A French Review of Haywood's Letter from Henry Goring

Eliza Haywood's Ab.66 A Letter from H---- G----g Esq; One of the Gentlemen of the Bed-chamber to the Young Chevalier … To a Particular Friend (1749) was translated as Lettre de H.... G....g Ecuyer, un des Gentilshommes de la Chambre du jeune Chevalier de S. George … qui l'ait accompagne d'Avignon … Traduite de l'Anglois par M. l'Abbe *** (1756).

This French translation was reviewed (in French) in L'Année littéraire, 7 (1756): 38–43, which is online here (as previously noted on this blog), but also here. Below is my transcription and translation (via Google Translate). If anyone cares to improve on either transcription or translation please let me know.

* * * * *

Lettre sur le Prétendant.

  L'histoire des disgraces du Prince Edouard a fait autrefois, Monsieur, le sujet d'une de mes Lettres *. Les voyages de ce Prince depuis son départ d'Avignon jusqu'à son arrivée en Lithuanie font la matière d'une brochure in-12 qui se vend chez Prault, Quai de Conti, à la descente du Pont-Neuf. Elle est intitulée: Lettre de H..... G.... G.... Ecuyer, un des Gentilshommes de la Chambre du jeune Chevalier de Saint George, et la seule personne de sa Cour qui l'ait accompagné d'Avignon dans son voyage en Allemagne et autres lieux: contenant plusieurs aventures touchantes et remarquables qui sont arrivées à ce Prince pendant le cours de son voyagé secret: à un ami particulier; traduite de l'Anglois par M. l'Abbé ***.
  On raconte dans cette Lettre vraie ou prétendue qu'un gentilhomme, qui se faisoit appeller le Chevalier de la Luze, étant arrivé à Avignon, eut avec le Prince des conférences secrettes, et partit peu de jours après. Le Prince ne tarda pas à le suivre, accompagné seulement d'un gentilhomme, d'un valet de chambre et de deux domestiques. Pour n'être point connu, il se fit appeller le Comte d'Espoir, et il prit sa route par Lyon. Il descendit dans un village à deux lieues plus loin que cette ville; il s'enferma dans une chambre, passa la nuit à écrire des lettres, et le lendemain il renvoya tout son monde excepté son gentilhomme. L'hôte chez lequel il logeoit lui trouva d'autres domestiques. Le Prince continua sa route par Dijon et par Nancy, et il arriva à Strasbourg où le Chevalier de la Luze lui avoit fait préparer un logement. Quelques jours après le feu prit pendant la nuit dans une maison qui étoit vis à-vis de son appartement. Il fut bientôt éveillé par le bruit; il s'habilla et sortit pour aller au secours. Ses gens voulurent le retenir: Eh quoi, s'écria-t-il, sommes nous donc nés pour avoir soin seulement de nous mêmes? Et aussi-tôt il vole à l'endroit où le feu faisoit le plus de ravage. L'objet qui le frappe d'abord est une jeune femme qui avoit la moitié du corps passé hors de la fenêtre, et qui crioit au secours parce qu'elle étoit dans une chambre où le feu avoit pris de toutes parts. Le Prince lui dit de se jetter en bas, et qu'il la recevroit dans ses bras. Il la reçut en effet sans qu'elle se fît aucun mal; et comme elle étoit en chemise, dit l'auteur, il l'emporta chez lui, la mit dans son lit, l'enveloppa dans ses couvertures pour empêcher qu'elle ne s'enrhumât. La crainte du danger avoit fait perdre connoissance à cette jeune et aimable personne, de sorte que pendant tout ce temps elle sut totalement insensible au soin qu'il prenoit d'elle. Le Prince de son' côté, loin de profiter de l'état où elle se troavoit, ne s'occupoit qu'à la saire revenir de son évanouissement. Quand elle eut repris ses sens, il la, recommanda à la maîtresse du logis, et retourna au feu qui duroit toujours. Le lendemain il dîna avec la jeune Demoiselle, le Chevalier de lu Luze, et son gentilhomme. Le repas sut gai, la conversation tendre et galante; et la Demoiselle, pénétrée de reconnoissance et frappée des vertus et de la bonne mine de son libérateur, se troubla, quitta la table, et alla prendre l'air un moment à la fenêtre. Le Prince la suivit et lui parla; la Luze et son gentilhomme voulurent le laisser seul avec elle. Il les retint auprès de lui dans la crainte qu'un tête à tête ne lui fît perdre le prix de son bienfait. Il se sépara de cette charmante personne, comme Aléxandre qui voyant la beauté des filles de Darius se retira sur le champ de leur présence.
  Tandis que le Prince Edouard étoit à Avignon, un Anglois, qui se disoit gentilhomme, étoit venu lui demander un emploi auprès de fa personne. Comme ìl n'y en avoit point de vacant, le Prince lui donna quelque argent, et lui permit de venir manger dans son palais. On le soupçonna bientôt d'être un imposteur et un espion. On communiqua ces soupçons au Prince: cela pourroit bien être, répondit-il; mais nous n'en sommes pas certains; nous sçavons seulement qu'il est dans le besoin; et j'aimerois mieux secourir cent ennemis que de refuser à un ami, sur un simple soupçon, le peu de secours que je puis lui donner. Cet homme avoit disparu quelque temps avant le départ du Prince; on sut fort étonné de le retrouver à Strasbourg dans l'hôtellerie où logeoit son Altesse Royale. Le jout même le Prince quitta Strasbourg, passa le Rhin, et continua sa route par Wirtzbourg. A quelque distance de cette ville, cinq hommes bien montés, masqués et armés, déchargèrent leurs pistolets tous à la fois et sans dire mot dans la chaise où étoit le Prince. Aucune des balles ne le blessa; il sauta de sa chaise, sit feu à son tour contre les assassins, en tua deux, et mit les autres en suite. Un des morts écoit le traître à qui son Alteste Royale avoit donné de l'argent à Avignon.
  Le Prince partit pour Léipsick, et le Chevalier de la Luze, après avoir exécuté sa commission en le conduisant en une certaine Cour d'Allemagne où il demeura dix jours, prit congé de lui. Edouard, accompagné seulement de son gentilhomme et de deux domestiques, passa dans différens Etats dont les Souverains n'étoient pas tous également disposés en sa faveur. A son arrivée en Lithuanie il reçut la visite d'une personne très-illustre qui lui est intimement attachée. Il eut avec elle plusieurs entrevues secrettes dans un château appartenant à la maison de Wizinski. Bien des gens, dit l'auteur, ont assûré que ce Prince étoit marié; mais rien n'est plus faux; il est vrai, ajoûte-t-il, qu'il aime une Princesse et qu'il en est aimé, et que, si ses affaires prennent une face plus favorable, cette union ne tardera pas à se faire; mais dans la position où il est actuellement il ne veut point se marier, pour ne pas devenir père, comme il dit lui-même, de mendians Royaux. Voilà, Monsieur, jusqu'où l'auteur de cette Lettre a conduit son héros. Il ne nous apprend ni ce qu'il devient, ni quel est le but de son voyage. Cette brochure est d'ailleurs très-mal écrite.

*Voyez l'Année Littéraire 1756, Tome II page 289.

Letter about the Pretender.

  The story of Prince Edward's misfortunes was once, Sir, the subject of one of my letters.* The travels of this Prince from his departure from Avignon to his arrival in Lithuania form the subject of a small octavo pamphlet sold at Prault's, Quai de Conti, near the Pont-Neuf. It is entitled: Letter from H..... G.... G.... Esquire, one of the Gentlemen of the Chamber to the young Chevalier de Saint George, and the only person of his Court who accompanied him from Avignon on his journey to Germany and other places: containing several touching and remarkable adventures that befell this Prince during the course of his secret journey: to a special friend; translated from the English by Abbot ***.
  This letter, true or purported, recounts that a gentleman calling himself the Chevalier de la Luze arrived in Avignon, held secret conferences with the Prince, and departed a few days later. The Prince soon followed him, accompanied only by a gentleman, a valet, and two servants. To remain anonymous, he called himself the Count d'Espoir and made his way through Lyon. He stopped in a village two leagues beyond the city, shut himself in a room, spent the night writing letters, and the next day dismissed everyone except his gentleman. The innkeeper where he stayed found him other servants. The Prince continued his journey via Dijon and Nancy, arriving in Strasbourg where the Chevalier de la Luze had arranged lodgings for him. A few days later, a fire broke out during the night in a house opposite his apartment. He was soon awakened by the noise; he dressed and went out to help. His servants tried to stop him: "What!" he cried, "were we born to only take care of ourselves?" And immediately he flew to the place where the fire was raging the most. The first thing that struck him was a young woman who had half her body hanging out of a window, crying for help because she was in a room that was ablaze on all sides. The Prince told her to throw herself down, and that he would catch her in his arms. He did indeed catch her without her being harmed; And as she was in her shift, the author says, he took her home, put her in his bed, and wrapped her in his blankets to prevent her from catching a cold. The fear of danger had caused this young and charming person to lose consciousness, so that during all this time she remained completely unmoved by his care for her. The Prince, for his part, far from taking advantage of her condition, was only concerned with helping her recover from her faint. When she had regained her senses, he commended her to the lady of the house and returned to the fire, which was still burning. The next day he dined with the young lady, the Chevalier de Luze, and his gentleman. The meal was cheerful, the conversation tender and gallant; And the young lady, filled with gratitude and struck by the virtues and handsome appearance of her liberator, became flustered, left the table, and went to the window for a moment to get some fresh air. The Prince followed her and spoke to her; Luze and her gentleman wished to leave him alone with her. He kept them with him, fearing that a private conversation might cause him to lose the reward of his kindness. He parted from this charming woman, like Alexander who, upon seeing the beauty of Darius's daughters, withdrew immediately from their presence.
  While Prince Edward was in Avignon, an Englishman, who called himself a gentleman, came to ask him for a position in his household. As there was no vacancy, the Prince gave him some money and allowed him to dine in his palace. He was soon suspected of being an imposter and a spy. These suspicions were communicated to the Prince: "That could well be true," he replied, "but we are not certain; we only know that he is in need; and I would rather help a hundred enemies than refuse a friend, on mere suspicion, the little help I can give him." This man had disappeared some time before the Prince's departure; everyone was quite astonished to find him in Strasbourg at the inn where His Royal Highness was staying. That very day, the Prince left Strasbourg, crossed the Rhine, and continued his journey via Wirtzburg. Some distance from this city, five well-mounted, masked, and armed men discharged their pistols all at once and without a word into the chair where the Prince was sitting. None of the bullets wounded him; he jumped from his chair, returned fire on the assassins, killed two, and put the others to death. One of the dead receives the traitor to whom His Royal Highness had given money in Avignon.
  The Prince departed for Leipzig, and the Chevalier de la Luze, after carrying out his mission by escorting him to a certain German court where he remained for ten days, took his leave. Edward, accompanied only by his gentleman-in-waiting and two servants, traveled through various states whose sovereigns were not all equally well-disposed towards him. Upon his arrival in Lithuania, he received a visit from a very illustrious person to whom he was intimately attached. He had several secret meetings with her in a castle belonging to the House of Wizinski. Many people, the author says, have asserted that this Prince was married; but nothing could be further from the truth; it is true, he adds, that he loves a Princess and is loved in return, and that, if his affairs take a more favorable turn, this union will soon take place. But in his current situation, he refuses to marry, so as not to become, as he himself says, a father of royal beggars. There you have it, sir, how far the author of this letter has taken his hero. He tells us neither what becomes of him, nor the purpose of his journey. Moreover, this pamphlet is very poorly written.

*See Année Littéraire 1756, Volume 2, page 289.

For for a complete list of reviews of Eliza Haywood's works—including works in translation, such as this—see here.

Another French Review of The Rash Resolve

In 2023, I located this, a second, very short review of Emanuella (An 9), the 1801 French translation of Haywood’s The Rash Resolve (1724).

This review appeared in Nouvelle bibliothèque des romans [the New Library of Novels], Vol. 36 (An 3 [1800]): 187 (online here and here), in the section for "Des Romans qui ont paru dans le premier trimester de la troisième année de la Bibliothèque des Romans [Novels that were published in the first quarter of the third year of the Bibliothèque des Romans].

* * * * *

EMANUELLA, ou la Découverte prématurée, par madame Elise Haywood; 1 vol. avec figures, traduit de l'anglais. Paris chez Ouvrier, libraire, rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, no. 41.

  Séduite par un jeune homme, volée par son amie, Emanuella est reçue par une pauvre femme elle accouche d'un fils, reconnaît son amant qui est devenu l'époux d'une autre, et meurt de chagrin: style agréable, et de l'intérêt.

[EMANUELLA, or the Premature Discovery, by Mrs. Eliza Haywood; 1 vol. with illustrations, translated from English. Paris, at Ouvrier, bookseller, rue Saint-André-des-Arcs, no. 41

Seduced by a young man, robbed by her friend, Emanuella is taken in by a poor woman, she gives birth to a son, recognizes her lover who has become the husband of another, and dies of grief: a pleasant style, and of interest.]

For for a complete list of reviews of Eliza Haywood's works—including works in translation, such as this—see here.

A German Review of Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy

Haywood's The History of Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy (1753) was translated into German as Die Schule des Ehestandes, oder die Geschichte Herrn Jacob Jessamy und Miß Jenny Jessamys (1777).

A short review of this edition appeared in Allgemeines Verzeichniß neuer Bücher, mit kurzen Anmerkungen nebst einem gelehrten Anzeiger, Auf das Jahr 1777 [i.e., General list of new books, with brief notes and a scholarly review, for the year 1777].

I missed this review when I was researching my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood in 2004, but I stumbled upon it on Google Books in 2022, and it has been in my backlog of posts since then. Below is my transcription and translation (via Google Translate). If anyone cares to improve on either transcription or translation please let me know.

Allgemeines Verzeichniß neuer Bücher, vol. 2, no. 11 (November 1777): 838 (No. 1695) (here and here):

1695. Die Schule des Ehestandes, oder die Geschichte Herrn Jacob Jessamy und Miß Jenny Jessamys, von dem Verfasser der Geschichte der Elisabeth Thougthleß. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt. Drey Theile. Lüneburg, bey Joh. Friedr. Wilhelm Semcke, 1777. 2 Alphab[ete]. 1¼ Bogen in 8. I thlr. 4gr.

So sehe auch Deutschland von theils eignen, theils fremben Romanen wimmelt, so zeichnen sich doch diejenigen, die aus dem Englischen übergetragen werden, immer noch am meisten aus. Der gegenwärtige, dessen Verfasser sich schon durch die Geschichte der Elisabeth Thoughtleß bekannt gemacht hat, enthalt zwar nichts Außerordentliches, es geht alles nach der gewöhnlichen Art, aber demohnerachtet ift er nicht übel geschrieben, und läßt sich ganz wohl lesen.

[1695. The School of Marriage, or the Story of Mr. Jacob Jessamy and Miss Jenny Jessamy, by the author of the History of Elizabeth Thoughtless. Translated from the English. Three parts. Lüneburg, published by Joh. Friedr. Wilhelm Semcke, 1777. 2 alphabets [plus] 1¼ gatherings in 8vo [i.e., 47¼ signed 8vo gatherings]. 1 thaler, 4 groschen.

Although Germany teems with novels, some native and some foreign, those translated from English are still the ones that stand out the most. The present work, whose author is already known for The History of Elizabeth Thoughtless, contains nothing extraordinary; it all proceeds in the usual manner. Nevertheless, it is not badly written and is quite easy to read.]

For for a complete list of reviews of Eliza Haywood's works—including works in translation, such as this—see here.

Ye Foolish Book Collector

Above and below are four versions of an image I generated using Google's free AI tool—i.e., via the Google browser. It used Nano Bannana to generate the images. My initial prompt was "Create an image in the style of Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Dance of Death series, for the type of book collector depicted in Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff."

I refined the image by asking it to remove the top banner; then "[1] Remove the fools cap from the skeleton reaching for the book; [2] add a simple constellation symbol to the blank pages on book at bottom right (above the banner), such as those found in Hygini, Poeticon Astronomicon"

Of the four images, I like the most the second one above, and this last one below—which is closest to what I had in mind.

Although I was delighted with the images, I was most impressed by the persistence (?)—how well Nano Bannana maintained the integrity of the original image, while modifying small details. This is a huge improvement on what image generators could do only twelve months ago.

OCR Redux

In my 2011 essay on the difficulties of searching OCR text-bases like ECCO ("'The New Machine': Discovering the Limits of ECCO; here), I gave, as an example, the opening sentence of Haywood's Female Spectator as rendered by Google Books and the Internet Archive. The two OCR-captured texts averaged over 150 typos per 2000 characters, a high enough error rate to render parts of the text completely unintelligible.

(I actually first did this test in 2004, at which point I encountered 33 errors in a passage 432 characters in length in a passage from Ab.60.7 The Female Spectator, 5th ed. (1755). I.e., OCR messed up 1 in 13 characters, nixing twenty words. The result didn't change between my first attempt at this and when I sat down to write my article, so this is the result I reported in 2011.)

While the Google Books passage had 33 errors among 432 characters, the Internet Archive had 35 in 430, allowing for differences in punctuation of the originals. The total of 68 errors among 862 characters equates to 157 typos per 2,000 characters. Here is the Google Books:

T is very much, by the choice we make of fubjects for our entertainment, that theiefined tall*' diftiuguifhes itfelt" from the vulgar and more grofs
: reading it univerfaily allowed to be one of the mofr. improving, as well at agreeable amufemerits; but then to render it fo,. one fhould, among the number of books which ar« perpetually ifluing from the prefs, endeavour to lingle out fuch as promife to be moft conducive to tho(e ends.

Since 2011, I have occasionally revisited this crude OCR test, to see how much OCR has improved. In January 2020, the same Google Books passage had only ten errors, or approximately 1 in every 43 characters—a significant improvement over 2011. Not only had the error rate for individual characters reduced by two-thirds, only three words contained errors compared to the total of twenty in 2011. Here is the 2011 text:

T is very much, by the choic* we make of subjects for our entertainment, that the icrlned tail*' distinguishes itself from the vulgar and more gross : reading it universally allowed to be one of the most improving, as well as agreeable amusements ; but then to render it so,, one should, among the number of books which art perpetually issuing from the press, endeavour to single out such as promise to be most conducive to those ends.

The error rate in May 2026 is, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, even lower. The same passage in two different editions (there are more editions of The Female Spectator online now than there were in 2011 or 2020) is only seven errors, six of which are long esses. Here is Ab.60.5 The Female Spectator, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (1748) here

T is very much, by the choice we make of fubjects for our entertainment, that the refined taste distinguishes itself from the vulgar and more gross: Reading is universally allowed to be one of the most improving, as well as agreeable amusements; but then to render it so, one should, among the number of Books which are perpetually iffuing from the prefs, endeavour to fingle out such as promife to be moft conducive to those ends.

Ab.60.7 The Female Spectator, 5th ed., vol. 1 (1755) here has exactly the same error rate, but the set of long esses misrendedred differs slightly. Intriguingly, a later edition, with what I took to be generally clearer type, has a lower error rate but more nixed words. Ab.60.9 The Female Spectator, 7th ed., vol. 1 (1771) being:

XCXX59XT is very much by the choice we make of subjects for our entertainI ment, that the refined taste diftin#guishes itself from the vulgar and more gross. Reading is universally allowed to be one of the most improving as well as agreeable ametements; but then to render it so, one should, among the number of books which are perpetually ifluing from the press, endeavour to fingle out such as promise to be most conducive to those ends.

The worst of the bunch is a copy of the 1775 pirate edition on the Internet Archive, having 33 errors—almost unchanged since 2011—only some being long esses: Ab.60.10b The Female Spectator, vol. 1 (Glasgow, 1775) here

IT is very much- by the choice we make of." fubjr&s for our entertainment, that the refined t:ut: uifimguilhes itfclf from the vulgar and more'grofs. Reading is univerfally allowed" to be one of the molt improving as well as agreeable amutements; but. then to render it fo, one fhould, among the number of books which are perpetually iffuing from the prefs, endeavour to finglc out fuch as promife to be moll conducive to thofe ends.

My conclusion from the above is that the Internet Archive has some work to do and that the Captcha / Turing test should probably be based on the ability to "diftinguish," or "fingle" out "fuch" words as distinguish, single out and such.

George Frisbie Whicher, 1889–1954, a bio-bibliography

George Frisbie Whicher, whose Columbia University thesis on Eliza Haywood was foundational to Haywood studies (i.e., The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood (1915)), has long been an enigma to me. Although his Columbia thesis was so important to Haywood studies, it seems that he never revisited the subject. At all. In forty-one years of academic life. In the circumstances, a meme something like this seems appropriate:

I have made multiple attempts in the past to peer into Whicher’s life, but never got very far. My most recent attempt was in January of 2018. Improvements in AI have vastly simplified this task, as has Anna’s Archive, so I have finally finished the following brief biography and bibliography.

* * * * *

George Frisbie Whicher (1889–1954) was the son of Lillian Hope and George Meason Whicher (1860–1937), a noted classics professor and poet. GMW seems to have been (appropriately) peripatetic: moving from Hastings College, Nebraska (1883–88), to Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn Heights, New York (1892–1900), then to Hunter College, Manhattan, New York (ca. 1900–1924), and finally—after GFW completed his own studies—to the Classical School in Rome (1921).

George Frisbie Whicher received his B.A. in 1910 from Amherst College, in Massachusetts, where he taught from 1915 to 1954, having received his PhD from Columbia in 1913, and having been an instructor in English at the University of Illinois from 1913 to 1915. As noted, his Columbia thesis was foundational to Haywood studies, but his most influential work may have been This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson (1938), which is credited with establishing Dickinson as a major figure in American literature. Whicher’s other notable works include: The Goliard Poets (1949), a collection of translations of medieval Latin songs and satires, Walden Revisited (1945), a centennial tribute to Henry David Thoreau, and Poetry and Civilization (1955); a posthumously published collection of his essays, edited by his wife. It is this collection which provides the basis of the bibliography below.

Whicher was married to Professor Harriet Fox Whicher (1890–1966) of Mount Holyoke. Born Harriet Fox, she earned her Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College and went on to have a distinguished academic career as a Professor of English in the English Department at Mount Holyoke. It seems that George and Harriet were close friends of the novelist Willa Cather (1873–1947).

The son of George and Harriet, Stephen Emerson Whicher (1915–61) was an influential American literary critic, biographer, and professor, best known as one of the leading scholars on Ralph Waldo Emerson. SEW earned degrees from Amherst College and Harvard University. He taught at Swarthmore College for a decade (1947–57) before becoming a Professor of English at Cornell University in 1957. His tenure there was short; SEW committed suicide at the age of 46—having been "upset by the prospect of continued world tension" (according to the NYT article, here)—leaving behind his mother Harriet, "his wife, Elizabeth, and four children, Susan, Nancy, Stephen and John." It is probably relevant that SEW served in the Navy during WW2 and received two combat stars during his service, so it is certainly possible he had something like PTSD.

An obituary for GWF: James Woodress and Robert P. Falk. "In Memoriam: George Frisbie Whicher, 1889-1954." American Literature, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1954): 255–56, starts: "The American Literature Group lost one of its most distinguished members when George Frisbie Whicher of Amherst College died on March 7. Few men have brought more honor to their profession through their lives and their writings than George Whicher did in his forty-one years of academic life."

* * * * *

A Bibliography of the works of George Frisbie Whicher

Books [5]
—The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 1915).
—This Was a Poet: A Critical Biography of Emily Dickinson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938).
—Alas, All's Vanity, or, A Leaf from the First American Edition of Several Poems by Anne Bradstreet (New York: Collectors' Bookshop, 1942). ¶ a biblioclastic "leaf book"; contains a leaf from Anne Bradstreet's Several Poems compiled with great variety of wit and learning, full of delight (Boston, 1678) [ESTC: R22624; Wing B4166].
—Walden Revisited: A Centennial Tribute to Henry David Thoreau (Chicago: Packard and Co., 1945).
—Mornings at 8:50: Brief Evocations of the Past for a College Audience (Northampton, MA: The Hampshire Bookshop, 1950).

Works edited, with Introductions [8]
—George Borrow, Lavengro, ed. George F. Whicher (New York: Macmillan, 1927).
—W. G. Hammond, Remembrance of Amherst, ed. George F. Whicher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946).
—Henry D. Thoreau, Walden and Selected Essays, Intro. by George F. Whicher (Chicago: Packard and Co., 1947).
—Horace, Selected Poems of Horace (New York: D. Van Nostrand Co. Inc., 1947).
—The Transcendentalist Revolt against Materialism, ed. George F. Whicher (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1949). Problems in American Civilization Series.
—Poetry of the New England Renaissance, 1790-1890, ed. and Intro. George F. Whicher (New York: Rinehart and Company, 1950).
—Virgil, Translated into English Verse by John Dryden, Intro. George F. Whicher, ill. Bruno Bramanti (New York: The Heritage Press, 1953). NEW
—William Jennings Bryan and the Campaign of 1896, ed. George F. Whicher (Boston, 1953). Problems in American Civilization Series.

Translations [2]
—On the Tibur Road: A Freshman's Horace. With George Meason Whicher (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1911).
—The Goliard Poets: Medieval Songs and Satires, with verse Translations by George F. Whicher (New York: New Directions, 1949).

Contributions [22]
—"Early Essayists" and "Minor Humorists" in The Cambridge History of American Literature, ed. William Peterfield Trent et al. (New York, 1917–21).
—[Seventeen articles] in Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (New York, 1943).
—"Chapter 34: Literature and Conflict." in The Literature of the American People, ed. Arthur Hobson Quinn (New York, 1951).
—"Part IV: The Twentieth Century." in A Literary History of the United States, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al. (New York, 1948).
—"Introduction," in Publius Virgilius Maro, The Georgics, trs. Jolın Dryden. With an Introduction by George F. Whicher and Illustrations by Bruno Bramanti (Verona, Italy, 1952; rpt. New York, 1953).

Articles, poems, and reviews for various periodicals [not enumerated; I will add these as I find them]
—"The Present Status of the Bibliography of English Prose Fiction between 1660 and 1800" PMLA, Vol. 36, Appendix (1921), pp. c-cvi.
¶ This essay "rehearse[s] the tale of existing bibliographies of fiction, both published [Charlotte E. Morgan (1911), Arundell Esdaile (1912)] and unpublished [Chester N. Greenough, John M. Clapp]." In it, Whicher notes that "Upon his retirement from teaching a few years ago, Mr. Clapp bequeathed his [mauscript bibliography of 18C fiction] cards to me. I have as yet done nothing to improve my inheritance" (civ) and that "In 1913 I had occasion to go through the files of three newspapers in the Burney Collection from 1720 to 1730, noting all titles of fiction with the date of the first 'This day published' advertisement." (cv) I discuss Whicher's essay and the manuscript collections he mentions in my post "Knitting for Bibliographers, by Professor Greenough" (here).
—"Shakespeare for America" [reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, Boston (June 1931).
—"Notes on a Wordsworth Collection," The Colophon, n.s. Vol. 11 (Summer 1937): 367-80. NEW
¶ In this essay, Whicher seriously questions the authenticity of what became known as the 'Wise cancel' in Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, concluding that 'These considerations are not direct evidence that the cancel leaf in question is spurious. Only an examination of paper and type can determine that. But they are sufficient to cast grave doubts on its authenticity. Mr. Wise's account of the normal make-up of both issues of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads is regrettably far from accurate" (373).

[2026.05.13 UPDATE: added another work introduced by GFW; publisher names; GFW roles; and another item under Articles]

Gerald Dillon, A Perfect Library, 1936

Gerald Dillon (1897–[after 1952]), the Irish-Australian freelance journalist who, in 1934, wrote an article on Haywood's Female Spectator for the Australian Woman’s Mirror (see my post on this here), also wrote an article on the "perfect library"—by which he meant, the perfect public library. In a 2021 post on Dillon's journalism (here), I rashly stated that I would "soon" post that essay. Five years later is a little late for "soon"; but, here we are.

While I don't agree with all of Dillon's sentiments (and I explicitly disavow either keeping volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary on the floor, or resting your weary feet on them), it is an amusing fantasy—especially in light of recent moves to strip libraries of books, and convert them into wayfaring stops / coffee lounges.

[Gerald Dillon, "A Perfect Library," The Bulletin, vol. 57, no. 2593 (16 September 1936): 2b–c [occupying one and a half a columns of "The Red Page"—and appearing in the same issue as the first "10-page Instalment of 'All That Swagger'" by Miles Franklin] (here)]

* * * * *

A Perfect Library

I read the other day of a lady, a potential frequenter of public libraries, who was actually too fearful to enter any of them without introduction, without guidance.
  I can well imagine her trying to summon up courage to enter one of the tomb-like buildings in which we harbor public books. Of course she would never get in. The whole external atmosphere is too stupendously chilling. I feel quite certain that hundreds of citizens often make pilgrimage to these ghastly-looking public libraries: and, of course, they never get any farther than the threshold— simply because these libraries do not look like places in which one could read.
  I rejoiced, to the limits of rejoicing, the other day when there came into one of these places a smallish boy who was part of a family—"looking round." I suppose books, even in a library, look just the same to a smallish boy as books anywhere else. On the outside, at any rate. So this smallish boy very intelligently essayed to have a look inside one of the books. He approached the vast shelves, took out a book, and was returning to a table to read it when he was intercepted by an attendant, who whispered, with bated breath, that it was against the rules to take books from the shelves. Then she pointed to a notice which read:—

Please Do Not Touch the Books.

  I never heard what the smallish boy said in reply. Doubtless he thought, reminiscently, of the zoo:

Please Do Not Make Faces at the Triantiwantigon,

and probably he accounted for this eccentricity at the library by deciding that maybe at feeding-time he would be allowed to look at the books to see what they contained. But I should love to know what that smallish boy really thought of our absurd adult world!
  I have often dreamed about the perfect public library, which, in the first place, always has a notice like this above the door:

PUBLIC BOOK HOUSE.
COME RIGHT INSIDE—NO CHARGE.
YOU MAY SLEEP IF YOU WISH, BUT WE WOULD RATHER NOT.
HERE YOU CAN CONTRACT LIFELONG PARTNERSHIPS.
THE HELPERS WILL INTRODUCE YOU.
THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE THERE FOR.

  The book attendants in this perfect public library welcome you at the entrance. In secluded nooks they seek out the lonelier patrons—of course we allow conversation in the perfect public library, because we are all so tremendously buoyant, with, the good fare provided.
  Nothing is inaccessible. The place is warm in winter and cool in summer. There are most delightful balconies on which you can sit out and read. You can get meals there too—at very reduced rates, of course. All the pens provided can be written with, and the ink is kept entirely separate from the water with which they scrub the floors. The library never shuts. You can sit there all night reading if you wish. The walls are hung with the most delightful pictures, for the perfect public library is also the perfect art gallery and the perfect museum rolled into one, but the museum atmosphere has been done away with. They have also done away with the gaol atmosphere and the public-institution atmosphere. In fact, this perfect public library is so perfect that all the folks have taken to going in there. In some parts of the library you can always happen on an interesting talk about books. There are halls there in which real Australian poets give readings of their own verse. Well-attended readings, too. And real Australian authors discuss their books at other times, and invite criticism from the audience—which is but grudgingly given, because the folks are so tremendously patriotic.
  And it was while I was dreaming this dream one night that I saw that ageing, lonely and book-eager woman come in. She had come right up in the lift, but the attendants saw that she was obviously unbookish looking and a little bit astray. At the threshold the principal book-assistant went forward and led her to the nearest armchair. Then he said in such a kindly voice: "Put your feet right up there"—motioning to some copies of the Oxford Dictionary which were lying on the floor—and then, after he had brought her a cup of tea, he said: "Well, where would you like to begin?" And she said: "Well, maybe I won’t live long enough to get through all—I mean all the literature I’m dying to read." And he replied: "Fear not, madam, from this day forward you have entered on a new lease of life."

GERALD DILLON.

Did Aunt Hetty read Eliza Haywood?

In an 1821 essay, Charles Lamb gives a brief account of a devout, somewhat-idiosyncratic maiden aunt. The essay—"My Relations"—first appeared in The London Magazine, Vol. 3 (June 1821): 611–14 (here), and has been reprinted in a myriad of editions of his Essays of Elia.

After introducing his "dear and good" aunt, Lamb describes her as given to "poring over good books, and devotional exercises" from "morning till night," and going “to church every Sabbath, as a good Protestant should." All the good books named by Lamb, however, are of a "Papistical tendency"—which seems not to have concerned his aunt, or stopped her from reading them when she was warned against them.

Lamb here transitions to a second ironic or paradoxical trait of his aunt. Namely, that—although these "good books, and devotional exercises" were "the only books she studied"—she had, "at one period of her life … read with great satisfaction The Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman." Lamb says no more, but clearly expects the reader to identify Haywood's Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman (1744) as a similarly-incongruous book, and of a similarly-dangerous tendency (for his devout aunt) as Thomas a Kempis and the Roman Catholic Prayer Book.

* * * * *

While Lamb's essays are partly autobiographical, they are also deliberately fictionalised. So, while it is possible to identify this unnamed aunt, who appears in a number of essays, with his real-life Aunt Hetty (a family nickname for his father's sister: Sarah Lamb [d. February 1797]), the identification is not complete. Just as his own persona "Elia" is not entirely Charles Lamb, this "dear and good" aunt is not entirely Sarah Lamb.

Since it isn't clear exactly how much Lamb deliberately embellished his portrait of his aunt—to what extent she is a satirical composite—it is probably pointless to be concerned over the fact that I can't establish a date of birth for Aunt Hetty. I will assume that she was either born in the 1730s, or imagined to have been boorn at about that time—like her brother (see here). As such, she could only have encountered Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman (MYN) long after the initial wave of the Annesley case scandal had passed.

If Aunt Hetty's reading of MYN is a pure embellishment, the fact that she was too young to have read MYN at the time of its fame (roughly, the mid-1740s) suggests that Lamb was either [1] ignorant of this chronological misalignment, or [2] indifferent about it. That is, if MYN was thrown in by Lamb for rhetorical effect—as a generations-old legal scandal—the fact that it is an imperfect fit doesn’t really matter.

Read this way, MYN is just an old-time cause célèbre—taken by Lamb more-or-less at random. The ironic humour is that this sort of scandal-novel-cum-law report is only one step removed from crim. con. reporting (i.e., the sensationalised reporting that issued from the Bawdy Courts—concerning adultery, rape and sodomy)—and so MYN is similarly inappropriate for Lamb's devout Protestant aunt as her Roman Catholic Prayer Book.

* * * * *

Although "My Relations" has been reprinted in the myriad of editions of Lamb's works mentioned, only a handful of editors have annotated or commented on this essay; and only two appear to have glossed "The Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman" aka The Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman.

Pleasingly, the most recent edition, The Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. Gregory Dart, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026), 416n20 correctly identifies this as MYN, although Dart does not note Eliza Haywood’s authorship, commenting only that MYN "tells the true story of James Annesley (1715–60), the son of a spendthrift Irish lord. Over a hundred years later, R. L. Stevenson plundered Annesley's story for his eighteenth-century thriller Kidnapped (1886)."

Although Dart misses the Haywood attribution, this is still a significant improvement on the 1903 edition of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by E. V. Lucas (here), who glossed the reference as follows:

Page 70, line 31. The Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman. The full title of this work is: The Unfortunate Young Nobleman; a Tale of Sympathy, Founded on Fact. In which are depicted the Unprecedented Sufferings of an Affectionate Husband, and the Forlorn State of an amiable Mother and her Infant Child. The story tells how the unfortunate Mons. du F—, eldest son of the Baron du F— married against his father's will, and suffered in consequence many privations, including imprisonment in a convent, from which he escaped by a jump of fifty feet.

The Unfortunate Young Nobleman; a Tale of Sympathy (London: R. Harrild, [ca. 1820]) is a pretty wild suggestion, given the context of Lamb’s reference. I.e.:

These were the only books she studied [Thomas a Kempis and the Roman Catholic Prayer Book]; though, I think, at one period of her life, she told me, she had read with great satisfaction the Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman.

Lamb's "at one period of her life" suggest to me, "at a distant period of her life" or "earlier in her life"—which hardly applied, in June 1821, to a book published only the previous year.

* * * * *

I haven’t decided yet whether I will include any reference to Lamb's Aunt Hetty reading Eliza Haywood in my book on Haywood's readers. A deciding factor might have been whether or not anyone has attempted to depict Aunt Hetty—with or without MYN in hand. Unfortunately, although a few editions of The Essays of Elia are illustrated, I can find no pictures of Aunt Hetty. The nearest I could find to the image I had in mind is the wonderful illustration below by James D. Smillie of Mary Lamb.

(At least, I assume the above is intended to be a romanticised image of Mary Lamb reading. It is the frontispiece to this 1885 edition of The Essays, but—as the image is untitled—I can’t be certain it is Mary.)

The Pain of a Bibliophile

At the moment, I am reading Hwang Bo-Reum's Every Day I Read, trs. Shanna Tan (2025)—a "warm and reflective collection of essays about reading, language and life." (Some Amazon reviews here.) The essays are all very short. And, although they strike me as quite uneven in quality, I like reading essays in general, and I have been particularly enjoying this (to me) outsider perspective on a topic I am deeply-familiar with.

For fairly-obvious reasons, I was amused by this passage in Chapter 45 (178–79):

  When I first learnt that the famed Japanese bibliophile Takashi Tachibana had a 'Cat Building' that housed more than 200,000 books, I was in awe. I can't afford a building, but I would love a spacious reading room lined with bookcases. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could find any book I wanted in my own home?
  But after reading several books written by bibliophiles, I realised that maybe that isn't the life for me. I love buying books, but bibliophiles take book-buying to the extreme.
  In The Pain of a Bibliophile (what a title!), it’s said that around half or maybe more of bibliophiles buy books every day, and because of that, they barely have space to walk in their own house. It takes about 10,000 books to open a secondhand bookshop, and Japanese author Takeshi Okazaki keeps about 20,000 or 30,000 books at home. One of the bibliophiles interviewed in the book estimated owning about 30,000 books, but when the actual count turned out to be 130,000, they chuckled shamefacedly.
  Despite owning a whole lot more books, the author claims that 500 is the ideal number of books to have at home. A true-blue bibliophile should have a sizeable collection, yet have the flexibility to adjust it according to one's changing preferences. The author quotes a literary scholar saying, More isn't better. I imagined a room filled with several hundred of my favourite books displayed neatly, with their spines visible. From then on, I stopped having the ridiculous idea to fill every inch of my house with books.

Wanting to know more about The Pain of a Bibliophile, I turned to the endnotes, and was disappointed to find the following (on p .221):

1 Translated from the Korean edition: 아즈마 가나코, (역) 박승희, 궁극의 미니멀라이프 (즐거운상상, 2016).

I haven't the remotest idea how to read Korean. I can't even break these lines of symbols into words, let alone work out which bit was the title and how to key this title into a search engine. I don’t know why the publisher didn't gloss each Korean title using something like the official "Revised Romanization" method. (Using this method, Hwang's Every Day I Read or 매일 읽겠습니다 can be Romanised as Maeil ikgetseumnida.) Better still would have been to give the name of the original work that was translated. If they had done this, it would have saved me a lot of wasted time, trying to identify The Pain of a Bibliophile—which, as Hwang says—has such a tantalising title.

* * * * *

Since I had no idea how to transcribe the Korean title, I used Hwang's translated title. I asked Google to identify a "Korean book, the title of which translates literally as 'the pain of the bibliophile'." Google search referred me to Hwang's previous book:

Based on the search results, it appears you may be referring to Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, a popular Korean "healing fiction" novel that heavily features themes of bibliophilia, comforting reads, and self-discovery through literature.

Since Google search failed, I tried Google AI, which informed me that

The Korean book you are referring to is likely 애서가의 고통 (Aeseogaui Gotong), which is the Korean translation of the German book "Die Leiden des Bibliophilen" (literally "The Sufferings of the Bibliophile") by Wolfgang Hermann.

Google AI provided other useful facts about Hermann's Die Leiden des Bibliophilen; namely:

It explores the obsessive habits and inherent struggles of those who love books too much, such as:
  The overwhelming physical weight of a growing collection.
  The anxiety of having a "To Be Read" (TBR) pile that never shrinks.
  The psychological burden of finding shelf space and the "pain" of potentially losing or damaging a beloved book

Particularly astute readers may have already realised that this is complete hogwash, but I innocently searched for English translations of this work and, when that got me nowhere, for information about the author. This is when I discovered (on Wikipedia) that Wolfgang Hermann was "a German librarian and member of the Nazi Party, whose blacklist provided the template for the Nazi book burnings in May 1933."

Returning to Google AI's (entirely hallucinated) account of this book, I am not sure what "psychological burden" Herr Herrmann might have suffered as a result of "potentially losing or damaging a beloved book"; nor do I know whether this librarian cheered on the Nazi book-burning only to alleviate anxieties he experienced over the mass of good books he would be unable to read or shelve.

Still, it did strike me as unlikely that Herr Hermann would have would have penned a book on Die Leiden des Bibliophilen. And, since he died at the end of WW2, I doubted that Herr Hermann would have had much time to write a book on the subject of his bibliophilic sorrows. Since it was even less likely that he had anything to say about late twentieth-century Japanese book collectors, Tachibana's 'Cat Building' etc., I belatedly concluded that this was a pretty wild AI hallucination.

* * * * *

After a number of less-entertaining hallucinations—I got caught up in side-quests based on Hwang's reference to Tachibana Takashi and his four-story Cat Building.

Eventually, I gave in and went to the trouble of photographing the endnote, uploading the photo to my computer, screen capping the entry, and using Google Translate to transcribe and translate it.

As a result of doing this, I can now offer [1] the above pictures of "La maison du chat noir chez TACHIBANA" ["Tachibana's Black Cat House"] (exterior, interior, and plan) and [2] a translation and gloss, below, of Hwang's endnote):

Translated from the Korean edition: Kanako Azuma, (Translator) Seung-hee Park, Ultimate Minimal Life (Jeulgeoun Sangsang, 2016).

  궁극의 미니멀라이프 [Gunggeuk-ui Minimallaipeu]
  아즈마 가나코 [Kanako Azuma]
  박승희 [Seung-hee Park]
  즐거운상상 [Jeulgeoun Sangsang]

Further Googling revealed that Gunggeuk-ui Minimallaipeu is a translation of Kanako Azuma's Motanai Kurashi: Oheya Mo Kokoro Mo Sukkirisuru [A minimalist lifestyle: A clearer space and a more refreshed mind] (2006), which has not been translated into English. (And is no longer available in Japanese—although the old Amazon listing survives here.)

* * * * *

The first part of Azuma's book title—To live without waste—refers to a Japanese practice (Mottainai), which is rooted in Buddhist ideas that everything has a spirit (Tsukumogami). The phrase—which might be playfully translated as "the way without waste"—combines Kura (暮: to live/spend time) with Mottai (勿体: the dignity, essence, or proper form of an object) and Nai (無し: without, no, or not).

There is a lot to admire about the Mottainai Kurashi philosophy, which is based on a deep respect for both nature and objects, particularly older objects that are believed to acquire a soul and become self-aware after long periods of use. Although it is rooted in Edo-period frugality, Mottainai Kurashi has inspired a contemporary neo-Scandinavian, eco-friendly minimalism (i.e., minimizing the purchase of unnecessary items), which has recently inspired a multitude of books on Japanese minimalism.

I suspect that some of those attracted to the idea of Japanese minimalism (and the prospect of achieving a "more refreshed mind" via "a clearer space") do not fully-understand the emphasis on avoiding the acquisition of unnecessary items, rather than merely disposing of unnecessary items.

Japanese folklore is full of warnings about thoughtlessly disposing of objects, since spirits (yokai) can "embody the frustration of being discarded, causing mischief or haunting owners who treated them poorly." I.e., you will not achieve a "more refreshed mind" by thoughtlessly disposing of objects—instead, you are likely to incur the wrath of a host of yokai. You have a responsibility to every object: to value, care for and mend objects—to appreciate what you have.

* * * * *

Although I have a deep respect for my many books, particularly older books, and I am in no danger of being haunted as a result of thoughtlessly discarding any of them, I have no illusions that I am practicing Mottainai Kurashi. Perhaps for this reason, I was particularly amused to discover that Kanako has written many books on the subject of minimalism (is not the proliferation of her books … problematic?) as I was by the fact that Hwang bookends her reference to Motanai Kurashi: Oheya Mo Kokoro Mo Sukkirisuru with an explanation that she "pushed out ten boxes of books" from her library in two days after deciding to "trim [her] collection to 500 books." It seems that all three of us have something yet to learn about the Mottainai Kurashi philosophy.

Finally, I have to say that I was immensely disappointed to learn that The Pain of a Bibliophile was a pean to minimalism. And I was incredulous to discover that no book with this title has ever been published. (No such title appears on WorldCat.) In fact, I was so disappointed and incredulous that I am tempted to remedy this state of affairs by writing my own book under this title.

No sooner did I have this thought that Google AI leapt forth, like Achillies in battle, to suggest an outline for this putative title. Not to be outdone, ChatGPT responded by penning this description of the imagined book:

Patrick Spedding's The Pain of a Bibliophile (2026) reads like a wry, affectionate exploration of a reader's most relatable struggles—those peculiar tensions that arise from loving books a little too much. Framed as both cultural observation and personal reflection, the book examines the paradox at the heart of bibliophilia: that the very source of joy can also be a source of constant, if often humorous, distress.

The author begins with the most visible burden—space. Shelves overflow, then multiply, until books migrate into teetering stacks across floors, chairs, and hidden corners. This physical sprawl becomes a symbol of a deeper excess: the ever-growing "to-be-read" pile, which looms not as a promise, but as a quiet, persistent anxiety. Each new acquisition, however thrilling, adds to an unspoken awareness that no lifetime may be long enough.

From there, the narrative turns to the financial habits of devoted readers, capturing the near-compulsive pull of bookstores and the curious ability to justify "just one more" purchase. This is paired with a contrasting fragility: the acute heartbreak of physical damage—a cracked spine or stained page—treated with a seriousness that borders on the ceremonial.

Time, too, emerges as an adversary. The bibliophile, the book suggests, is perpetually outpaced by their own ambitions, forced to choose between unread volumes while often juggling several at once. This indecision becomes its own quiet torment, as starting a new book can feel like a small betrayal of the others waiting.

Interwoven throughout are moments of loss and longing: the misplaced tome, the narrowly missed rare find, the book that got away. Social life presents its own complications, as bibliophiles struggle to explain their habits—or quietly opt out of gatherings in favour of the written world.

Yet the book ultimately resists framing these experiences as true suffering. Instead, it presents them as inseparable from the pleasure itself. The weight of a book, the scent of its pages, the satisfaction of ownership and discovery—all are part of a deeply sensory and emotional relationship. In this light, the "pain" of a bibliophile is revealed not as a flaw, but as a testament to the depth of their devotion.

If I had the inclination, I could probably have an AI write this book, and publish it, so other AIs could read and review it—and write blog posts about it (**)—but I have a host of bookish yokai to care for, so I will content myself with the above AI-bait (which is, I hope, enough to have The Pain of a Bibliophile added to my list of recent publications).

(**) My version of the dead internet theory—which Wikipedia still labels as "a conspiracy theory." I wonder if PolyMarket is taking bets on how soon this label will be removed.

The Half-forgotten Books series, 1903–1907

The "Half-forgotten Books" series, edited by E. A. Baker, M.A., and published by Routledge, 1903–1907, contained at least twenty-six titles. Above and below are a few survivors, in the distinctive series binding—which is the primary focus of the only scholarship I could locate on the series. In his 2014 essay on "Neo-Victorian Book Design," Chris Louttit writes (here, on p. 122):

The Half-Forgotten Books collection … reprinted neglected works of literature from the previous two hundred years or so in affordable but handsome volumes. [It] … includes Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, but ranges more widely into the annals of forgotten Victorian popular fiction to include novels by, amongst others, George Alfred Lawrence, George Herbert Rodwell and Edmund Yates. What is most pertinent about the Half-Forgotten Books in this context, however, is the way in which the neglected texts are presented. Each volume sports the same rather unexciting cover illustration of a collection of solid-looking books; all that differentiates them is the author and title.

* * * * *

Ernest A. Baker (1869–1941; on Wikipedia here) was, as a 1911 advertisement for this series explains, the author of A Descriptive Guide to the Best Fiction, British and American (1903; on IA), a book which offers brief descriptions, plot summaries, and critical analysis on roughly 4500 fiction titles. He was also, later—and far more importantly—the author of the ten-volume opus The History of the English Novel (1924-39) and, as I only discovered recently, A Guide to Historical Fiction (1914; on IA here).

(I initially, and rather optimistically, mis-read this latter title as being a guide to fiction published in the past, rather than a guide to fiction set in the past. Now that the Guide is 112 years old, I guess both apply, but it was a bit of a mix even when new. The book is surprisingly useful and fun guide, if you want to pair books published in—say—1718, with those set in 1718. If I ever see a copy, I’ll happily snap it up, even though Eliza Haywood does not get a mention.)

Baker seems to have been Routledge's go-to guy, being a prolific series and volume editor, for a prolific series publisher. In addition to this series, he was also series and volume editor for the fifteen-volume "Library of Early Novelists" Series (1904–1907), which I am still researching, but will do a separate post on.

My interest in both series was prompted by the discovery that Baker included in each of them a handful of curious and uncommon novels, gothic novels, and novels by women writers from the long eighteenth century. I only have his edition of Matthew Lewis' The Monk, but now I want his editions of Thomas Amory, Alain-René Lesage, Aphra Behn, Ann Radcliffe and Jane Porter.

For volumes in the Library of Early Novelists series, it might take a bit of patience for me to find decent and affordable copies of the titles that I want. But I have already given up on finding any similar volumes in the "Half-forgotten Books" series: volumes such as Sarah Fielding's The Adventures of David Simple, Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest and Le Sage's Asmodeus; or, The Devil on Two Sticks. I have given up because—although (according to Louttit) the British Library seems to hold eighteen volumes—I have only been able to confirm the existence of four volumes from the entire series, i.e., with images available online, and can only find—after a pretty comprehensive search—only two copies for sale (see links below).

* * * * *

Early advertisements (to 1905) list the volumes in the "Half-forgotten Books" series in publication order, but these advertisements only list the first eighteen or nineteen volumes (see below for the uncertainty); while the longer list (from Black Sheep, in 1911) is both alphabetical (by title) and numbered. All (?) of the volumes added to the 1911 list are marked as either "In Press" (one title) or "Ready" to be published—meaning, presumably, they were not yet published.

It is not clear how many of these "Ready" volumes were actually published in this series, and whether any novels were added later. The 1911 advertisement concludes with the claim that "Subsequent volumes will be selected from the following amongst other authors" (i.e., "…the following authors, amongst others"). The list that follows this statement enumerates thirty-eight authors, has a suspicious overlap with the "Library of Early Novelists" series.

In any event, since it seems to be impossible to accurately date either the seven unpublished, "Ready" volumes in the 1911 list, or to confirm the order of all of the first nineteen volumes, so I have transcribed below the 1911 alphabetical list and retained its numbering.

The list pretty accurately reproduced the published advertisement, except in my list below the author's name precedes rather than follows the book title, I have returned / re-arranged book titles to their natural order (thereby disrupting the alphabetical-by title arrangement), and I have dropped the all-caps. This means that "SUSAN HOPLEY (The Adventures of). Mrs. CROWE." becomes "Mrs. Crowe, The Adventures of Susan Hopley" etc.

1. A. R. Lesage, Asmodeus; Or, The Devil on Two Sticks
2. Captain Chamier, Ben Brace; Or, The Last of Nelson's Agamemnons
3. G. A. Lawrence, Breakspeare; Or, The Fortunes of a Free Lance
4. William Godwin, Caleb Williams [Ready]
5. R. M. Roche, Children of the Abbey
6. Thos. Cooper, Family Feud
7. C. Dickens, Memoirs of Grimaldi the Clown. With Introduction by Percy Fitzgerald and Plates by G. Cruikshank [Ready]
8. G. A. Lawrence, Guy Livingstone
9. Captain Morier, Hajji Baba in Isfahan
10. Harriet Martineau, Hour and the Man
11. Mrs. Radcliffe, Mysteries of Udolpho. With An Introduction by D. Murray Rose [Ready]
12. R. M. Bird, Nick of the Woods; Or, The Fighting Quaker
13. Mrs. Crowe, Nightside of Nature [1904; on IA]
14. G. A. Rodwell, Old London Bridge [Ready] [1904; on IA NEW]
15. Albert Smith, The Pottleton Legacy [In Press] [1904; on IA NEW]
16. Mrs. Radcliffe, Romance of The Forest
17. Samuel Lover, Rory O'More
18. Judge Haliburton, Sam Slick the Clockmaker [Ready] [1904; on IA]
19. W. H. Maxwell, Stories of Waterloo
20. Mrs. Crowe, The Adventures of Susan Hopley
21. Jane Porter, Thaddeus of Warsaw
22. Captain Chamier, Tom Bowling
23. R. Mounteney Jephson, Tom Bullkley of Lissington. With An Introduction By E. A. Baker, M.A. [Ready]
24. Amélie Rives, Virginia of Virginia
25. Emma Robinson, Whitefriars; Or, The Court of Charles II [Ready] [1903; copy listed here (sold)]
26. W. Carleton, Willy Reilly

* * * * *

Below are the thirty-eight authors, listed in 1911 as potential additions to the "Library of Early Novelists" series. I have expanded the thirty-five names that appear by surname only in this alphabetical list.

Ainsworth (i.e., William Harrison Ainsworth)
Amory (i.e., Thomas Amory)
About (i.e., Edmond About)
Aleman (i.e., Mateo Alemán)
Auerbach (i.e., Berthold Auerbach)
Banim (i.e., John Banim)
Mrs. Behn (i.e., Aphra Behn)
Carleton (i.e., William Carleton)
Craven (i.e., Pauline Craven or Mrs. Augustus Craven)
Conscience (i.e., Hendrik Conscience)
Feuillet (i.e., Octave Feuillet)
Sarah Fielding
Jessie Fothergill
Galt (i.e., John Galt)
Gleig (i.e., George Robert Gleig)
Gerstacker (i.e., Friedrich Gerstäcker)
Gerald Griffin
Gogol (i.e., Nikolai Gogol)
Mrs. Gore (i.e., Catherine Gore, or Mrs. Catherine Frances Gore)
General Hamley (i.e., General Sir Edward Hamley)
M. C. Hay (i.e., Mary Cecil Hay)
W. S. Hayward (i.e., William Stephens Hayward)
Heyse (i.e., Paul Heyse)
Holcroft (i.e., Thomas Holcroft)
Hook (i.e., Theodore Hook)
Mrs. Inchbald (i.e., Elizabeth Inchbald)
H. Kingsley (i.e., Henry Kingsley)
M. G. Lewis (i.e., Matthew Gregory Lewis)
Lever (i.e., Charles Lever)
Miss Manning (i.e., Anne Manning)
Mayo (i.e., William Starbuck Mayo)
Thos. Nash (i.e., Thomas Nashe)
Neale (i.e., W. Johnson Neale)
Mrs. Opie (i.e., Amelia Opie)
Mrs. Parr (i.e., Louisa Parr)
Praed (i.e., Winthrop Mackworth Praed)
Trollope (probably Anthony Trollope)
Yates (i.e., Edmund Yates)

* * * * *

Missing from both the twenty-six titles in the first list (whether published, "Ready" or "In Press") and the thirty-eight authors in the second, is Henry Brooke, The Fool of Quality, which appeared in this 1904 advertisement, only to be replaced by no. 16 in this 1911 advertisement (in The Heptameron).

Also missing from these lists is the volme below: Thomas Miller, Gideon Giles the Roper ([n.d.]), a copy of which is for sale here (and, possibly, here).

In a footnote to Louttit’s essay, quoted above, the author notes that "According to the British Library Catalogue, eighteen volumes of the series were produced between 1903 and 1906” but that "advertisements I have consulted in the individual volumes give as many as twenty-five titles" (125n14).

Given the existence of volumes not listed in advertisements, and the uncertainty concerning which of the works advertised as "Ready" or "In Press" were actually published, it may be safest (for now) to say of the series only that "between twenty and thirty volumes" were published.

Finally, if and as I can confirm the existence of volumes, and imprint dates, I will update the list(s) above with links etc.

[UPDATE 10 April 2026: I have added a few extra Internet Archive links (to nos. 14, 15) and dates of publication for all copies with links]

Lucifer is a damned fine fellow, and I hope he may win

Phillip Pullman wrote an Introduction for the 2008, Oxford University Press edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Pullman starts his Introduction as follows:

A correspondent once told me a story—which I've never been able to trace, and I don't know whether it's true—about a bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squire two hundred years ago or more, sitting by his fireside listening to Paradise Lost being read aloud. He's never read it himself; he doesn't know the story at all; but as he sits there, perhaps with a pint of port at his side and with a gouty foot propped up on a stool, he finds himself transfixed.
  Suddenly he bangs the arm of his chair, and exclaims 'By God! I know not what the outcome may be, but this Lucifer is a damned fine fellow, and I hope he may win!'
  Which are my sentiments exactly.

Thinking that tracing this story to its source might be a good test for AI, I asked Google’s AI and ChatGPT. Google AI obviously had no idea, and offered up a mix of mild platitudes, plot summary and hallucinations; ChatGPT was somewhat similar, but identified Pullman as the source: it was unable to trace the story any further than Pullman. Having spent an afternoon doing what Pullman was unable to do in 2008, I now have some sympathy for Pullman, Google’s AI and ChatGPT.

Rather than recount in full, step-by-tedious-step process by which I clawed my way back through time, pre-dating one version of the story after another, I will present what I believe to be the first version of the story, and then summarise what seems to have happened to the story afterwards.

The story originates with a work of fiction, Realmah, by Sir Arthur Helps, which first appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine in 1867–68, and was published by Macmillan, in 2 volumes, in 1868.

In Chapter 5 of Realmah (which appeared in December 1867), we get the following scene:

It fell to the lot of a very saintly, good man, to have to travel with [Lord] Thurlow, who was then Attorney General. A journey to the North was a serious thing in those times, and my saintly friend dreaded the long journey, with the blustering Attorney-General, who he was sure would utter many naughty words before they arrived at York.
  They had hardly left London before the good man remarked, "We shall have a long journey, Mr. Attorney, and so I thought I would bring some books to amuse us. I daresay it is a long time since you have read Milton's 'Paradise Lost.' Shall I read some of it to you? It will remind us of our younger days." (In those days men read great works; for there were not so many books of rubbishing fiction, to which the reading energies of the present day are directed.) "Oh, by all means!" said Thurlow, "I have not read a word of Milton for years."
  The good man began to read out his Milton: presently he came to the passage where Satan exclaims, "Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven." Upon which Thurlow exclaimed, "A d—d fine fellow, and I hope he may win." My saintly friend in horror shut up his "Paradise Lost," and felt that it would be no good reading to the Attorney-General, if he was to be interrupted by such wicked expressions of sentiment.

The Lord Thurlow mentioned here is Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow (1731–1806), was Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain for fourteen years and under four Prime Ministers (1778–83, 1783–92). In 1906, this “blustering Attorney-General” was accidently mis-identified as Lord Eldon, i.e.: John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon (1751–1838), Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, 1801–6, 1807–27. Other changes to this story occurred in the most colourful lines attributed to Lords Thurlow / Eldon:

"A d—d fine fellow, and I hope he may win." (1867, 1869, 1871)
"D—d fine fellow! I hope he'll win!" (1878, 1884)
"A d—d fine fellow. I hope he may win." (1909)
"A damned fine fellow! I hope he will win." (1925)
"This is a fine fellow. I hope he'll win." (1933)
"A damned fine fellow. I hope he may win" (1984, 1988)

As you can see, the only stable parts here are "fine fellow"; "I hope"; and "win"—the ellipsis of "damned" making it impossible to search for, and the change from "Lord Thurlow" to "Lord Eldon" eliminating all the pre-1909 examples.

Returning to Pullman’s version of the story, it is clear that his characterisation of the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, being entertained in a post-chaise to York with a reading of Milton, as a "bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squire … with a pint of port at his side and with a gouty foot propped up on a stool" is very wide of the mark.

Note also that Realmah is a utopian novel, set in a made-up prehistoric empire called ‘Sheviri,’ featuring detailed accounts of its government and religion. That is—much like Haywood’s Memoirs of Utopia—it related anecdotes about real British public figures in the form of "utopian" fiction.

Since Lord Thurlow died in 1806, and had last been Lord High Chancellor in 1792, this anecdote was generations old by 1867. It is possible that it was recorded earlier than 1867, but, if so, I haven’t been able to find it—yet. Based on this very unscientific test, it seems that we are still a long way from AI agents being able to duplicate the above research effort, and so we must be even further away from them being able to exceed our research efforts. When we reach the point when AI agents can exceed us, it is likely that many of the "bibulous, semi-literate, ageing country squires" of history, will be recognised as—as is the case with this one—a fiction, built upon a fiction.

The Scientific Silverfish and Moth Destroyer, ca. 1928

I recently bought the volume on the right above (The Works of Théophile Gautier), which is from the same series, and in the same binding, as the volume on the left (The Complete Romances of Voltaire … Eight Volumes in One). I have had the Voltaire since 1999, and regularly use its version of Candide in my teaching, and have long wanted more versions of Gautier's La Morte Amoureuse, since it is such an important and early representation of a female vampire, so I was very happy with this find.

The local bookshop that had the Gautier, had five more of these Walter Black volumes in the same soft leather bindings—Zola, Maupassant, Boccaccio, Balzac, and a Voltaire—but the prices were too high for me to buy any others, just for the sake of their matching bindings. Looking on eBay, I discovered someone else in Australia had nine volumes of this series (below), in the same bindings, for less than I paid for my Gautier (the listing is here), but I have so far resisted starting yet-another collection front.

Inside my Gautier, I found a card (above and below), which—at first glance—I took to be an abandoned bookmark. A closer look revealed that, although this may actually have been used as a bookmark, the purpose of the card was to "Scientifically Destroy" silverfish and moths.

As you can see above, the text reads:

THE SCIENTIFIC
SILVERFISH & MOTH DESTROYER.
—————
SIMPLY PLACE CARDS IN OR NEAR
ARTICLES TO BE PROTECTED.
—————
CONTENTS: 14 CARDS 1/- PER PACKET
DUGGAN'S 194 LIT. COLLINS ST. MELBOURNE, C.1.

The verso of the card has had some sort of insecticide painted onto it—you can see the brush strokes.

* * * * *

I was not surprised that I could find no record of these cards; but I was surprised that I was unable to find out anything very concrete about Duggan’s of Little Collins Street, Melbourne. This Facebook post suggests that Duggan's might have been a 1940s dry-cleaning business, which was bought out by Fletcher Jones, the Australian "clothing manufacturer and retailer" (which shut down only in January of this year; "Fletcher Jones to Close All Stores After Nearly 100 Years in Australian Retail," 17 January 2026, online here).

If Duggan's was a dry cleaner, I suspect that these cards were intended to be slipped into the pockets of freshly dry-cleaned coats and trousers, rather than books. But it seems to have done a sterling job anyway: the Gautier remains in lovely condition.

* * * * *

[UPDATE 8 April 2026: I am grateful to a very helpful, regular reader (PP), who ran a quick search on the address, 194 Little Collins Street, in the State Library of Victoria, Sands and McDougall directory series online (here). Although the State Library of Victoria series only includes directories from every fifth year, Duggan's makes no appearance. Only three types of businesses are recorded as operating from this address between 1910 and 1960. These businesses are: hairdresser: Walter Higginbotham (1910, 1915), Percy J. McGrath (1920); watchmaker and jeweller: T. A. Hansen (1925, 1930); tea rooms: Mrs H. M. Eddy (1935, 1940), Miss L. Buckland (1945, 1950), L. Halmson (1955), C. Coleman (1960).

As PP notes, "there is no record of a dry cleaning business at the address." It is possible—if Duggan's had a franchise in Melbourne—that it dates to a period between these five-year intervals, or between these settled buisness occupations, and that a search of the individual directories for this period would locate it. But it is also possible, as PP continues, that, "as with many circulating libraries and other businesses, the operators at the premises were merely a drop-off and collection point." Although my ignorance on the subject is close to comprehensive, I am going to assume that a watchmaker and jeweler would be a poor match for a dry cleaning drop-off and collection point, so my bet is on the tea-rooms of either Mrs Eddy or Miss Buckland, since the only evidence for a Duggan's dry-cleaning business (albeit in the western-districts of Victoria) dates from the 1940s.