{"id":378,"date":"2024-12-01T21:30:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-01T21:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athaeneum\/?p=378"},"modified":"2024-12-01T21:44:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-01T21:44:26","slug":"masterpieces-of-american-literature-1897","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/masterpieces-of-american-literature-1897\/","title":{"rendered":"Masterpieces of American Literature (1897)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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    • Title: Masterpieces of American Literature<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • Estimated year of printing: 1897 <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Inside stamp: \u201cDelivered Sep 27 1897, This Book Belongs to the City of Lowell Bartlett School\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Several handwritten student checkout entries:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cBlanchard Pratt, 1898\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cLotie Spriggs, 1899 98 1900\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cKatharine Rafter, 1898 and 1899\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cDaisy Clark, 9th grade, 1904\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \u201cRobert Leggat\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Handwriting in middle of book: \u201cBarlett School, 235 Salem St., Lowell, Mass, T.J. Garnet\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Copyright 1891<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      This is a school textbook, created specifically to meet the needs of advanced grammar classes in Boston.  The book covers literary classics by Washington Irving, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Webster, Henry Longfellow, and others.  A section is dedicated to each author, which includes a biographical sketch in addition to a selection of writings.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For dating this book, it carries a copyright of 1891.  However, page 129 references the death of Whittier in 1892, so it had to have been printed after that.  I think it is most likely that this book was printed in 1897, the same year that the stamp indicates it was delivered to the Bartlett School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For some collectors, the handwriting and school stamp on the inside would reduce the value of this book, but I love markings like that which give the book character and remind us that this book was really used.  and read in the past.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      In this case, this book was owned by the Bartlett School in Lowell, MA, and the inside cover records which student used it between the years of 1898 and 1904.  The Bartlett School was opened in 1897 to provide teaching opportunities for education students at the nearby Lowell Normal School, which had also just recently opened.  The Bartlett School was lost to fire in 1941 and rebuilt in 1950.  The address written in this book, 235 Salem St., is not its current address, so it presumably moved when it was rebuilt, although I couldn\u2019t find any documentation of that.  This original address is currently a parking lot for the University of Massachusetts – Lowell.  Notable Lowell resident Jack Kerouac attended the Bartlett School, presumably at this original location, since he was born in 1922.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      One of the children, Blanchard Pratt, grew up to work at the Radiophysics Laboratory at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.  I couldn\u2019t find any information about any of the other names in this book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Historical context:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      When this book was printed in 1897, William McKinley was President.  This was the same year that the Boston subway system was completed.  One year later in 1898, the modern New York City was formed by the annexation of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Notes: Inside stamp: \u201cDelivered Sep 27 1897, This Book Belongs to the City of Lowell Bartlett School\u201d Several handwritten student checkout entries: \u201cBlanchard Pratt, 1898\u201d \u201cLotie Spriggs, 1899 98 1900\u201d \u201cKatharine Rafter, 1898 and 1899\u201d \u201cDaisy Clark, 9th grade, 1904\u201d \u201cRobert Leggat\u201d Handwriting in middle of book: \u201cBarlett School, 235 Salem St., Lowell, Mass, T.J. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leedberg.com\/athenaeum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}