Field Report: Michael Field’s Diaries

The final, and perhaps most critical assignment of our course was to transcribe and comprehend the diaries of author “Michael Field”, the compound pseudonym held by poets and dramatists Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. Deciphering the handwriting was the key to visualizing the daily life of the first woman aesthete with such an ambiguous past.

One might wonder why giving the local priest a cake for his birthday is of any excitement to readers. (I’m further surprised that the cake was orange!)

Hosted by the Victorian Lives & Letters Consortium, the diaries and their contents were digitized by the British Library in conjunction with New York University. Other contributors to the transcription process and digitizing team hail from Lancaster University, University of Leeds, the Ruskin Foundation, Saint Joseph’s University, University of South Carolina and Western Carolina University.


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The transcription process as being difficult is an understatement. First, the CUNY Rare Book Scholars learned that this is a word-for-word rendering of a document with the original punctuation and spelling of the late 19th century, which could take time to get used to. We came across many full stops, commas at random points, and other forms of overlapping punctuation that our millennial minds would consciously avoid writing. Long dashes (-), an and (+ instead of &) and other abbreviated letters and words are a commonality in old-style formatting of words.

Another complication came with having to ascertain who was writing at the time of entry: Cooper or Bradley. From this, deciphering handwriting comes at a time-consuming cost of reading slowly, but thoroughly for accuracy. Flourishes at the end of sentences can be common; Field specifically stretches out the words “the”;”only”, and shrinks/condenses words like “and”;”to.” Misreading a D as a K happened more often than usual. Misspelling occurs regularly, and with little way to correct it, Field would opt to cross out the word and write the intended word on top, which creates a small field of vision that likely was meant only for the author to have read. Reading out loud lend credence and readability. Reflecting the original document took time, as words that were inserted or underlined also needed to be recorded in our notes exactly (the word “then” also had such a flourish on the T that the entire word was crossed over, leading to an assumption that it was originally an underline)

More than anything, the undergraduate experience of having a hands-on interaction with 19th century works that most students would have in graduate school has been incredibly erudite and sharpened our cognition when faced with esoteric works and handwriting. The process was entertaining and rewarding as it was academic, and granted a foundational and necessary knowledge for English (and non-English) majors, in what follows the course’s creed:

Encounters With the Archives

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