The Spedding Collection of Baconiana, 1916

Sadly, and as I explain below, "The Spedding Collection of Baconiana" is not the Patrick Spedding collection of books by and about Francis Bacon, but, rather, the rather more famous James Spedding collection of books by and about Francis Bacon, catalogued and offered for sale by Quaritch (inauspiciously) in the middle of WW1.

I feel a quite a bit of affinity with my childless kinsman, James. This is partly a matter of convoluted family connections, but I have a modest collection of books by Francis Bacon, including a handful of seventeenth-century editions, which in no way compares to the collection James assembled, but which did lead me to wonder to what extent our collections may have overlapped (answer: not much).

I started buying books by Bacon four decades ago. Bacon’s Essays are still among my favourite works. Indeed, Bacon’s Essays are partly responsible for my love of both the essay (as a genre) and, by association, seventeenth and eighteenth-century character writing too—the focus of another sub-collection of mine—but I think that the first book I read by Bacon was actually his unfinished utopia New Atlantis.

For what it is worth, I don’t think that New Atlantis is a particularly good utopia (sorry), but I really enjoyed the experience of reading it, in January of 1989, in (what was then) a lovely, newly-acquired 1639 folio edition, in its original binding. I spent a lot of money buying this folio from a Kenneth Hince; at a time when I was a poor student, living off Austudy, so I suppose must have sold a lot of my books in order to make the purchase. (Sometimes, I remember very nice books that I once had, and which I must have sold, and I wonder what possessed me to do sell them. This is an instance of the “what possessed me”!)

Anyway, since it is my ambition to have a collection of my books catalogued and offered for sale as a collection by Quaritch—or a dealer of a similar stature—I thought I’d buy this copy of James’s catalogue. If my ambition is ever realised it won’t, however, be for an armload of editions of Bacon’s essays, or his other works, it is will be my own working library of books by and about Eliza Haywood.

When I bought my copy of James’s catalogue, I wanted to see how our collections compared—not in terms of titles, rarity or value, but in terms of a working library, or scholar-collector-utility. This desire became even stronger once it occurred to me that, while James was focussed on the works of Bacon (mostly published two and a half centuries earlier), I was similarly focussed on the works of Haywood (mostly published two and a half centuries earlier).

Looking at James’s collection, I am struck by how many volumes are NQR—like my own! (Not my Bacon volumes, which are all unusually beautiful, but my Haywood volumes.) Just focussing on two titles in James's collection: the margins are "defective" on his 1625 Essayes and the title-page "mounted" on his 1632 edition; the portrait is “missing” from his 1627 and 1628 editions of Sylva Sylvarum (which contains his New Atlantis), ten pages are missing from a second copy of the 1628 edition, and the Dedication is missing from a copy of the 1670 edition. Indeed, a search of the catalogue for "missing" locates 25 instances in 24 pages!

I am not sure what benefit James’s kin got from the sale of his collection (see below), but it is a shame that none of his books came my way—even the many nineteeth-century editions—and that I have been only able to find the catalogue of his collection since I started looking for his books.

* * * * *

James Spedding (born 26 June 1808), M.A. (Camb. 1834), younger brother of Thomas Story Spedding (see my post here), died on 9 March 1881, after he was hit by a cab crossing a street in London. Thirty-five years later, Bernard Quaritch offered "The Spedding Collection of Baconiana"—lightly "salted"— for GBP400 (the Cornell University copy is here; The Columbia University copy is here).

(The catalogue is undated but was issued by November 1916; library catalogue assertions asside, it appears in a list of "Recent Bibliographies" in The Library Journal, Vol. 41, no. 11 (November 1916): 860; here.)

As well as being undated, the catalogue is unnumbered. The opening description of the collection (transcribed below) states that it contains “363 vols, in 318”—which seems to mean 318 items in 363 volumes rather than 363 items in 318 volumes. (I am too lazy to go through the catalogue, number the items for myself, and count or estimate the total volumes; and ChatGPT seems to be not up to the task yet.)

The publisher of "The Spedding Collection of Baconiana" notes that "A few volumes have been added by me to strengthen the collection, but the great bulk is as Spedding owned it." The language here doesn’t quite gel: "a few volumes … added" implies rather less "salt" (books added by a bookseller to fill out a catalogue) than "the great bulk" leaves room for.

Here is the opening spiel:

BACON COLLECTION. The Collection of Books used by JAMES SPEDDING (1808–1881), the accomplished Editor of the Works of Sir Francis Bacon, as his working library in bringing out that "unsurpassable model of thorough and scholarlike editing." 363 vols. in 318, folio, 4to., and 8vo. v. d.

Price of the Collection, £400 net.

This collection should be an invaluable acquisition to a public library or to a collector of Baconiana, as it includes a number of the first and early editions of Bacon's Works and those of his contemporaries, some of them of great rarity, and also a valuable collection of books in Baconian literature. Additional value is given to many of the books from the fact that they are enriched with Spedding's MS. notes (all the cases in which they occur are not mentioned below). A few volumes have been added by me to strengthen the collection, but the great bulk is as Spedding owned it.

* * * * *

If an institution had taken Quaritch's bait (as they should have done)—and bought the collection as a whole—it might now be an easy matter to identify how many works and volumes were in Spedding's working library. Unfortunately, it seems that, after a period, Quaritch broke up the collection and sold the items separately. Searching ESTC and Copac, it is possible to identify a few Spedding items, each at a different library:

The essaies of Sr Francis Bacon Knight (1612) [Baconiana, p.4, item 2] is at King's College, Cambridge [Keynes.A.08.20].

Francisci de Verulamio, Summi Angliæ Cancellarii, Instauratio magna (1620) [Baconiana, p.6, item 7] is at the Huntington Library [601344].

The remaines of the Right Honorable Francis Lord Verulam Viscount of St. Albanes (1648) [Baconiana, p.8, item 1] is at the University of Toronto, Library [bac B33 R45 1648] (online here).

A declaration of the demeanor and cariage of Sir Walter Raleigh (1618) [not in Baconiana] is at the Folger Shakespeare Library [STC 20653 Copy 1].

If, I future, I find any more Spedding items, I will add them here.

Dorothy Furman, collector of books and bookplates

Dorothy Furman (fl. 1895–1926), was a well-connected bibliophile, a staff member at the New York Times Literary Review (writing bookish-reviews and book-auction reports in the late 1890s) and was later a book dealer. She built an extensive collection of rare books, mostly first editions (but including treasures such as a fourth folio of Shakespeare's works) and bookplates—being a customer, if not a patron of sorts, to a number of bookplate artists, and corresponding widely within a community of bibliophiles.

Furman was a member of The Bibliographical Society (UK) from 1895–1917 (see here), appears in the Almanach du bibliophile pour l'année 1898 (here), was a Member of the Ex Libris Society in 1895 and 1900 (see here and here); the Bibliographical Society of America in (at least) 1905 and 1908 (see here), the American Bookplate Society in 1913 and 1918 (see here and here), and the Grolier Club in 1914.

Female members of these bibliographical and book-collecting societies were not common. In the fifty years between 1892 and 1942 The Bibliographical Society had approximately nine hundred UK members and four hundred and fifty US members (see cumulative member list here). Of these, there are 17 (UK) and 13 (US) with a "Mrs" prefix and 25 (UK) and 18 UK with "Miss"; that is, a total of 73 female members, or approximately five percent.

Given the rarity of bibliographicaly-inclined female book collectors in this period, and the significance of her bookplate collecting, it is suprising that there is so little information about Furman available online. Having just bought her copy of J. Roger Rees, The Brotherhood of Letters (New York: Lockwood and Coombes, 1889), I did some digging and am posting what I found here to save other collectors the trouble, and perhaps enable them to carry this research forward—something that can probably only be done in situ in New York.

Why New York? Well, Furman lived at a commuting distance from New York for at least two decades. Her reported addresses being 35 State Street, Flushing, Long Island, NY (1898–1905; see Almanach du bibliophile pour l'année 1898 and Ex Libris Society link above); 58 Clark Street, Glen Ridge, NJ (1905–8; see here); and 6 De Hart Street, Morristown, New Jersey (1913 and 1918; see American Bookplate Society links above), opening a bookshop there in 1919 (see here): The Publishers Weekly reporting: "Morristown, N. J.—Miss Dorothy Furman has opened a bookshop at 6 De Hart street, specializing in old, rare and current books, association copies and autographs."

The Walpole Galleries in New York sold at auction collections of her Modern First Editions in July 1920 (advertised in The New York Times on 29 and June 1920 here and here), bookplates and books on bookplates in September and November 1923 (see here and here), and China, Glass, Brass, Prints, Furniture, Pewter Objects of Art, Etc. in September 1926 (see here).

* * * * *

Regarding Furman's writing for the New York Times Literary Review: I have found four articles by her (too long to quote in full). Undoubtedly, she wrote many more since each appears to be only a sample of a series: "Books Worth Reading Again. VII. Dorothy Osbourne's Letters" The New York Times, Vol. 47, Iss. 15029 (12 March 1898): 170c–171b (see here); "Books Worth Reading Again. IX. Louisa May Alcott's Life and Letters" The New York Times, Vol. 47, Iss. 15053 (9 April 1898): 238c–239c (see here); "Books at Auction. Features of the Final Part of the Ashburnham Library Sold This Week in London" The New York Times, Vol. 47, Iss. 15083 (14 May 1898): 324a–b (see here). "Books at Auction. Prices at the Fine Mackellar Sale—Bibles and Manuscripts" The New York Times, Vol. 48, Iss. 15251 (26 November 1898): 794a–b (see here); "Two Noble Lives. Maurice de Guierin and His Sister Eugene—The Journals They Wrote" The New York Times (4 March 1899): 137a–c (see here).

Regarding Furman's collection of books: I can't find an auction catalogue for this 1920 sale, but The New York Times advertisement explains that it contained "First Editions of Modern Authors including Stevenson and Kipling; Riverside. Doves, Kelmscott, Ashendene and other Presses; best library editions of the works of famous authors; bindings; rare early English literature and autographs; being mainly the library of Miss Dorothy Furman." There was a review of the sale published in The Publishers Weekly, which reads:

The library of Miss Dorothy Furman consisting of modern first editions, books printed by private and special presses, fine sets of standard authors, rare early English literature and choice miscellaneous books, was sold at the Walpole Galleries July 1 and 2. The sale was well attended, and prices were very satisfactory. Mr. Turnbull is a careful cataloger and in sales of this character he handles them with a high degree of efficiency. A few of the items, indicating the trend of prices, were as follows: Andrew’s "Gossip about Book Collecting," New York, 1900, $50; same author, "Paul Revere and His Engraving," New York, 1901, $55; Sir Thomas More’s "Utopia," Chelsea, 1906, Ashendene Press edition, $42.50; Beaumont and Fletcher's "Fifty Comedies and Tragedies," London, 1679, second edition, $35; Lord Byron’s "Works," 13 vols., London, 1898–1901, large paper edition, $44; Blanchard's "Life of George Cruikshank," 2 vols. extended to 4 with 140 extra plates, many in colors, $75; De Morgan’s "Collected Works," 8 vols., London, 1906-14, first editions, $26; Drayton's "Poems," London, 1619, $25; Genest's "Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830," 10 vols., 8vo, prepared for extra illustrating with cases, $120; Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," 4 vols., 8vo, London, 1837–39, $60; Ireland's "Records of the New York Stage from 1750 to 1860," New York, 1866-67, large paper copy with extra illustrations, $40; Keats's "Poetical Works," 4 vols., London, 1883, original library edition edited by H. Buxton Forman, $65; Livingston's "Bibliography of Kipling," New York, 1901, Japan paper, $35; Masefield's "Tragedy of Nan and other Plays," London, 1909, first edition and presentation copy, $52.50; Montaigne's "Essays," 3 vols., folio, Boston, 1902, Riverside Press special edition, $65; Shakespeare's "Comedies, Histories and Tragedies," 1685, fourth folio with imperfections, $375; Stevenson’s manuscript of the first draft of "St. Ives," 500 pages, written by Isobel Strong, at Stevenson's dictation with revisions and additions by the author, $340; and Stevenson's "Verses," original wrappers, privately printed, 1912, very scarce, $65.

Regarding Furman's collection of bookplates: Walpole Galleries described it (well in advance of the sale, in 1921) as "The Important Collection of Bookplates of Miss Dorothy Furman of Morristown, N. J., being over 8,000 plates—one of the largest collections in this country" (see here); elsewhere the number is inflated to "about" ten thousand (see "Prospects For The Coming Season," The Publishers Weekly, Vol. 102, No. 18 (28 October 1922): 1553–54: "It includes the sale … the bookplates, about 10,000 in number, of Miss Dorothy Furman, for many years on the staff of the New York Times Literary Review; a superb …" (here).

Furman participated in an exhibition of bookplates in New York in 1895 (see here); she commissioned bookplates from Edwin Davis French in 1902 (see here), Arthur Nelson MacDonald by 1895 and in 1907 (see here and here [and at the head of this post]); J. Winfred Spenceley in 1907 (see here).

The bookplate contained in her, now my, copy of The Brotherhood of Letters is above. This plate is described (and so, a terminus ad quem established) in Ladies' Book-plates: An Illustrated Handbook for Collectors and Book-lovers (London: George Bell and Sons, 1895), 200 (see here):

"The following lines are familiar to many:

O for a Booke and a shadie nooke,
  eyther in-a-doore or out;
With the grene leaves whispering overhede,
  or the Streete cryes all about.
Where I maie Reade all at my ease,
  both of the Newe and Olde;
For a jollie goode Booke whereon to looke,
  is better to me than Golde.

This is taken from Dorothy Furman's plate, consisting of the name written on a garter."

(For an excellent investigation into the 1860s origins of this ye-olde verse, see here.)

One of the books she owned have been scanned and are online with her bookplate: Arthur Conan Doyle, Through The Magic Door (London: Smith, Elder [and] Co., 1907) here.

A few odd bits of evidence for Furman's patronage of book plate artists: she made donations of bookplates to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 1901 and 1902 (see here); she made a similar donation to the British Museum by 1912 (see here); and to the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1917 (see here).

Finally, I am indebted—once again—to the blog "My Sentimental Library," on which Jerry Morris (sadly, now dead) collected some information about Furman in 2018 (see here), which I have tried not to duplicate here.

The Drunken Druggist and a Shanghai Reading Room

The book below is an odd volume from Harrison and Co.'s The Novelist's Magazine series, which has a particularly interesting provenance, spending time in the UK, China, the US, and Australia.

The Novelist's Magazine (ESTC p6358) reprinted sixty novels, broken up into weekly parts, from 1780 to 1788. Each novel has a separate title page, and each of the 23 volumes has an engraved general title page. While some of the novels stretched over more than one volume (Sir Charles Grandison occupies vols. 14–15; Clarissa occupies vols. 10–11), most volumes contain multiple novels (for example, vols. 9 and 23 both contain six novels each).

I am interested in the series primarily because it contains Eliza Haywood's Betsy Thoughtless, Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, and The Invisible Spy (in vols. 13, 17, and 23); but I have this volume (vol. 7) because it contains some Haywoodiana: Charles De Fieux Mouhy's The Fortunate Country Maid (1740), an anonymous translation of La Paysanne Parvenue, ou les Mémoires de Madame la Marquise de L. V. (1735–36). Haywood's own translation of this French work, The Virtuous Villager, appeared in 1741, by which time The Fortunate Country Maid had gone through four editions and a Dublin reprint—pretty much running away with the market for the book.

I have had my copy of vol. 7 of The Novelist's Magazine for more than two decades. It is in pretty woeful condition (the spine is broken in three places), but it was cheap (USD10) and I haven't bothered to upgrade it because I liked the bookplate (below) on the front (fixed) endpaper: "James Watson | Manchester." This morning I was able to identify this previous owner as James Watson (1775–1820), an eccentric young druggist known in Manchester as "Doctor Watson."

Watson (below) was apprenticed to a fustian (heavy cotton) manufacturer; when that apprenticeship ended, he worked as a bookkeeper for a cotton merchant, until his father's death obliged him to take over the family's apothecary business. Apparently, "Doctor Watson" was a theatre fanatic: he was a collector of printed theatre ephemera (1799–1800) and, from 1803 onwards, produced a periodical, The Townsman. He became the first librarian of the Manchester’s Portico Library in 1806.

Apparently, Watson soon lost that position because of his "drinking habits and neglect of duty" (i.e., he was an alcoholic), and went on to lose another as a boarding school usher at Altrincham, for the same reason; after which he became homeless and dependent upon charity. After a lengthy period of destitution, he drowned (or drowned himself) in the River Mersey on 28 June 1820 and was buried at Didsbury.

(The portrait and most of the above information about Watson, is taken from a The Spirit of the Doctor: Comprising Many Interesting Poems Selected from the Original Manuscript of the Late Mr. James Watson (Manchester, 1820), online here; and Simon Beattie, Short List 6 (March 2014), online here.)

* * * * *

I took a few photos of my battered odd-volume this morning. When I was filing these, after I had returned the book itself to my "hopital for battered books," I noticed something I had missed in all my previous examinations of the book over the last two decades: there was a very faint blind stamp visible on the title leaf—so faint, that it was really only clear enough to notice on the recto. (Look again at the first photograph in this post, above, showing the whole title-page to this volume. Did you notice the blind stamp?)

I retrieved the book once again, and re-photographed the title page in strong raking light using a macro lense. While it is still the case that—even in these favourable conditions—only part of the blind stamp is visible on the title page (above), the negative on the verso is much clearer. Having reversed (flipped) my photographs of the verso using some image software, I was able to clearly make out a surprising ownership stamp (below): "Astor House Hotel | Shanghai"!

Astor House Hotel, Shanghai, has a lengthy Wikipedia page dedicated to it (here). If you read this page you will see that the Shanghai Astor had a "Reading Room." Peter Felix Richards (1846–1859), a Scottish merchant, opened the first Western hotel in China. In August 1850, Richards advertised that a reading room for shipmasters had been established in his hotel. The advertisement (here) reads: "NOTICE. SHIPMASTERS are respectfully informed that the undersigned have opened a READING ROOM in their Establishment especialy for their accommodation. P. F. RICHARDS [and] Co. Shanghae, 1th August, 1851."

Skipping ahead a half-century, a 1908 real-photo postcard (below; here), captioned "Shanghai——Astor House Hotel Co. Ltd: Lounge," shows (in the photograph) a signboard that reads "Reading and Writing Room." In 1911, when the Astor House Hotel had a grand re-opening, it was described as having "a reading room with several comfortable sofas and easy chairs upholstered in leather"—a description that nicely matches this 1908 postcard image.

Skipping ahead another half-century, the scene is rather different: the Shanghai Astor was bombed and occupied during the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and WW2 (1937–45); thereafter it went into a spiral of decline, and on 19 April 1954 the Hotel was confiscated by the CCP; much of the furniture and interior decoration was destroyed or stolen during the Cultural Revolution. After extensive renovations in the early 2000s, the hotel was bought out, and the hotel closed on 1 January 2018. The building was converted to the China Securities Museum, and the renovated premises are now once again accessible to the public (according to this site).

Pulling together the threads, it seems that my odd volume of The Novelist's Magazine was purchased, early in its existance, by the convivial Mancunian James Watson, who probably pawned it for a bottle of gin soon after. The enterprising Peter Richards picked up this volume on his travels, whether in Manchester or elsewhere, and transported it to Shanghai, included it in his 1850 Reading Room for Shipmasters. If the volume remained in situ, then it was likely looted from the Shanghai Astor by an American GI during WW2, who took it back to the states. When I bought it two decades ago, it was transported back past Asia, to Australia.

I have been unable to find any other remnant of either the James Watson library or the Astor House Shanghai library or Reading Room, and so, no images of either his book label or this blind stamp. I have also been unable to find any real information about whatever library may have at one time existed in the first Western hotels in China, and possibly one of the earliest English-language libraries in China—which is surprising. I hope that, by the time I dig this volume out of my "hospital"—for a team of book-binding robots to properly repair it—more information will be available. But until then, it is time for it to return to rest.

Bookplate of Thomas Story Spedding

Above and below are images of the heraldic exlibris bookplate of Thomas Story Spedding (1800–1870). The bookplate appears in a bound volume of various parts of the Library of Useful Knowledge (1827–38). Three more volumes of this broken set, each containing one of these bookplates, are presently available here. There is also a copy of Scott’s Quentin Durward (1823) for sale online for USD666(!) (here).

Thomas Story Spedding was an English barrister who lived at the famous Mirehouse estate in Keswick, a historic manor house in Cumberland on an estate that had been left to the Spedding family by Thomas Story in 1802. Thomas served as magistrate and High Sheriff of Cumberland in 1855, but he is much better known for his literary connections.

Thomas’s younger brother James Spedding (1808–1881) was famous for his edition of the works of Francis Bacon. Because of his family's standing, James’ literary connections, and the location of Mirehouse in the Lake District, the Speddings were especially close friends with various “Lake District” writers.

Thomas was close friends with Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)—who wrote movingly of Thomas after his death—and frequently hosted William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Edward FitzGerald (author of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám).

The Mirehouse estate quotes the recollection of Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley (here), which describes the convivial atmosphere of the library at the Spedding family’s Mirehouse estate:

There are those who would fain have that library filled again with the voices of old time. Tennyson’s deep-chested tones, FitzGerald’s laugh, Monckton-Milne’s wit. Carlyle’s strong Northern brogue, James Spedding’s dignified speech, and Tom Spedding’s humour.

* * * * *

There are no images online (that I can find) of this Thomas Spedding ex libris bookplate—one of the few Speddings to dignify their books with a bookplate—and below are most of the tiny number of photos I could find of the library at Mirehouse, either from the estate website or from the Mirehouse Facebook page (here). Since Mirehouse is regularly open to the public I expected to find many more images, but the main attraction seems to be outdoors: the stunning gardens and area generally.

The Fall of Sinful Sally

The virtue-to-vice plot of Hannah Moore’s tract, The Story of Sinful Sally (1796), can be summarised as follows:

[1] Innocent Beginnings [stanzas 1–8]: Sally lives a virtuous, peaceful life with her parents in a rural cottage. At 17 she is courted, and is soon married.

[2] Seduction and Fall [stanzas 8–14]: As a result of her vanity, Sally is seduced by the local lord; she abandons her husband and parents to become the mistress of Sir William.

[3] London Hedonism [stanzas 15–25]: Sally moves to London, replacing her honest life of faith with a life of gloating luxury and superficial pleasure; her pangs of guilt grow.

[4] Descent to the Streets [stanzas 26–30]: Abandoned by Sir William, she loses her fortune and turns to prostitution, silencing her pangs of guilt and drowning her sorrow in gin.

[5] Life of Prostitution and Crime [stanzas 31–35]: She joins a criminal gang, entrapping a series of young men, swapping each one for another once they are caught and executed.

[6] Agonizing End [stanzas 36–43]: Thoroughly poxed, a dying Sally suffers profound remorse and begs for salvation.

Many editions of this cheerful tract are undated; the one I transcribe below was printed in 1807 according to Anna Blanch’s bibliography (in A Reassessment of the Authorship of the Cheap Repository Tract (MA thesis, 2009) online here).

I bought the tract largely because I loved the title, and the woodcut above of Sally leading a young man by the elbow into a shop selling “Wines”—although the text makes it clear that Drunken Sal is a gin drinker (“my sorrows are redoubled, / But I drown them all in gin”).

Before passing this tract onto Monash, I scanned it, with the intention of publishing on this blog both the image and the text. That was back in 2013. The less said the better about the thirteen-years of procrastination that followed.

* * * * *

There are a few editions of this 43-stanza, 172-line ballad, which are variously represented online. A full text is here. The text follows the 1796-edition, but is unnumbered and has a number of typos (such as stanza 8 “simming” for “sinning”; stanza 13 “creafty” for “crafty” etc.).

A partial reprint and summary (seemingly, not based on the 1796 edition) is here; a 41-stanza edited text (omitting stanzas 22 and 25, but with line numbers) is available here—in pdf, as an excerpt from Duncan Wu’s Romanticism: An Anthology, 4th ed. (2012), 76–81. The omission of two stanzas and some textual variation suggests that Wu's text might be an accurate representation of a later (shortened) edition of the text.

Apparently, you can listen to readings from the Story of Sinful Sally here. This page also links to images of a McMaster University copy of the first edition of The Story of Sinful Sally, from which I have taken the six woodcuts below.

* * * * *

THE STORY of SINFUL SALLY.

The Story of Sinful Sally, Told by Herself. Shewing how from being Sally of the Green she was first led to become Sinful Sally, and afterwards Drunken Sal, and how at last she came to a most melancholy and almost hopeless End; being therein a Warning to all young Women both in Town and Country.

[stanza 1]

Come each maiden lend an ear,
  Country Lass and London Belle!
Come and drop a mournful tear
  O’er the tale that I shall tell.

[stanza 2]

I that ask your tender pity,
  Ruin’d now and all forlorn,
Once, like you, was young and pretty,
  And as cheerful as the morn.

[stanza 3]

In yon distant Cottage sitting,
  Far away from London town,
Once you might have seen me knitting,
  In my simple kersey gown.

[stanza 4]

Where the little lambkins leap,
  Where the meadow looks so gay,
Where the drooping willows weep,
  Simple Sally us’d to stray.

[stanza 5]

Then I tasted many a blessing,
  Then I had an honest fame;
Father, mother me caressing,
  Smil’d and thought me free from blame.

[stanza 6]

Then, amid my friends so dear,
  Life it speeded fast away;
O! it moves a tender tear,
  To think how peaceful was the day!

[stanza 7]

From the villages surrounding,
  Ere I well had reach’d eighteen,
Came the modest youths abounding,
  All to Sally of the Green.

[stanza 8]

Courting days were thus beginning,
  And I soon had prov’d a wife;
O! if I had kept from sinning,
  Now how blest had been my life.

[stanza 9]

Come each maiden lend an ear,
  Country lass and London belle;
Come ye now and deign to hear
  How poor Sinful Sally fell:

[stanza 10]

Where the hill begins inclining,
  Half a furlong from the road,
O’er the village white and shining,
  Stands Sir William’s great abode.

[stanza 11]

Near his meadow I was tripping,
  Vainly wishing to be seen,
When Sir William met me skipping,
  And he spoke me on the green.

[stanza 12]

Bid me quit my cloak of scarlet,
  Blam’d my simple kersey gown;
Ey’d me then so like a varlet,
  Such as live in London town.

[stanza 13]

With his presents I was loaded,
  And bedeck’d in ribbons gay;
Thus my ruin was foreboded,
  O, how crafty was his way!

[stanza 14]

Vanish’d now from cottage lowly,
  My poor parents’ heart I break,
Enter on a state unholy,
  Turn a mistress to a rake.

[stanza 15]

Now no more by morning light
  Up to God my voice I raise;
Now no shadows of the night
  Call my thoughts to pray’r and praise.

[stanza 16]

Hark! a well known sound I hear!
  ’Tis the church’s Sunday bell!
No: I dread to venture near!
  No: I’m now the Child of Hell.

[stanza 17]

Now I lay my Bible by,
  Chuse that impious book so new;
Love the bold blaspheming lie,
  And that filthy novel too.

[stanza 18]

Next to London town I pass
  (Sinful Sally is my name,)
There to gain a front of brass,
  And to glory in my shame.

[stanza 19]

Powder’d well, and puff’d, and painted,
  Rivals all I there outshine;
With skin so white and heart so tainted,
  Rolling in my chariot fine.

[stanza 20]

In the Park I glitter daily,
  Then I dress me for the play,
Then to masquerade so gaily,
  See me, see me tear away.

[stanza 21]

When I meet some meaner lass,
  Then I toss with proud disdain;
Laugh and giggle as I pass,
  Seeming not to know a pain.

[stanza 22]

Still at every hour of leisure
  Something whispers me within,
“O! I hate this life of pleasure,
  For it is a life of sin.”

[stanza 23]

Thus amidst my peals of laughter
  Horror seizes oft my frame:
Pleasure now—Damnation after,
  And a never-dying flame.

[stanza 24]

“Save me, save me, Lord,” I cry,
  “Save my soul from Satan’s chain!”
Now I see salvation nigh,
  Now I turn to sin again.

[stanza 25]

Is it then some true repentance
  That I feel for evil done?
No: ’tis horror of my sentence,
  ’Tis the pangs of hell begun.

[stanza 26]

By a thousand ills o’ertaken,
  See me now quite sinking down,
’Till so lost and so forsaken,
  Sal is cast upon the town.

[stanza 27]

At the dusk of evening grey,
  Forth I step from secret cell;
Roaming like a beast of prey,
  Or some hateful imp of Hell.

[stanza 28]

Ah! How many youths so blooming
  By my wanton looks I’ve won;
Then by vices all consuming,
  Left them ruin’d and undone!

[stanza 29]

Thus the cruel spider stretches
  Wide his web for every fly,
Then each victim that he catches
  Strait he poisons till he die.

[stanza 30]

Now no more by conscience troubled,
  Deep I plunge in every sin,
True—my sorrows are redoubled,
  But I drown them all in gin.

[stanza 31]

See me next with front so daring
  Band of ruffian rogues among;
Fighting, cheating, drinking, swearing,
  And the vilest of the throng.

[stanza 32]

Mark the youngest of the thieves;
  Taught by Sal he ventures further,
What he filches Sal receives,
  ’Tis for Sal he does the murther.

[stanza 33]

See me then attend my victim,
  To the fatal gallows tree;
Pleas’d to think how I have nick’d him,
  Made him swing while I am free.

[stanza 34]

Jack I laughing see depart,
  While with Dick I drink and sing,
Soon again I’ll fill the cart,
  Make this present lover swing.

[stanza 35]

But while thus with guilt surprising,
  Sal pursues her bold career,
See God’s dreadful wrath arising,
  And the Day of Vengeance near.

[stanza 36]

Fierce disease my body seizes,
  Racking pain afflicts my bones;
Dread of death my spirit freezes,
  Deep and doleful are my groans.

[stanza 37]

Here with face so shrunk and spotted
  On the clay cold ground I lie;
See how all my flesh is rotted,
  Stop, O stranger, see me die!

[stanza 38]

Conscience, as my breath’s departing,
  Plunges too his arrow deep,
With redoubled fury starting,
  Like some giant in his sleep.

[stanza 39]

In this pit of ruin lying,
  Once again before I die,
Fainting, trembling, weeping, sighing,
  Lord, to thee I lift mine eye.

[stanza 40]

Thou cans’t save the vilest harlot,
  Grace I’ve heard is free and full,
Sins that once were “red as scarlet
  Thou can’st make as white as wool.”

[stanza 41]

Savior, whom I’ve pierc’d so often,
  Deeper still my guilt imprint!
Let thy mighty spirit soften,
  This my harden’d heart of flint.

[stanza 42]

Vain, alas! is all my groaning,
  For I fear the die is cast;
True, thy blood is all atoning,
  But my day of grace is past.

[stanza 43]

Savior! hear me or I perish!
  None who lives is quite undone;
Still a Ray of Hope I’ll cherish
  ’Till eternity’s begun.

THE END.

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.

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 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.