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A View of the Private Case, 1962
I first read Peter Fryer’s Private Case—Public Scandal: Secrets of the British Museum Revealed (London: Secker and Warburg, 1966) in 1999. The opening pages of the book are memorable for the way in...
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A very crude Gardner ornament catalogue, 1995
In my recent “Checklist” of Thomas Gardner’s ornament stock (link to article here), I mentioned that I compiled a very crude catalogue of Gardner ornaments in 1995, by sketching some of the ornaments...
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Brief instructions on how to lose a chapbook
Two eighteenth century chapbook editions of a Brief instructions for the pious Christian; or, a sure guide to Heaven. By the late Bishop Beveridge appear on ESTC: both records are based on a single...
View ArticleThe Enfer on Wikipedia
When I was preparing my Foxcroft lecture I noticed that there was no entry on Wikipedia (in English) for the Enfer at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, a quite poor entry (in French), but an...
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Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the Literal Margins
The Centre for the Book, Monash University, in collaboration with the Centre for the Book, University of Otago and The State Library of Victoria, are hosting:Marginal Notes: Social Reading and the...
View ArticleWilliam Hatchett on Wikipedia
I finally got around to creating a Wikipedia entry on William Hatchett. There was no page up to 2011, and since 2011 there has only been a redirect to the entry for Haywood. My earliest experiences on...
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Works Containing Gardner Ornaments
I spent the second half of 2013 on study leave. During that time I compiled two lengthy articles of Thomas Gardner, his wife and son, who carried on his publishing business after he died in 1765. Both...
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Iwan Bloch on the erotic engravings of Fanny Hill
Henry Spencer Ashbee (1834–1900) (aka Pisanus Fraxi) claims, in his Catena Librorum Tacendorum (1885), 83, that "Few works have been more frequently illustrated than the Memoirs of a Woman of...
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A Cultural History of the Songster
While Paul Watt and I were working on our four-volume collection Bawdy Songbooks of the Romantic Period (2011), with Derek B. Scott, David Gregory and Ed Cray, we discussed the possibility of...
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The Van Everen Fitsanybook Adjustable Book Cover
Sing this 1890 jingle with me children,The Van Everen Cover is the right Book Cover. It's modern, it's useful, it's neat; So it's no use to bother or try any other, For Van Everen's cannot be...
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First Exhibition to Focus on Eliza Haywood
In 2004, in the literature-survey section of my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood, I explained thatno public or private library has approached completeness in gathering together the works of Haywood....
View ArticleInformal Haywood criticism, blogs etc
[I have moved this on section of my Eliza Haywood Links here, since my 2009 post was becoming unweildy. I hadn't updated it for years (since 2012?), and I don't plan on updating it again any time soon....
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A simple measure of media focus or bias?
A linguist made an observation to me last year concerning media focus, which has been at the back of my mind of late. Responding to a student project on media focus and bias, they wondered whether...
View ArticleEliza Haywood in the Early Novels Database (END)
The Early Novels Database (END) is hosted by the University of Pennsylvania Rare Book and Manuscript Library (PU), and under development by staff and students at the library, Swarthmore College and the...
View ArticleFoxcroft Lecure on Private Case Collections
My 2016 Foxcroft lecture on private case collections has finally appeared on YouTube (here). I mentioned the lecture in passing here, but more details about the event at the State Library of Victoria...
View ArticlePrivate Case items not on ECCO
While reviewing Patrick Kearney’s two bibliographies of the British Library’s Private Case holdings—his Private Case (1981), which lists items now in the Private Case, and his Supplement (2016), which...
View ArticleEliza Haywood Unpopular in the UK
It pains me to say this, but Eliza Haywood appears to be unpopular in the UK. Early one Saturday morning, shortly after I did my most recent update of this page (which lists Haywood scholarship...
View ArticleBooks I never considered indecent, 1836
On 24 October 1836, Selim Cohen was again indicted for stealing at least a dozen books from William Holmes. During his cross-examination, Holmes (who been a bookseller for twenty-six years, and had two...
View ArticleTell me, O! Eliza Haywood!
The following quote is from the long-forgotten Richard Savage, edited, with occasional notes by Charles Whitehead, Illustrated by John Leech, Bentley’s Miscellany, vol. 8–10 (London: Richard Bentley,...
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The Scale of Female Literary Merit, 1792
On 4 June 2014, Dr Jennie Batchelor did a Tweet (here) about a 1792 "Scale of Female Literary Merit" that appeared in The Lady’s Magazine; and on 15 December 2014, she did a Blog post (here) about it....
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