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Topos, Taxonomy and Travel in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Scrapbooks

  • Clare Pettitt
Chapter
Part of the Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture book series (PNWC)

Abstract

In the remarkable Sir Harry Page Collection of nearly 300 albums and commonplace books at the Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections, there is an elaborate scrapbook created by E. and T. Wilson between 1800 and 1830. The Wilson album is skilfully painted with trompe-l’oeil watercolours which make each page seem like a confusion of papers and objects piled upon one another, pinned and tied together with ribbons, partially concealing each other. On one page, a nautical map is painted on a scroll and titled ‘Rules for Sailing into Felicity Harbour’. The map charts in detail the ‘Bay of False Delicacy’, the ‘Lake of Contempt’, ‘Hesitation Point’ and ‘Consummation Straits’ which have to be navigated to enter the ‘Harbour of Marriage’, although the waters are still treacherous here with the ‘Rocks of Jealousy’ and the ‘Whirlpool of Adultery’ (see Figure 2.1).1 A verse is added: ‘Fair Virtue must your Pilot be / Your Compass Prudence, Peace your Sea / Your Anchor Hope, your Stowage Love, / (To your true course still constant prove) / Your Ballast Sense; and Reason pure / Must ever be your Cynosure’. In the corner of the same page of the album is a tiny watercolour sketch which is titled ‘Seacomb Ferry Boat’, a sailing skiff that ferried passengers between Birkenhead and Liverpool from 1817 onwards.

Keywords

Title Page Hesitation Point Textual Orderliness Print Culture Travel Writing 
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Notes and references

  1. 2.
    James A. Secord, ‘Scrapbook Science: Composite Caricatures in Late Georgian England’, Figuring It Out: Science, Gender and Visual Culture, ed. Ann B. Shteir and Bernard V. Lightman (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2006), pp. 164–91 (p. 186).Google Scholar
  2. 5.
    Recent work on scrapbooks includes: Sharon Marcus, ‘Theatrical Scrapbooks’, Theatre Survey, 54.2 (2013), 283–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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  6. 10.
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    See Griselda Pollock, ‘Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity’, Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 50–90 (p. 63). My attention was first drawn to the relevance of Pollock’s work to this discussion by Patrizia di Bello in her Women’s Albums and Photography.Google Scholar
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© Clare Pettitt 2016

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