Overview

Gems of Poesy is an MS magazine compiled by William Gardiner, who also compiled The Wreath of Wild Flowers. The two magazines had identical publication schedules and readers’ lists, so probably served as companion volumes. Each issue is numbered as the first volume of a new number (perhaps leaving open the possibility for further issues, should inspiration or time allow.)

Unlike The Wreath of Wild Flowers, this collection is of poems gleaned from other published sources: most issues feature work by Mrs Hemans, a favourite of Gardiner’s, as well as other well-known poets such as Lord Byron, Eliza Cook and Percy Shelley. They have all been copied out in Gardiner’s hand. Potentially, Gems of Poesy was intended as a companion volume to The Wreath of Wild Flowers, as they both circulated at similar times – a source of inspiration and examples of poetry for people who may not be able to access these poems elsewhere.

The value of copying out particularly interesting poems from printed sources for an audience was probably a response to the comparatively expensive price of periodicals prior to the repeal of stamp duty.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

(Currently unknown) (Dundee)

Date of Existence

1834?-1836?

Date of Magazine

1(1)-1(3), Mar. 1834-Mar. 1836 (produced yearly)

Number of Issues

3

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Poems (republished material); Magazine Rules; Title page

Repository

Dundee District Central Library, The Wellgate

Reference

D22012, Lamb Collection

Additional Notes

These magazines were collected in the 1860s by A.C. Lamb, a Dundee temperance hotelier. Many of the societies represented met on premises owned by either himself or, in earlier decades, in his father Thomas’ coffee house. Lamb was often involved in society life himself, and his collection of over 450 boxes covers a wide range of material relating to literature, poetry, culture and politics in Victorian Dundee. For more information on this material, please contact local.history@leisureandculturedundee.com.

Overview

This literary group was a bit unusual in that the members formed solely for the purpose of producing a magazine of original works. While they referred to their group as an ‘Association’ and collected subscriptions, it appears that they did not hold any formal meetings. It started as a group of 10 young men (women were allowed later) that were initially asked to join by F. J. Osborn, who would act as the magazine’s Editor.

Osborn, in his ‘Editorial’ in the first number, explains his methods of persuasion to elicit contributions: after convincing one young man to contribute an article, he would then approach another acquaintance and tell him that ‘Fizgog’ has sent in his contribution. He would then go on to say it was such a poor production that surely he (the acquaintance) could produce something better. This ‘harmless subterfuge’ appears not to have been necessary after the launch of the first issue as contributors were more forthcoming thereafter.

According to the magazine’s rules in the first number, each member of the group was to aim for contributing an article every month, but was certainly to do so at least every three months. The magazine was to be kept for four days only (this would later change to 48 hours) and then passed on to the next member on the list or he would have to pay a fine of 1d per day. Friends were allowed to read the magazine, but the listed member was responsible for its condition. Later on, contributions were accepted from non-members. In the first issues, the Editor re-wrote each of the pieces submitted, and the authors’ artwork was cut and pasted in.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

(Currently unknown) (Hertford)

Date of Existence

1904?-1911?

Date of Magazine

March 1904 – May 1911

Number of Issues

70

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript and Typescript

Contents and Contributions

Advertisements (humorous); Art/Illustrations (original); Articles (non-fiction); Circulation Lists; Editorials; Essays; Fiction/Narratives; Jokes; Letters to Editor; Magazine Rules; Notices; Prefaces; Puzzles; Readers’ Criticisms; Sketches; Tables of Contents; Title pages

Repository

Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS) (Hertford)

Reference

DE/FJO/A11/1-70

A summary of the history of the Glasgow Border Counties’ Literary Society is available on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds (see ‘Additional Notes’ below).

This magazine is unlike most other mutual improvement and literary society magazines that we have seen to date in the sense that it has an ‘unprofessional’ appearance: the letters and articles that are bound together in this one extant volume are on various sizes of paper. Also, it is unclear where the division is between Volumes I and II as this is not formally marked by a new title page, nor is there another editorial to help mark the distinction.

This group’s magazine is a good example of a society’s ‘Magazine Night’, but in this case either a standard-sized paper was not issued or not available to contributors, and the decision to collect and bound the contributions in a single volume was probably not made until much later, as the date of the ‘Contents’ page suggests (see below).

‘Magazine Evenings’ or ‘Magazine Nights’ were meetings that were devoted to the reading of original essays (or occasionally poems) written by group members that were submitted to the Magazine Editor beforehand. The Editor would be responsible for collecting, occasionally selecting, and reading the pieces aloud to the group (more rarely this was done by the contributor him/herself) on the appointed night. This would be followed by ‘criticism’ — or discussion on the piece’s positive and negative points — by the group members.

After the meetings, these contributions were sometimes bound and saved in the society’s library (if they had one) or would be kept by one of the office bearers. In these cases, it was intended that the magazine was to be preserved and that group members would have access to it at a later date. It is of note that literary and mutual improvement groups used the term ‘magazine’ to refer to the oral as well as the material medium.

At the front of this magazine, there is a ‘Contents’ page with a list of 44 contributions and the pen-names of their respective authors, followed by the signature of the volume’s Editor (John Wallace) and the date (30 March 1887). As the ‘Editorial’ of the first issue — which appears to be written partly as a set of notes — lays out:

‘Our Magazine is not limited to any branch in Literature. Its articles are of the grave, gay, social political [sic], the scientific, and we are gratified to state that the Poetry is not neglected in its pages’ (A. Lang, ‘Editorial’, Glasgow Border Counties’ Literary Society’s M.S. Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, 16 December 1885, [p.1]).

This volume also appears to have served as a kind of scrapbook, in the sense that there are various newspaper clippings (from much later dates) tucked into the book at the front.

Name of Club, Society or Group That Produced the Magazine

Glasgow Border Counties’ Literary Society

Date of Existence

1885-1887?

Date of Magazine

Vol. I, No. 1 (16 December 1885); Vol. I, No. 2 (10 March 1886); Vol. II, No. 2 (2 March 1887)

Number of Issues

(at least) 3?

(Note: these are bound together as Vols. I and II)

Manuscript/Published Magazine

Manuscript

Contents and Contributions

Articles (non-fiction); Editorials; Essays; Letters to Editor; Poems (original); Table of Contents; Title page

Repository

Scottish Borders Archive and Local History Centre (Heritage Hub, Hawick)

Reference

GB1097/SC/M/28

Additional Notes

See also entry for Glasgow Border Counties’ Literary Society on our sister website, Glasgow’s Literary Bonds.