At first glance this Bible appears relatively unassuming. I started cataloguing as I normally would by first looking at a book’s title page. As I had only paid attention to one part of the title ‘The Holy Bible containing the Old & New Testament’, I thought this would be a pretty straightforward job. An abridged biblical text in English. The Bible can be found in our catalogue here: https://hey.koha.openfifth.net/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=101218
I was very surprised when I leafed through the pages of the book to figure out it’s pagination, and discovered this:
Now this really had me stumped as even though the text didn’t seem to be English, I couldn’t figure out what other language it might be. I investigated some niche semitic languages before consulting the title page one more time. I then realised the key component I had been missing.
The Bible is ‘lithographed in the easy reporting style of Pitman’s shorthand‘. Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that can increase the speed of writing. It is compact on a page, making it the logical choice for condensing multiple Bible sections into a smaller book. This particular Bible contains the first six books, which might ordinarily be closer to 900 pages in English. Here it is 608 pages.
Pitman shorthand is a phonetic style of shorthand, meaning that the symbols represent the sounds of words as they are spoken. In the 19th and early 20th century it became the predominant shorthand method in the English speaking world. Isaac Pitman was a shrewd publisher who capitalized on the reform of the postal service and reduced postal costs in the United Kingdom to offer free shorthand correspondence classes. This precipitated the widespread popularity of Pitman shorthand.
The Bible would’ve been the perfect text for learning and practicing shorthand in the 19th and 20th century England. Literacy rates had grown rapidly throughout the 19th century and the English public were more devoutly Christian and therefore familiar with the Bible.
As always, I am awed by the uncatalogued treasures that I find hidden within the Heythrop Library collection! I remain dedicated to bringing these materials to light by cataloguing them onto our online catalogue.
AL
Sources:
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/New_Approaches_to_Shorthand.html?id=zXkhEQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
What are your thoughts about the above?