Hawthorne's Celestial Railroad » reprinting

Two new reprintings

Ryan Cordell — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:52:05 +0000

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.

Online Newspaper Archives

Ryan Cordell — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:08:52 +0000

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/)

Current Bibliography

Ryan Cordell — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:34:22 +0000

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).

Impetus

Ryan Cordell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:10:03 +0000

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.