Patrick Spedding

AI is not eating antique books

2026-07-27T14:43:20.673+10:00

It seems that the latest injection of disinformation, or "FUD" (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), into discussions about AI is that AI companies are "eating" physical copies of rare and antique books in the same way that data-centres are believed to be "drinking" water. (I asked Nano Banana to generate an appropriate image of this imagnined process—using the same starting prompt I used previously—to help my readers visualise this action. Please enjoy the result!)

This, somewhat alarmist, 25 July article by Frank Landymore, for instance, suggests that AI companies are purchasing antique books in large volumes (this is in the article title: "AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books…") to use as high-quality training data, as these texts are free from modern digital AI content. Because it is cheaper, destructive, high-speed automated scanning processes are being used to digitize the books (i.e., book spines are guillotined off, the covers removed, page-stacks are fed into scanner hoppers, then thrown away). The practice is facilitated by book database services that keep the tech company buyers anonymous. Rare booksellers have ethical concerns about selling books to these services, warning that it permanently destroys some of the last surviving copies of historic literature.

The FUD here is the "antique books" and "historic literature" claim. Once you read through the parent and grandparent linked articles (3 April essay by Val Giordano, promoting the practice, here; 25 June [anonymous] essay on the NL Times, reporting concerns of European book dealers, here; a 26 June article by Benj Edwards here; a solid, 21 July essay by Emanuel Maiberg here) it becomes clear that the books being hoovered up by Anthropic (and possibly others) all post-date 1969 (when ISBNs were introduced) and most, it seems likely, post-date 2006 (when ISBN barcodes became ubiquitous)—about the same time, coincidently, that the arrival of modern smart-phones ended civilisation as we knew it.

That the AI-company proxies are exclusively interested in books with an ISBN is made very clear from the following anecdote reported by Maiberg:

The seller told me that … Bulk purchases … usually reflect interest in a specific topic, whereas the recent, very large purchases were of books that had little in common, except for the fact that they all had ISBNs. This seller also sells rare books that do not have ISBNs, and none of those were part of the bulk purchases. (emphasis added)

That the bulk-purchase companies are likely to prefer later, bar-coded books, seems probable from the scale they are working on—it is simply easier and cheaper to scan the bar codes of hundreds of thousands of books, than it is to key in the ISBN (and then check for errors) on the same number.

From the articles I mention above, it seems that second-hand book dealers are getting what I take to be in-fill requests, for any ISBN that has not shown up in the literal truck-loads of books donated to charities, that are sold off to bulk-book dealers / waste-paper merchants (on this, see my post here concerning Mubin and Raza Ahmed's "Wrap Ltd."—a "printed matter," "waste and scrap paper" import/export business with an annual turnover of £6.5M "or more.")

It simply wouldn’t be economical to buy a book via ABE, Alibris etc. if you could buy the same book at a fraction of the price from ~~parasites~~, excuse me, erm … paper-dealers like Mubin and Raza Ahmed. I.e., you'd start with whatever your local large-scale charity can wring from a well-meaning public, checked-off against a master-list of ISBNs via bar-code scanning, and then back-fill the gaps in that master-list via ABE, Alibris etc.

For me, this is where it gets interesting. Anthropic et al. have more money than they know what to do with, and have just been stung to the tune of USD3K per book, for all the digital books they stole, and then got sued for stealing. That being the case, the following observation should come as no surprise:

there's a total disregard for the price of the book. I've had some books that sold through this way that were [...] greatly overpriced. That's kind of a tell for AI because they have just so much money.

* * * * *

Since I was born before ISBNs were a thing, it is hard for me to think of books after 1970 as "antique" or "historic" ("rare," especially, "rare on market" is another matter completely). Perhaps, this is easier for Frank Landymore—who seems to be in his early 30s. In any event, I asked one of the water-guzzling, book-eating monsters (ChatGPT) to estimate how many books have been published since 1970 (and 2006) and the answer should be reassuring.

It seems likely that something like 80 million English-language ISBN editions have been released, or which approximately 60 million editions were printed with a barcode. The number of unique works (i.e., with Pride and Prejudice counting once) is obviously much smaller—perhaps 10–20 million, but the number of physical copies printed is much larger, likely "well over 100 billion copies since the 1980s."

So, it seems Anthropic is attempting to gobble up millions of recent books (emphatically-not antique you baby-faced ageists!), mostly comprised of unwanted donations, fenced by the likes of Messers Ahmed, and otherwise unsold obscuriana, laying heavily on the hands of dealers who once supplied libraries, out of a pool of something like 100 billion copies printed.

If it were possible to pile this 100-billion copies one atop the other, it seems that the pile would likely extend 2.5 million kilometres, or about 6.5 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Indeed, only 14.5 billion books would be need to reach the moon, or 14.5% of all books printed with an ISBN.

I would wager as many books as I could carry, that far, far more than this 14.5%—perhaps 80% of these 100 billion books—have already been pulped, without once raising the interest of Landymore et al., making this story a pretty good parallel to widely-disseminated concerns about the water consumption of data centres. (Which is mostly FUD too, since most new data centres consume no water—they use closed-loop cooling—and the water usage of older AI data centres that do use evaporative cooling etc., is dwarfed by the water consumption of golf-course and intensive cattle farms. I.e., this is a gnat on the arse of a flee in the grand scheme of things.)

And while most AI tokens will doubless go to things like generating fake security footage of President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe in flagrante delicto, or self-insert versions of Terminator or Twilight, it is already clear that AI can, and probably soon will, cure every disease known to man and put a complete stop to the death and mutilation caused by badly-driven cars on the road—to name but two of life’s miseries. If they need to guillotine a copy of each my books to do this (**), they are welcome to do so.

(**) if AI can also restore my use of AdobeCaslonExpert in the later versions of Word, they can have all my essays too.

Bookplate of Thomas Story Spedding

2026-07-26T11:57:47.362+10:00

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.

A French Review of Haywood's Anti-Pamela, 1741

2026-07-22T17:09:42.063+10:00

Nine years ago now, I added to my list of “Eliza Haywood Reviews” (here), the following review in French, of the French translation of Eliza Haywood’s The Anti-Pamela; or Feign'd Innocence Detected. At that time, I merely linked to the Google Books text of the review in Bibliothèque Britannique, 22.2 (January–March 1744): 358–66.

Somewhat belatedly, I have now transcribed and translated this fascinating review, which is quite positive towards Haywood’s Anti-Pamela, and (rightly) strongly negative towards Richardson’s improbable, inconsistent, and implausible Pamela. Haywood’s Syrene is praised as realistic, consistent, and psychologically plausible—unlike Richardson’s idiotic Pamela. The reviewer specifically praises Haywood’s “moral design,” since the novel genuinely serves, as promised, as a moral warning.

Although the reviewer complains that Anti-Pamela (and Pamela) is badly translated, full of awkward expressions, and solecisms, he praises the translator—in a wonderful peroration—for omitting the many indecencies found in the English original: French readers, the reviewer notes, are spared from reading “a quantity of filth, which English readers are fortunate enough not to be so alarmed by.” Naughty, filthy English readers.

* * * * *

|358|
ARTICLE VII.
I.

L'Anti-Pamela, ou la fausse Innocence, découverte dans les Avantures de Syrene: Histoire véritable, et attestée par l'Expérience de tous les Jours, écrite pour servir de Préservatif aux Jeunes-Gens contre les Ruses des Coquettes, et traduite de l'Anglois par Mr. de M ***. Amsterdam, Arkstée et Merkus, 1743, in 12, 445 pages, sans l'Avertissement.

CET Anti est un Roman Moral, fait pour en réfuter un autre de même Espece, composé par un Mr. RICHARDSON, intitulé Pamela, ou la Vertu récompensée, et dans lequel, selon l'Avertissement qui précede celui-ci, les Regles de la Vraisemblance sont assez mal obsérvées.
  EN EFFET, y dit-on, l'on eft surpris, en lisant cet Ouvrage, d'y voir une Fille, qu'on nous donne pour une Niaise, raisonner, tantôt en Philosophe, tantôt en Théologienne; une Fille, qui a un Attachement presque inoui pour la Vertu; et qui, néanmoins, est la plus grande Grimaciere, et la plus ambitieuse du Monde. Elle veut, et ne veut pas: elle semble n'aimer la Vertu, que pour jetter de la Poudre aux Yeux, et pour mieux parvenir à ses Fins. En un mot, c'est un Caractere si compliqué, |359| qu'à chaque Feuille du Livre on croit voir une autre Héroïne …. Et l'on pourroit peut-être ajouter bien d'autres Choses sur ses Défauts, et ceux de son Panégyrique: ne fussent, par Exemple, que la Grossiéreté, et même la Brutalité des prémieres Propositions et Démarches du Héros de la Piéce, qui ne peuvent que rebuter d'abord tout Lecteur tant soit peu délicat et sensé; et que la ridicule Envie de devenir les Maitreffes et les Epouses de leurs Maitres, que la Réüffite des Minauderies de PAMELA peut aussi abusivement que naturellement faire naitre dans la petite Cervelle de quantité de sottes et imbécilles Créatures que son Avanture aura séduites.
  ON n'aura pas lieu, continue l'Avertissement déjà cité, d'appliquer ces Reproches généraux à SYRENE. Ici, le Caractere est soutenu du Commencement jusqu'à la Fin. C'est toujours une Coquette, qui ignore tout, excepté l'Art de tromper, dans lequel elle excelle. On voit même croitre son Habileté avec son Age: et, par un Effet ordinaire à la Coquetterie, son Gout pour la Débauche augmente à mesure qu'elle a plus d'Habitude avec les Hommes; et, à la fin, elle accorde par Libertinage ce qu'elle ne cédoit que par Intérêt …… Pamela est malheureusement une Espece de Phénix, qu'on ne trouve nulle-part. Syrene est un Personnage, qui est dans tous les Païs, et dans toutes les Villes du Monde. En un mot, on voit avec agrément, dans ce Roman-ci, le Tableau réel et naïf de la Vie, des Ruses, |360| et des Déréglemens outrez des Femmes débauchées; au lieu qu'on voit d'abord à regret, que l'autre n'est qu'un Conte fait à plaisir, forgé dans le Cabinet de l'Auteur, qui y parle toujours, sans laisser presque jamais parler, comme il l'auroit dû selon son Plan, une Fille simple et modeste, dont l'aimable Naïveté auroit cent fois fait plus de Plaisir à tout Lecteur judicieux, que tous les Rafinemens d'Amour quintessenciez et mistiques, qu'on lui prête très mal-habilement. S'il est vrai, comme on le débite, qu'un Prédicateur de Soutwarck n'ait point fait Difficulté de recommander publiquement en Chaire la Lecture de cette Histoire Romanesque, on ne doit point craindre d'y recommander de même celle de Télémaque, de Guzman d'Alfarache, et de quelques autres Romans Moraux de pareille Espece: car les Leçons de Morale, qu'on y donne, y sont bien plus habilement enchassées, beaucoup plus judicieusement distribuées, et par conséquent bien plus propres à produire un heureux Succès.
  POUR répondre parfaitement au Titre de Pamela, ou la Vertu récompensée, la Réfutation, dont il s'agit ici, auroit peut-être dû être intitulée Anti-Pamela, ou le Vice puni, puisqu'en effet chaque Projet criminel de Syrene est toujours mis à néant par le Manque de Succès: en quoi la Conduite et les Leçons de l'Auteur paroissent très judicieuses et très dignes d'Approbation. Quoi qu'il en soit, ces Avantures qui sont |361| au Nombre de IX, peuvent effectivement tenir lieu de Préservatif contre les Ruses des Coquettes: et c'est ce dont on pourra se former une Idée par le Détail suivant.
  I. DANS la prémiere, Syrene, mise en Apprentissage à contre-cœur chés une Couturiere, et bien instruite par sa Mere, Femme d'Intigue fort expérimentée, de ne jamais s'attacher à qui que ce fût que par Intérêt, mais entrainée par son Penchant à la Volupté, s'amourache étourdiment d'un Aigresin de Lieutenant, quil'entraine adroitement dans une Taverne, où, moïennant une Paire de Bas, et quelques Verres de Ratafia redoublez, il en obtient enfin les Gans. Après quoi, à propos de quelques Plumes qu'elle tâche en vain de lui arracher, il la plante-là enceinte de son Fait: mais, à l'aide d'un Breuvage officieux, sa digne Mere, Femme de longue-main familiarisée avec le Crime, la tire bientôt de ce mauvais Pas.
  II. LA seconde se passe dans une Maifon de Qualité, où Syrene, placée pour lire auprès d'une vieille Dame, et avoir soin de sa Chambre, trouve Moïen de mettre dans ses Filets son Gendre, et le Fils de ce Gendre, auquel elle s'abandonne enfin, mais qu'elle accuse aussi-tôt de l'avoir violée, et qui se voïoit sur le Point d'être forcé à l'épouser, ou exposé aux Rigueurs de la Justice, si une Lettre, imprudemment écrite par la Mere de Syrene, et heureusement remise à la Famille du Jeune-Homme, |362| n'avoit enfin découvert leur Complot scélérat.
  III. LA Scene de la troisieme fut à Greenwich, où Syrene, déjà entretenue par un Marchand Portugais, lie encore deux autres Intigues, l'une avec un Capitaine de Vaisseau, et l'autre avec un Jeune-Homme de Distinction, qui, aïant découvert, que sa Perfidie, et la Scélératesse de sa Mere, avoient causé la Mort de sa Fiancée, l'accable des plus violens Reproches, la quitte avec Horreur, et va porter sa Douleur et ses Regrets en Amérique.
  IV. L' OPERA et la Mascarade furent l'Occasion de la quatrieme, où l'on voit Syrene s'accrocher fort cavaliérement à un Lord déguisé de même qu'elle, passer fort voluptueusement la Nuit avec lui; après l'avoir effrontément ensuite été relancer jusque dans son propre Domicile, en recevoir les Railleries les plus ameres, et les Menaces les plus accablantes; et, enfin, en être le plus ignominieusement chassée.
  V. ON remarque dans la cinquieme avec quelle Facilité elle plume impitoïablement un Idiot de Marchand, qui, aïant enfin découvert son Infidélité et ses Friponneries en faveur d'un Avanturier, et se voïant à peu près ruïné, veut se tuër lui-même, mais en est empêché par sa Femme, qui lui pardonne généreusement ses Egaremens, pendant que, d'autre côté, Syrene et son
Galant, après avoir promtement dissipé ce |363| qu'ils lui avoient volé, se brouillent, se querellent, se battent, et enfin se quittent pour toujours.
  VI. ON voit dans la sixieme Syrene s'abandonner brutalement à son Insatiabilité pour les Hommes, se livrer sans mesure, non seulement aux Desirs empressez d'un Lord qui l'entretenoit en Chambre, mais même aux Emportemens brutaux de tout Venant, de qui elle ne manque point de recevoir de fort mauvais Présens, qu'elle communique au Lord, qui ne s'abstient de la traiter comme elle méritoit, que pour ne point appreter à rire au Public à ses Dépens.
  VII. LA septieme, l'une des plus intéressantes de tout le Livre, représente Syrene comme aïant fortuitement fait Connoissance dans le Parc de Saint-James avec un vieux Gentil-Homme veuf, qui la prend pour diriger sa Maison, et de l'Esprit duquel elle sait si bien s'emparer, par son Maintien modeste et hipocrite, qu'il alloit incessamment l'épouser, si son Fils, qu'il lui présentoit, n'eût fait d'Etonnement quatre Pas en arrierre, et si elle-même à son Aspect n'eût jetté un grand Cri de Surprise, qui jettérent le Bon-Homme dans un Embarras encore plus grand que le leur. Le Dénoûment fut, que ce Jeune-Homme se jetta aux Pieds de son Pere, lui demanda Pardon de ses Débauches, et lui avoua sincérement que cette Créature étoit une Fille-de-Joie des plus impudiques, et qui lui avoit passé quantité de fois par les Mains, |364| dans divers mauvais Lieux; ce qui la sit aussitôt, non seulement dépouiller des Habits magnifiques et des Joïaux précieux dont on l'avoit parée, mais même ignominieusement chaffer d'une riche et puissante Maison, dont elle alloit devenir la Maitresse.
  VIII. LE Héros de la huitieme fut un Jeune-Homme d'assez bonne Famille, mais pour le moins aussi gueux que Syrene, et qu'elle acheva de dépouiller impitoïablement jusqu'au dernier Fardin, sous prétexte de Mariage: mais, l'aïant enfin surprise en flagrant Délict avec le prémier Avanturier qui l'avoit débauchée, l'un et l'autre indignez de se voir également jouëz et duppez, la couvrirent d'Injures, et l'abandonnérent à sa mauvaise Conduite.
  IX. LA neuvieme et derniere commença à un Encan, d'où un Gentil-Homme la tira pour la mettre en Chambre, d'où sa Femme, extrémement jalouse, sçut à son Tour la tirer, pour être conduite, par Ordre du Magistrat, dans une Prison de Prostituées, en attendant qu'on la chassat honteusement de Londres, et qu'on la reléguât dans le Fond du Païs de Galles.
  TELLES sont les prémieres Avantures de Syrene, qui en font naturellement attendre de secondes. Et s'il est vrai qu'elle n'eût alors que dix-sept Ans, comme le dit expressément quelque part le Livre, elle pouvoit à très juste Titre parodier ainsi pour elle-même ce fameux Vers du Cid de Corneille: |365|

   Je suis jeune il est vrai; mais, aux Ames mal nées,
   Le Vice n'attend pas le Nombre des Années.

  IL ne sera peut-être pas inutile d'ajouter, que les deux Traductions de ces Romans de Pamela, et d'Anti-Pamela, ne sont nullement bien écrites, et se sentent fort souvent du Langage altéré des Lieux qu'habitent leurs Auteurs. Sans insister sur la prémiere, qui est fort irréguliere dans l'Edition de Londres, et que par cette Raison l'on a été obligé de rajuster tant bien que mal en beaucoup d'Endroits des Editions d'Amsterdam, il suffira d'indiquer ici quelques Irrégularitez de la seconde, telles que la Barette quittée par une Fille, pag. 3; une Tailleuse, pag. 4; tourner des Dispositions vers des Desirs, pag. 7; faire un Tour fur la Cour, pag. 24, et de même pagg. 31, 42, &c; ce fut férieux, pag. 25; se torturer, pag. 54; le Milord jugea … que Syrene … deviendroit une Espece de Bardane, pag. 236; une Cloaque, pag. 273; et sur-tout cet admirable Vers,

Fuiez la dangereuse Beauté des. Coquettes,

pag. 266: en sorte qu'on peut très légitimement conclurre, qu'ainsi que le Crispin Médecin de Haute-Roche étoit aussi habile en Astrologie qu'en Médecine, le Traducteur |366| de l'Anti-Pamela n'est guere moins habile en Vers qu'en Prose.
  AU RESTE, les Lecteurs François lui doivent être fort redevables de leur avoir épargné la Lecture de quantité de Saletez, dont les Lecteurs Anglois sont en Possession de ne s'effaroucher pas de même.

* * * * *

|358|
ARTICLE VII.
I.

The Anti-Pamela, or False Innocence, Discovered in The Adventures of Syrene: A True Story, Attested by Everyday Experience, Written to Serve as a Preservative for Young Men Against the Tricks of Flirts, and Translated from the English by Mr. de M***. Amsterdam, Arkstée [and] Merkus, 1743, in 12mo, 445 pages, without the Advertisement.

This Anti is a Moral Novel, written to refute another of the same kind, composed by a Mr. RICHARDSON, entitled Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, and in which, according to the Advertisement preceding it, the Rules of Verisimilitude are rather poorly observed.
  Indeed, it is said, one is surprised, upon reading this work, to see a girl, whom we are told is a simpleton, reasoning sometimes like a philosopher, sometimes like a theologian; a girl who has an almost unheard-of attachment to virtue; and who, nevertheless, is the greatest charlatan and the most ambitious in the world. She wants and she doesn't want: she seems to love virtue only to throw dust in people's eyes and to better achieve her ends. In short, she is such a complicated character, |359|, that on every page of the book one thinks one sees another heroine…. And one could perhaps add many other things about its faults, and those of its praise: for example, the crudeness, even the brutality, of the hero's initial proposals and actions, which cannot help but repel any reader with even a modicum of refinement and sense; and the ridiculous envy of becoming the mistresses and wives of their masters, which the sheer volume of PAMELA's coquettishness can so easily, yet naturally, inspire in the small minds of countless foolish and imbecilic creatures whom her adventure has seduced.
  It will not be necessary, continues the already-cited Advertisement, to apply these general reproaches to SYRENE. Here, the character is consistent from beginning to end. She is always a coquette, ignorant of everything except the art of deception, in which she excels. We even see her skill grow with her age; and, by an effect common to coquetry, her taste for debauchery increases as she becomes more accustomed to men; and, in the end, she grants through libertinism what she previously yielded only through self-interest… PAMELA is unfortunately a kind of phoenix, which is found nowhere else. SYRENE is a character who is found in every country and in every city of the world. In short, we see with pleasure, in this novel, the real and naive picture of the life, the ruses, |360| and the extreme debaucheries of debauched women; instead, we see at first with regret that the other is only a Tale made for pleasure, forged in the Author's Cabinet, who always speaks there, without almost ever letting a simple and modest Girl speak, as he should have according to his Plan, whose amiable Naiveté would have given a hundred times more Pleasure to any judicious Reader than all the quintessential and mystical Refinements of Love, which are very clumsily attributed to him. If it is true, as is claimed, that a preacher from Southwark had no difficulty publicly recommending the reading of this historical romance from the pulpit, then one should not hesitate to recommend likewise that of Telemachus, Guzman d'Alfarache, and some other moral romances of the same kind: for the moral lessons given therein are much more skillfully embedded, much more judiciously distributed, and consequently much more likely to produce a happy success.
  To perfectly match the title Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, the Refutation in question here might perhaps have been entitled Anti-Pamela, or Vice Punished, since indeed every criminal scheme of Syrene is always thwarted by its lack of success: in which respect the author's conduct and lessons appear very judicious and highly worthy of approval. In any case, these Adventures, which |361| number IX, can indeed serve as a safeguard against the wiles of coquettes: and this is something one can form an idea of from the following detail.
  I. In the first story, Syrene, reluctantly apprenticed to a seamstress and well-instructed by her mother, a woman of considerable experience and intrigue, never to become attached to anyone except for self-interest, but led astray by her inclination towards pleasure, falls foolishly in love with a swindler of a lieutenant, whom she cleverly lures into a tavern, where, by means of a pair of stockings and several glasses of double-strength ratafia, he finally obtains her gloves. After which, over some feathers she tries in vain to pluck from him, he leaves her pregnant with his child; but, with the help of a potent brew, her worthy mother, a woman of long standing familiar with crime, soon rescues her from this predicament.
  II. The second takes place in a House of Quality, where Syrene, placed to read beside an old Lady and to look after her Room, finds a way to ensnare her son-in-law and his son-in-law, to whom she finally gives herself, but whom she immediately accuses of having raped her. He was about to be forced to marry her or exposed to the rigors of Justice, if a letter, imprudently written by Syrene's Mother and fortunately delivered to the Young Man's Family, |362| had not finally uncovered their wicked plot.
  III. The scene in the third scene took place in Greenwich, where Syrene, already kept by a Portuguese merchant, becomes embroiled in two further affairs, one with a ship's captain, and the other with a young man of distinction. This young man, having discovered that her treachery and his mother's wickedness had caused the death of his fiancée, heaps the most violent reproaches upon her, abandons her in horror, and goes to America to bear his grief and regrets.
  IV. The opera and the masquerade were the occasion for the fourth scene, in which Syrene is seen quite cavalierly latching onto a lord disguised like herself, spending the night with him in a most voluptuous manner; after having brazenly pursued him even to his own home, receiving the bitterest mockery and the most crushing threats. and, finally, to be most ignominiously driven out.
  V. One notices in the fifth one with what ease she mercilessly fleeces an idiotic merchant who, having finally discovered his infidelity and roguery in favor of an adventurer, and seeing himself nearly ruined, wants to kill himself, but is prevented by his wife, who generously forgives his indiscretions, while, on the other hand, Syrene and her gallant, after having promptly squandered |363| what they had stolen from her, quarrel, fight, and finally part forever.
  VI. In the sixth scene, we see the Syrene brutally abandon herself to her insatiable hunger for men, surrendering herself without restraint not only to the eager desires of a Lord who entertained her in his chamber, but also to the brutal outbursts of every passerby, from whom she invariably receives very poor gifts, which she then passes on to the Lord, who only refrains from treating her as she deserves so as not to become a laughingstock to the public at her expense.
  VII. The seventh, one of the most interesting in the whole book, represents Syrene as having fortuitously made acquaintance in the park of Saint James with an old widowed gentleman, who takes her to manage his house, and whose mind she knows so well how to seize, by her modest and hypocritical demeanor, that he was about to marry her, if his son, whom he was presenting to her, had not taken four steps back in astonishment, and if she herself at his sight had not thrown a great cry of surprise, which threw the good man into an embarrassment even greater than theirs. The outcome was that this young man threw himself at his father's feet, begged his forgiveness for his debauchery, and sincerely confessed that this creature was a most shameless prostitute who had passed through his hands many times |364| in various disreputable places; which immediately led to her not only being stripped of the magnificent clothes and precious jewels with which she had been adorned, but even ignominiously taken from a rich and powerful household, of which she was to become the mistress.
  VIII. The hero of the eighth tale was a young man from a fairly good family, but at least as destitute as Syrene, whom she ruthlessly stripped of every last penny under the pretext of marriage. But, having finally caught him in the act with the first adventurer who had seduced her, both, indignant at being equally deceived and tricked, heaped insults upon her and abandoned her to her wicked ways.
  IX. The ninth and last began at an auction, from which a gentleman took her to put her in a chamber, from which his extremely jealous wife in turn took her, to be taken, by order of the magistrate, to a prison of prostitutes, while waiting to be shamefully driven out of London, and relegated to the depths of Wales.
  Such are the first adventures of Syrene, which naturally lead one to expect more. And if it is true that she was only seventeen at the time, as the book expressly states somewhere, she could quite rightly parody for herself that famous line from Corneille's Le Cid: |365|

   I am young, it is true; but, for ill-born souls,
  Vice does not wait for the number of years.

It may perhaps be useful to add that the two translations of these novels, Pamela and Anti-Pamela, are by no means well written, and very often reflect the altered language of the places inhabited by their authors. Without dwelling on the first, which is quite irregular in the London edition, and which for this reason has had to be readjusted as best as possible in many places in the Amsterdam editions, it will suffice to point out here some Irregularities of the second, such as the Barette left by a Girl, p. 3; a Seamstress, p. 4; turning Dispositions towards Desires, p. 7; taking a Tour of the Court, p. 24, and similarly pag. 31, 42, etc.; it was ferocious, p. 25; torturing oneself, p. 54; the Lord judged… that Syrene… would become a Kind of Burdock, p. 236; a cesspool, p. 273; and above all this admirable Verse,

Flee the dangerous beauty of… Coquettes,

p. 266: so that one can very legitimately conclude that, just as Crispin Physician of Haute-Roche was as skilled in Astrology as in Medicine, the Translator |366| of Anti-Pamela is scarcely less skilled in Verse than in Prose.
  Moreover, French readers owe him a great deal of gratitude for having spared them the reading of a quantity of filth, which English readers are fortunate enough not to be so alarmed by.

The Fall of Sinful Sally

2026-07-12T11:21:12.370+10:00

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.

A French Review of Haywood's Letter from Henry Goring

2026-06-21T07:14:33.113+10:00

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

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

* * * * *

Lettre sur le Prétendant.

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

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

Letter about the Pretender.

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

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

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

Another French Review of The Rash Resolve

2026-06-13T15:37:31.171+10:00

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

A German Review of Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy

2026-06-07T12:36:17.952+10:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ye Foolish Book Collector

2026-05-28T08:55:06.084+10:00

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

UPDATE 27 July 2026. I reused my initial prompt (as set out above) as a staring point for this new post on AI (not) eating antique books, and was so pleased with the resulting "Bibliomaniac versus Death" image that I thought I would add it here:

OCR Redux

2026-05-19T17:48:57.765+10:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2026-05-09T17:51:00.006+10:00

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

A Bibliography of the works of George Frisbie Whicher

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gerald Dillon, A Perfect Library, 1936

2026-04-23T17:24:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

* * * * *

A Perfect Library

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

Please Do Not Touch the Books.

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

Please Do Not Make Faces at the Triantiwantigon,

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

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

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

GERALD DILLON.

Did Aunt Hetty read Eliza Haywood?

2026-04-19T12:46:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

The Pain of a Bibliophile

2026-04-10T09:08:00.001+10:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Half-forgotten Books series, 1903–1907

2026-04-05T07:43:00.003+10:00

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

2026-03-18T11:16:00.007+11:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Scientific Silverfish and Moth Destroyer, ca. 1928

2026-03-15T10:49:00.007+11:00

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

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

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

As you can see above, the text reads:

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

The New Google Books Interface Sucks

2026-03-07T09:19:00.002+11:00

I will now be using Internet Archive links, wherever possible, rather than Google Books links. Here is my "old man yelling at clouds" explanation of why (a 2002 meme that is now, probably, an indicator of age).

The new Google Books format has degraded (in my mind) their interface, with dynamic overlays that become opaque to hide basic information about an item containing a search "hit" as soon as it finishes loading, or as soon as you interact with a page in any way (mouse or keyboard strikes). Here are the three steps in pictures: page, clear overlay, opaque overlay:

NB the thin white "floating" status bar box, at lower left, shows "waiting" in the first image, "loading" in the second, and which has disappeared in the third. It still isn’t clear to me why Google Books pages sometimes turns opaque as soon as the page finishes loading, and at other times, only once you interact with the page. But it conveys no information in either scenario since, even in the latter case it becomes opaque if you try to screencap the book information (i.e., before you interact with the page in any other way). Want to see the top of a page, or a page number? Tough luck. Want to centre or enlarge a highlighted term? Lol! Everything except the overlay page, with its puny title-box, disappears.

The thus-hidden page, displaying actual, useful information (such as book title, author, date of publication etc.), can only be reached by shutting down the overlay with mouse busy-work—there is no keyboard shortcut for this. By disregarding a warning on this page—that "Classic Google Books will [soon?] be turned off"—it is possible (for now), with yet more mouse-work, to reach the Classic Google Books interface. I’ll explain why you might want to do this shortly.

The obscured underlying page, the parent page or under-page (?), of the new interface is, admittedly, a better-organised version of the "About this book" page of the Classic Google Books interface, which was also a click-through. However, the Classic Google Books landing pages, the pages reached via search hits, were much more informative, making it possible to more-quickly shut down useless search hits.

All that remains visible on the overlay of the new interface is the first twenty characters of the title: so, "British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books: Edited 1881-1889 by R ..., Volume 52" becomes "British Museum Catal…" (as above); "The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, Volume 17" becomes "The Magazine of Am…"; and "Catalogue of the Private Library of Mr. George S. Davis" becomes "Catalogue of the Priv…"

The URLs reached via this new interface are also much longer than those in Classic Book Books. So, for instance, at their shortest (i.e., with search terms and other elements omitted), the URLs are

Old GB URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=rwJGAQAAMAAJ

New GB URL: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Catalogue_of_the_Private_Library_of_Mr_G/rwJGAQAAMAAJ

and for a specific page

Old GB URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=rwJGAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA49

New GB URL: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Catalogue_of_the_Private_Library_of_Mr_G/rwJGAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA49

It is unclear who benefits from the longer URLs: an AI crawler only needs "rwJGAQAAMAAJ" and a human gains little (in anything) from "Catalogue_of_the_Private_Library_of_Mr_G"—not least, since many browsers hide full URLs anyway, and those few that display URLs would be unable to display a full URL which has not had search terms and other elements omitted, as I have above. Personally, since I compose these posts in HTML, I find it a lot easier to read and write with the shorter, simpler Classic URLs. A Classic URL, with its 12-character ID (**), is also a lot more satisfactory for scholarship (i.e., in print), when referring to an online reproduction of a book, since it is easier for the writer and publisher to typeset/format and for the user to transcribe the URL and ID code.

So, while it is possible (for now, but it is unclear how much longer it will be possible) to click through from a Google Books search hit to the “Classic” interface, and from there, find the short URL and 12-character ID code for a book, and from that to generate a page-specific short URL, as above, doing so is now awkward and time-consuming; and since—given the warning—there is no guarantee that these short URLs will continue to work once "Classic Google Books [is] turned off," I will use the Internet Archive where I can, even for items on Google Books..

(**) Not alphanumeric: Google Books uses alphanumeric characters plus underscores, but excluding other special characters, these being "word characters" (apparently).

Book Shop, Place of Worship

2026-03-02T10:11:00.007+11:00

I was browsing for bookshops in Blackburn (Melbourne), when I spotted this:

(you have to imagine the "record scratch" sound-effect here): Did I read that right?!

Sweet! For comparison, here is the nearest "real" bookshop

So, what is a "Place of Worship"? Well, it turns out that it is not a Christian church, Jewish synagogue, Buddhist temple, Hindu mandir or Shinto shrine, each of which have their own symbols on Google Maps, nor (according to the post here) is it a Sikh gurdwara, Jain temple, Japanese Buddhist temple, or—in all liklihood—a pagan temple. It seems that this symbol…

…first appeared on Google Maps at the same time that the star-and-crescent symbol dissapeared, to (checks notes) "promote inclusivity" and to "avoid favouring one religion over another." I am guessing that this is also reason why there is no street number for this Place of Worship, and that Google Maps has deleted all post-2008 street-view data for one end of this street.

All of which is a shame, since I'd like to see any Book Shop that could accurately be described as a Place of Worship, and I have nothing but respect for any faith that so well captures my own sentiments in relation to book shops and book shopping. I'll have to resist the urge to visit this location to see the book shop for myself, in case I end up in a Nineteen Eighty-Four / Total Recall-type situation after Google remotely deletes the relevant data from my head.

On Buying More Books Than You Can Read

2026-02-12T07:30:00.006+11:00

The following quotation from A. Edward Newton's "The Decay of the Bookshop"—which first appeared in The Atlantic (January 1920): 48 (here), and was reprinted in Newton's A Magnificent Farce (1921), 78 (here)—has a long and interesting history:

And so it is that, not being a scholar or altogether indigent, I do not much use any library except my own. I early formed the habit of buying books, and, thank God, I have never lost it. Authors living and dead—dead, for the most part—afford me my greatest enjoyment, and it is my pleasure to buy more books than I can read. Who was it who said, ‘I hold the buying of more books than one can peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul’s reaching towards infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish’? Whoever it was, I agree with him ….
Too many of us who are liberal, not to say lavish, in our household expenses, seem to regard the purchase of books as an almost not-to-be-permitted extravagance. We buy piano-players and talking machines, and we mortgage our houses to get an automobile, but when it comes to a book, we exhaust every resource before parting with our money.

The answer to Newton's rhetorical question ("Who was it who said?") seems to have been William Hobart Royce (1878–1963), an American writer and bookseller who wrote under the name "Penmore"; specifically, Newton had in mind the following quotation (from 1916)

I do hold the buying of more books than one could peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul’s reaching toward infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish — Penmore.

Newton's 1920 paraphrase of Penmore-Royce was expanded by Holbrook Jackson (in The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1930), 225) as follows:

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired by passionate devotion to them produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity, and that this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish, an argument which some have used in defence of the giddy raptures invoked by wine.

Here, Newton's words are indicated by italics. (Throughout Jackson’s Anatomy of Bibliomania, quotations are printed in italic, instead of within quotation marks.) More than fifty years later, a version of the Jackson's quotation appeared in Otto Bettmann, in The Delights of reading: quotes, notes [and] anecdotes (1987), 49 [here]. Bettmann paraphrased Jackson, but attributed the entire paraphrase to Newton:

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity… we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.
A. Edward Newton

The passage following the ellipsis in the above quotation ("… we cherish books even if unread […]") appears to have been added Bettmann; certainly, it is not anywhere in either Newton (1920 or 1921) or Jackson (1930). Bettmann's embellished "quotation" is everywhere on the internet.

* * * * *

A 2008 blog post by Steve Dodson (here) unraveled the Newton-Jackson connection, and the lack of a source for the passage following the ellipsis. In a 2017 comment on this blog post, Dan Goldman identified "Penmore" as Newton's source, which he found in the Monthly Bulletin of the Pasadena Public Library "for October of 1915 or 1916." ( This source is viewable only as a "Snippet" to me in Australia.)

Since nearly a decade has passed since Goldman searched for the quotation, I thought I might now be able to find an earlier appearance, and therefore find the full context for the quote.

What I discovered is that the quote only appears as a "pull-quote" (a brief, attention-catching quotation used as a graphic feature): there is no "full context." I also cannot locate a primary source for the quote—but the earliest precisely-datable instance of its use that I was able to find appears to be in Educational Foundations: A Monthly Magazine of Pedagogy, vol. 27, no. 5 (January 1916), 279 [here]. The Penmore-Royce pull-quote is used as an advertisement, in the third of five advertisements for a "Book Buyer's League" that are scattered across this volume (September 1915–June 1916); the fifth advertisement (here) explains:

NOTE — Our friends are asked to remember that the publishers of Educational Foundations have exceptional facilities for filling orders for all magazines and books. The Book Buyer's League is now offering 10 per cent discount on all monthly statements to its members. Membership in the League costs but $2.00 a year and includes a subscription to this magazine.

The first bookish pull-quote (which appears on p. 275) is followed by "See Book Buyer's League announcement, this issue"; the second pull-quote (279) is followed by "Join the Book Buyer's League"; and the third pull-quote reads, in full:

I do hold the buying of more books than one could peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul's reaching toward infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish — Penmore.
The Book Buyer's League is at your service.

Although I found references to "The Book Buyer's League" dating back to 1902 (Life, Vol 39, no. 1008 (20 February 1902), [np] here), I did not find an earlier example of this Penmore-Royce pull-quote. The Monthly Bulletin of the Pasadena Public Library example given by Goldman appears in a group of quotations, and the other examples I was able to find from 1916 were in the form of quotations too (such as this one here and this one here).

* * * * *

In 2026, it seems that it is still not possible to identify a source for Bettmann's peroration "we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance." Along with Newton's "it is my pleasure to buy more books than I can read"— Bettmann's "we cherish books even if unread" is a key source for the Wikipedia entry on Tsundoku, which is a pre-WW1 era Japanese word, meaning something like "to pile up [books] with intent to read" (1995) or "piling up books and leaving them unread around your house" (2015).

While I did not find the source for Bettmann's peroration, I did find the following 1905 quote on cherishing books:

There are books we like, and books we love; books we honour, and books we cherish; books we admire upon the shelves, and books we thrust beneath our pillow when we go to sleep.

This is part of a monologue by Henry Woolford, a character in Guy Berton's novel, Art Thou The Man? (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1905), 202 (here), which echoes Francis Bacon's famous adage, from his essay "On Studies" (1598)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

The Woolford monologue is lengthy, but I liked this part of it, so I will close off this post by quoting it in full:

"I've wondered often why some books are favourite books," he said. "Of course, I know why they are, and yet there is a pleasant mystery about it all. There are many books here, and many more down in the library—great books, nearly all of them— books of the masters, histories of the great ones, symbols of thoughts that have lived through the ages undenied. And yet they have no equality in our affections. We pass by one with a glance, and seize upon another. There are books we like, and books we love; books we honour, and books we cherish; books we admire upon the shelves, and books we thrust beneath our pillow when we go to sleep. Some one has said that we have ancestors of the intellect as well as ancestors of the body, and a lineage of the spirit as clearly marked as a family tree. Here are my other ancestors—here in my favourite books. I've kept them here because I could not bear to have them banished in the library downstairs. They have watched me at my work, they have kept wakeful through the long, long nights, and they have been close when I slept. And they have been tyrants, too, for they have kept me awake oftener than they have talked me to sleep. Pleasant, precious comrades, these."

Burns Night, 2026

2026-01-25T21:45:00.000+11:00

To celebrate Robert Burns and his poetry, I thought I would post an image from my copy of the Poems of Robert Burns, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Co., 1801).

As you can see above, this is the engraving illustrating "Tam O'Shanter". The heading is "TAM O' SHANTER. | A TALE."; the attributions below the illustration read: "Drawn by A. Carse - Vol. II. page 103. – Engd by R. Scott"; and the text further below reads: Till first ae caper, syne anither, Tam tint his reason a thegither, An 'roar'd out, "Weel done, Cutty sark!"

While this 1801 edition is far from being a first, or even really an early edition, I believe that it was the first edition to contain an illustration for "Tam O'Shanter" (and—more importatly—the first to depict Burns' witch).

For reasons that would probably keep a therapist entertained for hours (if I had one), I have a pretty extensive collection of objects decorated with representations of said witch, either dancing amid the ruins or in persuit of Tam. While being the first has an appeal all of its own, this crude illustration by Alexander Carse is particularly charming. If I remember to mark Burns Night again next year, I will post some images of one of these objects.

Manufacturing Obscenity: Thomas Love Peac*ck

2026-01-20T20:29:00.002+11:00

When I was shopping around for cheap copies of the The Cambridge Edition of the Novels of Thomas Love Peacock, the following copy was recommended to me on eBay:

Note the highlighted name: Thomas Love Peacock has here been censored into obscenity as "Thomas Love Peac*ck"—a type of asterism or ellipsis that was common in eighteenth century print (and is still common on social media today), which was used in order to avoid (further) censorship (††)

Obviously, this name-change was the result of a database-wide change of all instances of "cock" to "c*ck"—since it also caught The White Peac*ck by D. H. Lawrence, and a book published by "Peac*ck Books" ( Shakespeare Superscribe); i.e., an author, a title, and a publisher—but it made me curious. I have mentioned before (here) that some inexperienced booksellers, unfamiliar with the Early Modern long esse, have been known to catalogue copies of Belle Assemblée as "Belle Affemblée"—and, by doing so, make their copies of "Belle Affemblée" invisible to searches for Belle Assemblée. (As a result, I sometimes search for Miss Besty Thoughtless as Mifs Betfy Thoughtlefs and The Invisible Spy as The Invifible Spy—which makes me feel like an idiot, especially since, so far, I have not found any!)

Seeing this asterised Peacock, I wondered whether there may be a treasure trove of works—or even just a single treasure—that had eluded my prior searches by virtue of being catalogued under "Thomas Love Peac*ck" instead of Thomas Love Peacock. When I conducted a search for "Peac*ck" I discovered yes, there were quite a few books catalogue this way, but no treasures, and not much of interest to me. However, I also discovered that all the booksellers (NB the plural here) who used this censorship method seem to be the many heads of a single bookselling Hydra, masquerading as competitors.

As you can see here:

the same book is being listed on eBay by, seemingly, different booksellers—booksellers on different continents no less. (This is not a stock photo BTW—which are usually labelled as such—and the descriptions do match the condition of the books in the photos. Rather, this is the same book being listed under multiple business names on eBay.) Hunting around for more pairs like this, I found four censorious booksellers.

* * * * *

The four booksellers selling books by "Thomas Love Peac*ck" on eBay are all enterprises run by Mubin and Raza Ahmed’s "Wrap Ltd."—a "printed matter," "waste and scrap paper" import/export business with an annual turnover of £6.5M ("or more"). Mubin and Taskeen Ahmed are listed as Directors of Wrap (and Shahida Ahmed as Company Secretary of Wrap) here.

On eBay, Mubin Ahmed’s baham_books (Joined 11 Aug, 2011; 11.3M [!!] items sold) duplicates Awesomebooksusa (Joined 27 Mar. 2009; 399K items sold), Raza Ahmed’s InfiniteBooks (400K items sold; Joined Dec. 2012), and The_Book_Fountain (Joined May 2013; 574K items sold). The Ahmeds may have more phantom / phoenix businesses. In this last instance, you need to match the VAT number for the business [GB 724498118] against those listed under baham_books and Awesomebooksusa [GB 724498118]. As I say, I only found these four by looking for duplicate "Peac*ck" volumes, a wider search may identify more fake competitors.

There is not a lot about Messers Ahmed online, but eBay spruiked Awesome Books and "Mubin Ahmed, 36 from Reading" in a 2020 Press Release (here), using the following quotation:

" We started our business, AwesomeBooks, after realising that many books from charity shops end up going to waste due to the sheer volume of donations they receive. We spotted an opportunity to start a business selling second-hand books, while also giving charities well-needed funds to take stock off their hands. AwesomeBooks has grown immensely over the last 17 years, and we now ship 6,000 books per day through our eBay store. From small beginnings, our turnover is now expected to reach £25m this year. Lockdown meant that sales of our books went through the roof. It seems like our customers used their spare time to read their 'bucket list books' and find sources of entertainment for children."

* * * * *

As someone who has both given a lot of books to charity, and bought a lot of books from charities, I have mixed feelings about discovering that they are handing over these donations by the truckload to a business that has turned Messers Ahmed et al. into Millionaires. I am sure the charities would argue that it is better than them going into landfill, and that they at least get something this way, instead of having to pay something (in tipping fees) for these books. Also, if it were not for AwesomeBooks et al., there would be fewer books and less competition online—and so, higher prices for books. The counter argument is that the charities ought to either pass on their donations, at modest prices, to their local communities, to the benefit of those local communities, or be much more open about wholesaling to eBay vendors.

It does strike me, moreover, that very few of the books listed by AwesomeBooks / Awesomebooksusa / BahamBooks / InfiniteBooks / The Book Fountain are paperbacks. A search for John Wyndham did not turn up a single paperback on InfiniteBooks; and while Awesomebooksusa and The Book Fountain had a few, these were overwhelmingly new books or very recent editions. So, it seems that paperbacks are almost all still going to landfill—or being pulped. Since "Wrap Ltd. " do import/export both "printed matter" and "waste and scrap paper" it may be that they are pulping a myriad of John Wyndham paperbacks, which might explain why said paperbacks are now almost impossible to find.

In any event, the quote from Mubin Ahmed does help explain why I rarely see an older or more interesting books at most op-shops—whether hardcovers or paperbacks, an Everyman or an older Penguin, to say nothing of a Loeb classical text—even after I have given such books to them. I assumed / hoped these were being distributed to other stores, or going to a central warehouse for vetting / sorting, but it seems that all the better books may be simply going to the local equivalents of Messers Ahmed instead, while most of the paperbacks are being pulped.

* * * * *

(††) Late last year I wrote an essay on the history of omission markers in the eighteenth century, and the terminology used to describe them (dashes, ellipsis and asterism), returning to a subject I had first touched on (albeit, only in passing) in two 2011 essays ("Fanny Hill and the Myth of Metonomy, " and "The New Machine, Discovering the Limits of ECCO"). I have long been fascinated by the practice of dashing, and have collected enough material for multiple essays on the subject, as well as an (as yet unrealised) research project. As a result, I probably tried stuffing too much into my latest essay, and needed to put it aside for a while, so that I could return to it with a pruning hook. Messers Ahmed’s asterism strikes me as a particularly good example of the continuing practice, since it is both completely ineffective as a form of censorship (where no censorship was called for in the first place), and draws attention to what it fails to censor.

Collecting Haywood, 2025

2026-01-09T07:23:00.004+11:00

I haven’t posted on this blog for a while—and I haven’t posted an end-of-year round-up of Haywood collecting for four years—but I thought I might test my blogging gears with a post on my Haywood collecting at the end of 2025.

My motivation for attempting this test is that I have now reached my long-term collecting goal of “beating” the British Library at collecting works by Eliza Haywood.

“Beating” in this context carries none of the usual implications of winning. It is not like this was a race—if it were, my competition would have to have some inkling, which they don’t, that a race had started (a race in which they enjoyed an almost three century head start, and overwhelming institutional advantages); and “winning” would have to involve having an objectively-speaking superior collection, which I don’t have even now, and never will have. As I have probably mentioned before, a significant number of Haywood’s early works have not circulated in the private collecting market for at least a century; many for longer, so I will never have the opportunity to buy them, even if I could afford them, were they to come up for sale.

Since 1997, my competitive measure has been—instead—how many times does the library appear as a holding location in my database of library holdings, which was the foundation of my Bibliography of Eliza Haywood. When finalised in 2004, the totals for the top ten libraries were: British Library (168); Oxford University—inclusive of the Bodleian (115); Yale University—i.e., all libraries (91); Harvard University—ditto (84); Cambridge University—ditto (81), Newberry Library (75), Huntington Library and University of Illinois (60), University of Pennsylvania (45). As I noted in my Bibliography, these top ten libraries contain as many Haywood items (779) as the 310 smallest libraries combined.

Over the last two decades my personal library count has gradually risen past all 320 of the instructions, whose holdings were included in my Bibliography. Obviously, at first, I was galloping past libraries. I passed fourteen by simply going from four to five Haywood items; and another fourteen by going from five to six. It didn’t take long for me to surpass the combined libraries of Melbourne, and then Australia. The gap between libraries all the way up to Yale (at 91) was narrow enough that I pretty consistently had new collecting targets to focus on. After all, the Bodleian, at 96, was only five more items beyond Yale, and then it was only six more to add All Souls College to the Bodleian, and so on, up to 115. But the fifty-three items needed to get from Oxford University (on 115) to the British Library (on 168) was a long haul, with few milestones on the way.

Now that I a have reached 169, I am happy to acknowledge that, the British Library almost-certainly still has more than I do; having likely acquired more Haywood items since 2004. In fact, I am sure they have, since I sold them (what was then the only known copy of) a Swedish translation of The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. There were also likely to have been copies at the British Library I missed including, for one reason or another. So, I am assuming that, if I were to re-do my 1997 / 2004 audit, I would find that I have been chasing an after-image of the British Library holdings for the last two decades, and that their present holdings are more like 175 or 180.

While it is possible that I may eventually pass the then-actual, present day count of the British Library, it has been getting harder and harder to find anything I don’t already have multiple copies of, so it may never happen. It is just as well then, that I am now increasingly focussed on the provenance and reading marks left behind by past readers, and am at least as excited by a dog-eared duplicate as I am by a clean copy of something I don’t already have.

Fortuitously, therefore, my very pretty, British Library-beating item no. 169, arrived with a number of dog-eared duplicate volumes. This means that I passed by the biggest institutional collection in style, with a mix of items they would both willingly, and unwillingly allow into their collection.

And so, rather than give an account in this post of the eighteen Haywood items I acquired this year, or the seventeen the year before, and so on back to my last “Collecting Haywood” post in January 2022 (for 2021 (here), and rather than share an image of the very nice set of La Belle Assemblée that took me from 168 to 169 Haywood items, I thought I’d share a few images of the duplicate volumes I acquired at the same time, which are at least as wretched as either my Frankenbook or the battered odd-volume of the German translation of Haywood’s Female Spectator (1744–46) (here), which reminded me of the “lone soldiers we see so often in films, the ones who stumble out of the mud and smoke of battle, with clothes torn, hair awry, smeared in muck, bandaged, limping, looking at the corpses on all sides with glassy eyes, only to collapse from exhaustion in front of the camera.”

Below is the title-page of an odd-volume from Haywood’s La Belle Assemblée, 5th ed. (1743), a representative of my eighth set of this edition. The worn and stained front board and the front free endpaper of this copy were sticky-taped together, but were separated from the rest of the volume, which has had all the plates torn out (including the frontispiece), and had lost chunks of more than a few page-edges as a result of rough page-turning.

Below are the title-pages of two non-consecutive odd-volumes from Haywood’s La Belle Assemblée, 6th ed. (1749), representatives of my seventh set of this edition. Putting aside the provenance information they contain, the first volume has no boards, and contains annotations and underlining in pencil (mostly), while the third volume retains its boards, but lacks the textual annotations and underlining. Both volumes are heavily worn, but complete, with discoloured, dog-eared and torn pages, and bifolia splitting at the spine. Both volumes also contain some amateur water-colouring to one headpiece and at least two engraved plates each.

Since these three disreputable volumes contained some intriguing provenance information, and I had some free time when they arrived, I have been able to recover quite a bit of their histories, and so I will post those histories, and some better photographs once I have access to Photoshop again.

Judge Rochfort exlibris bookplate, ca. 1760

2023-04-10T08:15:00.005+10:00

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 copies); here]. I know this because, the bookplate was, and still is, fixed to the back of the titlepage, as you can see:

Bookplates are usually attached to front (fixed) endpaper, not to the title leaf; most likely, there was already a bookplate on the front endpaper, when Rochfort went to add his plate, so it was placed on the verso of the title leaf instead (more on this below).

There is a copy of this edition of Foster's Sermons on ECCO, but not freely available online (yet—probably), but there are copies of the first edition of 1733 (here) and the fourth edition of 1745 (here) for anyone interested in Rochfort’s reading or book-buying preferences. Below is the full title page, taken from the University of Cambridge Library copy on ECCO:

Although I have been unable to find a reference to any other Judge Rochfort bookplates in library catalogues online—or on ESTC under “Copy Specific Notes”—there is actually another book from Judge Rochfort’s library available at present on ABE (here):

The title of this book is not well represented in this ABE catalogue listing, but it is a copy of Jeremy Taylor, Eniautos. A course of sermons for all the Sundays of the year, 2nd ed. (1655) [Wing T330; ESTC: r10569 (recording 40 copies); here]. As you can see, this copy of Rochfort’s bookplate is printed in red, which is very unusual I believe.

Although there is no image of it online, this armorial bookplate features in J. H. Slater’s, “Alphabetical List of Noted Book-Plates” in his Book Plates and Their Value (London: Henry Grant, 1898), 203 (online here):

According to Slater, there are actually two Judge Rochfort bookplates, mine being “distinctly ‘Jacobean’ with elaborate mantling”—although he dates is to “about 1760” (long after the Jacobean period)—but both feature the crest and motto: “Probitas est optima politia” [honesty is the best policy].

Slater, who is styled J. Herbert Slater in the books of his I have on my shelves, was particularly well informed, so I am inclined to accept his date for the bookplate. As I noted above, the unusual positioning of the bookplate suggests that Rochfort was not the first owner of his 1736 copy of Foster’s Sermons—any more than he was the first owner of his 1655 copy of Taylor’s Eniautos on ABE.

* * * * *

As for who was Rochfort—like St John Broderick, the other stray Anglo-Irish bookplate I bought in the late 80s (and blogged about here)—he is: Judge Rochfort, of Streamstown, Co. Westmeath, Ireland; High Sheriff of Westmeath in 1736.

Judge Rochfort was related to the much-better-known Rochforts of Gaulstown (Gaulstown is only about 25kms by road from Streamstown), but the link between the two families is somewhat distant, and the families may even have been at odds.

The Gaulstown Rochforts “were close friends of [Jonathan] Swift’s, and both George and John figure frequently in Swift’s letters and poems. John seems to have been a particular favorite: He was named by Stella one of her executors; and he was selected a member of the Lunacy Commission appointed, in 1742, to in quire into the state of Swift's mind” (Katherine Hornbeak, “Swift’s Letter to a Very Young Lady on Her Marriage,” Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2 (February 1944): 183).

Swift was a regular visitor to the Rochfort family at Gaulstown House—a very famous estate, which you will find information about here) and here). “It is said that it was when Dean Swift looked across the expanse of Lough Ennell one day and saw the tiny human figures on the opposite shore of the lake that he conceived the idea of the Lilliputians featured in Gulliver’s Travels” (here).

“A number of Rochforts family served in the Irish House of Commons for constituencies in Westmeath” (here); Robert Rochfort (1652–1727), of the Rochforts of Gaulstown, “had a highly distinguished career, being Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer. Robert’s grandson, also named Robert, was created 1st Earl of Belvedere in 1756. Their principal residences were Gaulstown House and, later, Belvedere House in Westmeath, of which only the latter still exists.”

Belvedere House is about 10kms from Gaulstown, but still only 25kms from Judge Rochfort in Streamstown—assuming that Judge Rochfort actually resided in Streamstown, which is by no means certain. The population of Streamstown is tiny, even today, although it is rapidly rising (increasing from 378 in 2016 to 519 in 2022; see here), and, as Arthur Sherbo notes, various members of the Rochfort family that Swift numbered among his friends were “resident in Dublin” at the time (Arthur Sherbo, “From the Westminster Magazine: Swift, Goldsmith, Garrick, et al.” Studies in Bibliography, Vol. 41 (1988), 276; here).

* * * * *

Returning to Judge Rochfort: Judge (here) was the son of Charles, son and heir of Charles Rochfort Esq. of Streamstown (ca. 1636–92; here and here), eldest son and heir of Lt.-Col. “Prime Iron” James Rochfort (ca. 1600–1652), who was court martialed and executed for killing his Major (in a duel) in Cromwell’s Army (here and here)—Lodge’s The Peerage of Ireland, vol. 3 (Dublin, 1754), 374–76 (here) provides the connections between all the otherwise disconnected references provided above.

Judge married Jane Donnellan (here), and had three daughters: Jane (here), Rebecca, who married (on 17 November 1779) Thomas Edwards, Esq. “an eminent surgeon” (here), and an un-named third daughter mentioned here.

Judge’s daughter Jane Rochfort married Rowland Rochfort (here)—a distant cousin—and had two daughters (only Harriet mentioned here, but two daughters mentioned here).

Rowland was the great, great, grandson of Lt.-Col. “Prime Iron” James Rochfort, and great grandson of Robert Rochfort (1652–1727; here; Prime Iron’s youngest son)—and wife Lady Hannah Hancock (d. 1733; here)—the friend of Swift.

Judge and his immediate family—indeed, most of the Streamstown Rochforts—have “no dates”—that I can find anyway—Robert, his ancestors, and descendants (i.e., the Gaulstown Rochforts), do. Lt.-Col. James Rochfort (d. 1652) was the father of Robert Rochfort (1652–1727), who was the father of the Rt. Hon. George Rochfort (1682–1730), who was the father of Arthur Moore Rochfort (1711–1774), M.P. for Westmeath, who was the father of Rowland Rochfort. Rowland’s father, Arthur, was the brother of Robert Rochfort, 1st Earl of Belvidere (1708–1774), aka “the wicked earl” (more on him below).

Meanwhile, the nearest dates that I can find for Judge’s immediate family are his grandfather (Charles, born ca. 1636), and the weddings of his daughters: Rebecca’s in 1779 and Jane’s (no date), but to Rowland, the brother of Lt.-Gen. George Rochfort (ca. 1739–1821).

* * * * *

I will end this ridiculously long post with a brief account of “the wicked earl” (based on the sources linked above, esp. here, here and here).

Apparently, Robert Rochfort, the 1st Earl of Belvidere, heard rumours that his young wife (Mary) had often visited—and had been having an “intrigue” with—his brother Arthur, the father of Rowland (Judge's son-in-law). According to a contemporary source: “[Arthur was] very well-bred and very well in his person and manner …[while] she is extremely handsome and has many personal accomplishments.”

As punishment, Robert had his wife locked up in the family house at Gaulstown, alone apart from her children and servants, for 31yrs. He also sued Arthur for “criminal conversation” for £2,000—a huge sum at the time; unable to pay, Arthur was thrown in a debtor’s prison where he eventually died.

Meanwhile, Mary was left so severely damaged by her long imprisonment “that she took to wandering the house and talking to portraits as if they were real people. When she was finally released after Robert’s death in 1774, Mary had become a deranged hag incapable of recognizing her own sons.”

George, the 2nd Earl of Belvedere, who freed his mother from imprisonment, demolished the Gaulstown House (where she had been imprisoned) and built a smaller house in the grounds for her. But Mary refused to stay; instead, she set sail for France, where she became a nun and lived the rest of her life as a hermit.

Given Robert’s character, if Judge allowed his daughter to marry Rowland, during the life of the wicked earl it seems very unlikely that he was at all close to Robert or the Gaulstown Rochforts—but perhaps this occurred after Robert bled to death, alone (and probably unrepentant), with his head caved in, on the grounds of his estate.

[Corrected: 15 June 2026]

St John Broderick of the Middle Temple, 1703

2023-03-30T08:02:00.004+11:00

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 Alan, Baron Brodrick (ca. 1655–1728)—who outlived his son by only six months (Wikipedia pages here and here).

The short Wikipedia entry on St John Broderick characterises him as “an Anglo-Irish politician who sat in the Irish House of Commons from 1709 to 1728 and in the British House of Commons from 1721 to 1727”; since he was a parliamentarian, a few more details appear in Romney Sedgwick’s The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715–1754 (1970; online here).

Combining details from Wikipedia, Sedgwick and C. M. Tenison’s “Cork M.P’s, 1559–1800,” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, vol. 1, 2nd ser. (1895): 177 (here), the details of his life can be summarized as follows:

St. John Brodrick of Ballyanane, alias Midleton, was the eldest son, by his first wife, of Alan Brodrick, M.P., who was afterwards created Viscount Midleton. He was educated at Eton, 1698, and King’s College Cambridge, 1700, and was admitted to the Middle Temple, 1700; barrister-at-law, Ireland; Recorder of Cork, in succession to his father, 1708.

Brodrick was M.P. Castlemartyr, 1709–13 (then “of Cork”); Cork City, 1713–14 (then “of the Middle Temple”); Cork County, 1715–27; and 1727 (then Right Hon. St. John Brodrick) till his death in 1728. Brodrick was M.P. also for Beeralstown, county Devon, 1721–27; a Privy Councillor, 1724.

He married Anne, daughter of Michael Hill, of Hillsborough. She died 1752, leaving five daughters, of whom Anne married James Jeffreys, and Mary married Sir J. R. Freke, M.P. (q.v.). He died s.p. and s.p.m., 21st February, 1728.

A “Sketch Pedigree exemplifying the Brodrick M.P’s” is in Tenison here and a “Pedigree of Broderick” (that includes St. John and his daughters) can be found here

* * * * *

I found only a few references to this 1703 bookplate. It seems that Broderick owned a copy of Donne's Poems (London, 1633), now at Texas Tech University, Lubbock (here, but no photograph).

There appear to be no modern photograph or scan of St John Broderick’s bookplate online, but Egerton Castle reproduced a copy of this bookplate in his English Book-plates: Ancient and Modern (1893), 60 (above; text here); and this image was used by both Linda K. Ginn, for her 2017 lecture on “Digital Bookplates: Old Technology and New Applications” [University Libraries Workshops and Presentations, 6 (pdf online here]) and Paul Magrath in his 2021 post for the ICLR [Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales] on “(L)ex Libris — the art of the legal bookplate” (here).

Regarding the Brodrick family motto: “a cuspide corona” can be translated as “from a spear, a crown” (i.e., one receives honour [a crown] for military exploits [a spear]). This motto can also be seen on the 1754 engraving above, taken from John Lodge, The Peerage of Ireland, vol. 3 (Dublin, 1754), pl. 29 (here).

* * * * *

I have no record, and no clear memory of when I acquired this bookplate—but I think I have had it and a one other anglo-Irish bookplate (which I blogged about here) for decades, probably since the late 80s. I have a pretty strong aversion to supporting “breakers”—biblioclasts who disassemble books for engravings, or sammelbands and nonce-volumes for individual works, especially plays—so I can only assume that I bought the collection of bookplates [1] not from the beaker themselves (to avoid encouraging this sort of thing) and [2] out of a desire to protect bookplates themselves.

As you can see, I have managed to protect this one so far. But it occurred to me recently, when I was going through my ephemera, that it might be even better to post images and information about some of my ephemera here. Destruction is only a bushfire away after all and the bookplates are both very attractive—as the appearance of this one in Egerton Castle’s English Book-plates suggests.

Eighteenth-Century Books in Australian Libraries, revisited

2023-03-24T15:23:00.002+11:00

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 Bibliographical Studies and Research at the University of California—“provides a count of ESTC records as well as providing ESTC codes.”

This count of ESTC items—books printed in English or in English-speaking countries before 1801—can be used as a crude yardstick to compare the rare book holdings in various libraries in Australia.

Although more than a decade has passed, there is remarkably little change to the figures I provided in my 2011 post—with one notable exception. Can you pick it?

The top ten libraries remain the same, and in the same order of size:

1. University of Sydney Library (NU) 7529 (up 18)
2. National Library of Australia (ANL) 7455 (up 3)
3. Monash University (VMoU) 4842 (up 5)
4. State Library of Victoria (VSL) 4656 (up 596)
5. State Library of SA (SSL) 2876 (up 3)
6. University of Adelaide (SUA) 2595 (up 2)
7. University of Melbourne (VU) 2294 (up 22)
8. State Library of NSW, Rare Books (NSL-RB) 1199 (no change)
9. Private collection, SA (PC-S) 1175 (up 4)
10. State Library of NSW (NSL) 1009 (up 1)

It is still the case that roughly one third of the 304 (was 303) Australian ESTC codes are recorded as holding nothing (101 libraries), a further one third have five or fewer listings (200 libraries), only eleven percent (34 of 304) have one hundred or more works.

I know for a fact that Monash has added a lot more than five ESTC items to its collection in the last decade—I have personally seen to that!—but I also know that they have been slack with informing ESTC of these new holdings. The State Library of Victoria count has, by comparison, increased by almost six hundred items, which is likely much more in line with their actual acquisitions. (On this, they seem to be particularly active in the area of early women writers; as a recent article explains here.)

It is unclear how many institutions might have stopped updating ESTC (like Monash), rather than stopped making acquisitions (State Library of NSW?), but I suspect that Monash’s cataloguing backlog is the norm, and that VSL’s professionalism is the exception. This suggests, in turn, that the specific figures recorded here for each institution are less important that the proportions between institutions etc.

* * * * *

Looking at the 2023 data, with this in mind, a few more things strike me.

The total count for all ESTC items in all Australian libraries is 47289—95% of these are held by the thirty largest libraries, so I looked at these thirty in particular. Breaking down the figures by State and Territory:

13800 items, or 29.2%, are held in VIC
12138 items, or 25.7%, are held in NSW
8162 items, or 17.3%, are held in ACT
7579 items, or 16.0%, are held in SA
1999 items, or 4.2%, are held in QLD
567 items, or 1.2%, are held in TAS
469 items, or 1.0%, are held in WA
0 items, or 0.0% are held in NT

Since NSW is Australia’s most populous State, I wondered about the relative proportions of ESTC holdings per State and Territory. On a per capita basis (actually ESTC items per 1000 people), the leagues table is as follows:

ACT is 17.8 per 1000 people
SA is 4.1 per 1000 people
VIC is 2.1 per 1000 people
NSW is 1.5 per 1000 people
TAS is 1.0 per 1000 people
QLD is 0.4 per 1000 people
WA is 0.2 per 1000 people
NT is 0.0 per 1000 people

ACT is an anomaly here, since the National Library of Australia (in Canberra) is not really an ACT institution—but the ACT itself is an anomaly, and the National Library is physically situated in Canberra, so perhaps this does not matter. The National average is 1.7 per 1000 people, so NSW is below the National average, but the ACT is in NSW, so—again with the ACT anomaly.

As for the type of institutions holding almost all of Australia’s ESTC items:

22081 items, or 46.7%, are held by twelve Universities
17720 items, or 37.5%, are held by six National and State Libraries
1751 items, or 3.7%, are held by five Religious institutions
1175 items, or 2.5%, are held by one Private individual
961 items, or 2.0%, are held by three Courts
668 items, or 1.4%, are held by one Parliament
385 items, or 0.8%, are held by two Medical Colleges

The number of ESTC items in Religious institutions, Courts and Parliamentary libraries surprised me a little.

* * * * *

A final thought, as a collector of 18C books—most institutions in Australia are doing a woeful job. In terms of new acquisitions, the only library in Australia that is doing it right—on the evidence of the ESTC code-finder—is the State Library of Victoria. But in absolute terms, no one is.

Below are—selected more or less at random, and ignoring most of the most obvious first-tier institutions in the States—ten points of reference for Australian rare book librarians:

Newberry Library 38087
Library Company of Philadelphia 31053
University of Chicago 25093
Boston Public 21233
Cornell University 18189
Columbia University 16426
Boston Athenaeum 12816
Rice University 8529
Free Library of Philadelphia 6109
Haverford College Library 5583

The entire ESTC book stock of Australia is weak when compared to the Newberry alone—which probably has fewer duplicates, and a wider coverage than Australia as a whole. The “Friends Historical Society of Swarthmore College”—which I have never heard of—has 2573 ESTC items! This is more than either the State Library of NSW or the University of Melbourne; indeed, more than all of Queensland and Tasmania combined.

It would also seem that even I now have more ESTC items than 292 of 304 Australian libraries—more than the whole of Tasmania (or Western Australia)—despite the fact that my budget is certainly a lot smaller than that of University of NSW, the University of Western Australia, State Library of Queensland and so forth. I do not know what they are spending their money on, but it isn’t (it seems) books printed before 1801.