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Fictions of Migration
in Contemporary Britain
and Ireland

Carmen Zamorano Llena

Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain
and Ireland
 Carmen Zamorano Llena

Fictions of Migration
in Contemporary
Britain and Ireland
Carmen Zamorano Llena
Dalarna University
Falun, Sweden

ISBN 978-3-030-41052-0 ISBN 978-3-030-41053-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41053-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
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tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
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 Acknowledgments

This study would never have come into existence without the support
from various institutions and individuals throughout the years. I would
like to thank the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet ) for their
financial support in 2011–2013 for the research project (Ref. No.: 2010–
1820) that was the foundation of the present volume. Parts of the re-
search for this monograph have been presented at international, mostly
multi- and interdisciplinary conferences on migration, comparative litera-
ture, and Irish Studies and have consequently benefited from challenging
interrogations by specialists in these areas. This work has also been pre-
sented in separate contributions to the research seminars held by the re-
search group Literature, Identity and Transculturality within the research
area on Intercultural Studies at Dalarna University, Sweden. Special thanks
are due to my colleagues in this group for their inspirational responses and
seminar discussions.
Thanks are also due to Edinburgh University Press for granting me
permission to republish a revised version of my article on Colum Mc-
Cann, which was originally published as “From Exilic to Mobile Identi-
ties: Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and the Cosmopolitaniza-
tion of Contemporary Ireland,” Irish University Review 46 (2): 359–376.
https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2016.0232.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at the NOS-HS workshop
series on “Temporalities and Subjectivities of Crossing: Contemporary
Public Migration Narratives in Europe” (2019–2020) and particularly

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Prof. Johan Schimanski for extending his invitation to be part of this

project in 2018. The insights and thought-provoking multidisciplinary
discussions at the workshops in the series have provided a fruitful forum
in which my own research for this monograph has found a welcoming
home.
I owe a bounty of immense gratitude and love to my friends and family,
to my parents, José and Carmen, to my sisters, Esperanza, Mª José, and
Montse and most particularly to my husband Billy for his unremitting
support and love, and to our children Gabriel and Carla, my guiding stars.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Migration, Mobility and the Redefinition of

National Literatures in a Global Context 1

2 A Cosmopolitan Revision of the Postcolonial “Home” in

Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore and Foreigners 33

3 From Exilic to Mobile Identities: Colum McCann’s Let the

Great World Spin and the Cosmopolitanisation of Irish
Reality 61

4 “Memories of Lost Things”: Narratives of Afropolitan

Identity in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea and Gravel
Heart 85

5 Against the Fear of Complexity: Ethical and Aesthetic

Engagement with De-racialising the Muslim Migrant in
Elif Shafak’s Honour 107

6 Solidarity Through the Bare Life of Migrants and “noeuds

de mémoire” in Rose Tremain’s The Colour and The Gustav
Sonata 135

vii
viii CONTENTS

7 “A Map of Bird Migration”: Redefinitions of National

Identity Through Transnational Mobility and
Multidirectional Memory in Evelyn Conlon’s Not the Same
Sky 175

8 Concluding Remarks: Timespace and Affective Networks

in Contemporary Fictions of Migration 197

Index 207
 About the Author

Carmen Zamorano Llena is Associate Professor of English at Dalarna

University, Sweden. She is also the Literary Editor of the peer-reviewed
journal Nordic Irish Studies, and Series Co-editor of Peter Lang’s Cul-
tural Identity Studies series. She has published widely on contemporary
Irish and British fiction and poetry, and is co-editor of several collec-
tions of essays, including Redefinitions of Irish Identity: A Postnationalist
Approach (2010), Transculturality and Literature: Redefinitions of Iden-
tity in Contemporary Literature (2013), and Authority and Wisdom in the
New Ireland: Studies in Literature and Culture (2016). Her research in-
terests include literary gerontology, literature and globalisation and litera-
tures of migration in Britain and Ireland, and she has published extensively
in these fields of specialization. She is currently a participant researcher in
the funded NOS-HS workshop series “Temporalities and Subjectivities of
Crossing: Contemporary Public Migration Narratives in Europe” (2019–
2020), and is also leading a research group on literatures of migration in
Europe at Dalarna University.

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Migration, Mobility

and the Redefinition of National Literatures
in a Global Context

A Sense of Order Amidst

the Turbulence of Migration
The contemporary context, in which the present literary study of Irish and
British prose fiction is situated, is first and foremost defined as the age of
globalisation with migration often regarded as one of its most salient fea-
tures, which, in the words of sociologist Nikos Papastergiadis (2000), “in
its endless motion, surrounds and pervades almost all aspects of contem-
porary society” (1). Scholars in globalisation studies coincide in regarding
the increased volume and pace of the flow of people as one of the most
dramatic changes that society has experienced in the last three decades
(Appadurai 1996; Bauman 1998), as the number of migrants has reached
peaks never experienced before in history. The most recent estimate con-
cerning global figures is that in 2019 there were 272 million international
migrants in the world, and that, if gathered within a single nation-state,
the number of the migrants worldwide would make for the fifth most
populous nation in the world (UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs 2019; International Organization for Migration 2018). As glob-
alisation analysts contend, the phenomenon of migration is not new, but
what makes it different from previous migratory movements is “the scale
and complexity of movement [whose] consequences have exceeded earlier
predictions” (Papastergiadis 2000, 2).
In its simplest form, migration is defined as the “movement of peo-
ple and their temporary or permanent geographical relocation” (Held

© The Author(s) 2020 1

C. Zamorano Llena, Fictions of Migration in Contemporary Britain
and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41053-7_1
2 C. ZAMORANO LLENA

et al. 1999, 283). This simplified definition of the term allows for a
broad understanding of migratory movements, extending from the ear-
liest displacement of hunters and gatherers from Africa to Eurasia, to the
waves of migrant labour determined by colonialist and imperial enterprises
between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; equally, it involves mass
labour migration from south to north and east to west based on the pull
exerted by the processes of industrialisation and accompanying urbanisa-
tion of societies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The gen-
eral thread that often unites this diversity of protagonists and migratory
movements is the human need to change geographical locations in search
of an improvement in economic, political and human conditions of living.
However, one of the key distinguishing features between past migrations
and current forms of global migration is what Papastergiadis (2000) has
termed “the turbulence of migration” in the contemporary context.
The turbulence of migration, Papastergiadis’s concept inspired by
James Rosenau’s work in international relationships, echoes the differ-
ent levels of transnational interconnection, but it also refers to the break-
down of easily identifiable patterns in human migration. This disruption
has been fostered by the present globalising process, in which the rev-
olution in technology, transport and communication systems has facil-
itated, not only the development of new economic hubs in the world
away from the traditional centres in the West and the northern hemi-
sphere, but also drastic changes in the nature of migration patterns and
the migratory experience. Contemporary migration is characterised by
its multidirectional, reversible and often unpredictable patterns. In ear-
lier periods, however, migration patterns were easily traceable in linear
terms and migration was often perceived as irreversible, as suggested by
the Irish tradition of the so-called American Wake, a farewell party to
the Irish emigrant, whose likelihood of return was often considered so
unlikely that, as Patrick Fitzgerald and Brian Lambkin (2008) observe,
“the departure was treated as if it were an actual death” (17). The idea of
a return to one’s country of birth often impregnated the migrant mind,
reflected, for example, in the experience of late nineteenth-century Irish
migrants to North America. Amongst disadvantaged migrants, the return
journey was often perceived as an unrealisable dream and fed their nos-
talgia for their land of origins, exemplified in many of the Irish immi-
grant ballads, such as “Hills of Donegal,” as well as in numerous letters
sent back home. As A. B. McMillan wrote in April 1894 from Pittsburgh
 1 INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION, MOBILITY AND THE REDEFINITION … 3

to her sister Eliza in Newtownards, Co. Down, she lamented her deci-
sion to leave for the United States: “times is very dull in this Country, I
sometimes think that if I had the money I would go Back Home again”
(qtd. in Fitzgerald and Lambkin 2008, 193). Those with better financial
resources could more easily realise their dream, which was also aided by
the fact that the transition from sail to steam in the nineteenth century
involved safer and much more inexpensive travelling. According to David
Fitzpatrick (2010), between 1871 and 1921, as a consequence of these
technological developments, the migrants’ travel back to Ireland became
commonplace, and by the 1890s, “the ‘Returned Yank’ as well as the
Irish-born tourist had become a familiar figure in rural Ireland” (634).
As in earlier migration processes, social and economic differences are
still part and parcel of the experience of contemporary international
migrants, and technological development is also crucial in determining
changes in migration patterns. The compression of travel time and the
reduction in the actual cost of travel have enabled an increase in the vol-
ume and frequency of migratory movements, as well as the possibility
for a number of migrants to maintain frequent transnational contact, not
only with their families and close community in their country of origin,
but also with friends and family that may also be based, temporarily or
permanently, in other parts of the world. Similarly, the remote interaction
across space enabled by videoconferencing systems as well as by instant
messaging, both written and voiced, has also changed the nature of the
links maintained between migrants and their communities “back home”
and across the globe. Although these systems do not replace face-to-face
communication, they partly compensate for its absence, particularly for
those international migrants whose economic situation does not allow
them to enjoy the benefits of low-cost travel. As a number of recent stud-
ies on the relationship between migration and electronic communication
observe (Alonso and Oiarzabal 2010; Madianou and Miller 2012), medi-
ated communication has become a crucial component in the making and
maintenance of transnational social relationships and “contribute[s] to the
creation of social structure” (Fortunati et al. 2012, xx). It can further be
argued that traditional understandings of social structures have been rev-
olutionised by contemporary migration, and this, together with the new
webs of transnational socio-economic, political and environmental inter-
dependence, has dramatically transformed the nature of societies.
4 C. ZAMORANO LLENA

These momentous, rapid transformations have revolutionised tradi-

tional Weltanschauungen and can be perceived as turbulences that chal-
lenge the traditional view of societies as homogenous, fixed and rooted
to a specific geographical space while sharing certain common values
and traditions. Papastergiadis’s “turbulence” is partly meant to echo the
fears felt by many in relation to the transformation of seemingly peren-
nial social patterns due to increasingly unpredictable migratory patterns.
These concerns are evident in the abundance of literature that emerged,
particularly in the 1990s, analysing the threats of globalisation to the
nation-state, or in the current upsurge of extreme right-wing parties in
many European countries which have at the core of their programme
what they often term, in a rather euphemistic manner, a concern with
immigration and integration politics. As Anthony J. Marsella and Erin
Ring (2003) observe, “the fear of the new immigrants may be related to
the widespread fear of uncertainty in our world. […] Our world seems
to be unraveling and things seem out of control and, under these cir-
cumstances, all changes are suspect” (8). However, as Lord Alfred Ten-
nyson (2003) already concluded in his implicit reflections on the conse-
quences of the industrial revolution in his 1835 poem “Locksley Hall,”
change is inevitable and often preferable to stasis. Our psychosocial sur-
vival amidst such turbulence depends on the ability to understand that,
behind the apparent chaos of the world spinning, to borrow from Ten-
nyson’s poem, there lay possibilities which can be grasped through the
study and identification of the new emergent social structures. As spe-
cialists in various disciplines identified as early as the mid-1990s, there
is a need to move away from the paradigm of the national, which has
dominated various academic disciplines since the late nineteenth century.
Global, transnational mobility of people, goods and information have
changed perceptions of time and space, their interrelationship and their
interdependent role in the formation of collective and individual identities
and sense of belonging.

Migration and Changes

to Constructs of National Identity
In the study of migration, for over a century the national paradigm was
conducive to a reductive view of the experience of migration in relation to
the nation-state. As Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder (2009) contend,
“in the century and a half of national perspectives in historiography from
the 1830s to the 1960s, emigration as departure from the nation was little
 1 INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION, MOBILITY AND THE REDEFINITION … 5

studied and immigration received attention in terms of ‘assimilation’ to

the institutions and culture of the receiving society” (1). The perception
of “the natural condition of man [as] sedentary” and of the “movement
away from the natal place [as] a deviant activity associated with disorga-
nization and a threat to the established harmony of Gemeinschaft rela-
tionships” meant that the perception of migration as inextricable to any
understanding of history did not occur until the 1990s (Jackson 1969, 3,
qtd. in Fitzgerald and Lambkin 2008, 5). It was then that the narrative
of the nation in what Benedict Anderson seminally defined as “imagined
communities” started to be crucially transformed by migration.
According to Anderson (1991), in the nation-building project, the
novel in particular plays a crucial role in the process of “imagining” a
collective narrative of belonging. Consequently, an analysis of the man-
ner in which migration has transformed and become part of a redefined
understanding of “imagined communities” should necessarily include an
examination of how fictional works since the 1990s have articulated and,
thereby, contributed to this transformation of the nation, as well as offer-
ing an insight into the complexities of articulating these new collective
and individual identities in a transnational context. This, in turn, implies
a necessary transformation of the study of literature and, particularly, of
national literatures.
Significantly, some of the most prominent figures voicing the need to
re-examine the nature of national literatures and of literary studies as a
discipline originated in the field of comparative literature. As Haun Saussy
(2006) notes in her commissioned ten-year report on the state of com-
parative literature for the American Comparative Literature Association,
the discipline itself finds its origins in the era of nationalisms. One of its
founding texts, Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne (1810), was written
to explain to a French readership what made “verbal art” the represen-
tation of a distinctive particular people and its culture, taking German
literature as a case in point. This contrastive approach, used in order to
show what made national literatures different and a reflection of a specific
Volkgeist, differed from the subsequently dominant approach in compar-
ative literature in that the latter aimed at identifying and studying “the
mutual relations of different literatures” rather than their differences (van
Tieghem 1931, qtd. in Saussy 2006, 9). In both cases, however, there
is an explicit or implicit understanding that each individual literature is
different, often tendentiously understood as monolingual and monocul-
tural, and contained within the borders of the national paradigm in which
6 C. ZAMORANO LLENA

it finds its roots. Therefore, comparative literature as a discipline was also

shaped and determined by the nation-building project that obviated dif-
ferences in order to strengthen the creation of a literature deemed repre-
sentative of a unified nation. However, the discipline’s methodology and
desire to constantly deconstruct the borders of national literatures and
languages arguably made its specialists, at the time of globalisation, more
perceptive to the changes in national literary paradigms caused by current
forms of transnational migration of people, ideas and texts.
At the turn of the third millennium, a number of specialists in litera-
ture in English already contended that globalisation had led to a number
of changes in the understanding of national literatures and their study.
These studies signalled the entrance of literature into globalisation studies
and their main arguments were often in line with the dominant percep-
tion in the area in the 1990s, particularly from sociological perspectives,
that globalisation and migration had destabilised traditional definitions of
the nation and, thereby, the foundations of the nation-state (Castles and
Miller 2013; Joppke 1998; Sassen 1998; Castles and Davidson 2000).
In line with this view, many of the critical works emerging specifically
within the field of Anglophone literary studies shared a sense that the
national was being diluted under the influence of globalisation, and that
compartmentalised national literatures were entering a process of interna-
tionalisation in which the national was being superseded by the increas-
ingly relevant literature of globalisation, reminiscent of Goethe’s famous
1827 pronouncement that “national literature is now a rather unmeaning
term; the epoch of world literature is at hand, and everyone must strive
to hasten its approach” (qtd. in Damrosch 2003b, 1). In 2001, the MLA
periodical inaugurated the year with a seminal special issue analysing the
globalisation of literary studies. In the introduction to this issue, Giles
Gunn (2001) observes that the object of literary study has been modified
with the “loosening [of] national […] paradigms that once organized lit-
erary studies” and that “academic specialities have become more nation-
ally borderless of late” (16, 18). Similarly, in the same issue, Wai Chee
Dimock (2001) argues for a “denationalization” of literature (176), and
in The South Atlantic Quarterly special issue on what its editors term “the
globalization of fiction / the fiction of globalization,” Susie O’Brien and
Imre Szeman (2001) explore the possibilities offered by globalisation “to
think of literature outside the framework of national literatures” (605).
Opposed to the above views is comparativist David Damrosch’s claim
(2003a) that the change in the national paradigm does not infer the
 1 INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION, MOBILITY AND THE REDEFINITION … 7

elimination of the national borders due to the threat of globalisation, a

view that since the 2000s also started to become more widely defended
in globalisation studies, and which sociologist Robert J. Holton (2011)
summarises with the contention that “while the nation state has been
radically challenged by a number of globalisation processes, its historical
dynamic is very far from being played out” (124). In line with this inclu-
sive view of globalisation, in the field of literature, Damrosch argues for
the pluralisation of the study of national literatures which should rather
be understood as a “network of traditions.” Damrosch (2003a) upholds
the necessary preservation of national traditions, “which are hardly about
to wither away” (328), but redefined through a more prominent and con-
scious intertwining of the national and the international. In this sense, a
comparative perspective can be highly beneficial to the study of national
literatures, as it highlights the fact that, as Damrosch (2010) claims, “in-
dividual literatures are never chthonic self-creations; they take shape in an
international framework” (26).

Fictions of Migration in the Redefinition

of National Literatures
Adopting an international and comparative approach contributes to the
identification of a number of key aspects to consider in the analysis of
the manner in which national literary traditions are reconfigured in the
contemporary global context. First and foremost, migration emerges as
a crucial concept in its various significations. On the one hand, the the-
matic analysis of how contemporary transnational migration redefines col-
lective and individual identities as articulated in contemporary fiction is
one of the most salient approaches to the study of contemporary litera-
ture in the age of globalisation. Previous analyses of the interrelationship
between literature and globalisation have mostly focused on other aspects
pertaining to the current globalising process. As in the mid-1990s, glob-
alisation spread its remit beyond the purely economic terrain, thematic
concerns migrated between seemingly disconnected fields of study and
became analysed from various disciplinary perspectives. The interpenetra-
tion of culture and economy that has been at the centre of analyses of
postmodernity, regarded as the condition of society in the contemporary
global context, generated in literature an aesthetics of globalisation that is
reflected in the proliferation of a number of thematic concerns character-
istic of the global age. In this sense, analyses of the literature produced in
8 C. ZAMORANO LLENA

this context have often focused on aspects that are a direct manifestation
of the market economy and the technological developments that char-
acterise and energise globalising processes. One such example is James
Annesley’s Fictions of Globalization: Consumption, the Market and the
Contemporary American Novel (2006), Suman Gupta’s focus on global or
anti-globalisation protests and global cities as part of his landmark study
Globalization and Literature (2009), and, more recently, Philip Leonard’s
Literature After Globalization (2013), with its focus on technology and
its challenge to the traditional definition of the nation-state, as suggested
by the subtitle to this volume.
Some significant analyses of the relationship between literature and
globalisation have taken migration as a point of departure to analyse the
literature produced in the present. In the European context, many of
these studies have only focused on literature produced by first- or second-
generation migrants to European centres, dealing mostly with their expe-
rience of migration (Gebauer and Lausten 2010). While the present study
also has migration as a thematic focus, the main aim is to analyse the
manner in which specific national literary systems have been transformed
under the influence of contemporary migration, including migration as a
theme in the work of migrant and non-migrant authors, as well as study-
ing the manner in which these texts suggest different ways of looking
at migration and its central role in the renovation of national literatures
in a transnational context. Therefore, the present study aims to analyse
what will be termed fictions of migration, a concept that is linked to Rita
Barnard’s “fictions of the global.” If, as Barnard (2009) claims referring
to Anderson’s seminal study, the novel is the genre that crucially con-
tributes to the formation of the national “imagined community,” a study
of the manner in which this community has changed under the influ-
ence of globalisation should naturally take prose fiction as the object of
study. Whereas Barnard’s “fiction of the global” analyses the manner in
which fiction reflects how technological and economic interconnections
have changed traditional understandings of national imagined communi-
ties and contributed to the formation of global imagined communities,
the present study will focus on human migration and its role in fostering
similar changes within and across national literary systems, particularly
focusing on the Irish and British cases.
Another aspect of current migration that has a direct impact on def-
initions of national literature is the transnational relocation of authors
and texts and the effects on definitions of national literature that follow
 1 INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION, MOBILITY AND THE REDEFINITION … 9

from this cultural exchange. This study will focus particularly, though not
exclusively, on authors whose work reflects their continued links not only
with the literary tradition in the country where they were born, educated
and often published in, but also with that of their chosen country of res-
idence. The migration of representative fiction writers of the current lit-
erary scene in the selected countries for this study has a double effect; on
the one hand, it generates a multidirectional interrelationship between lit-
erary traditions. On the other, it also contributes to an understanding that
national traditions are radically transformed by the work of these immi-
grant and emigrant authors. As several critics have noted, their texts often
circulate in different literary systems and contribute, in turn, to subverting
the exclusionary practices of traditional nation-building projects through
literature. The making of national literature in a globalised context, as
Damrosch (2010) contends, cannot depend on “a fatherland’s Mutter-
sprache or on authors’ passports but on their works’ effective presence in
a nation’s literary culture” (28). Just as the increased volume and pace of
the mobility of people, information and goods in the age of globalisation
make migration a central theme in the socio-cultural context in which lit-
erary works are produced and in their fictional narratives, the migration
of authors and texts makes mobility and the porosity of borders central
features in the redefinition of national literature in the present context.
Mobility, however, is not new, particularly in Irish and British fiction.
What is characteristic of the fiction of migration in the age of globalisa-
tion is the increased awareness of the weight of migration as a thematic
concern, as well as a way of refiguring what constitutes national literature.
Consequently, a study of the fictions of migration in the present context
will necessarily have to relate to previous forms of the mobility of people,
authors and texts, as well as the different bodies of literature that they
originated; equally important is their relationship with the national litera-
ture, in relation to which they have often been defined as literature of the
margins, a perspective which underlines the rigid demarcations between
national literature and “the rest.” In this sense, a study of the connection
between present fictions of migration and earlier migration literature, as
well as postcolonial writing and new forms of cosmopolitan writing, with
special attention to their role in redefining national literature and liter-
ary traditions, becomes paramount in terms of setting the basis for the
present study.
Although migration is purportedly one of the oldest literary topoi, with
Homer’s The Odyssey being one of its earliest expressions, it is mostly
10 C. ZAMORANO LLENA

since the 1990s that it has received a large degree of critical attention
in the field of literary studies. Many academic works, with their preoc-
cupation for categorisation, have attempted a classification of the differ-
ent texts, mostly fiction, that have migration as a central thematic con-
cern. The terminology is, at times, used ambiguously. Thus, in their pref-
ace to the seminal text Writing Across Worlds: Literature and Migra-
tion (1995), the editors outline the development of “migrant literatures”
(King et al. 1995). This concept includes first-generation migrants writing
in the language of their country of adoption as well as authors of migrant
descent, and the texts in all cases focus on the experience of migration
and related themes, ranging from the experience of rootlessness, displace-
ment and nostalgia, to complex issues of identity formation derived from
the encounter between cultural differences. This type of writing is, how-
ever, referred to as “migration literature” by Mirjam Gebauer and Pia
Schwarz Lausten (2010, 2). Søren Frank (2010), on the other hand, pro-
vides a useful disambiguation of the terms when he differentiates between
“migrant literature,” as that written by migrants, and “migration litera-
ture,” written by both migrant and non-migrant authors and in which
“the relationship between the literary content and style” takes precedence
over the “authorial background” (44). Frank’s latter concept is one of
the inspirational sources for Sten Pultz Moslund’s Migration, Literature
and Hybridity (2010), but is further complicated when considering Roy
Sommer’s (2001) classification of fictions of migration in contemporary
British literature, where he considers the “migration novel” as a subcate-
gory of what he calls the “multicultural novel,” and defines it as focusing
on diasporic experiences while taking authorial background as an implicit
classifying principle. In an attempt to escape the traps of using a terminol-
ogy that can easily be perceived as equivocal, the present study focuses on
fictions of migration as a useful concept that, with its connections to the
category of “fictions of the global,” suggests the emphasis on the role of
migration in the age of globalisation in reshaping national literatures. In
this sense, fiction of migration links with the recent critical attention to
the manner in which, as Rebecca L. Walkowitz (2006) argues, “the polit-
ical and social processes of immigration shape the whole literary system,
the relationships among all of the works in a literary culture, and not sim-
ply the part of that system that involves books generated by immigrant
populations” (533). The present study will thus contend that it is not only
immigration and the work of immigrant authors that shape a literary cul-
ture, but also the work of both non-migrant and migrant authors whose
 1 INTRODUCTION: MIGRATION, MOBILITY AND THE REDEFINITION … 11

works enter a dialogue with their country of residence and, in the case
of migrant authors, with their country of birth, thus expanding under-
standings of national culture and stressing the interaction between various
literary systems and historical realities.

The Role of National Differences

and Postcolonialism in the Emergence
of Fictions of Migration
Despite the role of globalisation in changing perceptions of migration in
relation to literature, the development of literature of migration and its
movement from the margins to the centre of literary systems does not
occur at the same pace or in the same manner in the different national
literatures. This is another aspect which, incidentally, also explains the
impossibility of completely discarding the national framework within liter-
ary studies, particularly in relation to migration, in a global context. With
their focus on migration literature being understood as literature written
by immigrants, Gebauer and Lausten (2010) already note how the cen-
trality of this literature differs in the various national literary apparatuses
(2). In Germany, for example, migration literature finds its origins in the
Gastarbeiterlitteratur produced since the 1960s by those migrants who
arrived in Germany through guest worker programmes established with
countries such as Turkey, Spain, Italy and Greece. This type of migra-
tion was different from the one experienced by Britain or France, which,
in the twentieth century, was initially mostly based on immigration from
former colonies after the Second World War and which was often sub-
sumed within the label of postcolonial writing. The antecedents of the
literature of migration in these countries are radically different, therefore,
from those in other European contexts, such as Spain or Italy, in which
literature of migration is often identified as a type of literature that has
developed in recent times, mostly caused by the increase in either forced
migration on economic or political grounds, or as part of the privileged
transmigrants relocating permanently or temporarily as middle- to high-
rank workers in large private corporations or supranational institutions.
Consequently, the literature produced by writers of migrant background
developing in these various national contexts, despite sharing certain the-
matic concerns, such as explorations of transcultural memory, encounters
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 TITLE PAGE OF “THE UNCLE’S PRESENT”
The Uncle’s Present,
A NEW BATTLEDOOR.
Published by Jacob Johnson, 147 Market Street Philadelphia.
The moral of Tom Jones, as translated for its youthful readers,
seems to boil down to this: If you are a good child you will never
annoy your neighbors! Fancy Henry Fielding’s amusement when
Tom Jones appeared abridged for children! What a marvelous leap
this was from the dry-as-dust New England primers and Protestant
Tutors, from austere catechisms to—Tom Jones!
Printers early discovered that books for children should be made in
proportion to their little clients—small. Miniature volumes have
always held a great fascination for children of all ages. Their very
neatness and compactness make them seem the more precious and
desirable. Perhaps it was with a view to making Bible stories valued
more highly by their small readers that they were printed in tiny
volumes called Thumb Bibles. These adorable wee volumes,
illustrated with crude woodcuts, are extremely rare. Not long ago a
lady came to my Philadelphia office with an old-fashioned hand bag
—the silk gathered sort, roomy if not beautiful. I noticed that it stuck
out in little points, and wondered what on earth she could have
brought in it. My curiosity was more than gratified when she emptied
it upon my desk—some twenty Thumb Bibles! When I asked her
what she wanted for these little charmers she shook her head and
said that anything I cared to offer would be acceptable. I suggested
$300. She looked at me aghast.
“Why,” she said, “I would have been willing to take twenty-five!”
Children began to assert themselves, beginning with the last quarter
of the eighteenth century. They became individuals rather than so
much parental property. Thomas Bradford must have realized this
when, in 1775, he placed such juvenile delights upon the market as
The Scotch Rogue, Moll Flanders, Lives of Highwaymen, Lives of
Pirates, The Buccaneers of America, and The Lives of the Twelve
Cæsars.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century shockers began to
appear. Lurid tales of dastardly deeds were read by children who
hitherto knew life through such stories as The Prize for Youthful
Obedience, The Search After Happiness, Little Truths, and other
edifying concoctions. The colorful experiences of Motherless Mary, A
Young and Friendless Orphan who was eventually Decoyed to
London, appearing from the presses of a New York house in 1828,
interpreted life in a new if less safe way. John Paul Jones’s Life was
issued with a terrifying frontispiece and in a dress to attract small
boys with an admiration and envy for buccaneers and their fierce
and bloody lives. Even Noah Webster, that staid dictionarist, wrote
The Pirates, A Tale for Youth.
The interest in American history began at the close of the
Revolution. The scenes of all the juvenile histories were formerly laid
in foreign countries. The American Colonies now had their own
history, and some of the rarest, and perhaps the most attractive to
the student, are those dealing with this subject. The History of
America abridged for the use of Children of all Denominations,
adorned with cuts, Philadelphia, Wrigley and Berriman, 1795, is
engaging and wonderful. The little illustrations are marvelous
examples of the illustrator’s skill. On account of the expense, the
publisher duplicated the portraits, and one cut served for several
worthies. Thus Christopher Columbus, General Montgomery, and His
Excellency Richard Howel, Governor of New Jersey, were depicted
exactly alike, the American eighteenth-century military costume
looking picturesque and fearful on Columbus.
The New York Cries, printed and sold by Mahlon Day in 1826, is
particularly entertaining. According to the introduction of this little
book: “New York island is 15 miles long, and from one to two miles
broad. It is laid out in spacious streets and avenues, with large
squares and market places. The circuit of the city is about eight
miles, and the number of buildings which it contains is estimated at
30,000, and the inhabitants at about 172,000.”
I cannot resist quoting the cry of Sand, as it is a reflection of the time
when New Yorkers used sand on their floors, instead of costly
Oriental rugs:—

Sand! Here’s your nice white Sand!

Sand, O! white Sand, O!

Buy Sand for your floor;
For so cleanly it looks
When strew’d at your door.

This sand is brought from the seashore in vessels, principally from

Rockaway Beach, Long Island. It is loaded into carts, and carried
about the streets of New York, and sold for about 12½ cents per
bushel. Almost every little girl or boy knows that it is put on newly
scrubbed floors, to preserve them clean and pleasant.
But since people have become rich, and swayed by the vain fashions
of the world, by carpeting the floors of their houses, there does not
appear to be so much use for Sand as in the days of our worthy
ancestors.
Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation
was published in Philadelphia by W. Johnson in 1836. Issued nearly
a century ago, it is still enshrined in our hearts. Although there were
many editions issued in America, few have survived the tooth of time
and the voracity of these youthful readers. The Philadelphia edition
had perfect pictures properly painted, and it is one of the most
charming morsels ever devised “to please the palates of Pretty,
Prattling Playfellows.” Two quotations are given in order to bring us
all back to the time long ago when Peter Piper meant so much to us.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;

Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

Villiam Veedon vip’s his Vig and Vaistcoat;

Did Villiam Veedon vipe his Vig and Vaistcoat?
If Villiam Veedon vip’d his Vig and Vaistcoat,
Vhere are the Vig and Vaistcoat Villiam Veedon vip’d?

The publisher’s excuse of presenting Peter Piper to the public is

worthy of the book itself:—
He Prays parents to Purchase this Playful Performance, Partly to Pay
him for his Patience and Pains; Partly to Provide for the Printers and
Publishers; but Principally to Prevent the Pernicious Prevalence of
Perverse Pronunciation.
PAGE FROM “PETER PIPER’S PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES OF PLAIN
AND PERFECT PRONUNCIATION”
Pp
 Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled Peppers;
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled Peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled Peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled Peppers Peter Piper picked?

The book will always remain attractive to us, but when we think of
the youthful minds it has mixed, the jaws it has dislocated, the
tongues it has tied, we can only remark that we love it for its faults!
When I look into these old editions, these picturesque little volumes,
which reveal so charmingly the quickening change from the days of
the Pilgrim Fathers, I am surprised that some enterprising publisher
does not reissue them to-day. Such stories as Pug’s Visit to Mr.
Punch, Who Killed Cock Robin, The History of Little Fannie, Little
Eliza and Little Henry, as well as the droll Old Dame Trudge and Her
Parrot, would go as well now as one hundred years ago. I think they
would make a fortune for someone—although I do not guarantee it!
Two specially made miniature bookcases house my whole collection
of children’s books. On either side of a large sixteenth-century
Spanish bookcase they hang against the wall, and visitors to my
Philadelphia home take delight in looking at their quaint illustrations
and the still quainter text. But alas, my library is now like a nursery
without children. The whole family—eight hundred—have traveled to
New York and are on exhibition in the New York Public Library,
where they may be seen by all who are interested.
 VII

OLD BIBLES
What is the greatest discovery in the history of books? This is the
question with which I am constantly bombarded. In letters from all
parts of the world the embryonic bookman, the novice collector, the
casual lover of books, the intelligent, the stupid—they make this their
leading question. And although I have never been accused of
unseemly virtue, I rejoice that the answer is exactly as it should be:
the first printed Bible.
The momentous recognition of the now famed Gutenberg Bible
occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century. Book collecting was
already beginning to discard its sombre, conservative guise as an
occupation of the religious in monasteries, or as a pastime of the old
and very rich. Now this discovery came like a flaming meteor against
the literary sky.
So many astounding finds have been made in out-of-the-way places,
it is somewhat surprising that this first and greatest printed work
should have been identified in the very heart of Paris. In a preceding
article I have related the remarkable manner in which several other
rare books turned up. There was the copy of Pilgrim’s Progress
which made its way from obscurity in the barber shop of a small
English town to international fame in a London auction room. And
another valuable book, Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, hid
unsuspected for years in the lumber room of an English estate
before it was brought to light; and a similar copy, equally rare, was
used as an archer’s target at Shrewsbury before its value was
accidentally recognized. What irony, then, that this, the greatest book
of all time, the Gutenberg Bible, should have rested in the very
centre of a literary stronghold perhaps centuries before its unique
preëminence was detected!
Thousands of eyes during that time had gazed uncomprehendingly
upon this marvel of the printer’s art in the celebrated library of
Cardinal Mazarin in Paris. How often it was read by strangely
undiscerning eyes, eyes of students, eyes of connoisseurs, looked
upon by true lovers of the antique! They saw nothing in it but a Bible
—one more early Bible. Such men as Descartes, Voiture, and
Corneille doubtless turned its pages many times. Certainly it must
have been something of a curiosity, even in those days. But what
scant imaginations they had! The very idea chills me!
It will forever remain a mystery, that Gutenberg Bible in Paris. How
did it get there from Germany? Who brought it? How did it happen to
be in the Mazarin Library? Did some serious-minded book agent of
old France, if there were any then, bargain quietly with the scarlet-
robed Cardinal, or was the road to its destination one of intrigue, of
dishonor, and finally violence? Alas, that we book lovers will never
know! A little pilfering here and there was never known to upset
Mazarin, if the book he coveted was worthy of it.
Often I have wondered, when visiting his musty library, what the
ancient walls behind the shelves could tell were they suddenly given
the power of speech. As the old proverb runs, “Walls have ears.” Nor
is it difficult in that majestic palace to watch through half-closed eyes,
veiled, of course, by your imagination, the proud old churchman as
he pridefully surveys his magnificent books. Perhaps you can see
him lingering before the provocative loveliness of gleaming
parchment and morocco covers; observe him as he tenderly
removes from its resting place some diabolical work of Machiavelli;
or he may pace elegantly between the ancient lecterns and reading
posts to bend in silent tribute before the disquieting beauty of some
massive old missal. I have easily pictured not only His Eminence but
many assistants as well, searching among the ancient tomes;
sandaled monks, learned scholars and librarians, poets and
courtiers, they have all passed me in that renowned library,
unconscious of my presence. And how the chains still jangle which
for centuries have held captive certain small and attractive volumes
on shelf and table. Some sophisticated doubters may sigh as they
read these lines, thinking: “Poor Rosenbach, what the vineyards of
France must have done to him!”
After I purchased the Melk copy of the Gutenberg Bible last year, I
learned, from the hordes of visitors who came to see it and through
the letters of congratulation and inquiry with which I was flooded, that
most people thought this the only copy in existence. As a matter of
fact, about forty-three copies have been discovered thus far, ten of
which are now in public and private libraries in this country. Perhaps
there are others in hiding; there is always that glorious chance. But
the very fact that there were these other copies, scattered in various
libraries in the old centres of Europe, copies which were there,
doubtless, from the time Gutenberg accomplished his stupendous
work, makes the more remarkable the first disclosure of this Bible,
nearly three centuries after its publication.
Think of the many wise graybeards who spent their lives searching
for knowledge in the vast libraries of Vienna, of Berlin, of Göttingen,
of Prague, and at Oxford and Cambridge, those centuries ago; men
who saw and read these volumes and yet did not question their
strange peculiarity. For although the Gutenberg Bible gives the effect
of a fastidiously written manuscript, it is not only the earliest but
actually the most beautiful work of printing the world has ever known.
It was the first work to come from any press using movable types.
Whether these were cut from wood or moulded in lead can never be
conclusively proved. This is immaterial, however, except to the
student of typography. The type itself is a large Gothic one, and the
ink, now nearly five centuries old, is to-day as black and glossy as
the hair of a Japanese beauty. The majestic Gothic lettering was the
prevailing one used in Germany for ecclesiastical works at that time,
and therefore it was but natural to use it as a model. The pages of
the Gutenberg Bible are perfectly spaced in double columns.
The great work was published in two states; some copies were
printed on paper, others on vellum. The feel of the paper always
fascinates me, so firm it is, so beautiful in appearance. It seems
alive, yet there is something definitely final about it. It is as though
the paper of the Gutenberg Bible had proudly indicated from its
inception that nothing finer, nothing more perfect ever could be
made. Nor is the vellum of any other old book of finer texture than
that which Gutenberg, the master printer, used. The rarest vellum is
from the thinnest, the most velvety part of the inner skin of the
sheep. This Gutenberg was careful to select, and his Bibles printed
on vellum are much more valuable to-day than those printed on
paper.
It thrills the lover of books when he observes the superb taste
Johann Gutenberg showed in the year 1455. A decade later,
printers, his pupils, began to be patronized by princes of Church and
State. It was they who ordered the most beautiful books, made
especially for their private gratification. But there is no record of
Gutenberg having any such incentive as wealth or approbation. He
must have followed some compelling desire of his own which led to
the creation of the perfect book.
It was about 1750 that Guillaume-François de Bure, a young
Frenchman, proved himself a veritable prodigy among discoverers.
At that time he employed every moment he could spare, working in
the Mazarin Library, which, since the death of its founder, had
fortunately been in the hands of intelligent and appreciative men. It
happened that De Bure one day stumbled upon two old volumes he
could not recall having seen before. He glanced at them as he
passed, and was so taken by their unusual beauty that he resolved
to return to study them as soon as possible. Almost the first thing De
Bure observed was that there were forty-two lines on the page. He
had seen, in those magnificent ecclesiastical surroundings, many
wonderful Bibles. In a state of hopeful excitement he looked for and
finally located another copy of the glorious book similar to the one in
the Mazarin Library, in the Electoral Library in Mainz. This is the copy
which is now in the French National Library. De Bure read the
inscription in an ancient hand at the end of each volume, several
lines stating that the books had been rubricated and bound in the
year of our Lord 1456. With these slender facts as a basis, he set
about further to establish the authenticity of the greatest
bibliographical discovery of all time.
There were two issues of the Gutenberg (or, as it was originally
called, the Mazarin,) Bible. The first contains forty, forty-one, and
forty-two lines to the column. But this, as a rule, is at the beginning of
the book, where it is apparent that Gutenberg was experimenting; he
was trying to evolve to his own satisfaction the form of what has
since been acclaimed the greatest monument of the printer’s art. To
obtain the very first issue of the Gutenberg Bible—that is an
achievement! Of all books in the world it is the most important to
possess in its elemental state, for it was in this condition that it first
saw the light of day. It is true that there is nothing nobler, nothing
finer, nothing more beautiful than the Gutenberg Bible in its last
completed phase, but to me the embryonic stage of the first printed
book is the most important. Only the first “gathering,” as we say
technically, comprises the first printed book.
I believe Gutenberg began printing his Bible a little before 1450, and
devoted the first three or four years to perfecting the movable types.
But I doubt if it could have been much earlier than 1455 when he
finally completed the first copy. In all probability he was assisted by
his friend, Johann Fust, who supplied the money with which
Gutenberg bought materials for a press and types. Aided, too, by
Fust’s son-in-law, Peter Schöffer, they brought eternal fame to the
name of their already famous city, Mainz. Later many apprentices
from Gutenberg’s and Fust’s atelier went southward to France, Italy,
and Spain, where they established the first presses in the great cities
of Paris, Rome, Florence, and Seville. These specimens of early
printing are known to the specialists as incunabula, or books
representing the cradle of printing. The term has been extended so
as to include all works printed before 1500.
 FIRST PAGE OF CICERO, “DE OFFICIIS,” PRINTED ON
VELLUM, MAINZ, 1465, WITH MINIATURE OF CICERO
Some authorities have questioned the claim of Gutenberg as the
inventor of printing. Coster of Haarlem has been put forth as the real
discoverer. There are fragments of early printing with Gothic types
that students of typography have dubbed Costeriana. I cannot enter
here into a discussion of this controversy. Perhaps both sides are
right. At any rate, I have read reams and reams on the subject and
have become sadder if not wiser at each perusal. Mademoiselle
Pellechet, a celebrated bibliophile of the nineteenth century, studied
the question deeply. In the end, as bibliography is a science in which
women have distinguished themselves, a woman will probably say
the last word! Perhaps the best person to give an opinion on the
subject to-day is Miss Belle da Costa Greene, the learned director of
the Pierpont Morgan Library.
When I visited England two or three years ago I was invited to
Windsor Castle to see the beautiful library belonging to King George.
The librarian, the Honorable John Fortescue, the authority on the
history of the English Army, showed me many magnificent volumes
and manuscripts. Among them was that glorious rarity known to the
initiated as the 1457 Psalter, printed on vellum by Fust and Schöffer.
There are in the royal library many works of great historical
importance, and I listened with delight to his fascinating stories
relating to them.
Often during the afternoon I stood before the windows of the library
to look out upon the vista of green lawns, the winding Thames, and
Eton College a few miles in the distance. I thought of Thomas Gray
and others who had known so intimately the country about me, of
famous men whose names were connected with famous books, and
a sudden desire came over me—a desire to see and pay homage to
the most beautiful book in the world. By the time I was ready to leave
the Castle I had decided to motor over to Eton.
When I arrived I immediately went to the library attendant and asked
him to let me see the Gutenberg Bible. This copy in the library of
Eton College is to my mind the most noble specimen of all. It is in its
contemporary binding of old leather decorated with the original metal
clasps and bosses, and it bears the name of the binder, Johann
Fogel, who goes down in history as the binder of the first printed
book.
At the very time of my visit to Eton the newspapers in England were
running editorial comment about several purchases I had just made
privately and at auction sales. They complained I was taking away
the greatest monuments of literature from their shores. The old
attendant at Eton, noting my enthusiasm as I turned the pages of this
beautiful Bible, said to me, in a tone tickled with pride, “Wouldn’t that
Doctor Rosenbach like to carry off this Gutenberg Bible too?”
Gutenberg’s Bible was set up from the Latin manuscript version
designated by scholars as the Vulgate. Previous to its issue most
manuscript Bibles were written either in Greek or Hebrew. Now, for
the first time, it appeared available to all who could read, translated
into Latin, the “vulgar” or common language of the Church.
 BELLE DA COSTA GREENE

During the past few years I have purchased four copies of the
Gutenberg Bible. The first, at the Hoe sale in 1912, was an edition
printed on paper, and with Alfred Quaritch I later sold it to the late P.
A. B. Widener, of Philadelphia. It is now in the collection of his son,
Mr. Joseph Widener. The second copy, in a superb binding by Fogel,
and now in the greatest private collection of Bibles in this country,
came from the library of the late James W. Ellsworth, of Chicago. It
was in a strange manner that I bought this copy. I was halfway
across the Atlantic. Before sailing I had been treating for its
purchase, along with the rest of his splendid library. I completed the
transaction by wireless. It was thus that the fifteenth century and the
twentieth met in mid-ocean! To buy a Gutenberg Bible by radio—it
seemed almost sacrilegious.
And this recalls another story. I met for the first time aboard one of
the great liners a distinguished collector, a man of great taste and
judgment. He said to me in the smoking room, fifteen hundred miles
out of New York, “Have you a set of the four folios of Shakespeare?”
“Yes,” I replied, “a fine one, the Trowbridge set; at least, I have if it
has not been sold.”
He asked me to verify it by wireless, which I did, and on receipt of
the message he purchased it in mid-Atlantic. No man that ever lived
had the prophetic foresight of Shakespeare; yet even he could not
have pictured such a thing. And the price? That is still another story.
I purchased another Gutenberg Bible, printed on paper, at the
Carysfort sale in London, four years ago, and paid £9500—a little
less than $50,000—for it. To-day it rests, with other great examples
of printing and literature, in the library of Mr. Carl H. Pforzheimer, in
New York City.
The Melk copy, which I bought at the Anderson Galleries last year,
was as exciting an acquisition as I have ever made. Of course there
were many collectors and dealers besides myself who yearned to
own it. The price I paid for it—$106,000—was like the first shot of the
Revolution, heard around the world. Mrs. E. S. Harkness bought this
copy from me and most graciously bestowed it upon the Library of
Yale University, in memory of Mrs. Stephen V. Harkness. It is
certainly one of the greatest gifts ever made to a university in this
country. So many copies have passed into public institutions during
the past few years, it is unlikely that many more perfect ones can
come into the market. What will its price be in the future? One could
as well stem the tides as to block its steady and irresistible march. It
is only a matter of time. To-day it sells for more than $100,000; more
than $1,000,000 will some day be a reasonable price for it.
Although much stress has been laid upon the value and rarity of the
Gutenberg forty-two-line Bible, and it is generally thought to be the
most valuable in the world, I believe the thirty-six-line Bible (known
as the Pfister, or Bamberg, Bible) is infinitely rarer. It also was the
work of a Mainz printing press, and was probably made under
Gutenberg’s supervision, after he had finished the one which now
bears his name. In the old days it was thought to have been printed
before the Gutenberg Bible, but scholars have proved by long study
that mistakes are made which could only have been the result of
using Gutenberg’s for copy, instead of one of the written texts. There
are only fourteen copies of this thirty-six-line Bible known; four are in
England, seven in Germany, one is in Belgium, one in France, and
another in Austria. Yet in all this broad land there is not one copy. But
I rejoice in having a single leaf of it, which, I assure you, I prize
greatly.
Probably the most beautiful Bible after the Gutenberg is in two
volumes, forming what is known as the 1462 Bible. It is the first one
that is dated, and was issued at Mainz, printed by Fust and Schöffer,
August 14, 1462. The copies on vellum seem to be more numerous
than those on paper. I bought the last copy, belonging to the Earl of
Carysfort, for £4800. It is not only the first dated Bible but the earliest
example of a book formally divided into two volumes. But it is not
considered a rare edition of the Bible in any sense of the word, as
more than sixty copies are known. In fact, we had two copies of it at
one time in our New York vault, both of which were illuminated with
grotesque birds and beasts, probably by the same artist. It is odd
that, although there are few collections of incunabula in South
America, there are two copies of this Bible in the National Library at
Rio de Janeiro.
Probably the greatest sport of all is the collecting of Bibles in
manuscript. It takes a king’s ransom to-day to secure a really fine
one. I do not mean the ordinary late-fifteenth-century ones, which
are quite common, but those executed from the ninth to the twelfth
century, especially when they are illustrated. Of course, the earliest
codices, the very foundation stones of the history of the Bible, such
as the Codex Vaticanus in Rome, the Alexandrinus in the British
Museum, and the Sinaiticus at Leningrad, are safely beyond the
purse of the richest collector. The Pierpont Morgan Library contains
the finest collection of illuminated Bibles in America. The vault at 33
East Thirty-sixth Street, New York, is an achievement almost
unequaled in the history of collecting. It is like a view of Paradise.
The latest acquisition by Mr. J. P. Morgan of some of the Holkham
manuscripts from the library of the Earl of Leicester is a notable
triumph in the history of great libraries.
Some years ago I was talking with Mr. Henry E. Huntington in his old
library at 2 East Fifty-seventh Street, New York. I said most humbly,
although with proper pride, “How would you like to own the original
Conqueror Bible of the architect of the Tower of London?”
“There ain’t no sich animile,” quoted Mr. Huntington.
I thereupon produced from a cavernous Gladstone bag two large
folio volumes, elegantly bound in blue morocco. “This is it,” I said.
The Bible was written in the eleventh century for Gundulph, 1024-
1108, Bishop of Rochester, who came over with William the
Conqueror and later became the designer of the Tower of London.
On the first leaf of each volume the bishop had written an elaborate
curse, excommunicating anyone who should destroy, mutilate, or
carry it off. When I showed Mr. Huntington these fatal words, he said
to me, with a twinkle in his eye, “You old rogue, this applies to you,
too, you know. I will take the Bible, but without the curse!”
 LEAF FROM AN ENGLISH BIBLICAL MANUSCRIPT OF THE
NINTH CENTURY

I recall one day several years ago when I visited the library of the
late Sir Thomas Phillipps, at Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham. His
grandson, Mr. T. FitzRoy Fenwick, and I were looking over the
precious volumes, and we talked of Sir Thomas’s ardent love of
manuscripts. For more than fifty years he had been the world’s
greatest gatherer of everything written by the hand of man. His
knowledge was equal to his love, and he succeeded in forming an
unrivaled library of manuscripts, which included some of the greatest
specimens in existence. He did not confine himself to Continental
examples alone, but was the first great collector of manuscripts
relating to America. Sir Thomas Phillipps was the patron not only of
Lord Kingsborough, whose researches on Mexico are well known,
but of George Catlin, who depicted so graphically the life of the
American Indian. Mr. Fenwick, who inherited from his grandfather his
appreciation and love of fine things, and who possesses an almost
unequaled knowledge of old manuscripts, asked me if I had ever
seen a manuscript containing Anglo-Saxon writing. I said that I had
not, and he thereupon produced the Four Gospels, an English
manuscript written in West Anglia in the time of King Alfred, a.d. 850-
900, which contained splendid full-page illustrations of an unusual
type. There upon the margins were characters in Anglo-Saxon,
written long before the Conqueror came to the shores of Britain.
Nothing, however, surprises me at Thirlestaine House. One day Mr.
Fenwick showed me the Liesborn Gospels, a superb manuscript
made in the ninth century for King Widekind, the only successful
opponent of Charlemagne. It was in its old binding of carved wood,
and is one of the few very early manuscripts in existence giving the
name of the scribe who wrote it.
He also showed to me the famous French Historiated Bible of the
fourteenth century, in two magnificent volumes, which contained
almost a hundred illustrations, quite in the modern manner, more like
William Blake than an artist of old Touraine. I now have these three
precious Biblical manuscripts, and I doubt whether there is a nobler
assemblage in existence.
To my mind the most inspiringly beautiful and important early
Hebrew manuscript of the Bible is that in the remarkable collection of
Mr. David Sassoon, of London. It should be reproduced in facsimile
so that all students here and abroad might study not only its unique
text but its glorious illustrations as well.