The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge preserves many of the manuscript sources associated with British polar exploration, including journals, logbooks and correspondence. Some of these documents are on display at the recently renovated Polar Museum, based at the Institute, but the SPRI has also begun to make some material available online, beginning with Scott’s diary from his last ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1910-1912.

In his entry for Christmas Day in 1911, after making his usual notes on the weather conditions and the party’s progress, Scott writes of the feast the explorers enjoyed that night: ‘We had four courses. The first, pemmican, full whack, with slices of horse meat flavoured with onion and curry powder and thickened with biscuit; then an arrowroot, cocoa and biscuit hoosh sweetened; then a plum-pudding; then cocoa with raisins, and finally a dessert of caramels and ginger. After the feast it was difficult to move. Wilson and I couldn’t finish our share of plum-pudding. We have all slept splendidly and feel thoroughly warm – such is the effect of full feeding.’

For many, the text itself will not be unfamiliar – the diaries, gifted to the nation by Scott’s family, are in the British Library, and have appeared in many print editions since 1913. What makes this publication project different is the combination of different communication methods and media – using a linked blog, Twitter account, and photostreams to document the expedition day-by-day in this centenary year, the SPRI staff are hoping to see whether modern communication methods can provide a better understanding of the past. As the introduction to the project explains, ‘reading the journals over a few days is a very different experience from following the daily events of the expedition as they happen. It is hoped that the blog will enable readers to gain a deeper appreciation of the challenges faced by the expedition and the sacrifices made by Scott and his men. This is our first attempt to bring the diaries of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration to a worldwide audience by electronic means.’

The commemoration of a centenary, as for any anniversary, is about marking time, and so it is appropriate that this project particularly emphasises the dimension of time. Being given a daily excerpt from a document which is about the daily act of writing and recording is indeed very different from racing through a print edition at one’s own pace, and the online media of blogs and Twitter timelines allow this dimension to be explored in a new way.

Books for children are often some of the most experimental when it comes to physical form and the material potential of paper and card. More is to come here on this topic, but for now, here is a peep at one of well-known author/illustrator Jan Pienkowski’s beautiful scenes in his telling of the Christmas story, The First Noel. Through the layering of intricately cut pieces of card, Pienkowski’s pages form cavernous spaces, reminding us of the essentially three-dimensional nature of the book as object.

… went on display earlier this month for just three hours (12-3 pm) in a replica Victorian post office in the replica Victorian town of Blists Hill, at Ironbridge in Shropshire. Then it was returned to its resting place in the British Postal Museum and Archive, and was replaced with (you’ve guessed it) a replica.

Christmas being all about replication, it is striking how unfamiliar this item is. It is single-sided, apparently because it is really a glorified calling-card. It was printed in an edition of 1,000 using the relatively new technology of lithography, and coloured by hand. The image on the card is a triptych, featuring sober grisaille scenes of Christian charity to left and right. In the colourful middle section a family seated round a table raises a seasonal toast to the card’s recipient; a small child, encouraged by one of the adults, has already started downing his wine. (This last detail reportedly raised hackles in the Temperance League).

The card was commissioned in 1843 (the year of A Christmas Carol) by Henry Cole, a man whose extraordinary administrative skills must have prepared him well for the rituals of Christmas-card sending. Having reformed the public records, Cole helped invent the penny post; produced timetables for the Railway Chronicle; wrote children’s stories under the pseudonym of Felix Summerly; organized the Great Exhibition; and subsequently initiated the Albert Hall and the fabulous suite of museums in South Kensington. After reading about his life in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, it comes as a mild relief to learn that Cole ‘cared little for his personal appearance’; something, at least, had to give. The DNB suggests that Cole’s Christmas card may have been an offshoot of his work for the Post Office, offering support to those who suspect that all the seasonal greetings are really just another way to sell stamps.

Cole was still sending his card of 1843 in the 1860s, and was keen in later life to lay claim to the invention. Nowadays the few surviving copies retail for up to £8,000 each. You can read more here or here.

One of the most lovely Christmas cards I received this year was this one, produced  by the Fitzwilliam Museum, which features an illumination from a fifteenth-century French Book of Hours (MS 69).

In this scene of the nativity, the infant Christ is not in the arms of his mother, but lovingly propped on the knees of Joseph. Meanwhile, the Virgin Mary rests in bed, holding an open book, perhaps her own Book of Hours. The juxtaposition of baby and book makes this tiny scene at once ordinary and extraordinary, a beautifully intimate depiction of the Word made Flesh.

Our second stocking filler from the CMT is the manuscript of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, which you can find in an online facsimile here. Held in the Pierpont Morgan, just round the corner from the New York Public Library, the manuscript gives a wonderful sense of creativity on the wing, with numerous crossings-out, interlinings, second- and third-thoughts darkening the page.

Towards the end of the tale, the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge his neglected gravestone, and Scrooge asks: “Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” He answers the question himself: “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead … But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!” And a few lines later, he begs: “Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” Dickens is, as ever, busily crafting every sentence as he goes; in that last sentence he first writes ‘change’, then alters it to the more intense ‘sponge away’. Scrooge’s desire to rewrite his own ending chimes with the creative act that unfurls before our eyes.

The notes to this edition tell us that the sentence by which Dickens clarified that Tiny Tim did not die was added as an afterthought. The manuscript leaves this crucial matter suspended in an unforeseeable future.

On Christmas Eve exactly one hundred years ago, two children left a letter for Father Christmas in the chimney of their family home in Dublin. The letter stayed in the chimney for many decades, until it was discovered by the current owner of the house. Miraculously, it has survived with only a few scorch marks. ‘I want a baby doll and a waterproof with a hood and a pair of gloves and a toffee apple and a gold penny and a silver sixpence and a long toffee’, the author of the letter instructed. I wonder if Father Christmas obliged? Read more about it in this article from last week’s Irish Times.

This is the first in a special series of festive material texts – if the elves aren’t too exhausted, we hope there will be one for each of the twelve days of Christmas…

Happy Christmas from all at the CMT!

One of the windows of the Cambridge University Press bookshop is currently staging a display of beautiful creations by book sculptor and paper artist Justin Rowe. Based on the traditional carol, the collection consists of a work for each of the twelve days of Christmas. From the interiors of books, Rowe brings forth delicate, intimate scenes in paper, of dancing ladies, drumming drummers, and milking maids. On close inspection, some of the scenes have an unsettling, dark element too – why are the ten lords leaping off a bibliographical cliff? I particularly like his use of gold leaf, one of the traditional materials for book ornamentation, which both reinforces the material origins of his creations as books, and transforms them into something else. You can see photographs of these and other works on Rowe’s own website.

‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ are being raffled for Romsey Mill, a Cambridge charity, and tickets are for sale inside the CUP shop.