By Leah Liceaga

On November 3rd, English Professor Olivia Moy, of Lehman College, met with her English Seminar class under the arch at Washington Square Park. They had arranged to see the NYU Fales Collection, a mere street away, consisting of literature aged centuries, with librarian Charlotte Priddle. Among the collection, was a volume of the poem Tale of the Ancient Mariner, written by American poet Samuel Coleridge who lived from 1772 to 1834. Among the other works were Lyrical Ballads by poet William Wordsworth, and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Librarian Priddle also discussed how publishing was back in the time this literature came out to print. Due to the then costly price of paper, each piece was used to maximum efficiency, with one large sheet of paper printed on both side, and then folded multiple times to form a tiny paper book. Small poems that would be handed out to passerby for free or with a small charge, would likewise be multiple poems printed on a single, very large, sheet of paper, which was then cut up for distribution as a way to save money.