Heritage et AL

As part of Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections working from home effort, our teams are busy transcribing letters and manuscripts from our collections which have been digitised and are currently available on Manuscripts Online . My transcription tale is from a 'Diary kept from 1861-1865 by Mr. Frederick Jenner of Teviotdale, Canterbury, containing an account of his voyage from Liverpool to Lyttleton on the S.S. Great Britain , and of his subsequent life on his sheep run, and at Christchurch '. Image: Diary kept from 1861-1865 by Mr. Frederick Jenner, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, NZMS 1. I was drawn to this manuscript for a number of reasons. The S. S. Great Britain was a famous ship and there is an interesting passenger list for the voyage, including the first English cricket team to tour Australia and Thomas Hocken , who worked as the ship's doctor. The scope and contents of the journal also appealed. This is a substantial journal of 200 pl...

2019 marks 300 years since the publication of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe , or, to use the full title:  The life and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner: who lived eight and twenty years all alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With an Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Written by himself . Title page from: Daniel Defoe. The life and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe. 1719. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections . Robinson Crusoe was a great commercial success for its publisher William Taylor, who published three subsequent editions of the book by hitherto political journalist and pamphleteer Defoe, as well as The farther adventures , a sequel, in the same year of 1719. Michael Schmidt, in The Novel : a biography   (2014), outlines Robinson...

During June 2019 in the Sir George Grey Special Collections Reading Room two items from the Eastern Manuscript collection were on display. EASTMS S294 and EASTMS S297 were selected to celebrate Eid al-Fitr or Eid, as it is commonly known. Meaning the "festival of breaking the fast", this joyous celebration is held over a three-day period and marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. The exact date of Eid varies each year depending on the rising of the Shawwāl or new crescent moon during the tenth month of the Islamic or lunar calendar. Each Islamic country has its own traditions and ways of celebrating Eid, but generally Muslim communities come together to pray, spend time with relatives and friends, visit graveyards to pay their respects to loved ones who have passed, give gifts and share food. Ref: Scribe unknown. Qu’rān, Arabic in naskh script, c.1830. Double-page frontispiece. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, EASTMS S294. Ref: Jāmi, Mawlavī; scri...

In New Zealand in the 1880s, it was customary for women to wear gloves at all times when in public – at least, for Pākehā women of a certain social group. Men also wore gloves in public, but social expectations were somewhat more lax: as “Alice” wrote resentfully in the Otago Witness in 1891, “We dare not, as men do, go gloveless into the streets, although many would be only too delighted to have their hands free.” For women, glove fashions changed rapidly, and new trends for colours, lengths, and embellishments were published weekly. Clean, tidy gloves were important not only for reasons of fashion but also as a marker of respectability. The author of 'Woman’s World' in the New Zealand Herald reminded readers : “shoes and gloves are indicative of the character of the wearer, [and so] it is well to bestow a little extra care on them.” Holes, ripped seams, missing buttons, and dirty fingertips indicated a lack of virtue, and women who wore anything less than perfectly neat ...

The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) had far-reaching effects around the world for all the major European powers. Following last week's post about propaganda cartoons from the Russo-Japanese War, we take a look at some more political cartoons published in the  New Zealand Graphic  that reflect this. When the war began in February 1904, the Czar and his officials viewed it as an opportunity to divert the Russian people’s attention from their own domestic problems, instead focusing their patriotic loyalty on Czar Nicholas as their ‘Little Father.’ The officials complacently assumed that Russia would achieve easy victory over an insignificant Asian country in a small eastern war. However when the Russian defenders of Port Arthur surrendered to the Japanese in January 1905, things began to go awry. The significance of the Russo-Japanese War for the rest of the world was that for the first time in modern history an Asian country had defe ated a European power. Before the war Gre...

The New Zealand Graphic achieved a satirical milestone in its 8 July 1905 issue when, perhaps for the first time, a New Zealand journal published cartoons from a foreign viewpoint. These were an intriguing series of Japanese propaganda cartoons about the Russo-Japanese War. The Russo-Japanese war began in February 1904 when the Japanese attacked the Russian naval squadron at Port Arthur, in Liaoning province, China. In March the Japanese army invaded Korea and by May had encircled the Russians in Port Arthur. The Russian army in Manchuria tried to relieve Port Arthur but could not get further than Mukden. In January 1905 the Russian defenders at Port Arthur surrendered. Then in February 1905 the Japanese forced the Russians to retreat from Mukden back into Manchuria. After the naval battle in the Tsushima Strait in May 1905, when the Japanese virtually destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet, the Russians grudgingly negotiated and signed a peace agreement at the Treaty of Portsmouth. Th...