Ephemera Bound Together

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GMT20210609-200138_Recording_1686x720.mp4 (131.2 MB)

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2021-06-09

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Abstract

Ephemera, transitory materials that were not intended to be preserved or kept, often capture dynamics and activities that other sources do not. The Robbins Collection and Research Center in Religious and Civil Law has a small number of manuscript volumes that consist of ephemeral materials that were bound together, thus preserving early ephemera and, more unusually, in the context within which they were first used and understood.

Description

Ephemera, transitory materials that were not intended to be preserved or kept, often capture dynamics and activities that other sources do not. The Robbins Collection and Research Center in Religious and Civil Law has a small number of manuscript volumes that consist of ephemeral materials that were bound together, thus preserving early ephemera and, more unusually, in the context within which they were first used and understood. Robbins MS 232 is a collection of Philippe-Auguste Merlin’s drafts of speeches to the French court of appeals between 1801 and 1804, which were the backs of letters, envelopes, announcements, and other ephemera. MS 174 is a mishmash of instructions, decisions, reports, correspondence, treatises, poems, discussions of the Jesuits, an index of Jewish observance, and calligraphy practice from the desk of an eighteenth-century cardinal. MS 180, on the other hand, is a coherent grouping of drafts and fair copies of resolutions, consultations, and proposals — complete with broadsheets containing the printer’s proof and final copy — for an edict regarding rape that was issued in the Papal States in 1736. Because they contain so much ephemera, these volumes provide unique windows into law, politics, and power in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France and Italy, but they also pose definite challenges to providing description and access. Here, I propose discussing the problems faced and decisions reached in the invisible work of making these materials visible and available for research and study.

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Ephemera

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http://hdl.handle.net/11213/18009

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2021 Conference