The child writer: graphic literacy and the Scottish educational system, 1700–1820

ABSTRACT

The story of Enlightenment literacy is often reconstructed from textbooks and manuals, with the implicit focus being what children were reading. But far less attention has been devoted to how they mastered the scribal techniques that allowed them to manage knowledge on paper. Focusing on Scotland, handwritten manuscripts are used to reveal that children learned to write in a variety of modes, each of which required a set of graphic techniques. These modes and skills constituted a pervasive form of graphic literacy. The article first explains how children learned to write for different reasons in diverse domestic and institutional settings. It then explores how they acquired graphic literacy through the common techniques of copying, commonplacing, composing, bookkeeping, scribbling and drawing. In the end we shall have a more detailed picture of how children used writing as an indispensible mode of learning during the Enlightenment.

KEYWORDS:

• Eighteenth- century Scottish education
• manuscript culture
• visual culture
• material culture
• writing techniques

Notes

¹ Ruth B. Bottigheimer, ‘The Book on the Bookseller's Shelf and The Book in the English Child's Hand’, in Culturing the Child 1690–1914: Essays in Honor of Mitzi Myers, ed. Donelle Ruwe (Lanhan MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 3–28; May Hilton and Jill Shefrin (eds.), Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), see especially Hilton and Shefrin’s introduction; Susan M. Stabile, Memory's Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).

² For notable studies on the history of Scottish education during the long eighteenth century, see: James Grant, History of the Burgh and Parish Schools of Scotland (London: William Collins, 1876); John Edgar, History of Early Scottish Education (Edinburgh: J. Thin, 1893); Alexander Wright, The History of Education and of the Old Parish Schools of Scotland (Edinburgh: J. Menzies, 1898); John Strong, A History of Secondary Education in Scotland: An Account of Scottish Secondary Education from Early Times to the Education Act Of 1908 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909). For influential late twentieth-century histories that cover all or part of the long eighteenth century, see: Alexander Law, Education in Edinburgh in the Eighteenth Century (London: University of London Press, 1965); James M. Beale, A History of the Burgh and Parochial Schools of Fife, ed. Donald J. Withrington (Edinburgh: Scottish Council for Research in Education, 1983); Robert Anderson, Education and the Scottish People, 1750–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). For a parallel study of England, see Steven Cowan, The Growth of Public Literacy in Eighteenth-Century England (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London 2012).

³ I have found E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005) and Stabile, Memory’s Daughters, particularly helpful on this point.

⁴ Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (London: Routledge, 2007). Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) and The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

⁵ Ingold (2007) repeatedly underscores this point and it rests on his longstanding interest in how the act of copying – either verbal or graphic – plays a core role in learning and human cognition. See Tim Ingold, ‘From the Transmission of Representation to the Education of Attention’, in The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology versus Ethnography, ed. Harvey Whitehouse (New York: Berg, 2001), 113–53.

⁶ For more on the joint material and visual emphasis of Ingold’s anthropology, see his Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (London: Routledge, 2011), especially Chapter 2, ‘Materials against Materiality’, 19–32.

⁷ The classic formulation of this point is T. C. Smout, ‘Born Again at Cambuslang: New Evidence on Popular Religion and Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’, Past and Present 97 (1982): 114–27.

⁸ M. O. Grenby, The Child Reader: 1700–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Arianne Baggerman and Rudolf Dekker, Child of the Enlightenment: Revolutionary Europe Reflected in a Boyhood Diary, trans.Diane Webb (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

⁹ For household education, Marjorie Plant, The Domestic Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1952), Ch. 1; John Mason, ‘Scottish Charity Schools in the Eighteenth Century’, Scottish Historical Review 33: 1 (1954): 1–13.

¹⁰ The Westminster Shorter Catechism was set in 1648 by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. It was published in various forms throughout the eighteenth century to promote piety and literacy. See The Confession of Faith (Edinburgh: Lumisden & Robertson, 1736); The Confession of Faith, and the Larger and Shorter Catechism (Edinburgh: E. Robertson, 1757); The A, B, C, with the Shorter Catechism (Aberdeen: Chalmers, 1737). All of these texts went through multiple editions.

¹¹ Judith Bailey Slagle, Joanna Baillie: A Literary Life (London: Associated University Press, 2002), 47.

¹² John Warden, A Spelling Book (Edinburgh: Kincaid & Donaldson, 1753); Arthur Masson, An English Spelling Book (Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour & Neill, 1757); Gilles Ker, A New Spelling Book (Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour & Neill, 1757); James Gray, A Concise Spelling Book, Seventh Edition (Edinburgh: Caw, 1794); and Alexander Barrie, A Spelling and Pronouncing Catechism ([Edinburgh]: 1796). These books went through numerous editions. For a helpful overview of eighteenth-century Scottish catechisms and primers, see Alexander Law, ‘Scottish Schoolbooks of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Studies in Scottish Literature 18: 1 (1983): 1–71.

¹³ Instructions for making and preserving red and black ink are given in T. H. [‘A Lover of Children’], The Child’s Guide (Aberdeen: Chalmers, 1796), 58–60. Instructions for making ink and pens were also included in books meant for older children. See George Fisher, The Instructor: Or, Young man’s Best Companion (Edinburgh: Alston, 1763), 31, 37, 45.

¹⁴ William Chambers and Robert Chambers, Memoir of Robert Chambers with Autobiographical Reminiscences of William Chambers (Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1872), 47.

¹⁵ The coeducational history of Scottish burgh schools is addressed in Grant, History of the Burgh and Parish Schools, 535–7.

¹⁶ Quoted on p. 69 in Sandra McCallum, A Case Study of the Moore Family, with Particular Reference to the Extended Tour Abroad of (Sir) John Moore with His Father Dr. Moore (1772–1776) (unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2014).

¹⁷ Edward Cocker, Cockers Arithmetick (London: T. Passinger and T. Lacy, 1678); James Paterson, Scots Arithmetician (Edinburgh: Joshua van Solingen and John Colmar, 1685); Duncan K. Wilson, The History of Mathematical Teaching in Scotland to the End of the Eighteenth Century (London: University of London Press, 1935).

¹⁸ Alexander Macghie, Principles of Book Keeping Explain’d (Edinburgh: Watson, 1718); Robert Lundin, The Reason of Accompting by Debitor and Creditor (Edinburgh: publisher unknown, 1718); Alexander Malcolm, A New Treatise of Arithmetick and Book-Keeping (Edinburgh: Mosman, 1718); Robert Colinson, Idea Rationaria or The Perfect Acomptant (Edinburgh: Lindsay, 1683).

¹⁹ Popular textbooks for these subjects were: William Panton, The Tyro’s Guide to Arithmetic and Mensuration (Edinburgh: Reid, 1771); Alexander Ewing, A Synopsis of Practical Mathematics (Edinburgh: Smellie, 1771); Alexander Ewing, Institutes of Arithmetic (Edinburgh: Caddel, 1773); William Wilson, Elements of Navigation (Edinburgh: Robinson, 1773); and Batty Langley and Thomas Langley, The Builder’s Jewel, Twelfth Edition (Edinburgh: Clark, 1768). For geographical instruction, see Charles W. J. Withers, ‘Toward a Historical Geography of Enlightenment Scotland’, in The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Reinterpretation Paul Wood, ed. (Rochester: University of Rochester, 2000), 63–97, especially p. 72 to 74. A helpful reconstruction of the eighteenth-century curriculum taught in Fyfe’s parish and burgh schools is given in Beale, A History of the Burgh and Parochial Schools of Fife, 122–77.

²⁰ Lindy Moore, ‘The Value of Feminine Culture: Community Involvement in the Provision of Schooling for Girls in Eighteenth-Century Scotland’, in Barclay and Simonton (2013), 97–114 (see especially p. 100); Grant, History of the Burgh and Parish Schools, 527–531; Andrew Bain, Education in Stirlingshire from the Reformation to the Act of 1872 (London: University of London Press, 1965), 131.

²¹ Sam McKinstry and Marie Fletcher, ‘The Personal Account Books of Sir Walter Scott’, Accounting Historians Journal 29: 2 (2002): 59–89, see p. 64. A good example of a folio-sized orthographic poster appears as the second sheet of Edmund Butterworth, New Sets of Copies in Alphabetical Order (Dumfries: 1778), National Library of Scotland (hereafter NLS) RB.s.447. For further examples of Butterworth’s orthographic engravings, see Edmund Butterworth, Universal Penman (Edinburgh: N.G. Robinson, 1785).

²² Copybooks of the Atlantic world are explored in Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write, 286–92 and Aileen Douglas, ‘Making their Mark: Eighteenth-Century Writing-Masters and their Copy-Books’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 24 (2001): 145–59. For copy specimens made in the American colonies, see Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write, 287–8.

²³ The classic text on printed copybooks, mainly for masters living in England, is Ambrose Heal, The English Writing-Masters and the Copy-Books, 1570–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931). For a wider European perspective, see David P. Becker, The Practice of Letters: The Hofer Collection of Writing Manuals 1514–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1997).

²⁴ Jean Greig, Copybook belonging to Jean Greig (1763), Bound MS, NLS, Greig Papers, Dep. 190, Box 3; Robert Richardson, Copybook (1778), Bound MS, NLS MS 20,987.

²⁵ Robert Anderson, ‘Schools and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth Century’, Past & Present 109 (1985): 176–203, see especially p. 179. Elizabeth Benger, Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton, Volume 1 (London: Longman, 1818), 36–7. Somerville ended up teaching herself Latin with the help of a kindly uncle, the cleric Dr Somerville. Mary Somerville, Queen of Science: Personal Reflection of Mary Somerville (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2001), 29–30.

²⁶ Colin Buchanan, The Writing-Master and Accountant’s Assistant (Glasgow: Chapman, 1798), frontispiece.

²⁷ The quote is taken from the nineteenth copy of David Drummond’s 1694 will and testament housed in the special collections of Innerpeffray Library in Perthshire, Scotland. Many thanks to Lara Haggarty for pointing out this information to me.

²⁸ Ewing, A Synopsis of Practical Mathematics, iii.

²⁹ Lindy Moore, ‘Urban Schooling in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Scotland’, in The Edinburgh History of Education in Scotland, ed. R. Anderson, M. Freeman and L. Freeman (Edinburgh: Edinburgh History of Education in Scotland, forthcoming).

³⁰ Robert Hamilton (1743–1829), professor of natural philosophy and mathematics at the University of Aberdeen (Marischal College), served as Perth Academy’s rector before his university appointment. John West (1756–1817), who taught as an assistant to Professor Nicolas Vilant (1737–1807), the chair of mathematics at St Andrews University, unsuccessfully tried to secure the mathematics mastership at Perth Academy early in his career. See respectively: Alex D. D. Craik and Alonso Roberts, ‘Mathematics Teaching, Teachers and Students at St Andrews University, 1765–1858’, History of Universities 24: 1&2 (2009), 206–79, see especially p. 226; Rachel M. Hart, ‘Letters and Papers of Dr Robert Hamilton’, Northern Scotland 9: 1 (1989), 83–5.

³¹ The Perth Academy’s curriculum and its commitment to fine writing are summarised in ‘Account of the Academy’, printed at the end of William Morrison, ed., Memorabilia of the City of Perth (Perth: Morison, 1806), 345–9.

³² James Dennistoun, ed., Memoirs of Sir Robert Strange, Knt., Engraver, Vol. 1 (London: Longman, 1855), 11.

³³ Thomas Ruddiman, Mr Ruddiman’s Rudiments of the Latin Tongue (Edinburgh: Murray & Chochran, 1779), and Grammaticae Latinae Institutiones [Twelfth Edition] (Edinburgh: Dickson & Creech, 1790); James Barclay, The Rudiments of the Latin Tongue (Edinburgh: Barclay, 1758); Alexander Adam, Rudiments of Latin and English, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: Gordon, Bell, Dickson, Creech, Elliot & Balfour, 1772). Numerous editions of these primers were printed.

³⁴ Chambers and Chambers, Memoir of Robert Chambers, 57.

³⁵ The practice of learning Latin orally in schools is raised in Alexander Law, ‘Latin in Scottish Schools in the 18th and 19th Centuries’, The Bibliotheck 15: 3 (1988): 63–75, see p. 69.

³⁶ Patrick Cramsie, The Story of Graphic Design: From the Invention of Writing to the Birth of Digital Design (London: British Library, 2010), 111–35.

³⁷ James Todd, The School-Boy and Young Gentleman’s Assistant, Being a Plan of Education (Edinburgh: publisher unknown, 1748), 67.

³⁸ Andrew Lawrie, The Merchant Maiden Hospital Magazine (Edinburgh: Darling, 1779), 43–4.

³⁹ For the pictorial aspects of the typography in British primers, particularly those that addressed geographical topics, see Robert J. Mayhew, ‘Materialist Hermeneutics, Textuality, and the History of Geography: Print Spaces in British Geography, c. 1500–1900’, Journal of Historical Geography 33: 3 (2007): 466–88. A helpful overview of the visual elements of textbooks is given in James Hartley and Joyce L. Harris, ‘Reading the Typography of a Text’, in Literacy in African American Communities ed. J. L. Harris, A. G. Kamhi and K. E. Pollack (Mahwah: Erlbaum, 2001), 109–25.

⁴⁰ The materials and skills required to make paints are explained throughout Claude Boutet, The Art of Painting in Miniature (London: Hodges, 1739), with p. 107 being a particularly good example.

⁴¹ Hannah Robertson, The Young Ladies School of Arts, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Ruddiman, 1767).

⁴² Nicholas Tromans, David Wilkie: The People’s Painter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 61–461. For the Foulis Academy, see David Murray, Robert and Andrew Foulis and the Glasgow Press with Some Account of the Glasgow Academy of Fine Arts (Glasgow: Maclehose, 1913), and the manuscript letters of the Foulis Press housed in the Murray Collection, GUL, MS Murray 506. The Trustee’s Academy was serving a thriving art market in and around Edinburgh. See Stana Nenadic, ‘The Enlightenment in Scotland and the Popular Passion for Portraits’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 21: 2 (1998): 175–92, see especially p. 177.

⁴³ Baggerman and Dekker, Child of the Enlightenment, 87–9.

⁴⁴ James Dunbar, A Volume Completed by James Dunbar in 1710 containing Arithmetic, Introduction to Algebra, and A More Compendious Way of Writeing than Ordinar Called the Short Hand, Making Use of Farthing’s Alphabet (1710), Bound MS, NLS Acc 5706/11.

⁴⁵ John Greig, Pocket-Book Belonging to John Greig (1762–1764), NLS Dep 190, Greig Papers, Box 3.

⁴⁶ The use of Ladies Pocket Books as information management devices is addressed throughout Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

⁴⁷ Each weekly calendar featured in The Ladies Complete Pocket-Book (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Printed by T. Saint, for Whitfield and Co., and W. Creech, Edinburgh, 1780) appears as table of seven blank boxes running down the entire length of the page, with each box being labelled with the day of the week and the date. The top of every weekly table reads ‘Appointments, Memorandums, and Observations’.

⁴⁸ The most detailed study of eighteenth-century manuscript textbooks copied by students is Thomas Knoles, Rick Kennedy and Lucia Zaucha Knoles (eds.), Student Notebooks at Colonial Harvard: Manuscripts and Educational Practice, 1650–1740 (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2003). The book includes several helpful photographs of copied textbooks. See also the photograph of a copied mathematics textbook in Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write, 295.

⁴⁹ James Fowler, Schoolbook of James Fowler, Strathpeffer (1780), Bound MS, NLS MS 14,284, f. 136.

⁵⁰ Robert Jackson, Geometry Notebook of Robert Jackson, A Schoolboy (1788), Bound MS, NLS MS 9156 [Anonymous], Perth Academy Notebook (1780s–1790s), Bound MS, NLS MS 14,291 [Anonymous], Perth Academy Notebooks, 3 Vols (1787), Bound MS, NLS MS 14,294-6.

⁵¹ Some copied textbooks are so neat that it is difficult to tell if a child or professional transcriber made them. A case in point is [?] Carre, A Treatise of Algebra 1458 (17[43]), Bound MS, NLS MS 5455. ‘Carre his book’ is written on the title page but it is uncertain who, precisely, copied it.

⁵² The Latin texts used by grammar schools are discussed in Chapter 3 of Law, Education in Edinburgh, and Bain, Education in Stirlingshire, 128. For the curriculum of the Glasgow Grammar School, see McCallum, Case Study of the Moore Family, 59–64.

⁵³ The connection between natural and textual knowledge in Scottish educational contexts is treated throughout Matthew Daniel Eddy, ‘Natural History, Natural Philosophy and Readership’, in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Vol. 2, ed. Stephen Brown and Warren McDougall (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 297–309.

⁵⁴ The pedagogical and mnemonic advantages of copied textbooks are underscored in Knoles, Kennedy and Knoles, Student Notebooks at Colonial Harvard.

⁵⁵ [Anonymous], Notebook of Juvenile Latin Verses and Exercises (1742–46), NLS Newhailes, MS.25413. [Anonymous], Notes Mainly on Classical Authors, Also Latin and Greek Verse and Prose Composition, Including Some Juvenile Exercises (1744–1787), Newhailes, MS. 24,516. For Edinburgh High School, see the EHS collection housed by the Edinburgh City Library.

⁵⁶ The Monro family Latin soirees are explained in Margaret Monro, The Professor’s Daughter: An Essay on Female Conduct by Alexander Monro (Primus), ed. P. A. G. Monro (Edinburgh: Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 1996), 3–4.

⁵⁷ Thomas Blacklock, Kalokagathia [n.d.] (Anonymous note-taker), Bound MS, EUL Dc.3.45; Thomas Blacklock, Kalokagathia [n.d.] (Anonymous note-taker), Bound MS, EUL La.III.80; Monro, The Professor’s Daughter.

⁵⁸ Margaret Monro, An Essay on Female Conduct Contain’d in Letters from a Father to His Daughter (c.1738), Bound MS, NLS MS 6658. Margaret Monro recopied the MS as An Essay on Female Conduct (1739), Bound MS, NLS MS 6659.

⁵⁹ For the Perth Academy curriculum, see again Morrison, Memorabilia. For sample notebooks see Anon. Bound MS (1780s–1790s), and Anon. Bound MSS (1787).

⁶⁰ Anon. Bound MS (1780s–1790s), f. 15v.

⁶¹ R. Macve and K. Hoskin, ‘Writing, Examining, Disciplining: The Genesis of Accounting's Modern Power’, in Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice, ed. T. Hopwood and P. Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 67–97.

⁶² From the late seventeenth century Scottish girls were taught accounting then went on to become merchants. Helen Dingwall, ‘The Power Behind the Merchant? Women and Economy in Late-Seventeenth Century Edinburgh’, in Women in Scotland c.1100-c.1750, ed. Elizabeth Ewan and Maureen M. Meikle (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999), 152–62.

⁶³ An exception to this trend is Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write, who underscores the direct link between writing and mathematics in books used in the British Empire. See especially pp. 293 to 296.

⁶⁴ Todd, The SchoolBoy and Young Gentleman’s Assistant, 71.

⁶⁵ The bookkeeping texts referenced by Todd were John Mair’s Book-Keeping Methodized (Edinburgh: T. & W. Ruddimans 1736) and William Webster’s An Essay on Book-Keeping According to the Italian Method (London, H. Meere for C. King in Westminster Hall, A Bettesworth in Paternoster Row, W. Mears without Temple Bar, and E. Symon at the Royal Exchange 1719).

⁶⁶ Buchanan, The Writing-Master, frontispiece.

⁶⁷ In addition to Mair, Book-Keeping Methodized, and Webster, Essay on Book-Keeping, other popular books were Macghie, Principles of Book Keeping; Lundin, Reason of Accompting; Malcolm, New Treatise of Arithmetick; Colinson, Idea Rationaria. During the last half of the century Mair’s book continued to be used as a textbook. William Gordon’s The Universal Accountant and Complete Merchant (Edinburgh: Donaldson & Reid, 1765) went through several editions as well. Overviews of accounting methods appeared in many compendia from the 1750s onwards. See Fisher, The Instructor.

⁶⁸ Robert Richardson of Pitfour, School Exercise Ledger (1776), Bound MS, NLS MS 20,985, and School Exercise Ledger (1777), Bound MS, NLS MS 20,986. Robert’s notebooks are held in the NLS collection of John Richardson, a successful merchant from Perth. A. R. B. Haldane, The Fishmonger of the Tay: John Richardson of Pether and Pitfour (Dundee: Abertay Historical Society, 1981).

⁶⁹ Robert Hamilton, An Introduction to Merchandise: Containing a Complete System of Arithmetic. A System of Algebra. Forms and Manner of Transacting Bills of Exchange. Book-keeping in various forms (Edinburgh: Elliot, 1788).

⁷⁰ Hamilton, Introduction to Merchandise, 492. Some of the skills used by adult accountants to extract numbers from different sources in eighteenth-century Britain are recounted in J. R. Edwards, ‘“Different from What Has Hitherto Appeared on this Subject’: John Clark, Writing Master and Accomptant, 1738’, Abacus 50: 2 (2014): 227–44.

⁷¹ For further examples of printed ledger pages, see the many examples given in James Scruton, The Practical Counting House; Or, Calculation and Accountantship Illustrated (Glasgow: Duncan, 1777).

⁷² Grenby, The Child Reader, 226.

⁷³ Jeane Masson is quoted in Ian J. Simpson, Education in Aberdeenshire before 1872 (PhD thesis, Aberdeen University, 1942), 206–7. John Greig’s financial calculations were written in the 1756 and 1767 editions of the Edinburgh Almanack. The volumes are housed respectively in NLS, Greig Papers, Dep. 190, Box 4. For seventeenth-century scribbles, see Eila Williamson, ‘Schoolboy Scribbles on a Burgh Court Book’, Scottish Archives (2002): 96–112.

⁷⁴ Sandra Cumming, ‘The Erskine Family through Their Books’, [n.d.], unpublished MS on deposit at Duff House, outside Banff, Scotland. I should also note that there is marginalia in the educational books housed in the NLS’s Castle Fraser Collection; however, most of it seems to have been made by adults. For example, the underscoring in John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 14th ed. (London: Whiston, etc., 1772), NLS C.Fras. 67, is made on passages in which Locke is commenting on how to teach headstrong children.

⁷⁵ The ages of the Erskine children are established in Cumming [n.d.]. They are depicted in David Allan’s portrait of the family painted circa 1788: ‘Sir William Erskine of Torrie and his family’, National Galleries of Scotland, Accession no. PGL 333.

⁷⁶ For inscriptions regarding birds, arithmetic calculations, professions and drawings, see the following books, respectively: James Moir, The Scholar’s Vade Mecum (Edinburgh: Donaldson, 1775), Dunnimarle House Library Number (hereafter DH LIB No.) 2130; Boyer Abel, The Complete French Master for Ladies and Gentlemen (Edinburgh: Bell, 1782), DH LIB No. 986; [The Principles of Latin and English Grammar, 17--], DH LIB No. 247; John Mair, A Radical Vocabulary, Latin and English, 5th ed. (Edinburgh: Murray, 1779), DH LIB No. 1791.

⁷⁷ Eutropius, Eutropii Historiae Romanae breviarium, ab urbe condita usque ad Valentinianum et Valentum Augustos... In usum scholarum (Edinburgh: G. Gordon, G. Gray, J. Dickson et C. Creech, 1779), DH LIB 362.

⁷⁸ Alexandre Scot, Nouveau recueil: ou, melange litteraire, historique, dramatique et poetique; contenant le poeme celebre des jardins de Mons. L'Abbe de Lille (Edinburgh: Elliot, 1784), DH LIB No. 293.

⁷⁹ Lynn Bonfield Donovan, ‘Day-by-Day Records: Diaries from the CHS Library. Part II’, California History Quarterly 56: 1 (1977): 72–81. Quotation taken from p. 72.

⁸⁰ Marjory Fleming, The Journals, Letters, and Verses of Marjory Fleming in Collotype Facsimile from the Original Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1934).

⁸¹ Baggerman and Dekker, Child of the Enlightenment, address the supervised reading of children’s diaries, mainly by family members, throughout Chapter 2. Arianne Baggerman, ‘The Infinite Universe of Eighteenth-Century Children’s Literature’, in Childhood and Emotion: Across Cultures, 1450–1800, ed. Claudia Jarzebowski and Thomas Max Safley (New York: Routledge, 2014), 106–20.

⁸² Hamilton’s composition of a travel journal is recounted in Benger (1818), 51–2. Alexander Sinclair, Journal of a Tour from Edinburgh to Caithness (1809), NLS MS.3090.

⁸³ Lady Charlotte Susan Maria Campbell, daughter of the 5th Duke of Argyll, Memoir and Journal of a Tour to Italy (1789). NLS, Acc.8110.

⁸⁴ George Sandy, ‘Legal Diary, March–July 1788’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club 24 (1942): 1–69; the original manuscript is housed as George Sandy, Legal Diary, March–July 1788, Bound MS, Signet Library, Edinburgh. George Bogle, ‘Schoolboy Diary’, Bound MS, Steggall Collection, Mitchell Library, Glasgow City Archives, TD1681/6/1. Content summaries of the Sandy and Bogle diaries are given respectively in William Matthews, ed., British Diaries: An Annotated Bibliography of British Diaries Written between 1442 and 1942 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) 92, 130.

⁸⁵ The narrative uses both first- and third-person pronouns and Sandy devised his own cipher to write entries that he did not want the others to read. A photographic reproduction of the cipher appears opposite p. 44 in Sandy, ‘Legal Diary’.

⁸⁶ The modes through which early modern accounting carried various ideological and philosophical meanings in early modern Europe are addressed in Jacob Soll, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (New York: Basic Books, 2014). See Chapter 8 for the eighteenth-century British context. The influence of John Mair’s accounting textbook is addressed on pp. 118 and 150.