This sketchbook points to Crane's political leanings, his view of the world, and his thoughts on labour and leisure. Bound in green cloth with gold embossed letters, the visual content tends towards the bucolic––featuring landscapes, sunsets, and a countryside cottage and imagery of animals. The pencil sketches include studies of birds––a solan geese, a black cock, and a cormorant. The absence of detail in the line drawings of cows and a horse rider on horseback contrast with the detailed studies of a cottage and rocks and shrubs.

Located near the end pages, the textual content includes hand-copied sections of written works by Charles Kingsley, John Ruskin, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Copied in part, Kingsley poem titled Palinodia, 1841, which begins as an ode to nature, and continues as a commentary on mankind’s place in “sunless cities, and the weary haunts of smoke-grimed labour.” Crane also copied out sections of Ruskin’s essay, Unto the Last, 1860, which attacks aspects of classic economic theory associated with Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Excerpts from Ruskin are followed by Emerson’s History, from Essays: First Series, 1841.

The medium is pencil and ink on paper.

Green cloth-bound notebook featuring preliminary sketches of farm animals--including sheep, cows, horses, a dog (defecating), and a chicken. Extensively illustrated, the sketchbook includes landscapes of farmland and topographical sketches with notes on colouring as well as landscapes in watercolour. It includes portraits of a child and of a man, and details of a gate and a branch. The visual content includes a folded sheet of paper featuring profile and frontal portraits of the same man.

Crane’s handwriting notes include excerpts, quotes, and marginalia. Excerpts come from the art section from the The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art and the Westminster Review. Located on the sketchbook’s endpapers, Crane’s quotes Ralph Waldo on the use of the artist’s tools. Crane’s notation includes music notes with laughter “ha, ha, ha.”

Used by Crane in the summer and fall of 1864, the sketchbook corresponds with the period when Crane was beginning to illustrate a number of book covers and toybooks in partnership with the printer Edmund Evans. There is a possible connection between the animals and music notice in these sketches with farm animals and songs that feature in Crane’s early toybooks.

The medium is pencil, ink, and watercolour on paper.