[table of contents]
[return to Sextant Online Index]

We've selected an 18th century woodcut for the cover of Volume IV, No.2 in part because so many of the issue's offerings make effective use of engravings to show us something of our past; these sections of the magazine -- Nancy's Schultz's account of the 1834 anti-Catholic riots in Charlestown, Len Friedman's translations from Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris, and especially Harold Pinkham's examination of early New England engravers -- work collectively to acquaint us with how the world typically represented itself toward the end of the long stretch of recorded human history predating the possibility of photoreproduction. The cover for our issue, in fact, replicates a magazine cover from more than 200 years ago.

David Sartwell's nature photographs, on the other hand, use today's technology to record images that might have been seen not merely hundreds, but thousands of years ago. We share his concern that similar denizens of the far north be around to stare into someone else's lenses in centuries to come.

We're pleased to inaugurate "In Translation," a section of the Sextant we hope to use occasionally, mindful that the expression of our faculty and staff's talents is not limited to English. English with more than a touch of Irish, however, is Kenneth MacIver's focus in his essay celebrating the playwright Sean O'Casey.

Among the authors whose works are reviewed in our Book Shelf are two have ties to the college. Susanna Kaysen, whose Girl, Interrupted has been on the New York Times list of best-sellers was a visiting writer teaching at Salem State in 1989.

And poet Agha Shahid Ali is scheduled to give a reading at the college with novelist George Cuomo in November, close to this issue's publication date.

Editor: Rod Kessler, English Editorial Board: Shelby Adams, Art  Sue Case, Biology Ellen Golub, English John Mack, Management Eileen Margerum, English  Michael Prochilo, English Vera Sheppard, Theatre & Speech Janet Stubbs, Psychology  Ellen Vellela, English Alan Young, Biology
Design, Layout and Typography: Joyce Rossi-Demas, Graphic Services Susan Lombard, Graphic Services Photography: Leon Jackson, Instructional Media Center Interns: Wendy Mahoney and Elizabeth Lydon	Above:  view from the ruined Ursuline Convent on Mount Benedict (1854)             On the cover of the Sextant, Boston Waterfront, the American Magazine featured this woodcut version of William Burgis' 1774 view of colonial Boston