A (Belated) Happy Birthday to Mungo Park!
Borrowing of Park’s Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa at the Advocates Library, shortly after its publication. (FR262a-25, page 103)
Born on the 10th of September, 1771, we had hoped to wish Scottish explorer and surgeon, Mungo Park, a happy birthday on the 252nd anniversary of his birth last month. However, while observing the digital picket of the recent UCU strike action, we decided to wish him a belated happy birthday today instead!
For me, one of the most exciting aspects of working on the books and borrowing database is coming across people, such as Mungo Park, who appear as both borrowers and authors in the records. Park was born in Fowlshiels, Selkirk and was educated as a surgeon at the University of Edinburgh. His matriculation records show that he was a student there between 1788 and 1790. From the Books and Borrowing records, we can see that he visited the library just once to borrow a copy of David Macbride’s A methodical introduction to the theory and practice of the physic. However, it is his legacy as an explorer which perforates the borrowing records from libraries across Scotland, from Orkney to Selkirk and Westerkirk.
Mungo Park’s borrower’s record from the University of Edinburgh, 1st November 1790. (Da.2.23, page 26)
I’ve blogged before about the popularity of travel writing, particularly at the Royal High School but it is certainly a popular genre across the majority of the libraries in the project, tapping into a public fascination with the British Empire and exploration, but also reflecting that this was, and is, a highly entertaining genre, which appealed to a broad range of readers.
Works of travels and voyages were often highly illustrated and Mungo Park’s 1799 account of his exploration of the course of the Niger River, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, contains richly-detailed maps for readers to pore over.
Map, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (p. 27) available at Historical Texts.
It is perhaps unsurprising that Mungo Park’s account was particularly popular at Selkirk Library, with 64 borrowings between its publication in 1799 and 1814. With the rich borrower occupation data at Selkirk we can also see that it was popular among a huge range of people from farmers to fellow surgeons, clergy to an MP, revealing the universal appeal of and appetite for tales of exploration. The same work was also popular at the Royal High School where it was borrowed 118 times, reflecting the pupils’ wider interest in travel writing.
At Westerkirk, Park’s legacy continued with 64 borrowings of an account of his second expedition in 1805, which sadly ended in his drowning in the rapids at Bussa (now covered by Lake Kainji) in January 1806. At Westerkirk, interest in his work continued until 1822, long after Park’s death, showing the enduring fascination with his adventurous journey to find the source of the Niger River.
Other Sources:
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Mungo Park”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Sep. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mungo-Park. Accessed 3 October 2023.
Park, Mungo. Travels in the interior districts of Africa: performed under … the African Association, in the years 1795, 1796, and 1797. By Mungo Park, … (London, 1799), (Accessed via. Historical Texts)