper instead. I couldn't quite remember how to fit the cover, and one of my co-workers helped me. It took me straight back to high school, those first days of the new school year with the books piled up. To be honest, my cover looks rather sad, a bit lumpy in spots, and the lettering leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully it will keep the spine intact for a while, and that's all that matters to me.

Isn't the Martha in Paris cover lovely?

New books, and a book lost

If all goes well, I will be moving in a month or so. I should be thinking about all the books that I have to put into boxes between now and then. I should be weeding out books that I don't need to take with me (to the built-in bookcases). I should not be adding more books to those stacks. Like Louis in "Casablanca," I am sure that you will all be shocked, shocked!  to hear that somehow I keep finding books that I just have to have.

The book on the left is The Sherwood Ring, by Elizabeth Marie Pope. I learned about from a post by Constance Martin on Staircase Wit, "10 Books for the Hamilton-Obsessed." Her description immediately sold me on the book:

"This is a jewel of a YA historical fantasy from an author wrote only two books (both outstanding). When orphaned teenaged Peggy goes to live with her cantankerous uncle in upstate New York, her loneliness results in encounters with characters from the Revolutionary War. The contrast between the 20th century and the British-occupied countryside is entertaining and British officer Peaceable Sherwood is as charming a character as you will find in a story that combines history, romance, and humor."

I've been in the mood for a time-travel or time-slip novel, and I think this one will be just right.

The book on the right arrived today, in a wrapping so elegant that I thought immediately of Persephone Books. This one comes thanks to Jane at Beyond Eden Rock. I initially resisted both her review and the book's beautiful cover, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I'm glad I was able to find a copy whose cover is still in pretty good shape, and I am so looking forward to the story within. March Cost is a completely new author to me - with more titles to explore.

(Thanks to Jane and Audrey, I may also have ordered a copy of Margery Sharp's Martha in Paris today - another beautiful cover. I still have The Eye of Love to read first.)

Sadly, another book has been lost in transit.  When Jennifer of Holds Upon Happiness wrote about reading My Family and Other Animals for the first time, she asked about sequels. I couldn't remember the name of the second book, so rather than walking all the way out to the living room, I did a quick Google search. My reward for sloth was the discovery that there is a third book set in Corfu, The Garden of the Gods.  Of course I had to look for a copy - and there aren't a lot out there. I did find one for a reasonable price, but it never arrived, and today Amazon gave up hope and credited me for it. (I once lost an Amazon book package left on my doorstep; I have a theory that they are sometimes appropriated by people assuming they must contain electronics.)  While I was waiting, I picked up My Family and Other Animals, for the first time in at least fifteen years. What a joy it was to rediscover this book. I had only the vaguest memories of it. Now I'm looking forward to sitting down with Birds, Beasts and Relatives - of which I remember even less (if possible).

I am reading: Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich

The subtitle of my copy (borrowed from the library) is "The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America." The image above, with a more forceful text, is from the paperback edition. It feels like a perfect time to be reading this book, under either title, given the events of the past two weeks (and the many past actions and tragedies they evoke). 

     At the start of the twenty-first century, Americans are in the midst of a contentious, often painful, national debate about slavery and its role in American history. At a time when earlier remedies for inequality have been discarded as politically and practically unacceptable, as the historian of American slavery Ira Berlin has put it, "slavery has become a language, a way to talk about race, in a society in which it seems that blacks and whites hardly talk to each other at all." Modern-day racism's roots lie in the slavery era, and any attempt to seriously address race today must also take into account not only the slavery of the past, but also the commitment and sacrifices of other Americans, both black and white, to bring slavery to an end. A better understanding of the Underground Railroad, and of men and women like George DeBaptiste [a black "conductor" in Indiana], deserves to be part of that conversation. . .
    The story of the Underground Railroad is an epic of high drama, moral courage, religious inspiration, and unexpected personal transformations played out by a cast of extraordinary personalities who often seem at the same time both startlingly modern and peculiarly archaic, combining then-radical ideas about race and political action with traditional notions of personal honor and sacred duty. . .
    The Underground Railroad's impact on the antebellum United States was profound. Apart from sporadic slave rebellions, only the Underground Railroad physically resisted the repressive laws that held slaves in bondage. The nation's first great movement of civil disobedience since the American Revolution, it engaged thousands of citizens in the active subversion of federal law and the prevailing mores of their communities, and for the first time asserted the principle of personal, active responsibility for others' human rights. By provoking fear and anger in the South, and prompting the enactment of draconian legislation that eroded the rights of white Americans, the Underground Railroad was a direct contributing cause of the Civil War. It also gave many African Americans their first experience in politics and organizational management. And in an era when proslavery ideologues stridently asserted that blacks were better off in slavery because they lacked the basic intelligence, and even the biological ability, to take care of themselves, the Underground Railroad offered repeated proof of their courage and initiative.
     The Underground Railroad, and the broader abolition movement of which it was a part, were also a seedbed of American feminism. . . In the underground, women were for the first time participants in a political movement on an equal plane with men, sheltering and clothing fugitive slaves, serving as guides, risking reprisals against their families, and publicly insisting that their voices be heard. ("Introduction") 

The cover of this book immediately caught my attention when I came across it in the library, with its pictures of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I didn't recognize all the people shown, and now I've met some of them, extraordinary characters - heroes - like Rev. Josiah Henson, a runaway slave who made it safely to Canada, where he established a colony in Ontario for his fellow fugitives. And Isaac Hopper, who began a long and distinguished career as an abolitionist and central figure on the railroad at age 16, when he helped a fugitive slave in Philadelphia find a safe home and work.

I've already ordered a copy for my shelves, since the library will want theirs back on Saturday.

A positively wolfish appetite for books

     The Small Person used to look at them sometimes with hopeless, hungry eyes. It seemed so horribly wicked that there should be shelves of books - shelves full of them - which offered nothing to a starving creature. She was a starving creature in those days, with a positively wolfish appetite for books, though no one knew about it or understood the anguish of its gnawings. It must be plainly stated that her longings were not for "improving" books. The cultivation she gained in those days was gained quite unconsciously, through the workings of a sort of rabies with which she had been infected from birth. At three years old she had begun a life-long chase after the Story. She may have begun it earlier, but my clear recollections seem to date from Herod, the King, to whom her third year introduced her through the medium of the speckled Testament....
     Religious aunts possibly gave it horrible little books containing memoirs of dreadful children who died early of complicated diseases, whose lingering developments they enlivened by giving unlimited moral advice and instruction to their parents and immediate relatives, seeming, figuratively speaking, to implore them to "go and do likewise," and perishing to appropriate texts. The Small Person suffered keen private pangs of conscience, and thought she was a wicked child, because she did not like those books and had a vague feeling of disbelief in the children. It seemed probable that she might be sent to perdition and devoured by fire and brimstone because of this irreligious indifference, but she could not overcome it...
     Little girls did not revel in sumptuous libraries then. Books were birthday or Christmas presents, and were read and re-read, and lent to other little girls as a great favor.
    The Small Person's chase after the Story was thought to assume the proportions of a crime...
     "That child has a book again!" she used to hear annoyed voices exclaim, when being sent up or down stairs, on some errand, she found something to read on the way, and fell through the tempter. It was so positively unavoidable and inevitable that one should forget, and sink down on the stairs somewhere to tear the contents out of the heart of a few pages. . .   

There is something enchanting about meeting a fellow reader across the years. This is from Frances Hodgson Burnett's The One I Knew Best of All, a memoir of her childhood in the 1850s (it was published in 1893). This particular chapter has a happy ending, with the Small Person discovering, in "a large old-fashioned mahogany bookcase" called the Secrétaire, shelves and shelves of stories inside the "substantially bound and serious-looking books" that fill it.

Her cheeks grew hotter and hotter, she read fast and furiously. She forgot that she was perched on the ledge, and that her legs dangled, and that she might fall. She was perched in Paradise - she had no legs - she could not fall. No one could fall from a Secrétaire filled with books, which might all of them contain Stories!

I had been reading William Still's The Underground Railroad, his record of the fugitive slaves that passed through Philadelphia on their way to freedom in Canada. He began the work to document these individuals, which might help them find their families again later. His is an invaluable record, but it isn't concerned as much with how the fugitives escaped and made their way north, or how the Railroad operated. That's the part of the story that I want to read, so I think I'll set it aside for now in favor of a more general history of the Railroad.

Not a lot of reading, but books still beget books

I haven't managed much reading in the last couple of weeks - at least of books. Instead, I have been reading though paperwork. After many years of apartment living, I finally decided it was time to buy a house. I was lucky enough to find one that I liked - and not just because of its built-in bookcases. Things have moved more quickly that I thought possible. It doesn't seem quite real, despite the thick stacks of contracts and loan documents and association covenants that I am carting around. Yesterday I received a 58-page inspection report, which made me realize how much I have to learn about the care and upkeep of a house.

People keep asking if I am excited, and I'm not, yet - I'm anxious and unsettled. And I haven't even started packing, though a friend has collected boxes for me. Normally, I would turn to some comforting books for distraction, like the Little House stories. (At least I don't have to pack everything into a covered wagon to move to a sod shanty.) Or Georgette Heyer, where servants efficiently move families between London and their country estates. Instead, I inched my way, a few distracted pages at a time, through a biography of Harriet Tubman and the autobiography of Elizabeth Keckley.

Reading about Harriet Tubman made me want to learn more about the Underground Railroad. Catherine Clinton, author of the biography, wrote about other prominent "conductors" and "abductors," including Tubman's "great comrade and benefactor" William Still. The child of a fugitive slave mother, Still became the central agent of the UGRR in Philadelphia,

the primary mover and shaker, spending much of his career risking jail and sheltering fugitives. He also kept a remarkable record of the stories of those who passed through his station from 1852 onward. His notes were hidden away in a cemetery until after the Civil War. Finally, in 1872, the publication of Still's manuscript provided the most detailed record of the inner workings of the Underground Railroad. This volume offers a black eyewitness to these extensive operations and amazing tales.

After reading that, I put in a request for his book, via interlibrary loan. It's a big fat volume, almost 800 pages. William Still originally began documenting his "passengers" to help families torn apart, by sale or other forced separations, to find each other again. The first account is of his own brother Peter, whom their mother had to leave behind in slavery when she made her escape. Neither brother knew who the other was, when they first met forty years later. William afterward helped Peter buy the freedom of his own wife and children, left behind in turn.

Because their work violated the national fugitive slave laws, most of the workers on the UGRR were careful not to leave any incriminating evidence around. Many of the fugitives they helped couldn't read or write. So very few records of this work survive, and that makes William Still's book unique. The stories are amazing, and heart-breaking, and enraging, in turn.

It can't be coincidence that I had already found this in the new books bin at the library:

I'm sure eventually I'll need to take a break from history, for something lighter, but for now I am happily riding the rails.