Sloane was one of the great networkers of his age. He was a secretary of the Royal Society of London and he revived the publication of their Philosophical Transactions. He counted among his many friends, colleagues, and patients Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys, John Locke, and Henry Morgan.

Sloane was hugely successful in his profession and with his hobbies. He became both the President of the Royal College of Physicians and the President of the Royal Society – at the same time! His medical practice (and his marriage to a rich widow) ensured that he was able to indulge his taste for collecting. He collected books, natural history specimens, ethonographic material, prints, fossils, coins, manuscripts to name just a few of his interests. He was one of the richest people in London and was eventually able to buy the Manor at Chelsea.

Sloane was also popularised the use of chocolate as a medicine so it is clear that he was also a genius who was far ahead of his time! This also means that lots of events commemorating Sloane involve chocolate in some way. So if he wasn’t worth celebrating enough already there’s an excuse to dose yourself with some healthy chocolate while enjoying his legacies!

There are a lot of events to celebrate the life and many achievements of the enterprising Dr Sloane this year. Here are just a few.

Sloane’s hometown of Killyleagh in Northern Ireland has a series of concerts and events starting this week to honour their favourite native son. See http://hanssloane.com for details. The Killyleagh birthday party continues in September with a Chocolate Ball at Killyleagh Castle ‘(dress: Milk, Dark or White Tie of course!)’ and a Chocolate Festival. See http://hanssloane.com/events.php.

London will also play host to a variety of events celebrating Sloane.

The British Library will host a conference on 7-8 June 2010 entitled ‘From Books to Bezoars’ which will include the latest news about the Sloane Printed Books Project. Thousands of Sloane’s 40,000 books have already been identified.

The British Museum is also offering a series of events including a concert and talks. See their Events Page for all the details. Meanwhile the British Museum also has on online exhibition of some of the objects Sloane collected. See them at Sloane Objects. There is also a page giving a biography of Sloane and the history of the British Museum at Sir Hans Sloane.

The Royal College of Physicians, the Chelsea Physic Garden and The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret are joining forces to present a series of events for the rest of the year. The RCP will host an exhibition called ‘Sir Hans Sloane: Discoveries, Travels and Chocolate’ from 5 July-24 December 2010. The Physic Garden has a series of events including chocolate tastings througout the spring and summer. The Old Operting Theatre is holding ‘Odyssey of Chocolate’ workshops and Sloane walks in Chelsea and Bloomsburgy will be led by its director, Kevin Flude. For a full list of events see Hans Sloane Our Local Hero Events (pdf).

The Natural History Museum holds Sloane’s famous and important Herbarium which includes specimens from his Voyage to Jamaica in the late 1680s. The Museum will also host a series of Sloane350 events.

Hans Town in Chelsea was named for Sloane (as, of course, was Sloane Square!) – he once owned the land it stands on. Find out more at Hidden London Hans Town.

Why not celebrate Sloane’s birthday with some chocolate and his very own Rum Punch Recipe? Or make some Rum Chocolate Truffles. I know I’m tempted!

PRESS RELEASE
30 March 2010

British Library successfully stops English naval explorer’s journal from sailing abroad

The British Library has acquired a previously unknown journal of British naval pioneer, Sir John Narbrough, thanks to a £200,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and the generous support of Dr Bernard H Breslauer, the Gosling Foundation and other individual donors.

This rare manuscript provides the fullest known account of Narbrough’s voyage to South America from 1669-71 and contains unrecorded maps and unresearched information on British exploration and social and political history. It also includes an account of Narbrough’s earlier voyage to the Caribbean in the heyday of the buccaneers.

An explorer, navigator and close friend of Samuel Pepys, John Narbrough can be positioned between Francis Drake and Captain Cook. In 1670, John Narbrough became the first Englishman to sail through the Strait of Magellan in both directions. James, Duke of York (later James II) had commissioned Narbrough to sail to South America and discover whether there was gold which could be safely returned to Great Britain. Narbrough’s expedition proved that a profitable trade with South America was possible, with or without Spanish consent, and this set the course of Britain’s foreign policy for the next half century.

Sir John Narbrough’s naval journal has direct importance for the history of English mapmaking. A skilled mapmaker himself, he was assisted by Greenvile Collins – who later became the first Englishman to create detailed charts of all the coasts of Britain. Their description of the Strait of Magellan provided the basis for British charts of the Strait until the time of Captain Cook. The manuscript charts in the Journal are amongst the earliest English large-scale maps of Spanish America, with those of Valdivia and Port St Julian being especially important for their ethnographical and wild life illustrations. The drawings illustrating the charts include naïve and charming depictions of the peoples and animals of South America

Peter Barber, Head of Map Collections at the British Library, said:

“We are thrilled that Sir John Narbrough’s Naval Journal – a real hidden treasure – has been saved for the nation’s seafaring heritage. It is arguably the first English modern nautical journal and shows that Narbrough was a much more significant figure than previously thought. The charts that accompany the journal correspond to every child’s idea of what a buccaneer’s map looks like yet their artistic naivety is accompanied by technical sophistication of a high order, as well as important ethnographical, zoological and political information which can now be discovered by all at the British Library.”

Carole Souter, Chief Executive of the NHMF, said:

“As the National Heritage Memorial Fund marks 30 years of safeguarding the nation’s most important heritage, we are delighted that our grant has helped save these fascinating papers for the nation. Naval exploration is such an important part of our national story and Sir John Narbrough’s journal and manuscripts shine a light on a key moment in Britain’s sea-faring history.”

Sir John Narbrough’s naval journal will be displayed in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library from May. The draught of Magellan Straits, drawn by Captain John Narbrough in 1670, will be displayed in the British Library’s new exhibition: Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art which opens on 30 April (free admission). See: www.bl.uk/magnificentmaps

The total cost to purchase the naval journal of Sir John Narbrough was £310,000. This acquisition complements the British Library’s existing map collections of 4½ million atlases, maps, globes and books on cartography, dating from the fifteenth century to the present day. Once catalogued, Sir John Narbrough’s naval journal will be readily accessible to researchers through the Library’s Reading Rooms at St Pancras.

The acquisition was made possible due to a temporary export bar which was placed on the journal by the Culture Minister. The Minister’s ruling followed a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest, administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

Ends

For more information please contact
Julie Yau, Arts Press Officer, British Library
020 7412 7237 / Julie Yau

See Help Save John Narbrough’s Journal for information about the original appeal.

The primary purpose of this user engagement exercise will be to gauge responses to the bpi1700 website and database, thus making it possible to assess its effectiveness and plan further work on it. No preparation on your part will be required and it does not matter if you are not familiar with the bpi1700 website already. Lunch will be provided for all those who participate in the appraisal!

The exercise will comprise one-to-one interviews and a small focus group, and volunteers will be divided between these two activities. It will take place over a few hours on a single day. The date has yet to be decided, and will depend on volunteers’ availability. It could be on either the morning or the afternoon on Friday, 26th, Monday, 29th, or Tuesday, 30th March. At present, it appears that Monday 29 March is the most popular day, so the appraisal might well happen on that day, but this isn’t set in stone yet!

If you would like to be involved, please contact Paul Vetch at the Centre for Computing in Humanities, King’s College: this is located at 26-9 Drury Lane, WC2, which is where the exercise will take place. Paul’s email address is paul.vetch@kcl.ac.uk. When emailing him, please indicate which of the dates given above you could manage, and whether morning or afternoon or both. It would also be helpful if you could briefly indicate your status, viz., student (taught or research; part-time or full-time); lecturer; or other [please specify]. Please contact him by Monday, 8 March, so as to allow time for detailed arrangements to be made.

The bpi1700 website is an important, pioneering project and I do hope that you will be able to consider helping the team with their work.

Best wishes,

Stephen Brogan

There is also a Facebook Group which is keeping track of developments and links available here.

You can sign the petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/spkcl10/petition.html

If you want to write to King’s about this issue the person to write to is: Professor Rick Trainor, The Principal, King’s College, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS and copy to Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities.

If you want to find out more about palaeography and why it’s so important, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palaeography. There are some useful links there, too.

You can find out more about the day at http://www.followamuseum.com/. A list of Twittering museums is available at http://www.followamuseum.com/countries.html.

Or you can follow some museums already listed at http://twitter.com/BirkbeckEMS/museums-galleries. (I’ll be adding to this throughout February so if you know of any museums that are likely to offer items of early modern interest do let me know!)

From walks exploring Bloomsbury’s romantic past to workshops on Valentine cards and love letters of old, the Past Caring festival will take place in some of London’s leading museums, archives and historic houses. The primary aim is to encourage new and existing audiences and to engage in our past in imaginative ways. This project will also promote awareness of the innovative adult learning work undertaken at each institution, and give participants the opportunity to find out how to progress into more formal learning. This project is to be the beginning of a long partnership with further history festivals on different themes and other collaborative events.

A list of events can be found at http://www.pastcaring.org/eventslist.php

Amsterdam/New York, NY 2010. VIII, 266 pp. (Costerus NS 180)
ISBN: 978-90-420-2808-1 Paper
ISBN: 978-90-420-2809-8 E-Book
Online info: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=COS+180

Readers of The Early Modern Intelligencer can claim a 30% discount on this title! Send an email to info@rodopi.nl ,and mention your postal address, the book title and the discount percentage. The discount is offered until February 15th.*

The blurb:
Early modern women writers are typically studied as voices from the margin, who engage in a counter-discourse to patriarchy and whose identities prefigure postmodern notions of fragmented selfhood. Studying a variety of literary forms – autobiographical writings, diaries, mothers’ advice books, poetry and drama – this innovative book approaches early modern women’s strategies of identity formation from an alternative angle: their self-writings should be understood as attempts to establish a coherent, stable and convincing subjectivity in spite of the constraints they encountered. While the authors acknowledge contradiction and ambiguity, they consistently strive to compromise and achieve balance. Drawing on social and cultural history, feminist theory, psychoanalysis and the study of discourses, the close reading of the women’s texts and other, literary and non-literary sources reveals that the female writers seek to reconcile the affective, corporeal, social, economic and ideological dimensions of their identities and thereby question both the modern idea of the unified self and its postmodern, fragmented variant. The women’s identities as writers, mothers, spouses, household members and economic agents testify to their acceptance of contradictions, their adherence to patriarchal norms and simultaneous self-assertion. Their pragmatic stances suggest that their simultaneous confidence and anxiety should be taken seriously, as tentative, precarious, yet ultimately workable and convincing expressions of identity.

Contents
Acknowledgements, Introduction, Writing the Self: Identity through Authorship, Self and Other: Identity and Relationality, The Self under Threat: Self-annihilation, Self-abnegation, Self-loss and Death, The Struggle for Stability: Contradiction and Ambiguity, Private/Public Spaces: Boundaries, Polarities and Transgression, The Search for the “Golden Meane”: Rethinking Marginality and Power, Epilogue, Bibliography, Index

*Please note that this offer is not valid in combination with any other offer

Instead of the usual news and events reporting, today will be just for fun.

UK readers will need a break between the Queen’s Speech (also for the Commonwealth, of course!) and Doctor Who so here is some early modern stuff to send you back in time until The End of Time (Part 1)…

If you’ve unwrapped your presents already, how do they compare with this?
The Perfect Present?

Mr. Charles Maitland acquainted the Faculty in the name of the Right Honourable the Earl of Morton That his Lordship had made them a present of an Egyptian Mummy to be set up in the Library, which had sometime since been sent from London together with a Letter to Mr. Thomas Ruddiman their Library Keeper to receive the said Mummy for that purpose, and that is was now in the Library. Upon which the Dean and ffaculty Appointed Mr. Peter Wedderburn and the said Mr. Maitland to wait on the Earl of Morton, and to return him the Thanks of the Faculty…They also directed the Curators of the Library to dispose of the Mummy into a proper place in the Library. (From The Minute Book of the Faculty of Advocates, 28 July 1748)

Mumming

Mumming was traditional at this time of year during the early modern period. (There is, of course, no connection between mummies and mumming.) Mummers perform traditional folk plays. There is always a character called the Doctor. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Play for more on mumming and mummers.

Now look what you have done

If you can’t catch some live mumming (there’s some in Carshalton in the 28th – see here for details – it’s provisional so check before you travel) you can do your own. You can put on your own version of The Mumming Play of King George and the Turkish Knight.

If mumming is not your thing (maybe a bit too medieval?), the BBC will to the rescue on Boxing Day at 17:05 on BBC2 when it will show Hamlet starring David Tennant. Visit the website at Hamlet for all things Hamlet.

Why did Cromwell Cancel Christmas?

Maybe he’d just read The Mumming Play of King George!

It is a common myth that Cromwell personally ‘banned’ Christmas during the mid seventeenth century. Instead, it was the broader Godly or parliamentary party, working through and within the elected parliament, which in the 1640s clamped down on the celebration of Christmas and other saints’ and holy days, a prohibition which remained in force on paper and more fitfully in practice until the Restoration of 1660. There is no sign that Cromwell personally played a particularly large or prominent role in formulating or advancing the various pieces of legislation and other documents which restricted the celebration of Christmas, though from what we know of his faith and beliefs it is likely that he was sympathetic towards and supported such measures, and as Lord Protector from December 1653 until his death in September 1658 he supported the enforcement of the existing measures.

Read more at The Cromwell Association

For some contemporary responses see The Vindication of Christmas at Mercurius Politicus A Christmassy Post.

A Christmas Quiz

Click CrackerQuiz to find a list and a question. The answer to the question can be found at the end of this post.

Restoration Christmas

Once the puritans were gone, Christmas was back with a bang. The Gentleman Administrator gives some details (and songs to sing!) here: A Very Merry Restoration Christmas.

Twelfth Night

Today is also, of course, the start of the 12 days of Christmas. This is fine excuse to re-read one of Shakespeare’s classics, Twelfth Night. A shipwreck, a comedy puritan, mistaken identities, and a very good clown in Feste – there’s lots to love. On holiday away from your collected Shakespeare? You can get the text from Project Gutenburg.

If you haven’t yet had enough feasting, try this 12th Night Bean Cake Recipe

The Quiz Answer

They could have all sung this had they but known the words.

More festive fun is available at Westminster Wisdom’s History Carnival.

Happy Christmas!

In his inspiring and provoking book, Larry Wolff analyses the invention of Eastern Europe in the time of the Enlightenment. The question is whether Eastern Europe as a concept existed earlier? What about the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty first centuries? In what way can we perceive Eastern, versus Central Europe, versus Europe over time in history and where are their borders?

The Institute of History at the Jagiellonian University will host a conference devoted to travel writing on Central, Central Eastern and Eastern Europe. We are interested in papers on travel accounts, diaries, letters, travel journals and alike presenting the confrontation of travellers with the Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Baltic peoples and their territories throughout history. Since we do not define and do not want to define borders, papers on neighbouring regions (Ukraine, Serbia, Montenegro) or indeed transregional travel accounts will also be considered.

Please send 300 word proposals of 20 minute presentations, with a short cv, to Prof. Jakub Basista by 15 January 2010. The selection and draft programme will be made by 31 January 2010.

The conference will be held at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków on 11-12 June 2010. The language of the conference will be English and there will be a conference fee of approximately 400 PLN (at present about 90 Euros). Regretfully, the organizers cannot provide assistance with travel expenses, although modest accommodation (three nights 10-13.06) and meals will be provided for speakers.

The organizers plan to publish a selection of conference papers.