“Leaves of ivory”: erasable writing in eighteenth-century fiction

This article considers the neglected practice of writing on ivory in the eighteenth century. It places the ivory tablet, or memorandum-book, within the history of erasable writing, demonstrating the purposes for which it was used, and the affective meanings it could carry. Like other forms of writing technology it reveals much about contemporary conceptions of memory and the mind. The properties of ivory are considered along with its role in global trade. Detailed attention to two late eighteenth-century novels, Miss/Mrs Pilkington’s Delia, a Pathetic and Interesting Tale (1790) and Elizabeth Hamilton’s Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1796) shows how the representation of the ivory tablet in fiction raises crucial questions regarding the interplay between remembering and forgetting, as well as the perils of female authorship. Though its contents are designed to be erased, the ivory tablet makes a lasting contribution to the period’s literary and philosophical debates.