Manuscript literary magazine for coterie circulation by Charles Braithwaite with a powerful essay on the efficacy of reading by the prominent English Quaker minister (and mother of the editor) Anna Braithwaite. Written and edited by her son Charles Lloyd Braithwaite in his late teens in their native Kendal (modern-day Cumbria) his mother Anna’s essay develops a subtle argument about the moral power of well-chosen reading materials: ‘Reading, certainly gratifies in itself, but when at the same time if affords stores by which we may purchase the highest and most refined delights of society - which it gives a variety & a fertility to our reflections moment, & when it satisfies a laudable ambition... it can surely be of no little importance to be directed to the surest means of augmenting the sum of enjoyment by such ennobling additions.’ Of course Braithwaite also presents the opposite outcome as ‘Books are much degraded when considered as the mere panders of curiosity.’
In keeping with the Braithwaite’s transatlantic links, alongside this essay (pp69-65 - c1000 words) there is an extract from William Ellis’s Missionary Tour Through Hawaii (1823) dealing with his visit to the Island of Tabuai and the journal closes with Queries, a poem and an injunction to the reader that ‘communications should be sent before the 20th of the month.’
Anna Braithwaite (1788-1859) was born in Birmingham into a Quaker banking family (her brother was the poet Charles Lloyd; her sister married Christopher Wordsworth); she married Isaac Braithwaite thus uniting two Quaker dynasties and repeatedly travelled to the USA in the 1820s to avoid the schism created by the views of Elias Hicks, publishing her Letters and observations relating to the controversy respecting the doctrines of Elias Hicks in 1824. Charles Lloyd Braithwaite (1811-1893) was himself married in Philadelphia during one of his own visits to the USA in the 1850s; he worked as a woollen manufacturer.
DESCRIPTION: Folio sized manuscript journal (19x29.5cm). Calligraphic manuscript title and contents list to buff thick paper wraps, dated ‘2nd Mo 1st 1828’ - February 1st 1828(?) and seemingly priced (top left) at an exorbitant 21 shillings. Sewn through spine fold; outer leaves very dusty. On the first leaf (p65) this issue is stated as ‘No 5 Vol 3rd’. Written in a single easily legible cursive hand, c2000 words in total; paginated pp65-80. The longest article is in the form of Anna Braithwaite’s long letter, signed ‘A.B.’ but written in her son’s hand.
We can find no other institutional examples of this Magazine.
