In this year of the 400th anniversary of the arrival in 1620 of the Mayflower in the Wampanoag homeland, in what is now called the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Plimoth Patuxet Museums and the State Library of Massachusetts announce the publication of a groundbreaking new edition of William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation.
For the last year or so we have worked with our colleagues at Plimoth Patuxet to take digital images of the original manuscript and transform them into a brand new publication: a full facsimile of a document that is almost 400 years old.
The State Library has been the custodian of the Bradford Manuscript since its return from England in 1897. After then-Governor Roger Walcott placed the manuscript with the State Library, the original volume was on public display downstairs in our reading room for many years in a specially-designed secure display case. Since then our curatorial responsibilities have evolved significantly, so we now work very hard to make the work accessible to as many people as possible through digitization and facsimiles. You can see the entire volume on our website, and, when we re-open after the pandemic protocols have ended, you can visit us here in the State House to see many different published transcriptions and facsimiles.
In 2012, we secured funding to have the manuscript conserved and digitized, using the expert services at NEDCC—the Northeast Document Conservation Center, in Andover, Massachusetts. The conservators there performed a careful evaluation of the volume, digitized it to document its condition, tested all paper and ink, and then dis-assembled it to repair damage the volume had suffered during its long lifetime. You can read about this process on the NEDCC website if you’re interested. After the volume’s pages were repaired, it was digitized again, and then sewn back into its original vellum binding, and placed in a handsome custom-designed box. We keep it stored securely, in an environment with consistent temperature and humidity, and rarely bring it out of those conditions.
The digital images from NEDCC allowed us to put the entire volume in our digital repository, DSpace, so anyone with a computer and internet access can see it in great detail by starting at the home page of the State Library web site. We also had those images printed and bound, in a few copies for people to see in the State Library, and one of those copies is on display in our reading room.
But we wanted to do more to make the volume more accessible to more people. So last year we started working in earnest with our colleagues at Plimoth Patuxet to design a brand-new facsimile that could be printed and sold at a reasonable cost. We wanted people to be able to read Bradford’s own words, in his own handwriting, so they can see the actual words of one of the primary players in the Pilgrim story.
The book, available exclusively through Plimoth Patuxet’s gift shops and at www.plimoth.com, will be launched November 19, 2020 at 7:00 p.m., via a special online event hosted live by Plimoth Patuxet and featuring comments by bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick. The event is free, but registration is required at https://virtuallaunchofplimothplantation.eventbrite.com.
Books will be available for purchase on November 19; however, those wishing to be notified of its availability are welcome to sign up at the link here: www.plimoth.org/OfPlimothPlantation.
