A Missing Chronology

This article is being written on October 23rd, 2021: today is the anniversary of the Creation of the World on October 23rd, 4004 BC according to James Ussher’s Chronology.

Page 1 of Ussher’s Chronology (from the University of Michigan)

George Orwell would not have been aware of the significance of today’s date although he owned a copy of Chronological Tablets, exhibiting every Remarkable Occurrence from the Creation of the World down to the Present Time, a book he tells us was printed by J.D. Dewick, Aldersgate Street, [London] in the year 1801. Orwell bought the book late in 1943, he was a curious man and consequently says:

With some interest I looked up the date of the creation of the world, and found it was in 4004 B.C., and “is supposed to have taken place in the autumn.” (“As I Please”, 31st December 1943)

Orwell read on:

Later in the book it is given more exactly as September, 4004.

“September” is a curious month as Ussher clearly gives the month as October. Either Orwell transcribed the month wrongly, or his Chronological Tablets used a chronology similar but not identical to Ussher’s. More unfortunately, this book unlike a large part of Orwell’s library did not survive to be indexed among his belongings: we cannot pick up his copy and check the text. The book certainly existed, but the English or Welsh student is at a particular disadvantage: Worldcat, the index, shows no copies in English or Welsh libraries, with one in Scotland, one in Ireland, and three in the United States of America.

Based on the similarity of titles, the book was plagiarised by American publishers, but they seem to have edited the text along the way.

The running title Mnemonika was added to the front page above Chronological Tablets. We are fortunate that we can interrogate Mnemonika, looking for references to “4004” and we find no month given whatsoever:

The two pages of Mnemonika referring to the year “4004”.

Is that the end of the matter? No. In fact, the Chronological Tablets was an early nineteenth century update of a volume which had been published as early as 1762 under the similar but non-identical title, as an interrogation of Worldcat shows: Chronological tables of universal history, sacred and profane, ecclesiastical and civil; from the creation of the world, to the year one thousand seven hundred and forty-three. Tables had become Tablets, and the concluding date changed from the exact one thousand seven hundred and forty-three to the more general Present Time. (This hiding of the year is a known publishers’ practice which prevents a book being seen to be out of date on a quick examination). Chronological Tables was a translation of a French original by Nicolas Lenglet Dufresnoy, an eighteenth century author of educational works on geography, history and pedagogy generally.

A check on the 1762 edition shows that Orwell would have been no better informed about the significance of October 23rd:

The only page in the 1762 edition, published by A Millar and others, mentioning 4004.

Returning to Orwell’s “As I Please” column, he begins with the three words, “Another ninepenny acquisition” which provokes a further sense of historical wonder. For nowhere else, and not before, has he mentioned anything “ninepenny”; not once, that he should specify that this is “another”. Not only is his discovery of the date “September, 4004” a puzzle, so is his account of the acquisition of the book and the significance of its price. A small query such as this is yet more evidence for the need of more study of Orwell’s life and reading if we are to answer the questions a close examination of his work provokes. If nothing else, it is an example of his interest in dates and the possibility of their manipulation which came to concern him so much.

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Acknowledgements

George Orwell’s “As I Please” column appeared in Tribune on the 31st December, 1943. It is item 2398 in the Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Professor Peter Davison.

Orwell’s adaptation of The Voyage of the Beagle, item 2953 in the Complete Works, was first broadcast on the BBC Home Service on the 29th March 1946.

Facsimile reprints of Mnemonika, and Chronological Tables (1762 edition) are available. There is little cause to recommend them.

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