Introduction: Printed Ephemera–The Raw Materials of History
Florence M. Jumonville

"I have also a flower," declared the little prince as he tried to describe his planet to a geographer. "We do not record flowers," said the geographer. "Why is that? The flower is the most beautiful thing on my planet!" "We do not record them," said the geographer, "because they are ephemeral." "What does that mean–ephemeral?" the little prince persisted. Eventually he learned from the geographer that ephemeral things are "...in danger of speedy disappearance."¹

The word ephemera may be singular or plural. From the Greek ephemeros, lasting about a day, it refers to something short-lived. Americans pronounce it ephemmera, while the British are as likely to say epheemera–those few, that is, who say it at all. According to Maurice Rickards, founder of the Ephemera Society, "...it was never a word for the man on the street. It lurked for centuries in the half-light of semi-learned talk, to be trotted out in one guise or another for want of anything better, then to be put away for a generation or two till it had been almost forgotten."²

Some of those who knew and used this obscure word were naturalists, who employed it as a synonym for the name of the delicate mayfly; physicians, who applied it to transient fevers; and poets, to whom it described mortal beings.³ More recently, ephemera has come to refer to materials that are intended to be used briefly and then to be discarded: letterheads, tickets, menus, calendars, schedules, labels, advertisements, broadsides, playbills, programs, and invitations are but a few examples.⁴ With the publication in 1962 of designer and typographer John Lewis’s authoritative book Printed Ephemera, this phrase came into wide use.⁵ To librarians, ephemera forms "a class of printed or near-print documentation which escapes the normal channels of publication, sale, and bibliographic control. It covers both publications which are freely available to the general public and others which are intended for a limited and specific circulation. ... It is in part defined by the fact that it tends to resist conventional treatment in acquisition, arrangement, and storage, and it may not justify full cataloguing."⁶

Ephemera dates from the dawn of printing, preceding both the Gutenberg Bible and the Bay Psalm Book. Much of it was produced in large quantity, but with the passage of time many examples met the fate for which they were created–the wastebasket. Survivors, therefore, are rare. If ephemera was meant for disposal, is not collecting it contradictory? If it is problematic to manage bibliographically, what justifies the special effort? AB Bookman’s Weekly editor Jacob Chernofsky wrote, "There is something about ephemera that makes such material more interesting to historians than even books or formal documents. Ephemera is, in fact, raw, unedited history–the purest kind, and as such should generate great interest for the historian who seeks to approach the place, time, and people under study as closely as he possibly can."⁷ Similarly, Marcus McCorison, director of the American Antiquarian Society, has described ephemera as "a window into the center of a culture."⁸

The theatergoer who saves programs, the mother who treasures her children’s school certificates and report cards, the belle who keeps invitations to social events, the businessman who retains examples of his firm’s advertising brochures, the librarian who maintains a vertical file of menus from local restaurants, all are unwitting collectors of printed ephemera. (Librarians who issue borrowers’ cards, subject bibliographies, or schedules of special programs also create it.) Sentiment, a perceived need to refer to these materials in the future, or admiration for their physical appearance impels persons to preserve items of personal or professional interest. Sometimes this only delays their eventual disposal. Other souvenirs, however, find their way into private collections or public repositories.

Generations of prescient collectors have sought ephemera, either for its intrinsic value or for the challenge of the quest. The collecting of ephemera began in England with historian John Selden (1584-1654), who accumulated street literature because of its usefulness for indicating "the complexion of the times." Celebrated diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) assembled the first general collection of ephemera. America’s first great ephemerist was Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), founder of the American Antiquarian Society and a printer who recognized the significance of printed ephemera as part of the evidential record. Today these and other important collections are housed in libraries such as the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge; the American Antiquarian Society; and the New-York Historical Society.⁹

A burgeoning interest in printed ephemera inspired the establishment of the Ephemera Society (London) in 1975, followed by the Ephemera Society of America five years later and by similar groups in Australia (1987) and in Canada (1988). Dealing in printed ephemera has become a specialized activity of the antiquarian book trade. With the recognition that these materials are inextricably entwined with political, economic, religious, military, and social history has come the realization that they are within the purview of historians, scholars, and librarians.¹⁰ Increasingly, editors and authors are selecting ephemera to illustrate books on various topics.¹¹ A growing body of literature on ephemera exists and cannot be ignored. Most of this literature consists of broad introductions to the subject.¹² or of publications devoted to certain types of ephemera.¹³ There has been little effort to chronicle the general ephemera of a geographic area.

This theme issue of LLA Bulletin describes examples of the diverse printed ephemera produced or used in Louisiana. Following a survey of sundry forms of ephemera are three studies that highlight selected aspects of the subject: Faye Philips discusses political items and addresses broader concerns of preservation and collection that relate also to other types of ephemera; John Magill comments on invitations, programs, and other memorabilia engendered by the New Orleans carnival; and Earl Hart examines materials associated with advertising and trade and the printing techniques used to create them. Finally, Kate Adams suggests a sensible arrangement librarians can use to organize the ephemera entrusted to their care.

Often lacking anything resembling a title page or even an author or a title, and impossible to order from any standard source, ephemera is the stuff of which catalogers’ and acquisitions librarians’ nightmares are made. Yet it encompasses some of the most unusual and charming materials, not unlike the little prince’s flower, that will repose on a library’s shelves or in its files. The purpose of this theme issue is to focus attention on these fragile documents of everyday life and to encourage their preservation and use.

References

¹Antoine de Saint Exupery, The Little Prince, trans. Katherine Woods (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, c1943), 65-66.

²Rickards, Collecting Printed Ephemera. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 13.

³W.H. Auden, for example, declared in "The Lullaby," "...the grave | Proves the child ephemeral," and in "Aristophanes’ Apology" Robert Browning wrote, "May I, the ephemeral, ne’er scrutinize | Who made the heaven and earth and all things there!" Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Random House, 1976), 131; Browning, Balaustion’s Adventure, Aristophanes’ Apology. Pacchiarotto, and Other Poems (Boston: Houghton Muffin, 1886), 263; Alan Clinton, Printed Ephemera: Collection Organisation and Access (London: Clive Bingley, 1981), 14; Rickards, Collecting Printed Ephemera, 13.

⁴For definitions of these and selected other types of ephemera, see Katherine J. Adams, "Organizing an Ephemera Collection: Some Principles," in this issue. Rickards, Collecting Printed Ephemera, 31, and Chris E. Makepeace, Ephemera: A Book on Its Collection, Conservation and Use (Brookfield, VT: Gower Publishing Co., 1985), 220-223, provide lengthy but nevertheless incomplete lists of kinds of ephemera.

⁵Lewis, Printed Ephemera: The Changing Uses of Type and Letterforms in English and American Printing (Ipswich, Suffolk, Eng.: W. S. Cowell, 1962) 14-15.

⁶ Clinton, Printed Ephemera, 15.

⁷Chernofsky, "Editor’s Corner," AB Bookman’s Weekly 85 (March 5, 1990): 943.

⁸ Quoted by William Frost Mobley, "Introduction," Ephemera 2 (1989): 1.

⁹ Rickards, Collecting Printed Ephemera, 37-49 (quotation, 42).

¹⁰Ephemera Society of America, "An Invitation to Membership" (Schoharie, NY: The Society, [1989?]), unpaged; Chernofsky, "Editor’s Corner," 943.

¹¹ E.g., the Southern Heritage Cookbook Library, 18 vols. (Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House, 1983-1985); Donna R. Braden, Leisure and Entertainment in America (Detroit, MI: Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, 1988). Printed ephemera inspired Christmas Keepsakes (Little Rock, AR: Leisure Arts, 1990), a selection of needlework designs based on nineteenth-century chromolithographs and greeting cards, and motivated Cynthia Hart, John Grossman, and Priscilla Dunhill to compose A Victorian Scrapbook (New York: Workman Publishing, 1989), illustrated with examples from Grossman’s magnificent collection.

¹² E.g., Lewis, Printed Ephemera; Rickards, Collecting Primed Ephemera.

¹³ E.g., Reynaldo Alejandro, Classic Menu Design: From the Collections of the

New York Public Library (Glen Cove, NY: PBC International, 1988); Robert Jay, The

Trade Card in Nineteenth-Century America (Columbia, MO: University of

Missouri Press, 1987).

Florence M. Jumonville is head librarian at the Historic New Orleans Collection.

The Ephemera Society acknowledges with thanks the editor of Louisiana Libraries for granting permission to reproduce this article from Volume 53, Number 2, published in Fall 1990.