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The General History and Description of a Machine for Composing Hexameter Latin Verses

This 22 page pamphlet is John Clark's description of his Latin Verse Machine, which he began building in 1830, and completed in 1843. It was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London in 1845.

The pamphlet includes a list of automatons that inspired the project, discusses the "kaleidoscopic" system that generates the verses in the Latin Verse Machine, and explains how the machine works.

The pamphlet doesn't directly cite the 1677 "Artificial Versifying, or the Schoolboys Recreation, A New Way to Make Latin Verses", but the machine is based on this text.

A few original print copies of the pamphlet are held by the Alfred Gillett Trust in Somerset, UK. As of 2023 the pamphlet is not available online.

Jill Walker Rettberg - 15.07.2023 - 11:23

Jason David Hall

Jill Walker Rettberg - 15.07.2023 - 11:28

Nineteenth Century Literature

Jill Walker Rettberg - 15.07.2023 - 12:10

Popular Prosody: Spectacle and the Politics of Victorian Versification

Paper discussing John Clark's Latin Verse Machine (1843) and the effect of this kind of technology on popular understandings of prosody.

Jill Walker Rettberg - 15.07.2023 - 13:52

Alfred Gillett Trust

The Alfred Gillett Trust primarily holds materials related to the company now known world-wide as Clarks Shoes, such as company records and designs for shoes. It also holds John Clark's Latin Verse Machine (1830-1843) and documents related to it, and it is for this reason the trust is of interest to the field of electronic literature.

Jill Walker Rettberg - 15.07.2023 - 16:37