Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 7th ed. Vol. I. London: A. Churchill and J. Churchill, 1716. Print.

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 7th ed. Vol. II. London: J. Churchill, 1715. Print.

Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1st ed. Vol. I. London: Thomas Basset, 1690. Early English Books Online. Web. 22 April 2015. <http://gateway.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:93267>.

Locke, John. An essay concerning humane understanding. In four books. Written by John Locke, Gent. 5th ed. Vol. I. London: A. Churchill and J. Churchill, 1706. Early English Books Online. Web. 22 April 2015. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. University of British Columbia Library. 22 Apr. 2015.
<http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=ubcolumbia&tabID=T001&docId=CW3317467774&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE>.

Wynne, John. An Abridgement of Mr. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1st ed. London: A. Churchill and J. Churchill, 1696. Early English Books Online. Web. 22 April 2015.<http://gateway.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&res_id=xri:eebo&rft_id=xri:eebo:image:56724:4>

J. R. Milton, ‘Locke, John (1632–1704)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/16885, accessed 19 April 2015]

R. O. Bucholz, ‘Herbert, Thomas, eighth earl of Pembroke and fifth earl of Montgomery (1656/7–1733)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/13050, accessed 19 April 2015]

Stephen Taylor, ‘Wynne, John (1665/6–1743)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/view/article/30159, accessed 19 April 2015]

Watling, Gabrielle. “The Enlightenment.” Cultural History of Reading. Vol. I. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2009. 175-96. Print.

Pearson, David Robert Stanley. English Bookbinding Styles: 1450-1800: A Handbook. London: British Library, 2005. Print.

Foot, Mirjam M. “Bookbinding.” Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. N.d. Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Cambridge University Press. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.

Price, John Valdimir. “Philosophical Books.” Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. N.d. Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Cambridge University Press. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.

Rivers, Isabel. “Religion and Literature.” The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780. Cambridge University Press, n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.

Let’s now take a quick peek at the theories I have so far:

1. Could the popularity be solely driven by Locke’s ideas? Locke wrote in a very accessible manner and his ideas were quite ‘cutting-edge’.
2. Was the book marketed as a Religiously appropriate book?
3. Did people just buy the book because having it made them look smarter? The ‘Cultural Capital’ angle.
4. Was it popular because Locke was associated with a few big names like Newton?

I think that it would be better for us to keep these theories in mind, but instead of applying the theories to the information, I am going to let the information to point to a theory.

To answer the question of popularity, we should start with trying to get a grasp at the conditions this book was read in. I am going to rely on the Cultural History of Reading from this point on. Watling writes, “The Enlightenment in particular represents a dividing line between broad acceptance of church and monarchial doctrine on the one hand, and the orderly Christian God, and the rise of “Natural Philosophy” on the other. In terms of scientific progress, the Enlightenment saw major advancements in mathematics, engineering, and technology, as empirical methodologies replaced inductive assumption as the dominant form of establishing “truth” (176).

Having this information, I am thinking back to all the scholarly editions in Locke’s work by A. Churchill. The footnotes serve the interesting purpose of diffusing the claim that the Locke’s idea is inconsistent with the Christian Doctrine. Moreover, I also know that John Wynne, a bishop, wrote the Abridgement for the purpose of answering the ‘vulgar’. The religious ‘angle’ cannot be denied. Locke’s work was still concerned with the hottest topic of the time: epistemology. In the face of growing tension between ‘Natural Philosophy’ and the Christian Doctrine stood Locke’s Essay that was bang in the middle. It was able to reconcile a new age epistemology with the Christian Doctrine. The religious aspect is, if not the biggest contributor to the Essay‘s success, is till a contributor.
Walting states, “One of the reasons that his [Locke’s] philosophies were so popular was that he supported innate rationality over external authority” (187).  I wish to note that he seems to be supporting the first theory: Could the popularity be solely driven by Locke’s ideas? I think to state that would be a part-answer, if not the wrong answer, to the question regarding Locke’s popularity. It is Locke’s ability to offer new ideas within the framework of the Christian Doctrine that I think has caused his success.
Here is a quotation by Rivers who writes an article about ‘Religion and Literature’ for Cambridge History: “Though Locke’s Essay was perceived in many quarters on first publication to be dangerous to religion, after the early accusation had subsided he was widely relied on by both churchmen and dissenters throughout the eighteenth century as a supporter of Christianity and an opponent of freethinkers” (452).

So far the answer seems to be that a mix of ‘the Essay being religiously appropriate’ and ‘the ideas were new’. However, the Enlightenment was also the age of the growth of Science, and the biggest name was that of Newton’s. How can I ignore that Locke and Newton communicated a lot, since the Biography entry states, “…but Locke kept in touch with Newton, the two corresponding mostly on problems of biblical interpretation.” The Biography entry also states, while referring to the Essay, “Locke was seen as having given a plain unmetaphysical account of the workings of the human mind that could serve as a complement to Newton’s account of the physical universe.” Although I cannot definitively state that Locke’s relation with Newton was a contributing factor, I cannot rule it out either. 

The information points to a mixed answer, but how does this relate to all the information we have about the book? I think that the edition of the book tells us that it wasn’t just the higher class that were buying Locke’s Essay.
Let’s think with the information we have. Religious heads are concerned about the challenge that ‘Natural Philosophy’ has posed to their authority. They use Locke’s Essay to comfort the concerned devotees during Mass or in person. Religious heads, I would imagine, were held in high regard by the people. Their recommendations would be taken seriously. The Churchills publish the fifth edition of the book with footnotes that alleviate any anti-religious concerns regarding the book. Maybe the publishers see that more people want to buy the book and they decide to make it more portable by publishing an octavo edition (the sixth one). It seems that the middle-class buying this book could also be a contributing factor to the success of the book. The middle-class person I imagine buying the book gets it bound like our copy was (not too expensive). It also cannot be denied that when a book is gaining success and is being recommended by religious heads, not owning it could be a sign of being ‘un-cultured’. Just like people today try and keep Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time up for display for everyone to see, something similar could have happened to Locke’s Essay. Now such a theory would not be mere conjecture because Locke’s Essay is dealing with what is causing people’s perception of the world to completely change. There is a lot of pressure on the basic beliefs of the people because the ‘natural philosophers’ (=’scientists’) of the time. Locke can serve to take  the pressure off by allowing people to maintain their beliefs and still have access to a new way of thinking that is consistent with the rise of Science. No matter how I cut it, it always comes back to Locke’s ability to offer an epistemology consistent with the Christian Doctrine.

In  conclusion, the answer is not a definitive one. The book’s popularity could have been because of all of the theories contributing to its success, but I have argued that the book being religiously appropriate was a huge factor in its popularity and success.

That is all!

Dammit! Didn’t have a good segue into references.

Locke’s Essay was first published in 1689. The book I am looking at is the seventh edition. There must be quite a few changes from the Essay‘s publication in 1689 to the edition I am looking at. We can draw out the changes in terms of changes on the ‘outside’ and changes on the ‘inside’.

It is going to be hard to answer how the book has changed on the outside without having access to physical copies of all the editions. I do have one thing to offer:
The first edition was a folio, as the ESTC states; however, my edition is smaller and is an octavo. The first time the Essay became an octavo was the sixth edition published in 1710 by the Churchills. The move from a folio to an octavo was probably to be able to make the book more portable to help boost sales. Other than this, I cannot offer more information about how the book has changed on the outside over its various editions.

The inside of the book though is easier to research. The ‘Dedication’ and the ‘Epistle’ that we saw in our edition has  been a part of previous editions, including the one from 1690:

The ‘Dedication’ from the first edition, off EEBO

The ‘Epistle’ from the same edition

You can see that the image makes it look like the pages are huge. It is because the image is from a folio edition.

Coming back to all those questions I left you with at the end of the previous post: When did the editorship begin?
Below is an image from the first edition against the same page from my edition:

        Clearly scholarly editing did not occur in the first edition.

After some research on EEBO, which involved looking through each of the editions, I found that the Churchill edition was the first one to do this editing. More specifically it was the fifth edition where the changes first appeared:

This was published in 1706.

The footnote refers to one of Locke’s letters wherein he clarifies the issue of how the idea ‘of identity and diversity’ is not inconsistent with the Christian Doctrine . Therefore, it is not like the editor is carrying out any of his own analysis. Moreover, the Biography entry of Locke states, “…Locke was on friendly terms with the printers (Awnsham and John Churchill)…”. I, hence, do not think that the changes were made without Locke’s consent.

I should also speak a little about An Abridgement of Mr. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which was first  published by the Churchills in 1696. This was not written by Locke, but rather by John Wynne.

John Wynne was the Bishop of Bath and Wells. He wrote the Abridgement, “…which he hoped would bring the ‘Vulgar Systems’ prevalent at Oxford into discredit” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). The Abridgement was approved by Locke before it was published by the Churchills. Moreover, the Abridgement went through eleven edition by 1774.

So far I have given you a lot of information. Now I am going to start trying to make sense of all this information in an effort to answer why the book was so popular.

You might wonder why it is important for me to go into things like binding, covers, etc. Like I said before, this bit of the research can give me the tools to gauge what kind of market this book was aimed at. Bear in mind that the question is, “Why was the book so popular?”. This section could very well become the reason why one theory seems more plausible than another one to answer the question: “A binding’s quality may signify the regard in which the text is held, or the level of use it is expected to have, or it may say something about the owners taste and standing.” This quotation is from English Bookbinding Styles.

This post will be divided into two parts. Part I will look at the the physical aspects of the book. Part II will look inside the book. Let’s begin!

Part I: The outside of the book

The Cover:

By looking at the cover, I am interested in answering two questions:

1. What is the cover made out of?
2. What is that design on the cover?

At first glance, it seems that the cover is made out of some kind of leather based on the colour and feel of it. This leather has been pasted over the board and spine of the book. Before answering what the cover was made out of, I am going to turn to the ornamentation of the cover. The decoration seems quite simple; however, the spine is better decorated:

  
It does not seem like the person that had the book bound spent a lot of money on its decoration. If the person did not spend a lot on the decoration of the book, it could point me towards what kind of leather was used. At the time, the leather could be from either goatskin, sheepskin, or calfskin.
Goatskin would have to be imported from Turkey, which would have been expensive (Pearson 19). Going through the British Library Catalogue and looking for covers around the same era with the same ‘panel design’ on the cover, I found that most of the covers were made out of goatskin. But most of those covers were also red in colour and looked more ornate:

This was published in 1706.

Let’s now look at something from around the same period in calf:

Published in 1706. This one is more what I’m looking for.

Pearson writes in English Bookbinding Styles, “It [calf] was usually dyed some shade of brown and, although it could be produced in other colours, English bindings of this period in red, green and other hues will more commonly be found to be goatskin” (18). Our leather is also ‘brown’ and resembles the picture right above this paragraph. It wouldn’t be unfounded to say that the leather covering is made from calf, which answers the first question. (It was hard to find anything about sheepskin, in case you caught on).

Now we can turn to the second question, which I have already started answering. The design is a ‘panel design’. Pearson writes, “The centre and corner idea remained current throughout the Restoration period and beyond…” (73).
A close-up of the cover:

There are a lot of floral/foliage designs that have been pressed into the cover. Pearson notes that this kind of design is prevalent in The Restoration (73). But I did state that the spine seemed to be more ornate. Let’s go back to that:

There is some work done in gold

The spine has a ‘raised band’, which is caused by the sewing. The ‘inside’ of the book that makes up the text is referred to as a bookblock. The bookblock is made up of sections:

You can see all of the sections at the bottom of the book
These sections were sown together, which in this period would have been done by cord (Pearson 102). This sewing shows as ‘raised bands’ on the spine. Our book has five of these raised bands. The book could be given further stability by allowing the sewing to run into the cover of the book. You can see this in our book here:

Turning back to the spine, there are compartments caused by the raised bands. There is a title on one of these compartments. The practice of putting titles on the spine (Spine Labelling) started happening when shelving practices changed to that of shelving books with the spine facing outwards (107). The edges of these compartments are further decorated with ‘narrow gold fillets’. However, there is not much work done on the spine. Another look at the spine reveals the endband:

 The little thing hanging off with some cord sticking out
These endbands also became prevalent with new shelving practices. The book would now be reached for by tugging at the spine. The endbands would give the spine extra support.

Our endband seems quite ordinary, in terms of its lack of ornamentation. Compare this endband to one on another copy of the Essay that we have at the library:

Clearly a little more work was put into this one

So far we have covered: the cover, the cover design, sewing, spine, and endbands. All of the evidence so far points towards this being a rather ordinary edition. We can now turn to what’s going on inside the book.

Part II: Inside the book

The book is in two volumes:

The edition that I am looking at has Volume I published in 1716 and Volume II published in 1715. However, both Volumes are continuations of each other, since the index at the end of Volume II refers to the correct page numbers in Volume I. The first volume was published by John Churchill and the second one by John Churchill and Awnsham Churchill. They were both brothers, and John was the younger one. I will come back to the Churchills a littler later.

The book begins with an author portrait:

    There’s good ol’ John

The book then has a dedication to “Thomas Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery”:

This ‘Thomas’ is Thomas Herbert whom Locke met Montpellier, France. Locke travelled in France from 1675 to 1679, where he met Herbert. Herbert had undertaken a “three-year tour of France and Italy”, which is when he met Locke. This all recorded in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Moving on, we then have “The Epistle to the Reader”:

This edition also has a lot of footnotes:

The footnote states: “The Doctrine of Identity and Diversity, contained in this Chapter, the Bishop of Worcester pretends to be inconsistent with the Doctrine of the Christian Faith…”
What is going on here? The footnote refers to an idea of Locke that was challenged to be inconsistent with the Christian Doctrine. However, the editor of this book, who is also the publisher and most likely Awnsham Churchill, diffuses this claim in the footnote. There are still a lot of questions to be asked here: When did this editorship begin? Why was it done? Did Locke approve of it? However, these question cannot be answered from within the book. This, therefore, segues quite well into the question: What surrounds this book?

There are a lot of editions and copies of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Even I own a modern edition. It is a part of the Philosophy student’s starter-kit. UBC’s Rare Books and Special Collections has a the seventh edition of the Essay. Time for a picture:

The rest of this project will be split up into two main parts:

• Nitty-gritty of the book: This part will be focused on the physical aspects of the book. You might wonder why this is necessary, but it can give us a lot of information that can help answer the question: Why was this book so popular? The physical aspects can tell us how much money was put into its production, and we can have a rough idea of what the market of the book was. The goal of this part will be to cover a few important bits that are both ‘about the book’ and ‘surround the book’.
  • About this book: How was this copy bound? What kind of cover? What kind of spine? What was the quality of printing? How was the book itself structured? What about endbands?
  • What surrounds this book: Well, there is the question of how many editions there were. Who were the publishers? Then we can look at how the book has changed over editions. The change can be tracked ‘outside the text’ and ‘inside the text’: How has the book physically and textually changed? Interestingly enough, in this period of book production the person that handled the physical also handled the editing (=’textual change’).
    After all of this legwork can we get start answering the real question:
• Why was the book so damn successful? The answer will not be a simple one. I will look at some theories that I have. Some are competing and some are complementary. I hope to go through every theory and keep/trash them.
  1. Could the popularity be solely driven by Locke’s ideas? Did the people read the book and say, “Dude, you have to check out this Locke guy”?
  2. Was the book marketed as a Religiously appropriate book? There seems to be a lot of focus on getting the book to be endorsed by Church officials; this statement will obviously be substantiated later.
  3. Did people just buy the book because having it made them look smarter? The ‘Cultural Capital’ angle. I personally like this theory.
  4. Was it popular because Locke was associated with a few big names like Newton.

Well a lot of work to get through. Next post will begin with the nitty-gritty.

 

My first philosophy course at UBC was PHIL 100. My professor, Professor Samantha Matherne, on the first day of the lecture said, “This course is going to be about living the good-life”. I cannot count the number of times she used the phrase ‘good-life’ in our course. Well I can count them but that is not the point. At the end of every book we read, she would say, “So, what is [philosopher’s name]’s conception of the good-life?” I moved on in Philosophy and went ahead with studying a lot of things without every considering the question that Prof. Matherne always asked at the end of a book, “What was her/his conception of the good-life?”

Go ahead and look up best-selling philosophy books. There will be a list by Amazon and bunch of other websites that offer lists. Browse through a few.
“On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes” by Alexandra Horowitz. “Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes” by Maria Konnikova. “How children succeed” by Paul Tough. “Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making , Problem-solving and Prediction” by John Brockman. “Manage your day-to-day”. “Give and take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success”. “The Examined Life: How we Lose and Find Ourselves”. “How to stay sane”.
They are all answering some aspect of the larger question, “What makes a good life?”.

Let’s, however, take all of this a little back in time. The time when the mechanical printing press was in full swing and books were sold at a large scale. The same place were Shakespeare made his fortunes from selling his plays. Britain in December, 1689. This was the year that John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding was first published by Thomas Basset. Locke’s book was the first “overwhelming success” for a philosophy book, as described by John Price while writing the article “Philosophy Books” for the The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Needless to say, a reliable source.

I will look at a number of theories to see why the book was successful, except the theory of the good life. The question of a good life is germane to our generation where religion does not play a big part in our daily lives. If you asked the question as to how one should lead a good life in 1689, the answer would be in the religion that is popular at the time and place. But this only makes it more interesting because the answer won’t be obvious to me.

So, what can you expect?