Along with manuscripts, exquisite African sculpture, the incunables and the collection of antiquities that are the treasures of Bryn Mawr’s special collections, are a range of other special materials that are less rare, but no less integral to the educational mission of the College. This semester, when I taught a senior seminar in the social history of advertising in the U.S. and Europe, I used materials that were produced on a mass level in the 19th century, but were not often retained, and thus have become relatively scarce. And when they were added to the collection, it was probably not for the reason for which we have deployed them.

When libraries build collections, the books and manuscripts and other artifacts that we amass are usually procured for a straightforward reason. But as time passes, other aspects of the material in question gain interest for the reader. Take this trade card as an example. We think it was produced in 1899, one of a set of nine, to advertise Enameline, a stove polish. We in the library purchased this interesting novelty for its obvious connection to the College — note the text in red below, “I am a Bryn Mawr girl” — and probably precisely because it bears little resemblance to an actual turn of (the twentieth!) century Bryn Mawr student. When we passed it around in a class on the history of advertising, though, it sparked an animated conversation about the possible connections between the growth in opportunities for education for women in this period, the development of the notion of the consumer, and, most intriguingly, the elusive connections between the “new” woman and the arrival of modern marketing techniques.

Another example. The first edition of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens was published in parts during 1836 and 1837 and as a rare item was purchased by the library in the 1950s, an excellent copy with some of the twenty parts in their rare first issue form. The excitement that this book caused in our seminar, in addition to the obvious thrill of working with a Dickens first edition, was the extensive use of advertising: in some of the serial parts, the number of pages of advertising far exceeds the number of pages of the novel. Even more intriguing to us was the first use of what is known today as “product placement,” mentioning a branded product for commercial purposes. That caused us to think that a range of categories normally understood as separate from one another, such as literature and advertising, are closely connected.

Largely due to the generosity of the Friends of the Library, its board and its current chair, Susan Klaus, we can provide a wide range of primary research materials to our students and faculty. We thank you very much for your continued support and hope you enjoy this fourth issue of Mirabile Dictu, which has been edited and designed by Jean G. Miller.

Elliott Shore
The Constance A. Jones Director of Libraries and Professor of History

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