At this January’s MLA Convention, I’ll be presenting on The Society for Textual Scholarship‘s sponsored panel, Text:Image; Visual Studies in the English Major (viewing the panel description may require an MLA membership). I’ll discuss “Mapping the Antebellum Culture of Reprinting,” thinking through my experiments with GIS in the past few years, particularly since attending the GIS course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute this past summer.

So I was thrilled this past week to read William G. Thomas’ talk, “What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities,” from this year’s Nebraska Digital Workshop, and to learn from the talk about Thomas’ project, Railroads and the Making of Modern America. The project itself is fascinating, and I immediately wondered if some of their data might help me investigate the circulation of “The Celestial Railroad.” I’ve suspected for awhile that Hawthorne’s tale—which satirizes uncritical modernizing through the central image of a railroad—ironically may have spread around the country through the railroad system.

The historical map that I georeferenced at DHSI seemed to bear this conclusion out. On the Railroads and the Making of Modern America site, however, I was able to download a KML that more precisely charts the 1861 railroad system in America. I used ArcGIS to convert this KML to a shapefile, and then imported that shapefile into my “Celestial Railroad” map. The results were exciting:

The blue circles represent reprintings of the story; the yellow triangles represent paratexts. Larger icons mark places with multiple reprints or paratexts.

With only one exception—Louisville, Kentucky, which sits beside the Ohio River—the entire textual history I’ve so far uncovered for “The Celestial Railroad” seems to unfold along the nineteenth-century railroad network.

Of course, these results point to more work that needs to be done. The “Railroads” project claims they will soon be releasing their data for the American railroad system in 1840, 1845, 1850, and 1870. With that data, I could more finely tune my own investigation—correlate reprintings and paratexts from each time period with the exact railroad system that might have ferried them. That would allow me to see whether Hawthorne’s tale grew with the railroads. If it did—well, that would be interesting to say the least.

While preparing for this week’s Modern Language Association Convention in Los Angeles, I revisited the amazing digital collection of the David Rumsey Historical Map archive. This site provides digital copies of many of the 24,000 maps in the archive, even allowing visitors to download high-resolution files of them. I’ve used several of these maps of the United States in the late 1830s and 1840s to trace the spread of “The Celestial Railroad” across the country.

This week, however, I discovered that a number of the maps in the collection can be downloaded as a .kmz file to be viewed in Google Earth. Importing this file into Google Earth allows you to lay maps from the Rumsey collection over the Google Earth globe. These maps are georectified, meaning that the features on the maps have been lined up with their precise places on the more precise modern globe.

After playing with these maps for a few minutes, I quickly decided to overlay an 1839 map from the Rumsey collection with a .kmz I created in Google Maps of the towns in which “The Celestial Railroad” was republished between 1843 and 1860. Within minutes I had this visualization—a “historical” map of the story’s reprintings—

I made larger the markers for those cities where the story was more frequently reprinted. So New York and Philadelphia are the largest, as the story ran many, many times in both cities. That resizing was, for this quick project, entirely subjective—I hand-sized each city’s pin.

This isn’t, of course, the best visualization one could create of this, but I was impressed that I could put something that looks this good together in only a few minutes. I plan to keep experimenting with the Rumsey maps in Google Earth as I think through how best to tell the geospatial aspects of this story about Hawthorne and 19th Century publishing.

Well, it’s been a relatively busy week. I wrote earlier about being given a month’s access to the full archive America’s Historical Newspapers. This investigation has been fruitful: I’ve found a new reprinting in the Jamestown Journal of Jamestown, NY (12 Oct. 1843) and several interesting articles that reference the story, one of which will show up in the revision of the article I’m working on, “‘Taken Possession Of’: Hawthorne’s ‘Celestial Railroad’ in the Evangelical Canon.”

Later in the week, a link in Dan Cohen’s twitter feed led me to a Language Log post that mentions the Pennsylvania Civil War Newspapers archive (whew!). I didn’t know this archive, and a quick search there returned yet another witness, from the Lancaster Intelligencer (1 Feb. 1859). This one includes a short editorial preface—these are my favorite witnesses, as they add not only to the corpus of reprintings but also to the cultural narrative surrounding the story.

This project continues to grow exponentially; every new resource discovered returns new results.

At the Poe Studies’ Association Conference last weekend, conversations about this site invariably turned to questions about what online newspaper archives are out there. Most folks are aware of American Periodicals Series Online, but not many of the others that I’ve used . So below I’ve compiled my list so far. These all bear primarily on 19th Century American research, but some include wider resources.  They’re organized here alphabetically, but I’d say that APS Online, the Gale Group’s Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers, the Access Newspaper Archive, and the Making of America Projects have been most useful to me. Final caveat—some of these live behind pay-walls. At UVA we subscribe to them, but I’m not certain how many will be accessible if your school doesn’t. Noticing Google Books in this list, my next post will be a “true/but” response to Geoff Nunberg’s recent article, “Google Books: a Metadata Train Wreck.” If you spot any fixable problems with these links, please let me know. If you know an archive of 19th Century American periodicals that I haven’t included, please, please let me know.

Access Newspapers Archive (http://access.newspaperarchive.com)

Accessible Archives (http://www.accessible.com/accessible/preLog)

America’s Historical Newspapers (http://infoweb.newsbank.com/?db=EANX)

American Periodicals Series Online (http://proquest.umi.com/login)

Gale Group, Nineteenth Century U. S. Newspapers (http://infotrac.galegroup.com)

Google Books (http://books.google.com)

Library of Congress, American Memory Collection (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/snchome.html)

Library of Congress, Chronicling America Collection (http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/)

Making of America Project, Cornell University (http://digital.library.cornell.edu/m/moa/)

Making of America Project, University of Michigan (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/)

Below is my current bibliography for “The Celestial Railroad.” I’m currently transcribing these versions. Eventually this site will (I hope) incorporate a web-based version of Juxta that will allow visitors to compare textual changes across these versions. Items prefaced with an asterisk (*) are new to Hawthorne studies; found mostly through searchable online newspaper repositories. My next task will be a bibliography of references to the story, which will be a considerably longer list.

Bibliography

Periodical reprintings of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Railroad”

“The Celestial Railroad,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 12, no. 59 (May 1843): 515-523.

* ——, Morning Star (New York) 18, no. 5 (24 May 1843): 20.

* ——, Midnight Cry! (New York) 4, no. 20 & 21 (13 Jul. 1843): 156-159.

——, Signs of the Times and Expositor of Prophecy (Boston) 5, no. 21 (Jul. 1843): 161-164.

——, Cambridge Palladium (Cambridgeport, MA) 1, no. 31 (5 Aug. 1843): 1-2.

——, Christian Advocate and Journal (New York) 17, no. 52 (9 Aug. 1843): 205-206.

* ——, Christian Secretary (Hartford, CT) 22, no. 29 (29 Sep. 1843): 1, 4.

* ——, Christian Watchman (Boston) 24, no. 39 and 40 (29 Sep. and 6 Oct. 1843): 153, 157.

* ——, Scioto Gazette (Chillicothe, OH) 44, no. 2249 (18 Oct. 1843): 1-2.

* ——, Baptist Banner and Western Pioneer (Louisville, KY) 10, no. 42 and 43 (19 and 26 Oct. 1843):

——, Salem Gazette 42, no. 84 (20 Oct. 1843): 1.

——, Salem Mercury 4, no. 43 (25 Oct. 1843): 1.

* ——, Vermont Chronicle (Windsor) 18, no. 44 and 45 (1 Nov. and 8 Nov. 1843): 173-174, 177.

——, Gazette and Courier (Greenfield, MA) 52, no. 2700 (14 Nov. 1843): 1-2.

* ——, Episcopal Recorder (Philadelphia) 21, no. 40 and 41 (23 Dec. and 30 Dec. 1843): 160, 164.

* ——, Republican Compiler (Gettysburg, PA) 26, no. 14 (25 Dec. 1843): 1-2.

——, Baptist Magazine for 1844 (London) 36, series 4, vol. 7 (Jan., Feb. 1844): 9-12, 71-76

* —— (excerpt), Liberator (Boston) 14, no. 11 (15 Mar. 1844): 44.

* ——, Hagers-town Torch Light & Public Advertiser (Hagers-town, MD) 30, no. 21 (21 Mar. 1844): 1.

——, Voices of the True-Hearted (Philadelphia) (Nov. 1844-Apr. 1846): 119-125.

* —— (excerpt), Ohio Observer (Hudson, OH) 21, no. 8 (24 Feb. 1847): 1.

* ——, Non-slaveholder (Philadelphia) 2, no. 10 (Oct. 1847): 228-236.

——, National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York) 8, no. 24 (11 Nov. 1847): 96.

——, The Friend, A Monthly Journal (London) 6, no. 61 (Jan. 1848): 4-8.

* ——, Christian Secretary (Hartford, CT) 26, no. 52 (3 Mar. 1848): 1-4.

——, Vermont Christian Messenger (Montpelier) 4, no. 23 (5 Jun. 1850): 1-2.

* ——, Circular (Brooklyn, NY) 2, no. 44 (16 Apr. 1853): 175-176.

* ——, Littell’s Living Age (Boston) no. 851 (22 Sep. 1860): 740-747.

* ——, Friends’ Intelligencer 17, nos. 39-41 (8, 15, and 22 Dec. 1860): 620-623, 637-639, 652-655.

Other notable reprintings:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Celestial Rail-road (unauthorized pamphlet, Boston: James F. Fish, 1843).

——, The Celestial Rail-road (unauthorized pamplet, Boston: Wilder & Co., 1843).

[——], as A Visit to the Celestial City, revised by the Committee of Publication of the American Sunday-School Union (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1843).

—— and anon., as The Celestial Rail-road; or, Modern Pilgrim’s Progress: After the Manner of Bunyan. Vividly Representative of the Present-Day Professors of Religion, Bible Examiner, vol. 12 (Philadelphia: Merrihew and Thompson, February 23, 1844).

——, in Mosses from an Old Manse (New York: Wiley and Putnamn, 1846).

——, in Prose Writers of America, with a Survey of the History, Conditions, and Prospects of American Literature, ed. Rufus Wilmot Griswold (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1847).

——, The Celestial Rail-road (unauthorized pamphlet, Lowell: D. Skinner, 1847).

* [——] and Salomon Neitz (trans.), as Ein Besuch auf der Eisenbahn nach der Himmlischen Stadt (Philadelphia, 1853).

—— and anon., as The Celestial Rail-road; or, Modern Pilgrim’s Progress: After the Manner of Bunyan. Vividly Representative of the Present-Day Professors of Religion (Boston: J. V. Himes, 1860).

—— and anon., as The Celestial Rail-road; or, Modern Pilgrim’s Progress: After the Manner of Bunyan. Vividly Representative of the Present-Day Professors of Religion, Advent Tracts (Western Series), no. 16 (Buchanan, MI: W. A. C. P. Association, 1867).

——, “A Walk Through Vanity Fair, Hawthorne” (excerpt), in Roses and Holly: A Gift-Book for All the Year (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1867): 129

*——, “The Celestial Railroad,” in A History of the Church of God, from the Creation to A. D. 1885; Including Especially the History of the Kehukee Primitive Baptist Association, ed. Elder Sylvester Hassell (Middletown, NY: Gilbert Beebe’s Sons, 1886): 951-963.

*——, “The Celestial Railroad,” in The Feast of Fat Things (Middletown, NY: Gilbert Beebe’s Sos, 1890): 93-120.

*——, “The Celestial Railroad,” in Capital Stories by American Authors, Published by the Christian Herald, ed. Louis Klopsch (New York: Bible House, 1895): 13-42.

* [——], as A Visit to the Celestial City, revised by the Committee of Publication of the American Sunday-School Union (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1897).

*——, The Celestial Railroad (Philadelphia: Union Press, 1899).

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Celestial Railroad” retells Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, using Bunyan’s religious ideals to satirize the easy, liberal, modern Christianity Hawthorne saw all around him. While it is widely anthologized, most scholars read it as a quirky but unrepresentative piece in Hawthorne’s oeuvre—a fairly blunt allegory, “The Celestial Railroad” can disappoint 21st century readers who come to literature expecting narrative subtlety or symbolic nuance.  During my dissertation research, however, I uncovered a history of extensive printing, reprinting, and commentary of and about the story in the years immediately after its first publication in early 1843. The quirky story resonated in profound ways with contemporary readers—including devout readers who were less likely to encounter Hawthorne otherwise—and may have influenced mid-nineteenth century culture more than many of the subtler tales that modern scholars privilege.

I first became aware of this wider influence while digging through copies of the Midnight Cry! and Signs of the Times, two newspapers printed between 1842-44 by the apocalyptic evangelical group known as the Millerites or Adventists. My dissertation investigates apocalyptic figures and rhetoric in antebellum religious literature and fiction, and I was reading these papers because the Millerites were the most famous apocalyptic group of the period—50,000 Americans countenanced Baptist pastor William Miller’s claim that the world would end in 1843 and then, when that initial claim didn’t pan out, on October 22, 1844.

Most of the content in Adventist papers reflected their eschatological concerns: articles describing ominous natural events, charts illustrating biblical prophecy, sermons unpacking apocalyptic passages. I was surprised, then, when I saw the following—

Introduction to Midnight Cry! Printing

—on the front page of the July 13, 1843 edition of the Cry; inside the paper is a complete reprinting of Hawthorne’s story. Quickly opening the Signs of the Times folio just beside me, I soon found “The Celestial Railroad” printed there as well, on July 26 of the same year. I was, in short, surprised; there isn’t much fiction in these papers, and nothing by any writer modern readers would recognize. I suddenly had new research questions: why did this story resonate with this groups of readers?  Did other religious readers also see “rich stores of instruction” in Hawthorne’s allegory?

1st page of Midnight Cry! printing

And so I started digging, beginning with the Morning Star, published by the Freewill Baptists—from whom the Midnight Cry claimed to have copied the story—and this small breadcrumb pointed me toward a deep history of printing, reprinting, and public reception for Hawthorne’s story. Following this and subsequent breadcrumbs, I have since uncovered 32 reprintings of “The Celestial Railroad” in the years between its initial publication in the Democratic Review in 1843 and the end of the Civil War [working database of my findings]. Most of these are unaccounted for in bibliographies of Hawthorne’s work, the most authoritative of which were published before the American Periodicals Series Online, Cornell’s Making of America Collection, and Google Books made broad-ranging initial research into such questions simpler.

Reprintings of the “Celestial Railroad” appeared in period newspapers and pamphlets; the American Sunday School society issued tract versions—with commissioned illustrations—of the story under the title A Visit to the Celestial City in both English and German for the edification of America’s children.  There are even two novelistic rewritings of the piece, including the behemoth, two-volume Modern Pilgrims: Showing the Improvements in Travel, and the Newest Methods of Reaching the Celestial City by George Wood.

More than half of “The Celestial Railroad’s” reprintings come from religious or denominational periodicals, published by a wide range of religious groups, including Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Quakers, and even Oneida Perfectionists.  Denominational editors often modified Hawthorne’s text; some, in fact, deleted and/or added large sections of text to help the story better fit with the theological viewpoint of their publications, and many provided short introductions or glosses suggesting to readers just how the story should be read or interpreted.  The texts of these reprintings have never been collected, collated, or compared, however—which is just what this website hopes to remedy.

from the Sunday School Union's "Visit to the Celestial City"

This site will aim to allow scholars, teachers, and students to follow the rich history of “The Celestial Railroad’s” publication and editing. This site will provide both images and the text of each printing of the story, highlighting significant amendments or deletions, as well as any editorial introductions appended to the texts. I’ll use the Juxta collation software to compare the editions. The first steps in this process, which I hope to complete in the Summer of 2009, will be collecting, digitizing, transcribing, and collating the many printings of “The Celestial Railroad” made in books and periodicals between 1843 (the year of its first authorized publication) and at least 1864 (the year of Hawthorne’s death), with a special focus on its circulation in religious periodicals.