Merrie Trippers
The Autocrat of the Brewster, having issued her mandate, the Aristocrat, the acrobat and the Scribe met her at Rowe’s Warf in Boston at 9.15 on Wednesday Morning. Leaving a temperative of ninety-in-the-shade beghind us, we had a breezy sail down the Harbor in the Nantasket Boat.
Photo caption: On ye Nantasket Steamer
What's this all about?
The Journal was created in 1891 by four intrepid women, who took a 17-day literary retreat to Great Brewster Island in Boston Harbor. They created a scrapbook containing early snapshots, humorous narratives, and charming illustrations, along with daily entries that give us clues about their livesand identities.
From producer Emily Marvosh:
My goal with this project is to expand the world of the Great Brewster Journal of 1891: bringing it to larger audiences but also making the document—and its creators—feel a little more immediate and REAL to all of us. Throughout the development process, I have often found it difficult to describe what audiences experienced at the Academic Arts Center in September 2025. Even my own mother (hi Mom!) asked me the other day how I would describe this work: "Mini opera? Musical representation? Artful interpretation?" For the (many) grants I wrote, I used the terms "immersive multimedia experience:" I want the audience to feel like they are inside the Great Brewster Journal, hearing, seeing, reading, and imagining what it might be like on Boston Harbor in 1891.
The photo above is the Bug Light, sadly lost to time, which sat at the end of a sand spit and warned deep-water craft away from the shoal. Because of its awkward shape, it was nicknamed the Bug Light and was beloved by harbor visitors.
Why Lowell?
The four women who created the Journal were from Lowell, MA, at the time an industrial powerhouse. They belonged to an all-female literary club, one of many around the country through which women educated themselves by reading a wide variety of literature, often out loud and in each others' company—you could think of it as a very intense book club. The Academic Arts Center, owned and run by the Middlesex Community College, occupies an 1875 building that was once Lowell's Boston & Maine railroad station.