Fortunately, “bibliomania is not a psychological disorder recognized by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders". However, according to Mark D. Griffiths, “taxonomic collecting” (“attempt[ing] to own an example of every type of a series of items produced”) and “the multiple purchasing of the same book” are probably either “fetishistic” or a symptom of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. While Griffiths notes that there is “very little academic research on the topic”—research reviewed in his article—he concludes that “book collecting can be compulsive.”
It is unlikely anyone who has jokingly described themselves as a bibliomaniac will disagree with this conclusion, just as it is unlikely that many of these same people are likely to agree with Freud that collecting is “a manifestation of anal-erotic impulses” or a “neurotic defence against pre-oedipal or oedipal traumas”—statements also quoted by Griffiths. In Civilisation and its Discontents (1930), 56–57, Freud argues, that “putting out fire by urinating” on it represents a “sexual act” and that controlling this desire is an achievement, a heterosexual masculine victory of culture-over-nature which is both “without a prototype” and “impossible” for women. Which tells you a great deal about Freud and his credibility, and very little about fire. And the capacity of women to urinate on it.
Returning to taxonomic collecting and purchasing multiple copies of the same book—if these are symptoms of bibliomania, then I am a bibliomaniac. In 1887, Augustine Birrell said, in relation to book collecting, that “until you have ten thousand volumes the less you say about your library the better.” But I am talking about bibliomania, not book-collecting, and by Griffiths’ definition, it is possible to be a bibliomaniac by repeatedly buying copies of only one book. Buying a dozen copies of Birrell’s Obiter Dicta, for instance, would be enough to make you a bibliomaniac.
Anyway, I was thinking about compulsive behaviour the other day when two more sets of Haywood’s Female Spectator arrived—these being my sixth and seventh set of the “Second” edition, i.e. Ab.60.5 the first London, duodecimo edition, which is not really the second London edition, and was not the first duodecimo edition. When I set out, without much premeditation, to collect Haywood taxonomically, I had not thought that I would end up with so many “duplicates” as well. Of course, very few hand-press books are genuine "duplicates" bibliographically-speaking (there are often slight differences, as I discuss here), and every book has its own history, more or less recoverable, which makes it unique (even volumes from the same set, as I discuss here).
Still, seven sets of the 1748 “Second” London edition does seem excessive, even to me. The vendor, whose outstanding collection on Hume ended up in a Japanese university, assured me that he had had a dozen copies of many of Hume's works before he parted with his collection. And David Levy assures me that his Hoyle collection also includes a significant number of “duplicates” of some items. Both collectors said I had nothing to be concerned about. But I am not sure I should be taking advice from people whose bibliomania is more advanced than my own.
Having gone online to self-diagnose, I found the Wikipedia entry on Bibliomania, and passed from that to the article by Griffiths, which I have been quoting from (“In Excess. Hooked and Booked. A brief look at bibliomania,” Psychology Today, 17 September 2013). Having read Griffiths’ essay, it appears that I now have to decide which diagnosis is worse, an obsessive-compulsive disorder or a paraphilia.
Thursday, 30 November 2017
Wednesday, 29 November 2017
Knitting for Bibliographers, by Professor Greenough
As Wikipedia explains, Chester Noyes Greenough (1874–1938) was Professor of English (from 1915) and Dean at Harvard University (1919–27). Inasmuch as he is known to bibliographers today, he is known for his Bibliography of the Theophrastan Character (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947) and his unpublished card catalogue of “English Prose Fiction, 1470-1832,” which is held at Harvard University’s Widener Library.
I was not aware of either work until quite recently, when I encountered a reference to the “Greenough catalogue” as a bibliographical reference to a “lost” work of eighteenth century erotica. Searching online, I found a few more references to this mysterious catalogue. A good example is, Allene Gregory, The French Revolution and the English Novel (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1915), 321; Gregory writes “I wish to acknowledge an especial indebtedness to a manuscript card list of prose fiction by Professor C. N. Greenough, which formed the basis for my working list of Revolutionary fiction.”
In 1921, PMLA published an article by our good friend George F. Whicher—Eliza Haywood’s first bibliographer—as an appendix to their 1921 volume (George F. Whicher, “The Present Status of the Bibliography of English Prose Fiction between 1660 and 1800,”PMLA, 36 (1921): c–cvi). In it, Whicher describes how Greenough had compiled his catalogue. Describing two unpublished bibliographies, which have “carried forward the listing of prose fiction through the later years of the eighteenth century,” he explains,
One of them is the compilation of that indefatigable collector of literary information, Professor Chester N. Greenough of Harvard. He has collected between 3,000 and 4,000 titles covering the entire period—in fact his list extends to 1832—and has recorded editions besides the first. He has examined, though not with systematic thoroughness, the usual sources of bibliographical information. The feature of his collection which promises to be of greatest value is the large number of clippings from modern booksellers’ catalogues that it contains. As every student of the novel knows, editions and even books not available in any of the great libraries are constantly turning up in dealers’ lists. A collection of these items, such as Professor Greenough, may do much to supplement information gathered from other sources. Professor Greenough has courteously expressed his willingness to have his cards consulted by other workers in the bibliographical field.
(The second card catalogue, begun ca.1906 by John M. Clapp (1870–1953), was bequeathed to Whicher when Clapp retired as Head of the Department of English at Indiana University, ca. 1920. By 1922, it was in Amhurst College Library—for its fate, see below.)
Ruth Greenough’s account of her husband’s life, including his life as a scholar, was published in 1940. In this biography, she mentions Chester’s work on his catalogue of “English Prose Fiction”—which he referred to as his “B.P.F.” According to Ruth, Chester had an “almost boyish enthusiasm” when contemplating the “prospect of its attaining finished form” (Ruth Hornblower Greenough, Chester Noyes Greenough; an account of his life as teacher, dean, master & scholar (Cambridge, MA: Merrymount Press, 1940), 287). The “B.P.F.” was begun ca. 1920, “in the early years of his deanship to employ [his] spare moments” (287). The three or four thousand cards Whicher reports in 1922 grew to approximately two hundred thousand cards, catalogued under four hundred tentative subject headings, by the time of his death (286). Inspired by Robert Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica; Or, A General Index to British and Foreign Literature (1824), Chester’s “B.P.F.” was both a productive way to use of his spare moments, and a break from his duties as Dean.
In 1929, after almost a decade of work on the project, Chester received some research funds, so he employed research assistants to expand on his work and—when this grant money ran out—continued to pay his RAs to work on it. Not surprisingly, Chester was very anxious to see the work finished: when he was Dean (1919–27), “he never ceased to regret … the fact that his own work was lying idle” (117), when he first received his grant money he advised his RA to “Spend like a drunken sailor!” (287), and even after he was paying for the work from his own pocket, he wanted his RA to “push faster”—increasing his hours to increase his output. Ruth says that “he kept a tray of cards” at hand, which he “played with, rearranged, added to” (117), “quieting his nerves by compiling, assorting and indexing the cards”—something “he called his knitting work” (287). His RA adds, “Often in spare moments before going to classes he would finger over the cards and express delight in the accumulation [he was making] for future scholars” (288).
Prof. Chester Noyes Greenough’s “accumulation” is described in a FAQ answer on the Harvard University Library website (here):
Professor Chester Noyes Greenough’s “Catalogue of English Prose Fiction, 1470-1832” is still an index card file kept in a large wooden case in Houghton Library. It is located in an area not normally open to the public, so it is necessary to contact Houghton to arrange to consult it in person: houghref@fas.harvard.edu.
The staff at the Haughton were kind enough to answer a query of mine concerning Frailties of Fashion; Or, Adventures of an Irish Smock (1782), which I have mentioned on this blog before (here) and which is the subject of a forthcoming essay I have co-authored for Notes and Queries, supplying images of the card concerned (front, above; back, below). As you can see, the card records the title, format, price, publisher, the novel is characterised (probably from a review), and it has been checked in the British Museum catalogue. It appears the initial details were taken from The Monthly Review; a subtitle and a reference were later added—“CR LV 234,” which is a reference to the Critical Review, 55 ([1783]): 234—plus information on cross-references from subtitle, and subjects (Ireland and Fashion)—later still, details taken from Jules Gay’s Bibliographie des ouvrages relatifs à l'amour, aux femmes, au mariage et des livres (1871), 1.36, were add to the back of the card. (Identifiable as such, since Gay is responsible for the ghost “Randall (1875?)” edition.)
Below the transcript from Gay on the back is a stamp: “This card given to the Harvard College Library by J. M. Clapp January, 1929”—a statement of provenance that explains the cataloguing date on the front “8.11.09” (i.e., 8 November 1909), a decade before Greenough commenced his “Catalogue of English Prose Fiction, 1470-1832,” but three years after Clapp began his. From these details it seems that Clapp’s card catalogue collections were bequeathed to Whicher, who passed them on to Amhurst (where they resided in 1922); but that the collection was passed on to Harvard in 1929—whether by Clapp (who was still alive), Whicher (ditto), or Amhurst itself, is unclear—and added to the Greenough “Catalogue,” precisely at the moment Greenough was dispersing grant money “like a drunken sailor” to accelerate the expansion of his own card catalogue. From which, it seems likely that the first hand is Clapp’s, and the remainder either Greenough’s or his RA’s.
In my database Checklist of Eighteenth-Century Erotica I record remarkably similar details to those recorded by Clapp and Greenough. Because of the limited scope of my Checklist (fewer than two thousand titles), and the greater ease with which details can be added to virtual “cards” in FileMaker, I have the luxury of adding more of the same sort of details: more detailed title-page information, more advertisements and reviews, more details of copies located, etc. So it is not really surprising that my working methods are also much the same, my regrets about being kept from my Checklist by teaching and admin, ditto, and now the name I use for the time I spend on what has become my “knitting.”
If the card above is typical of the Clapp/Greenough catalogue, as I am tempted to refer to it as now, it is a remarkable achievement. It is a shame it is not better known.
I was not aware of either work until quite recently, when I encountered a reference to the “Greenough catalogue” as a bibliographical reference to a “lost” work of eighteenth century erotica. Searching online, I found a few more references to this mysterious catalogue. A good example is, Allene Gregory, The French Revolution and the English Novel (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1915), 321; Gregory writes “I wish to acknowledge an especial indebtedness to a manuscript card list of prose fiction by Professor C. N. Greenough, which formed the basis for my working list of Revolutionary fiction.”
In 1921, PMLA published an article by our good friend George F. Whicher—Eliza Haywood’s first bibliographer—as an appendix to their 1921 volume (George F. Whicher, “The Present Status of the Bibliography of English Prose Fiction between 1660 and 1800,”PMLA, 36 (1921): c–cvi). In it, Whicher describes how Greenough had compiled his catalogue. Describing two unpublished bibliographies, which have “carried forward the listing of prose fiction through the later years of the eighteenth century,” he explains,
One of them is the compilation of that indefatigable collector of literary information, Professor Chester N. Greenough of Harvard. He has collected between 3,000 and 4,000 titles covering the entire period—in fact his list extends to 1832—and has recorded editions besides the first. He has examined, though not with systematic thoroughness, the usual sources of bibliographical information. The feature of his collection which promises to be of greatest value is the large number of clippings from modern booksellers’ catalogues that it contains. As every student of the novel knows, editions and even books not available in any of the great libraries are constantly turning up in dealers’ lists. A collection of these items, such as Professor Greenough, may do much to supplement information gathered from other sources. Professor Greenough has courteously expressed his willingness to have his cards consulted by other workers in the bibliographical field.
(The second card catalogue, begun ca.1906 by John M. Clapp (1870–1953), was bequeathed to Whicher when Clapp retired as Head of the Department of English at Indiana University, ca. 1920. By 1922, it was in Amhurst College Library—for its fate, see below.)
Ruth Greenough’s account of her husband’s life, including his life as a scholar, was published in 1940. In this biography, she mentions Chester’s work on his catalogue of “English Prose Fiction”—which he referred to as his “B.P.F.” According to Ruth, Chester had an “almost boyish enthusiasm” when contemplating the “prospect of its attaining finished form” (Ruth Hornblower Greenough, Chester Noyes Greenough; an account of his life as teacher, dean, master & scholar (Cambridge, MA: Merrymount Press, 1940), 287). The “B.P.F.” was begun ca. 1920, “in the early years of his deanship to employ [his] spare moments” (287). The three or four thousand cards Whicher reports in 1922 grew to approximately two hundred thousand cards, catalogued under four hundred tentative subject headings, by the time of his death (286). Inspired by Robert Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica; Or, A General Index to British and Foreign Literature (1824), Chester’s “B.P.F.” was both a productive way to use of his spare moments, and a break from his duties as Dean.
In 1929, after almost a decade of work on the project, Chester received some research funds, so he employed research assistants to expand on his work and—when this grant money ran out—continued to pay his RAs to work on it. Not surprisingly, Chester was very anxious to see the work finished: when he was Dean (1919–27), “he never ceased to regret … the fact that his own work was lying idle” (117), when he first received his grant money he advised his RA to “Spend like a drunken sailor!” (287), and even after he was paying for the work from his own pocket, he wanted his RA to “push faster”—increasing his hours to increase his output. Ruth says that “he kept a tray of cards” at hand, which he “played with, rearranged, added to” (117), “quieting his nerves by compiling, assorting and indexing the cards”—something “he called his knitting work” (287). His RA adds, “Often in spare moments before going to classes he would finger over the cards and express delight in the accumulation [he was making] for future scholars” (288).
* * * * *
Prof. Chester Noyes Greenough’s “accumulation” is described in a FAQ answer on the Harvard University Library website (here):
Professor Chester Noyes Greenough’s “Catalogue of English Prose Fiction, 1470-1832” is still an index card file kept in a large wooden case in Houghton Library. It is located in an area not normally open to the public, so it is necessary to contact Houghton to arrange to consult it in person: houghref@fas.harvard.edu.
The staff at the Haughton were kind enough to answer a query of mine concerning Frailties of Fashion; Or, Adventures of an Irish Smock (1782), which I have mentioned on this blog before (here) and which is the subject of a forthcoming essay I have co-authored for Notes and Queries, supplying images of the card concerned (front, above; back, below). As you can see, the card records the title, format, price, publisher, the novel is characterised (probably from a review), and it has been checked in the British Museum catalogue. It appears the initial details were taken from The Monthly Review; a subtitle and a reference were later added—“CR LV 234,” which is a reference to the Critical Review, 55 ([1783]): 234—plus information on cross-references from subtitle, and subjects (Ireland and Fashion)—later still, details taken from Jules Gay’s Bibliographie des ouvrages relatifs à l'amour, aux femmes, au mariage et des livres (1871), 1.36, were add to the back of the card. (Identifiable as such, since Gay is responsible for the ghost “Randall (1875?)” edition.)
Below the transcript from Gay on the back is a stamp: “This card given to the Harvard College Library by J. M. Clapp January, 1929”—a statement of provenance that explains the cataloguing date on the front “8.11.09” (i.e., 8 November 1909), a decade before Greenough commenced his “Catalogue of English Prose Fiction, 1470-1832,” but three years after Clapp began his. From these details it seems that Clapp’s card catalogue collections were bequeathed to Whicher, who passed them on to Amhurst (where they resided in 1922); but that the collection was passed on to Harvard in 1929—whether by Clapp (who was still alive), Whicher (ditto), or Amhurst itself, is unclear—and added to the Greenough “Catalogue,” precisely at the moment Greenough was dispersing grant money “like a drunken sailor” to accelerate the expansion of his own card catalogue. From which, it seems likely that the first hand is Clapp’s, and the remainder either Greenough’s or his RA’s.
In my database Checklist of Eighteenth-Century Erotica I record remarkably similar details to those recorded by Clapp and Greenough. Because of the limited scope of my Checklist (fewer than two thousand titles), and the greater ease with which details can be added to virtual “cards” in FileMaker, I have the luxury of adding more of the same sort of details: more detailed title-page information, more advertisements and reviews, more details of copies located, etc. So it is not really surprising that my working methods are also much the same, my regrets about being kept from my Checklist by teaching and admin, ditto, and now the name I use for the time I spend on what has become my “knitting.”
If the card above is typical of the Clapp/Greenough catalogue, as I am tempted to refer to it as now, it is a remarkable achievement. It is a shame it is not better known.
Thursday, 19 October 2017
Early Reviews of Haywood's Memoirs of Utopia (1725–26)
The following note and editorial addition, concerning Haywood's Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia, appears in the Critical Review, 4 (November 1757): 272 (online here):
To the Author of the Critical Review.
SIR,
LAST winter a book called Modern Lovers was published, pr. 3 s. but in fact was only part of The Memoirs of Utopia. This month the same publisher has exhibited a book called Prostitutes of Quality, which is likewise extracted from Memoirs of Utopia, and yesterday a book was published, called Memoirs of B— Tracey, which in fact is only a part of an absence book, called A History of the Human Heart, which is not fit to be read by the public.
Nov. 26, 1757.
Your obedient servant,
T. L.
N. B. The authors of The Critical Review are obliged to T. L. for the above letter; and should be obliged to him for the same sort of information hereafter; for they would heartily join him in detecting such notorious and infamous impositions on the public.
The four works mentioned here are:
[1] Modern Lovers; Or, The Adventures of Cupid, the God of Love: A Novel (London: Printed for J. Cooke, at the King’s-Arms, in Great-Turnstile, Holbourn, 1756); ESTC: t66385.
[2] Prostitutes of Quality; Or, Adultery á-la-mode. Being Authentic and Genuine Memoirs of Several Persons of the Highest Quality (London: Printed for J. Cooke, and J. Coote, opposite Devereux-Court, in the Strand, 1757); ESTC: t46030.
[3] Memoirs of B— Tracey (London: Printed for J. King, in Great Turnstile, Holborn, [1757]); ESTC: t118902.
[4] A History of the Human Heart; Or, The Adventures of a Young Gentleman (London: Printed for J. Freeman, 1749); ESTC: n17696.
Putting aside, for a moment, the question of whether [1] Modern Lovers and [2] Prostitutes of Quality are, in fact, "only part of The Memoirs of Utopia"—the other two works are certainly related to each other: [3] Memoirs of B— Tracey is "in fact is only a part of" [4] A History of the Human Heart—about two-thirds of the former being a word-for-word reprint of the latter (i.e., about 214 of 314 pages). Both titles appear in George Colman's imaginary "Catalogue of a Circulating Library," as nos. 142 and 89, which I posted here.
T. L. wasn’t the only person to comment on the thefts. The Monthly Review, notes Memoirs of B— Tracey is “All stolen from a wretched book, published about seven years ago, entitled, The History of the Human Heart; and now imposed upon the Public for a new Work.” And the reviewer at Annales typographiques comments on “Mémoires du baron Tracey,” that it is “Pillé d'un mauvais livre publié il y a sept ans, intitulé: The history of the human heart [Stolen from a wicked book published seven years ago, entitled: The history of the human heart].
As for [1] Modern Lovers and [2] Prostitutes of Quality (Coleman nos. 153 and 163): both are comprised exclusively of unauthorised reprints from Haywood’s Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1725–26), 2 vols. The eighteen chapters of Modern Lovers being very lightly revised, out-of-sequence excerpts from Memoirs of Utopia (1725), 61–71, 89–91, 103–25, 140–74, 177–94, 196–210, 260–74; the six stories in Prostitutes of Quality being even more lightly revised, out-of-sequence excerpts from Memoirs of Utopia (1725), 58–71, 72–120, 121–26, 126–56, 265–75 and Memoirs of Utopia, vol.2 (1726), 126–40.
The publisher of these two unautorised reprints, J. Cooke, appended the following to his first volume of stolen text:
I am but just commenced Author, and therefore cannot form any Judgment of my Ability to please or instruct the Public; but one Thing I can venture to promise, that if this Performance meets with a general Approbation, the Public shall hear again from their
Most obedient Servant,
Cupid
The publisher's misdirection continued in the Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser, 10 November 1756, where Cooke notes "Great Enquiry having been made to discover the Author of this Performance; this is to assure the Public … that the Characters herein are all general, and not pointed at any particular Person, as hath been most falsely suggested.”
In 1756, the Monthly Review did not recognise Cooke desception, commenting only that Cupid “is here made to relate a number of silly, barren stories, each chapter being a distinct history," and noting that "At the end of the book, the public is threatned with a future visitation from the same quarter.” That "future visitation" was [2] Prostitutes of Quality.
With the publication of Prostitutes of Quality in 1757, both the Critical Review and Monthly Review recognised Cooke desception. The Critical Review is quoted at the start of this post—the Monthly Review adds that Prostitutes of Quality is “Cull’d from the lewd Eutopian romances that so much delighted the chamber-maids and ’prentices of the last age:—Surely, such wretched author-craft cannot fail of its reward!”
What is particularly interesting here is to see the reaction of reviewers when confronted with Haywood’s early work—after her death—work that was published before any of these journals, dedicated to reviewing literature, were established. The Monthly Review described the passages from Memoirs of Utopia as "silly, barren stories" in 1756, and “lewd” and “wretched” in 1757, but there is a back-handed complement, a grudging recognition, that the book “delighted … chamber-maids and ’prentices.” T. L., however, identifies all of the works he(?) mentions as “not fit to be read by the public.”
BTW: I am not really sure what "an absence book" is, unless absence is Latinate pun with ab- and sense: ab- being a prefix meaning "off, away, from" and, therefore, absence may be synonymous with something like "senseless." But this is a stretch. If there is an accepted meaning of this word/phrase, I am not familiar with, and neither are the editors of the OED.
Alternatively, "an absence book" may be a book in which absentees from Sunday School were noted, i.e., a naughty-book. The phrase is first recorded in the early nineteenth-century, but may be earlier. See, for instance, here in Hints for Conducting Sunday Schools (1811).
[NOTE: this is a revised and expanded version of a post I did almost six years ago.]
To the Author of the Critical Review.
SIR,
LAST winter a book called Modern Lovers was published, pr. 3 s. but in fact was only part of The Memoirs of Utopia. This month the same publisher has exhibited a book called Prostitutes of Quality, which is likewise extracted from Memoirs of Utopia, and yesterday a book was published, called Memoirs of B— Tracey, which in fact is only a part of an absence book, called A History of the Human Heart, which is not fit to be read by the public.
Nov. 26, 1757.
Your obedient servant,
T. L.
N. B. The authors of The Critical Review are obliged to T. L. for the above letter; and should be obliged to him for the same sort of information hereafter; for they would heartily join him in detecting such notorious and infamous impositions on the public.
The four works mentioned here are:
[1] Modern Lovers; Or, The Adventures of Cupid, the God of Love: A Novel (London: Printed for J. Cooke, at the King’s-Arms, in Great-Turnstile, Holbourn, 1756); ESTC: t66385.
[2] Prostitutes of Quality; Or, Adultery á-la-mode. Being Authentic and Genuine Memoirs of Several Persons of the Highest Quality (London: Printed for J. Cooke, and J. Coote, opposite Devereux-Court, in the Strand, 1757); ESTC: t46030.
[3] Memoirs of B— Tracey (London: Printed for J. King, in Great Turnstile, Holborn, [1757]); ESTC: t118902.
[4] A History of the Human Heart; Or, The Adventures of a Young Gentleman (London: Printed for J. Freeman, 1749); ESTC: n17696.
* * * * *
Putting aside, for a moment, the question of whether [1] Modern Lovers and [2] Prostitutes of Quality are, in fact, "only part of The Memoirs of Utopia"—the other two works are certainly related to each other: [3] Memoirs of B— Tracey is "in fact is only a part of" [4] A History of the Human Heart—about two-thirds of the former being a word-for-word reprint of the latter (i.e., about 214 of 314 pages). Both titles appear in George Colman's imaginary "Catalogue of a Circulating Library," as nos. 142 and 89, which I posted here.
T. L. wasn’t the only person to comment on the thefts. The Monthly Review, notes Memoirs of B— Tracey is “All stolen from a wretched book, published about seven years ago, entitled, The History of the Human Heart; and now imposed upon the Public for a new Work.” And the reviewer at Annales typographiques comments on “Mémoires du baron Tracey,” that it is “Pillé d'un mauvais livre publié il y a sept ans, intitulé: The history of the human heart [Stolen from a wicked book published seven years ago, entitled: The history of the human heart].
* * * * *
As for [1] Modern Lovers and [2] Prostitutes of Quality (Coleman nos. 153 and 163): both are comprised exclusively of unauthorised reprints from Haywood’s Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1725–26), 2 vols. The eighteen chapters of Modern Lovers being very lightly revised, out-of-sequence excerpts from Memoirs of Utopia (1725), 61–71, 89–91, 103–25, 140–74, 177–94, 196–210, 260–74; the six stories in Prostitutes of Quality being even more lightly revised, out-of-sequence excerpts from Memoirs of Utopia (1725), 58–71, 72–120, 121–26, 126–56, 265–75 and Memoirs of Utopia, vol.2 (1726), 126–40.
The publisher of these two unautorised reprints, J. Cooke, appended the following to his first volume of stolen text:
I am but just commenced Author, and therefore cannot form any Judgment of my Ability to please or instruct the Public; but one Thing I can venture to promise, that if this Performance meets with a general Approbation, the Public shall hear again from their
Most obedient Servant,
Cupid
The publisher's misdirection continued in the Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser, 10 November 1756, where Cooke notes "Great Enquiry having been made to discover the Author of this Performance; this is to assure the Public … that the Characters herein are all general, and not pointed at any particular Person, as hath been most falsely suggested.”
In 1756, the Monthly Review did not recognise Cooke desception, commenting only that Cupid “is here made to relate a number of silly, barren stories, each chapter being a distinct history," and noting that "At the end of the book, the public is threatned with a future visitation from the same quarter.” That "future visitation" was [2] Prostitutes of Quality.
With the publication of Prostitutes of Quality in 1757, both the Critical Review and Monthly Review recognised Cooke desception. The Critical Review is quoted at the start of this post—the Monthly Review adds that Prostitutes of Quality is “Cull’d from the lewd Eutopian romances that so much delighted the chamber-maids and ’prentices of the last age:—Surely, such wretched author-craft cannot fail of its reward!”
What is particularly interesting here is to see the reaction of reviewers when confronted with Haywood’s early work—after her death—work that was published before any of these journals, dedicated to reviewing literature, were established. The Monthly Review described the passages from Memoirs of Utopia as "silly, barren stories" in 1756, and “lewd” and “wretched” in 1757, but there is a back-handed complement, a grudging recognition, that the book “delighted … chamber-maids and ’prentices.” T. L., however, identifies all of the works he(?) mentions as “not fit to be read by the public.”
* * * * *
BTW: I am not really sure what "an absence book" is, unless absence is Latinate pun with ab- and sense: ab- being a prefix meaning "off, away, from" and, therefore, absence may be synonymous with something like "senseless." But this is a stretch. If there is an accepted meaning of this word/phrase, I am not familiar with, and neither are the editors of the OED.
Alternatively, "an absence book" may be a book in which absentees from Sunday School were noted, i.e., a naughty-book. The phrase is first recorded in the early nineteenth-century, but may be earlier. See, for instance, here in Hints for Conducting Sunday Schools (1811).
[NOTE: this is a revised and expanded version of a post I did almost six years ago.]
Wednesday, 4 October 2017
Haywood's Distress'd Orphan — as a web comic!
Arden Powell has been inspired to adapt Eliza Haywood's The Distress'd Orphan; or, Love in a Madhouse (1726) into a web comic, under the title: Madhouse. (Madhouse doesn't have an exclamation mark, but I think it should be Madhouse!)
The first five pages will be posted today (Wednesday, 4 October 2017), with one new page every Wednesday thereafter until the complete novella is up.
According to Earla Wilputte, Arden hopes to build a large enough readership to pitch the project to publishers in the following year.
You can find "5 Reasons to Read Madhouse" here (one not mentioned is the lovely artwork), and a sample (The Garden Date) here. Enjoy!
The first five pages will be posted today (Wednesday, 4 October 2017), with one new page every Wednesday thereafter until the complete novella is up.
According to Earla Wilputte, Arden hopes to build a large enough readership to pitch the project to publishers in the following year.
You can find "5 Reasons to Read Madhouse" here (one not mentioned is the lovely artwork), and a sample (The Garden Date) here. Enjoy!
Tuesday, 11 July 2017
Macmillan's New Cranford Series and Illustrated Standard Novels in Dust Jackets
In 2011, I posted images of the dust jacket of my 1896 copy of Thomas Love Peacock's Gryll Grange here and here; that copy has now been donated to the Monash Library, as a part of my Thomas Love Peacock collection, but is yet to be catalogued.
Before I gave up my Peacock collection last year, I had been keeping an eye open for any more Peacock volumes from Macmillan's New Cranford Series and Illustrated Standard Novels in dust jackets or wrappers, but without any luck. I did, however, occasionally find other volumes from Macmillan’s New Cranford Series (1890–96) in dust jackets, so I thought I should do a post on them, add any images to that post which I might find in future.
Here today are the two jackets that I collected images of (two titles, two copies of the first), plus a few pictures of my old copy of Gryll Grange. The prices being asked for Cranford are eye-watering (approaching two thousand pounds), so it is not surprising that the books remain available two years after I spotted them! But the copy of Coridon’s Song is only a USD245—a bargain—I don't understand why nobody has snapped it up!
UPDATED 6 July and 28 September 2018: I have now been sent images of four more volumes from this series in their dust jackets, by a reader of this blog, so I am posting these pictures here (no.4–7 below). If any other readers of this blog care to donate more or better images, and descriptions, I'll post them too.
[1] Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, With a Preface by Anne Thackeray Ritchie, illus. Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1891), large paper copy, ltd. to 300 copies; in plain red publisher's cloth with paper spine label.
[2] Austin Dobson, Coridon’s Song and Other Verses from Various Sources, Introduction by Austen Dobson, illus. By Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1894), pictorial black cloth with titles and illustration stamped in gilt, a.e.g.
[3] Thomas Love Peacock, Gryll Grange, Introduction by George Sainsbury, illus. F. H. Townsend (London: Macmillan, 1896), red cloth.
[4] Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village, illus. by Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1893).
[5] Floria Anne Steel, Tales of the Punjab, illus. Lockwood Kipling (London: Macmillan, 1894).
[6] Joseph Addison et al., Days with Sir Roger de Coverley, illus. by Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1892).
[7] Oliver Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield, Preface by Austen Dobson, illus. Hugh Thompson (London: Macmillan, 1890).
[8] Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Introduction by Austen Dobson, illus. Charles E. Brock (London: Macmillan, 1895), plain binding under illustrated dust wrapper, printed with an enlarged image of the headpiece on page 243. (Illustration from Jarndyce Catalogue, no. 234 (Winter 2018-19), item no. 21, priced at £1800.)
[Updated 13 December 2018]
Before I gave up my Peacock collection last year, I had been keeping an eye open for any more Peacock volumes from Macmillan's New Cranford Series and Illustrated Standard Novels in dust jackets or wrappers, but without any luck. I did, however, occasionally find other volumes from Macmillan’s New Cranford Series (1890–96) in dust jackets, so I thought I should do a post on them, add any images to that post which I might find in future.
Here today are the two jackets that I collected images of (two titles, two copies of the first), plus a few pictures of my old copy of Gryll Grange. The prices being asked for Cranford are eye-watering (approaching two thousand pounds), so it is not surprising that the books remain available two years after I spotted them! But the copy of Coridon’s Song is only a USD245—a bargain—I don't understand why nobody has snapped it up!
UPDATED 6 July and 28 September 2018: I have now been sent images of four more volumes from this series in their dust jackets, by a reader of this blog, so I am posting these pictures here (no.4–7 below). If any other readers of this blog care to donate more or better images, and descriptions, I'll post them too.
* * * * *
[1] Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, With a Preface by Anne Thackeray Ritchie, illus. Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1891), large paper copy, ltd. to 300 copies; in plain red publisher's cloth with paper spine label.
[2] Austin Dobson, Coridon’s Song and Other Verses from Various Sources, Introduction by Austen Dobson, illus. By Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1894), pictorial black cloth with titles and illustration stamped in gilt, a.e.g.
[3] Thomas Love Peacock, Gryll Grange, Introduction by George Sainsbury, illus. F. H. Townsend (London: Macmillan, 1896), red cloth.
[4] Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village, illus. by Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1893).
[5] Floria Anne Steel, Tales of the Punjab, illus. Lockwood Kipling (London: Macmillan, 1894).
[6] Joseph Addison et al., Days with Sir Roger de Coverley, illus. by Hugh Thomson (London: Macmillan, 1892).
[7] Oliver Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield, Preface by Austen Dobson, illus. Hugh Thompson (London: Macmillan, 1890).
[8] Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Introduction by Austen Dobson, illus. Charles E. Brock (London: Macmillan, 1895), plain binding under illustrated dust wrapper, printed with an enlarged image of the headpiece on page 243. (Illustration from Jarndyce Catalogue, no. 234 (Winter 2018-19), item no. 21, priced at £1800.)
[Updated 13 December 2018]
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