Special Collections and Archives Item of the Week

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe was published in 1722 in London.  A fictionalized, first-person account of the year 1665, it chronicles life in London during the Great Plague. Defoe was a novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, and is best known for his novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

Defoe’s work is notable for many scholarly reasons, but what makes individual copies of notice to students and patrons interested in book history is the provenance associated with each particular book. Another source of academic interest is the information about Defoe placed inside the book and its accompanying slipcase and what that might suggest about a previous owner and their use of the book.

The term provenance refers to origin or chain or ownership, and is how archivists and special collections librarians keep track of the people or institutions who owned the materials now in their collection. Bookplates are a common way of identifying previous ownership.  Grinnell’s copy of A Journal of the Plague Year three bookplates in addition to one small plate of a bookseller.  Also common is owners writing their names on the inside covers or on the title page. This particular book has two signatures from previous owners.

Pasted to the original pages of the inside cover and first blank page, as well as on the inside of the accompanying slipcase, are clippings of bookseller descriptions of A Journal of the Plague Year and about Defoe as an author.  Two clippings are dated 1920 and 1965, while the remaining two are undated.  The clippings inside the slipcase describe two different copies of A Journal of the Plague Year, one a first edition and the other a second addition.  Differences in print year, condition, and price are noted.  When the bookseller plate is taken into account, it seems likely that the owner was noting which copy he had purchased – the first edition – from which bookseller, and why. Based on the additional bookplates and signatures, other inferences can be made about the chain of custody and how this book came to be at Grinnell College, but we’ll let you discover them for yourself!

We encourage anyone with an interest to drop by Special Collections and look at this fascinating book in person.  Special Collections and Archives is open to the public 1:30-5:00pm Monday through Friday and mornings by appointment.