Bibliographer: Lisa Yelsey
The Unfortunate Union: or, the Test of Virtue
Traditional Description
The UNFORTUNATE UNION: OR, THE TEST OF VIRTUE. A STORY founded on FACTS, AND Calculated to promote the Cause of Virtue in Younger Minds. Written by a LADY. VOL. 1.
LONDON, Printed for Richardson and Urquhart, under the Royal Exchange, and at No. 46, Pater-nofter-Row. MDCCLXXVIII.
I 206p. II 227p.
12 mo. 12
Contents: TITLE B1-p.225 rText
Notes: Actual book at the Harvard University Houghton Library. There is no preface or epilogue to the story.. The book is not dedicated to anybody nor does it address the reader. There are no notes in the margins.
Experimental Description
Notes on this: Color is one of the main ways we think about images. I wondered how far formal realism extended in this example of a 1778 novel. I searched for the different colors in both volumes of the novel and took note of the way color signified images in context. It was interesting to note that color was not used very much in the novel, and which colors were used at all. The majority of times the color described some aspect of a woman’s appearance, whether it be her face or her clothing.
Describing The Unfortunate Union as the sum of its color words search for color words (red, orange, yellow, blue, green, brown, black, purple, gold) questions the boundaries of all description’s reliance on metonymy, asking us to think about how any given descriptive regime asks a small handful of characteristics of an object to stand for the whole.