Haywood Bibliography Note 1

I was recently lucky enough to find a set of Haywood's Female Spectator (1744–46). It is a little battered, but it was cheap, and it contains almost all the part-titles (an enormous help to bibliographers).


Anyway, although it is a "first edition" (Ab.60.1), I hesitate to call it one because my set—like almost every other set I have looked at—has a few Books in it that are reprints. In fact, when I looked closely at my copy I discovered that the reprinted Books that it contains are ones I hadn't seen before (I'll do a post on these reprints later). So I took my set to Monash and compared it to the one we have in Rare Books.


One of the first things I noticed when comparing the two is that the Books in my set that differ from those in the Monash set usually contain different tailpieces. And while it can be hard to identify a clear example of typographical difference between two line-for-line reprints (looking for hyphens instead of dashes, for instance), differences between ornaments are very, very clear.

I mentioned in my Bibliography how difficult and frustrating it is trying to distinguish line-by-line reprints from each other when no library has more than one copy of any one title or edition. And this is a perfect example of why. What a difference it makes, how much simpler it is, when you can sit two copies side-by-side.

When I got home again I photographed the ornaments in my copy. I will keep them on my computer so I can compare them to ornaments in the copies I examine in the future. And, in case anyone wants to check their copies at home, I thought I'd reproduce them here. The captions I have given them are the ones I am using in the updated entries in my Bibliography, entries that will form the basis of the second edition I am planning.

[1. Fruit and flowers]

[2. Five petal flower]

[3. Six petal flower]

[4. Vase of Flowers]

[5. Seated Figure]

[6. Winged Head]

[7. Eight petal flower]

Tailpieces appear on the last page of 16 of the 24 Books (Book 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 22, 24). The ornaments are:

1. Fruit and flowers [Book 5, 10 11, 12, 15]
2. Five petal flower [Book 9, 22]
3. Six petal flower [Book 6]
4. Vase of Flowers [Book 3, 17, 18]
5. Seated Figure [Book 1, 7, 14]
6. Winged Head [Book 12]
7. Eight petal flower [Book 24]

In other sets—with second or third editions of individual Books—the ornament may differ. So, for example, in the Monash copy of Book 1, the tailpiece is a Winged Head rather than a Seated Figure, but in my set Book 1 is a third edition (not recorded in my Bibliography) it is, nevertheless, a Seated Figure. I will save the technical details for another time.