Naomi Cream and the Power of Transcription

Naomi Cream is a descendant of Solomon Lyon, and undertook the work of transcribing Abraham Septimus Lyon's 1826-1839 diary. Naomi worked tirelessly to transform the hand-written manuscript into a readable document. Her explanatory notes helped to provide a sense of context for readers who are unfamiliar with the world Lyon depicts in his diary. And her scholarly articles have helped us study A. S. Lyon's place in Lyon family history and Jewish culture. In short, Naomi Cream has created great resources to help us understand these rare documents from the past. The diaries we can now read in a clear, clean format, have been transformed from their earlier form as faded ink on brittle pages. This transformation has affected how contemporary readers can access the diaries.  

In time, this site will include annotated editions of the diary.  In the meantime, however, we thought it would be a good idea to provide information about the process of transcription and the person responsible for that important work--Naomi Cream.