From time to time, while browsing through this
database, you will come across Webster 1913 definitions attributed to a certain "Halliwell". One of our great noders marvelled at one of these definitions, piquing my curiousity about the author. A quick
Web search turned up the name of the most likely source, a prolific Victorian
Shakespearean scholar and antiquarian. When I informed the instigator of
my findings, I received the following message:
"Fascinating. You should node Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, so
future enquiries won't meet solely with Geri."
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips turns out to be quite an interesting character.
He is primarily known for his scholarship about the life and works of William
Shakespeare, but he wrote extensively on a variety of literary subjects.
He published mathematical treatises and histories of science, and was one of the first scientific archaeologists,
from his studies of Shakespeare-related sites in Stratford-upon-Avon.
He was a primary force behind the establishment of the Stratford-upon-Avon
sites now mobbed by tourists.
Halliwell-Phillips' career was dogged by disputes, quarrels, and controversies.
He married without getting his father-in-law's permission. He was accused
of stealing manuscripts from Cambridge. He changed his name late
in life to gain control of his wife's inheritance.
Another rival of Halliwell-Phillips was Frederick J. Furnivall, with
whom he clashed horns over several Shakespearean controversies:
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Whether Shakespeare had ever been a Royal servant (a "W. Shaxpeare" was
given royal livery and may have marched in a 1604 parade with James
I)
-
Whether certain plays attributed to Shakespeare (now known as "Shakespeare
Apocrypha") were really written by the Bard. This controversy, along
with a dispute over his cataloguing of Stratford's town archives, caused
him to break with the Shakespeare authorities in Stratford. It's
interesting to note that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's website does
not mention Halliwell-Phillips in conjunction with the Stratford Records.
Highlights of the man's life include:
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1820
-
(June 21) born James Orchard Halliwell.
-
1839
-
Finds "A poem of moral duties" now called the "Regius Poem". Written
in Middle English about 1390, this turned out to be the oldest known
Masonic manuscript.
-
1839
-
Elected to The Royal Society; at eighteen, the youngest Fellow ever.
-
1840
-
Published his translation of the Regius Poem
-
1841
-
Reliquae Antiquae, dedicated to Sir Thomas Phillips, a Shakespearean
collector. Phillips invites Halliwell to Middle Hill, his estate,
and Halliwell becomes a frequent guest, eventually meeting Sir Thomas's
daughter Henrietta.
-
1842
-
The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee, and the Catalogue of his Library
of Manuscripts, from the original manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford, and Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
-
1842
-
Halliwell elopes with Henrietta Phillips, after Sir Thomas refuses to consent
to their marriage. Sir Thomas is so angry he cuts off all contact
with them. Sir Thomas cannot disinherit her because of the terms of his
own father's will, but Henrietta will receive nothing from the estate while
he is alive.
-
1842
-
Publishes Nursery Rhymes of England, where the following appears
for the first time in print:
Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday, christened on Tuesday,
married on Wednesday, took ill on Thursday, worse on Friday, died on Saturday,
buried on Sunday, that is the end of Solomon Grundy
-
1844
-
Several manuscruipts that disappeared from Trinity College, Cambridge while
Halliwell was a student are sold to the British Museum. Halliwell
is investigated but is never charged. However, he is excluded from the
British Museum library.
-
1847
-
Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs,
and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century. This appears to
be the work that Noah Webster's successors used as a source.
-
1847
-
Morte Arthure. The Alliterative Romance of the Death of King Arthur
-
1848
-
Biography of William Shakespeare
-
1849
-
Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales: A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England
-
1863
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An Historical Sketch of the Provincial Dialects of England
-
1860
-
Purchases Nash House, aka New Place, William Shakespeare's home in
Stratford-upon-Avon, and begins raising funds to buy other properties in
Stratford important to the life of Shakespeare.
-
1862
-
begins to organize 5000 or so ancient records of Stratford-on-Avon, but
leaves several hundred out because he feels they are not important to Shakepeare
biography.
-
1866
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bequest to University of Penzance
-
1872
-
Sir Thomas Phillips dies; Henrietta inherits everything. Halliwell
adds "-Phillips" to their name and becomes master of Middle Hill.
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1872
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bequest to Edinburgh University.
-
1884
-
publishes The Stratford Records, a pamphlet in which he explains his side
of the falling-out with the authorities in Stratford-on-Avon.
"The reasons that have led to my retirement from the Shakespearean
councils of Stratford-upon-Avon having, I find, been greatly misunderstood,
an endeavour must be made to give a more extended publicity to the true
causes. A large number of copies of this pamphlet will, therefore, be distributed
gratuitously, and it will also be accessible to the general public.
"My dispute is not with the people of Stratford Every surviving
old or intimate friemd that I have ever had there is still my old or intimate
friend, and I have every reason to believe that I am only out of favour
with the members of an imperious little oligarchy, who resent the slightest
quesiton of their supremacy, and who consider it highly indecorous that
so inferior a being as a Shakespearean biographer should venture to dispute
the validity of their decrees.
Later:
"Stratford-upon-Avon, under the management of its oligarchy,
instead of being, as it ought to be, the centre of Shakespeare-biographical
research, has become the seat of Shakespeare charlatanry."
-
1889
-
(January 3), dies. His collection is donated and sold piecemeal, as he
refuses to let the Stratford worthies get their paws on it.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/
Masonic Events in History
http://users.1st.net/fischer/MASHST01.HTM
Rare Books & Special Collections: An Online Exhibition 1474-1900,
Belmont Abbey College,
http://www.bac.edu/library/rarebooks/Halli.htm
The Stratford Records and the Shakespeare Autotypes, Facsimile
at Omnipaedia Polyglotta,
http://www.webincunabula.com/html/ha/halliwell.htm
The Horblitt-Phillips Collection at Grolier Club
http://www.grolierclub.org/Phillipps.htm
Edinburgh University Library, Gallery of Benefactors,
http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/lib/about/bgallery/Gallery/eighteen/
I am trying to get hold of a copy of James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps:
The Life and Works of the Shakespearean Scholar and Bookman by Marvin
Spevack. If I do, this writeup may change a bit.