ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Almanac production as a household enterprise in Early Modern Britain and Germany

• In Event: Recasting the History of Almanacs 1

English Abstract

‘I had calculated them all to the intervals which to find all by the rule of three (and I am not skill’d in logarithms) takes some time, and the Stationers was so hasty for the copy, which was done all to that so let them go in as the was,’ wrote Elizabeth Beighton in 1746 to a friend who had pointed out errors in her previous year’s astronomical calculations for the Ladies’ Diary [1]. The Diary was an English almanac, ostensibly aimed at women but widely read by both sexes, that was edited for 30 years by her husband, Henry Beighton, until his sudden death in 1743 left Elizabeth in charge. Her correspondence reveals, not only her involvement in compiling and computing for the Diary since their marriage in 1720, but also the limitations of her mathematical skill and the commercial pressures on English almanac producers.

The Ladies’ Diary is one of a growing number of British examples that add to German evidence for almanacs as collaborative productions of a household, involving the head, wives, siblings, children, servants, apprentices – anyone who had somehow acquired the requisite mathematical or organisational skills. This talk will assess what we know of the mathematical skills required in calendar and almanac production, how these were acquired, how the work was distributed, and how these combined to materialise gender and mathematical practices in a printed form that benefited the household as an economic unit.

Author

• Isobel Falconer, University of St Andrews