Reiss Sims, one of last year’s first-year students, offers some great tips for those beginning their study of history at the University of Portsmouth in 2020.
“The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the U.S.
Now let me start off by apologising for the classic “insert quote by famous person” approach to the start of this blog, but I do believe that Roosevelt hit the nail on the head – the study of history provides us with the understanding of the world we live in and outlines the possibilities for change, so congratulations for joining the team!
Just like I was a year ago, many of you will be both excited and nervous about starting the next three to four years of your life. Don’t worry, this is totally normal! The chances are, you’re going to look and think differently by the end of your course, so my advice would be to sit back, enjoy the ride and jump headfirst into every opportunity that presents itself. Hopefully, by the end of this blog, you’ll have a better insight into studying history at degree level. I’ll try and give you some advice that will be useful for tackling the first-year academics, whilst attempting to paint a realistic picture of what the next few years will look like.
To begin with let’s address the key difference between A-level and GCSE history and degree level history: freedom – the subject remains the same but the approach to study will be totally new.
During school and college, you would have likely been taught about a historical event (why and when it happened) and then required to regurgitate the textbook into your essay – spoiler alert, this isn’t the case at university. At university, you will be encouraged to explore, discover and discuss all perspectives of history to build your own argument (this is the key to writing a sound essay). The topics you choose, the articles you read, the opinions you form will allow you to write your own history!
Now I want to assure you that it is normal for this newfound freedom to seem daunting at first, it certainly was for me, but you’ll come to learn how to use it in all the right ways. Freedom will also become apparent, if it hasn’t already by now, in life outside of the classroom. Whilst it is important to put as much effort as you can into your studies, you must make sure that you get out and explore everything that the university has to offer (if your work is done, the pub is always an option…). University isn’t just about obtaining a degree; it’s about experiencing new things and meeting new people, so make sure you meet and sign yourself up to everything you can! Get that work/life balance nailed early, and you’ll never look back.
Reiss following his own advice in getting his work/life balance right.
Five tips for university study
Tip 1: The First Year Counts
The idea that your first-year grade doesn’t actually count couldn’t be further from the truth!
Going into the second year with very little idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your academic game is not ideal. Try your best, don’t worry about making mistakes and really get stuck in from the get-go.
(Tip within a tip: companies offering work experience/placements/graduate jobs will use your first year as a reference!).
Tip 2: Do the Readings
It is a minimum that you do the assigned readings, the more you do, the better you’ll understand.
You’re going to spend the majority of your reading, so you need to learn to enjoy it. It may seem long and hard to understand initially, however you’ll soon start to develop your own techniques to tackling the readings.
My advice? Organise a time to read throughout the week; plan ahead, don’t leave it to the last minute, break each piece down into digestible parts and make clear and concise notes. Oh, and just reading the intro/conclusion isn’t going to be enough either (wink).
Tip 3: Experiment with organisation
I started the year off by writing up all of my notes and then typing them up again later – it was very time-consuming. So by the end of the year, I found that by typing the notes up to start with would save me time and reduced the risk of losing my notes.
Set up a good and organised file system for all of your notes, be it physical or digital. There is nothing worse than having to re-read an article because you are revisiting the topic without notes.
(Tip within a tip 2: Make use of both One Drive or Google Drive – do not risk just having a physical copy of your work)
Tip 4: Don’t be afraid to say something wrong
Seminars are great – the professors are engaging, the topics provide hours of in-class debates, and by the end of them, you’ll have developed a better understanding of your readings and lectures. However, the idea of public speaking isn’t for everyone. My only bit of advice (other than doing the reading in preparation): never be afraid of giving the wrong answer. It is always best to give it a go and share your perspective! You’ll only learn more by doing so.
Tip 5: Enjoy it!
Look, you’re only at university for a very short period. Three years may seem like a long time, but you’ll soon realise that it flies by. So enjoy every second of it!
It’s not always going to be fun and easy, there are periods of long, hard graft! But if you do the right things and try your best, then there is nothing to worry about.
History is a pretty demanding degree, but it pays you in the skills you develop. Read, learn, discuss and have fun and I look forward to meeting some of you this year!
Ben Humphreys, who graduated in history with the UoP this year, expected to find his third year of history studies hard but actually found he had acquired the skills and resilience in his previous two years of study to get through the third year smoothly.
There are a lot of assumptions that the third year of university is the hardest both in terms of quantity and quality of work. There’s also a huge assumption that the first year is a walk in the park – just fun and games and a busy social life. To be honest, I found first year really hard; I struggled to understand what was expected of me and how to start thinking subjectively about the sources I was reading. Not just to read and accept it but to question it. I think taking a gap year had slightly blunted my intellectual prowess and I felt like my peers were much more switched on than I was. I was also struggling with mental health issues. Regardless, the jump to first year was my biggest challenge and my second and third years were much smoother for me. I knew how to approach the various types of assignments and how to pick apart primary and secondary sources. By the third year I was a lot closer to my lecturers, seminar leaders and peers, which made my third year so much more comfortable. I hope that my experience resonates with some of you and if it does, rest assured third year will be okay!
As I mentioned above, you will know how to complete the third year assignments from your previous two years of experience. The word count is usually just increased by 500 words which actually allows you to really tackle the question in hand. The real challenge is of course, your dissertation. 10,000 words may seem daunting and it is a serious undertaking. However, it’s split into three, 3,000 word chapters, an introduction and a conclusion – which breaks it down for you nicely. The best advice I can give is to spend a good amount of time finding a topic you really love – if you enjoy it, the journey will be so much easier. Make sure you build a good working relationship with your dissertation supervisor and seek them out often. Typically, I met with my supervisor every fortnight, which kept me on track whilst juggling other assignments. It also pushed me to spend regular time on it because I didn’t want to turn up with nothing to say! Some of my peers didn’t see their tutors for months on end which was crazy; they are there to support and guide you. Use them to your full advantage.
Ben found playing rugby invaluable in giving him energy and focus for his studies.
A balanced work / social life is so important and there’s two main points to get across here. Firstly, stay active. Continue to play sport or exercise. If you aren’t physically active, get active. I probably wouldn’t have made it through university if I wasn’t playing rugby throughout my years. It cleared my head, improved my university experience exponentially and gave me energy to study. Also, its potentially your last year of university so make the most of the widest range of sports clubs accessible to you, ever. Secondly, don’t spend all day in the library. Some of my peers were in there from 8 until 6, but didn’t seem to get much work done. Go in there for between one and four hours and have a productive, focused study session.
Another piece of advice is to get closer with your year group. I only became closer to them in the latter half of my university experience, because of my own personal problems and I would change that if I could. Getting closer to my peers made the course so much more enjoyable and the presentations that much easier. It was easier to present to a group of friends than a group of strangers.
Finally, careers. Now if you are anything like me, you don’t want to even hear about career prospects until after third year. I just wanted to concentrate on getting a good degree and I think that’s fair enough. I had also hoped that by third year my career plans would have materialised out of somewhere but no. I still don’t know what I want, and if you don’t either – that’s okay! There’s also no timeline to follow here. You’ve probably all had it, when people ask you what you do, they ask what you are going to do with your degree or what you want to do after. There’s an expectation that graduates have to leave university immediately to become a high flier or a CEO or something. Don’t be fooled and don’t compare yourself to others. Your twenties are a weird time period where there’s not a particular mould or pathway to fit into. So don’t worry if you haven’t got it figured out yet, I graduated last year and I don’t either.
Oh and don’t worry, there’s life after university.’
In the second in our series on First World War sources, second-year UoP student Charlotte Lewis discusses what can be learned from a letter by famed WWI poet Wilfred Owen to his mother Susan.
Whilst Wilfred Owen’s poetry is well known for describing the horrors of the First World War, his letters to his mother, Susan Owen, give the reader an insight into Owen’s personal experiences and reactions hiding behind his poetry. In light of this, this blog will focus on a letter written by Owen in February 1917 to his mother.[1] Through the analysis of this letter, this blog will try to convey not only its significant use in describing the conditions of the First World War, but also how it provides us with an understanding of Owen and his emotions reflected in his poetry, in particular his renowned poem Dulce et Decorum Est.[2]
The value of the content of Owen’s letter can only truly be understood when the conditions of trench warfare at this time have been fully acknowledged. Ashworth recognises that very early on in the war, at the end of the first battle of Ypres, the primary mode of warfare at the western front was static trench warfare.[3] During this time, armies were largely deadlocked and “movement was more often measured in yards than miles”.[4] This is clearly demonstrated in the opening sentence of this letter as Owen describes how “so little happens that I can’t keep up my instalments of blood-and-thunder literature”.[5] This line also reveals Owen’s relationship with descriptive writing as he writes “blood-and-thunder literature”, a genre of literature in which his Poem Dulce et Decorum Est conforms to in its description of the daily horrors experienced at the Western Front.[6] Potter argues that his letters from this time are “as evocative, shocking and profoundly moving as any of the poetry that his experiences inspired”.[7] For example, both the poem Dulce et Decorum Est and this letter portray a graphic imagery of fatigued, limping soldiers.[8] Owen describes in his letter how they marched “miserably slowly” as “some of the men could not wear boots” due to frost-bitten feet.[9] According to Ashworth, a trench foot was swollen and always painful.[10] There are strong parallels between this letter and the experiences described in Dulce et Decorum Est, supporting Rivers’ argument that his letters can be used as sources for his poems. However, whilst this letter does show clear similarities to his poem Dulce et decorum Est, it also shows a possible motivation for the creation of the poem.
A case of trench foot which required plastic surgery, Wellcome Institute photo no. L0025834
A theme presented in Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est is his dissatisfaction with the portrayal of the western front through propaganda. In private through his letters, and public through his poem, Owen highlights his contempt for the image of war portrayed by the home front. Bebbington recalls that of the two British Museum drafts of Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est, “one has the ‘dedication’ to ‘Jessie Pope, etc’”.[11] Pope frequently wrote jingoistic poetry as propaganda for newspapers and often portrayed an image of the war which was the polar opposite to that described by Owen in his poetry.[12] In his letter, Owen comments on the propaganda shown by the Daily Mirror, and how it “still depicts the radiant smiles of Tommies”.[13] This could be an indirect comment on the work of Jessie Pope and so this letter could act as a source for understanding the initial dedication of the poem to her, as well as the running theme of anger towards softened portrayals of war experiences which discredited and undermined the heroic nature of the soldiers. The perusal of this letter allows us to understand some of the multitude of emotions behind Owen as a poet through his description of soldiers’ daily experiences, whilst representing the realities of Trench warfare.[14]
The 2nd Manchesters capturing a German battery at Francilly Selency, April 1917 by Richard Woodville
However, when using this letter as a source, there are a number of considerations to take into account when assessing its use in understanding Owen’s experience of the war and associated emotions hiding behind his poetry.[15] Kerr acknowledges that Owen had an incredibly strong relationship with his mother, as he suggests that Susan Owen was the family’s still point and an “inner sanctuary”; one aspect of his devotion to her could be his willingness to “protect her from distress”.[16] Subsequently, we must consider whether Owen has refrained from describing the true nature of his experience at the time of the letter in order to protect his mother, and so this letter is less likely to emphasise the whole picture; reading the vivid details in the poem Dulce et Decorum Est it is possible to recognise that this letter might not contain the whole truth.[17] However, by using this letter as a source for understanding Owen’s poem, as well as understanding experiences of the First World War in general, it can be very useful in as much as it avoids popular memory.[18] Roper highlights that frequently other WWI sources such as memoirs and autobiographies can be influenced by public narratives created by popular fiction and television of what it means to be a soldier hero, whereas a letter is arguably free from this bias as it captures the moment in order to “communicate the self to the recipient”.[19] Thus, it would be beneficial to analyse Owen’s other letters alongside this letter in order to grasp a better perception.
Through analysis of Owen’s letter to his mother in 1917 we are able to develop a clearer understanding of Owen and his experiences of the war, providing a source for interpreting the emotions and messages conveyed through his poetry, in particular Dulce et Decorum est.[20] This letter offers a unique portrayal of the realities of warfare as well as an insight into Owen’s relationship with the war as a result of his experiences.[21] Whilst we are unable to gain a full understanding of Owen’s experiences through this single letter, it does offer a significant basis for a first understanding of Owen, and so we would benefit greatly from a comparative analysis of other letters written by Owen.
[1] Wilfred Owen, “‘Sunday February 18 1917’, Harold Owen and John Bell”, Wilfred Owen: Collected letters, (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 435-436.
[2] Bryan Rivers, “Wilfred Owen’s Letter No. 486 as a Source for “Dulce et Decorum Est”, in ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol. 21, (2014): 29.
[3] Tony Ashworth, Trench Warfare, 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System (London: Pan Books, 2000), 2.
[11] W.G. Bebbington, “Jessie Pope and Wilfred Owen” in Ariel: a review of international English literature, Vol. 3, (1972): 82.
[12] Anderson Araujo, “Jessie Pope, Wilfred Owen, and the politics of pro patria mori in World War I poetry” in Media, War & Conflict, Vol. 7, (2014): 337
[14] Michele Kaltemback, “Wilfred Owen’s personality as revealed by his letters”, in Caliban, Vol. 10, (1973): 43; Owen, “’Sunday February 18 1917’”, 435-436.
[18] Michael Roper, “Re-remembering the Soldier Hero: the psychic and social construction of Memory in Personal Narratives of the Great War” in History Workshop Journal, vol. 50 (2000): 183
[19] Roper, “Re-remembering the Soldier Hero, 183; Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self: Personal narratives and Historical practice, (Florida: Routledge, 2018), 22.
In the first of a series on First World War sources, in this blog second year UoP student Oliver Rooney discusses the experiences of Charles Wyndham Wynne, expressed through his letter to his aunt Sophia Sarah Wynne on the 13th October 1916, several months before his death in June 1917, as well as the historiography surrounding the importance and limitations of First World War letters. [1]
The atrocities of the First World War have been conveyed through personal letters between soldiers and their families. These personal sources provide historians with a first-hand understanding of the soldier’s experiences during wartime, and the emotions they conveyed and attempted to conceal from their letters.[2] Charles Wynne (1895-1917) was an Irish soldier who served as captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. Through regular correspondence between him and his mother, Alice Katherine Wynne, his letters have shown his journey throughout the war, from Fort Dunree in Belfast in 1915, to the 182nd Siege Battery in France by 1916.[3] However, his letter to his aunt on 13th October 1916, part of a collection digitised by Trinity College Dublin, contains a more brutal description of his experiences. On his arrival in France, Charles described the chaos left behind from the previous battery positions; “an old battlefield of the French, utter desolation and plenty of legs and arms and bones and boots”.[4] This description is explicit in telling the first-hand brutality of war, as Charles almost normalises the sight of death. Although, First World War historians argue that wartime letters were limited in describing the true nature of the trenches. Michael Roper indicates that there was “a relative absence of explicit descriptions of the horror of the trenches in British soldiers’ letters”, suggesting that letters avoided the truth to protect family members from the atrocities of war.[5] However Charles’s letter challenges such arguments, as his experiences of France were graphic and honest, describing the country as “an awful network of wires everywhere you go”.[6] Therefore, although letter writing during the First World War became a “mass cultural phenomenon”, the majority of wartime letters were not graphic in nature, letters like Charles’ were relatively uncommon. [7]
Soldiers of the Royal Garrison Artillery at the Battle of the Somme, November 1916.
When reading First World War letters, it is important for historians to understand where letters were placed in the context of the war. As for Charles Wynne’s letter, the 13th October 1916 is placed during the latter part of the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Verdun; two of the most catastrophic battles of the war. This would explain the brutality of Charles’ experiences as described in his letter, and why everything was “in an awful confusion and muddle.”[8] Additionally, David Barton and Nigel Hall note that letters from the war hold forms of contextual understanding, by referring to the space and time of the writer and of the reader; two worlds invoked within the letter,
Charles in the brutality of war, and Sophia in the safety of home.[9] This idea indicates that wartime letters hold an insight into the life of a person, years after their death, whereby the historian can experience the same emotions felt by the first intended recipient, in this case Sophia Wynne.[10] They understand the same emotions that Sophia would have felt from reading his letter in 1916, to reading his letter in the present, although in hindsight, historians know the outcome of Charles’ death in 1917. Charles’ letter further describes the struggles of life in France, explaining to his aunt that she was “right about the mud in some of the trenches”, implying that she had warned him of the conditions that he would face during the war.[11] Megan Robertson argues that wartime letters imply a relationship, that establishes social contexts and connections within their content.[12] Thus, wartime letters like Charles’ are important for social historians as they display similarities in the relationships and emotions between the soldier and his family during the First World War, with people and their families in the present.[13]
The social context surrounding personal sources and wartime letters is important for social and cultural historians, as each letter displays a unique correspondence which provides questions about the emotions and motivations of the soldier, and what was included and concealed from each letter.[14] As for Charles’ letter, he describes himself as “a rotten correspondent”, but does not hide his morbid experiences, describing how he was told that “a leg was sticking out (of the mud) a mark used as a sign post for pointing out the way.” [15] Martha Hanna discusses how First World War epistolary was a means by which soldiers “maintained their civilian identity in the midst of war”: in Charles’ letter, he maintains his civilian identity while describing the barbarity of the war around him. His emotions are somewhat subdued from the letter, therefore, social historians need to analyse personal sources like these to understand how soldiers understood the nature of warfare and “their acceptance of the conduct of war.” [16] Moreover, Summerfield indicates that wartime letters were subject to censorship by the military authorities. Thus, she indicates that some historians are sceptical about the usefulness of war letters, suggesting that “few correspondents communicated the ‘reality’ of the frontline.”[17] Nonetheless, Charles as a wartime correspondent was useful in describing his personal experience of the “utter desolation” of the French battlefield, and the “plenty of legs & arms and bones)” that he witnessed, whereas other wartime correspondents from France may have been more implicit in their epistolary. [18]
To conclude, this blog has outlined the usefulness and limitations of First World War letters as personal sources for historical analysis, as correspondents on the front line often attempted to conceal their true emotions, and many letters from the war were absent of explicit descriptions of the trenches, likely due to censorship by the military authorities. [19] Charles Wynne’s’ letter, however, is useful in describing his personal account of the “desolation” of war, which provides historians with a broader context of the aftermath of First World War battles, such as the Battle of the Somme. [20] Overall, wartime epistolary faces limitations, as they were not intended to be read as historical sources, rather an insight into the soldier’s communications of life at war. Ultimately, letters convey a relationship between the soldier and his family, which establish social contexts of the First World War.[21]
[2] Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self: Personal Narratives and Historical Practice, 1st ed. (London; Routledge, 2018), 32. In, Michael Roper, The Secret Battle. Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester; Manchester University Press, 2009), 21.
[7] Christa Hämmerle, ‘“You Let a Weeping Woman Call You Home?” Private Correspondences during the First World War in Austria and Germany’. In Rebecca Earle, Epistolary Selves: Letters and Letter-Writers, 1600-1945, (London: New York; Routledge, 1999), 153. In Summerfield, Histories of the Self, 28.
[9] David Barton and Nigel Hall, Letter Writing as a Social Practice (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000), 6. In, Megan Robertson, “Epistolary Memory: First World War Letters to British Columbia”, Issue 182 (2014): 129.
[10] Miriam Dobson, “Varieties of primary sources and their interpretation”: Letters. In Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History, edited by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann, (London: New York; Routledge, 2009), 57.
[16] Martha Hanna, “A Republic of Letters: The Epistolary Tradition in France during World War I”, American Historical Review, (2003): 1339; Summerfield, Histories of the Self, 28.
After a talk with his eventual dissertation supervisor Dr Katy Gibbons, third-year UoP student Richard Grainger was inspired to enrich his knowledge of twentieth-century orientalism in a dissertation which applied his theoretical understanding to the study of a period when Islamic nations were the more dominant powers.
The university’s history department prides itself on delivering a socially and culturally favoured degree curriculum. The emphasis on ‘history from below’ has been particularly enjoyable from my view. One particular historical approach of interest is postcolonial studies, which focus on the cultural impact of empire on the colonised. Edward Said has been influential, and often controversial within this area of study. In Said’s Orientalism, he argues that the Western has to a certain degree always imposed a degree of positional superiority on the East. He argues this transcends all walks of life, both politically and culturally.
Orientalist art often depicts the East as feminine, and by implication inferior to the masculine West. A Lady Receiving Visitors (The Reception), John Frederick Lewis, 1873, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, Accession No. B1981.25.417
My interest in Edward Said’s Orientalism was stimulated primarily from a second-year unit on International Politics of the Middle East. With a focus on the last hundred years or so, the unit gave me an ever increased understanding of British and French dominance and duplicity in their relationships with Islamic nations. As this module focused on the First World War, this was initially my first thought chronologically for my dissertation. Only after a conversation with one of the early modernists in the department, Katy Gibbons,did I begin to look at earlier periods for my research.
Fellah Women Drawing Water, Jean-Leon Gerôme, 1873-5, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Williamstown, Mass., Accession no. 1955.52
I became interested in studying an earlier period where Western dominance was not so self-assured. Whilst the power of Britain and France was considerable in the lead up and aftermath to the First world war, I was interested in a study which went ‘against the grain’ and challenged narratives. The early modern period was a complex period of geo-political reality, and it felt that a study in Elizabeth’s England would be an interesting angle to compare Said’s theory to. As Orientalism was said to have filtered throughout society, I wanted to use two distinctive models to establish whether relations between England and the Islamic powers could be seen as Orientalist. I wanted to understand what England’s place in the world was really like in the 16th Century, and how Englishmen reacted to it.
In order to do so, I wanted to compare both the real-politics and the cultural aspect in a way which was accessible. I therefore chose to analyse English playwriting regarding the Ottomans, Turks, and Islam, and the message or anxieties made visable by playwrights. In comparison, I wanted to see if Queen Elizabeth felt the same way in her diplomatic correspondence with the leaders of Eastern states.
Queen Elizabeth I, Armada portrait: the imperial crown and globe depicted in the painting are thought to signify the pursuit of imperial power.
It was crucial before doing so to understand the geo-political reality, which was that post-Reformation England had to adjust to a new situation in the late sixteenth century which allied themselves with anti-Catholic powers. Elizabeth worked hard to cultivate commercial relationships with the Ottomans and the Moroccans, who had much more extensive empires in their own right, but needed tin, lead and other materials from England. Whilst English expansion was at this stage limited to a claim to land in Ireland, the Ottomans were multi-ethnic, trans-continent and at the peak of their powers towards the end of the century.
I chose three plays right at the end of the 1500s to analyse. William Shakespeare’s Othello (1603); Thomas Heywood’s, The Fair Maid of the West Part 1 (1597-1603); and Thomas Dekker’s Lusts Dominion (1600). These plays would ‘Other’ Muslim characters, but also allow for audience agency, and allowed me to reflect on how Englishmen saw their place in the world.
To compare, I wanted to find diplomatic correspondence between Elizabeth and elites in Morocco and the Ottoman courts to establish whether these fears were shared, but also whether England tried to impose any superiority. As with many diplomatic exchanges, I found that both sides wanted to seek similarities. Protestant England was against the idolatry of the Catholic church, and found commonality with Islamic powers in this regard. Most crucial to dispel Said’s theory of Western superiority was the exchange of gifts which lubricated these alliances, with the more predominant gifts coming from London.
Finding sources was thoroughly enjoyable. I enjoyed reading plays, letters and pamphlets depicting the East from an English perspective. I had to tread carefully not to leap to texts which confirmed my narrative, and had to really think hard about whether they contributed to a general sentiment, or allowed for audience agency. The ambiguities themselves made the project especially enjoyable.
The moorish Ambassador to Elizabeth I, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, 1600, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford on Avon, PFH1166942
I found that firstly, English positional superiority did not apply to the late sixteenth century over the East. Secondly, contemporaries responded to this situation in their representation of the East, which served to define English national character. What became clear was that contemporary visions of England’s place in the world would vary from fear and othering of the East, to a proactive global vision articulated and pieced together by the Queen herself.
Our new UoP history module, The Extraordinary and the Everyday: People, Places and Possessions, taught by Dr Katy Gibbons and Dr Maria Cannon, studies material evidence – objects, buildings, landcapes – as a starting point for asking questions about the past. It employs an innovative form of assessment – the object biography, which recognises that material artefacts, just like people, accumulate histories and have their own life-stories to tell, about the meanings and values of the societies that produced, collected or consumed them. Harry Odgers’ object biography told the complex story of a seemingly simple drinking vessel, a ‘Toby jug’.
Objects of the past are incredibly useful and can offer the historical narrative unique information and emotion concerning people’s lives. Items are ‘the stuff of life’; because they have frequently interacted with individuals in cultural and social ways.[1] This biography provides insight into a ‘Toby Jug’ by exploring its significant contextual features; its reflection of the early modern consumer market and its growth; and its numerous lives.
The jug depicts a seated man clutching a mug of alcohol. It is made out of an earthenware material with a colourless lead glaze; and painted yellow and purple. This, along with its distinctive tri-cornered hat, makes it a Toby Jug – a popular object in early modern Britain amongst consumers; and its primary function was to store and serve alcohol. It currently resides in The British Museum, who state that it was created ‘circa 1780’ in Staffordshire.[2]
The precise origins of this fairly fictious character are somewhat unknown. The jug of alcohol, tobacco pipe resting at his side and name ‘Toby’ all associate it with the tavern, specifically referencing tales of an eighteenth-century Yorkshireman, with similar features, who supposedly drank two-thousand gallons of ale from a jug. Elizabeth Wallace acknowledges that the character took influence from a ‘Yorkshire drinker’ named ‘Toby Filpot’; it was spread and ‘memorialized’ by the poet Francis Fawkes, whose tale, The Brown Jug, refers to a similar drunkard.[3] Living in Yorkshire, Fawkes was situated where the jugs first became popular, implying his poem potentially incorporated this character into northern folk-life.[4] Folk tales are often fictitious, yet Dee Ashliman explains that many people have ‘accepted’ folktales to be true.[5] Likewise, Vladimir Propp explains further that either way folk law can simply reflect ‘the outlook of the age’.[6] It suggests that tales were a common way of successfully spreading knowledge of, potentially even marketing, consumer goods during this period. Word of mouth was the ‘simplest form of communication’ because it did not require any form of education to utilise, unlike writing letters or reading newspapers. Therefore, it provides insight into how folk tales, and their materialistic counterparts, were a popular form of early modern culture; and also, that objects were a focal point of conversation between people and communities – aiding the social historical narrative within early modern society.[7]
Etching, 1786, with verses below: ‘this brown Jug that now foams with mild Ale … Was once Toby Fillpot, a thirsty old Soul’, the jug being supposedly created by the potter out of the clay of Toby after he had been long-buried. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_2010-7081-1369
Alternatively, it reflects the growing consumer market during this period, in which people sought items of both decorativeness and functionality, strengthened by steam power advancements and the introduction of materials like earthenware, which were ‘so much cheaper’.[8] Cheaper earthenware’s encouraged a ‘great spread of spending on manufactures’ because businesses had spare money to reinvest.[9] Correspondingly, people in this period were more ‘conscious of their material life’, meaning mass production was becoming necessary to match the higher demand for materialistic products.[10] Inevitably this led to a period where production expanded at a higher and constant frequency across the country.[11] Bevis Hillier explains that folk pottery is unique, and popular, because it is both ‘ruthlessly decorative as it is ruthlessly functional’.[12] Clearly this Toby Jug is a part of this growing consumer market: it functioned as an alcohol jug and was decorated in a purple and yellow colouring, mirroring the growing desire from consumers. Additionally, this Toby Jug was created from earthenware and its cheap, brittle form can be reflected by the minor damages to its lid. Staffordshire potters, including Ralph Wood, utilised similar materials in their other work; which are similarly ‘earthenware’ and ‘lead glazed’.[13] Wallace argues that this jug was ‘made at the factory of Ralph Wood’ – suggesting it was indeed his work. It is a valuable asset because it offers insight into its creator; whilst providing a unique perspective into the growth of the consumer market, including the cultural desire of consumers, emerging in the English Industrial period.[14]
The ‘transition to capitalism’ during this period – demanding objects of luxury and functionality – only saw the market grow further. For example, it included other folk legends including Gin Woman and Drunken Sal; which functioned correspondingly, whilst aiding the market by offering consumers choice.[15] They were revised in the twentieth century where anything could appear on the jug – including Charlie Chaplin or Pavarotti.[16] Its impact is reflected by this growth into later centuries; where artists such as Richard Slee have even created modern adaptations like Toby as Abstraction, which plays on the idea of ‘Englishness’ and the meaning of English traditions. [17] It shows the impact these jugs had within the consumer market, which grew over the recent centuries, and the extent they ‘circulated as a popular consumer item’ – as they remained popular for consumers, even today.[18] This usefully enforces how items incorporating both functionality and decorativeness, which are prominent within modern consumerist culture, stemmed from the early modern period.
Staffordshire Toby Jug of King George V, 1918, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Luckily this jug was able to survive numerous lives. Once created, it would have been used in a tavern to store alcohol. Use in an alcohol establishment, surrounded by people who were intoxicated, could indicate how the lid was damaged.[19] Also, it implies that there was a shared usage of this item. The jug would have been utilised in a public house by numerous people, suggesting that these establishments favoured items of decorative and functionality as well. It was later acquired by museum administrator Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, and then donated to the British Museum in 1887.[20] Catherine Richardson states that object’s function as a ‘consumer good’ in their primary lives, whilst later becoming objects of ‘collecting and wonder’.[21] Whilst Anne Gerittsen explains further that it is through these numerous ‘social lives’ that objects acquire their meaning.[22] Similarly, Samuel Adshead explains that when objects are ‘processed’ through these social interactions, and therefore given meaning, they become ‘cultural objects’ of materialistic culture; because their interactions with various people, and within different places, provides them with unique and diverse backgrounds, as well as an emotional perspective – which written culture can often lack due to its less visually engaging form.[23] This object is useful by providing ‘complex, symbolic bundles of social, cultural, and individual meaning’ through its cultural complexities regarding its origins; its placement in a wider, growing consumer market; and its social lives over the past three centuries.[24]
Clearly this object has had a rich and diverse history. It passed through multiple life stages – from its primary use as a jug through to its life in a museum. The jug is a useful instrument when investigating the historical narrative: its features and materials reflect the pottery industry amongst the wider, developing consumer market in the eighteenth century, whilst its lives offer valuable, emotional perspectives into past relationships and human interactions. It is an item which provides a unique angle on the cultural and social relationships within the early modern period.
[1] Anthony Buxton, Tim Harris, Stephen Taylor, and Andy Wood. Domestic Culture in Early Modern England (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2015), 95
[3] Elizabth Kowaleski Wallace. “Character Resolved into Clay – The Toby Jug, Eighteenth-Century English Ceramics, and the Rise of Consumer Culture,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, No. 1 (2018): 19-22; Francis Fawkes. The Brown Jug (1761).
[5] Dee Ashliman, Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook (London: Greenwood Press, 2004), 34
[6] Vladimir Propp, Ariadna Y. Martin, and Richard P. Martin. Theory and History of Folklore (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 3.
[7] John Miller. Early Modern Britain, 1450-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 420.
[8] Darren Dean, Andrew Hann, Mark Overton and Jane Whittle, Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600-1750 (London: Routledge, 2004), 104.
[9] Pat Hudson. The Industrial Revolution (London: Edward Arnold, 1992), 175.
[10] Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xix.
[11] Peter Mathias. The First Industrial Nation: The Economic History of Britain 1700-1914 (London: Routledge, 1988), 2.
[12] Bevis Hillier. Pottery and Porcelain 1700-1914: The Social History of the Decorative Arts (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 117
[14] Elizabth Kowaleski Wallace, “Character Resolved into Clay – The Toby Jug, Eighteenth-Century English Ceramics, and the Rise of Consumer Culture,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, No. 1 (2018): 40
[15] Darren Dean, Andrew Hann, Mark Overton and Jane Whittle. Production and Consumption in English Households, 1600-1750 (London: Routledge, 2004), 2.
[18] Elizabth Kowaleski Wallace. “Character Resolved into Clay – The Toby Jug, Eighteenth-Century English Ceramics, and the Rise of Consumer Culture” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, No. 1 (2018): 19-22
[19] The British Museum, “Toby Jug.” https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=415927001&objectId=38180&partId=1, 2 April 2020.
[21] Catherine Richardson, Tara Hamling and David Gaimster. The Routledge Handbook of Material Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2016), 6
[22] Anne Gerritsen. Giorgio. Riello, The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the Early Modern World (London: Routledge, 2015), 2
[23] Samuel A. M. Adshead. Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400 – 1800: The Rise of Consumerism (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), 2-3
[24] Ann Smart Martin. “Winterthur Portfolio”, A Journal of American Material Culture 28, No. 2 (1993): 141-157.
