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Gossip in a Library, redux
The last time I mentioned Edmund Gosse and his puningly-titled essay collection, Gossip in a Library (1891; see here), I was rather hard on both the writer and his essay ("What Ann Lang Read").Since I...
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Chapbook Illustration and the History of Dr. Faustus
Thanks to Giles Bergel et al., bibliographers of the (very) long eighteenth-century have a valuable new widget for image-matching woodblocks. The widget was developed by Bergel et al. to search of...
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What A Library Should Be Like, 1924
Richard Le Gallienne's “What A Library Should Be Like: Some Suggestions For Those To Whom Books and Their Heritage Are Precious” appeared in "House and Garden" in December 1924 (here). Le Gallienne...
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Eliza Haywood in Sydney, 1934
On the weekend I made an astonishing discovery: I am not the first person in Australia to have an interest in Eliza Haywood. Amazing, I know; check it out:Below I have transcribed the article I...
View ArticleWorks Falsely Attributed to Eliza Haywood
Below are links to original editions online of works falsely attributed to Eliza Haywood. These Haywood attributions are ones that I believe to be—and have previously explained at length why I believe...
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Gerald Dillon, freelance journalist
Gerald Aloysius Dillon (29 June 1897–[after 1952]), Irish-Australian soldier and freelance journalist, contributed an article on “'The Female Spectator': Mrs. Eliza Heywood's Periodical” to Australian...
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Collecting Haywood, 2021
Although 2021 was not much of an improvement on 2020 in Covid-terms—endless lock-downs, working from home etc.—it was a significant improvement in terms of book-collecting. I have no grand theory to...
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Teaching English in Utrecht, using The Female Spectator
My Bibliography of Eliza Haywood (2004) includes two sections given over to reprints of sections of works by Haywood before 1850: "Ac. Reprints in monographs" and "Ad. Reprints in...
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Fabian’s Fine Old Furniture, Melbourne Bookshop
I first visited Fabian’s Fine Old Furniture, at 309 Swanston Street, Melbourne, during an Easter-holiday visit in 1990. Despite the name of his business, Fabian mostly sold books, and clearly had been...
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Slip cancellation in 1904
Below are some images of one of my books with a cancelled imprint—The Letter of Petrus Peregrinus on the Magnet A.D. 1269, translated by Brother Arnold, and with an Introductory Note by Brother...
View ArticleGems of British social history series, 1978–1982
Between 1978 and 1982, Paul Harris published six facsimiles of eighteenth and nineteenth century erotic texts under the series title: "Gems of British social history series". For the record, these six...
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Fern reads McClure’s Magazine, 1914
The young woman wearing spectacles in this "real photo" postcard is identified in pencil as “Fern"—a name which peaked in popularity "at the dawn of the 20th century" (according to this site)....
View ArticleAn Anonymous Review of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, 1865
An unsigned review of Eliza Haywood's The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy appeared in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, vol. 20, no. 506 (8 July 1865): 52a–53b (here)....
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The H. B. Nims Handy Pamphlet Case, 1876
The Handy Pamphlet Case (depicted above) was produced by H. B. Nims and Co., Troy, NY, and advertised from 1875 to 1877. An 1875 advertisement in The American Stationer (here), reads as follows:The...
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Kingsley Studios Reader, ca. 1905
This studio portrait of a young woman at a desk, posed with book open in front of her, seems to have been taken by E. Grattan Phillipse, of "Royal Kingsley Studios" at 46 High Street, Ilfracombe, North...
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Eliza Haywood in Quaritch's General Catalogue, 1871
A three-volume set of the first edition of Eliza Haywood's Ab.68.1 The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (1753) appeared as lot no. 1219 in the 1871 sale Catalogue of the Valuable ... Library of the...
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The Unfortunate Young Nobleman, 1820
The following chapbook came to my attention only because of the similarity of the title to Haywood's Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman.* For a happy moment, I thought that this might have been a...
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Collecting Haywood, 2022
I am posting today to both apologise to any remaining long-term viewers of this blog for my long silence and to post my annual Haywood collecting year-in-review. For personal reasons, I was obliged to...
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Vampire-hunters and vampire-hunting kits
Shortly before going on leave last year, I was approached by Charmaine Manuel, who was writing an article on the “10 strangest artefacts in Australian museums”—which was published in The Guardian on 31...
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Leonora Meadowson in Sams's Royal Subscription Library, 1826
Haywood’s The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson (London: Francis Noble, 1788) is a two-volume collection of four, short works, only the first of which is by Haywood—this being the titular “Leonora...
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Did James Annesley have a son in Pennsylvania?
Haywood’s Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, Return’d from a Thirteen Years Slavery in America where he had been sent by the Wicked Contrivances of his Cruel Uncle (1743) is based on the...
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An Ode written by Mr. Hatchett, 1750
The following Ode is addressed to Lord Robert Spencer (1747–1831; above ætat 22), youngest son of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706–58), on the occasion of his third birthday (8 May...
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Eighteenth-Century Books in Australian Libraries, revisited
Almost twelve years ago now, I did a post on “Collecting Eighteenth Century Literature” (here). In that post, I mentioned that the “ESTC code-finder” (now here)—maintained by the Center for...
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St John Broderick of the Middle Temple, 1703
This “Early Armorial” Restoration exlibris bookplate (Ginn, slide 14; see below) was created for St John Broderick of the Middle Temple, later The Honourable St John Brodrick (ca. 1685–1728), son of...
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Judge Rochfort exlibris bookplate, ca. 1760
A biblioclast cut this early eighteenth century Judge Rochfort exlibris bookplate from a copy of James Foster, Sermons on the following subjects, viz. …, 3rd ed. (1736) [ESTC: n24146 (recording 15...
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