Friday 27 December 2019

Collecting Haywood, 2019

2019 was a better year for Haywood collecting than I was expecting. I did have better years with a lot less money about a decade back but, as I mentioned in last year's year-in-review post (here), the supply of Haywood material has diminished, so my expectations have been low since at least 2013.

The 2019 highlights are:



[1] Ab.5.1b Injur'd Husband, 2nd ed. (1723) and Ab.7.1a A Wife to Be Lett (1724), bound together in a contemporary binding. Although both are first editions, it seems likely that this is a very rare example of issues of items found in Aa.2.1 The Works of Mrs Eliza Haywood being purchased separately. As the low Spedding Bibliography-numbers indicate, both are very early works by Haywood, and particularly hard to find for this reason. As I mentioned last year, Haywood's plays have been particularly elusive for me, so it was nice to get another copy of A Wife to Be Lett so soon too.



[2] Ab.7.3 Wife to be Lett (1735); my second copy of this edition, but only my third of the play. It is quite worn, but has some wonderful near-contemporary marginalia, which will be gold for the book I am planning on Haywood's readers.



[3] Ab.19.1a Memoirs of the Baron de Brosse, Part 1 (1725) and Ab.19.2 Memoirs of the Baron de Brosse, Part 2 (1726), bound together in a contemporary binding. Also early works; they join my copy of the "Second" edition of Part 1 (Ab.19.1b), so that I now have all editions and issues of Ab.19 MdB.



[4] Ab.59.1a Fortunate Foundling (1744), a first edition (first issue) of one of Haywood's later novels. Again, as I mentioned last year, I did not have any of Haywood's later novels until very recently, so it was great to get another so soon.



[5] Ab.60.1 The Female Spectator (1745), my third set of the first edition, which I describe here.



Also worthy of note are Ab.67.12 L’étourdie, ou histoire de Miss Betsy Tatless (1754), which I did not have. It is quite rare, only two other copies being known to me. I now have copies of all of the French translations of Betsy Thoughtless published between 1754 and 1782; Ab.67.11–16—a bit of a milestone for me. Ab.70.5b The Wife (Boston, 1806), the only issue I was lacking of the Bowdlerised American edition of The Wife—another rarity (only one other copy known) and another milestone. I was also very pleased to find my third copy of Ed.59.18 Edwin and Lucy, in yet-another variant binding (above, right). Finally, this year I got a copy of Clara Reeve's The Progress of Romance (1785), an important early assessment of Haywood's writing.

* * * * *

I still have less than half of the Haywood items I know about, and am well short of matching the British Library collection (which has about 55% of the items known to me). My goal as a collector is to surpass the BL collection, which I hope to do in the next three or four years, not to have a complete collection, which is almost certainly not possible in one life time, even with endless funds. My goal as a scholar has always been to simply to have a useful collection. The collection has already proven to be quite useful—providing me with material for original research and publications—but it is obvious that it will get more useful as it gets larger—so my scholarly and collecting goals remain in agreement: more Haywood items are required!

Rocking Chair Reader, ca. 1910



The young woman in this photo is posed with a book on a plain oak rocking chair. The book can't be identified, and the posture of the "reader" is not suggestive of either a captured private moment, or an attempt to recapture a moment of reading, such as we see in some of the previous photos I have posted. Likewise, while the oval inset croping of the image and the plain background suggests that the photo could have been taken in a studio, I imagine that the former could be requested when printing a negative and the latter is consistent with both the chair and the book, so perhaps this photo was taken at home.



The photo is printed as a real-photo postcard; the recto is well-thumbed (which is why I have cropped it out in the photos above and below); the stamp box on the verso is an "AZO"-type with triangle corners, pointing upwards. According to this site, this paper stock was used from 1904 to 1918. The chair in the photo has turned spindles and bentwood arms—although the legs are not visible, this is a style that was common on rocking chairs. Earlier chairs (rocking, kitchen, and dining chairs) often had pressed wood backs, as you can see here.



Although the plain, wide back of the oak chair has a bit of an early Deco look to me, our "reader" is wearing clothes that are suggestive of an earlier period. (Although long hair and high-neck shirts [without mutton leg shoulders] paired with a lace jabot or cravat were common from the late 1890s until at least 1915.) The binding style of the book was common from the mid-19th century well into the the 20th century, which does not help with narrowing down the date of the photo either.



All considered, there are no very strong indicators of date, location, or identity, and those clues that are present do not work together to offer any clue to the (fairly wide) date range indicated by the stamp box, thus the conservative dating above.

Saturday 30 November 2019

1940s Sweater Girl, Reading

This is a WW2 period, candid photograph of a young woman reading. She is reclining on a art deco couch, in front of a bookcase, with a window behind her. Our reader has shifted to her left shoulder forward, and her right shoulder back, so that the light streams in over her right shoulder, illuminating the pages in front of her. Her eyes are fixed on the lower, left-hand page of the book she is reading.



The verso is stamped Velox, a common Kodak brand in the 1940s–50s according to David Rudd Cycleback's Photograph Identification Guide. The clothes that our sweater-girl reader is wearing are consistent with late War-period restrictions: a drab skirt with a hemline just below the knee, and only a few pleats (as described here), with a short, flat knit, light-weight sweater blouse (here).



As Debbie, The Vintage Dancer explains: "The term sweater girl started in the 1940s with movie star icon Lana Turner. She, and other young women, wearing snug fitting sweater tops were seen as both innocent and sexy. The modest coverage of the sweater said 'I am a good girl' while the two sizes too small fit said 'I have breasts!'" While to "be so flaunting with a woman’s natural assents was taboo in good company," even a more modest, but still snug fit (as here) "emphasized the ideal ’40s torso which was a thin waist, full shoulders and soft, natural chest."

Sunday 17 November 2019

Lillian and I, Reading



This is another photo that breaks my collecting rules, since it features two women reading magazines, rather than books. I bought it because the age and setting of the photo are significant.



The clothing (particularly the high-neck, boned collars) and the hairstyle (a casual and simplified Gibson Girl pompadour) both suggest a date of ca. 1900–1910—which is relatively early for a photograph to be taken is a domestic setting, outside of a studio.



It is likely that the photo was staged, but (like this one) it is possible that the photographer was attempting to capture a typical setting for reading and it is highly likely that the reading material itself was genuine. (Unfortunately, as with the same photo, while it may be possible to identify the particular issue of the magazine below, I have not been able to identify it, and so the date remains a guess.)



By contrast, studio photos almost always appear to be taken with prop-books, books that belonged to the photographer and that are not actually being "read" by the subject of the photos in any meaningful way. (And, being props, it is likely that any magazine used in a studio photograph was as out of date as those found in waiting rooms today, and so they are unreliable guides to dating.)



On the verso of the photograph the two women are identified as "Lillian and I"—it is not clear if Lillian is the woman on the left, or if this is just the conventional grammatical form for the two women. The vendor was from from Hamilton, Ohio, and it seems likely that the photo was taken somewhere nearby.

Monday 11 November 2019

Lucy Stout, reading in a hammock

In this ca. 1915 black and white Real-Photo Postcard above, a young American woman is reclining on her side, in a beautiful floral hammock. The subject of the photo is identified on the verso as Lucy Stout.



Lucy has been interrupted—genuinely, it seems—while reading. Rather than resting her hand on a book, posing behind a pile of books, or an open book, she holds the book in her hand purposefully: marking her spot with the index finger and thumb of her left hand, while turning pages with her right.



Note that, unlike the reader of the Portland Sunday Telegram in this photo, she has not been interrupted reading the very first page of her book, she is nearly finished it.



The ARTURA stamp box on the verso dates this postcard to 1908–24. The high-neck dress, simple hair-style, and long hair of our reader all point to a date early in this range. However, the vendor was in Shell Knob, which is in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri; the background to the photo looks a lot like some of the scenes Photos of Shell Knob Trails, so it may be that Lucy was a local, or was visiting a local family. If so, this simple and conservative style may not offer any further hints to the dating the photo.

Saturday 9 November 2019

Frequency of Posting

For a variety of reasons it was unusually difficult for me to regularly post new material on this blog throughout much of 2018 and the first half of 2019, and so I have tried to post much more regularly since July of this year. Although new posts were not appearing, I consistently maintained a number of important posts that aggregate information and links to texts etc. But, when new posts are not being added, it does give the blog an abandoned look, and both posts and the blog as a whole become increasingly invisible online.

November is always a particularly busy time for me at Monash, and so it is not terribly surprising that I only managed a single post last month—but it was still pretty annoying, since I had consistently managed three per month since July, and was hoping to maintain that rate until the end of the year at least. In reality, I have never been as consistent as I had been hoping—regularly producing the same number of posts month after month—and it (belatedly, I guess) occurred to wonder just how impossible a task I had set myself to be this consistent. That is, I wondered whether there was a pattern to my posting that reflected how busy I am at different times of the year.



Above is the result of a bit of cut-and-paste and Excel magic: a chart of the frequency of posts, per month, for the eleven years from June 2009 (when I started this blog) to June 2019. The numbers across the bottom are months, from January (1) to December (12). This frequency distribution of posts-per-month is a pretty good match for how busy I am at work—with one post per month on average in May (total of 11) compared to roughly three posts in July (total of 33).

As you can see here, for students the two teaching semesters run from March to May and August to October; but results are not finalised until the end of the exam period and so, for staff, the two teaching semesters run from March to June and August to November. The weeks prior to semester starting are a reasonably busy time for teaching preparation too and, for me, at the start of the year in particular, since I tend to do more teaching in semester one than in semester two (the split is often two-thirds, one-third, from semester one to semester two). The little bumps in late March and October are probably the mid-semester breaks.

And so, what you see above is a reflection of the constant battle between teaching and everything else I do as an academic. I could probably do a similar chart of when I submit essays for publication, and when I get work done in the garden at home, but I suspect the results would be much the same. The conclusion I draw from this is that I shouldn't be surprised when I fail to be absolutely consistent with my posts on this blog and, perhaps, it is a bit foolish to even try to be.

Reading the Portland Sunday Telegram, 1940s

In this late 1940s photograph (another Real-Photo Postcard), a young woman in a floral dress, sitting on a bed in a cabin, is reading the Portland Sunday Telegram.



In my collecting, I have generally tried to avoid images of people reading newspapers, magazines, or browsing photographs, in favour of people reading books; and I have preferred candid or domestic photos to posed or studio photographs. While this image may be staged (the woman is focused on only the first page of the Portland Sunday Telegram, suggesting that the photographer has not caught her deeply engaged in sustained, immersive reading) the setting in emphatically domestic, and it is possible—likely, in fact—that the photographer was attempting to capture a typical instance of sustained, immersive reading, in a familiar or common location for such reading.



The appeal of this image depends very much on this genuine-staged quality, but it is also beautifully framed and illuminated, and the setting is appealingly simple and rustic. Light streams in from the right; our central figure holds a brightly-illuminated newspaper in her hands, sitting at an angle on the bed to ensure the full power of the sun falls on the page in front of her. To the left, with his (?) back to the photographer, sits another reader (?)—this one at a table. The presence of a second person, not participating in the process of being photographed, does make the photograph seem more natural or, at least, heightens the impression of this being highly typical, if not entirely unstaged.



Regarding the dating of the photograph: there is an EKC logo in a dotted-line stamp box on the version, the EKC logo intersecting the top of the stamp box, and the words “EKC Place Stamp Here” in the middle. Apparently EKC published postcards between 1939 to 1950 (but only cards from 1938–45 appear in the long list here. It is likely that a close examination of all issues of Portland Sunday Telegram from this period would reveal the exact issue our reader is holding, and so the likely date of the photograph—which would be nice. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the newspapers, or the time to do the searching.

Thursday 7 November 2019

A Dutch Review of Idalia (1723)

The following review of Idalie, of De ongelukkige minnares (1803), a Dutch translation of the 1770 French translation of Idalia: Or, The Unfortunate Mistress (1723), appeared in Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen, No.15 (1804): 656–57 (online here; for information on this newly-discovered translation, see my earlier post here; for a complete list of reviews of Eliza Haywood's works—including works in translation—see here).

As far as I can tell from my crude translation below, the reviewer was not terribly impressed with the plot, the protagonist, or the moral of the story, but the characterisation of Idalia (a "coquettish, manly girl"), plot outline ("madly in love, carelessly careless, raped, seduced, and complicated in many sadnesses") the criticisms offered ("such girls must be locked up"!) do suggest why a modern reader might enjoy the book a bit more than our 1803 reviewer did!

Hopefully, someone fluent in Dutch, French and English will sit down one day and compare the three texts, and let us know how much the plot has been changed from English to French and French to Dutch. Our reviewer does not really say enough about the plot to indicate whether it has been changed radically, but in the case of The Fortunate Foundlings, which was translated from English to French and then from French back into English, the ending was changed completely each time, giving three quite different plots, to say nothing of the characterisation etc.

* * * * *

Idalie, of de Ongelukkige Minnares. Naar het Fransch. Met Plaaten. Te Amsterdam, by G. Roos. In gr. 8vo. 300 bl.

Een Boek, waar by wy juist driemaal zyn ingesluimerd; eindelyk zyn wy het toch doorgeworfteld, en weten nu de geschiedenis van de ongelukkige Minnares en nog van ene Barbarysche Princesse, maar werden er noch wyzer, noch beter door, en de lezing gaf ons zelfs geen enkel aangenaam ogenblik. Wy kennen nu toch Idalie; zodanige meisjes moest men opsluiten, indien namentlyk hare deugd niet beter bevestigd is, dan die van dit coquette, manzieke meisje, niemand toch kon haar aanzien, of hy werd ogenbliklyk op haar verliefd, en vergat ook aanstonds alle zyne verbintenissen en betrekkingen. Wy zien haar hier, in mannen en vrouwen gewaad, te water en te land, mal verliefd, voorbeeldloos onvoorzichtig, verkracht, verleid, en in velerleije verdrietlykheden ingewikkeld. Het verhaal is smaakloos, en styl en taal zyn, in deze overzetting althands, ellendig genoeg. Eindelyk steekt zy zich zelve dood, en, hoezeer wy den zelfmoord wraken, was ons dit nu toch aangenaam, omdat wy nu niets meer van haar horen zullen. De Voorredenaar meent, dat, daar het Leezen van Romanicke geschriften t hands zo zeer als ooit, in den smaak der jonge lieden valt, men niet genoegzaam kan zorgen dat zy dezen kunnen smaak aan zulke geschriften kunnen voldoen, waarin niets schadelyks voor de goede zeden is aan te treffen; en daarom heeft hy dan voor de vertaling uit het Fransch van deze oorspronglyk Engelsche Roman gezorgd. Wie kan berekenen, welk een aantal soortgelyke Geschriften deze zyne zorgvuldigheid ons in het vervolg nog ter beöordeling bezorgen zal? Dat de man zich toch minder met onnodige zorgen mogt pynigen!

[Idalie, or the Unfortunate Lover. From the French. With plates. At Amsterdam, by G. Roos. In gr. 8vo. 300 bl.

A Book, whereby we have justly snoozed three times; I finally got through it, and now I know the history of the Unfortunate Lover and one Barbary Princess, but they [the characters] didn’t get any wiser or better, and the reading didn’t even give us a single pleasant moment. We now know
Idalia; such girls must be locked up, if her virtue is not better confirmed than that of this coquettish, manly girl; no one could look at her, or he fell in love with her, and soon forgot all his commitments and relationships. We see her here, in men’s and women’s robes, on water and on land, madly in love, carelessly careless, raped, seduced, and complicated in many sadnesses. The story is tasteless, and style and language are, in this translation, miserable enough. Finally she stabs herself to death, and—however much we disapprove of suicide—this was now pleasant to us, because we will not hear from her anymore. The Preface-writer believes that since the Reading of Novel writings is as much as ever in the taste of the young people, one cannot sufficiently ensure that they can taste such writings in which there is nothing harmful to good morals can be found; and therefore he arranged for the translation from French of this originally-English novel. Who can calculate, what number of similar writings this care will still provide us with in the future? That a man may be less concerned about unnecessary worries!
]

[Updated 7 November 2019]

Wednesday 6 November 2019

A Dutch translation of Idalia

Idalia: Or, The Unfortunate Mistress (1723) was one of Eliza Haywood's earliest works, but it now appears that it was the last of her works to be translated, at least until interest in her works revived in the 1970s and 80s.

First translated into French in 1770 under the title Idalie ou l’Amante Infortunée, then translated into German in 1772 under the title Idalie, die unglückliche Liebhaberinn, it now appears that Idalia was translated into Dutch in 1803 under the title Idalie, of De ongelukkige minnares. (The latest translation previously known to me was the translation of Ab.9 The Rash Resolve, which appeared as Emanuella: ou la Découverte prématurée late in 1800.)


This Dutch translation of Idalia does not appear in my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood (2004), and I owe my discovery of it to a query I received from a Dutch PhD student only last week. Having done a little research, I have now compiled a new entry for the translation in my revised manuscript Bibliography under the code Ab.6.2A.

Ab.6.2A Idalie, of De ongelukkige minnares is now the fourth Dutch translation of a work by Haywood of which I am aware, and the second that I have discovered since the publication of my Bibliography fifteen years ago. (The other being Ab.54.2 De Anti-Pamela (1743), a Dutch translation of Haywood's Anti-Pamela.)


Like De Anti-Pamela, and both of the Dutch translations that I previously described in my Bibliography, a copy of Idalie, of De ongelukkige minnares is on Google Books, which has helped me quickly compile information about it. (See here for a constantly-updated list of links to original editions and edited texts of works by Haywood, including all the Dutch translations mentioned here.)

As you can see from the pictures posted here, Idalie, of De ongelukkige minnares was translated from the French ("Naar het Fransch"), does not identify Haywood as the author, is charmingly illustrated, and, if you follow this link to the text, you will also see that it contains a brief Preface (text and crude translation below). I have also found a review of the translation, which I will post separately, and add a link here in my catalogue of reviews of Haywood's works.



* * * * *

VOORBERICHT.

Het leezen van Romanieke geschriften thands, zo zeer als ooit, in den smaak der jonge lieden vallende, kan men niet genoegzaam zorgen dat zij dezen hunnen smaak aan zulke geschriften kunnen voldoen, waar in niets schadelijks voor de goede zeden is aantetreffen. ’Er zijn zeekerlijk reeds veelen en uitmuntenden van die soort in onze taale voorhanden; echter daar men gestadig naar iets nieuws tracht, en in diergelijke geschriften inzonderheid het nieuwe, altijd eenige aangenaamheid aan zig [sic, for zigt?] heeft, hebben wij gemeend deze oirspronglijk Engelsche Roman onze jonge Leezeren en Leezerensen niet te moeten onthouden, daar zij in dezelven den droevigen rampspoed ontwaaren, waarin de ongelukkige, en, door het noodlot vervolgde Liefde, gewikkeld kon worden, teneinde zij zo veel mogelijk is, behoedzaam tegen dezelve gemaakt worden, en het zoet dat dikwijls in schijn in de eerste beginselen der Liefde gelegen schijnt, leeren wantrouwen en altijd op de gevolgen en het einde van alle hunne daden het oog blijven vestigen. Zo de rampspoedige minnarij van deze Idalie daar toe eenigzins kan bijdraagen, zal ons oogmerk met de vertaaling volledig bereikt zijn.


[PREFACE

The Reading of Novel writings nowadays is, as much as ever, in the taste of young people, [so] one cannot sufficiently ensure that they can satisfy their taste with such writings, where nothing harmful to good morals can be found. There are already many and excellent [novels] of this kind in our language; however, since something new is steadily sought, and in such writings, in particular the new, always some pleasantness has come to mind, we have thought that we should not withhold this original English novel from our young Readers and Reading people, since they perceive in them the sad calamity, in which unfortunate, and persecuted Heart, could be wrapped in order to make it, as much as possible, cautious against Love, and the sweetness that often appears to appear in the first principles of Love, teaches distrust and always on the consequences and end of all their deeds continue to pay attention. If the calamitous lover of this Idalie can contribute to that in any way, our intention with the translation will be fully achieved.]

Books, Consolation, Contemplation

In this ca.1910 tinted photograph (a Real-Photo Postcard), a French woman in conservative dress (probably in mourning dress), sits on a wooden chair, holding a book.



Probably due to entirely-accidental over-exposure, the book appears as a literal tabula rasa (a clean slate), but the mourning dress and contemplative pose of the sitter (a distant look, two fingers of the right hand gently resting on her jaw) suggest a work of religious consolation and piety.



We are to imagine that our sitter is meditating on the profound words she has been reading, our imagination being entirely liberated by the lack of any visible text above, on the theme of memento mori or sic transit gloria mundi (the inevitability of death, or the passing glory of the world in general).

The verso of the card is stamped “Charles Fiérens Rue Meyerbeer, 15, Roubaix” (i.e., 15 Rue Meyerbeer, Roubaix, France). Nothing seems to be known about Fiérens (sic transit Fiérens!), but Roubaix is a city in northern France, on the boarder of France-Belgium.

Tuesday 5 November 2019

Mary Roesler, not really reading

In the rather odd image below, from the first decade of the twentieth century, a very photogenic Mary Roesler is posing with a book. It would obviously be a misrepresentation to say that this is a photograph of "Ms Roesler reading"—unless she had the rather extraordinary ability to read using her right ear. Or out of the corner of her eye, I guess.



The above photo is from a series of photographic postcards of our model tightly wrapped in gauze holding a flower, or rather more loosely draped in gauze holding a bunch of flowers, lying on her belly, or her back (ditto), sitting on a couch looking at herself in a hand mirror, playing a Pandura (classical lute-like instrument), awkwardly posing with a classical urn, standing while playing an aulos (twin pipes), facing left or right (ditto), sniffing a glass of wine. I.e., holding herself in a variety of poses, all of which are designed to show of her trim figure and a little bit of skin, mostly that on her lovely shoulders.

Although the postcard is, in many ways, quite typical, in attempting to show off an attractive model to advantage, using a book merely as a prop. It is somewhat unusual, in that, this is not plausibly a "reading pose." And, for that reason, it is rather more revealing than Ms Roesler's attire.

In this photo, it is obvious that the book in her right hand is a prop. We are not expected to imagine that Ms Roesler has been interrupted while reading, sprawled on her side on a cloth-covered lump, with one arm held high in the air, holding a book with the same refined delicacy as we'd expect her to hold a tea-cup, with pinky extended.

I explored this subject in some depth quite some time ago now (here), explaining that I had been collecting vintage images of women reading since about 2007, and that I would start to regularly post these images on my blog with comments, or without.

I have not, however, actually posted many of the two-hundred or so images I have been collecting, partly because my scanner became unusable when I upgraded my computer and partly because the image host I was using deleted all my images. Today's post is an attempt to re-start this project and to introduce the images that (I hope) will become a regular feature, now that I have access to a scanner once again.

Thursday 17 October 2019

Les Journées Amusantes in Italian

The first six days (only) of Madeleine Angélique Poisson de Gomez’s Les Journées Amusantes (Paris: G. Saugrain, Charles le Clerc, Ándre Morin, 1722–31) was translated into Italian by Pietro Chiari, and published under the title Li Giorni di Divertimento in 1758. This 1758 translation was reprinted in 1777. To the best of my knowledge, the only modern critic to mention Li Giorni di Divertimento is Séverine Genieys-Kirk, and she only mentions the 1777 edition in her account of translations of Les Journées Amusantes.**



I mentioned Li Giorni di Divertimento in my previous posts on the translations of Les Journées Amusantes (here) and the illustration of this work in translations—such as Eliza Haywood's La Belle Assemblee—(here). In both posts I mentioned the 1758 edition, but with a question mark.



As the illustrations to this post suggest, I can now remove the question mark, because I have managed to buy a copy of the first volume of the 1758 edition (which, as the image below shows, contains three days: Primo, Secondo, and Terzo Gionrno).



After landing my copy and doing a bit more research, I have realised how very fortunate I was to be able to find a copy of this edition so quickly. As far as I can tell only a single set is held in any institutional library anywhere in the world (and this is not in Italy) and only one set has appeared at auction in the last two centuries (and that was in 1871).

The only known set of Li Giorni di Divertimento is held by the Bodleian Library [Vet. F5 e.310]. The Bodleian catalogue describes their set as follows: each volume is bound in original bookseller's limp pasteboards, with stitching exposed and leaves uncropped (the same as mine, see below) and is 19cm tall; an engraved frontispiece in v.1 (above and below) depicts "Madame de Gomez writing in a book-lined study."



The full title and imprint are: Li Giorni di divertimento, di Madama di Gomez, tradotti dal francese. Tomo primo.[-secondo.] (In Venezia: Presso Domenico Deregni, con licenza de' superiori, e privilegio, 1758). The Bodleian copy appears on WorldCat; no copy is recorded on the Union Catalogue of Italian Libraries (here), the The European Library (here) etc. If anyone is able to locate another copy, I'd love to hear about it.



Below is an account (in Italian, and badly translated) of the publication by Francesco Antonio Zaccaria (here) from when the translation first appeared, followed by a contemporary review (in French, and badly translated), and then all the later references I can find for copies in auction catalogues etc.

**(Séverine Genieys-Kirk, “Eliza Haywood’s translation and dialogic reading of Madeleine-Angelique de Gomez’s Journées amusantes (1722-1731),” in Translators, Interpreters, Mediators: Women Writers 1700-1900, edited by Gillian E. Dow (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), 37.)

* * * * *

[Francesco Antonio Zaccaria], Memorie per servire all'istoria letteraria (appresso Pietro Valvasense. In Merceria all'Insegna del tempo, 1758), 399–400 (here).

Amico Carissimo,
Venezia, 2 Novembre

IN contrassegno della memoria, che di voi conservo, benchè da molto tempo lontano, mi dò il piacere di mandarvi il presente Libro (a). Egli è adattato alla corrente stagione, ed opportuno alla deliziosa villeggiatura, che siete vicino a godere in codesti amenissimi vostri colli, ove avrete tutto l'agio di leggerlo, e gustarlo. So veramente, che non siete molto amico dell'Opere Romanzesche, e non andate dietro alla corrente del volgo, che in questi tempi, piucchè in altro mai, le gradisce, e ne pregia, e favorisce gli Autori; ma pur mi lusingo, che siate per leggere la presente con piacere, non già per semplice effetto di vostra amicizia verso di me, che ve ne spedisco una copia, ma in forza del suo merito, che a mio parere la deve rendere immune dal pericolo di venir con quelle confusa. Basta leggerne il nome dell'Autore Francese per esserne persuaso, essendo questi la celebre Madama di Gomez, che nel pubblicare questo gentil |400| parto del suo felice ingegno non lo giudicò immeritevole d'essere da lei umiliato al presente Augusto Monarca della Francia, che in quel tempo era ancora nella sua adolescenza. Troverete in questo primo Tomo, che solo vi mando, per essere l'altro ancora sotto il torchio, mille tratti d'erudizione, di Storia, di Politica, e di Morale Dottrina; vi sorprenderanno due Dissertazioni una sopra l'amore, l'altra sopra lo spirito; e non potrete a meno d' ammirare alcuni avvertimenti dati da una Madre a sua Figlia sopra la condotta generale della sua vita. Li racconti, che vi si trovano inseriti, sono bensì favolosi, e trattano di materie amorose, ma le trattano saggiamente, e in guisa che devono servire, non a guastare, ma ad istruire il Lettore. Li caratteri delle persone vi sono espressi a meraviglia, e ci danno l'idea del vero conversare, non quale è in uso a nostri tempi, ma quale dovrebbe essere. In una parola questo è un Libro nel suo genere eccellente, come nella Prefazione con tutta giustizia l' asserisce lo Stampatore; e se v'è qualche difetto lo è della traduzione, che si conosce fatta frettolosamente, ma che però se non è ottima, non è neppure delle cattive. Leggetelo che sarà per aggradirvi. Addio.

(a) Li giorni di divertimento di Madama di Gomez, tradotti dal Francese. Tomo I. in Venezia 1758, presso Domenico Deregni, con licenza de' Superiori, e Privilegio.


[Dear friend,
Venice, 2 November.
IN the mark of memory, which I have kept from you, although I have been away for a long time, I am pleased to send you this Book (a). It is adapted to the current season, and appropriate to the delightful holiday, that you are close to enjoying in these very pleasant hills, where you will have all the leisure to read it, and taste it. I really know that you are not very fond of Romance work, and do not go after the current of the vulgar, who in these times, more than ever, likes them, and prizes them, and favors the Authors; but I do, however, flatter myself that you are going to read the present with pleasure, not just as a result of your friendship towards me, that I send you a copy, but by virtue of its merit, which in my opinion must render it immune from the danger to come with those confused. It is enough to read the name of the French author to be persuaded, this being the famous Madame of Gomez, who in giving birth to her | 400 | happy ingenuity did not consider it undeserving of being submitted by her to the present Augustus Monarch of France, who at that time was still in his adolescence. You will find in this first volume, that I send you only, the other being still in the press, a thousand traits of scholarship, of History, Politics, and Moral Doctrine; two dissertations will surprise you, one above love, the other above the spirit; and you cannot fail to admire some warnings given by a Mother to her Daughter over the general conduct of her life. The stories, which are inserted in them, are indeed fabulous, and deal with loving matters, but treat them wisely, and in such a way that they must serve, not to spoil, but to instruct the Reader. People's characters are wonderfully expressed, and give us the idea of true conversing, not which is in use in our times, but which should be. In a word, this is an excellent book of its kind, as the Printer states in the Preface, with justice; and if there is any defect it is the translation, which is known to have been made hastily, but which, if it is not excellent, is not even bad. Read it to please you. Goodbye.
]



The first volume of a 1758 edition was reviewed in Annales typographiques, 2 (July 1760): 249–50 (no. 181; here):

I giorni di divertimento di madama di Gomez; tradotto dal francese, tomo I. In Venezia, presso Domenico Deregni, con licenza de’ superiori e privilegio, 1758, in-12.
Les journées amusantes de madame de Gomez, tome I. A Venise, chez Dominique Deregni, avec permission et privilége des superieurs, 1758, in-12.
Tout y répond au titre, tout y est amusant, non seulement pour ceux qui ne veulent qu’être amusés, mais même pour ceux qui veulent être inftruits: differtations, réflexions morales, fićtions romanesques, avantures galantes, traits d'histoire, anecdotes; tout cela ferencontre dans cet ouvrage.
On trouve aussi dans ce premier volume deux dissertations, l’une sur l’amour, & l’autre sur l’esprit.
Quoique la tradustion he sçauroit passer pour excellente, elle n’est cependant pas mauvaise. M.


[Everything answers to the title, everything is amusing, not only for those who only want to be amused, but even for those who want to be educated: dissertations, moral reflections, romantic fictions, gallant adventures, characteristics of history, anecdotes; all this is found in this book. There are also two dissertations in this first volume, one on love and the other on the mind. Although the translation would be considered excellent, it is however, not bad. M.]



A copy of volume 1 is recorded in this 1767 catalogue; a two-volume set is recorded as item 4410 in this 1774 catalogue, plus this 1793 catalogue; volume 2 appears as item 217 in this 1802 catalogue; and two volumes bound together appear as item 3209 in this 1871 catalogue.

Saturday 21 September 2019

The Devil in Love revisited

In the first of three updates to my Halloween 2011 post on Cazotte’s The Devil in Love (here), I mentioned that I had discovered there were a number of American editions of this novel. In that post, I provided details of four original editions (representing four different translations: 1791, 1793, 1798, 1810), and three modern editions (1925, 1991 and 1993).

The three American editions I discovered in 2012 were those of 1810 (New York), 1828 and 1830 (Boston). Not having access to any of these online, I suggested at that time, that “it seems most likely that they are all reprints of no.2—the 1793 edition.”



Since writing the above, I have acquired a copy of The Devil in Love that was printed in Boston in 1828.



As you can see above, this edition has a charming frontispiece of “Biondetta Playing On The Harp”; and as you can see below, the Boston text matches—as I suspected it would—no.2 in my previous post, the 1793 edition. This edition starts “At five and twenty I was a Captain of the Guards in the service of the King of Naples, and lived in gay society …”



The two Boston editions are somewhat similar in size and length, suggesting one may be a reprint of the other. It is likely that Peaslee's the Boston edition is itself a reprint of Van Winkle's New York edition, but this is something I will only be able to establish in the unlikely event that I end up with a copy to compare my Boston edition to.



Below is my updated list of editions of The Devil in Love. Since 2011, three of the early editions have been added to Google Books, so I have added links to these. I have also passed on my copy of Biondetta, or the Enamoured Spirit, which illustrates my previous post, to Monash University, and have updated the holdings accordingly.

* * * * *

[1] Alvarez, Or, Irresistible Seduction; A Spanish Tale (London: W. Richardson, 1791). ¶ On Google Books (here). ESTC: t226198 (recording 2 copies); “When I was five-and-twenty years old, I was a captain in the the King of Naples’ guards: we lived very sociably among ourselves …”

[2] The Devil in Love, Translated from the French (London: Hookham and Carpenter, 1793). ¶ ESTC: t71529 (4 copies); on ECCO; “At five and twenty I was a Captain of the Guards in the service of the King of Naples, and lived in gay society …”

[3] The Enamoured Spirit (London: Lee and Hurst, Bell, Millar and J. Wright, 1798). ¶ On Google Books (here). ESTC: t210676 (2 copies); “At the age of five-and-twenty I was Captain in the Guards of His Majesty the King of Naples, and kept constant company with my brother officers”

[4] Biondetta, or the Enamoured Spirit (London: J. Miller, 1810). ¶ On Google Books (here). I have located nine copies: L [1458.d.16] and O [Fic. 27524 e.164]; CaSRU [PQ 1961 C5 A6413 1810]; CtY [Hfd29 151N], DLC [PZ3.C3197 B FT MEADE], MH-H [*EC8 L5875 Y810c], PSt [PQ1961.C5A65 1810], ViU [PZ2.C39 B 1810]; VMoU [840.5 C386 A6/B]; “At the age of five and twenty I was a captain in the guards of the King of Naples.”

[4A] The Devil in Love (New York: C. S. Van Winkle, 1810). pp: 178: i–viii 9-178; 17cm ¶ One copy: NNYSL [Ham C3865 D3].

[4B] The Devil in Love (Boston: J. P. Peaslee, 1828). ¶ pp. 102: i–vi 7–102; illus.; 12cm. ¶ One copy: AuPC-PS [lacking i–ii?]; also recorded here as having being in the “Library of the Hasty-Pudding Club in Harvard” in 1841. “At the age of five and twenty I was a captain in the guards of the King of Naples.”

[4C] The Devil in Love (Boston: N. H. Whitaker, 1830). pp. 110; illus.; 12cm ¶ Three copies: DeU [PQ1961 .C5 A6413 1830], MH-H [GEN 40516.6.2*], InU-Li [PQ1961.C5 D513 1830].

[5] The Devil in Love (London: Heinemann; Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925). Limited edition (UK: 75 copies; US: 365 copies) ¶ Reprints translation no. 2; available online on Europeana, courtesy of the Bodleian Library (direct link to PDF here)

[6] The Devil in Love, translated by Judith Landry (Dedalus, 1991; 2nd ed. 2011). ¶ “At the age of twenty-five I was a captain of the king's Guards at Naples; we kept our own company much of the time …”

[7] The Devil in Love. Followed by Jacques Cazotte: His Life, Trial, Prophecies, and Revelations by Gerard de Nerval, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Marsilio, 1993). ¶ “At the age of twenty-five I was a Captain of the Guards in the service of the King of Naples. We lived much of our time …”

Thursday 19 September 2019

The Australian Fanny Hill

Apparently, "one of the few objectionable productions of the Australian press" (*) appeared in 1878: The Life of Emily Duncan; an Autobiography; with Introduction by Robert Coles (Sydney, N.S.W., 1878).

Information about this Aussie Fanny Hill appears as item 521 in Bibliotheca Arcana seu Catalogus Librorum Penetralium (London: George Redway, 1885), a bibliography of erotica that appeared under the authorship of "Speculator Morum," but which is generally ascribed to Sir William Laird Clowes (see here).

Bibliotheca Arcana seems to have been based on a mix of entries taken from two erotic bibliographies by Henry Spencer Ashbee, and cuttings from contemporary, unidentified booksellers' catalogues. (I discuss this item in my post on "An 1886 review of Bibliotheca Arcana" here.)

Sadly, The Life of Emily Duncan is not known to survive, and is not known from any other source (i.e., it is not cribbed from Ashbee, and does not appear in any surviving bookseller's catalogue, bibliography etc.)

Clowes, however, reproduces more than the just the title of this volume. From him, we learn that it was published in Sydney in twelve octavo sheets (192pp: xxiv, 168).

The text is characterised as follows by Clowes:

One of the few objectionable productions of the Australian press. Emily Duncan, a woman of some personal attractions, kept a house of ill-fame in Sydney, some years ago; and, after her retirement, wrote this life of herself her paramour, Robert Coles, contributing a preface, in which the authoress's charms are very minutely described.

Alfred Rose simplifies this characterisation as follows (Registrum Librorum Eroticorum (1936), 1.197 (no.2645), citing Bibliotheca Arcana 521): "An Australian work similar to 'Fanny Hill'.”

I have been unable to identify either the Sydney Madam Emily Duncan (active, I would guess, in the 1870s) or her paramour, Robert Coles. It would not be very surprising that both the names and the place of publication are fictitious. But it would be nice to examine the book itself for further clues, to identify either the printer, or Ms Duncan.

* !! I imagine there were citizens of Sydney who, in 1885, would have thought that there were a great many productions of the Australian press that were "objectionable." However, the only other item printed in Sydney in either Clowes's or Rose's bibliographies is the 1925, Fanfrolico Press edition of Lysistrata illustrated by Norman Lindsay (Registrum Librorum Eroticorum (1936), 1.204; no.2743).

Melbourne appears twice in Rose (but not in Clowes), once for W. J. Chidley's The Answer (1.64; no. 838) and once for Tales of the Villa Brigitte, translated from the French by M.A. Oxon (London [and] Melbourne: H. J. Vicar, Sons [and] Co., 1910), 2 vols (2.329; no. 4444)—but this is something to explore on another day.

An 1886 review of Bibliotheca Arcana

The rather harsh review of Bibliotheca Arcana seu Catalogus Librorum Penetralium (1885) below seems to have attracted no notice at all. This is not terribly surprising since this erotic bibliography has attracted little comment of any scope beyond its authorship (generally ascribed to Sir William Laird Clowes, see here).

The page-long review appeared in Book-lore: A Magazine Devoted to Old Time Literature, vol. 3 (January 1886): 53 (here). In this review, the reviewer complains that "the compilation"—"it is nothing better"—had been "put together without system or classification," that it "displays neither grasp of the subject, critical acumen, nor bibliographical treatment," and that it has "the appearance of cuttings from a bookseller’s catalogue" rather "than notices by a bibliographer."

The reviewer goes on to note "the influence of two much more important and thoroughly done bibliographies" on Bibliotheca Arcana. The bibliographies are not named, but those with a copy of the book being reviewed could follow the opaque references provided to identify these as two erotic bibliographies by Henry Spencer Ashbee.

In 1982, Patrick Kearney simply echoes these anonymous complaints, when he describes the Bibliotheca Arcana as "heavily cribbed" from Ashbee's erotic bibliographies, and that (an unspecified number of) entries had "been culled from unidentified sale catalogues" (A History of Erotic Literature (1982), 13).

In 2017, Sarah Bull repeated Kearney's observations (without citation) when she states that "The composition of Clowes's Bibliotheca Arcana … is so similar [to the works of Ashbee] that the bibliographer has often been accused of plagiarizing Ashbee's work" ("Reading, Writing, and Publishing an Obscene Canon: The Archival Logic of the Secret Museum, c. 1860–c. 1900," Book History, Vol. 20 (2017), 230 [emphasis added]).

In his Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English, 1800–1930 (1993), Peter Mendes included a "Checklist of Clandestine Catalogues, 1885–c. 1930." This checklist includes a catalogue from January 1899 by Charles Carrington that mirrors the title of Clowes's Bibliotheca Arcana:

To be kept under Lock-and-Key. Bibliotheca Arcana. Being a rough list of rare, curious and uncommon books, pamphlets, prints & engravings that have been Privately Printed, Prohibited by Law, Seized, Anathematized, Burnt or Bowdlerized; more particularly, those relating to the Mysteries of Human Affinities, or dealing with the Attractions and Aversions—Vices and Virtues—Loves and Longings—Hates and Failings—Passions and Peculiarities of Live, Moving, Men and Women—and throwing light upon the Psychology of Sex [Held British Library, Cup.364.g.48].

Bull describes the preface to this catalogue as "plagiarizing liberally" from Clowes's Bibliotheca Arcana (249), but does not say anything of the source of the entries.

All I can add regarding this last question—the non-Ashbee material in the Bibliotheca Arcana—is that at least one of the items cribbed from "unidentified sale catalogues" is not known to survive, is not known from any other source (i.e., it is not cribbed from Ashbee): I discuss this item in my post on "The Australian Fanny Hill" (here).

* * * * *

Bibliotheca Arcana seu Catalogus Librorum Penetralium: being brief notices of books that have been secretly printed, prohibited by law, seized, anathematized, burnt or Bowdlerized. By SPECULATOR MORUM. London: George Redway, MDCCCLXXXV. Small 4to., pp. xxii. 141 and xxv.

WE are always ready to hail with a cordial welcome every book on bibliography, of which the notices are at first-hand, done conscientiously, and de visu[*]. This seems to be the case with the Bibliotheca Arcana, although we must take exception to it on other grounds. The books noticed, the nature of which is sufficiently explained on the title-page, are of a kind which renders it desirable that they should not be made very generally known. Many hold that every book has a utility of some sort, nullus est liber tarn mains qui non exaliqua parte prosit[†]; others that all books, irrespective of their subjects or tendencies, should be catalogued. It is not for us to argue either point here, and as the Bibliotheca Arcana is an expensive publication, is issued, we believe, to subscribers only, and is well printed on excellent paper, its existence may for these reasons be condoned. But we fear it will be found of little service to the bibliophiles, for whom it is evidently destined: it is put together without system or classification; the entries are undigested, and have more the appearance of cuttings from a bookseller’s catalogue than notices by a bibliographer; neither are the works by the same author or the various editions of the same book brought together, but are dispersed in various articles, and spread over several pages; translations are served up as original works; books issued at different times with different titles are treated as distinct works; there are numerous errors which we cannot in this journal paint out. In fact, the compilation (it is nothing better) displays neither grasp of the subject, critical acumen, nor bibliographical treatment. “The entries,” we are told, “have been arranged (?) without any reference either to subjects or authors. The index which is appended will enable the student to classify for himself.” This is all very well, but it is not for the guest to arrange the entertainment to which he is invited.

The preface is the best part of the book. “It would be an interesting task,” writes Speculator Morum, “for an essayist to describe the progress and fortunes of the erotic in art and literature from the earliest times down to the present day, to show how eroticism was in some mysterious way at the root of all ancient religions; and to point out how, instead of being looked askance upon, it was actually favoured and patronized by priests, poets, sculptors, dramatists, and philosophers in the classic ages, which have handed down to us not only literature, but also pictures, statues, and gems, tinged with the most extreme eroticism, and yet truly lovely in their design and workmanship.” Interesting as such a task might be, we doubt whether the author is to be found, at any rate in England, likely to undertake it. We cannot but think that we trace, both in the preface and in the general idea and form of the book itself, the influence of two much more important and thoroughly done bibliographies of the same description of books, lately privately printed, and which are noted in arts. 6 and 7 of the Bibliotheca Arcana [§]. As in the Bibliographic des Ouvrages relatifs a I’Amour of Gay, many books have been introduced which are foreign to the scope of the work; so in Mr. Redway’s compilation there are several articles, among which we may instance Nos. 323, 330, 435, 437, 556, 595, of which we fail to see the raison d’être.

[* from sight]
[† "There is no book so bad that some good cannot be got out of it," a paraphrase of Pliny the Elder]
[§ i.e., Ashbee's Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877) and Centuria Librorum Absconditorum (1879); Catena Librorum Tacendorum was not published until 1885, and is not included in the Bibliotheca Arcana]

Tuesday 27 August 2019

William Hatchett and The Fall of Mortimer

Jina Moon was awarded her Ph.D. at the University of Tulsa in 2015, for her study “Domestic Violence in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction”; she came to my attention a few months ago for an essay she has written on William Hatchett: “‘Was Ever Treason so Unnatural?’: Phallic Mothers and Propaganda in Two Plays by William Hatchett.”

Moon’s essays opens: “William Hatchett’s The Fall of Mortimer was famously suppressed by Sir Robert Walpole’s government in 1731…”—which is a fine opening, except there is no evidence that The Fall of Mortimer was actually written by William Hatchett. The attribution was first made a century after the play was published, without evidence, and not obviously to William Hatchett, as I explained in my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood in 2004 (under De.1, De.4, De.5).

Moon only attempts to support her attribution with a footnote (393n1), not an in-text discussion. Her footnote states that “eighteenth-century historians and theatre scholars identified William Hatchett as its author”—naming Allardyce Nicoll as having made the attribution (actually he only reported the attribution, which seems to have been first made in 1834), Thomas Lockwood as having “acknowledged” it (in 1989) and Jennifer Airey—also of the University of Tulsa—as “confirming” it (2013).

All of these claims are either misleading or false (see below). It is not clear whether Moon misunderstood or intentionally misrepresented her sources, but her failure to identify the source and status of the attribution of The Fall of Mortimer to Hatchett—to either recognise or acknowledge that there is no primary source at all for it—undermines her argument and many (most?) of the claims she makes in her essay. Although many of her claims about Hatchett and the text are somewhat weak anyway, it is a shame that Moon undermined her own work at the outset, since she is certainly right that “critics have evinced almost no interest in Hatchett’s work” (384).

It is both surprising and disappointing (the usual combination) that New Theatre Quarterly’s referees did not pick up this rather fundamental flaw in Moon's argument. When I asked the editors about it they—at first—tried to ignore the question altogether, and then—when pressed—pretended that Moon had not, in fact, mischaracterised her sources at all.

Since there are so few essays on Hatchett, I think it is important to acknowledge that Moon's essay is based on an unsubstantiated claim (or, at least, a poorly substantiated one). But rather than write a formal essay arguing how Moon has mischaracterised her sources, I thought I'd simply transcribe here her footnote and the relevant sections of her sources, with a few brief notes, so the reader can judge for themselves.

Airey, ‘Was Ever Treason so Unnatural?’: 393n1: "In The Politics of Drama in Augustan England, John Loftis argues that the anonymity [of The Fall of Mortimer] was inevitable because it was ‘a dangerous play to acknowledge’ (p. 105). Likewise, its two printed versions in 1731 and 1763 did not have the author’s name. As a result, the authorship of The Fall of Mortimer remained obscure. Nonetheless, despite the anonymity, eighteenth-century historians and theatre scholars identified William Hatchett as its author. For example, in A History of English Drama 1660–1900, Allardyce Nicoll attributes The Fall of Mortimer to Hatchett, introducing a hand-list of plays (p. 371). In ‘William Hatchett, A Rehearsal of Kings (1737), and the Panton Street Puppet Show (1748)’, Thomas Lockwood also acknowledges Hatchett’s authorship of the play (p. 317). In ‘Staging Rape in the Age of Walpole: Sexual Violence and the Politics of Dramatic Adaptation in 1730s Britain’, Jennifer Airey also confirms his authorship of The Fall of Mortimer (p. 101)."

"Nicoll attributes" (nope, he avoids doing this)

Airey's citation is Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1660–1900, 3rd edn. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 2.371 (in the "a hand-list of plays"). There were three editions of Nicoll's Early eighteenth century drama: 1925, 1929, 1952, in all editions The Fall of Mortimer does not appear under Hatchett's name (in the 3rd ed. this is on 2.334), but—instead—appears under the heading "Unknown Authors" where Nicoll records that the play had been "Attributed to William Hatchett". If Nicoll accepted this attribution, or thought it was reliable, The Fall of Mortimer would appear under Hatchett's name.

"Lockwood acknowledges the authorship" (not really, he also hedges)

Lockwood, "William Hatchett, A Rehearsal of Kings (1737)": 316–17: "It was apparently Hatchet also who reupholstered the old play of King Edward the Third as The Fall of Mortimer"; 231n6 "As Hume has noted (Henry Fielding and the London Theatre, p.80 n), the attribution to Hatchett goes back only to Lowndes's Bibliographer’s Manual, rev. Henry G. Bohn, 6 vols. (London, 1857-64), 3.1619. See also Lance Bertelsen, "The Significance of the 1731 revisions to The Fall of Mortimer’, Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research, 2nd Ser., 2 (1987), 17–18. … If Hatchett did write The Fall of Mortimer then he would also have been the author of the pamphlet in its vindication, The History of Mortimer …". Note here "apparently," "only" and "If…then"—this is Lockwood hedging, though both of his sources are less cautious.

Hume, 80n86: "The adaptation was anonymous, Lowndes credits [William] Hatchett, plausibly, but without explanation"—citing the 1857-64 edition of Lowndes's Bibliographer’s Manual. (In fact, the attribution appears first in William Thomas Lowndes, The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature (London: William Pickering, 1834), 3.1302: "by — Hatchett.") Hume is admirably clear and concise (plausible, but no evidence), though he does not dwell on the identification of "— Hatchett" as William Hatchett.

Bertelsen, 17: "William Hatchett, the probable reviser of The Fall of Mortimer"; 17–18 "If, as seems likely, Hatchett did indeed transform King Edward the Third…" Note that, while Bertelsen suggests that the attribution is probable, he reminds the reader that would only make Hatchett the reviser of the play (a characterisation consistent with the "Advertisement" in the 3rd ed. of 1731), before attributing to Hatchett Remarks on an Historical Play call'd The Fall of Mortimer.

"Airey confirms his authorship" (no, she really doesn't)

Unfortunately for Moon, Airey’s “Staging Rape in the Age of Walpole” does no such thing; it simply mentions The Fall of Mortimer, in passing, in a list of nine plays, in the form "William Hatchett's The Fall of Mortimer" (96). There is no evidence offered by Airey for the attribution, or any work of reference cited in proximity to this list.

Airey was the only scholar mentioned by Moon who I was unfamiliar with, and so I was anxious to read her essay, which is woeful. I was not remotely surprised to discover that Airey had not "confirmed" the Hatchett attribution, that she had simply repeated the Hatchett attribution without evidence, since I already knew that Nicoll made no such attribution and that Lockwood's "acknowledgement" amounts to nothing when it comes to evidencing an attribution.

Sadly, I found what I expected, that Moon had either misunderstood or lied about Airey in an attempt, it seems, to obscure the fact that there is no primary evidence for this attribution. At all. That Moon does not once mention either Remarks on an Historical Play or The History of Mortimer indicates just how shollow her interest is in attribution questions or—I'd argue—the play itself.

* * * * *

Jina Moon, “‘Was Ever Treason so Unnatural?’: Phallic Mothers and Propaganda in Two Plays by William Hatchett,” which was published in New Theatre Quarterly, 34, No. 4 (November 2018): 383–94.

Jennifer Airey, “Staging Rape in the Age of Walpole: Sexual Violence and the Politics of Dramatic Adaptation in 1730s Britain,” in Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800, edited by A. Greenfield (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), 95–106.

Sunday 25 August 2019

More Female Spectators

A few years ago I mentioned (here) that "When I set out, without much premeditation, to collect Haywood taxonomically, I had not thought that I would end up with so many 'duplicates'." (My post was prompted by the arrival of my seventh set of the “Second” edition of The Female Spectator (1748).) While this was certainly true of most of Haywood's works—even at the start—there are two items I would have excluded from this blanket statement: the first, octavo, editions of both The Female Spectator and La Belle Assemblée. Today I am going to talk about the first of these.

I provided the reason I might have wanted duplicates of the first edition(s) of The Female Spectator in my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood (2004), 438:

It ought to be noted that to distinguish the different editions of each Book has proved to be a very difficult task … Since the bookbinder was instructed to ‘cancel [remove] every title except the general one’, few of the surviving sets contain any of the original part-titles. Since first, second and third printings are often so similar as to be almost indistinguishable except from their part-titles, and no ready method exists to identify the edition of books with cancelled [part] titles, only those sets with part-titles intact or with second edition general titles have been identified by cataloguers as containing reprinted Books. No library with these rare survivals has multiple copies of the part-published editions of The Female Spectator and so it has not been possible to compare different editions of each Book.

One of the consequences of the fact that "no single public or private library has approached completeness in gathering together the works of Haywood" (16), was that almost no library had more than a single copy of any of her works. (Spoiler alert: except mine.)



In the case of the first edition(s) of The Female Spectator, only the British Library and the Bodleian have more than a single set, and in both cases the second set is incomplete (i.e., L [94.c.12–15; 629.e.4, -v.1,4] and O [8vo Y 64–66 Jur, -v.4; G. Pamph. 1856 (14), bk.1 only]), and none of the 24 individual "Books" that make up The Female Spectator are reprints in either case.

As a consequence, when I was preparing my Bibliography, I had to compile entries for each Book based on a comparison of the Monash and Melbourne University mixed sets with a microfilm copy of the Harvard set (which has almost all of the part-titles for first edition Books) combined with with a handful of photocopies posted to me by the University of Kansas and the Riverside Library at the University of California (which both have most of the known part-titles for reprinted Books).

I concluded my headnote to The Female Spectator with a warning:

It is quite unlikely that every edition of every Book has been identified [here] and so it is not clear how many Books were reprinted. The fact that no copy is known to have survived with uncancelled part-titles for Books 10–24 and that no differences have been discovered among copies of these later Books in the few copies examined does not prove that no later Books were reprinted. It may be that reprints of the later Books have not survived uncancelled by mere chance and that the absence of any comprehensive Haywood collection has hindered the identification of differences that may exist among widely scattered copies of earlier Books.

Obviously, since "the absence of any comprehensive Haywood collection ha[d] hindered the identification of differences that may exist among widely scattered copies of earlier Books", one of the things I hoped to achieve by collecting Haywood taxonomically, was to improve the entry for the individual Books that make up the first, octavo, editions of The Female Spectator, by collecting multiple copies.



Fifteen years later, as you can see above, I now have four copies of the octavo editions: three complete sets (two of mixed issues; all with part-titles), of the "First" octavo edition, and one odd volume (the first volume only, no part titles) of the second octavo edition.

As a result of my collecting, I now have copies of 27 of the 34 individual Books that I described in 2004, plus four more that I have since identified (Ab.60.0.1A, Ab.60.0.5A, Ab.60.0.11A, Ab.60.0.32A). I also have part-titles for 26 of these 38 entries. Combining my own copies with those I have local access to, there are now only three Books inaccessible to me: Ab.60.0.15, Ab.60.0.17, Ab.60.0.19, all only known to exist in the Riverside Library copy.

It is not clear whether the high price of my latest copy—the “Cornwell House” set, sold at the Martin Orskey sale in June—is a factor of it having come up at a prominent London auction, or the increased interest in Haywood. Although it is contrary to my interest for it to be the latter, it would be nice to think that one of Haywood's most important works was beginning to be more highly valued. If so, my chances of adding any further copies to my collection are very low. This Cornwell House set cost me almost fifteen times as much as either of the two previous sets, an extravagance I couldn't afford to repeat.

However, now that I have four copies of the first volume it is easy to show the advantage of having multiple copies of the same work. Note that, in the photo below, each copy is open to the last page of Book 1, and that the facing page is either the part title for Book 2, or the first page of text for Book 2. There are three editions of Book 1, all of which are illustrated here.



The two copies on the left are identical (Book 1 ends on page 68, both have the same tailpiece). These are both copies of Ab.60.0.1. While both copies of Book 1 on the right end, instead, on page 70, the settings are different from each other (the final line is longer bottom right), and a different tailpiece is used on each. The top one is Ab.60.0.1A, the bottom Ab.60.0.2.

As the above image suggests, it is almost impossible to overstate how valuable to be able to compare multiple copies in this way. Which is why it is so important for serious research libraries to collect authors in depth. Although a number of research libraries have been collecting eighteenth-century women writers with some enthusiasm, they appear to be collecting for breadth, not depth—as is indicated by the fact that it is still the case that there is no institutional library with even two full sets of Haywood's Female Spectator.

Wednesday 21 August 2019

Teaching Eliza Haywood

At some point in the Northern Winter of 2020 (i.e., early 2020, since the Northern Winter runs from ca. December 2019 to March 2020), the Modern Language Association of America will publish Approaches to Teaching the Works of Eliza Haywood, with contributions from twenty-five scholars, myself included.



Among the broad range of Haywood scholars included in this volume, are those who have done so much to make her work available in edited form: Paula R. Backscheider (Selected Fiction and Drama of Eliza Haywood), Catherine Ingrassia (Anti-Pamela), Tiffany Potter (The Masqueraders and The Surprize), and Earla Wilputte (The Adventures of Eovaai, Three Novellas). Also included are scholars who have made a name for themselves with book-length studies, which have had a significant impact on Haywood studies: Ros Ballaster (Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740), Kathryn R. King (A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood), and Kirsten T. Saxton (The Passionate Fictions of Eliza Haywood).

David Oakleaf—another significant name in Haywood studies—comments that “The pedagogical range and resourcefulness of this volume is impressive. Any teacher of Haywood will benefit from a thorough engagement with the material presented.” I am certainly looking forward to reading the other contrutions, whichI have not yet seen.

* * * * *

My own essay ("Haywood’s Works: Availability, Editing, and Issues of Bibliography") will be in the first section, titled “Materials,” which is intended to identify "high-quality editions, reliable biographical sources, and useful background information." Although I primarily intended my essay to be a history of the availability of Haywood's works—in original editions, various micro-format duplicates, and printed editions, whether in facsimilie or edited form—what I ended up focussing on is the extent to which the growth and focus of Haywood scholarship has depended on the availability of Haywood's works in edited form.

Obviously, for works to be studied at all, they need to be available to a scholar; but for works to be widely studied, they really need to be widely available in edited form. Certainly, for the most part, those works by Haywood which have been the most frequently edited are also the ones that are most frequently discussed in scholarship. However, the correlation is imperfect, suggesting a bias among Haywood scholars for Haywood’s prose fiction and periodicals over her drama, nonfiction, and Haywood's many translations.

What my survey suggested to me is that convenient edited editions of Idalia and The Fatal Secret, for instance, are certainly called for, and would probably encourage more studies of those works, but the developing critical interest in Haywood’s periodicals and longer works of original prose fiction suggest that editions of The Young Lady or The Fortunate Foundlings would do more to expand the range of Haywood scholarship. Publishers take heed!