The Mirror functioned as place where well-educated and wealthy men (and some women) of the East House could express their ideas. Common articles included: political rhetoric; short stories; poems; notes on philosophy, and notes on physics. Additionally, the authors used the Mirror to claim some authority over the definition of mental illness. The extract from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, included in preface of the Volume 6, displays the patients expressing their own ideas about insanity:
"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact; And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name."[1]
This quotation states that ‘the lunatic, the lover and the poet’ all use their imagination actively. However, when their ideas are materialised by others what was previously ‘unknown’ (and, therefore, only ascribed meaning by the individual’s imagination) is classed as ‘insanity’ by others. Many other quotations similar to this one appear on the preface’s of the Mirror to prelude that the writings within the Volume are not to be immediately labelled as ‘insane’, but instead to be valued as a piece of writing.
Explore the sub-sections of this page to discover why the Mirror was established and, also, some key themes present in the periodicals first seven volumes.
[1] William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ed. by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (Washington: The Folger Shakespeare Library), V. 1. 7. in, ‘Preface’, Morningside Mirror, 6.1, p.i.
Emmay Deville URSS Project 2020/21 