The Una Fraser Collection

Una Fraser with Malcolm Fraser, 1930
Una Fraser with Malcolm Fraser, 1930. Malcolm Fraser collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2005.0036.00007

The Una Fraser collection in the University of Melbourne Archives includes two large scrapbooks of various ephemera – newspaper cut-outs, photos, letters – collected by Una Fraser, Malcolm Fraser’s mother, during the 1950s and 60s. Carefully clipped and pasted into the scrapbook, with dates noted by hand, they convey the sense of personal and intimate links to the future Prime Minister (1975-1983). Whilst the majority of these items relate to Fraser’s political life, there are also a number of other items related to the Fraser family, including family photographs and clippings from local newspapers, which give a window into rural life in Australia in the mid-twentieth century.

From this collection and in this context, doctoral students have each chosen a different document from the early stages of Malcolm Fraser’s career, particularly those which shed some insight into his sometimes contentious political journey.

In Fraser’s letter to the householder, Anton Donohoe-Marque examines a typed, hand-signed campaign letter from Fraser to the constituents of Wannon, a seat in Western Victoria. In it, Fraser champions the values of individualism and egalitarianism he developed studying political philosophy at Oxford and so makes an appeal to the ‘bushman ethos’ that would likely resonate in the rural communities of Wannon.

In ‘Fraser’s Political Football‘, Adam Eldridge explores another typed letter from Fraser to the Melbourne daily newspaper, The Sun. This document takes issue with the Melbourne-based Sun newspaper for its distortions and false attributions, and unfortunately seems to reinforce the caricature of Fraser as a humourless figure, quick to combat the media. However, the scrapbook reveals that the Sun letter followed other letters published in regional newspapers which show young Fraser’s media savvy as well as a rarely seen self-deprecating aspect to his character.

In ‘Bread and Butter Issues’, Timo Eckhardt looks at two articles from Fraser’s successful 1955 campaign for Wannon. First, Fraser seeks to appeal to the people of Wannon by extolling the virtues of the thrifty Menzies government’s social policies and secondly, he shows his passion for international politics and warns against the ALP’s closeness to communism.

Finally, in ‘Fraser meets Digger’, Pauline Georgelin considers a photo of Fraser as Minister for the Army meeting a digger in South Vietnam in July 1967. The photo provides yet another glimpse into Fraser’s lifelong passion for international politics and is particularly interesting in light of the 56,000 Vietnamese immigrants welcomed to Australia by his government during the 1970s.

Bursting a bubble: Using prints to teach finance and economics

Just what a hall filled with finance students were not expecting on their first lecture for semester two, was a print curator armed with printed images, historic banknotes and a rare book, set to explain how these items convey financial and economic concepts. Printed material (and by extension other cultural materials) convey economic concepts both in the subjects they exhibit and in the ways they are consumed and used. Additionally, their production often follows trends of financial booms and crashes.

The student’s topic for week one was financial bubbles. A simple description of a bubble is an unstable asset or business accompanied by high speculation. For example, an investor sells commodities or shares worth $100 onto a second investor for an inflated $200 who sells them onto a third party for $400 and so on. Should the company collapse, the original investor makes a tidy profit while the last person into the scheme loses a great deal of money. [1.] The world’s most famous cases and the student’s subjects are: tulip mania, the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble.

engraving by Hollar
Wenceslaus Hollar, Spring (Ver) 1641, engraving

Tulip mania occurred between 1634 and 1637 and saw the price of tulip bulbs rise to an extraordinary level. Economic bubbles are also characterised by the influence of crowd behaviours whereby people are irresistibly drawn to an asset, such as tulip bulbs, which appear to offer a ‘get rich quick’ opportunity, and a mania ensures. The engraving by Hollar was made in 1641 just a few years after tulip mania. It shows the wealth of the woman who wears an expensive costume and to her right is an open chest displaying a costly fur garment. She holds a bunch of rare tulips (rare striped tulips were affected by the mosaic virus), much sought after by tulip traders and the fashionable. When looking at objects like this engraving, a useful technique to uncover their interpretation, is to ask them questions. For example, when considering an asset whether it is a tulip bulb, a work of art or a company share, how does rarity influence buying behaviours?

The Mississippi Bubble was a more complex financial scheme masterminded by economist John Law (1671-1729). Law became the Finance Minister of France, a country which in 1716 was bankrupt through wars. This provided Law with the landscape with which to launch his economic experiments. The Mississippi Bubble was his misadventure into converting France’s debt into shares of the Mississippi Company, a business focussed on the French colony in Louisiana. Law’s exaggerations of the success and wealth of his company led to wild speculations on its shares. Profits from the shares were issued to investors as banknotes. In 1720 there was a mass urge by shareholders to convert their shares into coin at the bank. However, the Banque Royale did not hold the amount of money represented by the paper notes and was therefore unable to pay. [2.]

Bubble cards
Unknown artist, Pasquins Windkaart op de Windnegotie van 1720, engraving

This episode is captured by a new acquisition for the Print Collection: Pasquins Windkaart op de Windnegotie van 1720, an uncut Dutch set of cards satirising John Law and the Mississippi Bubble.[3.] The first card depicts John Law as the King of Hearts and other characters and players in the scheme such as shareholders follow suit. There are many visual references to the Dutch terminology for inflating shares: a ‘wind scheme’, and for selling shares yet to be officially released: to ‘trade in the wind.’ Other financial schemes are referenced, for example the three of spades shows three girls sitting on a swing to represent the South Sea Company, the Mississippi Company and the West Indian Company. As well as an economist, John Law was a gambler and was known to spend his evenings playing cards. These cards are a comical means to enable the disgruntled investor to take their revenge and wield their power upon Law. They seem to ask: how much does chance and emotion play in financial investment?

Unknown artist, Lucipher’s new row barge c. 1721, engraving, etching

The engraving Lucifer’s new row-barge satirises Robert Knight (1675-11/1744) and the South Sea Bubble, the second financial crash in England following on the heels of John Law’s experiments in 1720. This, another failed scheme to refinance national debt through a trading company, saw Knight the Cashier abscond with a fortune. Knight stands in a boat bound for hell named the S.S. Inquisition. Various devils and demons control the gold, which is scathingly portrayed in the commentaries as the object of individual and national ruin. Like the cards, this broadside is made by an anonymous artist and would have been sold on the streets of London, the location of an audience ready to revel in sensationalism. It also echoes popular card games for in the top right corner is a playing card which is the knave or jack of diamonds and this card the viewer may associate with Robert Knight.

For contemporary finance students, the 17th and 18th centuries are rather distant and hazy constructs, yet these primary source items provide them with tangible evidence and genuine context. Financial bubbles are as prevalent today as they were in the past and through their example, the Print Collection has now entered the financial arena.

Kerrianne Stone, Curator, Prints

References

[1.] John Chown, A history of money: from AD 800, London; New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 144
[2.] see John Chown, 1994, pp.201-211
[3.] See Roger Tilley, A history of playing cards, New York: C.N. Potter; distributed by Crown Publishers, [1973] especially pp. 123-133.

The Overland Letter

Nathaniel Cutter

James Graham’s Overland Letter provides a vivid account of the early settlement of Victoria and of the hopefulness of many of its settlers, and through the physical writing style a vibrant material record of the challenges and ingenuity the colonial experience afforded. The letter was presented to the University of Melbourne Archives in 1961, within the extensive business and personal archive of Graham’s prominent trading and retail firm Graham Brothers and Co. The collection, which spans the period 1839-1960, can be found at the accession number 1961.0014; the Overland Letter and transcript at 1961.0014.00045–46.

Even though James writes the diagonals in red ink to aid readability, having a transcript is extremely helpful to the modern reader! Other writers of the time experimented with different paper-saving methods, including shorthand, reusing paper, or writing over newsprint.[3] Unlike many long letters of the time, Graham appears to predominantly written in one sitting, rather than over a period of repeated folding, storage, unfolding, and additions.In July 1839, James Graham, a new settler in the Port Phillip District of the Colony of New South Wales, wrote to his family in Fife, Scotland. This letter was his first in over a year, meaning he had plenty to say, to update (and reassure!) his readers.[1] James employs a wonderful example of the prevalent contemporary cross-writing technique: writing horizontally, vertically and diagonally to save expensive paper, and filling two large leaves of heavy paper with enough text to require 40 pages of transcription – yet even still he found himself forced “to draw to a conclusion for want of paper, tho’ I have a great deal more to say.”[2]

James Graham, overland letter, 12 July 1839
James Graham, overland letter, 12 July 1839. University of Melbourne Archives, Graham Bros collection, 1961.0014.00046

James first recounts his five-week journey by horse and cart from Sydney through trackless bush, with only damper, tea and salt beef for sustenance.[4] Graham’s party battled thick ice, rough-sleeping, water shortages, wandering horses, falling branches, backward seasons, unusual wildlife, and bushfires, all challenges alien to his own experience and no doubt thrilling to his family in Scotland; yet at the end he wrote, “altogether I was very much delighted with the journey, and would willingly undertake another”![5]

From here James compares his new home in Melbourne, “a most astounding place”, with Sydney. The Melburnian countryside was “as Heaven to us,” but “there is not a more…beautiful harbour in the known world” than that which bisects Sydney’s “extensive and beautiful town.”[6]

Outside the cities, however, a war rages between Indigenous Australians and the newly arrived pastoralists, where the former one is reputed to practice cannibalism, “treachery and ill-will”; while the latter includes Britain’s “most debased and vilest dregs”, who “never look upon the Blacks [as] human beings, but, would just as soon shoot them…or hunt them [as a] kangaroo,” start the majority of violence.[7]

James presents a palpable sympathy for those Indigenous people who “retaliate on the oppressors,” imagining the “heart-rending” experience of being driven from “their dominions…the wild animals [killed]…[and] their women carried off.”[8]

James’ own affairs were promising: sponsored as a Melbourne wool buyer, and placed in charge of 100 acres, he lives in a log cabin until his house is built, and has learned to cook, clean and bake for himself, fancying himself “a great adept” in cookery and having “Scotch acquaintances come miles in the mornings to get a plate full of porridge.”[9] His twelve workmen live onsite with their families, and though in Australia “money is the great idol, and for it they will…undergo any hardship”, these men are “worth their weight in gold.”[10]

Port Phillip is booming, with land speculation and cattle stations proliferating and skilled jobs ready for the taking; but prices are high since everything is shipped from Sydney or Tasmania.[11] With a great sense of optimism about the new colony, James regards emigration to Victoria as an unqualified success, for: “Were I at home and know as much as I do about this country with its privations, hardships and pleasures, I should not have the least hesitation in making up my mind to come out at once.”[12]  The Overland letter is an unusual artifact but it is also an ode to the complex affective responses one of Victoria’s early settlers felt towards both the land and its peoples.

Nathaniel Cutter is a current PhD student in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, researching the experiences of English expatriates in seventeenth-century North Africa.

Citations

[1] Overland Letter transcript, 1.

[2] Overland Letter transcript, 39-40.

[3] David Livingstone famously employed this technique: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19119-dear-diary-i-am-sick-to-death-david-livingstone/.

[4] Overland Letter transcript, 2-6.

[5] Overland Letter transcript, 6-11, 16-17, 36-37.

[6] Overland Letter transcript, 12.

[7] Overland Letter transcript, 13-14.

[8] Overland Letter transcript, 15.

[9] Overland Letter transcript, 17-25.

[10] Overland Letter transcript, 25.

[11] Overland Letter transcript, 30-33.

[12] Overland Letter transcript, 34.

The Manicule: A Remnant of Readers Past

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57312771

Between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, the manicule was one of the most common symbols inscribed by readers in the margins of manuscripts and inserted by publishers in printed books. This small hand with the index finger extended, was primarily used to indicate a particularly important passage of text, but would become so much more than a simple highlighting device.  

I first noticed this intriguing symbol in some of the eighteenth-century texts from the Rare Books Collection, which I am working with as part of the Cultural Collections Projects Program (pictured left). The very first one that I examined had a relatively simple, yet well-drawn manicule in the margins of one of the pages, pointing directly at a sentence in the text.[1] However, as I progressed to the next text, the manicule had become no more than a quick scribble which faintly resembled a hand.[2] The quality between the manicules in these books was striking – why was there such a difference?   

One explanation could be that in the latter case I had stumbled across a late example of the handwritten manicule, which began to fall out of use during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and printed manicules, inserted by publishers, took their place. In the centuries before, the handwritten manicule was a sight to behold, with some so detailed that they took over the entire margin of a page.  These fascinating hands, which are often severed just after the cuff, shared a generic form yet were undeniably individualistic, reflecting the personality of their inscriber.  

While each manicule shared the same basic features and function, their appearances were very distinctive. Some would have extravagant cuffs, dotted with jewels, while others sported simple sleeves. The hands themselves could also be extremely detailed and lifelike, right down to the fingernails. Or, they could be no more than a few scribbles suggesting the barest outline of a pointing hand.  

http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/s/5xha86

They all, however, have the ability to evoke the reading concerns of their long departed writers. Working almost like a signature, the manicule was a personal symbol that readers developed and used to indicate their presence in the text.[3] Indeed, the clothing accompanying the hands can be dated if detailed enough, enabling us to know the exact period in which the reader was active.  

It is interesting to note that despite the pervasiveness of the manicule in the history of textual culture, it took quite a long time for a single word to come to represent the device. The manicule has had approximately fifteen English names: hand, hand director, pointing hand, pointing finger, pointer, digit, fist, mutton fist, bishop’s fist, index, indicator, indicule, maniple and pilcrow.[4] The term ‘manicule’ has become the one most employed by manuscript specialists, however. The word itself derives from the Latin maniculum, meaning ‘a little hand’ (in any posture), providing quite a general and accurate description of this common symbol.  

While beginning as a simple indexical tool, over time, the manicule has become a remnant of readers past, a pictorial signature that enabled the reader to leave their presence with the book, long after they had gone.  

Gemma Lee 

PhD Candidate 

School of Historical and Philosophical Studies 

Research Assistant, Great Rare Book Archaeological Dig Project

Museums and Cultural Collections Projects Program

University of Melbourne 

Endnotes 

[1] Cicero, Marcus Tullius, John Davies, Adrien Turnèbe, and Petrus Faber. M. Tullii Ciceronis Academica (Cantabrigiae: Typis academicis, sumptibus autem Corn. Crownfield: Prostant apud Jacobum Knapton, Robertum Knaplock, & Paulum Vaillant, bibliopolas Londinenses, 1725).  

[2] Cicero, Marcus Tullius, and John Davies. M. Tullii Ciceronis Tusculanarum disputationum (Cantabrigiæ: Typis Academicis. Sumtibus Corn. Crownfield. Prostant apud J. & J. Knapton, J. Crownfield, R. Knaplock, N. Prevost, & A. Vanden Hoeck, bibliopolas Londinenses, 1730). 

[3] William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).  

[4] The last two terms, ‘maniple’ and ‘pilcrow’ are considered mistakes in terminology, as neither accurately refer to a symbol which represents a pointed hand. The rest of the terms have all been correct at some point in the history of texts. William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 

 

Some Fascinating Early Woodcuts of Women from Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus

De Claris Mulieribus, or De Mulieribus Claris, translated as ‘Concerning Famous Women’, by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), is a prime example of one of the treasures contained within the University’s Rare Books Collection. Originally published in 1374, the University acquired a copy in 1903, as part of the George McArthur Bequest.

The Rare Books Collection holds a German edition of this text, printed in 1541, which is full of intricate (and occasionally incredibly gruesome) woodcut illustrations of women, courtesy of notable German printer, Heinrich Stayner.[1]. De Claris Mulieribus is a crucial piece in the history of Western literature, and of Renaissance history, being one of the first texts to appear with women as its primary focus.

De Claris is comprised of 106 short biographies of ‘famous women’. This work acts as a feminine counter to a similar project undertaken by a compatriot and close friend of Boccaccio’s, Petrarch, whose De Viris Illustribus is a collection of 36 biographies of famous men through history. The subjects of Boccaccio’s work are drawn from a number of sources, including religious texts, as is the case with Eve, the first woman to appear in the book; through Greek and Roman myths, where a large number of the subjects including Circe, Medusa and Isis originally appeared; to real life heroines, including Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, and Sappho, the Greek poet.

Even though Boccaccio’s text focuses on famous female figures, his selections are somewhat puzzling. While he himself was deeply religious, his text favours subjects drawn from mythology, claiming in his Preface that the life stories of Christian women had already been celebrated in literature: they had ‘sought eternal glory by means of an endurance that was often contrary to human nature’, whereas his mythical subjects achieved ‘earthly fame with the help of gifts and instincts they had received from nature.’[2] A number of Boccaccio’s subjects, such as Medea, do legitimately bad things – according to Apollonius she helped Jason to steal the Golden Fleece. In order to distract her father, Medea kills her brother Absyrtus and, as is demonstrated in the accompanying woodcut in this book, throws his hands and head off a horse as they ride off. Yet, Boccaccio believed that the women he selected deserved to be praised, for their ‘intellectual powers…literary accomplishments…moral virtues or their artistic creations.’[3]

It is this praise of women of antiquity that marks this book as a pivotal moment in Renaissance literature. The familiarity Boccaccio displays with Livy, Ovid and Pliny, among other ancient writers is demonstrative of the ways in which they were embraced and drawn upon as a source for humanist philosophers. Indeed, as Virginia Brown, in the Introduction to her 2003 translation writes, Boccaccio here ‘provides a striking foretaste of ideas that would later find clearer expression in the Renaissance….such as the view that it was appropriate for gifted women to seek and acquire fame for their contributions to art, literature, and the active life of public affairs.’[4]

Over the course of its life, the University’s copy of De Claris has been witness to these changing attitudes towards women. As previously mentioned, the text contains a short biography of Sappho, the Greek poet. Sappho is best known for her poems about love and women, and through history, both her character and her writing has been subject to an array of both praise and condemnation. Her poetry, rediscovered in the medieval and later period, led to speculation regarding her sexuality, with critics chastising her for her apparent homosexuality.[5]

Perhaps this is why, in the University’s copy, the pages relating to Sappho have been torn out? Not removed carefully, but ripped, leaving a jagged shard of paper behind. It is easy to imagine this page devoted to Sappho, who was adopted during the Modernist period (by Djuna Barnes) as a ‘patron saint of lesbians’, being torn out at some point in the book’s life, during one of the many periods when patriarchal and religious views pertaining to women and homosexuality have erred on the side of condemnation.

De Claris Mulieribus is an incredibly important work, not only in the history of Western literature, but as an artefact and embodiment of Renaissance thought. This relatively progressive text paved the way for other early works depicting women, such as those by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) and Christine de Pizan (1364-1430).[6] De Claris stands as a crucial piece in the history of women in literature, and indeed in the history of women and feminism, literally embodying the way attitudes towards women have changed over time.

Jaxon Waterhouse

Research Assistant, Rare Book Detectives Project

Museums and Collections Projects Program

Endnotes

[1] Giovanni Boccaccio, Ein Schoene Cronica oder Hystoribuch... Augsburg: durch Stayner, Anno M.D.XXXI [1541]

[2 Virginia Brown, On Famous Women, xv-xvi.

[3] Brown, xviii.

[4] Brown, xiv-xv.

[5] Reynolds, THE Sappho Companion, 295.

[6] See: Christine di Pizan The Book of the City of Ladies, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales.

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