I'm currently working on an article about the scandalous, redheaded, early 20th-century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. (Her candle burns at both ends!) She was among the most famous women in the United States in the 1920s and into the '30s, but her star faded quickly after she died -- not necessarily for any good reason, apart from the fact that the literary Powers That Be didn't care enough to ensure that anyone kept eyeballs on her poetry. In her day, she was rightly admired for her sassy, acerbic wit and disdain for sexual propriety, which she neatly compressed into sonnets.
Anyway, as part of the research for my article, I've been digging into the archives of a journal called Equal Rights. It was a publication put out weekly-ish by the National Women's Party (NWP), the political group run by Alice Paul. After suffrage was won, their primary goal was getting the Equal Rights Amendment passed, along with other policies consistent with the equality-feminist agenda. I previously learned that Millay -- who is often unfairly branded as an apolitical floozy -- had been on the editorial board for the journal.
For my article, I need to dig deeper: I'm trying to prove that Millay was a savvier political figure than people tend to give her credit for, and as part of that, I need to figure out precisely when she worked for Equal Rights and what her participation entailed. (Was it, like, a vanity credit? Did she write articles? Did she vet other women's writing? etc.) As it turns out, this is pretty esoteric information and isn't the kind of thing anyone has bothered to track down before. So, into the archives I went.
I won't leave you in suspense: I figured it out. (Millay is first credited as part of the editorial staff of Equal Rights in the April 19, 1924 issue, and her name remains in the credits until mid-1935. She likely attended Editorial Board meetings and had a say in the direction of the journal, and may have contributed some anonymous pieces.)
So, case closed.
Along the way, though, I found something charming:
Equal Rights published one volume per year, in weekly-ish issues -- in other words, every volume had somewhere around 50 issues. When the year was over, they leveled up to the next volume and started over in their issue numbering. Volume 1, Issue 1 of Equal Rights debuted in late February of 1923, and there are 45 issues in that first volume. Volume 2, Issue 1 was published on February 16, 1924.
Then, something weird happens.
The very next week, on February 24, 1924, the front cover announces that the issue being published is Volume 11, issue number 2. There is no explanation as to why Volume 2 only has one issue, or why the volume number has suddenly jumped to 11.
As it happens, volume numbers were printed in Roman numerals. There's only one reasonable explanation: Some dummy on the editorial staff misread the Roman numeral II for 11. Rather than attempting to retract the mistake, the journal just went with it. Every volume and issue number from that date forward just carries on from 11. When 1925 rolled around, it became Volume 12. When the journal stopped publishing in 1954, their final issue proclaimed that it was Volume 40, Issue 2. In reality, the journal had only ever published 31 volumes.
...
Did I lose you in the minutiae of publishing?
Here's why I dragged you along through the archives: I adore the humanity implied by this mistake. I rarely have the reason or opportunity to do archival work, so I'm rarely privy to the freaky little eccentricities of history. I love being reminded that the distant, majestic figures I study are people, prone to misreading Roman numerals and forgiving one another and just shrugging and sticking with Volume 11. I wish that more scholars paid attention to Equal Rights, that the contents of this journal were considered important to American history, but on the other hand, I also love being (I suspect) one of only a handful of people who have ever noticed and been amused by this error.
It gives a lovely light.
