Rough Guide to Early Modern England

I've just arrived in Chapel Hill to begin a seminar on Marvell at the National Humanities Center, but before the seminar begins I've squeezed in a trip to the UNC Chapel Hill Library's Special Collections.  Appropriately enough, the first thing I called up was a 17th century commonplace book that raids various authors, including Bacon and Anglo Welsh Historian, James Howell (c. 1594-1666), to compose a sort of Rough Guide for early modern tourists.  The book opens with a paean to the virtues of travel:

“The world is a Book full of profitable Instructions, and the best study of it, is by Travail: wherein by the observation of New, and unknown objects, a mans head is opened, and his life may receive an Excellent frame & model, by proposing unto himself the diversity of so many other mens Lives, Constitutions, Humours, and Fancies, as he meets withall; whose vertues (by good Election) may proove as so many Commonplaces of Instruction: and their Vices as Rocks to be avoided.

The chief advantages of Travail are: Health, Education, Experience, and Language: which being the benefits, that under a mans life servicable to his Country and Himself comfortable, they are to be persued with the highest resolution, & industry, which the purchase of such felicities justly deserves.”
 After my jog around UNC this morning, and my high hopes for the Marvell seminar, I can only say that Howell seems prescient and it is amazing to me that a rough guide to travel written in the 1600s can still basically describe what we hope to get out of it today.  I'm also very excited to find out what perilous vices I will need to avoid during the rest of my stay...

Other Tips:

Read: "All kind of Books are profitable, except printed Bawdry; and for Pamphlets, & Lying stories they may be read, but presently make use of them" (fol 3)

Be inquisitive: "Because a wise question procures a Satisfactory answer, it will be very pertinent to know how, and what Questions to Ask. For to profit by Company must come from our selves; our Questions being the Fire, which draws out either ye Quintessence, or Dreggs, of things" (fol 4)

Keep moving: "Stay not long in one City or Town; yet more or less as the place deserveth, but not long: and then change your Lodging from one end & part of ye Town to another, which is a great adamant of acquaintance" (this is taken from Bacon).

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Early Modern Craigslist

While I was doing some work on early newsbooks at the Folger Shakespeare Library recently, one of my friends asked when papers first began to run classified and personal ads. As it happened, I had just taken some pictures of the London Gazette, from August 23, 1694, which is one of the first ones I've seen to include such ads.  As you can see in the picture below, the advertisements include a law dictionary, oil to ease the gout and other aches and pains, gunpowder for sale, several offers of rewards for the return of stolen horses, and a lady who lost a "long scarf, lace Tippet, a thin hood, a girdle," and some other items when she left them in a coach driven by a "little man with Pockholes in his face."

As you may be able to see, behind this page of the printed newsletter is another, manuscript newsletter. Interestingly, the two forms persisted together -- the printed version carrying news available to all, the manuscript version containing the most recent news (since it was quicker to write than to set print) as well as items that were considered to politically dangerous to print. Manuscript newsletters never contain classified ads -- presumably, you knew exactly who you were sending them to, or at least wanted to create a sense of intimacy, so it didn't make sense to send a message into the great unknown in the way these classifieds do.  Only in print, where the audience is imagined as truly large and unknown, did these ads emerge.

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