I have recently (in the odd moments allowed to me by that anti-intellectual managerialist nightmare with the Orwellian Newspeak name, the Research Excellence Framework) been preparing for publication my keynote talk at the first Sheffield Digital Humanities Congress last year, Made in Sheffield: Industrial Perspectives on the Digital Humanities. This considers how looking at the history of the Industrial Revolution can help us understand current digital transformations. Among recent scholarly publications on the industrial revolution, I particularly enjoyed Emma Griffin’s Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013). Griffin uses autobiographies by working men and women to reexamine the debate about the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the standard of living and quality of life. Griffin’s introduction discusses the use of quantification in academic discussion of the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the life of ordinary people, reminding us of Sir John Clapham’s trenchant dismissal of ‘historians who neglect quantities’ and E. P. Thomson’s riposte that ‘it is quite possible for statistical averages and human experiences to run in opposite directions’.
Griffin’s emphasis on the importance of quantification in the historiography of the Industrial Revolution is itself very pertinent to current discussion of the role of quantification in humanities research (and particularly as part of the digital humanities). Griffin reminds us that sophisticated quantitative techniques have been used by historians writing about the Industrial Revolution since the 1920s. The impression is sometimes given by enthusiasts for quantification in the digital humanities that it offers an escape route from the thickets of theory and will create more authoritative conclusions. A moment’s glance at the use of statistics in studying the Industrial Revolution will quickly dispel any such thoughts. The apparently authoritative statistics on British economic growth prepared by Deane and Cole, which provided the basis for Rostow’s theory that there were set conditions for ‘lift off’ into economic growth, were undermined by Crafts, who questioned the methods used by Deane and Cole and produced statistics which suggested that it was very difficult to measure substantial economic growth in Britain in the late eighteenth century, indicating that the early effects of the Industrial Revolution were limited to particular industries and localities. The literature about British economic growth rates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries suggests that quantification isn’t a route to clarity but rather a means of creating greater uncertainty and complexity.
Griffin laments the current stress on quantification among historians working on the Industrial Revolution: ‘Producing graphs and tables is more in vogue than asking how workers felt’ (p. 15). Moreover, Griffin suggests that the picture produced by such measurements is rather monochrome: ‘However living standards are measured, historians report stagnation or decline. Evidence of modest rises is gloomily dismissed as a paltry recompense for the labouring families that had done the most to create the substantial economic growth that occurred over the period …Today’s intellectuals understand the industrial revolution in much the same way as the educate elites who lived through it’ (p. 17). In Griffin’s view, if one looks at the autobiographies by ordinary men and (sometimes) women which began to appear in increasing quantities from the beginning of the nineteenth century, a different impression emerges. Griffin uses these autobiographies to question some of the accepted criticisms of industrialization. She finds that, for many people, factory work might offer an escape from the misery and uncertainty of a subsistence life in the countryside. She suggests that the growth in child labour had more complex roots than ruthless economic exploitation. Griffin uses these autobiographical recollections to reconstruct working class lives as more than economic abstractions and considers the importance of (for example) sex, religion and education in making up the quality of life.
Griffin expresses amazement that more use has not previously been made of these autobiographies: ‘It is surely surprising that in spite of the ongoing interest in how the industrial revolution was experienced by the poor, no one has opened the pages of the books and notebooks where the poor wrote about just that. Historians have measured wages and working hours with meticulous care, yet none have sought to listen to, or make sense of, the messy tales that the workers left behind … If we listen rather than count, we shall start to see the industrial revolution in a very different light’ (p. 16). There are obvious issues about the autobiographies used by Griffin as a corpus of evidence, and she is very conscious of these (e.g. p. 25). Griffin uses just over 350 autobiographies – a slender sample with which to investigate such a complex phenomenon as industrialization, although it is remarkable that so many memoirs by ordinary men and women survive. The sample is dominated overwhelmingly by men – Griffin reports cases in which the idea that a woman’s life could ever be worth describing was dismissed as ludicrous. Many of these men had made good as teachers, preachers, poets, engineers or politicians, or wanted to tell us how they had succeeded, perhaps as a result of the virtues of temperance. The authors may have had experience of working class life, but they were rarely simply ordinary people – these memoirs are not the voice of the poor, by any stretch of the imagination.
Yet these autobiographies are fascinating and compelling documents. I cannot possibly do justice to them here – I can only recommend that you read Emma Griffin’s book. Griffin describes how ‘Most of the autobiographies that have survived appeared in print during or soon after the author’s lifetime. A few were even commercial successes. James Dawson Burn’s Autobiography was published in 1855, and by the end of the decade had gone into its fourth edition. Others were published in small numbers by obscure provincial printers, more for the writer’s satisfaction than in response to any public demand. John Robinson’s Short Account of the Life of John Robinson was as short as its title promised – just one page long. Robinson was a printer and probably published his short account himself. It seems likely that the copy held by Torquay Central Library is the only one now in existence’ (p. 5).
The lack of a digital dimension to Griffin’s research is striking. The process she describes is one of finding forgotten items in dusty archives. Yet the period she discusses – the first half of the nineteenth century – is one where we assume that digital online coverage of published books is quite good. These are books which don't present many copyright problems, and it seems reasonable to assume that many of them will have been covered already by the mass digitisaton programmes of Google, Microsoft et al., and be accessible via Google Books, the Internet Archive and so on. Indeed, perhaps it would be feasible to assemble enough online versions of these working class autobiographies to use some quantification techniques on the text, and see how the results compare with Griffin’s qualitative explorations. What type of language was used in discussing factory work? How were conditions in towns described? Maybe we could even envisage some sentiment analysis of these texts. The potential of these documents for quantatitive analysis has already been demonstrated by Jane Humphries, who has used them in this way in her study of Childhood and Childhood Labour in the Industrial Revolution (2010). By mining the digital versions of these autobiographies, perhaps we can dissolve the quantification / qualitative polarities in the historiography of the Industrial Revolution, and develop a new type of discourse about the effects of industrialization. But the practicability of such an approach would be dependent on the extent to which our autobiographies are available in digital form.
A key tool in Griffin’s research was a monumental annotated critical bibliography of The Autobiography of the Working Class edited by John Burnett, David Vincent and David Mayall, which was published in three volumes from 1984-9 and lists over two thousand autobiographies by people of working class origin produced between 1790 and 1945. Griffin notes that many more items have come to light since these volumes were prepared (p. 248), but they are nevertheless the starting point in attempting to appraise digital coverage of this material. Many of the items described by Burnett et al are in manuscript or typescript form, but a very large proportion are published, and we can hope that many of the earlier items are available online. (On Burnett's Bibliography, see further the archive kept at Brunel University.)
Prior to 1800, the English Short Title Catalogue, representing decades of intensive bibliographic research, provides an authoritative record of the printed output of the English-speaking world, and the ESTC underpins the digital libraries of Early English Books Online and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (although even the ESTC is not comprehensive. Between 1788 and 1793, Thomas Johnson, an influential designer, carver and gilder, published an anthology called Summer Productions; or, Progressive Miscellanies, which contains at the end of the sixth volume an account of his life. The ESTC only notes the first volume, which is in the British Library. In 2003, Jacob Simon pointed out that there were copies of the remaining five volumes in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, and published Johnson's Autobiography in Furniture History 39, pp. 1-64) . But most of the printed autobiographies in which we are interested were produced after 1800. Burnett’s bibliography only covers items produced after 1790, and only three items in it were printed before 1800 (Vol. 1, nos. 15, 472, 507). Griffin, going back to 1700, adds a further six items, giving us nine recorded working-class autobiographies between 1700 and 1800. By contrast, the Bibliography records over 80 working class autobiographies produced between 1800 and 1849, which (as Griffin observes) itself tells us a great deal about changes in working class literacy and access to means of communication.
The nine eighteenth-century autobiographies are all carefully recorded in the ESTC and as a result duly appear in Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Here are the ESTC entries in chronological order, with links to the ECCO facsimile. Where only one edition of the work appears in ECCO, I have given the entry for that edition. Where copies are available via Google Books or the Internet Archive, I have also given a link.
Tryon, Thomas, 1634-1703. Some memoirs of the life of Mr. Tho. Tryon,
late of London, merchant: Written by himself: together with some rules, and
orders, proper to be observed by all such as would train up and govern, either
familes, or societies, in cleanness, temperance, and innocency. (London :
Printed, by T. Sowle, in White-Hart-Court, in Gracious-Street, 1705.) ECCO copy.
Chubb, Thomas, 1679-1747. The posthumous works of Mr. Thomas Chubb:
containing, I. Remarks on the Scriptures. II. Observations on the
Reverend Mr. Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses. III. The author's
farewel to his Readers; comprehending a Variety of Tracts, on the most
important Subjects of Religion. With an appendix, including a postscript
to his four last Dissertations, more particularly relative to that on
the History of Melchizedek. To the whole is prefixed, some account of
the author : written by himself. In two volumes. ... (London : printed
for R. Baldwin, jun. at the Rose in Pater-Noster-Row; and sold by E.
Easton, in Silver-Street, Sarum, M.DCC.XLVIII. [1748]). ECCO copy. HATHI Trust copy. Google Books copy.
Bewley, George, 1683 or 4-1749. A narrative of the Christian
experiences of George Bewley, late of the City of Corke, deceased.
Written by himself: And Published with the Approbation, and by Order of
the National Half-Year's Meeting, held in Dublin in the third Month,
1750. (Dublin : printed by I. Jackson at the Globe in Meath-Street,
1750.) ECCO copy.
Bangs, Benjamin, 1652-1741. Memoirs of the life and convincement of
that worthy Friend, Benjamin Bangs, late of Stockport in Cheshire,
deceased; mostly taken from his own mouth, by Joseph Hobson. (London :
printed and sold by Luke Hinde at the Bible in George-Yard,
Lombard-Street, [1757]). ECCO copy.
Barker, Robert, b. 1729. The unfortunate shipwright: Or, Cruel captain.
Being a faithful narrative of the unparallel'd sufferings of Robert
Barker, late carpenter on board the thetis snow of Bristol, in a voyage
to the coast of Guinea and Antigua. (London : Printed for, and sold by
the author, and may be had at Mr. Samuel Collins's, the sign of the
Card-maker's Arms on Garlick Hill, London, and no where else, 1758.) ECCO copy. [A copy of the 1759 edition is available via Google Books].
Barker, Robert, b. 1729. Unfortunate shipwright. Part 2 (Published according to act of Parliament.) The second part of the unfortunate shipwright; or, The blind man's travels through many parts of England, in pursuit of his right: ([Dublin] : London, printed: and Dublin reprinted for Robert Barker, for his own benefit, in the year, 1766.) ECCO copy.
MacDonald, John, b. 1741?. Travels, in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during a series of thirty years and upwards. By John Macdonald, A Cadet of the Family of Keppoch in Inverness-Shire; who, After the Ruin of his Family in 1745, was thrown when a Child on the wide World; the Ways of which, with many curious, useful, and interesting Particulars he had occasion to observe, and has taken care, by Means of a regular Journal, to record, while he served, in various departments, a great number of Noblemen and Gentlemen, English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, &c. &c. (London : printed for the author, and sold by J. Forbes, Covent-Garden, MDCCXC. [1790]). ECCO copy.
Memoirs of a printer's devil; interspersed with pleasing recollections, local descriptions, and anecdotes. (Gainsborough : printed and sold by J. M. Mozley and Co. for the author: and sold by Messrs. Rivington, St. Paul's-Church-Yard, London, M.DCC.XCIII. [1793]) ECCO copy.
McKaen, James, 1752 or 3-1797. Genuine copy. The life of James M'Kaen, shoemaker in Glasgow, [w]ho was executed at the Cross of Glasgow, on Wednesday the 25th Jan. 1797. For the murder and robbery of James Buchanan, the Lanark carrier. [ Second edition.] (Glasgow : Printed for and sold by Brash and Reid, [1797]). ECCO copy.
Anderson, Edward, 18th cent. The sailor; a poem. Description of his going to sea, and through various scenes of life, ... with observations on the town of Liverpool. By Edward Anderson, ... (Newcastle : printed for and sold by the author. M. Angus and Son, Printers, Side, Newcastle, [1800?]) ECCO copy.
So for books published before 1800, that remarkable bibliographic achievement, the ESTC, and the resoures derived from it such as ECCO, ensure that we can easily trace obscure voices like that of Robert Barker or Benjamin Bangs. It is worth noting in passing that humbler folk like these are not so well served by other initiatives such as Google Books or the HATHI Trust. While most (but not all) of these works feature as catalogue entries in Google Books, only one is reproduced in facsimile in the Googl;e library so far (which is also the only one to be picked up by the HATHI Trust, showing how the selectivity of these initiatives can become self-reinforcing).
From 1800, paradoxically, as working class autobiographies become more commonplace, they start to disappear from the web. This is partly because the bibliographical infrastructure is less comprehensive from 1800. As noted, to 1800 we have the ESTC which attempts to record every known publication from the English-speaking world. A Nineteenth-Century Short Title catalogue was produced in print and CD-ROM by Avero Publications between 1983 and 2003 and there is an online version which continures to be updated, but, even though this contains more than 1,275,000 items, it is based on the holdings of big league research libraries: the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Harvard University Library, the Library of Congress, the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, the National Library of Scotland and the University Libraries of Cambridge and Newcastle.That means a book that survives in a single copy in Torquay Public Library will not be mentioned. If a book was published in the nineteenth century (and likewise for much of the twentieth century), it needed to have had the social, intellectual or moral prestige to make it worthy of inclusion in one of the super-elite libraries of the English-speaking world. And, if it didn't make its way into these august collections, then it probably won't make it onto the web either, because the blinkered assumption of projects like Google Books and the HATHI Trust is that the sum of human knowledge and understanding is only to be found in elite top notch institutions, and not in Torquay Public Library.
Let us take as an illustration the autobiography found by Griffin in Torquay: A Short Account of the Life of John Robinson, printed by Robinson himself in Torquay in 1882. This does not appear in the Bibliography of Burnett et al., and Griffin speculates that the copy in Torquay Public Library is the only one surviving. Not surprisingly, it is not in the NSTC. A natural next port of call would be COPAC, which declares that 'In a single search you can discover the holdings of the UK’s national libraries (including the British Library), many University libraries, and specialist research libraries'. COPAC stands for 'CURL Online Public Access Catalogue'. CURL was the Consortium of University Libraries, a co-ordinating group for libraries as universities which regarded themselves as elite, now re-branded as Research Libraries UK. Broadly, the membership of RLUK is those elite universities which belong to what is called the Russell Group. There are one or two non-Russell Group universities in RLUK, but generally non-Russell Group universities such as Aberystwyth University, Bangor University, Hull University, Kent University and Sussex University, all of which have important and interesting research collections, are not deemed worthy of inclusion in the COPAC club. COPAC has recently been extending its coverage to other specialist collections, including some which are major resources for working class history such as the Bishopsgate Institute and the Humanist Library at Conway Hall, but no public library collections have so far passed the august portals of COPAC.
A better alternative in searching for this type of material is WorldCat, run by the world's biggest and most important library consortium, OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) which has developed from an association of Ohio Libraries and Colleges who wanted to share cataloguing and other resources. Many of the bibliographic products produced by OCLC are indispensable to running a large modern library service and virtually every major library service in the UK is a member and contributes its catalogue records to WorldCat. This includes the university libraries omitted from COPAC, as well as public library services such as Torbay Library Services. WorldCat altogether combines the catalogues of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. However the size of WorldCat can be a hindrance if you are looking for specific items. In this case, the fact that 'short account life robinson' (and other similar search strategies) wil result in hundreds of hits on WotldCat. The single sheet in Torquay is probably somewhere, but it is searching for a needle in a haystack.
Annoyingly, WorldCat doesn't have an easy means of restricting searches to particular libraries. So the simplest thing to do is to go direct to the online catalogue for Torbay Library Services, where a search for 'robinson' as author and 'short' in the title produces the following very gnomic catalogue entry:
Part of the difficulty in locating this item in WorldCat was because this original catalogue information is so limited - an indication of place or approximate date of publication would have assisted in locating the information on WorldCat. It is sometimes suggested that catalogue information and formats are becoming irrelevant because of the power of Google as a search tool, but of course the quality of Google searches depend on the underlying information. WorldCat records have been ingested into Google Books, presumably to help direct future digitisation work, but the restricted information in this catalogue entry effectively obscures it. A Google search for 'john robinson torquay' doesn't retrieve the catalogue entry in the first ten hits. A search for "short account of the life of john robinson" does the job, but the lack of information in the original catalogue entry makes the Google Book entry virtually meaningless:
It will probably be a very long time before we see a digitised version of Robinson's account of his life in Google Books. It is ironic that it is through Emma Griffin's own reference to Robinson's little autobiography that this item is beginning to develop a footprint in Google (to which this blog entry will, of course, add). In selecting items for digitisation in Google Books and other mass digitisation projects, priority is given to such 'great libraries' as the Bodleian Library, Harvard University Library and the British Library. The assumption appears to be that the contents of these libraries embraces the whole of human knowledge and understanding. For the British partners, it is assumed that legal deposit under the terms of copyright legislation means that the libraries have a copy of every book ever printed in the UK. But in the British Library (for example) legal deposit was not systematically enforced until the late 1840s and it is unlikely that librarians at the British Museum before that date would have taken much interest in acquiring what would have been seen as such ephemeral material as the autobiographies used by Griffin. Moreover, many items received under legal deposit considered of ephemeral interest were not fully catalogued by the British Library but placed under generic 'dump' headings. The ESTC found that there were something like 50,000-60,000 forgotten items from the eighteenth century in the British Library. These have now been largely identified and catalogued for items up to 1800, but no such similar exercise has occurred for the nineteenth century, and there can be no doubt that many further working class autobiographies languish under such dump catalogue entries.
Although WorldCat and Google Books are wonderful resources, the problem is that they reinforce an assumption that by simply linking up the catalogues of major libraries gives us comprehensive coverage in a quick and painless process. As a result, we found ourselves silently and surreptitiously enmeshed in the world view and cultural assumptions which shaped those elite libraries. The problem is that, in working with resources like Google Books, we soon cease to have any sense of how these resources are silently constraining and altering our research. You can begin to get a sense of the perils of this process by looking more closely at the way which the digital representation of the working class autobiographies used by Emma Griffin is highly filtered, with a significant quantity of material disappearing from sight altogether.
Those writers of working class origins who had a success story to report, who had become distinguished statesmen, successful businessmen, religious leaders and so on, were able to find commercial publishers who were interested in their story. Writers whose life demonstrated the virtues of temperance, prudence and self-help were of course particularly favoured. Books published by major commercial publishers would be picked up by the legal deposit libraries in Britain, and might even excite interest across the Atlantic. As a result, it is these volumes which we tend to find in such resources as Google Books, the Internet Archive and the HATHI Trust. Here are some examples:
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 125]. [CAMPKIN, J.], The Struggles of a Village Lad (William Tweedie: London, 1859). Google Books copy (from The British Library).
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 241]. FLOCKHART, Robert. The Street Preacher, being the Autobiography of Robert Flockhart, late corporal 81st Regiment (Adam and Charles Black: Edinburgh, 1858). Google Books copy (from Harvard); HATHI Trust copy (also from Harvard).
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 331]. HILLOCKS, James Inches. My Life and Labours in London, a step nearer the mark (William Freeman: London, 1865). Cheap edn., Mission Life in London (London, 1865). Google Books copy of cheap edition (from Oxford), also available at Internet Archive.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 632] [SMITH, Charles Manby], The Working Man's Way in the World, being the Autobiography of a Journeyman Printer (William and Frederick G. Cash: London [1853]). Google Books copy (from Harvard), also in Internet Archive and HATHI Trust (with additional copy in New York Public Library).
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 675] ANON., Struggles for Life; or, the Autobiography of a Dissenting Minister (W. and F. G. Cash, London; John Menzies, Edinburgh: 1854 [1853]; new edn. The Book Society, Hamilton, Adams and Co., Jarrold and Sons: London, 1864). Google Books copy, from an American edition printed by Lindsay and Blakiston, Philadelphia, 1854, in Harvard Libraries, where a cataloguer has identified the author as William Leask. This copy also in HATHI Trust catalogue.
These autobiographies for one reason or the other caught the attention of librarians and collectors and made their way to the respectable havens of Harvard and the British Museum, where they have been picked up by Google, HATHI and so on. In comparing the contents of the bibliography compiled with Burnett et al. with Google Books, the surprising thing is the large number of the nineteenth century autobiographies, most of which present no copyright issues, are represented only by catalogue entries with no digitisation. This is a reminder of how far Google Books remains a very incomplete (indeed, barely started) enterprise, even for pre-1900 material. In some cases, digitised versions of autobiographies (derived from a microfilm edition of some items in the British Library from Burnett's Bibliography) are available via the Gale subscription resource, Nineteenth Century Collections Online (these electronic versions are picked up by COPAC). However, what is the most surprising and startling aspect of examining the digital presence of these working class autobiographies is the large number which escaped the bibliographical net altogether. As a result, these everyday voices have effectively vanished from the web, except where a modern scholar happens to have discussed them and this discussion has been picked up by Google. Let us examine a few cases to illustrate the process.
Edward Davis was born in Aston started working in a button factory at the age of six. He became a Quaker in 1858 and, having been apprenticed to a pearl button manufacturer and then built up a confectionery trade, eventually became a teacher. In 1898, the firm of White and Pike published a short pamphlet by Davis entitled Some Passages from My Life, Davis presumably paying for the publication. This is No. 204 in Vol. 1 of the Burnett bibliography, which states that there is a copy in Birmingham Reference Library. This is not on the online catalogue of Birmingham Libraries, presumably because it is only recorded on a card catalogue which has not been converted to an online form. Since the book is not recorded in the Birmingham catalogue, it is not in WorldCat. And as a result of this, there is no catalogue entry for Davis's little book in Google Books, the HATHI Trust, or The Open Library. Davis's book hasn't completely vanished from the web, however. A xerox of the copy in Birmingham was made at some point (presumably because of the entry in Burnett's bibliography) and deposited in Oxford University, so there is an entry for this photocopy on COPAC.
Other autobiographies have been more completely obscured by the way in which digitisation has proceeded. John Finney worked in the Potteries from the age of 13 and in 1902 published Sixty Years Recollection of an Etruscan (J. G. Fenn, Stoke-on-Trent, 1902), which is No. 57 in Vol. 3 of the Bibliography. The Bibliography records that there is a copy in the Horace Barks Reference Library in Hanley. In many cases, holdings of local history libraries and reference libraries remain as card catalogues, and the online catalogue for Stoke libraries does not refer to Finney's book. So, once again, it is absent from our major catalogues - no entry for Finney's book in WorldCat or COPAC. As a result, Google Books denies all knowedge of such a book. A general Google web search on 'John Finney Etruscan' will tell us that this is an engaging work, but we can find out nothing else about it or where to get it.
Another example: Benjamin North was born at Thame in Oxford in 1811, the 8th child of a labourer. He was a boy shepherd, bird-keeper, plough-boy, and groom, then trained as a paper-maker, but was made redundant by the introduction of new machinery. He eventually became a traveller for a chair-maker and set up a successful furniture business in High Wycombe. North's autobiography was published after his death by his son, and is No. 129 in Vol. 3 of the Bibliography: Autobiography of Benjamin North, with a preface by W.H., to which is appended a brief notice of his last moments, by his eldest son (Fred K. Samuels, Aylesbury, 1882). A copy is recorded in the Local Collection Reference Library in High Wycombe. The entry in the Buckinghamshire Libraries online catalogue states that the copy in High Wycombe is a photocopy. Buckinghamshire Libraries are members of OCLC, so perhaps it is because the High Wycombe copy is stated to be a photocopy that the entry for North's memoirs does not appear in WorldCat. Whatever the explanation, this is another book that the web has caused to vanish: no entry in WorldCat, nothing in COPAC, no report on Google Books. The only trace of its existence in Google is where it is cited by historians such as Emma Griffin or Jane Humphries in her book on Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution.
We could continue to mount up examples of working class autobiographies listed in the Bibliography of Burnett, Vincent and Mayall which have vanished from our main online bibliographic resources such as WorldCat and Google Books and have in effect been suppressed by the web. Here is a random list made from first preliminary checks against the Bibliography:
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 26] Autobiographies of Industrial School Children (T. Nelson and Sons: London, 1865). Ten short narratives by boys and girls who attended industrial schools in Aberdeen. A copy is reported in Aberdeen Central Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 41] BARBER, Mrs M. Five Score and Ten. A True Narrative of the Long Life and Many Hardships of M. Barber, taken down from her own dictation, a short time before her death and who died at the advanced age of nearly one hundred and eleven years (Penny and Makeig, Crewkerne, 1840). Copy reported in Bristol Central Library, the website for which explains clearly why this little book hasn't made its way onto the web: 'Much of the older reference stock from before 1985 will not be found on the online catalogue. These records are still held on card catalogue files in the Reference Library'.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 47] BARNETT, Will. The Life Story of Will Barnett, better known as the ex-jockey. Written by himself (Spurgeon Memorial Press: Congleton, [1911?]). Copy in Horace Barks Reference Library, Hanley.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 71] BLOW, John. The Autobiography of John Blow (J. Parrott: Leeds, 1870). Copy in Leeds Public Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 213] DUKE, Robert Rippon. An Autobiography, 1817-1902 (Privately published: Buxton, 1902). Copy in Derbyshire County Library, Matlock. Duke, having been apprenticed to a caprenter at the age of 14, became an architect and was responsible for much of the development of Buxton, so there are published biographies and further information about him on the web, but the existence of this published autobiography is only mentioned in passing.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 263] GIBBS, John. The Life and Experience of, and some traces of the Lord's gracious dealings towards the author, John Gibbs, Minister of the Gospel, at the Chapel of Saint John Street, Lewes (Printed for the author: Lewes, 1827). On this book. see now in addition the Annual Report of the East Sussex County Record Office 2008-9, p. 13.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 299] HANBY, George. Autobiography of a Colliery Weighman (Brewin and Davis: Barnsley, 1874). Copy in Barnsley Public Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 300] HANSON, William. The Life of William Hanson, written by himself (in his 80th year) and revised by a friend (Privately published: Halifax, 1883). Another edition was published by J. Walsh in Halifax in 1884. Copies in Halifax Public Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 478] McNAUGHTON, John Donkin. The Life and Happy Experience of John Donkin McNaughton. Written by Himself (H. Masterman: Thirsk, [1810?]). Burnett et al don't give a location for this item - presumably it is recorded only on a card catalogue somewhere in North Yorkshire County Libraries.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 542] [OVERSBY, W. T.] A Life's Romance. By a Successful Insurance Man (Liverpool Daily Post: Liverpool, 1938). Copy in Blackburn Central Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 568] RAGG, Thomas. God's Dealings with an Infidel: or, Grace Triumphant: being the Autobiography of Thomas Ragg, author of Creation's Testimony to its God' (Piper, Stephenson and Spence: London, 1858). Copy reported in Local Studies Department, Central Reference Library, Birmingham.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 598] ROONEY, Ralph. The Story of My Life (Bury Times: Bury, 1947). 3 editions are reported in Burnett, all held by the Local Studies Collection in Preston, but none of them are apparently in WorldCat, Copac, Google Books, etc.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 637] SMITH, George. An Autobiography of One of the People (Privately published, 1923). Copy in Local Studies Library, Redruth.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 641] SMITH, William. The Life of William Smith, late Minister of the Baptist Chapel, Bedworth (E. C. Lewis: Coventry [1857?]). Copy in Nuneaton Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 677] SUTTON, William. Multum in Parvo; or the Ups and Downs of a Village Gardener (Robertson and Gray: Kenilworth, 1903). Copy in Local Studies Library, Coventry.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 687] TAYLOR, John. Autobiography of John Taylor (J. Francis: Bath, 1893). Copy in Bristol Central Library.
This is only the result of a very preliminary excursus into the Bibliography, and again the very action of publishing this blog entry (just as means of parking my notes for the time being) will give these books a web presence, in some cases for the first time. However, these lacunae of the web do raise important questions about how we are building up our digital libraries and the way in which we conduct research using them. For the period before 1800, the ESTC attempts (and largely succeeds) in documenting all printing in the English-speaking world, no matter where it is kept. After 1800, Google Books and other enterprises have decided to forgo the preliminary creation of such a detailed bibliographical infrastructure. Instead, they have assumed that national libraries and other major research libraries contain all that is needed, and have worked from there. The way in which the use of this ad hoc method distorts the online representation of post-1800 printing requires much further examination. I suspect the result is that the printed output of the provinces (particularly the newly industrialised areas of Northern England and the Midlands) is seriously underrepresented in corpora like Google Books. The extent to which there is an inherent class bias in enterprises like Google Books is also worth investigating (probably there was a bias in the British Museum against all sorts of biographical material which was apparently only of ephemeral value). These issues in themselves have ramifications for the research methods that we adopt in approaching collections like Google Books. 'Distant reading' has a great deal to offer in looking at measuring shifts in the use of language and metaphor over long periods, but, if the sample on which the distant reading takes place is biased towards particular regions or social groups, this will significantly distort the results.
I hope to develop a more detailed analysis of these issues, but I suppose a preliminary conclusion is a plea to remember public libraries in developing digitisation programmes. Digitising the British Library and Harvard Libraries will never be enough; we also need the Horace Barks Reference Library, the Mitchell Library and the Minet Library. Our digitisation strategies need to take this into account.
Further Reading
J. Burnett (ed.) Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s (London: Allen Lane, 1982)
J. Burnett (ed.) Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s (London: Allen Lane, 1994)
J. Burnett, D. Vincent and D. Mayall (eds.), The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated Critical Bibliography 3 vols. (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984-9)
E. Griffin, Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013)
Jane Humphries, Childhood and Childhood Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
D. Vincent, Testaments of Radicalism: Memoirs of Working Class Politicians 1790-1885 (London: Europa, 1977)
D. Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London: Europa, 1981)
Barker, Robert, b. 1729. Unfortunate shipwright. Part 2 (Published according to act of Parliament.) The second part of the unfortunate shipwright; or, The blind man's travels through many parts of England, in pursuit of his right: ([Dublin] : London, printed: and Dublin reprinted for Robert Barker, for his own benefit, in the year, 1766.) ECCO copy.
MacDonald, John, b. 1741?. Travels, in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, during a series of thirty years and upwards. By John Macdonald, A Cadet of the Family of Keppoch in Inverness-Shire; who, After the Ruin of his Family in 1745, was thrown when a Child on the wide World; the Ways of which, with many curious, useful, and interesting Particulars he had occasion to observe, and has taken care, by Means of a regular Journal, to record, while he served, in various departments, a great number of Noblemen and Gentlemen, English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, &c. &c. (London : printed for the author, and sold by J. Forbes, Covent-Garden, MDCCXC. [1790]). ECCO copy.
Memoirs of a printer's devil; interspersed with pleasing recollections, local descriptions, and anecdotes. (Gainsborough : printed and sold by J. M. Mozley and Co. for the author: and sold by Messrs. Rivington, St. Paul's-Church-Yard, London, M.DCC.XCIII. [1793]) ECCO copy.
McKaen, James, 1752 or 3-1797. Genuine copy. The life of James M'Kaen, shoemaker in Glasgow, [w]ho was executed at the Cross of Glasgow, on Wednesday the 25th Jan. 1797. For the murder and robbery of James Buchanan, the Lanark carrier. [ Second edition.] (Glasgow : Printed for and sold by Brash and Reid, [1797]). ECCO copy.
Anderson, Edward, 18th cent. The sailor; a poem. Description of his going to sea, and through various scenes of life, ... with observations on the town of Liverpool. By Edward Anderson, ... (Newcastle : printed for and sold by the author. M. Angus and Son, Printers, Side, Newcastle, [1800?]) ECCO copy.
So for books published before 1800, that remarkable bibliographic achievement, the ESTC, and the resoures derived from it such as ECCO, ensure that we can easily trace obscure voices like that of Robert Barker or Benjamin Bangs. It is worth noting in passing that humbler folk like these are not so well served by other initiatives such as Google Books or the HATHI Trust. While most (but not all) of these works feature as catalogue entries in Google Books, only one is reproduced in facsimile in the Googl;e library so far (which is also the only one to be picked up by the HATHI Trust, showing how the selectivity of these initiatives can become self-reinforcing).
From 1800, paradoxically, as working class autobiographies become more commonplace, they start to disappear from the web. This is partly because the bibliographical infrastructure is less comprehensive from 1800. As noted, to 1800 we have the ESTC which attempts to record every known publication from the English-speaking world. A Nineteenth-Century Short Title catalogue was produced in print and CD-ROM by Avero Publications between 1983 and 2003 and there is an online version which continures to be updated, but, even though this contains more than 1,275,000 items, it is based on the holdings of big league research libraries: the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Harvard University Library, the Library of Congress, the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, the National Library of Scotland and the University Libraries of Cambridge and Newcastle.That means a book that survives in a single copy in Torquay Public Library will not be mentioned. If a book was published in the nineteenth century (and likewise for much of the twentieth century), it needed to have had the social, intellectual or moral prestige to make it worthy of inclusion in one of the super-elite libraries of the English-speaking world. And, if it didn't make its way into these august collections, then it probably won't make it onto the web either, because the blinkered assumption of projects like Google Books and the HATHI Trust is that the sum of human knowledge and understanding is only to be found in elite top notch institutions, and not in Torquay Public Library.
Let us take as an illustration the autobiography found by Griffin in Torquay: A Short Account of the Life of John Robinson, printed by Robinson himself in Torquay in 1882. This does not appear in the Bibliography of Burnett et al., and Griffin speculates that the copy in Torquay Public Library is the only one surviving. Not surprisingly, it is not in the NSTC. A natural next port of call would be COPAC, which declares that 'In a single search you can discover the holdings of the UK’s national libraries (including the British Library), many University libraries, and specialist research libraries'. COPAC stands for 'CURL Online Public Access Catalogue'. CURL was the Consortium of University Libraries, a co-ordinating group for libraries as universities which regarded themselves as elite, now re-branded as Research Libraries UK. Broadly, the membership of RLUK is those elite universities which belong to what is called the Russell Group. There are one or two non-Russell Group universities in RLUK, but generally non-Russell Group universities such as Aberystwyth University, Bangor University, Hull University, Kent University and Sussex University, all of which have important and interesting research collections, are not deemed worthy of inclusion in the COPAC club. COPAC has recently been extending its coverage to other specialist collections, including some which are major resources for working class history such as the Bishopsgate Institute and the Humanist Library at Conway Hall, but no public library collections have so far passed the august portals of COPAC.
A better alternative in searching for this type of material is WorldCat, run by the world's biggest and most important library consortium, OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) which has developed from an association of Ohio Libraries and Colleges who wanted to share cataloguing and other resources. Many of the bibliographic products produced by OCLC are indispensable to running a large modern library service and virtually every major library service in the UK is a member and contributes its catalogue records to WorldCat. This includes the university libraries omitted from COPAC, as well as public library services such as Torbay Library Services. WorldCat altogether combines the catalogues of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. However the size of WorldCat can be a hindrance if you are looking for specific items. In this case, the fact that 'short account life robinson' (and other similar search strategies) wil result in hundreds of hits on WotldCat. The single sheet in Torquay is probably somewhere, but it is searching for a needle in a haystack.
Annoyingly, WorldCat doesn't have an easy means of restricting searches to particular libraries. So the simplest thing to do is to go direct to the online catalogue for Torbay Library Services, where a search for 'robinson' as author and 'short' in the title produces the following very gnomic catalogue entry:
RCN - ISBN/ISSN/BNB D02006836X
Personal Name Robinson, J.
Main Title A
short account of the life of john robinson
Publication As author
# TORQUAY LOCAL HISTORY D929/ROB PAM Not for loan Local
History/Studies
Part of the difficulty in locating this item in WorldCat was because this original catalogue information is so limited - an indication of place or approximate date of publication would have assisted in locating the information on WorldCat. It is sometimes suggested that catalogue information and formats are becoming irrelevant because of the power of Google as a search tool, but of course the quality of Google searches depend on the underlying information. WorldCat records have been ingested into Google Books, presumably to help direct future digitisation work, but the restricted information in this catalogue entry effectively obscures it. A Google search for 'john robinson torquay' doesn't retrieve the catalogue entry in the first ten hits. A search for "short account of the life of john robinson" does the job, but the lack of information in the original catalogue entry makes the Google Book entry virtually meaningless:
It will probably be a very long time before we see a digitised version of Robinson's account of his life in Google Books. It is ironic that it is through Emma Griffin's own reference to Robinson's little autobiography that this item is beginning to develop a footprint in Google (to which this blog entry will, of course, add). In selecting items for digitisation in Google Books and other mass digitisation projects, priority is given to such 'great libraries' as the Bodleian Library, Harvard University Library and the British Library. The assumption appears to be that the contents of these libraries embraces the whole of human knowledge and understanding. For the British partners, it is assumed that legal deposit under the terms of copyright legislation means that the libraries have a copy of every book ever printed in the UK. But in the British Library (for example) legal deposit was not systematically enforced until the late 1840s and it is unlikely that librarians at the British Museum before that date would have taken much interest in acquiring what would have been seen as such ephemeral material as the autobiographies used by Griffin. Moreover, many items received under legal deposit considered of ephemeral interest were not fully catalogued by the British Library but placed under generic 'dump' headings. The ESTC found that there were something like 50,000-60,000 forgotten items from the eighteenth century in the British Library. These have now been largely identified and catalogued for items up to 1800, but no such similar exercise has occurred for the nineteenth century, and there can be no doubt that many further working class autobiographies languish under such dump catalogue entries.
Although WorldCat and Google Books are wonderful resources, the problem is that they reinforce an assumption that by simply linking up the catalogues of major libraries gives us comprehensive coverage in a quick and painless process. As a result, we found ourselves silently and surreptitiously enmeshed in the world view and cultural assumptions which shaped those elite libraries. The problem is that, in working with resources like Google Books, we soon cease to have any sense of how these resources are silently constraining and altering our research. You can begin to get a sense of the perils of this process by looking more closely at the way which the digital representation of the working class autobiographies used by Emma Griffin is highly filtered, with a significant quantity of material disappearing from sight altogether.
Those writers of working class origins who had a success story to report, who had become distinguished statesmen, successful businessmen, religious leaders and so on, were able to find commercial publishers who were interested in their story. Writers whose life demonstrated the virtues of temperance, prudence and self-help were of course particularly favoured. Books published by major commercial publishers would be picked up by the legal deposit libraries in Britain, and might even excite interest across the Atlantic. As a result, it is these volumes which we tend to find in such resources as Google Books, the Internet Archive and the HATHI Trust. Here are some examples:
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 125]. [CAMPKIN, J.], The Struggles of a Village Lad (William Tweedie: London, 1859). Google Books copy (from The British Library).
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 241]. FLOCKHART, Robert. The Street Preacher, being the Autobiography of Robert Flockhart, late corporal 81st Regiment (Adam and Charles Black: Edinburgh, 1858). Google Books copy (from Harvard); HATHI Trust copy (also from Harvard).
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 331]. HILLOCKS, James Inches. My Life and Labours in London, a step nearer the mark (William Freeman: London, 1865). Cheap edn., Mission Life in London (London, 1865). Google Books copy of cheap edition (from Oxford), also available at Internet Archive.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 632] [SMITH, Charles Manby], The Working Man's Way in the World, being the Autobiography of a Journeyman Printer (William and Frederick G. Cash: London [1853]). Google Books copy (from Harvard), also in Internet Archive and HATHI Trust (with additional copy in New York Public Library).
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 675] ANON., Struggles for Life; or, the Autobiography of a Dissenting Minister (W. and F. G. Cash, London; John Menzies, Edinburgh: 1854 [1853]; new edn. The Book Society, Hamilton, Adams and Co., Jarrold and Sons: London, 1864). Google Books copy, from an American edition printed by Lindsay and Blakiston, Philadelphia, 1854, in Harvard Libraries, where a cataloguer has identified the author as William Leask. This copy also in HATHI Trust catalogue.
These autobiographies for one reason or the other caught the attention of librarians and collectors and made their way to the respectable havens of Harvard and the British Museum, where they have been picked up by Google, HATHI and so on. In comparing the contents of the bibliography compiled with Burnett et al. with Google Books, the surprising thing is the large number of the nineteenth century autobiographies, most of which present no copyright issues, are represented only by catalogue entries with no digitisation. This is a reminder of how far Google Books remains a very incomplete (indeed, barely started) enterprise, even for pre-1900 material. In some cases, digitised versions of autobiographies (derived from a microfilm edition of some items in the British Library from Burnett's Bibliography) are available via the Gale subscription resource, Nineteenth Century Collections Online (these electronic versions are picked up by COPAC). However, what is the most surprising and startling aspect of examining the digital presence of these working class autobiographies is the large number which escaped the bibliographical net altogether. As a result, these everyday voices have effectively vanished from the web, except where a modern scholar happens to have discussed them and this discussion has been picked up by Google. Let us examine a few cases to illustrate the process.
Edward Davis was born in Aston started working in a button factory at the age of six. He became a Quaker in 1858 and, having been apprenticed to a pearl button manufacturer and then built up a confectionery trade, eventually became a teacher. In 1898, the firm of White and Pike published a short pamphlet by Davis entitled Some Passages from My Life, Davis presumably paying for the publication. This is No. 204 in Vol. 1 of the Burnett bibliography, which states that there is a copy in Birmingham Reference Library. This is not on the online catalogue of Birmingham Libraries, presumably because it is only recorded on a card catalogue which has not been converted to an online form. Since the book is not recorded in the Birmingham catalogue, it is not in WorldCat. And as a result of this, there is no catalogue entry for Davis's little book in Google Books, the HATHI Trust, or The Open Library. Davis's book hasn't completely vanished from the web, however. A xerox of the copy in Birmingham was made at some point (presumably because of the entry in Burnett's bibliography) and deposited in Oxford University, so there is an entry for this photocopy on COPAC.
Other autobiographies have been more completely obscured by the way in which digitisation has proceeded. John Finney worked in the Potteries from the age of 13 and in 1902 published Sixty Years Recollection of an Etruscan (J. G. Fenn, Stoke-on-Trent, 1902), which is No. 57 in Vol. 3 of the Bibliography. The Bibliography records that there is a copy in the Horace Barks Reference Library in Hanley. In many cases, holdings of local history libraries and reference libraries remain as card catalogues, and the online catalogue for Stoke libraries does not refer to Finney's book. So, once again, it is absent from our major catalogues - no entry for Finney's book in WorldCat or COPAC. As a result, Google Books denies all knowedge of such a book. A general Google web search on 'John Finney Etruscan' will tell us that this is an engaging work, but we can find out nothing else about it or where to get it.
Another example: Benjamin North was born at Thame in Oxford in 1811, the 8th child of a labourer. He was a boy shepherd, bird-keeper, plough-boy, and groom, then trained as a paper-maker, but was made redundant by the introduction of new machinery. He eventually became a traveller for a chair-maker and set up a successful furniture business in High Wycombe. North's autobiography was published after his death by his son, and is No. 129 in Vol. 3 of the Bibliography: Autobiography of Benjamin North, with a preface by W.H., to which is appended a brief notice of his last moments, by his eldest son (Fred K. Samuels, Aylesbury, 1882). A copy is recorded in the Local Collection Reference Library in High Wycombe. The entry in the Buckinghamshire Libraries online catalogue states that the copy in High Wycombe is a photocopy. Buckinghamshire Libraries are members of OCLC, so perhaps it is because the High Wycombe copy is stated to be a photocopy that the entry for North's memoirs does not appear in WorldCat. Whatever the explanation, this is another book that the web has caused to vanish: no entry in WorldCat, nothing in COPAC, no report on Google Books. The only trace of its existence in Google is where it is cited by historians such as Emma Griffin or Jane Humphries in her book on Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution.
We could continue to mount up examples of working class autobiographies listed in the Bibliography of Burnett, Vincent and Mayall which have vanished from our main online bibliographic resources such as WorldCat and Google Books and have in effect been suppressed by the web. Here is a random list made from first preliminary checks against the Bibliography:
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 26] Autobiographies of Industrial School Children (T. Nelson and Sons: London, 1865). Ten short narratives by boys and girls who attended industrial schools in Aberdeen. A copy is reported in Aberdeen Central Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 41] BARBER, Mrs M. Five Score and Ten. A True Narrative of the Long Life and Many Hardships of M. Barber, taken down from her own dictation, a short time before her death and who died at the advanced age of nearly one hundred and eleven years (Penny and Makeig, Crewkerne, 1840). Copy reported in Bristol Central Library, the website for which explains clearly why this little book hasn't made its way onto the web: 'Much of the older reference stock from before 1985 will not be found on the online catalogue. These records are still held on card catalogue files in the Reference Library'.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 47] BARNETT, Will. The Life Story of Will Barnett, better known as the ex-jockey. Written by himself (Spurgeon Memorial Press: Congleton, [1911?]). Copy in Horace Barks Reference Library, Hanley.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 71] BLOW, John. The Autobiography of John Blow (J. Parrott: Leeds, 1870). Copy in Leeds Public Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 213] DUKE, Robert Rippon. An Autobiography, 1817-1902 (Privately published: Buxton, 1902). Copy in Derbyshire County Library, Matlock. Duke, having been apprenticed to a caprenter at the age of 14, became an architect and was responsible for much of the development of Buxton, so there are published biographies and further information about him on the web, but the existence of this published autobiography is only mentioned in passing.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 263] GIBBS, John. The Life and Experience of, and some traces of the Lord's gracious dealings towards the author, John Gibbs, Minister of the Gospel, at the Chapel of Saint John Street, Lewes (Printed for the author: Lewes, 1827). On this book. see now in addition the Annual Report of the East Sussex County Record Office 2008-9, p. 13.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 299] HANBY, George. Autobiography of a Colliery Weighman (Brewin and Davis: Barnsley, 1874). Copy in Barnsley Public Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 300] HANSON, William. The Life of William Hanson, written by himself (in his 80th year) and revised by a friend (Privately published: Halifax, 1883). Another edition was published by J. Walsh in Halifax in 1884. Copies in Halifax Public Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 478] McNAUGHTON, John Donkin. The Life and Happy Experience of John Donkin McNaughton. Written by Himself (H. Masterman: Thirsk, [1810?]). Burnett et al don't give a location for this item - presumably it is recorded only on a card catalogue somewhere in North Yorkshire County Libraries.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 542] [OVERSBY, W. T.] A Life's Romance. By a Successful Insurance Man (Liverpool Daily Post: Liverpool, 1938). Copy in Blackburn Central Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 568] RAGG, Thomas. God's Dealings with an Infidel: or, Grace Triumphant: being the Autobiography of Thomas Ragg, author of Creation's Testimony to its God' (Piper, Stephenson and Spence: London, 1858). Copy reported in Local Studies Department, Central Reference Library, Birmingham.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 598] ROONEY, Ralph. The Story of My Life (Bury Times: Bury, 1947). 3 editions are reported in Burnett, all held by the Local Studies Collection in Preston, but none of them are apparently in WorldCat, Copac, Google Books, etc.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 637] SMITH, George. An Autobiography of One of the People (Privately published, 1923). Copy in Local Studies Library, Redruth.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 641] SMITH, William. The Life of William Smith, late Minister of the Baptist Chapel, Bedworth (E. C. Lewis: Coventry [1857?]). Copy in Nuneaton Library.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 677] SUTTON, William. Multum in Parvo; or the Ups and Downs of a Village Gardener (Robertson and Gray: Kenilworth, 1903). Copy in Local Studies Library, Coventry.
[Burnett et al., Vol. 1, No. 687] TAYLOR, John. Autobiography of John Taylor (J. Francis: Bath, 1893). Copy in Bristol Central Library.
This is only the result of a very preliminary excursus into the Bibliography, and again the very action of publishing this blog entry (just as means of parking my notes for the time being) will give these books a web presence, in some cases for the first time. However, these lacunae of the web do raise important questions about how we are building up our digital libraries and the way in which we conduct research using them. For the period before 1800, the ESTC attempts (and largely succeeds) in documenting all printing in the English-speaking world, no matter where it is kept. After 1800, Google Books and other enterprises have decided to forgo the preliminary creation of such a detailed bibliographical infrastructure. Instead, they have assumed that national libraries and other major research libraries contain all that is needed, and have worked from there. The way in which the use of this ad hoc method distorts the online representation of post-1800 printing requires much further examination. I suspect the result is that the printed output of the provinces (particularly the newly industrialised areas of Northern England and the Midlands) is seriously underrepresented in corpora like Google Books. The extent to which there is an inherent class bias in enterprises like Google Books is also worth investigating (probably there was a bias in the British Museum against all sorts of biographical material which was apparently only of ephemeral value). These issues in themselves have ramifications for the research methods that we adopt in approaching collections like Google Books. 'Distant reading' has a great deal to offer in looking at measuring shifts in the use of language and metaphor over long periods, but, if the sample on which the distant reading takes place is biased towards particular regions or social groups, this will significantly distort the results.
I hope to develop a more detailed analysis of these issues, but I suppose a preliminary conclusion is a plea to remember public libraries in developing digitisation programmes. Digitising the British Library and Harvard Libraries will never be enough; we also need the Horace Barks Reference Library, the Mitchell Library and the Minet Library. Our digitisation strategies need to take this into account.
Further Reading
J. Burnett (ed.) Destiny Obscure: Autobiographies of Childhood, Education and Family from the 1820s to the 1920s (London: Allen Lane, 1982)
J. Burnett (ed.) Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s (London: Allen Lane, 1994)
J. Burnett, D. Vincent and D. Mayall (eds.), The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated Critical Bibliography 3 vols. (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984-9)
E. Griffin, Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013)
Jane Humphries, Childhood and Childhood Labour in the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
D. Vincent, Testaments of Radicalism: Memoirs of Working Class Politicians 1790-1885 (London: Europa, 1977)
D. Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London: Europa, 1981)
