The Manuscript in the British AmericanWorld of Print

DAVID S. SHIELDS

THEHisTORYofthe manuscdpt in Bridsh America is a grabbag of archive accession reports, catalogue copy for theautograph trade, and bibliographical ruminations about

the contents of various editions. No histories of the Americanmanuscript as a medium of communication exist. No literary his-tory of the colonial period provides a clear account of the role ofcirculating manuscripts and recited scripts in literary culture. Noone has attempted even a preliminary account of manuscript pro-duction or reception. Recently people have realized that lack ofthis information prevents a full understanding of the uses of printin Bridsh America. The new historians of the book sdmulatedconcern about the role of the manuscript in provincial cultures,pardcularly the American colonies. They did this by framing theirinvesdgadon of print vvdthin a larger inquiry into the occasions andmeans of communicadon in a culture. As Michael Warner andDavid D. Hall have argued, the older histories of print grantedthe press and its products ontological status—« priori roles as'agents of change.' ' This is what histories should have been proving

I. Warner's Letters of tbe Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990)is a pioneering attempt to construct a deontological history of the press in Americanculture. The Program in the History of the Book in American Culture at the AmericanAntiquarian Society has been the central force in reconceptualizing the historiography of

This paper is an adaptation of a talk given before the planning conference for Volume 1 ofthe American Antiquarian Society's collaborative history of the book in America, held atthe Society on September 18-19, '992-

D A V I D S . SHIELDS is associate professor of English at The Citadel.

Copyright « 1993 by American Antiquarian Society

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instead of assuming. The new historians of the book regard im-prints as media fulfilling already consdtuted tasks within cultures.This premise confronts historians with the quesdons, why print?why not some other means of communicadon? Because of thecurrent concern among theorists of cultural studies with oralityand the quesdon whether there are such things as oral texts, thenew historians of the book have drawn the demarcadons betweenspeech and print vrith some thoroughness.^ Yet spoken communi-cadon was not 'the Other' for printed texts, but one of severalpossible opdons in getdng a message across. Manuscript wasanother. Determining where and when manuscripts operated aspreferred vehicles of written communicadon gives us a sharpersense of the condidons that prompted one to resort to the press.I offer a speculadon about what might be encountered in an in-qmry into the place of the manuscript in the seventeenth- andeighteenth-century Bridsh American world of print.

Let me begin with the elementary points: before print there waswridng; after prindng there was wridng. Prindng depended onwridng. Every new book, every original árdele in every newspaperor magazine, every law, every first-run adverdsement derived frommanuscript copy. Spontaneous composidon at the type case wasan arcane skill; so much so that Benjamin Franklin late in life couldrecall his first boss in Philadelphia, Samuel Keimer, composing anelegy for Aquila Rose direcdy in lead.

Textual crides have always kept historians of the book aware ofthe author's 'fair cop/ manuscript, that prototype transmutedinto the printer's myriad imperfect impressions.^ Yet the authority

print in America. These initiatives have been greatly encouraged by the work of its chair-man, David D. Hall.

2. Richard D. Brown's Knowledge is Power: the Diffusion of Information in Early America,ijoo-i86s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) is the most influential recent studyupon this issue.

3. Manuscript's role in editorial theory has been developed more out of the findings ofmedieval codicology than the tradition of textual criticism running from Fredson Bowersto Jerome McGann. For an introduction to the current state of editorial theory regardingmanuscripts, see Paul Delbouille, 'L'ÉtabUssement du texte,' in Maurice Delcroix andFernand Hallyn, eds.. Méthodes du texte: Introduction aux études littéraires (Paris: Duculot,

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of manuscript in the printing shop was not limited to fair copy. Anauthor's intentions were indicated by any mark in his or her ownhand—as holograph text, or marginal corrections on the proofs,or handwritten alterations of a printed text. An author's responsi-bility reposed in his or her hand. In cases of libel, if the fair copyof an imprint survived and the hand of the author was recognizedin court, then the author was as vulnerable as if he or she hadsigned the text."* Because fair copy manuscripts had a way of beingconsumed by bookmaking, and because they were rendered redun-dant by the finished books, few survive from the provincial era.Their scarcity has resulted in an underappreciation of the extentto which handwriting surrounded a book in a printing shop.

Then, too, the attentions of historians of the book have fixed onanother sort of printing office manuscript, the business ledger.The ledger is a fascinating document, providing a privy ghmpseof the printer's trade, hinting even at the reception of various ofthe imprints. Yet we should notice the window as well as the view.We should see the ledger itself and be reminded that, during theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the day-to-day recordkeep-ing of private businesses and public institutions was conducted inmanuscript: business accounts, daybooks, letterbooks, church rec-

1987); also, John Whittaker, 'The Practice of Manuscript Collation,' Text: Transactims ofthe Society for Textual Scholarship, 5 (1991): 121-30. Of contemporary theoretical treatments,two command notice: David F. Huit, 'Reading It Right: The Ideology of Text Editing,'Romanic Review, 79, i (Jan. 1988): 74-88; Louis Hay, 'L'Écrit et l'imprime,' De la lettre aumanuscript: Sémiotique des manuscrits littéraires, ed. Louis Hay (Paris: Centre Nationale dela Recherche Scientifique, 1989).

4. The destruction of incriminating manuscripts by printers took place as a matter ofcourse during the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the authorities routinely searched forsuch evidence in the major press suppressions: the James Franklin arrest, the Zenger affair,and the Monster of Monsters prosecution. Lacking evidence of authorial identity, the author-ities would arrest printers. The noteworthy pohdcal lihel case involving handwriting oc-curred in New York in the aftermath of the Zenger prosecution. Francis Harison, the chiefpolemicist for Gov. Coshy and the court faction, was arrested for an incriminating letter.'From the neglect to disguise the hand, which Mr. Smith, Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Lurdng theMayor, all pronounced to be Mr. Harison's, it was conjectured that his design was toprovoke a criminal prosecution, establish the precedent of convicting on the proof of asimihtude of hands, and then, by counterfeiting the writing of one of the demagogues ofthe day, to bring him to the gallows, while the Governor's friends were to escape by pardon.'William Smith, Jr., The History of the Province of New-York, 2 vols., ed. Michael Kämmen(Cambridge,Mass., 1972), 2:8-11.

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ords, government proceedings, and court findings were all kept byhand according to conventionalized, in some cases legally stip-ulated, formats.' Some forms of records were ancient—charters,deeds, oaths; some were modem—receipts, daybook entries, in-stitutional proceedings. From the bookkeeping revolution of thefifteenth century well into the seventeenth century, the scope andorderliness of recorded information in the West increased mark-edly. In England, the emphasis on efficient recordkeeping duringthe seventeenth century led to a series of innovations in handwrit-ing (the 'science of chirograph/). Secretary's hand was simplifiedinto cursive script, tachygraphy and other shorthand systems werecreated, and secret scripts proliferated.^ Throughout the West,the period that saw the efflorescence of print also saw the flourish-ing of manuscript.

What explains the proliferation of manuscripts? One can 'roundup the usual suspects': the growth of schools, the spread of bank-ing, the rise of literacy. One point deserves elaboration: the Refor-mation sparked the growth of schools in Protestant countries, andschools taught literacy so that persons might know God's savingword. Yovmg men were sent to the local grammar master to leamto read and write, to read printed books—The Book—and writemanuscripts. Only the ability to read was needed for salvation;writing was an ancillary skill. One of the powerful points made by

5. Perhaps the oddest colonial recognition of the legalism of manuscript recordkeepingmay be found in the conduct of gentlemen's clubs. A fovorite pastime was to try membersfor violating secretarial protocols. The Homony Club of Annapolis, for instance, mademock trials for secretarial malfeasance the most common social entertainment during theearly 1770s. The Homony Club Record Book. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Also,Homony Club Loose Papers. Gilmor Collection. Maryland Historical Society.

6. Gustavus Selenus, A Complete System of Cryptography, trans. John Henry Waiden(London, 1624); John Wilkins, Mcrcary: or, The Secret Messmger \Lonaon, 1641]; FrancisGoodwin, Nuncius Inanimatus [London, 1639?]; Thomas Shelton,/í Tutor to Tachygraphy,or, Short-Writing [London, n.d.]; William Addy, Sténographia or the Art of Short-Writing(London, [ 1690]). The academic paleographical literature is extensive, as is the more recenthistorical corpus concerning the experiments in creating 'universal character,' wridng thatfigured ideas rather than signified the acoustics of pardcular languages. Unexamined arethe semiodcs of manuscripts using several wridng systems. What, for instance, does onemake of Michael Wigglesworth's diary that records the confessions of sin in shorthandwhile nodng resolves and meditadons in script? Do the various scripts correspond toregions of the spiritual interior?

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feminist historians of literacy is that female literacy in the provin-cial era was often limited to an ability to read; home-taught girlswere oftümes not taught to write.^ Two ofthe points of disdnctionrecommending Sarah Kemble Knight as a schoolmistress in 1690sBoston were that she had professional experience as a scrivenerand that she taught wridng.

An ability to write implied personal worth. It suggested that onepossessed messages deserving communicadon, business worthmemorializadon, and thoughts worthy of preservadon. ReformedChrisdanity's revaluadon of the individual operated as one effi-cient cause ofthe proliferadon of manuscripts.

The Puritan journal of spiritual self-examinadon was the para-digmadc manuscript projecdng personal worth. It was the book ofone's own soul, tesdfying that one's heart registered the world'smost meaningful struggle, the war between divine grace and sin.The Puritan journal was a modem form. It was devised in the1580s by members of the classes of East Anglia as an experimentin piety.* From this network of ministerial pracddoners, journal-keeping spread through convendcles as one of the extraordinarypracdces of piety helpful in the work of sancdficadon. Every knovmfirst-generadon journal writer in Massachusetts, for instance, hada personal cormecdon vdth someone in the original classes. Myhistorical point: social insdtudons developed the new manuscriptforms of recordkeeping—even that most private form of record,the tally of one's own sins. These insdtudons first sponsored thespread of those forms. My second point: print invariably usurpedthe educadve funcdon of these insdtudons at some point after theCreadon of a new manuscript form. The convendcle lost itsmonopoly on instrucdon when Henry Scudder published A Chris-tians Daily Walke (London, 1633) and John Beedle exemplified The

7. E. Jennifer Monaghan, 'Literacy Instruction and Gender in Colonial New England,'American Quarterly, 40 (March 1988): 18-41.

8. David S. Shields, 'The Journal of Spiritual Self-Examination,' A History of PersonalD/aryH^ní/ng/'nAfevfingAJníí/fco-víí, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1982,pp. 69-84.

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Diary of a Thankful Christian (London, 1656).̂ One no longer hadto enroll in the writing master's school when William Bradford'sThe Secretary's Guide showed how to form the characters of a clear,cursive hand and Edward Cocker's Arithmetic showed one how tocipher. Nor did one have to article oneself to a bank in order tolearn the methods of double-entry bookkeeping. Books drove thespread of various sorts of manuscript writing.

I am not proposing a simple dialectic here, with print animatingspread of manuscripts, and manuscripts enabling the spread ofprint. The relationship was more complicated. It was most compli-cated in the institution that had more to do vdth books than anyother in British America, the college. Much has been made, par-ticularly by Walter Ong, of the interpénétration of speech andprint in the communication of the early modem colleges.'" Onelearned by lectures and by reading. The purpose of the lecturesand readings was to refine a student's skill in forensics. Graduationwas marked by a demonstration of the students' rhetorical skillswhen theses were debated at commencement. Because one's learn-ing was manifested in speaking rather than in writing, the body ofinformation one had confronted in the lecture hall and in texts hadto be digested to an aphoristic minimum, so it might be quoted as'copia' in one's rhetorical performance." Outlining, note-taking,and commonplacing were the techniques by which students trans-muted the body of received knowledge—i.e., the library, schooltexts, and the content of their masters' lectures—into usable form.

9. Determining the reception of these works is a difficult matter. Perhaps other guidesto practical Christianity were responsible for the dissemination of diary writing—ThomasHooker's The Christians Two Chiefe Lessons, viz. Selfe-Denial and Selfe-Tryall (London,1640), for instance. John Corbet, Self-Employment in Secret (Cambridge, Mass., 1684 reprintof 1681 London ed.) was the major American imprint dealing with diary writing and othercloset devotions. Henry Scudder's The Christians daily Walke with God, because of itsintroduction by John Davenport, was known and well regarded. It was not reprinted inBritish America. Cotton Mather, however, cannibalized it in Bonifacius. Mather's MagnaliaChristi Americana (i 703) published portions of the journals of Jonathan Mitchel, ThomasShepard, Nathaniel Mather, and John Baily.

I o. Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1958).

11. John D. Shaeffer, Sensus Communis: Vico, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Relativism (Dur-ham: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 28-34.

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(And for much of the seventeenth century access to the librarywas limited to select Harvard seniors. ' ̂ ) A good number of the stu-dent study aids have survived from Harvard, William and Mary,and Yale. The earliest Harvard materials include Abraham Pier-son's lecture notes, the notebooks of Samuel Shepard and WilliamPatridge, and commonplace books by Solomon Stoddard, JohnLeverett, John Holyoke, and John Hancock. The commonplacebook had a dual funcdon: on one hand it stood as a subsdtute li-brary, epitomizing literature into its pithiest sentences all conve-niendy arranged by topic, on the other hand the act of vmdngsentendae helped fix them in memory.

Note-taking insured an important point wouldn't be forgotten,both by preserving it in the more perfect memory of wridng, andby invesdng special attendon on it by the act of wridng. In anycircumstance where a body of informadon had to be inscribed onthe tablets of one's heart, note-taking was resorted to. Notes arean index to the matters deemed valuable by writers, too valuableto be entrusted to mere human memory. The importance of ser-mons, polidcal debates, business negodadons, public meedngswere attested by the memoranda they generated.'' Though theoften modest appearance of the notes—the slapdash abbreviatedscript, the scraps of paper—suggests casualness, in truth they con-sdtute the surest register of the interests of their writers.

More elaborate than commonplaces and notes were transcripts.Because of the scarcity of books in Bridsh America undl well intothe eighteenth century, persons often borrowed volumes andcopied passages into manuscript. Transcripts from medical booksare perhaps the most common such manuscripts. Laws run a closesecond."'* Literature had its devotees too. The Essex Insdtute

12. Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline inTransition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, Institute of Early AmericanHistory and Culture, 1981), pp. 64-66.

13. The surviving body of sermon notes in particular testifies to the importance of thepractice. As Thomas Shepard n counseled Thomas Shepard m , 'Neglect not to write afrerthe preacher always in ha[n]dsom books, and be careful always to preserve and peruse thesame.' Cotton Mather, Magnalia, 2:82.

14. This is an unscientific observation based on a decade's experience examining manu-

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possesses a handwritten copy of Philip Pain's Daily Meditations of1668 so painstaking that the spatial disposition of the printed titlepage is imitated in the manuscript copy. Someone liked that worka great deal.

After the consohdation of the gazettes and magazines during theeighteenth century, persons with belletrisdc inclinations wouldtranscribe selected verse and essays from the prints. These collec-tions resembled the published miscellanies in form, but differedin that they expressed the taste of the compiler. When one chosea piece and then copied it by hand for a collection, one exerted aproprietary claim over a writing, indicating 'this is for me.' Whatis interesting is the number of such collections that mix worksfi-om periodicals and from the networks of manuscript distribution.Nathan Fiske's notebook at the American Antiquarian Society is acase in point.'^ The principles of selection imphcit in the collec-tions tell a great deal about the history of taste and the developmentof provincial aesthetic concerns. A revolution in self-understand-ing stands between the transcript book of Rev. William Becket, theChurch of England minister at Lewes Town, who during the1720s cherished the metropohtan wit of Pope and Swift, andThomas Pemberton, who at the end of the century wished tochronicle the genius of Massachusetts, preserving any poem hecould find by native authors.'^

Then, of course, manuscripts circulated in British Americawhen and where there was no local press. Prior to 1751 in NovaScotia, 1709 in Connecticut, 1756 in New Hampshire, 1693 ^^New York, 1751 in Newjersey, 1761 in Delaware (the lower coun-ties), 1726 in Maryland, 1729 in Virginia, 1755 in North Carolina,17 30 in South Carolina, 1762 in Georgia, 1730 in Jamaica, i73oinBarbados, 1746 in St. Kitts, and 1748 in Antigua manuscript was

script collections. The incidence may only reflect the survivability of such texts. Othertranscript forms—student exercises, recipes, geographical notices—were more perishable.

15. Nathan Fiske Notebook, [1750S-1780S], American Antiquarian Society.16. William Becket, 'Notices and Letters Concerning Incidents at Lewes Town 1727-

1744,' Manuscript Am .0165. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Thomas Pemberton.Poetry Collection. Massachusetts Historical Society.

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the dominant mode of written communication for matters publicand private. The situation is epitomized by an entry in the joumalof public affairs kept by William Stephens, resident secretary forthe Tmstees of Georgia. In his memorandum for July 8, 1738,Stephens remarks upon the successful prosecution of a junto ofmalcontents who posted handwritten satires of Oglethorpe at a Sa-vannah tippling house.'^ Stephens arranged for transcripts of thelibels and the court proceedings to be shipped to London alongwith his manuscript joumal. One event—three layers of manu-script commentary.

When the printing press came to a provincial metropolis, itoften seemed a tool of the ruling oligarchy in the eyes of outlandersand political outsiders. Manuscript in these circumstances couldsymbolize a deprivation of the advantages of urbane society. Dur-ing the 1760s, the Regulators of the Piedmont Carolinas raised avigilante army and demanded under the threat of force that thecoastal oligarchy extend the institutions of civility—courts, char-tered markets, churches—into the back country. The ample Reg-ulator literature—songs, sermons, remonstrances, satires, peti-tions—circulated almost entirely in manuscript.'^

Then, too, when groups who had access to the press wished toconvey the impression that governmental tjranny was deprivingthem of their liberty, they resorted to manuscript distribution oftracts and satires. Posted on the town pump, on the lintel of themarket, in the common room of taverns, or even on the door ofthe state house, manuscripts garnered as broad an urban reader-ship as any printed text.'^ One did not have to pay to read. And

17. William Stephens, ^ Joarn«/ of the Proceedings in Georgia, Beginning October 20, ly^y(London: Meadows, 1742). The manuscript of the journal was dispatched to the GeorgiaTrustees in secdons. The material from 1737 through October 1740 was published in twovolumes. The material after 1740 remained in manuscript.

18. Charles Woodmason, T^he Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution, ed. RichardJ. Hooker (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 195 3). WiUiam Stevens Powell,The Regulators in North Carolina, A Documentary History (Raleigh: State Department ofArchives and History, 1971).

19. The most extraordinary Bridsh American coUecdon of pump verses and pasquinadesis found in the loose pages of the diary of Benjamin Walker of Boston. 4 vols. MassachusettsHistorical Society. The material coUected dates from the 1710s to the 1740s.

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the manuscript had magnedc power, since its method of distribu-don suggested that the contents contained truths too dangerousto be printed. This aura of dangerous privy intelligence was alegacy of the Whig manuscript distribudon schemes of the 168osin England. During the Stuart reacdon to the Rye House Plotthere was a royalist clampdown on the press (both Benjamin Hardsand Richard Steere left London for New England because of thisclampdown). The Whigs responded by setdng up scriptoria andHooding the metropolis vwth handwritten ballads that added theallure ofthe forbidden to the energy of the controversial.^" Duringthe colonial disturbances connected vdth the Glorious Revoludon,public incitement by manuscript came into its own. Col. BenjaminEletcher's cabal in New York City and the Old Charter facdon inMassachusetts circulated manuscripts around the cides. ̂ ' Yet forhistorians of the book the most interesdng manuscript campaignwas that conducted by James Alexander and Lewis Morris as thefinal fusillade of the Zenger affair. After Governor WilliamCosb/s minions burnt the gazettes and two ballads at the publicgibbet, the river party Hooded New York City with manuscriptsongs attacking Governor Cosby." Five survive in various ver-sions. The manuscripts signified the closure ofthe press to truth.

Another manuscript circuladng in the New York coffeehousesduring the Zenger affair—one of the few manuscripts support-ing Governor Cosb/s side—supplied another reason for a writeravoiding print. Archibald Home's 'Memoirs of a Handspike' spokeof the press as an engine that spewed 'black putrid venom' undl itwas regarded as a 'common nuisance.'̂ ^ Home was invoking theimage ofthe press as agent of depravity, an image that had become

20. The products of the Whig scriptoria are printed and discussed in the volumes ofPoems on the Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse ¡66o-iyi^, 8 vols., ed. George deF.Lord (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963—75).

21. David S. Shields, Oracles of Empire; Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America,;(!íí)o-;7_fo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 110-11, 139-41.

22. Miscellaneous Papers, Songs (Cosby 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.) New York Public Library.23. Archibald Home, 'Poems on Several Occasions By Archibald Home. Esqr. late Sec-

retary, and One of His Majestie's Council for the Province of New Jersey: North America,'Laing Manuscripts, HI, 452, University of Edinburgh Library.

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commonplace in the metropolis after the rise of Grub Street inthe 1690s. A popular print of the 1710s entitled 'The Mystery ofPrinting' shows the interior of a printing office filled with thedrying sheets of Onania, Rochester's poems, John Toland's works,and Aristotle's Masterpiece. Behind the press a two-faced printerstands.̂ "* One face grins lewdly; the other gazes out with the gravesobriety of the guardian of learning. Well before BenjaminFranklin adopted the persona of'Old Janus' when he took controlof the New England Courant, the duplicities of printers and printinghad become commonplace. Persons who identified with the de-veloping ethic of politeness often entertained trepidations aboutresorting to the press. Even after Addison and Steele's muchvaunted injection of manners into print during the 171 os, the onusattached to print had not entirely dissipated, particularly in theprovinces.

One of the important revisions in English literary histori-ography of the past decade has been the realization of the centralityof manuscript circulation of literature during the seventeenth cen-tury. The work of Arthur Marotd and Jean Brink has revealed theextent to which the literary geru-es associated with the communi-cations of the English court were conducted in writing. ̂ ^ y^e'entre nous' exclusivity of the court was reinforced by the sense ofintimacy arising from reading something in a person's own hand.When Edmund Waller imported belles lettres from Erance intothe conversation of the English Court, he reinforced the preexist-ing preference for manuscript. Belles lettres, that literature de-signed for social pleasure rather than edification, memorialization,or attestation, made literature a sort of lubricant for the smoothworking of sociability in the developing scenes of conversation.John Taylor, 'the water poet,' made it the lingua franca of theEnglish spas. The Waller-quoting stage wits—Ethrege's Dori-

24. A copy is reprinted in Philip Pinkus, Grub St. stripped hare (Weston, Corm.: Archonbooks, 1968).

25. Arthur Marotti, Joiw Donne Coterie Poet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,1986). Jean Brink, Michael Drayton Revisited (New York: Twayne, 1990).

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mont and Congreve's Mirabell—imbued belles lettres vvdth cachetin the city drawing rooms. Belles lettres flourished pardcularly asan adornment to the conversadon of mixed sex company. Epi-grams, impromptus, anecdotes, toasts, and other 'conversibleforms of wit' were the favored forms exchanged at the city teatables and the card tables at Bath, Epsom, and Islington Wells.

The first American belletrists were figures who partook of theseconversadons. Benjamin Colman of Boston traded verses withpolite Chrisdan ladies at Bath.̂ '̂ William Byrd made his name asa wit at Tunbridge Wells in 1700 with his complimentary poemsand sadres. Henry Brooke, who would introduce polite letters toPhiladelphia, refined his skills as an extempore writer in the draw-ing rooms of London after graduadng from Oxford in 1692.̂ ^Brooke's greatest admirer in Philadelphia, Elizabeth Magawley,also learned to write in London. In Bridsh America these personssought to create enclaves of gendlity. They took as their explicittask the refinement of the conversadon and manners of specificcompanies of people. Brooke's 'A Rule for Conversadon seriouslyrecommended to a certain Club' and 'A Discours against Jesdng'(1700s) are instnicdons in both pleasure and politeness.^* If, asJ.G.A. Pocock has argued, an amelioradon of manners was mer-candlism's payoff for a cidzenry without direct access to power,then belles lettres was the discursive vehicle that worked to thisrefinement in the provinces. ̂ ^ It was the literary adjunct to con-sumerism. And while books of metropolitan wit might be importedas manuals of polite conversadon, the local pracddoners main-tained a preference for manuscript communicadon even afternewspapers began featuring poedc contribudons in the 1720s and'30s. Archibald Home, the arch-poet of Trenton, the central figurein a coterie that included two Jews, two Women, a Huguenot

26. Several survive in the Benjamin Colman papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.27. David S. Shields, 'British American Belles-Lettres ; Cambridge History of American

Literature, vol. i, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).28. Henry Brooke, Commonplace Book, Peters Collecdon, Historical Society of Penn-

sylvania.29. J.G.A. Pocock, 'Virtues, rights, and manners,' Virtue, Commerce, History (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 49.

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minister, Trenton's sheriff, and several provincial officers, choseto print only two verses during the course of his Hfe. Upon hisdeath in 1744 his circle prepared a manuscript collection of hispoems that circulated in a number of copies. The calligraphy ofthe title, the organization of the contents by genre, the prefatoryelegies, and the appendix of coterie verse attest to the high degreeof finish of this work. Certain belletrists maintained personal col-lections of works in fair copy. Ehzabeth Graeme Ferguson, thePennsylvanian who gathered an extraordinary salon at GraemePark outside Philadelphia during the 1760s, prepared as many asnine separate collections of her work. Robert Boiling preparedat least seven manuscripts of his writings, some of which were il-lustrated with pen-and-ink drawings. Annis Stockton preparedfour collections of her writings.'" We know of other belletristswhose works once existed in collected form, but now survive onlypiecemeal: William Packrow of Charleston, Susanna Wright ofPennsylvania, Benjamin Waller of Williamsburg. Indeed, the firstpubhshed posthumous collection of a British American poet'sworks, Aquila Rose's Poems on Several Occasions (1740), was pre-pared without the aid of the manuscript of his collected works,which had been lost during the sixteen-year interval between thepoet's death and the printing of his works. All of these collectionspresented the author's work as part of a literary conversation.Nearly invariably, poems or prose vignettes by associated writersappear amidst the authors' works. Yet the manuscripts that mostmanifest the spirit of sociability animating belles lettres were clubwritings. The most elaborate of these, Alexander Hamilton's his-tory of the Tuesday Club and the recordbook of the HomonyClub, are among the few masterworks of early American Htera-

30. Boiling's works remain uncoUected. J. A. Leo Lemay, the authority on Boiling's lifeand literary works, details the surviving materials in the scholarly apparatus to Robert BoilingWoosAnne Miller: Love and Courtship in Colonial Virginia, iy6o (Charlottesville: UniversityPress of Virginia, 1990). Susan Stabile, a graduate student at the University of Delaware,is currently preparing a study based on a comprehensive collection of the manuscripts ofthe Delaware Valley network of women poets: Elizabeth Graeme Ferguson, SusarmaWright, and Hannah Griffitts. Carla Mulford's edition of The Poetry of Annis BoudinotStockton will be published by the Newjersey Historical Society in 1993.

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ture. ̂ ' Hamilton's nearly 2,000-page mock history parodies worldhistory in the transacdons and squabbles of a company of Annap-olis gentlemen. The parodie distance of the work depends uponthe disparity of the candid conversation of private society and thediscursive ceremonies of public, published declarations.

Habermas has traced the development of the bourgeois publicsphere out of the private conversations of clubs, salons, and cof-feehouses.'^ Yet not all of the institutions that Shaftesbury tenned'private society' projected into the public realm. Some groupsconsciously maintained their distance from public spirit and doxa.By composing a vast ironic manuscript mocking politics, leaming,and manners, Alexander Hamilton exploited the privacy of privatesociety to nurture a sensus communis—^ group consciousness—atodds with the empire and the repubhc of letters. Manuscript belleslettres possessed the insularity necessary to provide a haven for thepleasure of social free play. It was in the service of exclusive com-munications and privy pleasures that the manuscript would retainits greatest utility after the end of the provincial era. Secret manu-scripts became invested with such peculiar authority that popularfiction seized upon the image of the clandestine writing as a favor-ite mask for its narrations.

31. Dr. Alexander Hamilton, The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club, 3vols., ed. Robert Micklus (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

3 2. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry intoa Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Mass.: AÎIT Press, 1989).