Like many middle-class Boston girls
of the late 19th century, Annie McFarlane kept an autograph album, in
which her schoolmates, family, and neighbours wrote messages of
friendship and scraps of sentimental verse. This keepsake, with its
stamped and coloured binding, was passed down through McFarlane's family
to her great-grandson, the independent scholar Theodore Dawes.
Fascinated by the faded inscriptions in so many varied hands - from the
spiky script of Andrew McFarlane (Father) to the laboured cursive of
young Flossie L. Law - Dawes undertook an arduous course of archival
research aimed at uncovering the identity and biographical details of
everyone who signed the album.The result is this book, in which each
page of Annie McFarlane's autograph album is reproduced in facsimile,
along with the biography of the person who signed it. Together these
brief yet telling portraits reveal the texture of life in Boston circa
1890, as well as in Vanceboro, Maine, where the McFarlanes had a summer
home.


United in the leaves of Annie's album are the McFarlanes
themselves, a family of Irish and Scottish extraction who achieved a
modest prosperity in the linen trade; the Rothenbergs, owners of the
legendary Boston department store of that name; the Kellys, stolid Maine
farmers; and many others from every walk of life. Particularly striking
are the voices of those too frequently omitted from our historical
narratives: servants, labourers, and, of course, children. Autograph Album
is a landmark in the social history of New England. For the specialist,
it will shed light on questions of class, ethnicity, gender, and
popular literacy; for the general reader, it is a rich and poignant
reminder of the worlds that lie hidden in a family heirloom.