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How Long Did Quill Pens Last?


PDW

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A friend has just emailed me the following:

 

"From "The Percy anecdotes" collected and edited by Reuben and Sholto Percy, 1821-3:

 

History of a Quill

In the year 1610, an English version of Camden's `Britannia' appeared, which was the work of the industrious Philemon Holland, a physician and a schoolmaster, who boasted of having written a large folio volume with one pen, on which he composed the following lines:

 

With one sole pen I wrote this book,

Made of a grey goose quill;

A pen it was when I it took,

And a pen I leave it still."

 

How long did a typical quill pen last in typical use? Was this not much beyond the expected, a major boast, or very unlikely?

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In the writings of Charles Dickens, Scrooge was so stingy that I allotted only one quill pen per month

to his bookkeeper Bob Cratchet. I suspect that writing on an open page is not as demanding on a

goose quill as the small entries into a ledger, which require frequent sharpening of the quill.

Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn.
Zum Augenblicke dürft ich sagen:
Verweile doch, du bist so schön !

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