My IASH Fellowship Ends …

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
IASH - Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

‘All good things must come to an end’, as the saying goes. And an IASH Postdoctoral Research Fellowship is a thoroughly good thing.  I handed back my keys with sadness today, but I have had a great year. (The Fellowship was technically six months, but I was graciously permitted to hang around, retaining the use of my office for the rest of the year, which was wonderful, and enabled me to continue data-gathering in the Library’s Heritage Collections.)

19th meets 20th century
Looking back …
Last glance from bus stop
St Patrick’s Square

If you are looking for a next step after your PhD, or if like me, you’re making a change of direction – or need a spell concentrating on a particular research question in the Humanities – do consider applying.

I devoted my time to examining the archives of the Edinburgh publishers, Thomas Nelson.  I initially entitled my project, ‘From National Songs to Nursery Rhymes, and Discussion Books to Dance Bands: investigating Thomas Nelson’s Musical Middle Ground’, but the nursery rhymes turned out to be poems, and weren’t what I had in mind! The rest? Yes, I researched them.

I found quite a bit of correspondence between Thomas Nelson’s editors, authors and compilers, which was gratifying. I was able to trace material in journals that I would not have had access to, had I not been in Edinburgh; there’s the excellent University Library collection of actual and digital resources, and the National Library of Scotland just down the road.

I have deferred commencing any significant written work until I had explored all the potentially relevant materials in the files. I believe I’ve now reached that point.  As a result of conducting this research, I have ideas for extending my research in new directions, and I’m contemplating writing another book, so I need not only to explore potential audiences, but also to start working on a book proposal

However, I have also applied for and recently won an Athenaeum Award from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland to enable me to conduct an oral history project. This work, to be conducted in 2026, will hopefully enable me to write a final chapter for my proposed monograph. (I’ll be blogging about this before too long, but there are things I need to do first, before I spill the beans!)

I have benefited from being part of a research community, hearing other scholars’ papers and discussing our research; and attending researcher development sessions. I  was able to focus on my new direction as a researcher – important, after so many years as an ‘alt-ac’ researcher working in professional services. In this regard, I have also been in a position to submit some other unrelated work for publication, and I spoke at a conference at the University of Sussex in June, all of which gives me a sense that my research is gathering momentum.

Today, my last day, I took a cake to the University Library’s Heritage Collections; went to IASH’s Christmas lunch; and mulled over aspects of my ethical approval submission for my next project. (Oh, and drank quite a bit of coffee!)

Thank you so very much for a great year, IASH!

IASH (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities)

Archival Truths: the Reality of Archival Research

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
White puzzle with black gap where the missing piece should be.

I can say this very succinctly!

That which you seek may not be there.

Indeed,

That which you seek may not exist.

You can look as hard as you like, for as long as you like, with as much concentration and determination as you can muster from every inch, every fibre of your body … but not everything you want to find, will have survived to the present day, whether in archives or attics, boxes or basements.

Thus, the Thomas Nelson archive may have a handlist, but even the handlist (a second or third version of a handlist made by unknown hands at some point in the past) may document items that no longer exist. I struck lucky with my searches for correspondence about the four Nelson Scots Song Books (1948-1954). Of course, I still don’t know if there was further correspondence between the song book editors (by which I mean the compilers), as well as that between the compilers and Nelson’s in-house editors. But I found enough to be interesting, and to document the general story of their coming to fruition. It is possibly significant that they were published post-war, by the educational department editors, who had all been in Edinburgh for years by now.

However, for the past few weeks, I’ve been looking for correspondence between the author of a 1935 (ie, pre-war) book aimed at the general reader, and Nelson’s in-house editors. There was correspondence as early as 1932 – I know that much, but I can’t find it. Not only have I completely failed to find it, but we’ve discovered at least half-a-dozen boxes are missing. I bet you anything the missing correspondence is (was) in one or more of those missing boxes! Now, Nelson had offices in Edinburgh and London. The editorial staff for educational materials seemed to have been based in Edinburgh before the Second World War, whilst some – but not all – of the other editorial staff joined them from London’s Pater Noster Row at the start of the war. Thus, my 1935 book – not a school textbook – may have been edited from the London office, not in Edinburgh. Hold onto that knowledge.

Missing in Enemy Action?

When the London offices were bombed, the remaining London editorial staff, including the juvenile literature department, were found temporary office accomodation with another publisher. If my missing correspondence was lost either during a move to Edinburgh, or during the London raids, or in the general upheaval that followed, then they will never be found.

Ironically, when I was researching in the British Museum for my Masters degree, there was a particular Augustinian plainsong manuscript that I desperately needed to see – I’d travelled from Exeter to see it. But I filled in the paper slip (this was 1980 – that’s how you did it) – and got the slip back, marked ‘Missing in Enemy Action’. I rather think I have come up against the same problem again!

And the handlist? The original copy could even have been made by Nelson’s own staff, maybe in Edinburgh, but incorporating letters that had come up from London.

There remain four ‘temporary boxes’ at the end of the sequence, which may contain my prey. And a handful of other boxes that I can’t look at until the next time I’m in Edinburgh. But I’m preparing myself to accept the almost inevitable. In this particular instance,

That for which I search may not exist at all.

Imperial War Museum image (copyright © The Family Estate (Art.IWM ART 16123) – I can only share the link).

Victorian Copyright: the Author Miss Letitia Higgin, and Editor Lady Marian Alford

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

My new eBay purchase arrived on Sunday afternoon: Letitia Higgin’s Hand Book of Embroidery, published by her employer (the Royal School of Art Embroidery) in 1880, and edited by the Vice President of the Society: Lady Marian Alford. It’s a modern reprint: the original is an appropriately antiquarian price.

The Society had been founded in 1872. Letitia (Lily) was a middle-class young woman needing to earn her own living, who, with two of her sisters, was employed by the Society.  She was promoted to a senior position, and wrote this handbook not for absolute beginners, but for ladies who had learned the basics and needed to know more. The introduction explains that the book answers some of the most frequently asked questions. Brilliant, I thought. This could be just what I need. You know how I enjoy embroidery, even if I’m just a relative beginner.

A Daughter of Margaret Maclean-Clephane

Portrait of Lady Marian Compton, from National Trust via Art.UK
Grant, Francis – Lady Marian Margaret Compton (1817-1888), Viscountess Alford; National Trust, Belton House; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/lady-marian-margaret-compton-18171888-viscountess-alford-176409 National Trust Images via Art.UK

Enter Margaret Maclean Clephane’s elder daughter, Marian (Marianne)!  The book’s editor was none other than a daughter of song-collector Margaret Maclean-Clephane. (Just for the record, Margaret’s married name was Lady Compton, and later Lady Northampton.  That’s why her daughter was Lady Marian Margaret Compton.)  Lady Marian’s musically gifted mother was also a poet.  The family evidently had creativity in their genes. Marian’s aunt Anna was a song and folklore collector too; her other aunt was artistic; and now we find that Marian was a talented needlewoman.

A Copyright Dispute

The guide was so popular that the Society had hoped to produce a second edition, but a copyright dispute between author and editor meant that this didn’t happen.

I sat bolt upright.  We ordinary folk shall never know what the dispute was. (I learnt this much from Wikipedia. See reading list below.) Maybe the Society has archival paperwork that tells more, but I really must not let myself get distracted at the moment!

Giving Credit where Credit’s due

From my vantage point as a 21st century author, it would be easy to feel outrage on Letitia Higgin’s behalf. Had she done all the work and written the whole book, only for Lady Marian Alford to sweep in and add her name to it? Realistically, having a titled name on it would probably have added gravitas and authority in 1880. My guess is that Letitia Higgin did most of the hard work, and Lady Marian put her own titled gloss on it, but I simply don’t know. We can’t jump to conclusions.

Bust of Lady Marian Compton, from National Trust via Art.UK
Lady Marian Compton (1817–1888), Viscountess Alford
Ernesto Cali (b.1821)
National Trust, Belton House, again via Art.UK.

I do know that Miss Higgin also wrote magazine articles referring to the book, and Lady Marian also authored other works. Neither woman’s expertise is in question.

Anyway, I intended to use the book for the purpose of self-instruction, so I turned the page to find out about needles. It informed me I should use a size 5 needle for crewel work. To be honest, I don’t think I’m doing crewel work (with crewel yarn), but embroidery. With embroidery silk. I had imagined it would be similar, but I imagined wrong.

Five is Larger than Nine

Moreover, Miss Letitia Higgin and Lady Marian Alford didn’t think to tell me that size 5 needles are larger than size 9. I suspect I may have been using the right size for embroidery all along (without knowing a scooby about sizes and numbers), but now I reached for the tiniest size needle, and spent far longer than was reasonable, trying to thread one strand of thread into the eye of a needle that I couldn’t even see. Ughh! I blamed the eye (my own) that can’t even read with glasses.  Eventually I used a needle threader. The thread broke. I did get dressmaking thread through the eye. And I bent the needle before getting the single strand of embroidery floss through the eye.  The eye of the needle was ludicrously, but appropriately small for such a tiny wee needle.

The thread that would not go into the eye of the tiny needle
Tiny needle threaded with dressmaking thread
Embroidered word, HELP
Embroidered word, HELP, a needle threader, a bent needle and an embroidered heart

Temporarily giving up on Higgin and Alford, I turned to YouTube.  Thankfully, Sarah Homfray has done a series of YouTube videos about embroidery, and that’s how I learned that 5 was actually larger than 9:-

‘Are you using the right sized needle? I show you how to pick the right one!’

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PtBGZn0yohU&si=LJomNgTXJTZ_hoMT

I shall eventually return to Miss Higgin and Lady Marian Alston.  I’m sure they have useful knowledge to impart, quite apart from the insights into the pastime of embroidery in the late Victorian era. You could buy a marked canvas, which someone at the Royal School of Art Embroidery had prepared and even started off for you. That sounds helpful!

However, today? I’ve signed up to a local evening class. (Although I don’t know if I’ll ever be capable of marking out a canvas to make Higgin’s and Alford’s piano cloth design!)

7. DESIGN FOR A SOFA-BACK COVER OR PIANO PANEL. By George Aitchison. Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith. (From Gutenberg website: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24964/24964-h/24964-h.htm#Page_75

READING LIST

  • Alford, Marian, Needlework as Art (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1886.)
  • Alford, Marian – other works of local history interest.
  • Higgin, Letitia, ‘Art Needlework’, articles in The Art Amateur (1880) Vol.2 issues 5 and 6
  • Higgin, Letitia, Hand Book of Embroidery, ed. Marianne Margaret Compton Alford (London: Published by Authority of the Royal School of Art Needlework, 1880)
  • ‘Higgin, Letitia’ – Wikipedia entry
  • Homfray, Sarah, ‘Are you using the right sized needle? I show you how to pick the right one!’ YouTube
  • Hulse, Lynne, ‘Higgin, Letitia (Lily) , author and embroiderer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  • Northampton, Margaret Compton, marchioness of (d. 1830), Manuscript book of poems, dated 1808-1821, by Lady Compton (Lady Northampton), also transcription of poems, dated 1804-1840, by her sister Anna Jane Douglas Maclean Clephane.] National Trust Libraries – Note on Jisc Library Hub Discover:- ‘Poems stated to be by Lady Compton (as Lady Northampton was known 1815-1828) on pp. 1-47, and by Lady Northampton on pp.113-120; poems by Anna Jane Clephane on pp. 52-110 and 121 to end (many with monogram AJC).
  • Royal School of Needlework. Our History

Two Ladies and a Harp: the Maclean-Clephane Sisters of Torloisk on Mull (and Edinburgh)

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

You know how you buy a new car, and suddenly everyone seems to be driving the same white Fiat 500? It’s the same with research topics.

“Enthusiastic collectors of Gaelic songs and Irish harp tunes”

I researched Gaelic song-collectors Anna and Margaret Maclean-Clephane as part of my PhD (2009).

  • I blogged about the sisters as far back as 2012 in my librarian days, when the Whittaker Library was using Blogspot:- How Far Can a Song Travel? (Author Karen McAulay, Whittaker Live blog, Wednesday, 23 May 2012);
  • and of course they later made it into my book (Our Ancient National Airs, 2013).
  • I followed up with an extended article about them (also in 2013). See this excerpt from the article:-

Naturally, the Maclean Clephane sisters are in my Pure institutional repository at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. I coined the above phrase, ‘enthusiastic collectors of Gaelic songs and Irish harp tunes’, using it both in my book (p.92) and my article (p.62), both in 2013.

‘While they were still in their teens’

The sisters had a book ‘printed but not published’ while they were still in their teens – you can read about it in my article, p.58. I have to say, the arrangements in their book were – well, okay, but not artistically stylish!

Margaret had a harp – there is actually a Raeburn portrait of Margaret with her harp – see below.   Alexander Campbell did say the sisters played, but there’s no portrait of Anna with a harp, so we can’t prove it either way. He didn’t meet them. (There was in fact a third sister, though her musical interest didn’t seem to carry through to adulthood. ) Indeed, Anna wasn’t that hot on the piano, as I recall.  They grew up on the Isle of Mull. I’ve driven past the house, Torloisk. It’s massive!

I just love researching and writing about people, particularly musicians! If they’re women musicians, then that’s all the more interesting – so it’s hardly surprising I was drawn to them, and went looking at materials in the National Library of Scotland and the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh, and even visiting a manuscript that’s now down in London. (Blog post Women’s History Month 2024. Musicians, this present blog.)

Details of my article

But ever since, these fascinating and talented ladies keep cropping up in my social media feeds. People who’ve read my writings also contact me from time to time. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I get notifications that people have consulted my stuff, too … and there’s also a CD whose notes cite me, too:-

Tullochgorum – Haydn – Scottish Songs, by The Poker Club Band and Masako Art (BIS-2471 | SACD

Tullochgorum – Haydn  – Scottish Songs

The harpist, Masako, asked if she could cite my work – I was very appreciative that she went to the trouble of asking me.

Correctly cited 😀
Margaret Clephane … and Masako Art

I spent so long with my early nineteenth-century heroines, but eventually my research took different directions. Not being a Gaelic scholar was just one of the problems I’d encountered! I attended classes in speaking it, at the Conservatoire. I signed up to local authority evening classes at the Gaelic School in Glasgow. But somehow, I never really had time to give it enough attention, despite having been considered good at languages at school and possessing school certificates in – well, several European languages. I understand when someone agrees with me in Gaelic, and can pronounce ‘Torloisk’, for sure, but Gaelic remains beyond me!

But look – now the music is going to be played. That’s exciting!

A Happy and Healthy New Year – Here’s Hoping!

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

Through sheer bad luck, all the men in my house had flu between Christmas and New Year. Call it Casa Influenza, if you will. I’ve been downing zinc, echinacea, and multivitamins with cod-liver oil – providing room service whilst wearing a mask, and cursing my FitBit for suddenly deciding to pass daily comment on my own levels of activity. It’s not counting the stairs, which I consider a very bad show considering how many times I’ve been up and down them. Then, after the first day of my Florence Nightingale gig, it observed I’d been overdoing it and should take a rest. So, I tried to rest the next day (as much as I could), whereupon it observed that I really needed to increase my cardio load. The third day, I walked to the postbox to increase my step-count, but this still wasn’t enough for FitBit. Stupid device!

Bah, humbug!

Only One Resolution!

Left to myself downstairs for several days, I couldn’t help myself doing a little bit of research in between fetching and carrying coffee, soup and meals on demand. However, having done absolutely nothing about seeing the new year in last night, I decided that if I was going to make one resolution this year, then it would be to do something more relaxing than searching databases on a public holiday. Moreover, I had woken up early – again – and couldn’t get back to sleep. I reached for my headphones and settled down to an audiobook.

My book review of Sue Watson’s, Our Little Lies (2018)

(10 hours and 8 minutes, narrated by Katie Villa.)

An absolutely gripping psychological thriller with a brilliant twist.

I settled down under my duvet, ready to be psychologically thrilled. Although it began pleasantly enough, I must confess that I was too cosy, and I fear I may have been a bit drowsy through a couple of the chapters near the beginning. This didn’t promise to be as exciting as I’d hoped. It seemed like rather a slow, pedestrian start. On the other hand, maybe I’d have got on better if I’d been sitting up in a chair, or doing something else at the same time, rather than nearly falling back to sleep! When I woke up properly again, I didn’t feel as though I’d missed much.

Having said that, I took my phone round the house with me today, and listened to the entire story enjoyably enough, interrupted only when one of my invalids needed sustenance to be supplied! It did get better as it went on. The heroine was believable, and the anti-hero’s determination to gaslight her, accusing her of madness and psychological instability, grew more and more chilling as the tale unfolded. Her husband was a serial adulterer, a manipulative bully, psychologically and sometimes physically abusive.

As you listen (or read), you really do feel the heroine is caught in a trap, where her husband would do anything to make her feel guilty, whether literally finding fault where there was none, or for genuinely pathetic infringements (not folding the throws tidily enough, not tidying up crumbs off the sofa, or allowing the twins to watch TV) – or for serious tragedies for which she was in no sense to blame.

Marianne was certainly obsessive. But her husband Simon, who was a brilliant and ambitious surgeon, convinced her GP to prescribe heavy tranquillisers, and you were left wondering (as Marianne did) whether she was going mad, losing her memory, losing her ability to cope or becoming paranoid – or was the medication causing side-effects?

Admittedly, at one point, I wanted to yell, ‘For pity’s sake, you need to leave him, taking your kids with you!’, but of course, she had no-one to go to; even her so-called new friend turned out to be disloyal in the extreme.

The final chapters were very clever. Marianne arranged a party in which she would reveal her husband (and his lover) in their true colours. There was a murder a couple of days later, and because she couldn’t recall exactly what had happened, she was arrested and held for a number of hours before being released. However, the denouement was not as straightforward as it would have appeared, and – as in the best whodunnits, the culprit eventually turned out to be someone else entirely.

It’s not a detective novel, or even a crime story as such – emotional and domestic abuse underpin the novel, but the murder comes near the end of the book and – as I said – there’s a twist in the last ten minutes.

I closed my Audible book feeling that I had actually chosen just the right book for a lazy New Year’s Day. I’d recommend it.

Keeping it in the Family: our Routledge Year

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

The book I’m getting published later this year is not my first.

But our son Scott McAulay has beaten me to it, in being the first to see a Routledge publication this year – two chapters in this essay collection.  And I understand he’s in another collection, too.  Scott has an architectural background – we have very different specialisms! I’m a proud mum.

The Pedagogies of Re-Use

One of Scott’s illustrations is by his older brother, by the way!

Alice [Goes Indexing] in Wonderland

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay

It is clear that I haven’t quite mastered the art of part-time working yet. I have collated a list of keywords for the first, general index, and that’s just waiting for when I get to see the proofs. The next step was to get the copy-edited book manuscript back to the copy-editor. I cheerfully threw myself into that task too. Domesticity was forced into spare minutes. I have no idea how long I spent – but I did it. I made all my little tweaks and corrections to the manuscript, and off it went. Now, all that remained was to collate a list of music titles for the second index of historical Scottish publications. Between Friday and today, I did that, too. It’s a long, long list!

Do we have a Crisis? Or don’t we?

There was a problem, though. Whilst we live in Glasgow, most of my relatives are hundreds of miles away, and when a family concern raises its head, I immediately go into ‘prepare for a crisis’ overdrive.

Distractions!

  • My car went to the garage for a once-over, just in case I needed to drop everything. Back home, and back to indexing. It’s strange, trying to concentrate on something super-important, whilst wondering if you’ll still be at home in two hours, two days or two weeks …
  • Thinking of the family in Glasgow, I ordered ready-meals online from a different supermarket to my usual one, simply because they could deliver them quicker. This worked – reasonably well – but with some reservations. (I had to go out this evening, to buy things that I’d missed …)
  • Messages have flown between Glasgow and ‘down south’, in between checking 19th century publication dates and deciding where cross-references might be needed. It’s a bit disorientating!
  • I had a trip to Dundee on Saturday, grateful to be going somewhere else and doing something different for a few hours, and then – yup, back to indexing again. Organist duties on Sunday. More indexing. Dinner prepared and consumed. Still more indexing. And so on!
  • Because of the nature of the potential crisis, it all felt very much like Alice-in-Wonderland, where nothing seemed logical or predictable. Indeed, Alice’s rabbit-hole might have seemed a calm and welcoming place by comparison.

‘Late, Late, for a Very Important Date?’ Not Me!

Image from Pixabay

My main concern was that I had to get the book to a point where I literally could go no further, pending receipt of the proofs for adding page-numbers to the two indices. If the potential crisis proves to be an actual one, that means I can shove the laptop and printouts into a bag and take them with me. My book-writing is an unfathomable mystery to most of my English family, who aren’t up-to-date with what I get up to, and consider me really somewhat eccentric and excessive in what interests me, but even in a crisis, I don’t want to hold up the publishing process!

I think I’m now at the point where I can do no more. I should probably do something completely different, away from the laptop, tomorrow. There will assuredly be family messages which I can pick up on my phone, but I cannot do any more to the book. Maybe I should sew something. Oh, and get the hedges cut, just in case I have to desert them in a hurry …

If I’m still in Glasgow on Wednesday, I can turn my attention to future research-planning. It’ll feel more like a research day if I’ve had a relaxed day before it!

A Grumpy and Irritable Aberdonian

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Grey granite bricks

To be fair, David Baptie spoke highly of the Aberdonian James Davie, an early to mid 19th Century Scottish song enthusiast. He was a friend of the Dundonian song collector James Wighton.

However, correspondence between the two men reveals him writing sour objections to other contemporaries’ activities and opinions. I quoted some of his grumblings in my first book, Our Ancient National. Airs. I formed the impression that he was decidedly irritable in his old age! 

Here he is, in characteristic tone at the start of his Caledonian Repository:-

Arrangers? Pshaw!

Notwithstanding this, I was excited to accession several books of this Caledonian Repository to the library, since they’re quite rare. The books are tatty and fragile, but a tangible link with the past – they’re about 200 years old.

James Davie’s Caledonian Repository (You can find it in the National Library of Scotland https://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/102743092)

The Repository is in two series. We have three books from the first  and two from the second. Grateful that the tune contents pages were there, I sorted out which pages belonged where, then catalogued them. Oh, my fingers flew. But the last one that I managed to catalogue before 5 pm yesterday, simply didn’t want to play fair. The catalogue entry was done. But, without going into details, it wasn’t displaying properly.

I went home, had tea, opened the laptop and recatalogued that piece using the info I’d already entered.

No luck.

I removed the identifying sequential number and tried again.

Still no luck.

Maybe ‘something’ magical would happen to it overnight? It was too much to hope! Mr Davie, irascible as ever, did NOT want that book to appear properly in our catalogue.

Finally, my line-manager suggested trying to give it a different barcode. I have absolutely no idea why the system didn’t like the one I’d assigned it, but I did as suggested, and hey presto, we have Davie’s Caledonian Repository, Series 2, Book 2, properly catalogued and accessible.

So that left me with Series 2, Book 1 to do this morning. That book has all its pages, but the page numbering is, shall we say, a little quixotic.  Mr Davie has had the last laugh there.

Nonetheless, we do now have all five items in the Whittaker Library catalogue.  I like to think Davie would be a little bit pleased!

Banana Yoshimoto: The Premonition: heard on Audible

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Eccentric old house

I’m still new-fangled with this Audible book app. It told me I had a monthly credit to spend, so I had a look at the recommendations. Yoshimoto’s The Premonition sounded intriguing, from the blurb – and the cover art was attractive; proof that book design matters!

Had I walked into a bookshop and seen it, would I have bought it? I don’t know. I’d have been surrounded by appealing new titles, and I can’t say whether I’d have chosen this above all others. It’s quite short, compared to the other books I’ve listened to, and – frustratingly – it is not broken up into chapters. I find it easier to put a book down if I’ve come to a structural break.

It’s a strange, dreamlike book, set in or around Tokyo. It’s richly descriptive of its physical surroundings, but I got a bit tired of reading about Yayoi’s brother’s straight back, the set of his shoulders and the way he walked!

Yayoi, the heroine is paradoxically both clairvoyant after a fashion (the word ‘clairvoyant’ isn’t used, but what is a clairvoyant if not someone who has premonitions?) and amnesiac, having lost all childhood memories after a traumatic incident. She knows that there’s something she doesn’t know. She has two loving parents; a wonderful brother a couple of years younger than her, whom she adores; and a completely eccentric young aunt who lives alone in a ramshackle house, from which she somehow emerges sane and tidy enough to work as a school music teacher every day … except when it rains.

We never find out quite why the house has been allowed to become so dirty and run-down (was there no-one to help her learn how to run a home?); why the aunt never seems to cook proper meals; or why she seems so dreamy and other-wordly. It takes a while to work out why the heroine feels so drawn to her.

There are loose ends. What was the significance of the heroine intuiting that someone had killed a baby in the leaky bath of the temporary accomodation that her own family rented during a house renovation? This seems to be completely unrelated to anything else in the story. And why did the aunt not like going out in the rain? Most particularly, once the heroine had worked out her real relationships to her brother and aunt, you’re left wondering why she hadn’t been told before.

Japanese mountain volcano peak
Image by kimura2 from Pixabay

At the end of the novel, Yayoi has pieced together the story, with the help of her aunt/sister. But what will become of the changed relationship with her brother? And how will the aunt/sister resume a romantic relationship with another young man, who had until recently been a classroom pupil? From a British vantage-point, all I could think about was child protection policies, ethical breaches and the involvement of social services, the teaching council and potentially the police. My knowledge of Japanese culture is so minimal that I don’t know if such a situation would be viewed differently there.

Discovering the truth may not make things any easier

So, if I had to summarise the book in one line, it would be this:- ‘Discovering the truth may not make things any easier.’

I’m not sure what I’ll read next, but perhaps I’ll opt for something a little more conventional!

Flashbacks no.14, Thomas Nelson and Sons

Posted on by Dr Karen E McAulay
Picture of book cover

‘Audible’ books are great for someone who is trying to rest their eyes. But the problem starts when the book you want to read isn’t on Audible! Only being able to read a few pages at a time made reading this book a bit more of an endurance test than it needed to be. It wasn’t difficult reading in terms of comprehension – just a bit of an effort for my left eye without the assistance of the right one, which will take a few more weeks to catch up!

Thomas Nelson & Sons: Memories of an Edinburgh Publishing House, ed. Heather Holmes and David Finkelstein (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001) ; Flashbacks series no.14 (Book cover shown above)

In the final pages of the book I’ve recently submitted to my publisher, I have referred to Thomas Nelson and Sons, the Edinburgh publisher. In connection with the research behind that book, I had acquired a copy of the paperback edited by Heather Holmes and David Finkelstein some months ago, but I didn’t read it at the time – because it was clearly not going to inform me about editorial decisions of the sort I was writing about. Nonetheless, I did want to read it at some stage, and I made a start last weekend.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I learned a lot more about what it was like working in the print works, as recalled by four different individuals who were time-served printers – but I didn’t learn a huge amount more about publishing decisions in general, and there was nothing at all about publishing music. Nonetheless, it was useful; I’ve got a lot more background, and a few more facts and figures. Moreover, it was helpful to read about the demise of Thomas Nelson and Sons in the 1960s, the same decade that saw the decline of Scotland’s music publishing industry.

The ‘Flashbacks’ series is (or was) published by Tuckwell Press in association with SAPPHIRE (the Scottish Archive of Print and Publishing History Records) and The European Ethnological Research Centre. The latter sponsored the series, c/o the Royal Museums of Scotland. I think the National Museums of Scotland publishing page may be out of date, since it says there are six Flashbacks publications to date, yet the book I’ve just read is no.14, and was published in 2001. So far as I can make out, the series ended around 2004, and I think the SAPPHIRE oral history project ended about five years after that. (There are articles by Finkelstein, Sarah Bromage and Alistair McCleery dating from 2002 and 2009.)

As it happens, this was exactly the kind of book that I needed right now. Whilst I’m temporarily out of action, it’s useful to read around a subject without the pressure of needing to take notes. I can do the detailed scholarly work later!