Sean Oblak writes about a mysterious seventeenth-century book he encountered in his work with SCEMBI.

You’d expect many answers to be found in a book entitled The Question of Questions, especially when it claims to “resolve all our questions” and declares outright, “This book answers this question.” Printed in 1686 and held today at Santa Clara University Archives & Special Collections, the book seems keen on satisfying our curiosity before we’ve even turned a single page. Yet, there is one question that does not possess such a simple answer, a real contrast to the supposedly conclusive nature of the textual content presented here by author James Mumford. While I cannot fault the Catholic controversial priest Mumford — writing under the pseudonym Optatus Ductor, Latin for “Desired Leader” — for omitting information about the book’s production, I must acknowledge the absent and rather fascinating detail that obscures this volume’s history: no one knows where this book’s 1686 edition was published. As a research assistant for the project known as the Santa Clara Early Modern Book Initiative, or SCEMBI, I decided to investigate.

Some professional English bibliographers say the book was issued in London; other equally qualified bibliographers say Edinburgh. Even this book’s origins, it seems, amount to a question. I’m going to show how the answer, though, if there is one, lies in the book’s minutiae, a real case of the “devil in the details” (despite the fact we’re dealing with a book on godly beliefs). Specifically, these details may be found in the book’s physical evidence, as its structure and appearance may provide clues to deduce its place of publication. Let’s see where our “Desired Leader” can take us.

One clue can be found on the book’s final page, presumably the point in the text by which all questions have been answered. Here, we see an illustration, an ornate floral basket woodcut at the bottom of the page. I wondered if, perhaps, this same woodcut might be found in other works, hopefully some with more conclusive evidence about the place of publication. To my surprise, I found one, also printed in 1686: An Answer, To a Little Book call’d Protestancy To be Embrac’d, written by Alexander Con (Figure 1). There’s definitely a common theme of Catholicism vs. Protestantism fundamentally embedded in both texts, likely the reason for the inclusion of The Question of Questions in SCU’s collection. To my dismay, however, Con’s book provided no concrete answers to my original query; no one knows for sure where this book was published, either. A debate similar to that of The Question of Questions’ place of publication exists for Con’s work, this one centered on the Scottish cities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

Still, the seemingly-identical woodcut may provide another kind of answer. Upon closer inspection of microfilm reproduction, the woodcut in both works appears slightly damaged in the lower left corner: there is a small chip in the side of the basket. Since this minuscule detail is consistent across both books, it seems likely that they were printed with the same block. To ensure that this was no coincidence or a result of blurry microfilm, or that this feature is not limited to only one copy of each book, we at SCEMBI expanded the investigation beyond SCU, reaching out to curator Aaron T. Pratt at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Pratt helped to confirm and clarify what we were seeing, for the HRC has copies of both 1686 editions of The Question of Questions and An Answer to a Little Book. And, as we could see in Pratt’s high-quality scans of the HRC copies (Figure 2), the imperfection is indeed present in both books, further supporting the theory that these works originated with the same publisher, and in Scotland rather than London. (Our thanks go to Pratt.) As Pratt suggested to us, the HRC copy of Mumford also has signs of provenance pointing to Scotland, offering a possibility for more work on these books’ reception histories.

A precise answer to the question about place of publication is elusive. Still, The Question of Questions stands as a fascinating text and object, provoking investigation beyond its literary contents. It compels us to pay ever closer attention to the most minute of details, details whose significance has increased in the context of the mystery surrounding this one book. The Question of Questions ranks among many other titles that the SCEMBI project has worked with so far in that it provides, at least at first, more questions than answers. Yet, the pursuit of these answers, even if the evidence is partial, emphasizes the motivation behind SCEMBI itself. Through this project, we work not simply to file away titles into a catalogue, but rather to delve into the intriguing nature of pre-1800 English literature at SCU and to encourage others to do so as well: this book is available for research during Archives & Special Collections open hours. Make an appointment and supply the call number (BX1754.3 .M8 1686) to find an answer to the question of questions yourself.

Sean Oblak

Head image by Alexander Henning Drachmann from Esbjerg, Denmark – Question mark in Esbjerg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34722094