Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) of Newcastle upon Tyne is familiar for his engravings of north-eastern wildlife and fauna. His best-known book, A History of British Birds, was first published in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1797. What is perhaps less known is that Bewick was head of a business that provided more every-day items for local residents. In 1767, he was apprenticed to the engraver, Ralph Beilby (1744–1817), and became Beilby's partner in 1777, a partnership which lasted until 1797, after which Bewick set up on his own. The books connected with the partnership and Bewick's own business survive in the Tyne and Wear Archives (TWAM) in Newcastle; these include ledgers, cash and purchase books, day and weekly workbooks, subscription and debt books, as well as letters to Bewick and members of his family in the early nineteenth century, and various miscellaneous papers relating both to the family and to the business. The records cover a period from 1752 – when Beilby ran the business and before Bewick became an apprentice – until well into the nineteenth century; customers included local gentry, shopkeepers and professional clients, for whom Bewick (or rather his apprentices, in most cases) produced items such as visiting cards, seals, tickets for events, letter heads for tradesmen's bills, and other miscellaneous domestic items.

This study deals with the period from 1777 until the turn of the century, and with transactions with members of the musical community, both in the North- East and further afield.

Introduction

The oldest known Spanish ballad, La dama y el pastor (The lady and the shepherd), in which a high-ranking lady attempts to seduce a lowly shepherd, has survived for more than six centuries. First written down in 1421 by a Majorcan law student, Jaume Olesa, it appeared in print in the sixteenth century as, El villano vil (The lowly peasant). This early Spanish ballad has travelled far away from Spain as part of the Sephardi ballad tradition of Morocco and the Eastern Mediterranean. Its journey is typical of the dozens of medieval Spanish texts that make up the Sephardi ballad repertoire. Yet although these romansas (ballads) have remained remarkably faithful to their medieval Spanish roots, they have also evolved and taken on new characteristics to form a rich, vibrant, and unique tradition. As a result of the widespread pogroms that took place in Spain in 1391 and the 1492 Decree of Expulsion, tens of thousands of Jews chose to leave Spain rather than convert to Christianity. They were forbidden to take with them ‘gold or silver or minted coins’ (Edwards 1994: 52) but they took a rich and varied oral tradition of songs and folktales to their new homelands in Morocco and the Ottoman Empire where Jewish women continued to sing the ballads they had learnt in Spain.

The Spanish philologist Menendez Pidal has commented upon the medieval roots of those songs:

In Prague to Stay

After completing his studies in Pilsen and enjoying a vacation with his parents in Růžkovy Lhotice, Smetana resolved to dedicate his life to music and continue his studies in Prague. In August 1843, he visited Mladá Boleslav, where the Kolář family had recently moved, and his determination only grew stronger. Reuniting with Kateřina after months of separation brought him immense joy:

Upon returning home, Smetana faced the challenging task of sharing his aspiration for a musical career with his family. Initially opposed, his father eventually relented, though not without expressing concern for Smetana's future and imposing numerous suggestions and conditions. Like any well-meaning parent, he hoped his son would pursue a more stable path, perhaps as an official or by taking over the family business. Support from Professor Smetana, who believed his cousin could bring glory to the Czech nation through music, was crucial in bolstering Smetana's confidence. Although his father agreed in principle, he provided no financial support, forcing Smetana into years of struggle and hardship—challenges he would overcome through sheer determination.

In the decade between the publication of Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer) in November 1857 and his death in January 1868, Stifter produced a body of work whose idiosyncratic style and peculiar narrative mode set it apart from his previous writing. In these texts, a starker and more austere form dominated by a highly artificial language of staid rhythms and methodical regularity contributes to a strikingly desolate and often plodding prose marked by ritual and repetition. The tendency toward recursive narration along with the stubborn rearticulation of speech acts, gestures, and superfluous actions result in stories that are empty of conventional content but at the same time full—of narrative excursiveness, of attention to minutiae and mannerism, of language in and of itself. The linguistic excess of these works contrasts sharply with their scarcity of action and significant occurrences, making the reading experience trying, even for admirers of Stifter's famously eventless style. Indeed, for this reason, the late work has until recently often been sidelined, if not simply ignored, by critics and readers alike.

This volume forms the first element of the fourth volume of the new history of the Isle of Man, produced under the auspices of the Centre for Manx Studies at the University of Liverpool. It covers the period from the early fifteenth century to 1830 and is focused on political and constitutional aspects of the Island's history. Companion volumes covering the evolution of the natural landscape (edited by Richard Chiverrell and Geoffrey Thomas), the medieval period (edited by Seán Duffy and Harold Mytum), and the modern period (edited by John Belchem) have previously been published by Liverpool University Press.

As will immediately be clear, this volume and its companion are a collaborative effort involving a large group of scholars from the Island and beyond. In some cases, their contributions are worthy of particular note as we record with sadness that they did not live to enjoy the publication of their work: William Cain, Ulla Corkill, Nigel G. Crowe, Jennifer Platten, J.R. Roscow, R.L. Thomson and Nigel Yates. This preface also allows for recognition to be given to those who have helped coordinate the efforts of the contributors, especially amongst the editorial team Prof. Harold Mytum who has deftly maintained the momentum of the project overall alongside other recently published or soon-to-be-published volumes and the other work of the Centre for Manx Studies, and Dr Mike Hoy who has taken particular trouble to support the development of the Island-based contributions and played a pivotal role in coordinating support for the project there, including working with Charles Guard (formerly Administrator of the Manx Heritage Foundation, now Culture Vannin, whose generosity and commitment to the project is also acknowledged) on the identification of the extensive range of illustrations which support the text and ensuring the necessary permissions were secured.

The eighteenth century was, in many respects, a golden age of organ building in Britain. Many churches and cathedrals had lost their instruments during the English Civil Wars, and while there had been a move to replace them following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, most of these same institutions sought to improve or replace these instruments over the course of the eighteenth century. Others had new organs installed with the aim of improving the quality of music that accompanied worship. This increase in demand led to a growth in the number of organ builders.

In many cases, those engaged to construct or rebuild these instruments would reside a considerable distance from the town or city in which the organ was located and were unable to provide regular maintenance. Some organists were able to tune their own instruments, and perhaps even make minor repairs; for instance, Henry Valentine, organist of St Martin's Church, Stamford Baron, Northamptonshire, was in 1725 paid ‘for mending the organ’. Even so, organs would still require periodic servicing from a professional builder. For that reason, the offer from of work from a visiting organ builder could be a Godsend, saving on the cost of engaging a more distant professional. In some cases, however, people would be engaged to make repairs without limited proof of their ability.

Aberdeen's St Paul's chapel had an organ built by John Donaldson of Newcastle. The piano-maker Stephen Moore was given permission to repair this instrument in 1798.

Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters (My Great-Grandfather's Notebook; hereafter: Mappe) is perhaps the greatest example of Adalbert Stifter's notoriously finicky writing habits. The text first appeared in installments in the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode (Viennese Journal for Art, Literature, Theater, and Fashion) in 1841–42 (hereafter Journalfassung), and Stifter then reworked it for inclusion in the third volume of his Studien collection (Studies) in 1847 (hereafter Studienfassung). Stifter was typical for authors of the nineteenth century in republishing his works in book form, but his republications often comprised radically different works replete with new titles and major insertions, deletions, and emendations within the text. Nevertheless, the second publication usually marked the end of his work on his stories. This is not the case with the Mappe. Stifter revisited the text again in 1864, hoping to turn it into a standalone, two-volume work. After scrapping the third version, he attempted a fourth version in 1867, which he continued to edit in early 1868 on his deathbed. Despite some substantial changes across all four versions, the basic plot remains the same. The unnamed narrator returns to his childhood home and discovers his great-grandfather's notebook in the attic, whose contents he excerpts and transmits to the nondiagetic reader of Stifter's text. The great-grandfather Augustinus, known simply as the Doctor, had picked up the habit of journaling from his neighbor, the Obrist (Colonel), who consoles and soon befriends him after an aborted suicide attempt. The Doctor records his thoughts and daily events, and then seals the text. After several years have elapsed, he breaks the seals and rereads his entries, and is able better to appreciate his personal growth and the unexpected directions his life has taken.

Jan Löwenbach's biography of Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, originally titled Bedřich Smetana: Composer and Leader, is a remarkable scholarly achievement— decades in the making during the tumultuous middle of the twentieth century, shaped by the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, yet left unpublished and forgotten in a California archive until its rediscovery in the early 2020s. This introduction outlines Löwenbach's career and his lifelong dedication to Smetana's legacy. It also traces the complex history of the biography's creation and publication and highlights the significant contributions of several key figures: Löwenbach's wife, Vilma Löwenbach (née Zucker; 1891–1975), The New York Times critic Olin Downes (1886–1955), English translator Ruth Martin (1914–2000), and Czech American composer Karel Boleslav Jirák (1891–1972).

Given the fragmented nature of the archival material and the absence of a single authoritative source, the present editors and translators have substantially revised the original texts of Löwenbach, aligning this edition with extant Czech and English drafts—and, where necessary, with external sources. At the same time, we have aimed to preserve the biography's readability by avoiding extensive editorial commentary. In this process, we see ourselves as collaborators in a long, layered history of authorship, joining a lineage of contributors whose work is inseparable from Löwenbach's own.

—in which we consider the view Döblin took of human personality and the ways he presented it in particular works. Here, after clarifying the reasons for focusing on the notion of “person” rather than “self” or “ego,” we take a close look at two of his early novels—Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun (1916; The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, 1991) and Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine (1918; Wadzek's Fight against the Steam Turbine, 2020)—in the first section, and at how he evokes the character of family relations in two later works, Pardon wird nicht gegeben (1935; Men without Mercy, 1976) and Hamlet (1956), in the second and third. The chapter then concludes with an exploration of personalities, relationships and the sense of human destiny in works of the 1920s, including in particular Berlin Alexanderplatz.

A Social Animal

The opening pages of Berlin Alexanderplatz present a human figure in abject isolation. Released from Tegel Prison, Franz Biberkopf lingers outside the gates, paralysed with fear. The way he is experiencing this moment is indicated by an expression normally used for animals being returned to the wild: “Man setzte ihn wieder aus” (They were setting him free again, BA 15). While the predictable ordered routine continues for those who remain in captivity, he must confront the intimidating uncertainties of life outside. We are told that his punishment is just beginning.