Dr. Kirstyn Leuner (English) delivered a version of this essay as a presentation at the 2019 British Women Writers Conference at Auburn University. The inspiration for this paper is a copy of the Moss sisters’ book Early Efforts (1839) recently purchased by SCU. Come visit this small, beautiful book during your next study break. 

The Society of American Archivists defines provenance as: 1. the origin or source of something, and 2. information regarding the origins, custody, and ownership of an item or collection (Pearce-Moses). This is to say that provenance is evidence found in a book that communicates its movement over time, from author, to printers and publishers, to distributors, to various kinds of owners including readers and institutions like libraries. Studying the provenance of books by non-canonical women writers is an effective way to discover the social forces that determine the circulation, interpretation, and value of their work. It geographically and temporally visualizes bibliographical data points that are alternatives to the biased systems of classification that bury understudied women writers and books in the first place. The biased systems of classification I refer to include categorization by author, title, and publication date or literary era. This short essay uses as its case study a copy of the second edition of Early Efforts (published in 1839), an understudied volume of poetry written collaboratively by sisters Celia and Marion Moss, who are not very well-known. First, I show that the provenance in the copy of the second edition of Early Efforts held in Santa Clara University Library’s Archives and Special Collections affects interpretations of the book’s intended audience, which changes from a broad conception of a Western European public to the legacy that one builds within one’s family. Ultimately, I argue that the provenance in SCU’s second edition shows that this book, while far from canonical, was never forgotten. In fact, provenance reveals that the book has a long history of being highly valued in the nineteenth century for promoting and preserving Jewish women’s writing.

My argument stems from my work with the women’s book history collaborative, a group of scholars that formed in 2018 to advance recovery scholarship of women’s writing primarily in the long eighteenth century using feminist book history methodologies as an approach. Our work builds upon foundational scholarship by Margaret Ezell, Betty Schellenberg, Michelle Levy, Laura Mandell, and others who insist on revealing gendered and intersectional histories of the book and digital media. In this short essay, I apply N. Katherine Hayles’ concept of media-specific analysis the Moss sisters’ book. Hayles characterizes materiality as “an emergent property,” that cannot be generalized among similar objects in advance. Instead, textual materiality “is open to debate and interpretation, ensuring that discussions about a text’s meaning will also take into account its physical specificity” (67). In other words, the specific material properties that distinguish SCU’s unique copy of Early Efforts matter and can affect the meaning of the book.

Celia and Marion Moss make it clear in the front matter of their very first publication, the first edition of Early Efforts, that their identities are a crucial component of their published poetry. They identify themselves on the title page as “the Misses Moss, of the Hebrew Nation, Aged 18 and 16.” Celia is the elder of the two at 18, and Marion is the younger at 16, though they do not give their first names on the title page, opting instead to publish as a powerful unit of sister coauthors. (They do specify in the table of contents who wrote which poems.) In the preface, they continue to tell their story and the story of the book. They relay that their poems were written “under various circumstances, from the age of twelve till the present time,—not in the hours of idleness, but while engaged in other employments. Many were composed for months before they were written, nor did we at the time entertain an idea of publishing them; but the kindness of our friends has induced us to try the experiment.” The sisters, who refer to themselves as “authoresses,” want their readers to know that they are not idle poet geniuses, who recline and passively receive the inspiration of the Muse. (Most of us can relate.) Rather, they hint by referring to their “employments” and “disadvantages under which we have labored,” that they belong to a working-class family that values industriousness and education, and their literary pursuits are not their only work.

The authoresses also put their Jewish identity on the title page even before their ages. Besides their shared last name, it is their second-most important identifier on the page. They were raised in a middle-class Jewish family of twelve children in Portsmouth, England, where they have deep Jewish roots. In fact, their great-grandfather helped found the Jewish community in Portsmouth in 1747, and their grandmother was the first Jewish child born in the community (Orlando). While the themes of their poetry vary, both Celia and Marion each include two poems in the first edition in which they grapple with their identity as Anglo-Jewish young women, including poems called “Massacre of the Jews at York” and “The Passover” by Celia, and “Jewish Girl’s Song,” and “The Jewish Captive’s Song” by Marion. Karen Weisman writes that their poems have a surface-level confidence that makes their hybrid identities seem simple, but they also destabilize these self-definitions. The sisters claim to be privileged, yet in exile; sophisticated and wise, while also young and developing; grateful for English protection, but also angry at England for the persecution of Jews (Weisman 127). In the mid-nineteenth century, the Moss sisters’ poetry exemplifies a common difficulty among Jews trying to find their home within English Victorian culture (Weisman 128).

While their poetry is at times overly dramatic and formulaic, it is quite remarkable in range for poets who were as young as 12 when they wrote some of it. The poems also cover a surprisingly broad political geography for having been written by teenagers. For example, the book includes a “Lament for Poland” for its oppression by Russia, and the poem “War, a Fragment” is about the fate of “hapless, injured Spain!” personified as a Spanish wedding party that is murdered by a conquering army (probably English). A poem called “The Circassian Chief to His Followers” sings of their war against the Russian Empire before the Circassian genocide. “The Destruction of Setia” tells the tale of the last Grecian War, while “Lament for Jerusalem” dreams of Jews being able to return to their homeland. “The Battle of Bannockburn” celebrates Scottish freedom under Robert the Bruce, and finally “The Massacre of the Jews at York: An Historical Poem” is a fictional tale based on the 1190 event. The poets’ description of their minority status as Jews in the context of their many poems about the oppressed suggests that the Moss sisters, in 1839, desire to narratively situate themselves in solidarity with the Polish, Muslims, Spanish, Circassians, Greeks, and Scottish who suffer and resist imperial forces.

Not all of their poems reach so far outward toward foreign nations and histories for cultural connection. Many show the sisters reflecting inward, such as the very first poem in the first edition, called “Autumn,” written by Celia. The middle stanza reads:

Autumn is coming, and chill blows the blast,

Telling a sorrowful tale of the past;                  [fleet,]

Thus like summer, the bright hours of childhood will

And Autumn’s decay mark them transient as sweet. 

(3) 

Due to its placement within the book in relation to the sisters’ front matter, I also interpret the poem “Autumn” as somewhat autobiographical. The narrator contemplates her own coming-of-age, her “fall” that occurred between the time she wrote many of these poems and the more recent event of their printing and publication, when the sisters were 18 and 16. The book is their sorrowful and fleeting tale of the past, as well as a fleet of poems representing their embattled intersectional identity as young Anglo-Jewish women. Autumn’s decay makes fallen leaves, book leaves, marked with their tales. The narrator first calls them sorrowful, but then sweet and also transient. That a sweetness actually represents transience, movement, transformation, is a defining characteristic of both the authors’ identities and of the physical copies of the book.

Early Efforts, or early adulthood for the Moss sisters, then, brings with it a turn both inward to reflections on the self and memories of childhood, as well as outward, toward an audience and a public wider than their family. While the sisters published this book to raise money to care for their ill father (Weisman 128), they dedicate their collection of poems not to their father or mother, or to each other, or their 10 or more siblings—but instead to …

Sir George Thomas Staunton, the MP of Portsmouth. They state that their modest goal is to achieve “the approbation of the Public,” where “public” has a capital “P”. On the next page, in the preface, they reiterate their desire for “public” readers, and they differentiate these from their “friends.” They write: “the kindness of our friends has induced us to try the experiment” of publication. I interpret “friends” as early subscribers and supporters, like Staunton, whose name in large font tops a deep list of subscribers. Publishing, for the Moss sisters, means submitting their writing to a a broad, new audience of strangers beyond their family. Their list of subscribers is surprisingly long and far-reaching and divided by location to highlight the widespread support for the printing and publication of this small book. They gathered subscribers in Portsmouth, of course, but also Gosport, Ryde, Fareham, Havant, Liverpool, Manchester, Exeter, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton, and London in England; Dublin, Ireland; and even Paris, France.

However, the copy of the second edition of Early Efforts held in Santa Clara University reveals that for at least one of the sisters the book becomes more than a successful juvenile publishing project and experiment in reaching a wide audience. Rather, it becomes physical proof of the value of Jewish women’s contributions to literature and the arts in the nineteenth century. In other words, efforts by scholars like myself, Karen Weisman, and the Orlando Project who study the Moss sisters are not at all undertaking a new recovery project. These authors and this book have been marked as valuable before, and they continue to be. Provenance is our proof of value.

The second edition of Early Efforts was published in 1839, the same year as the first edition, by the famous bookseller George Byrom Whittaker, who also published Mary Russell Mitford and the last novel of Sir Walter Scott. We find all of this evidence on the title page. If we back up and inspect the board inside the front cover, we find the bookplate of a former owner, Francis Stainforth (1797-1866) carefully pasted there.

Stainforth owned the largest private library of women’s writing collected in the nineteenth century, and his manuscript library catalog is the subject of my digital humanities project, The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing, which you can find at stainforth.scu.edu. The library catalog lists approximately 8,000 editions and 3,500 names of women writers who published from the Early Modern period through the Victorian era. Stainforth mostly collected poetry, drama, and non-fiction prose. The tremendous size of the library is important, as it was just a hair larger than the library of women’s writing in the Woman’s Building exhibit at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

We haven’t yet figured out who Stainforth bought Early Efforts from, but we do know where it lived in his library, on shelf D3. You’ll be disappointed to learn that after six years on this project, we still haven’t figured out a pattern for why Stainforth shelved his books the way he did. It may have been based on when he acquired them. (Please figure this out for us, and we will cite you forever!) Stainforth owned the second edition of Early Efforts until 1866, when he died, and his library was transferred to the auction house of Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge for sale by auction. The library auction took place in early July of 1867, and his entire library was sold off book by book for a total of 792 pounds and 5 shillings to an array of bidders, including bookmen purchasing for the British Museum and for very well-known bookshops in Britain. 

Among the most important buyers at the auction was Early Efforts’ new owner, James Westell. Westell purchased all three of the Moss sisters’ books that were in Stainforth’s library—editions 1 and 2 of Early Efforts along with their next book, Romance of Jewish History in three volumes, published in 1850. At the auction, Westell paid just 1 shilling for all three. So, sadly, they weren’t big attractions at the auction. But it still boded well for these books that they went home with Westell. James Milne, editor of The Book Monthly, calls Westell “the born bookseller” (611). His shop on New Oxford Street in London was famous, and it remained open under his care for over 50 years beginning in 1861 (Roberts 200). Though he sold books across disciplines, he specialized in theological works. This explains his interest in scooping up the Moss sisters’ books, which all address the intersection of women’s literature and Jewish religion and identity politics. In fact, Stainforth’s library contained a high quantity of religious and spiritual writing, and Westell was one of the most prolific buyers at the auction.

We don’t know precisely who bought Early Efforts from Westell after he bought it in 1867 at the auction, so I go back to the book itself to look for more provenance clues to its subsequent ownership.

On the verso facing the dedication, we find marginalia that reads: 

To Cécile on her birthday

From

her loving mother

Marion Hartog

(Née Moss)

Nov^r 5^th 1897

Here, we read that Marion Moss, one of the sister co-authors of the book, inscribes this copy to her daughter, Cécile, as a birthday gift. Cécile was born in 1857 so this book was a gift from her mother on her 40^th birthday. In 1897, Marion was 76, and she lived another ten years after that. 

The author’s inscriptions are undeniably cool, but how does the provenance in SCU’s copy change the meaning of the book?

First, the placement and contents of this message show Marion rewriting her own book and redefining its value and its audience. What was previously a collaborative project in which she and her teenage sister boldly reached well beyond their family’s community in Portsmouth to an undefined European reading public as far away as Ireland and France, is now brought back, toward the end of her life, to her immediate family. Furthermore, the placement of the inscription opposes the dedication to Sir G. T. Staunton, Portsmouth’s MP. As a mother at 76 years old, she rededicates the book not to an influential man who is a member of parliament, but instead to her daughter, Cécile, who has become an acclaimed composer and pianist in her own right, and who, like her mother, is also a voice of Jewish women’s rights (Rubinstein and Jolles 404).

That the copy of her own book that Marion bought later in life came from Stainforth’s library, and then Westell’s bookstall, is also important. It bespeaks a narrative of ownership by prominent London bookmen who purchase, collect, and recirculate literature by Anglo-Jewish women writers. Stainforth owned many other volumes by women on the topic of Judaism, and Westell bought these at the auction, as well. His purchase of them acknowledges their value and adds value to them, and the Stainforth bookplate in these volumes identifies them as part of his well-known project to collect as much of the poetry and drama by British and American women writers as possible. The book is worth more with Stainforth’s bookplate, which is also the mark of a project built upon the premise that women writers and their writing are valuable and have had a transatlantic audience of buyers who will pay for them, from a first edition’s sale in 1839 to the present.

In conclusion, my scholarship on this book as part of the Stainforth library is not a new recovery project. Though the Moss sisters are seriously understudied, they are not and never have been unknown. I have been unable to find out who owned the book directly after Cécile Moss. But the book eventually finds its way into a London book trade show in the 1970s or 80s, where the Newman family from the Upper East Side of New York buys it to be a “decorative” book for their home, according to Adam Weinberger, a rare book dealer based in New York. In 2018, Weinberger bought the book from the Newman’s estate sale. He researched the Stainforth bookplate, found The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing website, and then tagged me on Instagram to let me know that he had a Stainforth book for sale. When I saw the post, I immediately pinged Nadia Nasr, Head of Archives & Special Collections at SCU, who bought the book at a fair but not negligible price. She was as keen to purchase the book as I was, because Santa Clara University is a Jesuit institution with archives that favor writing on religion and with a visible social justice agenda, and additionally to support my scholarship and broad pedagogy with our rare book collection. We’re certain that we are continuing the long narrative of buyers, teachers, and readers adding value to this book through its provenance. Examining the provenance in Santa Clara’s copy of the book brings together the adult life and pursuits of Marion Moss, who founded the first Jewish journal for women, her musician and activist daughter, the owner of the largest private library of women’s writing in the nineteenth century, one of London’s most important booksellers of religious writing, transatlantic private ownership, and most recently, a Jesuit university and digital recovery scholarship project. The story of this unique, small book is an important contribution to women’s book history, women’s literary history, and now scholarship and teaching at SCU.

Works Cited

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis.” Poetics Today, vol. 25, no. 1, 2004, pp. 67-90.

Leuner, Kirstyn, and Deborah Hollis, eds. The Stainforth Library of Women’s Writing. www.stainforth.scu.edu. Accessed 26 June 2019.

“Marion Moss” entry. Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Edited by Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, www.orlando.cambridge.org. Accessed 26 June 2019. 

Milne, James. The Book Monthly, vol. 4, 1906, p. 611.

Moss, Celia and Marion. Early Efforts, A Volume of Poems, by the Misses Moss. 1st ed., London, Whittaker, 1839. 

—. Early Efforts, A Volume of Poems, by the Misses Moss. 2nd ed., Portsmouth, Whittaker, 1839.

Pearce-Moses, Richard. “Provenance” entry. Glossary. Society of American Archivists, www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/p/provenance. Accessed 26 June 2019.

Roberts, William. The Book-hunter in London: Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting. E. Stock, 1895, pp. 200-1. 

Rubinstein, W., and Michael A. Jolles. “Hartog (née Moss), Marion (1821-1907).” The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. Springer, 2011, p. 404.

Weisman, Karen. “The Early Efforts of Celia and Marion Moss.” Singing in a Foreign Land: Anglo-Jewish Poetry, 1812-1847. U of Penn Press, 2018, pp. 123-66.