Delaware Valley Archivists Group

From Margaret: Today’s book club members may enjoy viewing images related to the Germantown Book Club formed in 1870. Twenty-two women from the Morris, Haines, Hacker, Wistar, and Chew families joined to discuss recent literature early that year. Book Club Members, 1870 Martha Canby, a founding member, recorded the books under discussion in two small notebooks now in the Morris Family Papers. The second notebook started in 1901 has an updated list of members with stalwarts like Martha continuing their membership with new participants from the Haines and Wistar families.  Interestingly, Martha’s daughter Elizabeth (also known as “Bessie”), who lived with her parents, is not listed. Book Club Members, 1901 Titles discussed in the beginning included the memoirs of Madame Recamier, Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, and Tennyson’s poetry. Reading List, 1870 Autobiographies and biographies were staples. Martha indicated which books she sold perhaps in an effort to slim down her collection. Today’s readers may admire the pace of one book a week – a dedication aided perhaps by no distractions of television or DVDs. Martha’s final entry was made in 1916. From Dana: I visited the Germantown Historical Society to see if I could find any information on the Germantown Book Club, but there were no records of the club, perhaps because, as you note, it was mostly a family affair.  I did, however, find evidence that book clubs and literary societies were quite the fashion in Germantown during this period.  The Germantown Historical Society has record of several popular book clubs operating in the area during the late 19th century, including one large group known as the Washington Irving Literary Society.  While some were co-ed societies, many were strictly women’s organizations.  Reflecting on the Germantown Book Club and others like it brought to mind issues of women’s education during the Victorian era.  For Martha Canby and her fellow book club members, literacy was clearly an important part of their lives—one doesn’t remain dedicated to a scholarly book club for nearly fifty years without a commitment to education!  In some ways, this focus on learning runs counter to what we know about traditional women’s roles in Victorian society.  As Suzanne Fagence Cooper writes in The Victorian Woman (2001), many Victorians adhered to the “separate spheres” model of gender relations—men were to go out into the world to earn money to support the family, while women were to nurture and educate the children, manage and maintain a cheerful household, and provide support for their husbands.  Victorians, however, seem to have placed some value on women’s literacy and education.  In her book Educating the Proper Woman Reader (2004), Jennifer Phegley writes that women’s reading habits came to represent the nation.  Phegley writes that G.H. Lewes, editor of The Cornhill literary magazine, pointed to “women’s reading practices as a vital indicator of a nation’s cultural development,” and, after citing that Roman women had also been avid readers, sought to “reassure male readers that intellectual women are not a new and dangerous breed, but the byproduct of an advanced civilization,” (Phegley, 77-78).  For Victorians, a literate women meant an evolved society.  In addition, a woman needed to be educated in order to properly raise her children.  Evidence of this can be found in many of the etiquette books that were so popular during the Victorian era.  One such book, written by Mrs. H.O. Ward, was entitled Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society, Customs, Manners, Morals, and Home Culture.  Published in Philadelphia in 1878, the book spanned a voluminous 574 pages and covered such topics as calling cards, dinner parties, and polite conversation.  Mrs. Ward wrote that women’s education was necessary within the home, as “when we remember how large a share of the training of her sons falls to the lot of a mother, we see how important it is that a woman’s reflective and reasoning faculties should be well-developed before such responsibilities are thrust upon her,” (408).  However, Mrs. Ward was sure to include discouragement against too much education for women, as “the development of [young women’s] physical growth is checked by excess of mental labor,” (409).  Some education, apparently, was appropriate, but too much could have troublesome consequences.