A disappointed bibliographer: the revenge of Ifano Jones

As a rule, libraries do not encourage people to write on books. With the passage of time, however, marginalia and other personal annotations become more interesting and can sometimes shed light on past events.

In Cardiff University’s Salisbury Library there are three copies of “The Bible in Wales”, a publication brought out in a limited edition of six hundred copies by the Libraries Committee of Cardiff Corporation in 1906 in connection with its successful, and thoroughly researched, exhibition of Bibles. No author’s name appears on the title page, but in the preface John Ballinger, then the chief librarian at Cardiff and subsequently first librarian of the National Library of Wales, claims responsibility, acknowledging the help of various assistants including James Ifano Jones who, he says, “collated and arranged” the “materials” for the bibliography. That, at least, is what the printed version of the book says! We recently noticed that one of our copies is heavily annotated in ink by its previous owner, Ifano Jones himself:

It is not too difficult to read between the lines here. Sir John Ballinger, as he later became, had worked his way up from becoming a library assistant in the Cardiff Public Library at 15, librarian of Doncaster at 20 and returning to Cardiff in 1884 as chief librarian at the age of 24 (library careers were rather different then!) He was not a Welsh speaker, but he generally gets the credit for building up an impressive Welsh library in Cardiff (as well as the beginning of the rare books collection now at the University). A famous catalogue of the Welsh collection was published in 1898, and subsequent works including this volume in 1906 all must have helped his cause once the decision had been made to found a National Library of Wales. Cardiff, of course, originally expected that the National Library would be there, and John Ballinger would surely have been expected to be appointed. The decision to put the National Library in Aberystwyth instead did not change the situation: Ballinger was duly appointed, and took up his post in 1909.

It has long been thought that Ifano Jones felt that he did not receive due recognition for his work. His own background was in printing, and he had a thorough knowledge of the history of the Welsh printing industry. Unlike Ballinger, he was a Welsh speaker, deeply involved in Welsh cultural life. He was appointed as an assistant in the public library, with special responsibility for the Welsh collections: possibly he felt that Ballinger took the credit for much of what he had done. Ifano Jones was not appointed National Librarian, nor did he become chief librarian at Cardiff when Ballinger left for Aberystwyth, but he did succeed in being known as “The Welsh Librarian, Cardiff”, which is how he appears on the title-page of his “History of printing and printers in Wales …” (1925), still a standard work.

Interestingly, as well as exacting posthumous revenge on Ballinger by leaving us his thoughts in ink, Jones has attached a clipping about himself from The Western Mail, dated 20 January 1909. The newspaper story gives his work at Cardiff the prominence which he clearly felt was his due, and the date is significant, as this was the very month in which John Ballinger took up his appointment as National Librarian. One cannot help wondering whether Ifano Jones himself was the source of the newspaper story.

A woman in science: Eleanor Ormerod and her sketchbook

An unusual volume in the Border Counties Collection of E.R.G. Salisbury held at Cardiff throws interesting light on the youth and early education of Eleanor Ormerod (1828-1901), a 19th century entomologist.

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Eleanor was a renowned expert on the turnip fly and other agricultural pests: she became a consultant at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, and an examiner at the University of Edinburgh. She was awarded medals by the University of Moscow and was the first woman granted an honorary LL.D. at Edinburgh. Eleanor Ormerod grew up at Sedbury Park in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, one of a family of ten children of the antiquarian George Ormerod (1785-1873). George Ormerod is chiefly remembered as a historian of Cheshire, and it probably for this reason that a volume of plates of sketches made by the Ormerod family is to be found among the books collected by Salisbury, Cheshire being one of the main counties represented in his Border Counties Collection.

Despite her later fame as a scientific expert, Eleanor had been privately educated at home with her sisters, and she was largely self-taught in her field. Her education included painting lessons from the pre-Raphaelite painter Holman Hunt. The illustrations in this volume are attractive landscapes and local scenes from both sides of the River Wye near Chepstow and around her home at Sedbury Park.

"SW view of Penhow or St. Maur Castle in Monmouthshire" (1852)

There are twenty illustrations by various members of the family: the mother Sarah and sisters Susan Mary and Georgiana, and four by Eleanor herself. The sketches are dated between 1834 and 1852. According to an anecdote related of Eleanor, her interest in insects was ignited on 12 March 1852 when a rosy-winged locust was caught at Chepstow: possibly she lost interest in sketching local landmarks after this date!

This is a charming volume from a little-known part of the Salisbury Collection, and it shines some light on the private education and background of a woman who was a pioneer  in a scientific field.

"Offa's Dyke in its ascent towards its termination on the Sedbury Cliffs and the shore of the Severn Estuary"

The plain man’s pathway to Heaven, or, The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy?

Among the older Welsh books in the Salisbury Collection at Cardiff we have the two seventeenth century editions of “Llwybr hyffordd yn cyfarwyddo yr anghyfarwydd i’r nefoedd” by the Puritan Arthur Dent (d. 1607), originally published in English as “The plain man’s pathway to heaven” in 1601.  When I first came across this title I was struck at once by the author’s name being the same as that of the hapless main character of Douglas Adams’ “The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”, and indeed, the similarity of the title. I filed the information away in the recesses of my memory, used the catalogue record whenever I wanted an example to explain the display of a uniform title for a translated work, and thought that one day I would look into it further. As is the way with such things, others got there before me, as you can read here on the h2g2 online guide (“The guide to Life, the Universe, and Everything”).

The site’s article mentions Douglas Adams’ interview of March 1987, in which he said that he had been contacted by someone with a research interest in the period. The (unnamed) researcher had jumped to the same conclusion, pushing it further by finding many parallels in the respective texts. Adams stated that he had never heard of the book or of its author Arthur Dent, so the similarity really is a pure coincidence.  Both works, as article and interview point out, are a version of the “Everyman” story, the innocent in a strange world which may or may not be a version of our own world which must be explained to him. (Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is probably the best-known later example of this popular genre).

“The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” has not, as far as I am aware, been translated into Welsh, but “The plain man’s pathway to heaven” was, first appearing in 1630 and again in 1682. It is one of several translations of religious works made by Robert Llwyd, Vicar of Chirk (1565-1655), intended to improve Welsh devotional life by making suitable books available in the Welsh language. While there are a number of locations  for the 2nd edition of 1682, the 1st Welsh edition of 1630 is rarer (it is also held at the National Library of Wales, the British Library, and Bangor University Library). As was usual with Welsh books before the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695, it was printed in London. The printer, Nicholas Okes (d. 1645), is better known for his editions of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, including his1st Quarto of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Othello.

The copy at Cardiff formerly belonged to Victorian Bible collector James Dix of Bristol (and is inscribed many times over with the name of an earlier owner, Ellis Powell, 1740). While the title-page is worn, the book is otherwise in good condition.

Testament Newydd 1567

Ar y 7fed o Hydref 1567 cyhoeddwyd llyfr pwysig yn hanes y Beibl ac yn sgîl hynny yr iaith Gymraeg: Testament Newydd William Salesbury a’r Esgob Richard Davies. Yn 1563 y pasiwyd y Ddeddf a fynnodd gael cyfieithiadau o’r Ysgrythyrau a’r Llyfr Gweddi Gyffredin yn Gymraeg ble bynnag yr oedd yr iaith yn arferedig: heb y Beibl yn Gymraeg, byddai hanes yr iaith wedi bod yn wahanol iawn.

Un o wŷr y Dadeni a’r Diwygiad oedd William Salesbury, yn ysgolhaig gyda’i syniadau ei hun am darddiad geiriau a’r orgraff. Yn y diwedd fe ffraeodd Salesbury a Davies ar faterion ieithyddol. Cam tuag at y Beibl cyfan yn Gymraeg oedd y Testament Newydd 1567 i fod, ond yn y pen draw yr Esgob William Morgan gafodd y fraint o gyflwyno’r Beibl cyfan yn 1588.

Yr oedd rheolau llym ynghylch argraffu hyd at 1695, felly nid yng Nghymru ond yn Llundain a baratowyd y Testament Newydd i’r wasg. Argraffwyd y llyfr gan Humphrey Toy, argraffydd o dras Cymreig yn St. Paul’s Churchyard, Llundain, gyda Salesbury yn symud mewn i’w dŷ er mwyn goruchwilio’r gwaith. Yn y rhagymadrodd, y mae Davies yn tynnu sylw at y ffaith bod yr iaith Gymraeg yn iaith estron yno:

“hwn yw’r Testament cyntaf a fu irioet yn Gymraeg yn, a’r printwyr eb ddyall ungair erioed or iaith, ac am hyny yn an hawdd yddynt ddeall y Copi yn iawn” (“This is the first Testament there ever was in Welsh, and the printers have never understood one word of the language, and so it is difficult for them to understand the Copy correctly”.)

Cyffrous felly yw cyhoeddi ein bod wedi darganfod copi o’r Testament Newydd 1567 ymhlith rhoddion diweddar, ac mor agos at benblwydd ei gyhoeddi ar y 7fed o Hydref!

[A recent acquisition, William Salesbury’s Welsh New Testament, a significant publication in the history of the Welsh language. It was printed in London by printers who spoke no Welsh but were supervised by Salesbury. It was published on 7th October 1567]

The Tennyson Collection

The Tennyson Collection was bought for the library of the then University College, Cardiff in 1936, from the estate of Cyril Brett, who was Professor of English here and a collector of Tennysoniana. Although it is not a new acquisition, along with some other rare material it escaped the retrospective cataloguing projects of the 1980s and 1990s, and  has only recently been added to the Voyager catalogue. There are 416 items in the collection, including all the pre-1900 editions of the major poems showing how the poet constantly revised work even after publication.  

Tennyson’s immense popularity inspired many illustrators including Millais and Rossetti: there are some beautiful examples in the collection in SCOLAR. The final part of the collection being catalogued this summer consists of a number of Tennyson’s poems set to music, which were popular Victorian “parlour pieces”.