ON DISPLAY THROUGH DECEMBER 7TH

An assortment of sources, all printed in 1812, relating to events and issues around the world, are currently on display to show off the breadth of the Watkinson collection.  There are 39 items grouped into topics (war, religion, literature, science, economics, American travels, world travels).  The image to the left is from a popular edition of an account of the Lewis & Clark expedition.

The following is one of my favorite items in the exhibition:

Robert Southey, Omniana; or Horae otiosiores (London, 1812)

Robert Southey, the son of a linen draper, was born in Bristol in 1774.  After his father’s death an uncle sent him to Westminster School but he was expelled in 1792 after denouncing flogging in the school magazine.  In 1794 Southey met and befriended  Samuel Taylor Coleridge; the two developed radical political and religious views and planned to emigrate to Pennsylvania to set up a commune, which was predictably abandoned.  Southey gradually lost his radical opinions.  In 1807 he was rewarded with an annual allowance by the Tory government, and in 1813 he was appointed poet laureate.  Lord Byron and William Hazlitt accused him of betraying his political principles for money.

Essentially a writer’s notebook, this volume is comprised of 246 broad-ranging anecdotes derived from observation and reading—including such topics as “Mexican tennis,” chess, biography (deploring the “sharking booksellers” who dissect a “great” man’s life immediately on his death), stationers in Spain, and longevity.  The contents are always surprising, shedding light on contemporary concerns, and displaying the ironic wit and curiosity of the poet.