tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49541246662530283012024-03-06T13:12:50.938+11:00Patrick Spedding~research notes~informal writings~Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.comBlogger329125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-58531555553846836292023-04-10T08:15:00.004+10:002023-04-10T08:21:57.158+10:00Judge Rochfort exlibris bookplate, ca. 1760<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-EgnBR2SYQEKPh6rqHCJhiC_6mfaWCIr8S-_M6tX0bDcyHQ6rwBFW2cJRtYUWyFCmZ-AFEjmWK7qFZmXngihhJsQMJJg2Sutn3egd7lInC9qCI0HT5PDQ2bOw7lZxIKdFq373P-ndO_HxHtaUervc3ZJx2MWp57LzxD1yrgEVq_iBXj0IYYX2xrVNww/s1600/1%20Judge%20Rochfort%201_500.jpg" /></div><br />
A biblioclast cut this early eighteenth century Judge Rochfort exlibris bookplate from a copy of James Foster, <i>Sermons on the following subjects, viz. …</i>, 3rd ed. (1736) [<i>ESTC</i>: n24146 (recording 15 copies); <a href="http://estc.bl.uk/N24146">here</a>]. I know this because, the bookplate was, and still is, fixed to the back of the titlepage, as you can see:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga1e2RNCizqh9hN6Fpr3VY3BF4uXPoD2Msw3EklMbG3jzEADyuD_GetjT4buZfD_4PcouPpCe6Eq-AyiCwU0je0sxi5YE-2GC3gi-x1vVgeG_zcjyXDcCwaD3MM1twbVHeBeSVAGPuPp5OalCHU6AF0A7BKLv37-OOcK_1NpliyKC_xhGqgDVa4Ob6zQ/s1600/2%20Judge%20Rochfort%202_500.jpg" /></div>
<br />
Bookplates are usually attached to front (fixed) endpaper, <i>not</i> to the title leaf; most likely, there was already a bookplate on the front endpaper, when Rochfort went to add his plate, so it was placed on the verso of the title leaf instead (more on this below).<br />
<br />
There is a copy of this edition of Foster's <i>Sermons</i> on ECCO, but not freely available online (yet—probably), but there are copies of the first edition of 1733 (<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=JGop-Lbs8EwC">here</a>) and the fourth edition of 1745 (<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=d35YAAAAcAAJ">here</a>) for anyone interested in Rochfort’s reading or book-buying preferences. Below is the full title page, taken from the University of Cambridge Library copy on ECCO:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRHj3g1pHN-at_7Zl5UZ_h1f_8P2-XDALXRyk4YGOV5ZNH9IoERVWbnJCEXavwFiLOX-7OGtav75nkOfYNfWeOuw8yWbhztU1E6xA6smcMD-HJCMYM8O5uzdzB6SP0UmRUJ7BqnjcAvN9eIw86Ipz3u7erS14-gl8az09MiaCK7jb4Cq--INgxS5umKA/s1600/3%20Sermons%20%281736%29,%20tp_500.jpg" /></div>
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Although I have been unable to find a reference to any other Judge Rochfort bookplates in library catalogues online—or on <i>ESTC</i> under “Copy Specific Notes”—there is actually another book from Judge Rochfort’s library available at present on ABE (<a href="https://www.abebooks.com/XXV-Sermons-Preached-Golden-Grove-Being-Winter/30983750510">here</a>):<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidHpBsHE7ZYRZzYAMl-T79bHFncRqkAtuDYpOSlHt-rNiL08WuG9fr35IqZHzvkUIvEaZz-mOobbUg9K0vor0Qiq0ENwei5m_P-hBObi4MKXkq0OfgG5K7c4ldZtZzpDqlhmKAQ18b6Jc1I_zhpJGp_irvfyhEOUh-IyfF-HC6KDfeiRCVwFwtwayX3g/s1600/4%20Eniautos%20%281655%29_500.jpg" /></div><br />
The title of this book is not well represented in this ABE catalogue listing, but it is a copy of Jeremy Taylor, <i>Eniautos. A course of sermons for all the Sundays of the year</i>, 2nd ed. (1655) [Wing T330; <i>ESTC</i>: r10569 (recording 40 copies); <a href="http://estc.bl.uk/R10569">here</a>]. As you can see, this copy of Rochfort’s bookplate is printed in red, which is very unusual I believe.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIZpbkGNpVTbgGhL0E8B1_0pGBW9qCP3XJMXiBt6ELU6KYl1tJKCrausMCk9-_KWBPJtW8a6QtJj6ozYx9diNrDifuCYLovO3BNN3oPXqNrNjrYLqwVwmSFTzx8qBezFEVmXenWNAGuRZ6TMPwJFqvJd0fFVjklAwoMVLhTl0brffzRM4KCN5h-r5aPw/s1600/5%20Eniautos,%20bookplate_500.jpg" /></div><br />
Although there is no image of it online, this armorial bookplate features in J. H. Slater’s, “Alphabetical List of Noted Book-Plates” in his <i>Book Plates and Their Value</i> (London: Henry Grant, 1898), 203 (online <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t9280x108&view=2up&seq=7">here</a>):<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPrxSH_r6Oy5D8xRCu7CgdAg8PpmFzbQX2YFgz97GkzAJ-yqzdQG9kNuHJXAoeQIsStoCpzCqAB-vTa2MTGEFaIZ9yxO7LYSiwuBEEM8u2tUhfXMpOfFS5O6nIFflOYp0yYRmNQjXi4i5Z3sBrIA_2XgOuTYROrVeDaomH5rz3pSLKQVnH8DTKUOBrEw/s1600/6%20Slater_tp_500.jpg" /></div><br />
According to Slater, there are actually two Judge Rochfort bookplates, mine being “distinctly ‘Jacobean’ with elaborate mantling”—although he dates is to “about 1760” (long after the Jacobean period)—but both feature the crest and motto: “Probitas est optima politia” [<i>honesty is the best policy</i>]. <br />
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Slater, who is styled J. Herbert Slater in the books of his I have on my shelves, was particularly well informed, so I am inclined to accept his date for the bookplate. As I noted above, the unusual positioning of the bookplate suggests that Rochfort was not the first owner of his 1736 copy of Foster’s <i>Sermons</i>—any more than he was the first owner of his 1655 copy of Taylor’s <i>Eniautos</i> on ABE.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><br />
As for who was Rochfort—like St John Broderick, the other stray Anglo-Irish bookplate I bought in the late 80s (and blogged about <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2023/03/st-john-broderick-of-middle-temple-1703.html">here</a>)—he is: Judge Rochfort, of Streamstown, Co. Westmeath, Ireland; High Sheriff of Westmeath in 1736.<br />
<br />
Judge Rochfort was related to the much-better-known Rochforts of Gaulstown (Gaulstown is only about 25kms by road from Streamstown), but the link between the two families is somewhat distant, and it the families may even have been at odds. <br />
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The Gaulstown Rochforts “were close friends of [Jonathan] Swift’s, and both George and John figure frequently in Swift’s letters and poems. John seems to have been a particular favorite: He was named by Stella one of her executors; and he was selected a member of the Lunacy Commission appointed, in 1742, to in quire into the state of Swift's mind” (Katherine Hornbeak, “Swift’s Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage,” <i>Huntington Library Quarterly</i>, Vol. 7, No. 2 (February 1944): 183). <br />
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Swift was a regular visitor to the Rochfort family at Gaulstown House—a very famous estate, which you will find information about <a href="http://www.staniforthfamily.com/GaulstownHouse.html">here</a>) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu">here</a>). “It is said that it was when Dean Swift looked across the expanse of Lough Ennell one day and saw the tiny human figures on the opposite shore of the lake that he conceived the idea of the Lilliputians featured in <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu">here</a>). <br />
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“A number of Rochforts family served in the Irish House of Commons for constituencies in Westmeath” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rochfort_(politician)">here</a>); Robert Rochfort (1652–1727), of the Rochforts of Gaulstown, “had a highly distinguished career, being Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer. Robert’s grandson, also named Robert, was created 1st Earl of Belvedere in 1756. Their principal residences were Gaulstown House and, later, Belvedere House in Westmeath, of which only the latter still exists.” <br />
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Belvedere House is about 10kms from Gaulstown, but still only 25kms from Judge Rochfort in Streamstown—assuming that Judge Rochfort actually resided in Streamstown, which is by no means certain. The population of Streamstown is tiny, even today, although it is rapidly rising (increasing from 378 in 2016 to 519 in 2022; see <a href="https://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/2022/06/30/population-increases-could-have-political-ramifications/">here</a>), and, as Arthur Sherbo notes, various members of the Rochfort family that Swift numbered among his friends were “resident in Dublin” at the time (Arthur Sherbo, “From the Westminster Magazine: Swift, Goldsmith, Garrick, et al.” <i>Studies in Bibliography</i>, Vol. 41 (1988), 276; <a href="https://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=StudiesInBiblio/uvaBook/tei/sibv041.xml;chunk.id=vol041.17">here</a>). <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><br />
Returning to Judge Rochfort: Judge (<a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p69519.htm#i695181">here</a>) was the son of Charles, son and heir of Charles Rochfort Esq. of Streamstown (ca. 1636–92; <a href="https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/charles-rochfort-24-23x247s">here</a> and <a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p38006.htm#i380054">here</a>), eldest son and heir of Lt.-Col. “Prime Iron” James Rochfort (ca. 1600–1652), who was court martialed and executed for killing his Major (in a duel) in Cromwell’s Army (<a href="https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rochfort-80">here</a> and <a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p40924.htm#i409237">here</a>)—Lodge’s <i>The Peerage of Ireland</i>, vol. 3 (Dublin, 1754), 374–76 (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SGw9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA376">here</a>) provides the connections between all the otherwise disconnected references provided above. <br />
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Judge married Jane Donnellan (<a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p69519.htm#i695182">here</a>), and had three daughters: Jane (<a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p69518.htm#i695180">here</a>), Rebecca, who married (on 17 November 1779) Thomas Edwards, Esq. “an eminent surgeon” (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=2voRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA656">here</a>), and an un-named third daughter mentioned <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=nCNRAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA910&dq=" judge="" ochfort="">here</a>.<br />
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Judge’s daughter Jane Rochfort married Rowland Rochfort (<a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p69518.htm#i695179">here</a>)—a distant cousin—and had two daughters (only Harriet mentioned <a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p69518.htm#i695180">here</a>, but two daughters mentioned <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=sy5JAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA910">here</a>).<br />
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Rowland was the great, great, grandson of Lt.-Col. “Prime Iron” James Rochfort, and great grandson of Robert Rochfort (1652–1727; <a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p20922.htm#i209213">here</a>; Prime Iron’s youngest son)—and wife Lady Hannah Hancock (d. 1733; <a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p20922.htm#i209212">here</a>)—the friend of Swift. <br />
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Judge and his immediate family—indeed, most of the Streamstown Rochforts—have “no dates”—that I can find anyway—Robert, his ancestors, and descendants (i.e., the Gaulstown Rochforts), do. Lt.-Col. James Rochfort (d. 1652) was the father of Robert Rochfort (1652–1727), who was the father of the Rt. Hon. George Rochfort (1682–1730), who was the father of Arthur Moore Rochfort (1711–1774), M.P. for Westmeath, who was the father of Rowland Rochfort. Rowland’s father, Arthur, was the brother of Robert Rochfort, 1st Earl of Belvidere (1708–1774), aka “the wicked earl” (more on him below).<br />
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Meanwhile, the nearest dates that I can find for Judge’s immediate family are his grandfather (Charles, born ca. 1636), and the weddings of his daughters: Rebecca’s in 1779 and Jane’s (no date), but to Rowland, the brother of Lt.-Gen. George Rochfort (ca. 1739–1821).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><br />
I will end this ridiculously long post with a brief account of “the wicked earl” (based on the sources linked above, esp. <a href="https://www.thepeerage.com/p4888.htm#i48877">here</a>, <a href="https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/10/jealous-wall-irelands-largest-folly.html">here</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rochfort,_1st_Earl_of_Belvedere">here</a>).<br />
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Apparently, Robert Rochfort, the 1st Earl of Belvidere, heard rumours that his young wife (Mary) had often visited—and had been having an “intrigue” with—his brother Arthur, the father of Rowland (Judge's son-in-law). According to a contemporary source: “[Arthur was] very well-bred and very well in his person and manner …[while] she is extremely handsome and has many personal accomplishments.” <br />
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As punishment, Robert had his wife locked up in the family house at Gaulstown, alone apart from her children and servants, for 31yrs. He also sued Arthur for “criminal conversation” for £2,000—a huge sum at the time; unable to pay, Arthur was thrown in a debtor’s prison where he eventually died.<br />
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Meanwhile, Mary was left so severely damaged by her long imprisonment “that she took to wandering the house and talking to portraits as if they were real people. When she was finally released after Robert’s death in 1774, Mary had become a deranged hag incapable of recognizing her own sons.” <br />
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George, the 2nd Earl of Belvedere, who freed his mother from imprisonment, demolished the Gaulstown House (where she had been imprisoned) and built a smaller house in the grounds for her. But Mary refused to stay; instead, she set sail for France, where she became a nun and lived the rest of her life as a hermit.<br />
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Given Robert’s character, if Judge allowed his daughter to marry Rowland, during the life of the wicked earl it seems very unlikely that he was at all close to Robert or the Gaulstown Rochforts—but perhaps this occurred after Robert bled to death, alone (and probably unrepentant), with his head caved in, on the grounds of his estate.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-58744425790867688772023-03-30T08:02:00.004+11:002023-04-10T08:24:26.401+10:00St John Broderick of the Middle Temple, 1703<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipImshE26oYNoUB6BMA5h6ulGNHOFtF5vgQZmhEY3eBQfig6FPIXXmXHHaA5YGjuATYyT0pIs0enzdOtd4JmHmMLdNdPF3R-oNNMRHuNVanThxiHhxavxlTHFEp5MRNFoh6rLaI_VQ81mQ0nzk8gshCjBXRPdEK1krSabMb8VJfSEVP2B6iAbszyf8rQ/s1600/1%20St%20John%20Broderick_500.jpg" /></div>
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This “Early Armorial” Restoration exlibris bookplate (Ginn, slide 14; see below) was created for St John Broderick of the Middle Temple, later The Honourable St John Brodrick (ca. 1685–1728), son of Alan, Baron Brodrick (ca. 1655–1728)—who outlived his son by only six months (Wikipedia pages <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John_Brodrick_(died_1728)">here</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Brodrick,_1st_Viscount_Midleton">here</a>). <br />
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The short Wikipedia entry on St John Broderick characterises him as “an Anglo-Irish politician who sat in the Irish House of Commons from 1709 to 1728 and in the British House of Commons from 1721 to 1727”; since he was a parliamentarian, a few more details appear in Romney Sedgwick’s <i>The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715–1754</i> (1970; online <a href="https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/member/brodrick-hon-st-john-1685-1728">here</a>).<br />
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Combining details from Wikipedia, Sedgwick and C. M. Tenison’s “Cork M.P’s, 1559–1800,” <i>Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society</i>, vol. 1, 2nd ser. (1895): 177 (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VMwGAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA177">here</a>), the details of his life can be summarized as follows:<br />
<br />
<font color="#B5EAAA">St. John Brodrick of Ballyanane, alias Midleton, was the eldest son, by his first wife, of Alan Brodrick, M.P., who was afterwards created Viscount Midleton. He was educated at Eton, 1698, and King’s College Cambridge, 1700, and was admitted to the Middle Temple, 1700; barrister-at-law, Ireland; Recorder of Cork, in succession to his father, 1708.<br />
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Brodrick was M.P. Castlemartyr, 1709–13 (then “of Cork”); Cork City, 1713–14 (then “of the Middle Temple”); Cork County, 1715–27; and 1727 (then Right Hon. St. John Brodrick) till his death in 1728. Brodrick was M.P. also for Beeralstown, county Devon, 1721–27; a Privy Councillor, 1724.<br />
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He married Anne, daughter of Michael Hill, of Hillsborough. She died 1752, leaving five daughters, of whom Anne married James Jeffreys, and Mary married Sir J. R. Freke, M.P. (q.v.). He died s.p. and s.p.m., 21st February, 1728.</font><br />
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A “Sketch Pedigree exemplifying the Brodrick M.P’s” is in Tenison <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=VMwGAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA178">here</a> and a “Pedigree of Broderick” (that includes St. John and his daughters) can be found <a href="https://archive.org/details/visitationengla02unkngoog/page/n21/mode/2up">here</a><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
I found only a few references to this 1703 bookplate. It seems that Broderick owned a copy of Donne's Poems (London, 1633), now at Texas Tech University, Lubbock (<a href="https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/texas-tech-university.html">here</a>, but no photograph).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeOy0rAwcdwLBBAfGH3nIgibHlcZOj8nfg70_cOrNqGLkbEqqtuvEBJQUjEwL_ZcxjFoSTIMSHJLEObX8gtbIzxJOskV2gspZQyjdPwpypFGMDpha2ECcZxcJmjuMNfUHLaD14R7QC-WG5fGko36297T-MsH58uIU-JlMGCD9QLQ_GnGLSNLwvSIJDmg/s1600/2%20Castle%201_500.jpg" /></div>
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There appear to be no modern photograph or scan of St John Broderick’s bookplate online, but Egerton Castle reproduced a copy of this bookplate in his <i>English Book-plates: Ancient and Modern</i> (1893), 60 (above; text <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=INwYkTsw4csC&pg=PA60">here</a>); and this image was used by both Linda K. Ginn, for her 2017 lecture on “Digital Bookplates: Old Technology and New Applications” [University Libraries Workshops and Presentations, 6 (pdf online <a href="https://aquila.usm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=libraries_workshops">here</a>]) and Paul Magrath in his 2021 post for the ICLR [Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales] on “(L)ex Libris — the art of the legal bookplate” (<a href="https://iclr.medium.com/l-ex-libris-the-art-of-the-legal-bookplate-f1a4099110c7">here</a>).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn16R_ylVXjPTzYcsQalQ6duoxoTGjEkohFYZ7eY5ON__5Pib4mloWIEVcqpKuWuvmV5Q3mVWrG4a5Vy8MDSmuhN6GeGmeDeOSLkOut6ELUYJ70UZiW9OQcZmq85daj0WDfxVJDrWYhFLYl3FsPOnReC2Fr7Q2Fkof80tVWAgGZDm1FZVO0AAcgBkD3Q/s1600/3%20Brodrick,%20Viscount%20Midleton_500_1.jpg" /></div>
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Regarding the Brodrick family motto: “a cuspide corona” can be translated as “from a spear, a crown” (i.e., one receives honour [a crown] for military exploits [a spear]). This motto can also be seen on the 1754 engraving above, taken from John Lodge, <i>The Peerage of Ireland</i>, vol. 3 (Dublin, 1754), pl. 29 (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SGw9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PP29">here</a>).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
I have no record, and no clear memory of when I acquired this bookplate—but I think I have had it and a one other anglo-Irish bookplate (which I blogged about <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2023/04/judge-rochfort-exlibris-bookplate-ca.html">here</a>) for decades, probably since the late 80s. I have a pretty strong aversion to supporting “breakers”—biblioclasts who disassemble books for engravings, or sammelbands and nonce-volumes for individual works, especially plays—so I can only assume that I bought the collection of bookplates [1] not from the beaker themselves (to avoid encouraging this sort of thing) and [2] out of a desire to protect bookplates themselves. <br />
<br />
As you can see, I have managed to protect this one so far. But it occurred to me recently, when I was going through my ephemera, that it might be even better to post images and information about some of my ephemera here. Destruction is only a bushfire away after all and the bookplates are both very attractive—as the appearance of this one in Egerton Castle’s <i>English Book-plates</i> suggests.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-59012356009289835412023-03-24T15:23:00.002+11:002023-03-24T15:42:26.844+11:00Eighteenth-Century Books in Australian Libraries, revisitedAlmost twelve years ago now, I did a post on “Collecting Eighteenth Century Literature” (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2011/04/collecting-eighteenth-century.html">here</a>). In that post, I mentioned that the “ESTC code-finder” (now <a href="http://cbsrdb.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/rlinlibsearch.pl">here</a>)—maintained by the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research at the University of California—“provides a count of ESTC records as well as providing ESTC codes.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cbsrdb.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/rlinlibsearch.pl"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF0wnjmNUepk8eC8HFbbYkFnDvRC_ptlsguzO9y0bxocSqEfj_ODtMXoWIJs6uLC65dRelQMR8afMLmn8C78BqiS54eWoeKaG5EZ1Uv7mkS_ieyN40pjMw4gaEYIXBIRe_BbSPqQduugbl8vSNdF5KvW8Tj6u5vI4OMIJoZVWyLzoriYWTQtGyF35-pg/s1600/Code%20Finder%201.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
This count of ESTC items—books printed in English or in English-speaking countries before 1801—can be used as a crude yardstick to compare the rare book holdings in various libraries in Australia.<br />
<br />
Although more than a decade has passed, there is remarkably little change to the figures I provided in my 2011 post—with one notable exception. Can you pick it?<br />
<br />
The top ten libraries remain the same, and in the same order of size:<br />
<br />
1. University of Sydney Library (NU) 7529 (<b>up 18</b>)<br />
2. National Library of Australia (ANL) 7455 (<b>up 3</b>)<br />
3. Monash University (VMoU) 4842 (<b>up 5</b>)<br />
4. State Library of Victoria (VSL) 4656 (<b>up 596</b>)<br />
5. State Library of SA (SSL) 2876 (<b>up 3</b>)<br />
6. University of Adelaide (SUA) 2595 (<b>up 2</b>)<br />
7. University of Melbourne (VU) 2294 (<b>up 22</b>)<br />
8. State Library of NSW, Rare Books (NSL-RB) 1199 (<b>no change</b>)<br />
9. Private collection, SA (PC-S) 1175 (<b>up 4</b>)<br />
10. State Library of NSW (NSL) 1009 (<b>up 1</b>)<br />
<br />
It is still the case that roughly one third of the 304 (was 303) Australian ESTC codes are recorded as holding nothing (101 libraries), a further one third have five or fewer listings (200 libraries), only eleven percent (34 of 304) have one hundred or more works. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIl4twr6lbTx6Se9a2-B5afbaUuOha6BdvUpGqnCC6lo6SmYUuluPdeTRDmS8E6GkQzoZugD2jlJvxF6wL1-8-LezuhjyA5l8Mqcd_NITQFejXu7gwl8lX-mK_hnLu3sbyFsZBWTl5GOQGl8Bgz7qYKdF7dWJ7Jfrb_gURzG4lRpmRjxobjssKvCkedw/s1600/Code%20Finder%202.jpg" /></div>
<br />
I know for a fact that Monash has added a lot more than five ESTC items to its collection in the last decade—I have personally seen to that!—but I also know that they have been slack with informing ESTC of these new holdings. The State Library of Victoria count has, by comparison, increased by almost six hundred items, which is likely much more in line with their actual acquisitions. (On this, they seem to be particularly active in the area of early women writers; as a recent article explains <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/reader-i-bought-them-the-aussies-helping-reel-in-literature-s-great-white-whales-20230119-p5cdss.html">here</a>.)<br />
<br />
It is unclear how many institutions might have stopped updating ESTC (like Monash), rather than stopped making acquisitions (State Library of NSW?), but I suspect that Monash’s cataloguing backlog is the norm, and that VSL’s professionalism is the exception. This suggests, in turn, that the specific figures recorded here for each institution are less important that the proportions between institutions etc.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
Looking at the 2023 data, with this in mind, a few more things strike me. <br />
<br />
The total count for all ESTC items in all Australian libraries is 47289—95% of these are held by the thirty largest libraries, so I looked at these thirty in particular. Breaking down the figures by State and Territory:<br />
<br />
13800 items, or 29.2%, are held in VIC<br />
12138 items, or 25.7%, are held in NSW<br />
8162 items, or 17.3%, are held in ACT<br />
7579 items, or 16.0%, are held in SA<br />
1999 items, or 4.2%, are held in QLD<br />
567 items, or 1.2%, are held in TAS<br />
469 items, or 1.0%, are held in WA<br />
0 items, or 0.0% are held in NT<br />
<br />
Since NSW is Australia’s most populous State, I wondered about the relative proportions of ESTC holdings per State and Territory. On a per capita basis (actually ESTC items per 1000 people), the leagues table is as follows:<br />
<br />
ACT is 17.8 per 1000 people<br />
SA is 4.1 per 1000 people<br />
VIC is 2.1 per 1000 people<br />
NSW is 1.5 per 1000 people<br />
TAS is 1.0 per 1000 people<br />
QLD is 0.4 per 1000 people<br />
WA is 0.2 per 1000 people<br />
NT is 0.0 per 1000 people<br />
<br />
ACT is an anomaly here, since the National Library of Australia (in Canberra) is not really an ACT institution—but the ACT itself is an anomaly, and the National Library is physically situated in Canberra, so perhaps this does not matter. The National average is 1.7 per 1000 people, so NSW is below the National average, but the ACT is in NSW, so—again with the ACT anomaly.<br />
<br />
As for the type of institutions holding almost all of Australia’s ESTC items:<br />
<br />
22081 items, or 46.7%, are held by twelve Universities<br />
17720 items, or 37.5%, are held by six National and State Libraries<br />
1751 items, or 3.7%, are held by five Religious institutions<br />
1175 items, or 2.5%, are held by one Private individual<br />
961 items, or 2.0%, are held by three Courts<br />
668 items, or 1.4%, are held by one Parliament<br />
385 items, or 0.8%, are held by two Medical Colleges<br />
<br />
The number of ESTC items in Religious institutions, Courts and Parliamentary libraries surprised me a little.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
A final thought, as a collector of 18C books—most institutions in Australia are doing a woeful job. In terms of new acquisitions, the only library in Australia that is doing it right—on the evidence of the ESTC code-finder—is the State Library of Victoria. But in absolute terms, no one is. <br />
<br />
Below are—selected more or less at random, and ignoring most of the most obvious first-tier institutions in the States—ten points of reference for Australian rare book librarians:<br />
<br />
Newberry Library 38087 <br />
Library Company of Philadelphia 31053<br />
University of Chicago 25093<br />
Boston Public 21233<br />
Cornell University 18189 <br />
Columbia University 16426 <br />
Boston Athenaeum 12816<br />
Rice University 8529 <br />
Free Library of Philadelphia 6109<br />
Haverford College Library 5583<br />
<br />
The entire ESTC book stock of Australia is weak when compared to the Newberry alone—which probably has fewer duplicates, and a wider coverage than Australia as a whole. The “Friends Historical Society of Swarthmore College”—which I have never heard of—has 2573 ESTC items! This is more than either the State Library of NSW or the University of Melbourne; indeed, more than all of Queensland and Tasmania combined. <br />
<br />
It would also seem that even I now have more ESTC items than 292 of 304 Australian libraries—more than the whole of Tasmania (or Western Australia)—despite the fact that my budget is certainly a lot smaller than that of University of NSW, the University of Western Australia, State Library of Queensland and so forth. I do not know what they are spending their money on, but it isn’t (it seems) books printed before 1801.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-75808833074132368392023-03-14T10:34:00.003+11:002023-03-14T10:39:14.807+11:00An Ode written by Mr. Hatchett, 1750<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLBtPk03rVeg3jPfGmWriIF8pvvcj_HlQ8TTE53WHB18ikSzgkSRH_Q3bdEAXyax81kAI9sYe1P8kVoqS4bjhozNTKjhoJqzYnj9QWhX4jQH9Fi-RhcJKQ6npHTFZJtTk7F_s4UTm7Ox_T7mKTDe-EMm9bBJsDejghU4VbnVNxYL3TcdX2N7xlFUBxZg/s1600/Lord%20Robert%20Spencer%20by%20Joshua%20Reynolds.jpg" /></div>
<br />
The following Ode is addressed to Lord Robert Spencer (1747–1831; above ætat 22), youngest son of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706–58), on the occasion of his third birthday (8 May 1750). The Ode was written by “Mr. Hatchett”—probably William Hatchett. More on this possibility below, but first the Ode:<br />
<br />
<i>An</i> ODE <i>to the Hon. Master</i> SPENCER, <i>on his Birth-Day. By Mr.</i> Hatchett.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">I.</div>
HAPLY, my young Mæcenas, your third Lustre’s past,<br />
When the bright Seeds of Knowledge ripen fast:<br />
Life’s vernal Season this, whose genial Heat<br />
The new Idea shoots from the Soul’s fertile Seat:<br />
So <i>Sol</i> in <i>Aries</i> swells the pregnant Earth,<br />
Which brings unnumber’d Beings into Birth.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">II.</div>
While now the blooming Mind, thrice lov’d, important Heir,<br />
Under the sapient Eye of Guardian Care,<br />
Is forming unto all that’s Great and Good,<br />
The long inherent Virtues of your lineal Blood;<br />
So to the Rose succeeds another Rose,<br />
Which with its native Beauty sweetly blows:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">III.</div>
While your learn’d Mentor wins you to the polish’d Arts,<br />
Each moral, generous Sentiment imparts,<br />
With anxious Labour teaches to controul<br />
The growing, fierce, contending Passions of the Soul,<br />
And fires your Heart with God-like Patriot Zeal,<br />
To shine the Darling of the Common-Weal:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">IV.</div>
While oft he sets before you this illustrious Plan,<br />
That Virtue only can ennoble Man;<br />
Can make those Gifts, which Fortune may have giv’n,<br />
Be, as they ought, possess’d, approv’d by Earth and Heav’n,<br />
Be’t mine to sing the glad returning Morn,<br />
When a Delight and Blessing you were born.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">V.</div>
Thrice welcome Task! the tuneful Tribute let me pay,<br />
Blythe as the Lark that chants the new-born Day;<br />
In liveliest Strains proclaim the happy Birth,<br />
And with the jocund Muse let all devote to Mirth:<br />
On pain of Dulness, hear the Muses say,<br />
Let nought but Wit, and Mirth, be seen to Day.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">VI.</div>
Worthy the Subject, me, the fav’rite Nine, inspire!<br />
Give me to touch for once the Thracian Lyre!<br />
Let all Creation feel the sprightly Song;<br />
To its gay Force let even lifeless Matter throng:<br />
Dulness the Penalty, if Grief and Woe,<br />
On this glad Day, their rueful Faces shew.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">VII.</div>
Sacred this Day to Jollity, hence Care and Strife!<br />
Thou Friend of Health, thou sparkling Zest of Life!<br />
Come, laughing Joy, exhilarate the Blood,<br />
And cause quick Circulation like a rolling Flood:<br />
Dulness the Penalty, if Grief and Woe,<br />
On this glad Day, their rueful Faces shew.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">VIII.</div><br />
Thy chearful Influence shed round from Morn to Night,<br />
Brighten each Eye, each Stoick Heart make light;<br />
To Beauty give the dimpling graceful Smile,<br />
In warbling Note, and Attick Step, the Hours beguile:<br />
Dulness the Penalty, if Grief and Woe,<br />
On this glad Day, their rueful Faces shew.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">IX.</div><br />
Nor fail to send your warmest Wishes to the Sky,<br />
Oft as you charge the circling Goblet high;<br />
A healthful Round of Natal Days the Toast,<br />
To the dear, lovely Youth, Mankind and Nature’s Boast:<br />
Dull be for ever the unsocial Soul,<br />
That in gay Chorus join not with the Bowl.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
The two earliest appearances of this poem in print (that I can find) are both from December 1750. It seems likely that the poem first appeared in <i>Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer</i> (11 December 1750): 1a, so this is the printing that I have used as my copy text. This printing is more careful with incidentals, such as the use of italics, capitalisation, indentation of lines and so forth, than the (reprints) in <i>The London Magazine</i>, vol. 19 (December 1750): 601a–b (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=sfsRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA601">here</a>), and in <i>The Royal Magazine; Or, Quarterly Bee</i>, vol. 2 (March 1751): 445b–446a (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mU76hUaSAj8C&pg=PA445">here</a>).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkXyfil7tXql6z2ePFlJTYajtZYdhi-y5AIBzo_WTdDoEH1Y6NxbG-uaiQVIs04L703RQQiLs0mi-mzIH07k98tvHgdWb37RQLp0WwURqY3_8KSPQwSOmHyL0ZwET-vPFHl84o8eS4ftzj8wY8EUIhckvyvZBg1JARN3Rm8wzgtV_AdwpIe0ycj45cZg/s1600/An%20Ode.jpg" /></div>
<br />
Although Hatchett was a relatively uncommon name in the mid-eighteenth century, I am aware of a number of men by that name, so it is by no means <i>certain</i> that the author of this poem was <i>Haywood’s</i> Hatchett. However, William Hatchett is the only one that I know of who capable of this sort of versification, so the odds are certainly in his favour; circumstantial evidence also points to William Hatchett.<br />
<br />
It is not clear what personal connection William Hatchett (if it is his work) might have had that would prompt him write this sort of celebratory poem, except in the hope of being well paid for his flattery—as was conventional—by Charles Spencer, the 3rd Duke. In 1750, Spencer was “Lord Steward of the Household”—an office of considerable political importance and carried Cabinet rank at the time—and, apparently, “he had no concept of economy, and was a heavy spender,” which would make him a prime mark.<br />
<br />
A more personal connection exists via Eliza Haywood, who dedicated <i>Adventures of Eovaai</i> to Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, in 1736 (even though she had previously satirised Churchill as “Marama” in the second volume of <i>Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia</i> in 1725). Churchill was prominent for her opposition to Walpole—so, on the same side of politics as Haywood and Hatchett—but she had died in 1744 (having outlived her daughter, mother of the 3rd Duke). It may be that Hatchett tried appealing to the 3rd Duke with this poem, in the hope that he would carry on the support previously offered by his grandmother.<br />
<br />
Regarding the <i>Whitehall Evening Post</i>, Kathryn R. King (<i>A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood</i> (2012), 115) considers this newspaper as “authoritative with regard to [Haywood’s] late-career publishing activities”—noting that the proprietor was Charles Corbett, a Fleet Street bookseller who had, in 1749 (when questioned by the authorities about Haywood’s <i>A Letter from H[enry] G[orin]g</i>) “testified that he had known her ‘many years’ and acknowledged having ‘sold several things Wrote & Published by’ her” and that, later, he has published her obituary notice in <i>Whitehall Evening Post</i>, which is the primary source of information supporting many Haywood attributions.<br />
<br />
While King also mentions that Corbett published Hatchett’s <i>The Chinese Orphan</i> in 1741, she does not mention that he had published his <i>Rival Father</i> a decade earlier (in 1730) and in the same 12 December 1749 deposition she references in relation to Haywood, he explains that “Mr. Hatchett (who the Examt. has known many years) came to [his] Shop & asked him” about the copies of Haywood’s Henry Goring pamphlet, which had been left “by a porter from a person whose Name the Examt. did not know.”<br />
<br />
The appearance of a poem by a “Mr. Hatchett” in a newspaper associated, in this way, with both Haywood and Hatchett, offers considerable support to the attribution of this poem, so I am inclined to treat William as the author.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-14647808243389361872023-03-09T09:35:00.004+11:002023-03-09T09:47:03.894+11:00Did James Annesley have a son in Pennsylvania?Haywood’s <i>Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, Return’d from a Thirteen Years Slavery in America where he had been sent by the Wicked Contrivances of his Cruel Uncle</i> (1743) is based on the “extraordinary and improbable” (MYN, 1.29) adventures of James Annesley (1715–60).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguqPlWoW7_xuR2gjopHYJQs7xYHolk1isHL1NJki1Wb28l8Zurc0qregQbhIET-3oO1Wl9lrMho-O0GoGVxtchhlqs-8rO0ziRN2NWWN_iuVUB0LniaxzAeBH4M3ZEo9kGXVIB_fItYGgjUqU1t5k9ory4IfYIozS5Cn4XxdYwk0BExjVhcPVu5moi4w/s1600/Annesley_1_500.jpg" /></div><p>
<br />
Haywood wasn’t the only writer attracted to Annesley’s story—Tobias Smollett gives a lengthy description of the case in <i>The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle</i> (1751); Walter Scott used the story as a plot device in <i>Guy Mannering</i> (1815) as did William Godwin in <i>Cloudesley: A Tale</i> (1830); it was used more transparently by Charles Reade in <i>The Wandering Heir</i> (1872) and, most famously, Robert Louis Stevenson’s <i>Kidnapped</i> (1886).<br />
<br />
As <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Annesley">Wikipedia</a> explains:<br />
<br />
“<font color="#B5EAAA">In 2010</font> [six years after I established Haywood’s authorship of <i>MYN</i>] <font color="#B5EAAA">A. Roger Ekirch published <i>Birthright: The True Story That Inspired Kidnapped, a biography of James Annesley</i>. Ekirch wrote that, while historians had long dismissed many details of Annesley's story as fiction, he had found a trove of legal documents that show that the story as traditionally told was mostly true.</font>”<br />
<br />
John Henley’s review (in the <i>Guardian</i>; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/18/kidnapped-stevenson-true-story-annesley">here</a>) provides some details from Ekirch’s groundbreaking study:<br />
<br />
“<font color="#B5EAAA">The principal source of information on Annesley was a fanciful if much-reprinted volume from 1743, <i>Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman</i> …. The events related in the book appear so far-fetched, however, that most of those who have read it, says Ekirch, ‘have tended to dismiss it as merely a sentimental fiction, written during an age when overblown stories of impossible adventures were a popular literary genre’. But … after seven years spent with trial transcripts, family documents, newspaper reports, House of Lords records and a treasure trove of nearly 400 legal depositions unearthed in Dublin and at the National Archives in Kew, it is now clear to Ekirch that those <i>Memoirs</i> are, essentially, true. ‘Annesley wasn’t the author, but he was the source of the information,’ he says. ‘You don't have to dig far to substantiate it’.”</font><br />
<br />
It is a shame that Ekirch’s research did not lead him to my <i>Bibliography</i>, and that I was not able to benefit from any of his research before publishing my own account of Annesley and Haywood’s <i>Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman</i>, but others can connect our “dots,” so that a more complete account is now possible.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
One aspect of the Annesley story that has always interested me is the question of Annesley’s children. Although he won an improbably legal victory over his <i>Cruel Uncle</i>, said <i>Cruel Uncle</i> spent fifteen years pursuing used every legal method possible to avoid restoring Annesley’s inheritance. Sadly, these delaying tactics paid off: he outlived his nephew by one year, and in the following year Annesley’s only son died. <br />
<br />
Annesley’s son is usually only mentioned in passing, as above, to add pathos to his father’s failure to (re)gain his inheritance. A few details of Annesley’s two marriages and five children appeared in 1778, and were reprinted verbatim until Ekirch’s <i>Birthright</i> expanded on them in 2010. <br />
<br />
In a note to account of the Annesley trial, Francis Hargrave (<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=c4hEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA431">here</a>) noted that James:<br />
<br />
“<font color="#B5EAAA">was twice married; <b>first</b>, to a Daughter of Mr. Chester, at Staines-Bridge in Middlesex by whom he had one Son and two Daughters. The Son, James Annesley, Esq. died November 1763, S. P. and the eldest Daughter is married to Charles Wheeler, Esq. Son of the late Captain Wheeler in the Guinea Trade: <b>Secondly</b>, to a Daughter of Sir Thomas J’Anson of Bounds near Tunbridge in Kent, Gentleman-Porter of the Tower, by whom he had a Daughter and a Son, who are both dead; the Son, aged about seven Years, died about the Beginning of 1764; and the Daughter, aged about Twelve, died in May 1765.”**</font><br />
<br />
Regarding the second marriage, an “A. M. T.” of Dublin added <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=p6Y2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA780">here</a> (<i>The Gentleman’s Magazine</i>, Vol. 78 (November 1795): 906a):<br />
<br />
“<font color="#B5EAAA">Sir Thomas J’Anson … was gentleman-porter at the Tower, and resided near Tunbridge, in Kent. He died several years since without male issue (as I believe), but had two daughters; one, a most amiable young lady, married to Mr. James Annesley, who {unsuccessfully at least} contended in the year 1743, and afterwards, for the honours and estates of the late Earl of Anglesey. Whether the other young lady was married or not, I cannot say.</font>”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
Ekirch adds a lot more details concerning these relationships, but does not mention (as far as I can tell) the—admittedly weak—claim of yet another child, a son born in America. The claim for James’s liaison and child appeared in 1890. Not only is the evidence weak, it is likely impossible to corroborate, but intriguing nevertheless. <br />
<br />
In an essay about the library of an anonymous “Philadelphia Antiquarian,” E. Powell Buckley notes that<br />
<br />
“<font color="#B5EAAA">The library has a large collection of ‘secret memoirs,’ … [including] a complete set of the celebrated Annesley case, or the <i>Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, returned from Thirteen years Slavery in America</i>, 1742, the first volume of which is frequently met with, and is supposed to end the story; but, including the trial account, comprises three volumes. Connected with these are divers pamphlets on the subject. <br />
<br />
There was a few years ago, in possession of a physician in Lancaster county, [Pennsylvania] a portion of a woman’s skull, the daughter of an early settler, who, but for the untimely death of her lover, would have been the wife of this same “young nobleman.” She was the mother of his child, and on his departure from Philadelphia to establish his claim as Lord Altham, he promised an early return to marry her. He died suddenly in London, and the sad event unbalanced the girl’s mind, and three years later she also died, a hopeless maniac. The boy grew up and was killed in a frontier Indian battle.</font>”<br />
<br />
It is not certain that “the daughter of an early settler” is Maria, “a very amiable creature of about fourteen or fifteen” (<i>MYN</i>, 1.90; <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=B10zAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA90">here</a>), daughter of his second master, who “possest a Passion for him more violent that is ordinarily found in Persons of tender Age” (MYN, 1.91), but this seems very likely. <br />
<br />
Maria’s violent passion is briefly described in an account of “The True History of James Annesley,” which appeared in an 1873 review-essay in <i>Harper’s Weekly</i>. (<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4ySERiKHkb4C&pg=PA298">Here</a>; the essay was prompted by the first US publication of Reade’s <i>Wandering Heir</i>, in 1873). The anonymous essayist writes that<br />
<br />
“<font color="#B5EAAA">James ran away from his master [Duncan Drummond, at New Castle on the Delaware River, who] … recovered him, and kept him three years longer, and then sold him to another planter, who was rather more humane. Here he became unintentionally the object of affection of two women—his master’s daughter, Maria, and a young Indian girl. They persecuted him with addresses which were distasteful to him, and the Indian, in a rage at his obduracy, drowned herself in an adjacent river. The parents of Maria discovered the infatuation of their daughter by the stratagem related in the novel [eavesdropping], and James was transferred to a planter in Sussex County, who dying, he was again sold to a neighbor of | his late master. <br />
<br />
It was while in the service of the latter that, being convalescent from a wound received from the vengeful brothers of his Indian admirer, he was lying under a hedge, and overheard his master’s wife (not daughter) arranging with a slave (who appears to have been a white, not a mulatto) to rob her husband and fly from the country. He had the courage to remonstrate with her, and thus incurred her hatred, though for the time she dissembled, and pretended to transfer her regard to him. But after she had made an attempt to kill him with poison he resolved to escape, and accordingly did so in the most expeditious manner at hand. He found a ship on the coast, which took him to the island of Jamaica, and there he enlisted on board of Admiral Vernon’s vessel as a common sailor.</font>”<br />
<br />
Ekirch largely passes over the period that James spent with his second master; in Ch. 4 he mentions “the evidence [of his mistreatment by his first master] was strong enough to prompt his sale to a new master [not named], though conditions remained harsh during the succeeding three years. Then with just twelve months remaining, Annesley, now twenty-one, boarded a ship … only to be apprehended and punished with four additional years of servitude” (Ekirch, p. 90; <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3k_KeySsi0EC&pg=PA90">here</a>)<br />
<br />
Ekirch dismissed the “Several dramatic incidents described” in <i>MYN</i> as “at best implausible” (Ekirch, p. 90)—saying of the one (concerning Maria and an Iroquois girl named Turquois), that events “were likely less titillating” than <i>MYN</i> suggest; and that another (concerning the unfaithful wife, neighbor to his second master) was “almost certainly … inspired by” a sensational (but unrelated) murder that occurred at the time (Ekirch, p. 91). <br />
<br />
Haywood claims that Maria “had made all the Advances Modesty would permit” (<i>MYN</i>, 1.96; <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=B10zAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA96">here</a>), but that Annesley “had not the least Spark of Inclination” for her (<i>MYN</i>, 1.97). However, as Ekirch says, James was Haywood’s “source of the information” (Ekirch, p. 70; <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=3k_KeySsi0EC&pg=PA70">here</a>)—and he had very good reason to conceal this relationship (abandoning a pregnant teenager in the Colonies would have, at the very least, not have helped him build the support he needed to prosecute his case). One later writer suggested that Maria “show[ed] her affection in a manner which could not be mistaken” [<i>Celebrated
Claimants</i> (London, 1874), 76–77; <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=BvKjqsy2u8sC&pg=PA76">here</a>]—an ambiguous statement, which could support either Haywood’s or Buckley’s account. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
Buckley refers to James’ death as “sudden” and “untimely,” suggesting that he died young, soon after he reached London, but James died at the age of forty-five, which is certainly young), but it was still twenty years after regaining his freedom. If Maria died, “a hopeless maniac” only three years after James (1763)—then she had been holding out the hope of reuniting with him for a long time, longer than Buckley seems to be implying. However, these details are not so far from the known facts as to flatly contradict them.<br />
<br />
It is possible that further research might either corroborate one or more facts in Buckley’s account, or locate a parallel that might have inspired the story—just as Ekirch was able to locate a parallel story of the “attempt to kill [James] with poison” (Ekirch, p. 91). Certainly, according to Ekirch, James’s widow, Margaret Annesley (née I’Anson) “spent her last years in a madhouse”—perhaps, as a “hopeless maniac.” However, the chances that a portion of Margaret’s skull ended up in the possession of “a physician in Lancaster county” seems very remote indeed, so it is unclear how all the elements in this story can be accounted for. <br />
<br />
Whatever the truth may be, the fact that even this putative (eldest) son of James “was killed in a frontier Indian battle”—thus missing out on the inheritance his mother hoped for him, via James—would be, sadly, quite fitting.<br />
<br />
PS: for my post on the various versions of the above portrait of James Annesley, see <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2015/12/portraits-of-james-annesley.html">here</a>.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-78527051683599217722023-03-05T07:53:00.001+11:002023-03-05T07:55:04.504+11:00Leonora Meadowson in Sams's Royal Subscription Library, 1826Haywood’s <i>The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson</i> (London: Francis Noble, 1788) is a two-volume collection of four, short works, only the first of which is by Haywood—this being the titular “Leonora Meadowson,” which is a lightly-revised reprint of Haywood’s <i>Cleomelia: Or, The Generous Mistress</i> (1726).<br />
<br />
In addition to a 1997 conference paper and a long entry in my 2004 <i>Bibliography</i>, I have published two essays on <i>Leonora Meadowson</i>: “Eliza Haywood’s last (‘lost’) work: <i>The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson</i> (1788)” (<i>BSANZ Bulletin</i>, 1999)—which announced my 1997 (re-)discovery of a copy at the Fales Library in New York—and “Twice-Told Tales in Eliza Haywood’s <i>Leonora Meadowson</i>” (<i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2016)—which corrects my mistaken attribution to Haywood of the three shortest works in this anthology.<br />
<br />
In my 1997 conference paper and 1999 essay, I explained how rare it is to find any reference at all to Haywood’s long-lost work. After a prolonged and extensive search, diligently pursued, I had found practically nothing. The “puny discovery” (1999:43) of a single advertisement, in another book issued by Noble, was all the reward I had for my efforts—until I accidently discovered a copy of the book at the Fales library in 1997. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjHUjH8L96GNoUR7oIou7vsP4OZhSc2bjsw6GodM8j402d-F1Qpcacb6XYKWDZB50n97qvi3VntkxsAY15B6H1mtfGS1_N7EC0MsbHDCoo5zlY6xGWjoSnGSiC9NkvDb3Qk4TPspnfbjoLn-lMc92Kk20ZaH6GS9UboWQxUtbzcINr6l9zoO0TeqDVmw/s1600/LM_1.jpg" /></div><br />
Above is one of the blurry, ye-olde-tech photos I took of my discovery in 1997:<br />
<br />
Over twenty-five years later, it is obviously very quick and easy to repeat and extend my previous, broad-scale searches for “some record, even if only a trace, of the fleeting existence of this ‘lost’ book” (1999:43)—and I am pleased to say that I found something more.<br />
<br />
What I found is only another trace—but the location of that trace is interesting. In the essay I wrote on my search for, and discovery of a copy of Leonora Meadowson, I explain that:<br />
<br />
“<font color="#B5EAAA">the main outlet for [the Noble bothers’] new publications was through wholesale distribution to other circulating libraries and to retail outlets. Leonora Meadowson appears never to have made it to this stage of distribution, or to have barely started it. If the book had been distributed, we would find it listed in the catalogues of dozens of the circulating libraries that the Nobles supplied; but, as I have shown above, it is not to be found in any of them.</font> ” (1999:40) <br />
<br />
I can now replace “not to be found in any of them” with “only to be found in one of them”—in the <i>Catalogue of Sams’s Royal Subscription Library, No. 1 St James Street London</i> (London: Joseph Sams, [1826]), 168 (no. 6658): “History of Miss Leonora Meadowson. a Novel, 2 vols. 12mo. 6s” (available <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=peTLOJ5MIn4C&pg=PA168">here</a>)<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjQfyXklE7sb0W-T5Yi2aXrqcmtO6d9fZ1rshcC0t1wG6OHQ_OS4lAqvkzvbWlQqsuAyXgFrc68gpjsW_r1rZPmK1THtPI94kL9ZEClWJrO4GGdWS0NMmc7bE0xYbzHltmkMT7vqzWfJ0SrrJGCwsEr1otYzRJ8QM_BVbUO-TCglGC6RqusO23MD5ZhA/s1600/LM_3.jpg" /></div><br />
<br />
This “puny discovery” doesn’t change my original analysis, since finding just one entry in a circulating library catalogue supports my interpretation that the process of distribution can have only “barely started” for the book to disappear so comprehensively since. If anything, it offers more support for my interpretation, which is nice. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLwuE_UabLyo6r9IMIC7KaPwkHqYo0xxBt_UEb-CqQixFoQYXKTEqk9rbvdtJNfj6iKoiJ7llEZ8sGzVEVZ-K9yZ6hSYsCUtb5P1SIdDzYV5ICSxmKovhqJc9AgF1ZVcwpjKNY5lx-zmhV1Zx0OGNgS4E_nYSEB1av8yEoLHCd8gLJ9U9EH_1l36gdnA/s1600/LM_4.jpg" /></div><br />
<br />
I will keep searching for traces of <i>Leonora Meadowson</i>. As more ephemeral publications (like the <i>Catalogue of Sams’s Royal Subscription Library</i>) are scanned and published online, it is possible that I will find yet more traces, but as I approach nearly thirty years of searching (!), my expectations are very modest indeed.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-80867516388026499112023-03-01T05:33:00.002+11:002023-03-01T05:33:28.030+11:00Vampire-hunters and vampire-hunting kitsShortly before going on leave last year, I was approached by Charmaine Manuel, who was writing an article on the “10 strangest artefacts in Australian museums”—which was published in <i>The Guardian</i> on 31 March 2022 (available <a href="https://camd.org.au/10-strangest-artefacts-in-australian-museums/">here</a>—without <i>The Guardian</i>’s annoying pop-up, 9 trackers and 30+ advertisements**).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQazvePBMNL5hTHoJGp6hXFIp7myQCT2QPsAh2V947LosXP5bzerUnJo4-npmdqkNAL4bM3SXoN7_9Cea8h35m7uVzhs95ytoEi9wed07pdA4OuLtkKRaJaAkPUutgAQaxs5Mql8dT_bTvxCLEelPTerrjn0FFN5BV4tH0JcRyZBKGB1YpIGCg0TWpKA/s1600/Vampire%20Hunting%20Kit%201.jpg" /></div><br />
<br />
Charmaine was interested in my thoughts on a Victoria Police Museum’s “Vampire Slaying Kit, Early 19th Century” that was seized in Pascoe Vale in 2004, as a part of a drug raid. <br />
<br />
(No explanation is offered on the Museum’s online catalogue for why the above kit was <i>kept</i> by the Police. Possibly, it was a “proceeds of crime”—rather than a “possession of a deadly weapon”—forfeiture, since the pistol is unlikely to be functional. Even if the pistol were functional, the crucifix isn’t really a “deadly weapon”—unless you are a vampire—the same goes for the Holy Water, and if a wooden stake is considered a “deadly weapon,” every gardener in Melbourne is in trouble.<br />
<br />
Since the rest of the “Vampire Slaying Kit” contents isn’t “deadly”—and yet these items were not returned—I am guessing forfeiture of the whole thing. But, who knows, they may have kept the Kit to help in their fight against the legion of the undead. More likely, someone at Victoria Police kept the kit simply because they liked it, wanted it, and they could—which is pretty much how Governments work in general.)<br />
<br />
Anyway, the Victoria Police kit clearly isn’t “Early 19th Century”—as claimed in their Museum catalogue (admittedly, “last updated 5 years ago”). As I explained to Charmaine, there are a lot of these faux-antique kits available online, ranging from the “Prop Plastic” “Vampire Hunting Kit” (<a href="https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/122184024557">here</a>, for $40) to those “made with antique and vintage parts” (as <a href="https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284953785201">here</a>, for over $1000).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4TuBNwuV0caS4KZmBjwXt2JmL38xqy2mQkjJS2e51cGmO1wJdYIDPctx4P8RZUNQ0MlU1OMBaOcJU23Vt5dPgZ8se0nhMqA5D9x-DQ0yl49VGDWLXdBXrilGMhDjSKeMxR-leYIaPlUbX0t0Te58Ou1_vmEEfTQPEqgbh8pbvD25_aAhiO1nXozQRuQ/s1600/Vampire%20Hunting%20Kit%202.jpg" /></div><br />
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These, better, antique / vintage “Vampire Slaying Kits” commonly contain a handful of more-or-less genuine antique items, but even the most expensive of these have—for obvious reasons—plastic or dummy guns (as <a href="https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/295087784970">here</a>). <br />
<br />
(In the past, the more expensive ones sold in America were likely to contain real weapons, though not—it seems—anymore, on eBay at least). This one (<a href="https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/284963698116">here</a> and image below) was one of the few I could find that appear to have real weapons. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhym-a4QUbgjMmjj5vWNhvqgWsAdso0AVLHBfYpxOPMQROIKw8rnOnywMOQTVMCmNx-3Z_8ZoL-07vJ8_uZNHCH_noVQxy6FinSKAP_fMkcO9SuYIUuU5w3Q6L_affRapozZx15nGFyIZ4RaimzJ01R7CLzuQCFJLUqIssff0y_QPNIEvrB_QCfsvT0CQ/s1600/Vampire%20Hunting%20Kit%203.jpg" /></div><br />
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The best of these kits are beautiful and wildly expensive artistic creations, assembled almost-exclusively from genuinely antique boxes, maps, journals, rosaries, crystal vials for holy water etc. <br />
<br />
In her article, Charmaine gave an example of a kit sold by Sotheby’s in 2011 (<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2011/19th-century-furniture-and-decorative-arts-n08784/lot.112.html">here</a>, with an estimate of 20–30,000 USD), but Sotheby’s sold another in 2021 (<a href="https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/style-new-york-silver-ceramics-furniture/a-vampire-slaying-kit-20th-century">here</a>, with an estimate of USD3000–5000; pic below).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIw2-JCtB0-w7Ij-3tQy5fS5i3Srcl32CjQWZnB-8ywX9z2-JFf4G7kXoqlI1sUSbDWaMNiZtl3qd8SvRe5C-Bj0SAuYvhtis9jaq-pTkXb9R-_DGS-XCReXzYEE6rAq1IovJotKGSPIPrDPimHwqjg7C29Bb1xPLI4WC7YUgEKsPaCk2YXNE7hFuxmQ/s1600/Vampire%20Hunting%20Kit%204.jpg" /></div><br />
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In the catalogue entry for the above, Sotherby’s state that “While some vampirists claim such kits were common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were more likely assembled following the publication of Bram Stoker’s novel <i>Dracula</i> in 1897 and marketed to travelers visiting eastern Europe.” While it is not <i>impossible</i> that some sort of tourist-ware was produced for the limited number of <i>Dracula</i>-enthusiasts visiting eastern Europe, I am yet to see any kit with a proven history that is anywhere near as long as suggested here.<br />
<br />
To my knowledge, nothing like these kits existed prior to their appearance in films, but I am not 100% sure when that first happened—even though I have watched 279 vampire films, fifty of them more than once, and made notes on many of them, but this was not something I was looking for. <br />
<br />
What I can say is that, although many of the early 1970s films, for instance, have a vampire-expert (I am thinking of the iconic Peter Cushing / Van Helsing figure), who helps track down and kill vampires, or has a hero who has to acquire the necessary items to do it, this type of theatrical, Tim Burton-esque, sciency-gimmicky-“Vampire Slaying Kit” seems to be at least a decade later still. <br />
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I personally associate this type of “Vampire Slaying Kit” with <i>Bram Stoker’s Dracula</i> (1992) and, although not a vampire film, there is also a great example of this same sort of sciency-gimmicky monster-hunter kit in <i>Sleepy Hollow</i> (1999). <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrGWJot_JO114-lFVfj5vJRmAIeI9ScFwoHE8uWsUAMPZ9JCNTcUpRX5hYqWCj0d5To7Q26v3M-vund70bgRjmUY-FkOVIcVsRud3c4jkKrbMJ_FytYOY1wTr6tjqXq4aAPAxevKn9DzIZLoUL58d_7CqWdBicjD_PXAHBmevxM6eg2C6JLCx6nuvQKw/s1600/Vampire%20Hunting%20Kit%205.jpg" /></div><br />
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I will keep an eye open for this type of kit as I re-watch vampire films. Hopefully, in future, I will be able to identify when they came into vogue. For the present, I’d guess it was the 1980s—when many cultural crimes were committed. Certainly, a lot later than <i>Dracula</i> (1898) and definitely not “Early” in the nineteenth century.<br />
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As for the dating of the Victoria Police Museum’s “Vampire Slaying Kit”—and as I said to Charmaine “If it’s 19th century, I’ll eat my head”! <br />
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**In the time it has taken to write this post, my (free) AdBlocker had blocked 75 advertisements on this page of <i>The Guardian</i>’s website.<br />Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-6086952149246350882023-01-01T07:06:00.006+11:002023-01-01T14:26:53.584+11:00Collecting Haywood, 2022I am posting today to both apologise to any remaining long-term viewers of this blog for my long silence and to post my annual Haywood collecting year-in-review. <br />
<br />
For personal reasons, I was obliged to drop everything I was doing and spend a fair chunk of 2023 on leave; since returning from leave I have had significantly reduced spare time, and will likely continue to have little time for blogging hereafter. I am hopeful, that things might begin to improve in 2023. In any event, when I can post, I will. I certainly have a number of substantial posts, which I would like to complete, that I have been working on for a long time.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
2022 has been another good year for Haywood collecting, despite the increasingly-obvious reduction in the pool of relevant books on the market. The few remaining Haywood titles, that were still relatively-common a few years ago, such as <i>The Female Spectator</i> and <i>La Belle Assemblée</i>, are becoming both less common and more expensive. While translations of Haywood’s works do appear on the market more regularly than the originals, and sometimes cheaply, these too are increasingly expensive. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4DPWLkXZcckVHUg_6L17YHszI_roDnZeFq8QefUoAiGEfZjue2O81WGAzL8A1ZOjKNfSk01rC3H0E30BprSX9A_OA7eXZujiojzp5Vb5V9bnYlBx5ix9ClcMDA5cehkqHyQfJ3U7wSnTyObNTk9odO47sk5k-5RKBtts4X65fPRuRUGQX_pf5Cv5YEQ/s1600/0%20group.jpg" /></div><br />
Consequently, much of what I was able to buy in 2023 were either wildly expensive unicorn-items (genuine rarities, whose appearance is measured in decades), or expensive copies of relatively common items. There were so few bargains that it would be deceptive to mention the prices of these at all, so I won’t.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgECLQ9qU502pQewl3TchS_sQoWCcB4OlxTHlQIN-26tzR5NYYxy-e_68d7hvYYQNZTR3YakT38CET2Xcz72qtEuMYS7SgnLkuMA-v6aVRa-aUAyUXQydA8WD3vi-LNzzIthPw_kaqEIPFABGLJCloYDSDcF6ZPLH_UPj2hx_QYTQD-n7018GP9EeAh2A/s1600/1%20Ab.4.2%20BR.jpg" /></div><br />
The highlight of the year is probably Ab.4.2 / Ab.5.2 the 1724 Dublin edition of <i>The British Recluse and The Injur’d Husband</i>, of which only two other copies are known, and which emerged from a Country House estate after something like two centuries of safe-keeping. I only have two Haywood items that are older than this volume. I have do not know for certain how long it has been since a copy of this book appeared on the market, but I am reliably informed that it must be at least four decades.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilKPj-al6zVDuiCanx3kWuIgwfttUZa0b1eVznTPsLxKBeY1qH084TsCCLnayv8TEwiwVGdikKj8KwcSwdcFtAW92iWqSwL6-Uhkz6DArhexfc7wZ9L0MzGn_EFegI368BLK7XswMbf86C_Yuk-Kp0Ym3yFLdp3kPajwWcA_7D0A-LwxmDkojXRNqTfQ/s1600/2%20Ab.66%20HG%20in%20French.jpg" /></div><br />
Two rare translations would come a close second to this 1724 Dublin edition: Ab.66.4 <i>Lettre de H.... G....g ecuyer</i> (a translation of <i>A Letter from Henry Goring</i>) and an odd volume of Ab.68.8 <i>Geschichte Herrn Jacob Jessamy</i> (a translation of <i>The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>)—of which only one set is known, which I have not examined, and which had an incomplete entry in my <i>Bibliography</i>. There are three French translations of <i>A Letter from Henry Goring</i>. I briefly had a later one (Ab.66.5) while I was still a PhD student, which I was obliged to buy and then immediately sell to a local library—since I couldn’t afford to keep it, but wanted to examine and have access to it. I have obviously been very keen to replace this volume, but had not seen a copy of any edition since 2003. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDLSNJYrIShb3TLllsQkTC_SPk1eQzXe-YdpkhAFJC8pxxcShycOvEEAjQZMBtkagFQOaXTrvTkwdhwKl2F0Cz8DYbKW29Ymx0TbnAJnhi3NwiaT1AcpCXc6gw1c-0Ph0X3fdJsXIbdIzdbLG1FG4MMO7s4ZWBOW9Zn6MtYw78PaoYQzvgTef7X6hvkg/s1600/3%20Ab.68%20JJJ%20in%20German.jpg" /></div><br />
Similarly, but surprisingly rare is the two-volume set edited by Thomas Kinnersley, titled <i>Matrimonial Miscellany</i> (1818–19), which contains a late, Bowdlerised edition of Haywood’s <i>The Fruitless Enquiry</i>. The first original Haywood item I ever purchased, in August 2000, was a copy of vol. 2 of this set—the volume containing <i>Fruitless Enquiry</i>. I have been looking for a complete set ever since. Even though I could only locate two other copies in 2004, I thought that, being a late reprint, I would quickly find another. No such luck. It took more than two decades of searching to find a complete set to sit next to my first “real” Haywood purchase.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0QnUFY16znMIMS72UmHmo6Ywmjvs8sA0AuzocKmIUvWQ2zdnHoxMX6vSye3pTt0ahxynPCjqBc65P9dGOUCB9qMKt_dqF71EB8YYTOR7oFUKGcpgS3Y5L644lJnXB4AFboDpdxPDuELQ8ZN9i_YcqLfkcGhwnqpuWWVAb1xsXX2W-Ap9KQIRk2hixmg/s1600/4%20Ab.36%20FI.jpg" /></div><br />
Honourable mention goes to a 1st edition of Ed.59.12a <i>The Happy Orphans</i>—the retranslated translation of Ab.59 <i>The Fortunate Foundlings</i>—another incomplete set of Ab.69.1 <i>The Invisible Spy</i>—a second copy of Ab.48.2 <i>Lettres Traduites de l’Anglais</i> (a translation of <i>Love-Letters on all Occasions</i>) and two more sets of <i>La Spectatrice</i>. I also managed to get a nice 1st edition of the translation I mentioned last year—the one “that I had somehow previously missed”—which brings me a step closer to publishing details of this find.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNAVr7tQV2zzc6_QDTcKiWADou7lQFbpgT_c45ru2dJcOTYDWBLqvhC_wlaM41XIk8l9rUyS2Ti-XVGyVjaYnD3BKBc8S457VglIEascmN_2tNwLMdleEc8m_K8dvxhpX9zP1E5t7qMVFqUNgjrwAHFl0SdT7wP5ePA3PoasY19fbB_hlYOy7xUnyspw/s1600/5%20Ab.69%20IS.jpg" /></div><br />
Finally, in terms of Haywoodiana, my 1743 signature of Richard Savage (which I mentioned in my post on <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2022/01/collecting-haywood-2021.html">Collecting Haywood, 2021</a>), is undoubtedly the highlight, but it was nice to supplement this in 2022 with a copy of his <i>The Authors of the Town; A Satire</i> (1725). <i>The Authors of the Town</i> contains Savage’s first attack on Haywood, in which he famously describes her as<br />
<br />
A cast-off Dame, who of Intrigues can judge,<br />
Writes Scandal in Romance—a Printer’s Drudge!<br />
Flushed with Success, for Stage-Renown she pants,<br />
And melts, and swells, and pens luxurious rants. <br />
<br />
I didn’t really want to collect Savage, but he is hard to ignore. I guess this means I may end up also having to collect a few copies of Alexander Pope’s <i>Dunciad</i>, but perhaps not until the Haywood pool dries up completely.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-55337041439313758332022-03-27T07:34:00.001+11:002022-03-27T07:34:09.450+11:00 The Unfortunate Young Nobleman, 1820The following chapbook came to my attention only because of the similarity of the title to Haywood's <i>Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman</i>.* For a happy moment, I thought that this might have been a previously-unknown chapbook reprint of Haywood's Annesley biography, but the full title suggested a different work altogether.<br />
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Haywood's work is "A Story founded on Truth," concerning a Nobleman who had <i>Return’d from a Thirteen Years Slavery in America where he had been sent by the Wicked Contrivances of his Cruel Uncle</i>; however, this "tale of sympathy, founded on fact" depicts <i>the unprecedented sufferings of an affectionate husband, and the forlorn state of an amiable mother, and her infant child</i>. So, close, but no cigar. <br />
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There appears to be only five copies of <i>The Unfortunate Young Nobleman; a tale of sympathy, founded on fact</i> in institutional collections. These are held at British Library, Oxford University, Victoria and Albert Museum (x2), and UCLA. None of these eminent instutitions identify the source-text, which I quickly discovered after only a little hunting online (since it is discussed by a few critics): Helen Maria Williams (1759–1827), <i>Letters Written in France</i>, 8 vols. (1790–96); primarily, the first volume, which: <i>contain[s] various anecdotes relative to the French revolution; and memoirs of Mons. and Madame du F----</i>. <br />
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Like <i>The Unfortunate Young Nobleman</i>, the <i>Letters Written in France</i> tell the story of an unfortunate couple, whose names are dashed out in the form "F----". The "Mons. and Madame" indicated here were Augustin-François Thomas du Fossé (1750–1834) and Monique du Fossé (née Coquerel).<br />
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As the <a href="http://www.enlightenment-revolution.org/index.php/Williams%2C_Helen_Maria">18th Century Online Encyclopedia</a> explains.<br />
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<font color="#B5EAAA">Throughout 1789 Williams befriended Monique Coquerel, a French woman exiled to London—the young wife of Augustin du Fossé, son of the Baron du Fossé who disapproved of Coquerel’s humble birth. Following the Baron’s death, his young son refused his title and thus embraced the basic tenets of the French Revolution. As an act of friendship, du Fossé invited Williams to France for the summer of 1790. Williams wrote copious letters describing her observations. These letters were later made public under the title of <i>Letters Written in France in the Summer of 1790</i>. This manuscript was but the first of eight volumes of letters devoted to Williams' observations of the events in France during and following the Revolution. The letters—Williams most popular work—are now known simply as Letters from France. For Williams, the persecution of the Fossés stood for the abuses associated with the ancien régime, and the Fossé’s ability to live in peace under the post-Revolutionary government demonstrated the freedoms associated with the Revolution.</font> <br />
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The story of Mons. and Madame du Fossé was described as a "charming little nouvelle" by the <i>Critical Review</i> (in January 1791: <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kX1PAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA117">here</a>), so it is not surprising that it should have been the focus of at least two separate publications, the present chapbook, plus an earlier one: <i>Memoirs of Mons. and Madame du F. In a Series of Letters, by Helen Maria Williams. Extracted from her Letters of the French Revolution</i> (Boston, 1794)—a copy of which is available from James Cummins for USD850 <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=975695322">here</a>.<br />
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<i>The Unfortunate Young Nobleman</i> was published by Robert Harrild, who was at the London address given ("20, Great Eastcheap") only from 1814–24. I have taken my estimated date of publication (1820) from the most comprehensively catalogued copies, which are at the Victoria and Albert Museum; both in the "Renier Collection of Historic and Contemporary Children's Books". An impossibly early date of publication is offered by one of the few people to discuss the text—Mary A. Favret—who lists <i>The Unfortunate Young Nobleman</i> under the works of Williams, but dates the chapbook "1790"—not "ca.1790" or "[1790]"—in both <i>The Idea of Correspondence in British Romantic Literature</i> (PhD thesis, Stanford University, 1988), 136, 412 and her <i>Romantic Correspondence: Women, Politics and the Fiction of Letters</i> (1993), 263 [<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fozQyZByyREC&pg=PA263">here</a>]. Although the date was probably adopted from the title of the source text (<i>Letters Written in France in the Summer of 1790</i>), it may also, possibly, be a result of misinterpreting a footnote in a French monograph on Willians.**<br />
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As you can see above, like both the Renier copies, mine is in a "Trade binding of quarter … sheepskin with … paper boards" (mine being red and blue rather than green and brown). Like the Bodleian copy, it also has a name penned onto the ffep (as can be seen below): "Miss M. Laud." (The inscription on the Bodleian copy reads "Eliza Buxton, Old Kent Road".)<br />
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The price that is faintly visible on the ffep (£3) is not the price I paid. If that is what the vendor paid, then they multiplied their investment ten-fold, which still seemed like a bargain to me—but I have recently paid much more than that in postage for a piece of paper smaller than an address label, so my sense of scale may still be off.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
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* For a more "piquant" example of a Haywoodian title-chime, which has been responsible for at least two false attributions, see <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2009/07/other-betsy-thoughtless_14.html">here</a>.<br />
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** Lionel Douglas Woodward, <i>Une anglaise amie de la révolution francaise: Hélène-Maria Williams et ses amis</i> (1930), 32n72: "Voir: <i>Lettres écrites de France pendant l'élé de</i> 1790, dernière lettre. L'histoire des malheurs des du Fossé fut publiée seule, aussi bien que dans les <i>Lettres</i>, sous ce titre: <i>The unfortunate young Nobleman …</i>" [See: <i>Letters written from France during the year of 1790</i>, last letter. The history of the misfortunes of the du Fossé was published alone, as well as in the <i>Letters</i>, under this title: <i>The unfortunate young Nobleman …</i>]. Favret's error is repeated on the SIEFAR page for Williams <a href="http://siefar.org/dictionnaire/fr/Helen_Maria_Williams">here</a>.<br />
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BTW: I have inserted above all the illustrations in this chapbook, because I love this style of woodcut and, in the correct order pretty-much tell the whole story; the illustrations are in the correct text sequence, illustrating passages on pp. 8, 20, 24, 42, and 52 (of the 71 pages).Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-4246841941170824202022-03-23T18:00:00.002+11:002022-03-26T11:22:48.827+11:00Eliza Haywood in Quaritch's General Catalogue, 1871A three-volume set of the first edition of Eliza Haywood's Ab.68.1 <i>The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i> (1753) appeared as lot no. 1219 in the 1871 sale <i>Catalogue of the Valuable ... Library of the Late Sir J. Simeon, Bart.</i> (<a href="1871 books.google.com.au/books?id=jT4RAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA81">here</a>). <br />
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The set, bound in calf, is attributed to the novelist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Lennox">Charlotte Lennox</a>, author of <i>The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella</i> (1752)—but not the author of <i>Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>. It is not clear how this error arose. Since no previous example of it is known, is seems unlikely it was copied from an earlier bibliography or catalogue. <br />
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In any event, as is the way with these things, the error in the catalogue of the library of Sir John Simeon, 1st Baronet (1756–1824) of Walliscot in Oxfordshire, MP for Reading in Berkshire etc., was repeated almost immediately—probably because he bought this lot at the Sir John Simeon auction—in Bernard Quaritch's <i>A General Catalogue of Books: Offered to the Public at the Affixed Prices</i> (1872), p.539 (no. 5644) [<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=u3bqfq85vSEC&pg=PA539">here</a>; reissued in 1874 <a href="http:books.google.com.au/books?id=u3bqfq85vSEC&pg=PA539">here</a>].<br />
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Quaritch's monumental <i>General Catalogue</i> occupied 1889 pages. That is not a typo: one thousand, eight hundred and eighty-nine pages, often in two or three columns. Given its comprehensive coverage of literature, the <i>General Catalogue</i> was used—along side Lowndes'/Bohn's <i>Bibliographer's Manual</i>—as a standard work of reference in the book trade for a long period. Consequently, it is surprising that this false attribution did not get repeated; but it didn't. And since it didn't, I managed to miss it: it does not appear in my <i>Bibliography of Eliza Haywood</i> (2004)<br />
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I remember having had a chance to buy a copy of Quaritch's <i>General Catalogue</i> at one point—in the basement of a large bookshop, while in the UK I think. But the <i>General Catalogue</i> failed my standard test—I searched the index for Haywood, and found nothing. Now that it can be searched electronically, I see that, not only does Haywood's appear (albeit via a false attribution), but Haywood appears (again?), and in a most interesting way. <br />
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In the section titled "Books Wanted to Purchase" appears the following entry (on p. 1755; <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=u3bqfq85vSEC&pg=PA1755">here</a>):
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuhPkNB8x3HyOr3aTJdOsNiTI6d_tc3_8W-xh7TAdPMC8GLaSy7EuOOq606599Rqu3SZvi7caPJ1LvALZiuv8BFIGKfwh9EWoWBqDjUUggOCpgCroMd7g0Wg-Je1MPxfF3NbJt86rQQ8Up45yJgFrCdySgpXAMB-mOLaZuGXSyReHfFcvHNBJNXuA1fw/s1600/EH%20in%20Quaritch.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="100" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuhPkNB8x3HyOr3aTJdOsNiTI6d_tc3_8W-xh7TAdPMC8GLaSy7EuOOq606599Rqu3SZvi7caPJ1LvALZiuv8BFIGKfwh9EWoWBqDjUUggOCpgCroMd7g0Wg-Je1MPxfF3NbJt86rQQ8Up45yJgFrCdySgpXAMB-mOLaZuGXSyReHfFcvHNBJNXuA1fw/s1600/EH%20in%20Quaritch.jpg" /></a></div>
NB: "… and <i>any</i> other works by this authoress."<br />
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Clearly, the lack of works by Haywood (recognised as such) in Quaritch's <i>General Catalogue</i> was not due to the fact that there was no demand for them!
Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-68101555000414449292022-03-13T10:16:00.000+11:002022-03-13T10:16:04.144+11:00Kingsley Studios Reader, ca. 1905This studio portrait of a young woman at a desk, posed with book open in front of her, seems to have been taken by E. Grattan Phillipse, of "Royal Kingsley Studios" at 46 High Street, Ilfracombe, North Devon (later, "Phillips and Lees"—a partnership that ended in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=JUc7AAAAMAAJ&q=Ilfracombe+%22Grattan+Phillipse%22">1921</a>). <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilfracombe">Ilfracombe</a> is—and was, in the first decade of twentieth century, when this photo was likely taken—a seaside resort on the North Devon coast, England, with a small harbour surrounded by cliffs. <br />
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As David Lodge notes, in his Foreword to <i>Readers: Vintage People on Photo Postcards</i> (2010; reviewed by me <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2012/08/tom-phillips-readers-ca-19001940.html">here</a>), about half the real photo postcards from 1900 to 1940 were taken in studios, like this one, and do not actually represent the experience of reading but merely allude to it, with props that "served as indices of culture, education, and in some cases piety" and a “limited repertoire of body-language” (5).<br />
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Since the experience of reading is so often feigned—and "reading itself is visually inscrutable"—there is a natural tendency to focus on slight variations in prop and pose in studio photographs, and on "behavioral and sociological" aspects, or to engage in "narrative [and] symbolic interpretation" (6), in posed and un-posed photos at home or in more natural settings. <br />
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In previous examples on this blog (for example, <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2014/12/mary-motley-reading-ca1860.html">here</a>, <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2019/11/mary-roesler-not-really-reading.html">here</a> and <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2019/11/reading-portland-sunday-telegram-1940s.html">here</a>), I have commented on clothes, and posture. What strikes me about this photo is the faded glory of the props—a carved oak desk, heavily worn and scratched, and a grand, carved, high-backed chair—suggesting a scholarly species of “baronial splendor.” The hardcover book is similarly well-worn: the spine being completely folded back on itself, so that the two halves of book-block can rest flat on the table.<br />
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We view the sitter across the desk. She, who appears to be in a rich, velvet dress, gives the appearance of having just glanced up from her reading, in which she was deeply engaged, glancing at the camera with as much unselfconscious naturalism as is consistent with the magnificent ribbons in her hair and the extended exposure times of the period.
Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-21939788917701233732022-03-06T10:07:00.000+11:002022-03-06T10:07:44.064+11:00The H. B. Nims Handy Pamphlet Case, 1876<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJtGTGkH00WW-8xKiFdFFwGtTxvF8DBq3pNN3yh8_o9CnCYOJGuNA87BG6G_M7lPH3Jj1wPtWzVkk17_1UR85ZM9x4w9T6nBVdVQNwe2yZoz5FEQLNaMNNUaphgns5vvT4Dedp73EXmyCtZkFN3o3mvcLGEHAK3DghJqYFGV79aw7FJTflVkhc4qIpvA" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJtGTGkH00WW-8xKiFdFFwGtTxvF8DBq3pNN3yh8_o9CnCYOJGuNA87BG6G_M7lPH3Jj1wPtWzVkk17_1UR85ZM9x4w9T6nBVdVQNwe2yZoz5FEQLNaMNNUaphgns5vvT4Dedp73EXmyCtZkFN3o3mvcLGEHAK3DghJqYFGV79aw7FJTflVkhc4qIpvA" /></a></div>
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The Handy Pamphlet Case (depicted above) was produced by H. B. Nims and Co., Troy, NY, and advertised from 1875 to 1877. An 1875 advertisement in <i>The American Stationer</i> (<a href="https://archive.org/details/ldpd_12498671_002/page/n4/mode/1up">here</a>), reads as follows:<br />
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<font color="#B5EAAA">The HANDY PAMPHLET CASE.<br />
With Index of Contents.<br />
<br />
Useful to librarians and literary men for classifying pamphlets.<br />
Useful to physicians for holding their journals previous to binding.<br />
Useful to clergymen to keep their sermons in.<br />
Useful to business men to keep price lists and catalogues in.<br />
Useful to everyone who takes a magazine.<br />
<br />
A neat, cheap and handy invention to preserve all kinds of paper-covered literature, that would otherwise be impaired or destroyed.<br />
<br />
LARGE 8vo., PER DOZEN, $2.50<br />
Samples sent by mail upon receipt of 25c<br />
<br />
H. B, NIMS [and] CO., Manufacturers,<br />
TROY, NEW YORK.</font> <br />
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The advertisement text was re-set in the 1877 advertisements I have seen in <i>The American Library Journal</i> (<a href="https://archive.org/details/libraryjournalch1187dewe/page/206/mode/1up">here</a>, for example), and the accompanying image changed to include the words "THE | HANDY | <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">Pamphlet</span> | CASE | <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">with | Index of | Contents</span>".<br />
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In addition to the advertisements in <i>The American Stationer</i> and <i>The American Library Journal</i>, Henry B. Nims—running a descendant business of W. H. Merriam (est. 1840)—printed advertising slips that were loosely inserted in new publications they sold. I found one (above) in a copy of H. R. Fox Bourne's <i>The Life of John Lock</i> (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876), which provides a sharper image than those in the magazines on Google Books.<br />
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Unfortunately, I can find no trace of a surviving example of the Nims Handy Pamphlet Case, which is a shame. If they were tin they probably did a lot of damage to the pamphlets, journals, sermons and catalogues they contained, but if they were made of stiff card and paper they might have saved many of the same from destruction.<br />
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Anyone interested in H. B. Nims and Co., of Troy, New York—"the largest and most complete book store between Boston and Cleveland"—will find some information in <i>The Industrial Advantages of Troy, N.Y. and Environs</i> (1895; <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=qYZDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA42">here</a>; the source of the quote and the photos above and below) and <i>The City of Troy and Its Vicinity</i> (1886; <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=J1wVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA35">here</a>).<br />
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BTW: anyone interested in another example of the wonderful, book collecting-related, stationary items developed in the States in the late nineteenth-century, should see my post on "The Van Everen Fitsanybook Adjustable Book Cover" (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-van-everen-fitsanybook-adjustable.html">here</a>).Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-52644690870314140752022-02-27T06:53:00.002+11:002022-02-27T07:04:28.235+11:00An Anonymous Review of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, 1865An unsigned review of Eliza Haywood's <i>The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i> appeared in <i>The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art</i>, vol. 20, no. 506 (8 July 1865): 52a–53b (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=_VwwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA52">here</a>). It seems to have been prompted by the writer reading Sir Walter Scott’s novel <i>Old Mortality</i> (1816), which is alluded to at the start of this review.<br />
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In the Conclusion of <i>Old Mortality</i>, an old woman declares: “I have not been more affected … by any novel, excepting the ‘Tale of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy,’ which is indeed pathos itself.” The old woman is a figure of fun. In his autobiographical “Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott,” Scott writes: “The whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe I abhorred; and it required the art of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic tale.”<br />
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The old woman’s enthusiasm for the <i>History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i> is not unlike Isabella’s enthusiasm for the “horrid novels” mentioned in <i>Northanger Abbey</i>, books that had been so thoroughly forgotten that they “were later thought to be of Austen’s own invention” until “Montague Summers and Michael Sadleir re-discovered in the 1920s that the novels actually did exist.” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northanger_Abbey#Allusions_to_other_works">here</a>)<br />
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The anonymous author of the present review seems to have had a similar motivation to Summers and Sadleir: being an enthusiast for Scott (rather than Austen), and wanting to establish that <i>The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i> “actually did exist”—like the “Northanger ‘horrid’ novels.” <br />
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His conclusion is that <i>The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>, not only exists, but "is skillfully constructed, without sacrifice of probability, or recourse to claptrap of any kind"—that it is "by no means a contemptible book … and if it never excites, it never becomes wholly devoid of interest." <br />
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Not only is this one of the longest, but it is also one of the fairest reviews Haywood's novel received in the two centuries following its release. It is a shame that [1] it is anonymous and [2] it has been overlooked completely. (For my post on "Eliza Haywood's Reputation before the 20C," see <a href="http://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2011/10/eliza-haywoods-reputation-before-20c.html">here</a>; for 18C reviews of works by Haywood, see <a href="http://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2013/08/eliza-haywood-reviews-texts-links-etc.html">here</a>.) <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *<br />
<br />
JEMMY AND JENNY JESSAMY.*</div>
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IN the preface or introduction to one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, an old lady is represented discoursing with the author, and expressing her admiration of some previous production of his brain. The novel she commends is, in her opinion, the best that was ever written, except the <i>History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>. As for that immortal history, it was an ideal of perfection, never to be equalled in this defective world. Mankind had only to wonder that such excellence had ever been presented in a visible shape. Unless memory is very treacherous, we once in early youth saw [page 52b] on the walls of some country inn or lodging-house two coloured prints, respectively representing a young gentleman and lady in old-fashioned costume, and purporting to be Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy. We are even inclined to recollect that in those works of art an attempt was made to combine the effects of painting and sculpture by an extremely simple process not uncommon in the last century. The coloured figures were carefully cut out and pasted upon a black ground, but one of the arms was purposely left destitute of the adhesive material, and allowed to project forwards. If the figure was that of a lady, and the unstuck hand held a nosegay, the effect was considered by competent judges to be pretty and natural. What an instructive paper, by the way, might be written on the successive ornaments that have decorated the walls and mantelpieces of the less opulent classes during (say) the last hundred years! The record would be of quaint designs in worsted, of violently-coloured mezzotints traceable to the now forgotten establishment of Messrs. Bowles and Carver in St. Paul’s Churchyard, of horrid waxwork groups on scriptural subjects, of black velvet used as an imitation of the feline coat, of elder-pith and minute rolls of paper applied to the adornment of various unserviceable boxes—all objects that belonged to a past generation, and can never return save through a retrogression in taste that is scarcely to be considered possible. <br />
Such a thing of the past is the <i>History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>, which, as we have seen, was most famous in its day. When a book, or an actor, or an event becomes the subject of a casual reference or of a cheap print, and that in an age when there are no illustrated newspapers hungering after appropriate topics, we may be assured that it was familiar to a very large number of persons, and that the knowledge of it was by no means confined to those of superior culture. We may assume that Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy were characters known to that large class of the public which in the last century certainly did not read much. That to the ears of many of our readers the names of interesting couple will have something of a familiar ring, we are inclined to believe. Still more strong is our opinion that the whole body of those who know of them any more than their names might easily be accommodated in a china-closet of moderate dimensions. Nay, having carefully, and with no small effort, read through the novel, we are ready to confess a certain complacent satisfaction at the circumstance that we are in possession of a modicum of erudition vouchsafed to almost none of our fellow creatures. We feel that it is simply a moral restraint which prevents us from indulging in the most reckless mendacity while describing Mrs. Eliza Haywood’s work, and that if we refrain from saying, for example, that Jemmy Jessamy is King James II., and Jenny Jessamy the Duchess of Marlborough in disguise, we are governed wholly by regard for truth, and not by any fear of detection in falsehood. <br />
There is something very misleading both in the title of the novel and in the fact of its former popularity. There is a sort of affinity between the words “Jessamy” and “Jessamine” (or Jasmine), and there is a homely Anglicism in the “ Jemmy” and the “Jenny,” that lead one to expect a tale of pastoral love in which the insipidity of the ordinary Damon and Phyllis will be rendered additionally nauseous by an infusion of home-grown sentimentality. No one can be more fluent than your genuine Britisher in twaddling about the innocence of rural life. With this hypothesis deduced from the title-page of the book, the ingenious speculator may account for the rise and fall of the Jessamy mania. Once people liked stories about well-bred rustics who talked a great deal of highflown stuff, but they have long ceased to relish incitements of the sort. Jenny Jessamy was some village maiden, dishonourably courted by some wicked squire, who cruelly persecuted her proper lover, Jemmy. At last virtue triumphed, the squire was overthrown, and very probably Jemmy turned out to be the lawful owner of his wrongly-held estate. All very well in its time, but folks like something different now. Since the days of the old-fashioned romances they have been well fed with historical fictions, and, having become tired of them in their turn, have comfortably settled into a contemplation of modern actual life, viewed, just at present, under somewhat stormy aspects. <br />
So much more plausible does this hypothesis look than many serious historical theories, that one feels a regret in demolishing it utterly with the declaration that never was a book less sentimental, less pastoral, or less obviously addressed to any transient caprice of the reading world than this same story of <i>Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>. The young gentleman is heir to a large estate, and has been duly educated at Eton and Oxford. The young lady, a distant cousin, is daughter of a wealthy merchant, and grows up a model of high-bred propriety. The respective parents of Jemmy and Jenny destine them for each other, and die, leaving them in a state of complete independence at an early age. They are expected by their acquaintance to marry immediately, but several instances of domestic unhappiness which come under their immediate notice determine them not to be too precipitate, Jenny being the leader on the road of wisdom. “Every one,” says that sage young maiden, “before they engage in marriage, should be well versed in all those things, whatever they are, which constitute the happiness of it; this town is an ample school, and both of us have acquaintance enough in it to learn, from the mistakes of others, how to regulate our own conduct and passions so as not to be laughed at ourselves for what we laugh at in them.” For these remarks she is well rewarded by Jemmy with the exclamation, “Spoken like a <i>philosophoress</i>”! The [page 53a] instances of conjugal discomfort form the subjects of short episodes, the authoress throughout adopting the method which we find employed by Cervantes, Scarron, Le Sage, Fielding, Smollett, etc., of interweaving the main story with others sometimes scarcely connected with it. Generally the incidents narrated are not of a very exciting kind, though they sometimes illustrate a lax state of society. Here a married gentleman of distinction has a mistress in every respect inferior to his own wife; there a married lady of quality pays her gaming debts at the expense of her honour. More eccentric than these is a certain Lady Fisk, who “went to Covent Garden in man’s clothes, picked up a woman of the town, and was severely beaten by her on the discovery of her sex.” But the prevailing tone of the book is decidedly grave and moral, and, though there is more plain-speaking than at the present day, it is quite obvious that the authoress is never intentionally licentious.<br />
When Jemmy and Jenny have wisely resolved to prepare them-selves for the marriage state, they are separated for some time, Jenny going to Bath with some friends of rank and position, whose mild adventures help to swell out the volumes, and Jemmy, through some business engagement, being constantly hindered from joining her. Though the young gentleman is somewhat of a libertine, and apt to indulge in transient amours, he never thinks of breaking his engagement with his dear Jenny, who, on her side, never indulges in jealousy. Her virtue, indeed, while of the purest quality, is at the same time of that robust kind that does not depend on innocence, and at little more than twenty years of age she can perfectly distinguish between the aimless peccadilloes of male unmarried youth and those aberrations that are likely to result in a breach of promise of marriage. The following little speech which she makes on one occasion to her Jemmy illustrates with singular plainness her general views on the subject of masculine constancy:<br />
<br />
<font color="#B5EAAA">“Make no vows on this last head (fidelity) I beseech you. I have heard people much older and more experienced than ourselves say that the soonest [sic, for surest] way to do a thing is to resolve against it. Besides, my dear Jemmy,” added she, with the most engaging sprightliness, “I shall not be so unreasonable to expect more constancy from you than human nature and your constitution will allow; and if you are as good as you can, may very well content myself with your endeavours to be better.”</font><br />
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The only serious obstacle to the happiness of these lovers arises through the machinations of Bellpine, a false friend of Jemmy’s, who, having become enamoured of Jenny and her fortune, vainly tries to make Jemmy fall seriously in love with a certain Miss Chit, famed for the excellence of her singing, but is more successful in spreading a report of Jemmy’s serious inconstancy which reaches the ears of Jenny. When the machinations of Bellpine are discovered, he is so terribly mauled by the injured Jemmy, in single combat, that his life is despaired of, and the avenger flies to France to escape the consequences of too successful duelling. However, the wounded man recovers; Jenny, going as one of a wedding-party to Paris, joins the disconsolate Jemmy, and brings him back safe and sound to marry her in the “Abbey Church of Westminster.”<br />
There is the whole story—that is to say, the main story, stripped of its details and ramifications. That in itself it is not “sensational,” will be at once perceived; let us hasten to state that nothing whatever is done to make it so. The personages part, meet again flirt, quarrel, faint, and fall into each other’s arms; but, do what they will, they no more lay claim to our sympathies than would a set of well-dressed and cleverly-managed puppets in a Fantoccini. We are told a great deal about love and hatred, but we never see them expressed. Of the art of representing an emotion, so as to kindle something corresponding in the mind of any reader of the present day, the authoress has not the slightest notion; and even when a passion is declared by one of the principal characters, we are convinced that the speaker is less concerned about his heart than about the rounding of his periods, though these are not very well rounded after all. Nor is any appeal made to the appreciation of wit and repartee, as in the writings of Congreve, and other heartless hierarchs of a peculiar worship of intellect. In the whole compass of three good-sized volumes there is not a smart saying that one would care to record as a specimen of superficial brilliancy. <br />
At humour or at delineation of character no attempt is made. The personages all belong to the highest ranks of a very artificial society, lounge through their time in London and Bath, amuse one another with elaborate gallantries, and indulge in copious but not reckless verbosity. More pains are taken with Jenny’s character than with that of the others, but she is such a mere incarnation of the views entertained by the authoress that her speeches are scarcely to be distinguished from the moral exordia which are uttered by Mrs. Eliza Haywood, in her own person, at the commencement of many chapters.<br />
Some of the personages, void of individuality as they all are, were possibly intended to adumbrate well-known realities of the day. Miss Chit, who attracts all the fashionable world by her excellent singing, and is supposed to have a father of higher station than her ostensible parent; Celandrine, a cowardly lady-killer, who ignominiously refuses a challenge at a period when a recognition of the old code of honour was implied in social morality; Lady Fisk, who gets into street rows—these might perhaps have been recognised by the readers of the middle of the last century as persons whose follies and vices were the subject of common talk. In her early days, Mrs. Haywood, who seems to have been born somewhere about 1693, and died in 1756, formed herself upon the more celebrated Mrs. Manley, and wrote two books—[53b] entitled the <i>Court of Carimania</i>, and the <i>New Utopia</i>—which owed their popularity to the quantity of scandal they contained, and caused Pope to bestow upon their authoress a few coarse lines in the <i>Dunciad</i>, which, whatever might have been the provocation, were most disgraceful to the poet. When she wrote her later works, of which <i>Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>, attained the greatest celebrity, she had become a reformed character, and a most ostentatious preacher of such morality as was current at the time. But there is no reason to assume that she entirely left off her old habits, and altogether forbade herself the pleasure of writing a little harmless unobtrusive scandal at the expense of her acquaintance. If the cap did not fit, no harm was done; if it did, the reader was to be blamed for putting it on. <br />
But what will most strike a modern thinker is the tone of wisdom in which Mrs. Haywood utters her ethical platitudes. It is hard to conceive the degree of <i>naïveté</i> with which both writer and reader must have been endowed when passages like following were considered instructive:<br />
<br />
<font color="#B5EAAA">
Youth, beauty, and wit have deservingly a very powerful influence on [sic, for over] the human heart; and every day’s [sic, for day,] experience obliges us to own that wealth without the aid of any of these, is of itself sufficient to captivate; it supplies all other defects; it smooths the wrinkles of fourscore; it shapes deformity into comeliness, and gives graces to idiotism itself; as it is said by the inimitable Shakespeare:<br />
<br />
Gold! yellow glittering precious gold! <br />
Gold! that will make black white; foul fair; wrong right; <br />
Base noble; old young; cowards valiant.<br />
<br />
But when the gifts of nature are joined with those of fortune, how strong is the attraction! How irresistible is the force of such united charms! According to the words of the humorous poet—<br />
<br />
Hence ’tis, no lover has the pow’r <br />
T’enforce a desperate amour, <br />
As he that has two strings to’s bow, <br />
And burns for love and money too. <br />
<br />
We ought not therefore, methinks, to judge with too much severity on the vanity of a fine lady; who seeing herself perpetually surrounded with a crowd of lovers, each endeavouring to excel all his rivals in the most extravagant demonstrations of affection, can hardly believe she deserves not some part, at least, of the admiration she receives. But what pretence soever we may make to excuse the weakness of exulting in a multiplicity of lovers, it is still a weakness which all imaginable care ought to be taken to subdue; as it may draw on the most fatal consequences both on the admirers and admired.<br />
</font>
<br />
All this is sound and charitable enough, but one could scarcely find a more perfect specimen of the grave kind of twaddle. Let a fluent writer once choose his moral theory, and he may cover as many pages as there are lines in the above with a specious exhibition of wisdom that will scarcely require the most moderate expenditure of thought. The quotations from Shakespeare and Butler are singularly illustrative of the period at which the book was written. The old pedantic habit of overloading a text with citations from Greek and Latin authors crudely massed together, after the manner of Burton, had passed away, but far more celebrated writers than Mrs. Haywood show us that people in the middle of the last century had not learned clearly to distinguish between illustration and proof. If the fair Eliza can back up an opinion, which none but a lunatic would think of contradicting, with a distich from that great master of the human heart, Mr. Dryden, or with half a dozen lines from Cowley, “who was certainly as great a judge of love as was Ovid himself,” she feels that she has made assurance doubly sure. <br />
With all the peculiarities which will seem so strange to a modern reader, the <i>History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i> is by no means a contemptible book. The story is skillfully constructed, without sacrifice of probability, or recourse to claptrap of any kind; and if it never excites, it never becomes wholly devoid of interest. Moreover, it would be hard to find a more perfect specimen of that satisfaction with a thoroughly worldly and semi-Pagan morality which at a later period earned for the eighteenth century the epithet “Godless,” than in the rules of life laid in the course of this once famous novel.<br />
<br />
*<i>The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>. By Mrs. Haywood.<br />Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-11429078361672879382022-02-20T11:55:00.001+11:002022-02-20T11:59:44.616+11:00Fern reads McClure’s Magazine, 1914The young woman wearing spectacles in this "real photo" postcard is identified in pencil as “Fern"—a name which peaked in popularity "at the dawn of the 20th century" (according to <a href="https://livingforthesunshine.com/old-fashioned-english-girls-names/">this</a> site). Apparently, the name is "surfacing again," since it is a "perfect combination of vintage and earthy-boho." M'ok.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4Nw7JsYyfbMbFgBg9pFAjR24p-4I_7ZsGSivwbez9TBrKCQbafSzxRbzWyKUIRbzaYxgYAPMv334AMOg5935XhClq7viqu9PnZbmo5NMoBQgXYoEXLMPJrOBF7l9rreKPBH-FyfNbasCq-cIXjkEg6pEfP7jhuqTZBHCg_tR-aKdBSChi8wILiscGuw" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="792" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi4Nw7JsYyfbMbFgBg9pFAjR24p-4I_7ZsGSivwbez9TBrKCQbafSzxRbzWyKUIRbzaYxgYAPMv334AMOg5935XhClq7viqu9PnZbmo5NMoBQgXYoEXLMPJrOBF7l9rreKPBH-FyfNbasCq-cIXjkEg6pEfP7jhuqTZBHCg_tR-aKdBSChi8wILiscGuw" /></a></div>
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Anyway, Fern is sitting on a swing, with a magazine in hand, while a book in a dustwrapper is sitting on the cushions beside her.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDpesJ27lbtGNeysgkyHC-Qu9rZpLesj6_hiAOXzCa_h56KLz_QoBmoj5CW1kDNKlnsOUEe0eAUKAfIIH1vqZLP2IBqaNMj0Xe2Rh-VxnBMReUl71NfvCGzuCObtkPTRqbj2W0RK6Ikh-kXfIAM__Zf3aTW9aUv7DFhroPHTskBr0Oq3TyVRhP8FFeBw" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjDpesJ27lbtGNeysgkyHC-Qu9rZpLesj6_hiAOXzCa_h56KLz_QoBmoj5CW1kDNKlnsOUEe0eAUKAfIIH1vqZLP2IBqaNMj0Xe2Rh-VxnBMReUl71NfvCGzuCObtkPTRqbj2W0RK6Ikh-kXfIAM__Zf3aTW9aUv7DFhroPHTskBr0Oq3TyVRhP8FFeBw" /></a></div>
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Fortunately, enough of the magazine cover is visible in the photography to identify both the magazine and—after a bit of hunting around—the issue, providing a date for the photograph.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL7YRGrg9tpsj5SuMOtibf_fc-_uIA2uxolPljszMMvtizTXGM5GHE_FBH1YqVjCekebuGWnvSL0jCU9CAkUN8_RALoysxMse4L2qx7GfJgXauXYIJR2y3z9MJwzuK3TzT70il2UW3civf60Uu4RsYHhX-hMxXo-kmIc1EXbhJjxnkJsLBk6YauNYWag" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiL7YRGrg9tpsj5SuMOtibf_fc-_uIA2uxolPljszMMvtizTXGM5GHE_FBH1YqVjCekebuGWnvSL0jCU9CAkUN8_RALoysxMse4L2qx7GfJgXauXYIJR2y3z9MJwzuK3TzT70il2UW3civf60Uu4RsYHhX-hMxXo-kmIc1EXbhJjxnkJsLBk6YauNYWag" /></a></div>
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As you can see by comparing above and below, Fern is browsing, or pretending to browse, <i>McClure’s Magazine</i>, vol. 43, no. 5 (September 1914). <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqM-5S3wa3xvr70vMeUeFWoZUYSYAl_OsYyQ9ZzQVbwLvzsI_Ruio_Sk9SW0W8Ktfjkd0L_7eLgWfLPDNqDVNjklTR7YfKwc2Ec0zfOFF2B5QTA6aXitFdQineh4p9gAMJ9I8Ml4S-uRtkVqENuSVIumB5rYAwDQKWSKdm1pMLH1vbUNLMzSSk1vy-Ag" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="729" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgqM-5S3wa3xvr70vMeUeFWoZUYSYAl_OsYyQ9ZzQVbwLvzsI_Ruio_Sk9SW0W8Ktfjkd0L_7eLgWfLPDNqDVNjklTR7YfKwc2Ec0zfOFF2B5QTA6aXitFdQineh4p9gAMJ9I8Ml4S-uRtkVqENuSVIumB5rYAwDQKWSKdm1pMLH1vbUNLMzSSk1vy-Ag" /></a></div>
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Perhaps she is reading "A Sea of Troubles" by P. G. Wodehouse? If <i>you</i> want to see what she is looking at, you will find the full issue online <a href="http://archive.org/details/sim_new-mcclures-magazine_1914-09_43_5">here</a>.Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-28360315404294968122022-02-13T12:01:00.001+11:002022-02-13T12:03:17.173+11:00Gems of British social history series, 1978–1982Between 1978 and 1982, Paul Harris published six facsimiles of eighteenth and nineteenth century erotic texts under the series title: "Gems of British social history series". <br />
<br />
For the record, these six volumes are:<br />
<br />
1. <i>Directory Of the Ladies of Pleasure in Edinburgh</i> [1775] (1978)<br />
2. <i>The Gentleman's Bottle Companion</i> [1768] (1978)<br />
3. <i>The Secret Cabinet of Robert Burns</i> [aka <i>The Merry Muses of Caledonia</i>] (1979)<br />
4. <i>Low Life in Victorian Edinburgh</i> [1851] (1980)<br />
5. <i>Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies Or Man of Pleasure's Kalender for the Year 1793</i> (1982)<br />
6. <i>Records of the Most Ancient and Puissant Order of the Beggar's Benison and Merryland, Anstruther</i> (1982)<br />
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I bought a copy of <i>The Gentleman's Bottle Companion</i> facsimile in 1989, but now have all four of the eighteenth century texts (nos. 1, 2, 3, 5). I have long considered the <i>Beggar's Benison and Merryland</i> volume to be a nineteenth century fabrication, but I am beginning to change my mind on this.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *<br /></div>
<br />
Regarding no.2: in 2000, when Alexander Pettit and I first started work on our five-volume anthology of <i>Eighteenth Century British Erotica</i> (2002), I was tasked with choosing the texts. Since I wanted to include <i>The Gentleman's Bottle Companion</i>, and could find no record of it in any library, I tried to get in touch with Harris. <br />
<br />
In early 2001, after spamming a series of publishers that he had work with (Beekhan Publishers in New York, the US distributor for his facsimiles; Werner Shaw Limited, who had published one of his books, etc.), I managed to reach him, in East Timor of all places.<br />
<br />
Little did I know what a wild life Harris had been living since he published his facsimile in 1978. His 2009 autobiography is titled <i>More Thrills than Skills: adventures in journalism, war and terrorism</i>, having become a war corresponded, covering eighteen wars between 1991 and 2001 (for basic details, see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Harris_(author)">Wikipedia</a>.)<br />
<br />
Astonishingly, it turned out that, no only did he actually own the original, and still the only known, copy of <i>The Gentleman's Bottle Companion</i>, but he had it with him in East Timor! Somehow, I persuaded him to sell it to Monash. I don't have any of the emails from that far back, but from memory it wasn't actually that difficult to persuade him. I think he was probably quite happy to see the book go somewhere safe, or safer than where he was. He must have been feeling the burden of responsibility for preserving, in the middle of a war zone, the only known copy of such a book. <br />
<br />
Although he was glad to sell the book, he knew what it was worth, so there was no chance I could buy it myself. He asked something like A$5000, ten to twenty times the amount I usually had in the bank at the time. I am not sure how I managed to persuade the bank to extend my credit that far, but they did, and quickly. I sent the money before he could reconsider, the book was sent, Monash reimbursed me, and by the end of 2001 I was able to supply Pickering and Chatto with a fresh copy of the book for our <i>Eighteenth Century British Erotica</i>, with Monash as the holding library. <br />
<br />
Unfortunately, although I once had it in my house, and included it in an exhibition I curated on "Lewd and Scandalous Books" in 2010, I have no photo of it. No image of the book is included in the catalogue, which you can download <a href="https://www.monash.edu/library/_archive/collections/exhibitions/lewd-and-scandalous">here</a>. However, there is a facsimile of the title-page and an OCR scan of the text <a href="https://www.horntip.com/html/books_&_MSS/1700s/1768_the_gentlemans_bottle_companion_(HC)/1768_the_gentlemans_bottle_companion_(HC)/index.htm">here</a>.
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Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-86158006854444249592022-02-06T13:28:00.003+11:002022-02-13T12:07:41.240+11:00Slip cancellation in 1904<p>Below are some images of one of my books with a cancelled imprint—<i>The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet A.D. 1269</i>, translated by Brother Arnold, and with an Introductory Note by Brother Potamian (New York, 1904).* (For my previous posts concerning cancellation, see <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2021/04/slip-cancellation-in-1980.html">here</a>.)<br />
</here></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEglXOZTdQj4LpWHqxXvhfbGS8j_YTQHxzSIHl486kOx_unLfoAcoMi3_OGYSsfku-nzFp29CEcwwfbwbP2aFbTVlvRMTQxfzvZ7YpZKhi8L48Ip2nMWiBoH5z5X8Y5GcnbDpWppTtQGmYu02HZb0brINGIVhBob8cGf5vz7o4dlqSWmKQxBBZVogjUUTA" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="644" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEglXOZTdQj4LpWHqxXvhfbGS8j_YTQHxzSIHl486kOx_unLfoAcoMi3_OGYSsfku-nzFp29CEcwwfbwbP2aFbTVlvRMTQxfzvZ7YpZKhi8L48Ip2nMWiBoH5z5X8Y5GcnbDpWppTtQGmYu02HZb0brINGIVhBob8cGf5vz7o4dlqSWmKQxBBZVogjUUTA" /></a></div>
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There are three copies of this edition of <i>The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus</i> available to buy at present: all record the imprint as “McGraw-Hill.” As you can see, however, the printed imprint is “McGraw Publishing Company.” <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKpHhRAENCIs-zydmPPBfmMpOrFQw68G-20w3d_sGM2W798roILZEKofQxu7awcAxBuP4y9JAVPO1Nk_RGuQBq_q9GALu-TMgmibEF2AGsGw6qTICBVxKyf83Sxm69UeIUKLNVjBZ6ohj0BpAlulruxw2qOMflQ63WVNMnlSSHNVWX3LvYV3a2IWGGCA" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKpHhRAENCIs-zydmPPBfmMpOrFQw68G-20w3d_sGM2W798roILZEKofQxu7awcAxBuP4y9JAVPO1Nk_RGuQBq_q9GALu-TMgmibEF2AGsGw6qTICBVxKyf83Sxm69UeIUKLNVjBZ6ohj0BpAlulruxw2qOMflQ63WVNMnlSSHNVWX3LvYV3a2IWGGCA" /></a></div>
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But you can also see that my copy (and, I assume, the ones for sale) have a nicely printed slip bound in that covers the imprint, which states that the book was published by the “McGraw-Hill Book Company … successors to Book Departments of the McGraw Publishing Company [and the] Hill Publishing Company.”<br />
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There is a copy on the Internet Archive (here https://archive.org/details/letterofpetrusp00pieriala) that does not have this printed cancellation slip, so it is unclear whether all copies have the slip-cancel. Which raises an interesting question: how should the imprint be recorded: “McGraw Publishing Company” or “McGraw-Hill Book Company”?**<br />
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While looking at this book again I noticed something else—which the astute reader may also have noticed—it has a page number on the title-page! It also has one on the verso of the title leaf, on the imprint page, as well as the half-title, part-titles etc. <br />
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Conventionally, these pages do not have page numbers on them. It would be interesting to know whether other publications by McGraw consistently included printed pagination in this way, or whether this was a one-off—an accidental oversight effecting just this book, bought on by the disruption of amalgamation.<br />
<br />
<br />
*BTW: Wikipedia informs me (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrus_Peregrinus_de_Maricourt">here</a>) that the AKAs for Petrus Peregrinus, Brother Arnold and Brother Potamian are: Pierre Pelerin de Maricourt, Joseph Charles Mertens and M. F. O’Reilly.<br />
<br />
**The answer from WorldCat (<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/letter-of-petrus-peregrinus-on-the-magnet/oclc/1129728785">here</a>)—or the overwhelming majority of its subscriber-libraries—is “Norderstedt Hansebooks GmbH 2018”! The main entry for <i>The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus</i> (with 171 copies in “all 9 editions”) has this imprint. Under this main entry you can insist on only seeing “just this [print-on-demand] edition,” but not just one of the other 8 editions, one or two of which are the real one. A secondary WorldCat entry with the imprint as I gave it at the head of this post (“New York, 1904”) has only one holding in Denmark. Three cheers for the Danes, for getting it right.<br />
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Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-50884997665409279712022-01-30T17:52:00.002+11:002022-01-30T17:53:23.593+11:00Fabian’s Fine Old Furniture, Melbourne BookshopI first visited Fabian’s Fine Old Furniture, at 309 Swanston Street, Melbourne, during an Easter-holiday visit in 1990. Despite the name of his business, Fabian mostly sold books, and clearly had been selling books for many years, though I only discovered the shop in 1990, after many book-buying holidays in Melbourne. <br />
<br />
Finding Fabian's was a red-letter day for me as a collector: I came away from my first visit with two eighteenth century first editions at bargain prices: a somewhat worn copy of Macpherson’s <i>Fingal</i> (1762), the first part of his Ossain cycle, and a very nice set of Le Sage’s <i>Gil Blas</i>, as translated by Smollett (1750). <br />
<br />
Sadly, despite his long tenure in such a prominent location, Fabian’s seems to have left almost no trace on the internet. In offering up some personal memories of Fabian (and Fabian’s shop) below, I am partly relying on my recollection of my 1990 visit, but I am also making use of some notes I made in 1993, after a <i>return</i> visit, which I only re-discovered during a clean-up last week.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqQfSOdH9Rb7xXxbBLDMoIXZXPzExpB2p8n4WRizFyNVpzhMPBeO5NZE4Eqn9UA1l4BcOMd5wvp03PNfVQn7HBHCd7oCUk-wlIXVT-8UfMWRw6cAFkp9cQaVMRmtNN2uKX322kzEBAY7Yh2vLdBqvD1fgOz8_l0nBqk6AD1hazkoyRfoXfEKZKV8HkMQ" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiqQfSOdH9Rb7xXxbBLDMoIXZXPzExpB2p8n4WRizFyNVpzhMPBeO5NZE4Eqn9UA1l4BcOMd5wvp03PNfVQn7HBHCd7oCUk-wlIXVT-8UfMWRw6cAFkp9cQaVMRmtNN2uKX322kzEBAY7Yh2vLdBqvD1fgOz8_l0nBqk6AD1hazkoyRfoXfEKZKV8HkMQ" /></a></div>
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A bright, clean travel agent now occupies 309 Swanston Street (photo above), which is opposite the State Library of Victoria; but for many years it was occupied by a rather different business: Fabian’s Fine Old Furniture. The eponymous owner, Fabian, was a rather eccentric, wild-haired man who had many interesting old books held in three or four massive Victorian book cases, while a goodly number more were liberally distributed in messy piles in various corners, nooks and crannies on the floor. Like the owner, the books, and the bookcases, the shop was old. <br />
<br />
In the early 1990s, it had the sort of deep, dusty, brass edged, shop-front display-window that all the best second hand bookshops ought to have. On display in this window were china cups and saucers, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanacks, faded copper plate engravings and maps with labels such as: “This map is 256 years old!”—“This book 152 years old!”—all with exclamation marks, silently bellowing at the passing foot-traffic. I don’t know how often these labels caught the eye of any passer by—with so much dust on the windows the signs were hard to read—but I remember very few interruptions whenever I visited Fabian’s—and all my visits to Fabian’s were lengthy.<br />
<br />
The reason for the length of my visits was because Fabian was an unashamed biblioclast. Fabian liked neatly bound sets of books, but it was his practice to keep the different volumes of any set of books equally distributed between the shelves of however many bookcases he had or—whenever he sold a bookcase—between the shelves of the remaining bookcases and in piles on the floor. <br />
<br />
He distributed the books in this was because—he explained to me—he wanted each bookcase to display a variety of titles, that a complete set of books was unsightly, and that complete sets would be likely to frighten off prospective buyers. His pricing is worked out on a per-volume basis, and was calculated solely on the size of a volume and the nature of its binding. I paid $45 per volume for my 12mo set (<i>Gil Blas</i>) and $100 for my folio volume (<i>Fingal</i>), but I think $80 was normally the going rate, when part of a set. <br />
<br />
Since Fabian did not care for completeness—in fact, he disliked it—but he liked neatly bound books, he had bought and distributed around his small shop many incomplete sets. As a result, even after an extensive, laborious search, neither buyer nor seller could be entirely sure that every volume that Fabian actually had in his shop had been found, unless the books thus collected together from all corners of the shop formed an unambiguously-complete set. <br />
<br />
Incomplete sets might be incomplete because Fabian bought them that way, or they may have been incomplete because the buyer had overlooked an odd-volume. This created a moral problem for a fastidious book buyer like myself: how could you be sure that, in the process of buying all the volumes of a seemingly-incomplete set that you had managed to accumulate, after hours spent turning over thousands of books, you were not thereby breaking up a complete set that you had simply failed to find all the volumes for?<br />
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Fabian was, obviously, unconcerned about this. Indeed, it seemed as if this sort of “accidental” breaking up of a set suited Fabian, the remaining volumes presented a more varied face to the buyer, and it made it easier for him to dispose of the remaining odd volumes.<br />
<br />
Since I am a completist, I would spend hours patiently accumulating volumes of any and all sets that I was interested in; slowly building up piles of matching volumes. When—as was more often the case than not—I failed to find a complete set, I would leave without the books, and Fabian would re-distribute the volumes around the shop, according to whatever principle of aesthetics that drove him. A year or so later I would return, and go through the process again. <br />
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Eventually, despite the appeal of thousands of old, beautifully bound books, and the prosepect of a repeat of my 1990 success, I was worn down by my actual lack of success in finding anything that was new-to-stock or complete, and so I stopped visiting his shop. From the mid-90s, for about a decade after I moved to Melbourne I would regularly see Fabian on a Sandringham-line train, with his distinctive wild grey-white hair, on his way into or out of the city. I would seem at different times of the day, either on his way in or out, so I gather that, in old age, he simply went in whenever he felt like it. (There were no opening hours advertised on his shop, and it was often closed when I visited.) <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
Returning to 1993: a friend and I were occupied in the doomed process of uncovering the companion volumes of an early set of Smollett’s <i>Peregrine Pickle</i> and <i>The Works</i> of Madame de Genlis, ignoring Fabian’s protest that the set was probably never complete to begin with and fearing that, if it had been complete, he had probably rendered it otherwise long since due to his practice of selling off volumes at random, when a well-dressed young man came into the shop, drew the attention of Fabian, and left us to our dusty work. <br />
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The conversation began, as I recorded it, in the following fashion:<br />
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FABIAN: Hello. Can I help you?<br />
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VISITOR: Yes. I’ve bought an old table that I want to put a bit of a display on, y’know, and what I wanted was some old books. I’ve got a bit of a shelf, and some things, vases and things like that, too, but what I need is a few antique books to put on it. ’Bout four of them. It doesn’t matter what’s in them because I’m never going to look in them [this said <i>emphatically</i>] as long as they are old, and look good, like these [indicating a set I was accumulating of <i>The Works</i> of Hobbes].<br />
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FABIAN: Yes, well, I get quite a lot of people coming in who want books like you do, for display; I have lots of old books here, with old leather bindings, all sorts of sizes and colours, and prices, so I am sure to have something that will suit. Now, about how much did you want to spend?<br />
<br />
There followed a discussion concerning how much the Visitor wished to spend, whether he preferred brown to black covers and so forth. Books in French or Latin, were offered, Fabian did his best to sell his books (“Now this one here is nearly a quarter of a thousand years old! Well, that’s older than the settlement in Australia”) and, at one memorable juncture, when Fabian was showing the Visitor a random selection of four of the twelve volumes of a Latin edition of the proceedings of the Council of Trent, the Visitor, admiring the binding, and in response to Fabian’s explanation of what the book was about, said “of course, I could always learn Latin if I bought them, and then I could read them.”<br />
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As I mentioned above, customers were rare; the shop was quiet, and the conversation struck a cord—I had recently read W. J. West’s <i>The Strange Rise of Semi-Literate England</i> (1991)—so I made notes as soon as I left the shop and recorded the details as well as I could soon after. Unfortunately, I did not make a note of whether the well-dressed young man bought any volumes of the proceedings of the Council of Trent. Even if he had, we will never know whether, by doing so, he was prompted to [1] learn Latin and then [2] immediately sit down to read his books, but I think it is very unlikely.<br />
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Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-81899565345987688092022-01-23T13:11:00.000+11:002022-01-23T13:11:04.137+11:00Teaching English in Utrecht, using The Female SpectatorMy <i>Bibliography of Eliza Haywood</i> (2004) includes two sections given over to reprints of sections of works by Haywood before 1850: "Ac. Reprints in monographs" and "Ad. Reprints in periodicals." <br />
<br />
Referring to these two sections in my Introduction, I stated that "It is likely that more Haywood items will be identified as critical interest in the contents of eighteenth-century periodicals increases and as a greater number of electronic resources become available that make it easier to conduct searches of these periodicals." When I wrote this I had in mind E. W. Pitcher's 1995 identification of over a dozen reprints "of Eliza Haywood’s Stories in <i>The Weekly Entertainer</i>," which was published in <i>Notes and Queries</i>.<br />
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Well, there hasn't exactly been a flood of articles like Pitcher's, but I have identified so many reprints myself that I have had to give up trying to incorporate them into the numbering scheme I used in 2004. I haven't have time to establish precise word-counts and provide detailed references to the source text reprinted. And, because I could neither number the items, or knew exactly what details to record, I pretty much stopped collecting any information about reprints.<br />
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Having recently discovered a pretty nice example of a reprint from <i>The Female Spectator</i>—detailed below—I have decided that I will start (soon) to keep some sort of list of reprints here. If I ever publish a second edition of my <i>Bibliography</i> I will simply omit these sections.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
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When I was updating my post <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2009/07/eliza-haywood-links.html">Eliza Haywood Links</a>, which the lists eighteenth- and nineteenth-century editions of works by Eliza Haywood, I stumbled upon a reprint of a lengthy story taken (with acknowledgement, which is unusual) from <i>The Female Spectator</i>. The reprinted story appears in James Low's <i>The Winter Evening Or, A Collection of English Prose and Verse</i>, 2 vols. (1780), 1.142–87. The copy of volume one, on Google Books <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mMJmH4pdXC8C&pg=PA142">here</a>, is reproduced from the incomplete set in Tilburg University Library (but digitised by the National Library of the Netherlands).<br />
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The editor of this anthology, James Low (1759–1817), was a "Teacher of the English Language in Utrecht," where he studied divinity at the university. He seems to have arrived in Utrecht in 1779, married in 1780, and as ordained at Flushing in 1783. According to William Steven, who gives a biography of Low in his <i>History of the Scottish Church, Rotterdam</i> (1833), 232–34 (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zJlUAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA232">here</a>), "his constitution, by nature healthy and vigorous, rapidly gave way" after the death of his son (at 26) and—soon after—of his wife. "He was a high Calvinist; and he was most punctual in his attendance at church courts, in whose debates, from his perfect knowledge of Dutch, he was enabled to take a part." <br />
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Low published his anthology of English verse and prose soon after he started teaching English. It was reviewed in a number of Dutch journals (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TccWAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA92">here</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=yg5ZAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA200">here</a>), and at least one German periodical (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1RRJAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA596">here</a>). Copies occasionally appeared for sale in bookseller's catalogues up to the 1840s (<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=NP4_f1dMdSQC&pg=PA81">here</a>). After that, <i>The Winter Evening</i> dissapeared from view, almost completely.<br />
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Low's <i>Winter Evening</i> is not on ESTC, and it appears that there is no other copy in an institutional library. There <i>was</i>, however, a copy for sale, so I bought it. I gather it had been for sale for a considerable period, since the vendor had increased the price in some online catalogues, but not others. When I asked about this I was told that the lower price was "very outdated". The change was minimal and the book is obviously very uncommon, so I made no complaint; and once it arrived I felt I had got a screaming bargain anyway: as you can see, it is a beautiful example of Dutch paper wrappers.<br />
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The reference that Low provides for his excerpt from <i>The Female Spectator</i> is interesting: "Female Spectator. vol. V. p. 290—312." The "vol. V." is an error for "vol. III"; the page reference narrows down the edition that Low used for his reprint. Of the ten editions of <i>The Female Spectator</i> in English, only three have the story excerpted on pages "290—312": the 4th, 5th and 6th editions of 1750, 1755 and 1766 [i.e., Ab.60.6, Ab.60.7 and Ab.60.8]. Even the most recent of these appeared when Low was a child, so I am guessing he had taken his own (second-hand) copy with him, when he went to Utrecht. <br />
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Above and below are the pages where the text appears in eight of the first nine editions. Above are Ab.60.1—Ab.60.2 did not get to volume 3—Ab.60.3, Ab.60.4, Ab.60.5; below are Ab.60.6, Ab.60.7, Ab.60.8, and Ab.60.9.
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Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-16514216824110307762022-01-16T14:00:00.001+11:002022-01-16T14:03:09.360+11:00Collecting Haywood, 2021Although 2021 was not much of an improvement on 2020 in Covid-terms—endless lock-downs, working from home etc.—it was a significant improvement in terms of book-collecting. I have no grand theory to explain why, and it may be that I was mistaken in the explanation I offered (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2020/12/collecting-haywood-2020.html">here</a>) for the 18C book-drought of 2020. Whatever the reason, 2021 brought three times as much Haywoodiana to my door as 2020—and most of these items were much more interesting too. <br />
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One of the <i>most</i> interesting arrived yesterday. Like David Levy, the shipping of a late-2021 purchase was delayed to an extraordinary extent due to “the resurgent pandemic” (<a href="https://edmondhoyle.blogspot.com/2021/12/2021-year-in-collecting-part-2.html">here</a>). Having paid a hundred dollars (!!) for 2–5 day international delivery—for an item that could have been slipped into a small Christmas card—my parcel took two months to appear: with two multi-week periods in which tracking reported no movement whatever, leaving me despairing that it may have been lost. <br />
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I have been waiting for the arrival of this parcel to post a “collecting year in review”; and since my parcel should have arrived in November, I am going to pretend that it did arrive in 2021 and am including it here. As a result, I am also including everything else that arrived between my "Collecting Haywood, 2020" post, and now.<br />
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As you can see above, my long-delayed parcel contained a dated signature, taken from a letter written by the poet, sometime-friend and sometime-enemy of Haywood, Richard Savage, on 12 July 1743, less than 3 weeks before he died in Bristol Newgate Prison. I believe that this may be the last datable piece of writing in Savage’s hand—not that Savage manuscripts are exactly common. Clarence Tracey quotes from 27 letters in his biography of Savage, but most of them are from printed sources.<br />
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As I was waiting for this scrap of paper to arrive, I obtained copies of a few other examples of Savage’s writing—enough to convinced me of the authenticity of the writing, and of the attribution to “Dr. Johnson’s Richard Savage as opposed to, say, Robert Savage, sausage-maker” (as <a href="https://www.sbrarebooks.com/index.html">Stuart Bennett</a> quipped). I did not expect to start collecting detached signatures in this way, but the dam broke with the acquisition in 2020 of three receipts from a signature collection—one signed by Hatchett.<br />
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One of the two greatest contributor to 2021 being a much better collecting year than 2020 was a lot of thirteen titles in nineteen volumes that I bought at Chroley’s Spetchley Park Auction in late March. Fortunately for me, the Spetchley Park Auctions—and the presence of a Haywood item—received some news coverage, and so I was alerted to the sale (background <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7675917">here</a>; the actual article <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/news/sale-insight-mind-18th-century-gentleman/">here</a>). The Haywood item reported on in the news turned out to be two Haywood items listed in the description of the lot (above; both of which I had), which turned out to be three Haywood items once the lot arrived in Melbourne: Ab.70.4 <i>The Wife</i>, 3rd ed., Ab.72.1 <i>The Husband</i> and Ab.64.3 <i>Epistles for Ladies</i>, 3rd ed. 2 vols.—this last one being the surprise inclusion, and one that I did not have (below). <br />
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The ten other Spetchley Park items all either works by women, or relating to women, many of which I had long wanted: Aphra Behn’s <i>Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister</i>, Jane Collier’s, <i>An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting</i>, Steele’s <i>The Ladies Library</i>, Salmon’s <i>A Critical Essay Concerning Marriage</i>, Madan’s <i>Thelyphthora; Or A Treatise on Female Ruin</i>, Alexander’s <i>The History of Women, from the earliest antiquity</i>, and Hayley’s <i>A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids</i>—among others.<br />
<br />
I cannot say much about the second great contributor to 2021 being such a good Haywood collecting year, but I can say that I discovered a French translation of a work by Haywood that I had somehow previously missed. Said work was printed many times, and translated into three other languages. Since I am in the midst of sweeping the market clean of these translations, I don’t want to risk inflating the price of any books that remain outside of institutional collections until I have a decent sample of them. I have managed to buy copies of four editions so far. My examination of these suggests that the few bibliographers who have mention the work have missed a great deal indeed. Both the collecting, and unraveling the mystery, are proving to be <i>immensely</i> enjoyable. <br />
<br />
Of the items not covered above, three are by Hatchett: with the help of Stuart Bennett I picked up a copy of Dd.1.1b <i>The Adventures of Abdalla</i>, 2nd ed.—in a very ugly binding, but with the full complement of plates—and I also managed to get two copies of one of his plays, Dd.4.1 <i>The Rival Father Or The Death Of Achilles: A Tragedy</i>. I was particularly pleased about this because both were in intact sammelbands from the one, very large and very interesting eighteenth-century collection of plays, the provenance of which I was able to untangle. <br />
<br />
The remaining Haywood items includes two more copies of the first edition of <i>The Female Spectator</i> in French—one with a variant title-page which has, once again, thrown into doubt my arrangement of editions (my original “Ab.60.11” has already become Ab.60.11, Ab.60.11A and Ab.60.11B!). I also received my third NQR copy of Ab.58.9 <i>New Present for a Servant Maid</i>. This one lacks the frontispiece, but has the final leaf, which is missing in my only copy with the frontispiece. Cookery books are particularly hard to find in nice condition, and complete, but one day I hope to find one such unicorn.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPesnxpD294YpKkVmkB_xCIlmiK29s8LQLBXCimuuopSjluF-J-eBkRztdM-hGSxBjEhmOEPDMHM5DtDLBVjl_OeVSKjXyoPykD13ixM8OiOMDbcsxJXiDe8NhHI9Kaz1QehVYEFSBav2ExzsyLD344wgpz5W7HKE7DRpvWYwoeeGXztSRr2IIKLyTXA" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="830" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgPesnxpD294YpKkVmkB_xCIlmiK29s8LQLBXCimuuopSjluF-J-eBkRztdM-hGSxBjEhmOEPDMHM5DtDLBVjl_OeVSKjXyoPykD13ixM8OiOMDbcsxJXiDe8NhHI9Kaz1QehVYEFSBav2ExzsyLD344wgpz5W7HKE7DRpvWYwoeeGXztSRr2IIKLyTXA"/></a></div>
<br />
Also NQR (not quite right) was a copy of Ab.66.2 <i>A Letter from H---- G----g</i> [Henry Goring]—the pirate edition. Seemingly from the collection of Gershon Legman, I discovered once it arrived that it was missing an entire gathering. Fortunately, the vendor gave me both a complete refund, and the book. I also picked up at various times duplicate odd volumes of <i>The Invisible Spy</i>, <i>The Female Spectator</i>, and <i>Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy</i>, of interest only to someone like me.<br />
<br />
The remaining three items are all very nice: Haywood’s Ab.11.1c <i>A Spy on the Conjurer</i>, 2nd ed. (1724); Elizabeth Griffith’s <i>A Collection of Novels, Selected and Revised</i>, 3 vols. (1777), which contains Haywood’s <i>Fruitless Enquiry</i>—which is quite rare (ESTC records nine copies), and often incomplete; and Ac.10b <i>Matrimonial Preceptor</i>, 2nd ed. (1759), which contains excerpts from <i>The Female Spectator</i>.<br />
<br />This last one is a nice segue way into a post I plan to do shortly on unauthorized and previously unrecognized reprints of works by Haywood, but I am still on holidays, so that may be another month away. Until then, thank you to all my (patient) readers, who have put up with my long silences. I will make no resolutions for 2022, but do expect to post more than I did in 2021.<br />Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-3502854907801978242021-08-29T14:03:00.007+10:002021-08-29T14:29:06.877+10:00Gerald Dillon, freelance journalistGerald Aloysius Dillon (29 June 1897–[after 1952]), Irish-Australian soldier and freelance journalist, contributed an article on “'The Female Spectator': Mrs. Eliza Heywood's Periodical” to <i>Australian Woman’s Mirror</i> in March of 1934. I said in my post on that article (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2021/08/eliza-haywood-in-sydney-1934.html">here</a>), that Dillon contributed a series of roughly fifty bookish essays to the <i>Australian Woman’s Mirror</i>, "many about women or women writers such <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-493033319/view?sectionId=nla.obj-523357405">Joanna Southcott</a>, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-397470313/view?sectionId=nla.obj-413020475">Ouida</a>, Angella Burdett, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-400132598/view?sectionId=nla.obj-418388128">Sidney Webb</a> and <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-397711642/view?sectionId=nla.obj-413088903">Katherine Mansfield</a> (probably his most famous essay)." I also said that "I have not been able to find out as much about Dillon as I would like"—but what I have found is below.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
The AustLit entry for Dillon states "Gerald Dillon was a freelance writer from Sydney," and list only six of his works: once self-published book (<i>Why Editors Regret: First Aid for the Free-Lance Gerald Dillon</i> (Sydney, 1929)), the Katherine Mansfield essay mentioned above, and four pieces of his journalism that seem to have been selected more-or-less at random.<br />
<br />
After a pretty extensive search online, I located quite a bit more information than AustLit offers. My three main sources of biographical information (reproduced below) are a series of entries for him (and his brothers) in <i>The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook</i> from 1930–52 (vol. 23 (1930): 134; 29 (1936): 131; 34 (1941): 130; 35 (1952): 118), a brief article about Dillon published in <>The wireless weekly: the hundred per cent Australian radio journal, Vol. 36 No. 28 (12 July 1941): 3b (this article supplied the only photograh I could find of Gerald Dillon), and a National Archives entry.<br />
<br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBmDMEBOmXteXKIM5fUVIIuyNAL_fZwW4E_MqIIj0TY07Bh4aAwtM4k_hZZV1IaGdr48M66b1G2O0E2kSyI-bDZ_f0vQVvg7TXeMrafwabzS3BenZCTH07DdgQGg6SXYvFg0WnrIHTiQzi/s0/Gerald_Dillon.jpg" /><br />
<br />
The <i>Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook</i> entries are all much the same, the 1930 edition reading<br />
<br />
<b>[1930–52] "Dillon, Gerald Aloysius</b>—b.1897, y.s. [youngest son] of late Theobald Augustus Dillon, co Roscommon; edu. Downside and R.M.C. [Royal Military College, Sandhurst]; Sec.Lieut 6 (Inniskillg) Dgns [Dragoons] 1916; resigned as Lieut 1921; served Great War; at present engaged in journalism. Author of <i>Why Editors Regret</i>: Box 2876N. G.P.O., Sydney, N.S.W."<br />
<br />
The yearbooks contain entries for two bothers, which provide more details of the family:<br />
Gerald's father was Theobald, of Mount Dillon, co. Roscommon, <br />
his mother was Bertha, daughter of Nicholas Mulhall of Boyle, co. Roscommon; <br />
his eldest brother went to Trinity College Cambridge (B.A.), was Capt. in the Connaught Rangers (Special Reserve); served in WW1, and was called to the Irish Bar in 1922; <br />
the second brother, Capt. John Jospeph Dillon (b. 19 Feb. 1896), went to Sandhurst, like Gerald, was a Lieutenant in the Connaught Rangers (Special Reserve); was twice wounded in WW1, winning the Military Cross, rising to Captain in 1927 in the Royal Army Service Corps.<br />
<br />
<b>[1941] FILLED LIFE WITH TRAVEL</b><br />
Gerald Dillon, well known for his talks on 2FC and 2BL [Sydney radio stations], has had a life crammed with travel and adventure.<br />
An Irishman, born in Dublin in 1897, he spent six years at an English public school before returning to Dublin to study law.<br />
In 1916 he abandoned law to enter Sandhurst. Graduating there with a commission in the Dragoons, he served in France in the last war.<br />
After the war, feeling an urge to travel, he resigned his commission in the Army, and visited Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, and Tahiti before settling for several years in Papua as a plantation manager.<br />
Gerald Dillon’s variety of experience has given him plenty of material for broadcasting. He is also well known as a freelance journalist, and on one occasion he turned to authorship.<br />
His anecdotes of life among the wild and woolly natives of Papua have proved very happy entertainment for radio audiences.<br />
<br />
<b>[1939–48] WW2 Service record [National Archives of Australia: Citizen Military Forces Personnel Dossier]</b><br />
<br />
DILLON GERALD ALOYSIUS<br />
Service Number - N279151<br />
Date of birth - 29 Jun 1897<br />
Place of birth - DUBLIN IRELAND<br />
Place of enlistment - PADDINGTON NSW<br />
Next of Kin - Unknown<br />
Contents date range: 1939–1948<br />
Item ID: 6194595<br />
Location: Canberra<br />
Access status: Open<br />
<br />
[Honouringveterans.org (<a href="https://honouringveterans.org/vet_profile.php?id=342930">here</a>) adds: "Rank: Corporal"]
<br />
<br />
Beyond <i>The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook</i> and the anonymous "Filled Life With travel," Trove fills in many details concerning Dillon's freelance and radio work. However, although there are hundreds of entries for Dillon on Trove, they add little about his personal life. Apparently, he lived in "Verona," Waruda St., Kirribilli, Sydney, before WW2, but I was unable to find any record after the 1952 <i>Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook</i>. If we are to judge by the lack of a Next of Kin in his WW2 Military Forces Personnel Dossier, it appears he did not marry. He seems to have died obscurely, and alone, with no memorial or death notice.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
Dillon's self-published 58-page booklet, <i>Why Editors Regret</i> was reasonably-well received, being reviewed in half a dozen journals throughout Australia. Although most major libraries in Australia have a copy, I have been unable to look into one due to the lock-down, but the reviews contain a number of details, so I will finish this post by transcribing three the longer reviews, and provide links to three others. The reviews below are organised chronologically.<br />
<br />
"Franziska" [Frances Zabel], <i>The Australian Woman's Mirror</i>, Vol. 5 No. 48 (22 October 1929): 24c, 41b "Let's Talk about Books" (<a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-402559434/view?sectionId=nla.obj-418421178">here</a>)<br />
<br />
Editors would have far fewer regrets if this little book were read by all those Australians seeking to break into freelance journalism The author, who can speak from experience of the ups and downs of freelancing, gives much practical advice to the budding writer and covers a wide field—what editors want, the article, book reviews, verse, the paragraph, the short story, writing for children, and so on. A foreword has been written by the editor of the Bulletin and there are special contributions by the editor of Aussie, the editor of the Mirror, Katharine Susannah Prichard, J. H. M. Abbott Professor Brennan, Edward Perugini, W. E. FitzHenry and others. Apart from a few typographical errors that should not have crept into a literary handbook, the little volume is well-produced, and it should do something toward realising the expressed purpose of Mr. Dillon the lightening of the heavy burthen which weighs on those who wander without proper sense of direction in the fugitive byways of literature.<br />
<br />
<i>The Bulletin</i>, vol. 50, no. 2594 (30 Oct 1929): 5a–b (<a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-617467001/view?sectionId=nla.obj-629345603">here</a>)<br />
<br />
Why Editors Regret <br />
They don’t; but the harmless fiction makes a catchy title, and prospective or potential freelances who spend half a crown on Gerald Dillon’s booklet of that name should not have any regrets, either. Editors do not regret, because theirs is the most impersonal job on earth; they buy what they want, they turn down what they don’t want. The best friend in the world ceases to be a friend when he translates himself into a piece of paper with words on it. Having done that, the best friend is a bit of copy and nothing else. <br />
Mr. Dillon has strong support: Bert F. Toy, editor of the Woman’s Mirror, and writer here of a most compact and in formative article; Walter Jago, editor of Aussie—not very informative, but a good blow where one has been long asked for; Katharine Susannah Prichard—so so; Harold Mercer—amusing and encouraging (he says, “One bit of misleading information may destroy a growing reputation painfully built up” (and he writes sermons for sick clergymen); C. J. Brennan—an excellent page on light verse; Hugh McCrae—Hugh McCrae; Edward Perugini—one or two acute remarks on serious verse; J. H. M. Abbott—on “historical background” in fiction (“There are 700 possible separate characters available amongst the convicts of the first fleet.” May he be spared to use the five of them that he has not used already!); Edyth Bavin, wife of the N.S.W. Premier—on “writing for children,” which she herself does charmingly; W. E. FitzHenry, who has grown up in The Bulletin office and knows as much about marketing paper with words on it as the next man, and his brother. A guiding foreword by S. H. Prior, editor of The Bulletin, and seven articles by Mr. Dillon covering pretty well the whole field of freelancing complete the bill of contents. <br />
<br />
<i>The Capricornian</i> (Thu 5 Dec 1929): 12a: BOOKS RECEIVED (<a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/69810791">here</a>)<br />
<br />
S. A. Rosa, <i>The Labor Daily</i> (Sat 7 Dec 1929): 9g. LITERARY JOTTINGS (<a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/239313839">here</a>)<br />
<br />
<i>The Advertiser</i> (Sat 8 Feb 1930): 14f "LITERARY BEGINNERS" (<a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/29008434">here</a>)<br />
<br />
<i>The West Australian</i> (5 Jul 1930): 5d (<a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/33338522">here</a>)<br />
<br />
"WHY EDITORS REGRET."<br />
(By J.P.) <br />
<br />
A small booklet with the above title came recently before my notice, and I found it interesting to read because of the elementary hints and tips it contains for those who practice free-lance journalism in Australia. That it is written for Australians is its chief virtue. This booklet, largely the work of Mr. Gerald Dillon, but containing some brief contributions by other well-known journalists and authors, fills a want that, I imagine, many writers in Australia have felt: it sets down some guidance that should explain to the disappointed just why and how editors 'regret' when they return manuscripts. For instance: 'What the editor wants is the sort of matter he publishes' … 'Get a typewriter' … 'Never fold your manuscript more than once' … 'Enclose a stamped addressed envelope for return' … 'Never use single spacing in typing' … 'Never send a covering letter with a manuscript'—these are the first essentials to the equipment of the freelance; indeed, I think they are guides that will take him over half his journey to acceptance of his manuscript. <br />
The book discusses the usual methods of writing newspaper articles, short stories, serials, verse, juvenile matter and paragraphs—the last subject to some purpose, which is perhaps not unnatural in a laud where paragraph writing has become a habit rather than a practice. These discussions are slight, and the symposium to which various well-known writers have contributed is notable for its general evasion of the book's requirements. Katharine Susannah Prichard has 'nothing very much to say as to 'why the editor regrets,' except that he doesn't when he says so.' The truth is that editors often do regret: and the editor of 'Aussie' has here something to say about why they regret. Hugh MacRae says. 'I cannot see how any freelance journalist could benefit by anything I might have to say.' J. H. M. Abbott dismisses 'The Historical Back ground,' of the short story, in two paragraphs, and Edyth Bavin 'Writing for Children' in two shorter paragraphs. Perhaps the soundest and most useful article is that by the Editor of 'The Australian Woman's Mirror' on 'The Woman Free Lance.' and it is a pity that the other contributors had not approached their task with the same seriousness and desire to help, when a thorough-going handbook for the local freelance might have been the result. <br />
This booklet should, though, be useful to the beginner, who will soon find that his experience does not tally with Mr. Dillon's in several matters. It is said that there is practically no market in Australia for articles of the discursive essayist type: and 'The local market for short stories is practically unlimited.' With good essays on almost all subjects appearing regularly in our leading papers. I wonder what shade of meaning Mr. Dillon in tends for his word 'discursive.' As for the short story market, this is decidedly limited, because it is over-supplied, and this for the reason that short-story writing ' is the one branch of literature in which, more than in any other with the possible exception of verse, local writers have squandered their energies.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
Four final notes: [1] In a recent essay by Martin Griffiths ("Katherine Mansfield’s Australia," <i>Tinakori: Critical Journal of the Katherine Mansfield Society</i> Issue 4 (Summer 2020): 60–70) Dillon is mistakenly described thusly (ibid. 63) "New-Zealand-born commentator Gerald Dillon." [2] it is nice to see a Frances Zabel review of Dillon's book. For my post on Mrs Zabel, see <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2021/03/frances-zabel-pioneering-bookseller.html">here</a>. [3] I was delighted to find that Dillon wrote an article on "A Perfect Library," which I will post soon. [4] "Verona" near "Astoria" in Waruda St., Kirribilli was a boarding house (according to Anne Watson, <i>The Art of Roland Wakelin</i> (1975), 2.22), but a "superior" one, according to a 1930 advertisement (offering "Superior Single Rooms, fireplace, balcony, glorious views, from 15/.").Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-28641653700182410402021-08-22T06:18:00.003+10:002022-03-26T11:51:38.490+11:00Works Falsely Attributed to Eliza HaywoodBelow are links to original editions online of works <i>falsely</i> attributed to Eliza Haywood. These Haywood attributions are ones that I believe to be—and have previously explained at length why I believe them to be—false attributions (explanations I might add here at a later date).<br />
<br />
In my <i>Bibliography of Eliza Haywood</i> (2004) I listed these items in section "Ca. REJECTED ATTRIBUTIONS"—explaining why the arguments that have been proposed for including them in the Haywood canon are suspect (a few are plausible, but unproven; many were made by accident; others are simply ridiculous or idiotic).<br />
<br />
I have added this post to my blog for much the same reason as I added posts that include links to genuine works by Haywood (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2009/07/eliza-haywood-links.html">here</a>) and William Hatchett (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2010/02/william-hatchett-texts-links-etc.html">here</a>): it is actually convenient for me—and I hope for others—to have these links all in one place.<br />
<br />
All author attributions below are tentative or conventional, and are included only to help readers find more information about each title. (My interest being not so much in who wrote these works, but whether there is compelling evidence that Haywood wrote them.)<br />
<br />
Item numbers are from my <i>Bibliography</i> (2004). <br />
<br />
In the case of two false attributions made since 2004, new item numbers have been created in the appropriate alphabetical position, in the form Ca.19A for <i>The Lady’s Drawing Room</i> and Ca.32A <i>Nunnery Tales, written by a Young Nobleman</i>.
<br />
<br />In the case of popular works, such as Ca.1 Penelope Aubin's <i>The Adventures of the Prince of Clermont</i>, I only listed the first edition of the work in my <i>Bibliography</i>, and so there is no "Spedding-number" for the later editions linked below. Rather than attemption to create a consistent series of new numbers, I simply use a lower-case "x" (in the form Ca.1.x) for all such editions.<br />
<br />
For now, links are only to copies on Google Books, but I will add links to copies on The Internet Archive, etc. as I find them.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
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Ca.1.x [Penelope Aubin], <i>The Adventures of the Prince of Clermont</i>, 2nd ed. (1728) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=cQhhAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.2.3 <i>The Busy-Body; or, The Adventures of Monieur Bigand</i>, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1768) [University of California copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=rz4_AQAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
Ca.2.3 <i>The Busy-Body; or, The Adventures of Monieur Bigand</i>, vol. 2 (Dublin, 1768) [University of California copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=0j4_AQAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.7.3 <i>A Present for Women Addicted to Drinking</i> (1750) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=cF1ZAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.10 <i>The Fair Concubine</i>, 2nd ed. (1732) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mg5XAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
Ca.10 <i>The Fair Concubine</i>, 4th ed. (1732) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=c8FlAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
Ca.10 <i>The Fair Concubine</i>, 4th ed. (1732) [University of Michigan copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TtM0AAAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.15 [Bonnell Thornton, ed.], <i>Have at You All: or, The Drury-Lane Journal</i> (1752) [Oxford University Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=u3MPAAAAQAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.17 [Sarah Robinson Scott], <i>The History of Cornelia</i> (1750). [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=lgxhAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.18.2a [William Bond], <i>The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell</i>, 2nd ed. corrected (1720) [Oxford University Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=gaFbAAAAQAAJ">here</a>; University of Michigan copy <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=YCA1AAAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
Ca.18.2c <i>The Supernatural Philosopher: Or, The Mysteries of Magick</i> [i.e. <i>The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell</i>, 2nd ed. corrected] (1728) [New York Public Library copy <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=m1-gWaFPRK0C">here</a>]<br />
Ca.18.3 <i>The Supernatural Philosopher</i> [i.e. <i>The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell</i>] trs. as <i>Der übernatürliche Philosoph</i> (Berlin, 1742) [University of Lausanne copy <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=GhE-AAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.19A.1b <i>The Lady’s Drawing Room</i>, 2nd ed. (1748). [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WT9WAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.22 <i>Leonora: Or, Characters Drawn from Real Life</i> (1745), vol. 1 [Oxford University Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=lRYGAAAAQAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.23 <i>Letters from Sophia to Mira</i> (1763) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=3FdpAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.24 [John Shebbeare], <i>Letters on the English Nation</i> (1755) [University of Michigan copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=8Ck2AAAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.26.x [Edward (‘Ned’) Ward], <i>The London-Spy Compleat</i> (1718) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Gjz2-8I-OF0C">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.28.3 [John Shebbeare], <i>Lydia, or Filial Piety</i>, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1763) [University of Michigan copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=MUI1AAAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
Ca.28.3 [John Shebbeare], <i>Lydia, or Filial Piety</i>, vol. 3 (Dublin, 1763) [University of Michigan copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=a0I1AAAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.29.1 [John Shebbeare], <i>The Marriage Act. A Novel</i>, vol. 2 (1754). [Ohio State University copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=x-hDAQAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.30.1c <i>Memoirs of The Court of Lilliput</i> (Dublin, 1727) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=NTQb7XFzDY4C">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.32.2 [Dr. John Hill], [Translation: French] <i>Caractères Modernes tirés des divers états de la vie civile</i>, vol. 1 (Londres, 1770). [Austrian National Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=CodgAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
Ca.32.2 [Dr. John Hill], [Translation: French] <i>Caractères Modernes tirés des divers états de la vie civile</i>, vol. 2 (Londres, 1770). [Austrian National Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=EIdgAAAAcAAJ">here</a>; Bavarian State Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uD09WrDCuGIC">here</a>]<br />
<br />
Ca.32A <i>Nunnery Tales, written by a Young Nobleman</i> (1727) [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1v4OqK3mnRsC">here</a>]<br />
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Ca.35.1 [Joseph Mitchell], <i>Poems on Several Occasions</i>, vol. 1 (1729) [National Library of the Netherlands copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1_ZdAAAAcAAJ">here</a>]<br />
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Ca.38.3 [Samuel Croxall, ed.], <i>A Select Collection of Novels and Histories</i>. In Six Volumes, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (1729) [New York Public Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=u9VDAQAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
Ca.38.3 [Samuel Croxall, ed.], <i>A Select Collection of Novels and Histories</i>. In Six Volumes, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (1729) [New York Public Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=btNDAQAAMAAJ">here</a>]<br />
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Ca.40.2 <i>Some Memiors of the Amours and Intrigues of a Certain Irish Dean</i> [Part 1], 3rd ed. (1730) [Oxford University Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=0ioCAAAAQAAJ">here</a>]<br />
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Ca.41 <i>The Spring-garden journal, by Miss Priscilla Termagant</i> (1752). [Oxford University copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IMIPAAAAQAAJ">here</a>] <span style="color: #7e2217;">NEW</span><br />
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Ca.44.1 <i>A Treatise on the Dismal Effects of Low-Spiritedness</i> (ca. 1751). [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=h_sB48hr_fMC">here</a>]<br />
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Ca.45.1 <i>Vanelia</i> (1732). [British Library copy <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=v8d4xfeM4CkC">here</a>]<br />
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[Updated 26 March 2022]Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-14699160795942668702021-08-16T14:04:00.004+10:002021-08-29T14:36:01.167+10:00Eliza Haywood in Sydney, 1934On the weekend I made an astonishing discovery: I am not the first person in Australia to have an interest in Eliza Haywood. Amazing, I know; check it out:<br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbIW_tBda2RLDvK0pGet8d3XqWSw6kqALJz8iQaU-dzY1HupRDHIUxYz9LGvMw5WwIC66cJrCORTIT7k1reSae_qhN2FF3ejLHm3oGKGnbiUVqICp6Y71oZXvHoh5t1abi-bjv2XyKm4Dz/s0/Dillon_1.jpg" /><br />
<br />
Below I have transcribed the article I discovered: Gerald Dillon, “'The Female Spectator': Mrs. Eliza Heywood's Periodical” <i>Australian Woman’s Mirror</i>, vol.10, no.15 (6 March 1934): 8, 59 (<a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-503351496/view?sectionId=nla.obj-536891992">here</a>). The illustrations—seeming prepared for this essay—are signed "CON" (elsewhere in the <i>Mirror</i> the name is expanded to "R. W. CON"—but I am still not able to identify them).<br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxmS1SpMp4FJh-BaLLPaESmf5WajIeXG-ioBF29V4LaBAMbcM7zn8XShxQ-1CJSSfrrjKn1NqRGGbiqkSl0_h1TldGNUw4hIrAqFT1g5a2s3ehpJOxO03nGSmN2s4UU9JTm1mzeBe98nTh/s0/Dillon_2b.jpg" /><br />
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From the spelling of Haywood's name (Heywood, rather than Haywood) it is fairly clear that the source of Dillon's text was <i>The Female Spectator. Being selections from Mrs. Eliza Heywood's periodical (1744-1746)</i>. ed. Mary Priestley, illustrated by Constance Rowlands (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1929), but his selection of anecdotes also makes this likely, since he does not mention anything that is not in the Priestley edition. <br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOA3TmJZ_PPJ99hDAywCl1L7a9PSq1JWnwFliUNlpPIe4o0YSAufd5F08_FvvW9YgJBUH2Bd0urrYjPWS4eFiqSsO3tzmFuisKYedn0KwHDzPujgrGhCbHtVHsmdYhx9vHMCV4uVCyv9hc/s0/Dillon_2a.jpg" /><br />
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However, the reason that I suspected that Dillon's text was the Priestley edition is that there were <i>very</i> few eighteenth century copies of Haywood's <i>Female Spectator</i> in Australia in 1934 (other than my own copies, there are still only three). In 1934 the only complete, eighteenth century copy was almost certainly that in the University of Melbourne library. Monash acquired their copy at some point after the university was founded in 1958; while the only copy in Sydney—an odd-volume of the 5th edition—first appears on "NUCOM 2" (the "Second Cumulative supplement" of Australia's "National Union Catalogue of Monographs," 1977)—not NUCOM 1 (1976)—so it was probably acquired in the 1970s.<br />
<br />
Not only were there no eighteenth century copies of Haywood's <i>Female Spectator</i> in Sydney in 1934, there appear to have been no copies of the Priestley edition in any institutional library either: and there still are none! It seems likely that Dillon was relying on his own copy, so—from my point of view—he had an <i>excellent</i> libary.<br />
<br />
I am not sure whether Dillon realised just how pitiful a cultural backwater Sydney is and was, but I am sure he felt that he was doing his bit to both entertain and improve his readers with the series of roughly fifty bookish essays he wrote for Bert F. Hoy, editor of the <i>Australian Woman’s Mirror</i>, many about women or women writers such as <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-493033319/view?sectionId=nla.obj-523357405">Joanna Southcott</a>, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-397470313/view?sectionId=nla.obj-413020475">Ouida</a>, Angella Burdett, <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-400132598/view?sectionId=nla.obj-418388128">Sidney Webb</a> and <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-397711642/view?sectionId=nla.obj-413088903">Katherine Mansfield</a> (probably his most famous essay).<br />
<br />
I have not been able to find out as much about Dillon as I would like, but what I have found I will put into a separate post about him soon. [That post has now been completed; see <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2021/08/gerald-dillon-freelance-journalist.html">here</a>] Until then, here is his take on Eliza Haywood.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b>“The Female Spectator”<br />
MRS. ELIZA HEYWOOD'S PERIODICAL</b><br />
By GERALD DILLON</div><br />
<br />
<i>THE FEMALE SPECTATOR</i> was the first periodical to be produced by a woman, and may therefore be regarded as the inspiration from which are derived the whole regiment of women’s papers to-day. <br />
Mrs. Eliza Heywood was founder and first and last editor. She was also its entire staff. The paper came out as a monthly in 1744 and enjoyed an existence of two short years. It was one of the many imitations of the type of journalism produced by Steele and Addison in <i>THE SPECTATOR</i>, but Mrs. Heywood’s periodical was written of course from and for the feminine viewpoint. <br />
Mrs. Heywood was what might be called a woman of the world. Her husband left no footprints on the sands of time. Of him it is known only that he deserted his wife, who was then left to shift both for herself and her two children. <br />
She went on the stage for a brief period, but subsequently became a “writing woman.” She produced some enthusiastic novels, re-wrote some plays, mothered a few pamphlets, and was a publisher for a span. She was born about 1693 and died in 1756. <br />
Rumor has it that Mrs. Heywood was what the period called “a flighty woman,” if she was not actually “fast”—though there is nothing at all in the tone and temper of her paper even to hint at that; nor is there anything in <i>THE FEMALE SPECTATOR</i> bearing even a slight resemblance to woman’s journalism as we know it to-day. <br />
The paper printed no serial. It never boasted of a “bright” article. There was nothing of “interest” about Lady Thingumitite or the Queen’s pet cat. No household hints. No medical advice. <br />
There were stories (of sorts) and some feeble murmurings about Nature study and natural philosophy. <br />
Mrs. Heywood, however, knew the value and importance of sexual themes in relation to light reading. The stories all had a moral—the moral being “’tis better to look before you leap” in the matter of love, and the stories all carried dreadful emphasis on the terrible ubiquity of the ensnaring male. <br />
I have said that <i>THE FEMALE SPECTATOR</i> was composed of a staff of one. In the first number we are introduced to two assistants, Mira and Euphrosine, but I think this trinity was a piece of camouflage on the part of Mrs. Heywood, and that in reality their existence was due to an editorial compromise with truth. <br />
Mrs. Heywood was a believer evidently in the type of male which Hollywood has now perfected. <br />
We notice one article on “Peace, a Promoter of Finikins,” in which attention is drawn to the prevalence of somewhat effeminate men. Indeed, Mrs. Heywood goes so far as to publish a page from the account book of a bankrupt beauty specialist showing an amount of £38/9/6 due to her from “a gentleman now in the army.” <br />
This gentleman had been supplied with a variety of “beautifying” things, including lip-salve, carmine, powder, jessamin butter for the hair, cold cream, perfumed mouth water, a toothbrush, and a riding mask to prevent sunburn! <br />
Mrs. Heywood hoped that “frequent campaigns” would wear this effeminacy off. <br />
As a specimen of short story we have “Amaranthus, his Passion for Aminta.” <br />
The gentleman with the long name was of course an army officer. He was ordered to Germany. He took leave of Aminta with vows of eternal remembrance, but in spite of the fact that he vowed also to marry Aminta on his return he did not do so. In fact, he forgot all about her at the earliest possible moment. <br />
When he came back (after a severe battle in which he was wounded) he explained to Aminta that he was “convinced a tender intercourse with the ladies took up too much of a soldier’s mind” … and he preferred to be a good soldier. So Aminta retired to “a lone county house” and lived in single unhappiness for the rest of her life. <br />
Then there is the story of “Erminia, How Ruined,” who went to a masquerade (a masked ball). She also ended in a lone country house. <br />
These stories are only a part of the monthly features. The paper evidently had some out side contributors, and of the sterner sex, too. In April, 1745, we notice “Philo-Naturae,” who lived apparently in the Inner Temple, contributing a long letter of the “museum” type, covering such matter as “Worms, Somewhat Wonderful,” and “Butterflies, How Engendered.” <br />
In one article Mrs. Heywood discourses on “flying machines” and “the impossibility of their use.” She says: <br />
I have indeed heard some people foolish enough to maintain that there would come a time in which the ingenuity of man will invent machines to carry him through the air with the same ease as we now cross the seas; which, they cry, seemed doubtless as impracticable at first as this does at present. … Mrs. Heywood, however, knew better. She says God taught Noah how to build the Ark, and if God had wished man to fly He would obviously have shown him how. <br />
Though the “bodyline” controversy was then in the womb of time Mrs. Heywood was apparently an appreciator of the value of sport for the sake of sport. She says: “To hurl the <i>tennis ball</i> or play a match at <i>cricket</i> are certainly robust and manly exercises” … and deplores the introduction of monetary considerations into these activities. Evidently cricket and tennis in 1745 were—as now—not what they were! <br />
Eliza was the original Dorothy Dix. In November, 1745, “Bellamonte” writes to her for guidance in the choice between three suitors. <br />
A is tall, graceful, of honorable family and “well fixed”; has no vice, but is evidently not an ardent lover. When he should be telling her that he can’t live without her he is talking about Admiral Balchen, and the loss he was to the nation. <br />
B is a lover; in fact he is more like a pet poodle from the description. He is well off, too, but too agreeable, too accommodating, too slave-like. <br />
C is gay, witty, genteel, handsome and addresses to a charm.” Good voice, musical, and generally is a sort of pocket encyclopedia—but not so well off. “Bellamonte” suspects that C is a bit “too full of himself.” What should she do? <br />
The answer is rather involved, but it amounts to this: Take A; his serious turn of mind will probably make him a death-do-us-part husband. <br />
I do not know how the ladies regarded <i>THE FEMALE SPECTATOR</i>—perhaps as rather a naughty journal to be hidden from Mamma—but I am sure that to a great many who led sheltered lives it was a window on the world. <br />
That world was full of exciting possibilities, a world in which youth, at least occasionally, had its fling. A world that is no better than it ought to be, because it was peopled apparently by vigilant parents of highly respectable daughters who matched their united wits against a host of bold seducers, and in the resulting contests there was both give and take… <br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdJFIWGaNF6ng4HAQHiVYTH8JHkw3_A3foSNVaYwqQnk7dHqW-tKTBvRzE-c7L4gYe65T_fSP188IuNX-zPV3HbNJe9gHiJHBXGi15li1gj3DPwfu6MAwpDfXUcAjBZa3R8N_MBvvSidn7/s0/Dillon_3.jpg" /><br />
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[UPDATED 29 August 2021]
Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-76751327750964839522021-07-31T10:36:00.003+10:002021-08-09T07:34:49.042+10:00What A Library Should Be Like, 1924Richard Le Gallienne's “What A Library Should Be Like: Some Suggestions For Those To Whom Books and Their Heritage Are Precious” appeared in <i>House and Garden</i> in December 1924 (<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015082310924&view=1up&seq=898&skin=default">here</a>). Le Gallienne (1866–1947) was a prolific <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Le_Gallienne">author and poet</a>, contributor to <i>The Yellow Book</i>, and one-time lover of Oscar Wilde, who married three times, living in the US before settling in Menton (near Nice), France. <br />
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It appears that Le Gallienne had a very nice library later in life. According to Wikipedia:<br />
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<font color="#B5EAAA">During the Second World War he was prevented from returning to his Menton home and lived in Monaco for the rest of the war. His house in Menton was occupied by German troops and his library was nearly sent back to Germany as bounty. Le Gallienne appealed to a German officer in Monaco, who allowed him to return to Menton to collect his books.</font><br />
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Although this bibliophic advice was written by a practice-what-you-preach aesthete, it seems not to have been reprinted in almost a century, and so I have transcribed it below. The full reference is: Richard Le Gallienne, “What A Library Should Be Like,” <i>House and Garden</i>, vol. 46 (December 1924): 58, 110, 112.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div>
<br />
WHAT A LIBRARY SHOULD BE LIKE.<br />
<br />
Some Suggestions For Those To Whom Books and Their Heritage Are Precious<br />
<br />
JUST as there are gardens without souls, the loveless offspring of seedsmen's catalogs and newly acquired bank accounts, so is it with libraries. Neither have any more vital relation to their owners than an ice box, as little reflect their tastes, and are almost as seldom their personal concern.<br />
In English country houses the word library is often merely a euphemism for a combination of gunroom and smoking room. Guns, fishing rods, and pipe racks, with a copy of the Sporting Calendar, and a few old magazines, comprise its literature. We have all met such "libraries" in novels, and have wondered how the name chanced to be given to rooms where anything is to be found except a book or a reader.<br />
But there are libraries which do contain books in many and expensive "sets" that, in spite of them, still more drearily belie the description. These are even less often visited by friendly humanity, and their serried rows of uniform, morocco-bound volumes, frigidly enclosed behind glass doors, gleam lonely and uninviting as cabinets of minerals in a museum. Such libraries, we have been told, are bought by the yard like wall papers, irrespective of their literary contents, and have even less character than the other furnishings of the house, of which they form a regulation part. Obviously, these are not the libraries with which we have here to do.<br />
By a library we mean, of course, a cherished collection of books, and the room in which those books are sympathetically housed, a room that has taken on an unmistakable bookish character from their presence. <br />
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OUR library may be in the house or outside it, in a garden or in a woodland, by a stream among the rocks. It may be high up in a city garret, or it may be the warm heart of a palace. If one has a garden, there is no happier place for our library. "A library in a garden!" exclaims Mr. Edmund Gosse in one of his essays, "The phrase seems to contain the whole felicity of man!"<br />
The association of trees and books is, indeed, as old as the very derivations of the words "book" and "library," which are almost identical. Is not the word "book" derived from the Anglo-Saxon and German words for the beech tree (boce and buche) because the ancient Saxons and Germans did their first writing on beechen boards! And similarly the Latin word "liber" meant the inner bark of a tree used for writing on, before it meant "book," and gave us "library." When we reflect that the paper on which our books are printed is made from wood pulp, it will be seen that we arc still, in a sense, writing on the bark of trees, and the thought is worth playing with for a fanciful moment. The leaves of our books and the leaves on our garden trees should, therefore, feel at home together, being both made of the same mysterious substance, and when we bring our books into the garden it is but bringing them back to their green birthplace. And anyone who has built a library in a garden knows how at home indeed they are there. How the peace of both embrace and supplement each other, and, as we sit with our library door open on quiet summer afternoons, or on early mornings with the delicate sunlight playing tenderly like visible music on the nut-brown bindings, "while to and fro the room go the soft airs," the very stillness rarifies our minds, and the thoughts behind the words we read seem to steal out of themselves from the page, with the dews of their first utterance yet bright upon them. The low whisperings of the trees and the quiet talk of the books seem one, in a rare equilibrium of the soul. Yes! Mr. Gosse was right. A library in a garden! The phrase does contain the whole felicity of man! <br />
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YET it does not exhaust it. There are many other modes of felicity for a man who really loves his books whose library is the organic growth of years of collecting together those books and those only which sensitively express himself, and surround him like his own soul, his memories and his dreams, externalised in a companionable embodiment. Such a book lover will often indulge himself in imagining the many various libraries he might create for himself, like so many bookish castles in Spain. Sometimes he may dream of the libraries of great book lovers of the past. For example, if he is an omnivorous bibliomaniac, and never can have enough books about him, he may recall with envy the huge collection of Richard Heber, that "fiercest and strongest of all the bibliomaniacs," to whom Sir Walter Scott dedicated the sixth canto of Marmion. Heber is credited with owning at least 150,000 volumes, and for those as crazy as he the romantic thing about his "library" was that it was not all in one place. Eight houses were needed to hold it, all in different places, some in England, and some in ancient cities of Europe. Never was such a book glutton, a "hellus librorum." But think of the romantic adventure of pilgrimaging from one of his eight libraries to the other, the perpetual novelty of visiting and re-visiting his various Castles in Spain.<br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJJDp18TA2Tn09D1Il5tm4dbEjDmRxuIpWfQWgSUsMVJhEdVFTVnWLiU9_ErsATGjlFhE3xSFvdlLVxexEreuXfxzGJGoTo-bvV8i0sSHEuOMJpNbo7skIiLnapcP2r5i2JHPzO7xRQiM/s0/Image+1_500.jpg" /><br />
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However, I doubt whether the reader is with me in this rhapsody. Probably his dream of a library is something more sensible and static, and I dare say Montaigne's library in his old Gascon tower would be more to his taste. Indeed, who has not dreamed of that, and, well as it is known to us, it will be pertinent, and indeed practical, to quote something of his description: "'Tis in the third Story of a Tower of which the Ground-Room is my Chapel, the second Story an Apartment with a withdrawing Room and Closet, where I often lie to be more retired. Above it is a great Wardrobe, which formerly was the most useless part of the House. In that library I pass away most of the Days of my Life, and most of the Hours of the Day. In the Night I am never there. There is within it a Cabinet handsome and neat enough, with a very convenient Fire-place for the Winter, and Windows that afford a great deal of light, and very pleasant Prospects. … The Figure of my Study is round, and has no more flat Wall than what is taken up by my Table and Chairs; so that the remaining parts of the Circle present me a View of all my Books at once, set upon five Degrees of Shelves-round about me. It has three noble and free Prospects, and is sixteen Paces Diameter." Montaigne continues that only from fear of that "Trouble that frights me from all [page 111] Business," he had refrained from building on either side, "a Gallery of an hundred Paces long and twelve broad," because "every Place of Retirement requires a Walk." If we add those galleries for him in our imagination, can one conceive a library more after one's own heart! Here once more in another form is Mr. Gosse's "whole felicity of man." Perhaps some reader of this essay may have the whim—and the money—to reconstruct this old library in Montaigne's tower, not forgetting to complete it with the galleries.<br />
Wherever our library be situated, in a garden, in an ancestral tower, in some quaint old town with gables and belfries, or in a modern American city, the first condition of its being a real library, with the true library atmosphere, where the books can really breathe and live for us, instead of being merely stored, is that the room should not be stiff and formal. It should not be a square room, or a room we can see all at once. The one defect, to my mind, in Montaigne's library, though he himself esteemed it an advantage, was that he could see all his books at once. <br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI0wlXMmy0dIaSeBoZIHWZIjRcXFowNt9GFO6pEB7PqCU03Ca8ZnnT0xpHmDQn-7vunzskr1AgQ_O5Di0FBvYvt-ajnLizTogbDnCp2rOlhzKKw_acipExKMBPRUGv33ZfZcfNrjUG0ZAc/s0/Image+2_500.jpg" /><br />
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In this respect a library should be like a garden. The garden we can see all at once is not a garden but merely an horticultural exhibit. It has no surprises. And a library, similarly, should have room for surprises. It should be rambling in shape, or made to appear so. The [page 112] letter T, or better still, the letter I, with broad top and bottom, is a good ground plan. It should have two stone fireplaces, so disposed that one can only be seen at a time, roomy and hospitable, with deep angles, and there should be many alcoves, and nooks and corners, some with low windows and wide window seats. It should either be a room with low ceilings, and massive rafters of black oak, or it should be high, with galleries and winding stairways, and hidden some where in the galleries again should be other nooks, some with windows of richly dyed cathedral glass. One or two tiny rooms, with old tapestries for portieres, might be devised, suggesting secrecy and arcane mysteries; and everything, indeed, should be done to tempt the presiding genius of libraries, the nymph Quits, to make her abode there. Here and there should be bowls of roses, early violets, or drowsy wallflowers, and in some secluded corner the still statue of a goddess should come upon us with a white surprise. An old painting or two of some great dead scholar should be enshrined in hushed recesses, Erasmus, say, or Robert Burton of "The Anatomy of Melancholy"; and whatever other such objects of the sister arts are there should be un exciting, but with a quiet thrill in them, full of "whispers and of shadows." <br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTv99QW063zBmjXW6wgL0_OyqO-s8HZJGNYgmAmWVHPaVK05NqsWdUufuf_cCNiOCPWfPwEfEJWLaDp1csHINJInm2M8fc4sKTVYo50UqsCMO3_R8uOKSsGRK6il8uaCj36K9EzEPaZbyM/s0/Image+3_500.jpg" /><br />
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As for the bookshelves, they should be open, none of your forbidding glass doors, with locks and keys, behind which the books seem cold and distant as the coffined dead. Yet here and there an old Chippendale bookcase for rarities and delicate bindings, might blend its old world elegance and quaint lozenged panes, companionably among the open shelves. As for bindings, the old books will, of course, wear their old weathered coats of ribbed time-brown leather, or time-yellowed vellum. On these the morning sun and the evening lamplight fall most lovingly; and modern books, too, are best left in their original cloth which also soon take on a certain mellowness, as their different colors add variety to the whole informal, haphazard harmony. Nor should any uniformity in the heights of the volumes be aimed at. Nothing is so monotonous and un-suggestive to the eye, and so destructive of that gregariousness of all sorts and conditions of writers that counts for so much in the companionability of a library. "Sets" we must have, but these can be so disposed amid the general pattern as to give it firmness, without destroying its wayward charm. <br />
There is no need to speak of wall papers, for no wall space will be visible, as the library will be furnished from ceiling to floor with the most satisfactory mural decorations yet invented, namely—books; and, as to general furniture, such as tables and chairs, all that need be said is that they should be solid, simple, comfortable, and distinguished, Elizabethan and Jacobean, for preference, breathing austerity and reverie. And there should be Renaissance cabinet and writing desks with secret drawers. Which reminds me that one of those tiny hidden rooms above referred to should be accessible only by a sliding panel, the spring of which should be known only to the master of the library. And the library, too, should be provided with what one might call a postern, masked by shelves opening inward at a touch, and communicating with a private staircase, by which the master could escape intrusion at a moment's notice; for in a sense a library should be a fortress, a fortress of the soul, ready to repel attack by all enemies of quietude and dreams. <br />
For the essence of a library is solitude—solitude in the society of the choicest spirits of Time and Eternity. No idle creatures of a day should have entrance there. <br />
<br />
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE<br />
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[UPDATED 9 August 2021]Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-42762839402492320582021-07-18T10:03:00.004+10:002021-07-19T05:21:41.257+10:00Chapbook Illustration and the History of Dr. FaustusThanks to Giles Bergel et al., bibliographers of the (very) long eighteenth-century have a valuable new widget for image-matching woodblocks. The widget was developed by Bergel et al. to search of woodblock illustrations in Scottish chapbooks held in the National Library of Scotland.<br />
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Importantly, said widget—"NLS Chapbooks"—has an external search function, allowing you to "Search using your own image" (see <a href="http://meru.robots.ox.ac.uk/nls_chapbooks/external_search">here</a>) in much the same way you can conduct image searches using Google Images (<a href="https://images.google.com.au/">here</a>) etc.<br />
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As I have said recently (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2021/03/compositor-fleuron-20.html">here</a>), that the lack of a "Search using your own image" function, is the largest (remaining) limit on the utility of
Hazel Wilkinson's otherwise outstanding "Compositor" (aka Fleuron 2.0). <br />
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Knowing this—and my interest in this subject generally—David Levy kindly sent me the details of the "NLS Chapbooks" search engine and a link to a very informative video of Bergel's NLS talk "Exploring Chapbooks Printed in Scotland with Machine Vision" (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jkq0iLzMvo">here</a>).<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGHx6Dg5H3JwrU5onLqYPZTlhtdKQNMsC1Q2lm41yPhnuONUl5uXRwVfGCvABBEFrTFeopv7viKYoIsk8OMwwjpNb1ZryP9D8dEcPv2UeG2v7EwJw73iqZmgCXkjmLdLcbabn2VM4Ew93d/s0/Faustus_3_500.jpg" /></div><br />
Conveniently, I had the perfect candidate to test the "NLS Chapbooks" search function: the image above that appears on a chapbook <i>History of Dr. Faustus</i>, which I blogged about in 2010 (<a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2010/10/chapbook-history-of-dr-faustus.html">here</a>). The result of my search was extremely gratifying. As you can see, it matched the image to seven items (listed below)—one of them from my copy of the <i>History of Dr. Faustus</i>—before the algorithm failed.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjknJ2a0XaA5i8AO0Rfoh14kDNeIWsezKNc1i5s8XVtIhH6C_rGFzcoR9cO6s7fZcTo8HrLTV-SGjpXfWBQkSAEZlBDGYAI6FtigscHhpbKl9qk7X7d1YdgzRNECqRl2sOhI2Cu34ydaWCt/s0/NLS_Chapbooks_1.jpg" /></div>
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Something that should be immediately obvious, even in the small images above, is that the block has been intentionally altered—or "diminished" as Bergel explains in his talk (starting at 35.00). A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halberd">halberd</a>, a late eighteenth century version of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_weapon">pole-axe-spear-weapon</a>, is present in five of the seven images, but is missing from the two issues of the <i>History of Dr. Faustus</i>.<br />
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A closer examination of the seven images reveals two much more subtle changes: a very small chip in the hat (which seems to be some sort of French military bicorn hat), that becomes progressively less small, and a very small crack adjacent to that chip, which becomes progressively larger. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrYnovmzj0xq8YCwnmE7r1UhaYEigVNL_x0V1winnSuSO2w2LYE8ARd-r4FEEGd5yp5rO38ljonfGUrx3BHDx_3RAj-YeUpS9vDSjHzOoAcYcUX_w7VpB29Sb0IybVlCafIxtpzLYnyJd5/s0/Stage_1and2.jpg" /></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmTf0uFO9JvLNwxpTUe6JYrqW3J1L02Eh59Uswy-QrCQQyk2m_ThyjLc-UlRv5AGHWPhZJKKqvJdNxFZ3i6UKQPs9iA46llKI_M-qXNzBlql-NL5YOEKAPZyeVoQwOtIq8h6DaHTk14A9/s0/Stage_3and4.jpg" /></div>
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Above, we see the four distinct states or forms of this block represented by the NLS images, with the changes mentioned: [1] undamaged; and [2] tiny chip to hat (1st image below); [3] small chip and second tiny crack; and [4] large chip and small crack (2nd image below). The last of these corresponds with the block's de-halberdising.<br />
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Looking just at the just the top of the hat, this progression is a bit clearer—despite the pixilation at the magnification necessary.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPnKeRCqN18F0QheYCSJBbY5Ky5J2X5SN_jeOymkroe92_q_JxqPAmz4kbMAOQUlULr_JDpnU1PmfxhhSVAE2TBkq_L86qNuZYbxfydQqmsR3TN6lriC1_Ub6FmVM4jyPqrEO8xJma2lOl/s0/Hat_tops.png" /></div>
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The pixilation is a clear indication of the path to further progress. The excellent work by Bergel and his team may not be reproducible by Wilkinson (using images from ECCO), because the images she is working with are at a lower resolution that the NLS images. (NLS Chapbooks download at approximately 350dpi, ECCO images at 72dpi.) <br />
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Like decent OCR, matching user-supplied images requires more detailed images to reduce the number of false positives. This suggests the utility of ECCO upgrading at least a proportion of their scans with fresh photography, to improve OCR (which they now supply) as well as this sort of image-searching functionality.<br />
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But even when working with better images, such as those in the NLS Chapbooks series, resolution sets limits in identifying the sort of progressive damage to blocks seen above. This, in turn, suggests that the optimal image resolution is probably 600dpi—which has long been the digital archive standard.<br />
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One final point to make about the items listed below, with NLS cataloguing links, is that the suggested date of publication for these items at NLS will have to be re-considered. Judging from the ornament damage, the earliest item (<i>Three Scotch songs</i>) cannot be "1850–1860?" if the <i>History of Dr. Faustus</i> is "1840–1850?" etc. <br />
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Also, if the <i>History of Dr. Faustus</i> is the final form of this block, then it should also be clear that the person depicted in this block is neither Faustus not Mephistopheles—nor anyone else from the <i>History of Dr. Faustus</i> for that matter. As Edward J. Cowan and Mike Paterson explain: <br />
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"It was often felt necessary to ornament the front cover with a picture , and a woodcut usually served this purpose—even if it had been used several times before, was fairly crudely executed and made only an indirect allusion (if any at all) to the content." (<i>Folk in Print: Scotland's Chapbook Heritage, 1750-1850</i> (2007), 13).<br />
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<b>State 1: spear; no chip</b><br />
<i>Three Scotch songs: Donald Caird. Bundle and go. The Haughs of Crumdel</i> (Glasgow: Printed for the booksellers, [1850–1860?]) [L.C.2845(30)] <a href="https://search.nls.uk/permalink/f/hha760/44NLS_ALMA11640723950004341">NLA catalogue entry</a>.<br />
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<b>State 2: spear; tiny chip</b><br />
<i>John Falkirk's cariches: to which is added Tam Merrilees; a capital story</i> (Glasgow: Printed for the booksellers, [1840-1850?]), E [L.C.2852.C(10)] ¶ issue with number <a href="https://search.nls.uk/permalink/f/hha760/44NLS_ALMA11640721990004341">NLA catalogue entry</a>; E [L.C.2848(1)]. ¶ issue without number <a href="https://search.nls.uk/permalink/f/hha760/44NLS_ALMA11640721990004341">NLA catalogue entry</a>.<br />
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<b>State 3: spear; small chip, 2nd tiny chip</b><br />
<i>Four popular songs: viz. Glasgow fair; Oh what a parish. A beauty I did grow; and The adventures of a shilling</i> (Glasgow: Printed for the booksellers, [1850–1860?]), E [L.C.2845(32)] <a href="https://search.nls.uk/permalink/f/hha760/44NLS_ALMA21471153370004341">NLA catalogue entry</a>. <br />
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<i>The Haughs of Crumdel: to which is added, It fell upon the Martinmas time. Wilt thou go my bonny lassie?</i> (Glasgow: Printed for the booksellers, [1850–1860?]), E [L.C.2845(5)] <a href="https://search.nls.uk/permalink/f/hha760/44NLS_ALMA21425901950004341">NLA catalogue entry</a>.<br />
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<b>State 4: no spear; large chip, 2nd small chip</b><br />
<i>History of Dr. Faustus: shewing his wicked life and horrid death, and how he sold himself to the devil, to have power for 24 years, to do what he pleased, also many strange things done by him with the assistance of Mephostophiles. With an account how the devil came for him at the end of 24 years, and tore him to pieces</i> (Glasgow: Printed for the booksellers, [1840–1850?]), [L.C.2852.E(24)] <a href="https://search.nls.uk/permalink/f/hha760/44NLS_ALMA11640723030004341">NLA catalogue entry</a>; L.C.2847(6)] ¶ issue without number <a href="https://search.nls.uk/permalink/f/hha760/44NLS_ALMA11640723030004341">NLA catalogue entry</a>.<br />
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[UPDATED 2021.07.19]Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954124666253028301.post-64635670037108103352021-05-29T14:03:00.001+10:002021-05-29T14:03:49.980+10:00Gossip in a Library, reduxThe last time I mentioned Edmund Gosse and his puningly-titled essay collection, <i>Gossip in a Library</i> (1891; see <a href="https://patrickspedding.blogspot.com/2012/07/ann-lang-versus-lady-stanley.html">here</a>), I was rather hard on both the writer and his essay ("What Ann Lang Read").<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_MaU5zt4swCzw4NMkRXPqLoyl9subXP33AOkvjuC-lBaxnrPmKwo19XXbF3YHREoQpbnn3X5rkZ7pzP_0p1mRx1u9kz7Da6UgHWwdukCZDDyUERilyKK7JS5Q6U7N2p_t9uGFjZ1MYaTB/s0/1_Gosse_redux.jpg" /></div>
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Since I wrote that post in 2012, I have given four lectures on Gosse and his essay collection, in a variety of teaching units at Monash, and have continued to be equally hard on both.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYuiYe_jdM4nIw11XilAmJeK1fUkJtdjMM8FL0pUBzAg62kChCgSIEuGwqhj_MHmQCxGwUiGqzYW45Z8GrJ1VqKlXFi1H51VihpKR7OVxxkTcyTyTnJCSZH4TPxh_alAVARryiaCLcSgxZ/s0/2_Gosse_redux.jpg" /></div>
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In light of this, it may seem a little odd that I would spend a reasonable sum of money to buy the volume illustrated in this post, which is a signed, limited edition of <i>Gossip in a Library</i> containing a photogravure of Gosse.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxW9CEMdwOJcEsajvu50yA_V-S5CHxNp9AFXeap59YTBrd_2pDGsl73uDYWPVQYHN3O49EYc1yI0jw5PRA5noBlG3CdvoLXeSaaeyGvTvwjcYOuwhlJ_oDObv_k4IYgNnNQAzKYIeW7I6E/s0/3_Gosse_redux.jpg" /></div>
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Given that this limited edition was published a year <i>later</i> than the first edition, a copy of which I already have, I was clearly not motivated by any high-minded bibliographical or collecting principle: this is in no way <i>better</i> than a first edition. Quite the opposite, in fact.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxgKXjcUmNWWyxE5rFfVouWMlrHOuDs8mIdVM7aaAmkyMlU2Wb7t0g_NK3YlslkKglwRSY2djyiIkvgeSreI9hY3OrMYSb-nB9jyczw9622SBjNZ7Dy5XRL3UAcZsJ21ldz9UoJq-RtiWL/s0/4_Gosse_redux.jpg" /></div>
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However, the 1892, limited-to-one-hundred-copies, signed-by-the-author, deckled-edged, large-paper edition, has—as I mentioned—a photogravure of Gosse, and this sort of artwork is just the thing I <del>need</del> want for my book on Haywood's readers. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbipr41419HrRc-dzLMB3V37mhLQ-RftReWVDiEtF9gJWWhC_v9RLWJ2DoPSE3ye1j1RJAzpGFnKxTGZ2ZfMnsp_KE1kyU8CN03LcNSUocJ82Ihom4hwNt0NxQ3H6eV774s9nthx51gPjA/s0/5_Gosse_redux.jpg" /></div>
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Looking online, I can only find one site which uses this 1892 photogravure. Not only is their reproduction (<a href="http://victorian-era.org/victorian-authors/edmund-gosse-biography.html">here</a>) watermarked with text, it is also rather small: I will do better!<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguoEutXE1W4tih63jKW89aZJISpj-QyvTRJVXzfEMYW3ruNIsEVpuwMzdqOMvtMMdoK9tKkCgUufUQ2o2XkdTJyb58V5qAsdPeDZnBTmPbFB0vqZO2NB2MgvQvFGPSC_1itMLTozuqO74v/s0/6_Gosse_redux.jpg" /></div>
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My only other justification for buying this kind-of duplicate is that it contains a two-page supplement of reviews ("Opinions of the Press"), which is not present in the 1891 edition of <i>Gossip in a Library</i> on Google Books (see <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=kdwVAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA161">here</a>), and which will also be rather useful for my chapter of Gosse.
Patrick Speddinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14626381184719917832noreply@blogger.com0