The scrapbook shown here is an appealing and unintentional combining of stories. In the 19th century, it was not uncommon for people to send away for free, hard-bound government publications so that they could use the pages of these books to create scrapbooks.

The underlying text is from the pages of the U.S. Geological Survey 1888-89. The “scrapbooker” has, from the looks of it, rather hastily cut out several poems, A Narrow Escape, A Ballad of January 1 and Uncle Hiram’s Visit, and pasted these verses over a section on, of all things, fossil insects. Unless the scrapbook maker somehow intuited postmodern

attitudes about text of our age, it is clear that no relationship between the text of the geological survey and the poems was intended. The relationships, wonderful as they are, are all serendipitous. Look at this double-sourced line: “here be given it The water wagon driver grins.” Or this: “corded in internal Backward, turn backward oh time in your flight.” Both of these conjoined lines are from places where the pedestrian survey text meets the poem A Ballad of January 1.

This 19th century practice of repurposing (and recycling) free publications, in some ways, sets the stage for altered artists’ books.

Scrapbook
Unknown Artist