"When this marvellous library is finally housed in the white marble
building in Washington, it will arouse the enthusiasm of scholars. No one
knows today exactly what it contains. There will be surprises innumerable.
Hidden in the profound depths of this collection there will be, I am sure,
much new material. . . ." A. S. W. Rosenbach, "Henry C. Folger as a
Collector," Henry C. Folger, 18 June 1857 11 June
1930 (New Haven, 1931), p. 105.
Among the treasures hidden until now at the Folger Shakespeare
Library is a set of the Gentleman's Magazine which for many
years was maintained by the editors as a special file copy.[1] Evidence gathered from several
collections of Nichols family documents and other sources makes it possible
to trace the passage of this important run of volumes through successive
generations of the family and through the subsequent owners, an English
provincial book dealer and the Renaissance scholar Dr. T. N. Brushfield,
into the hands of Henry C. Folger. The volumes in this collection contain
extensive editorial annotation, including identifications of hundreds of the
magazine's anonymous contributors. Tipped or bound into many volumes
are manuscript letters, color drawings for the engraved plates, the original
wrappers of monthly numbers, copies of pamphlets and booksellers'
catalogues, and other materials related to the magazine's publication.
Because this
set of volumes served as the file in which the Nichols family collected such
documentation, it possesses unique evidential value for scholarship on the
history of the Gentleman's Magazine and constitutes a major
source of information which has not hitherto been utilized in scholarship on
the literary history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The connection between the Nichols family and the
Gentleman's Magazine spanned three-quarters of a century.
In 1778, John Nichols (1745-1826)
purchased a half-interest in the proprietorship from the heir of Richard
Cave, the founder's nephew.
[2] David
Henry remained the nominal editor until he officially made over the position
and its salary to Nichols in 1791.
[3]
Nichols, however, had long since assumed most of the responsibilities of
management, and it was fully appropriate that those who corresponded with
him during the 1780's referred to the
Gentleman's as "your
magazine."
[4] His son, John Bowyer
Nichols (1779-1863), joined the firm in 1796, and "among his duties, from
an early age, was that of assisting in the editorship of this Magazine. . . ."
[5] John Gough Nichols (1806-1873)
entered the business in 1824. After his grandfather's death, he began "to
take an active part in the editorial management of
The Gentleman's
Magazine, to which he had already been an occasional contributor"
(
Memoir, p. 5). The professional pattern of three successive
generations in the Nichols family thus reflects a high degree of continuity,
and after the death of John Nichols there was to be no lessening of the
family's involvement in the affairs of the magazine. In 1833, in fact,
Bowyer Nichols acquired all the shares in the proprietorship which had
remained outside the family, though he left the editorial duties to his son
and other associates.
[6] J. G. Nichols
edited the magazine alone from 1851 until the middle of 1856, when his
father sold it to John Henry Parker (
Memoir, p. 16).
Although the family officially ended its association with the
Gentleman's Magazine at that time, its identification with the
history of this periodical could scarcely be terminated. Among the works
first featured by Parker when he assumed control was J. G. Nichols'
"Autobiography of Sylvanus Urban," a long account of the magazine up to
1754,
[7] and today
the scholar who wishes to study the history of the
Gentleman's will find that the extant collections of Nichols
family papers are among the primary resources.
John Nichols' entrance into the magazine's affairs is perhaps nowhere
better illustrated than in the increasing number of references to him among
the annotations in volumes at the Folger. Volume XLIX (1779) reveals with
singular immediacy the early details of Nichols' part in publishing the
Gentleman's Magazine, for throughout this volume his name
and that of David Bond are written on the first pages of the sheets which
they respectively printed. Bond had been printing the magazine for several
years under his lease of David Henry's printing shop at St. John's
Gate.[8] In June, 1778, Henry
informed Bond that Nichols would be printing half of each monthly number
until the lease expired in 1780, since Nichols now owned that proportion
of the proprietorship. Because the control of folding and stitching had come
to Nichols with the shares he possessed, he assembled the printed sheets;
Bonds' copy had to be farmed out and his printing collected each
month. For Nichols, the arrangement must have been inconvenient at best,
and for Bond it was definitely undesirable. His annoyance led him to
publish a pamphlet bitterly reproaching Nichols and Henry in 1781.
Although the world was thus told how the printing was handled during this
interval, few people besides the printers and their immediate associates
would have known which sheets had come from which shop, and probably
only the principals themselves would have cared to write down that
information in a volume of the published magazine. The notations in Vol.
XLIX at the Folger are in the handwriting of either John Nichols or his
son, and they provide unique information about this episode.[9]
Although annotations in the Folger volumes allow one to observe
closely Nichols' emergence as the magazine's printer and editor, such
evidence seems to have been supplied for the most part by his son. The
frequent identifications of Nichols as the author of prefaces, editorial
statements, and pseudonymous articles are usually in the handwriting of
Bowyer Nichols, and he himself appears to have added only occasional
annotation.[10] In view of his editorial
habits, it is nearly inconceivable that Nichols did not keep a well-annotated
file copy close at hand as he undertook the direction of this important
periodical. His major study of Hogarth, his Literary Anecdotes of the
Eighteenth Century, and other characteristic works assumed their
eventual length through his painstaking accumulation of notes in file copies
over many years. However, no set of the magazine bearing the kind of
annotation one imagines Nichols to have made was in his library or
his son's or his grandson's when they were sold in the course of the
nineteenth century, and no such set is known to exist today. One is left to
speculate that John Nichols' personal collection of the Gentleman's
Magazine was destroyed in the fierce fire which consumed his
printing office and warehouses in 1808. The account of the fire which
Nichols published in the magazine that year (pt. i [Jan.-June], pp. 99-100)
does not specifically report the status of whatever editorial files he then
maintained. If he kept a file copy in "the Dwelling-house, which, though
it had an immediate communication with the other buildings, was
providentially preserved from destruction," such a collection would have
escaped the fire. "A considerable number of valuable books" were
preserved because they were housed there, including "a single copy of
several of the articles that formed the stock in trade, and a matchless
collection of early printed
News-papers, which Mr. N. had for many years with great trouble and
expense been collecting and arranging." It is more likely, however, that his
file collection of the
Gentleman's Magazine would have been
located for convenience of reference in the printing office, along with the
materials for other works in progress, such as the new edition of the
Anecdotes of Bowyer. "The whole of Six Portions of Mr.
Nichols's Leicestershire and the Entire Stock of the Gentleman's Magazine
from 1782 to 1807" were, like the revised
Anecdotes,
"irrecoverably lost." When Nichols' library was sold at auction after his
death, the only set of the magazine it contained was a run of volumes
beginning with that for 1808.
[11] If
Nichols' personal collection through the volume for 1807 was indeed
destroyed by fire, his loss was soon alleviated through a bequest from
Richard Gough (1735-1809), his closest editorial associate besides his son,
and a man whose
interests and habits were perhaps nearer his own than those of any other
person.
[12] Gough's will left to Nichols
his "corrected" set of the
Gentleman's Magazine.
[13] Most and perhaps all of the first fifty-two
volumes in the Nichols family collection at the Folger Library were drawn
from this set which John Nichols inherited from Richard Gough.
The provenance of these volumes is established by the presence of
Gough's bookplate and by annotation in his hand.[14] The bookplate appears
in only twelve volumes,
[15] but there
are reasons to believe that it must once have been present in most of the
others before Vol. LIII (1783). Those containing his bookplate belong to a
group of forty-two
[16] which have
undergone a common rebinding, and in two of them (XXXIII [1763] and
XLI [1771]) the bookplate has been covered by the front pastedown. Since
there are annotations in his hand in all but three of the rebound volumes
after that for 1752 (and in these three there is virtually no annotation
[17]), it seems likely that his bookplate was
removed or obliterated in the rebinding of most of these volumes. It was
perhaps once present also in six volumes before that for 1752 which are in
the rebound group but which (like those from the same period still bearing
the bookplate) contain little or no annotation in his hand, perhaps because
they were published during his youth.
[18] Beginning in Vol. XXII (1752),
Gough's volumes contain the kind of annotation which one might expect a
reader with his interests to have made in his copy of each monthly number
as it appeared. He devoted attention particularly to the monthly lists of
births, marriages, preferments, and deaths. Notations in his hand provide
additional information and correct inaccuracies, and the lists are routinely
marked with an elaborate system of checks, crosses, and lines, usually with
the same stroke and shade of ink as the notations. Certain notations indicate
that he returned to the lists to add information later in the century.
[19] Gough evidently shared John Nichols'
view that one of the most valuable functions of the
Gentleman's
Magazine was its preservation of historical and biographical
data,
[20] and his efforts to verify and
extend such data in his own volumes must have enhanced their value to the
Nichols family. Gough's volumes also contain annotation of other kinds. He
wrote comments on articles which interested him, particularly those on
antiquarian subjects, often adding evidence or giving references to other
publications in the field.
[21] When his
own articles and reviews of his works appeared in the magazine he of
course devoted special attention to them, writing comments in his copy and
carefully correcting typographical errors.
[22] From time to time, Gough identified or
guessed at the identities of other contributors.
[23] Containing such pertinent and interesting
additions, the early run of volumes from Richard Gough provided the
Nichols family with a suitably substantial
foundation for their own collection.
Various factors suggest that the volumes after that for 1782 in the
Folger Library are a series maintained entirely within the Nichols family
which escaped destruction in 1808. In 1783, John Nichols inaugurated a
major change in the Gentleman's Magazine, nearly doubling
the number of pages each month in order to accommodate an increasing
body of
contributed articles.
[24] In effect, he
began a new series, for, though the policy of numbering volumes on a
yearly basis was continued, each volume was now to be bound in two parts
with separate title-pages. Whatever holdings the Nichols family had in back
numbers of the
Gentleman's Magazine, it seems reasonable
to assume that the family set aside an adequate supply of duplicate copies
from 1783 onward. The similarity of the bindings in this run of volumes at
the Folger suggests continuity of ownership. None of these volumes
underwent the rebinding which characterizes those from Gough's
library.
[25] None contain his bookplate.
They do contain, as the earlier volumes do not, tipped-in letters to the
editor and color drawings which presumably only the managing staff would
have had on file. More significantly, Gough does not appear to have
annotated these volumes: one does not find his calligraphic traits in the
written
notations, and the informational lists are not marked in the systematic way
Gough marked his volumes. On the other hand, beginning in the volume for
1783, marginalia in the hand of Bowyer Nichols is the principal annotative
feature of the collection at the Folger. At least some of his annotation was
probably added before 1808, for on the front free endpaper of Vol. LXXI
(1801), part 1 (Jan.-June), he noted that his identifications of certain
contributing writers were inscribed "at the time, or nearly so, of
publication." That the Nichols family collection at the Folger ends with the
last volume to be published in his lifetime (though the family sold the set
eleven years later
[26]) suggests that
Bowyer Nichols was its custodian during much of the nineteenth century.
Very likely he began to maintain his own file copies when he became
involved in editorial activity at the turn of the century, and if his collection
was not a complete one by 1808 it doubtless
included at least a continuous run of volumes from 1783 onward. Whatever
its composition, Bowyer Nichols' own collection of the
Gentleman's
Magazine would have escaped the fire which devastated many of his
father's holdings, for Bowyer was then the occupant of the dwelling house
"providentially preserved from destruction."
[26a] No document has as yet come to light
explaining why certain of the volumes (but not others) inherited by John
Nichols from Gough were incorporated into the collection which eventually
came to the Folger Library. In view of the available evidence, however, a
plausible explanation is that after the fire in 1808 a run of annotated
volumes beginning with LIII in the
possession of Bowyer Nichols represented the family's most important file
of the magazine; that Gough's earlier volumes superseded any held by the
family; and that John Nichols passed these volumes to his son in order to
establish within the family as substantial a file as possible.
The nature and scope of Bowyer Nichols' annotation indicate that he
devoted considerable effort to increasing the documentary value of the set
of volumes which the Folger now owns. J. G. Nichols evidently made use
of the set also, especially towards the middle of the nineteenth century,
when as managing editor he was in a better position than his father was to
provide current information about authorship.[27] The occasional corrections of obituary
information in volumes from this period appear often to be his.[28] His critical remarks on antiquarian articles
in volumes from the eighteenth century reveal that J. G. Nichols examined
earlier portions of the collection as well. Indeed, the initials JGN written
on the blank side of an engraved plate, in a large youthful scrawl quite
different from the neat hand of his adult years, suggest that he discovered
the collection at an early age.[29] It is
clear that he consulted it while he was writing the "Autobiography of
Sylvanus Urban." His annotations on VII (1737), 400-402, are obvious
preparations for his remarks on that passage.[30] John Nichols may have made similar use
of this set in preparing his own historical account of the magazine, and the
occasional notations in his hand are evidence that he did consult it.[31] The annotation of Bowyer Nichols,
however, is far more extensive than that of his father and his son. Notations
in his hand call attention to certain bibliographical irregularities in the
volumes from Gough's library,
[32] and
his identifications of anonymous writers occur as early as Vol. VIII
(1738).
[33] Though some of his
annotation appears to have been added earlier,
[34] much of it dates from the 1840's and
1850's. Bowyer Nichols was then carrying forward the work, begun by his
father, of assimilating the vast numbers of letters and documents in the
family's possession towards the seventeen volumes called
Literary
Anecdotes and
Illustrations of the Literary History of the
Eighteenth Century, the last two of which (published in 1848 and
in 1858) he edited alone. The care which Bowyer Nichols devoted to this
task is evident in the condition of letters and documents which have found
their way into the extant collections of Nichols family papers. The
Columbia University collection, for instance, contains scores of documents
which he either transcribed or annotated. Some
of these annotations can be dated from the middle of the nineteenth
century.
[35] That this work was
coordinated with his annotation of the set of the
Gentleman's
Magazine now at the Folger is suggested by a statement which he
inscribed at the front of many of these volumes.
[36] The statement, nearly always dated in
1847, establishes that he had made an exhaustive effort to identify the
contributing writers, and at least in volumes which had been published
during his childhood his identifications must have been based largely on
documentary evidence rather than on personal recollection. Although he was
by no means able to identify all of the magazine's writers—there had
been thousands
of contributors, and most of them preserved anonymity
[37] —his annotations concerning authorship
are frequent and illuminating. Where possible, he reasoned out the adoption
of particular pseudonyms or initials: "M. C. S. is Rev W. Bagshaw Stevens
(probably
Magd
Coll.
Socius)";
"L E is Samue
l Pegg
e."
[38] Bowyer Nichols also provided in many
places the kind of annotation which Richard Gough and J. G. Nichols made
in these volumes—corrections of fact, additions of detail,
cross-references, occasional remarks. His annotation went beyond theirs,
however, in the assimilation of evidence concerning the history of the
Gentleman's Magazine, and it is to Bowyer Nichols that we
are most deeply indebted for the evidential value of this set of
volumes.
This was not, of course, the only set of the Gentleman's
Magazine which belonged to the Nichols family. Until the early
1850's, they kept, indeed, another complete set, a collection of the
magazine "from its commencement, 1731 to 1854 boards,
uncut, rare in this state." The set was offered by Sotheby in
a special auction of items from Bowyer Nichols' library in 1856, along with
one other interesting run of volumes: "the New Series, edited by the Rev.
John Mitford, John Bruce, Esq. F. S. A., and J. G. Nichols, F. S. A. 1834
to 1855, 44 vol. bound for convenience of reference in 22
vol., perfect."[39]
Five other sets of the magazine were listed in the catalogue of the
remaining portions of Bowyer Nichols' library after he died: one run of
volumes from 1731 through 1782, one from 1808 through 1833, one from
1824 through 1838, and two from 1824 through 1845.[40] The set of the
Gentleman's Magazine now at the Folger was not, however,
offered for sale from Bowyer Nichols' library. It was not to be sold until,
after the death of J. G. Nichols, the family released for purchase a vast
body of manuscript and printed materials relating to the history of the
Gentleman's which appears to have been accumulating for
three generations—letters to the editor, manuscripts and proof sheets,
newspaper cuttings probably connected with the magazine's informational
lists. One finds few such collections in the catalogues of his father's and
grandfather's libraries. Although, like other nineteenth-century Englishmen,
members of the Nichols family
evidently regarded their libraries along with their other possessions as
capital to be converted into cash estates, they took care that certain portions
should be inherited intact. The opening bequest in Bowyer Nichols' will
conveys to J. G. Nichols "my Illustrated Copies of the Works respectively
called 'The History of Leicestershire' and 'The Beauties of England and
Wales' and also all my Works or Writings in Manuscript and Collections
of Correspondence whether bound in volumes or otherwise. . . ."
[41] In addition, J. G. Nichols was to choose
any printed books he wanted from his father's "private library" up to a
value of £2000. When his own library was sold it contained at least one
presentation copy from his father's personal collection, and several
notebooks of Bowyer Nichols now at the Bodleian were purchased from J.
G. Nichols' library.
[42] The collection
of the
Gentleman's Magazine which Bowyer Nichols had so
carefully annotated thus passed into the keeping of his son along with other
valued works. J. G. Nichols took possession of it as a unique collection of
the magazine. Among the various sets listed in the catalogues of the
libraries of John, Bowyer, and J. G. Nichols, this set is the only one
advertised as containing annotation and inserted materials.
The collection passed from J. G. Nichols to Dr. T. N. Brushfield by
a circuitous route. It was offered at auction by Sotheby as lot no. 774 on
the third day's sale of J. G. Nichols' library in December, 1874.[43] The catalogue listed it separately from
three other sets, which were offered
on the seventh day of the sale.
[44]
According to the auctioneer's copy of the catalogue, it fetched £12, a
modest price considering the intrinsic value of the set, but one of the higher
amounts achieved during the auction.
[45] Although Quaritch, Pickering, and other
major London book dealers were present, the successful bidder was a man
named Pratt, who bought items every day of the sale and was one of the
major purchasers.
[46] Pratt's name
appears at only one other sale in the auctioneer's catalogues for this period.
He bought a number of porcelains at the next auction after that of J. G.
Nichols' library.
[47] The infrequency
of his attendance and the nature of his purchases suggest that Pratt was a
dealer in old books and antiques who came to the London market to make
occasional acquisitions suitable to the provincial trade. Though little
information about him is
available, two facts can be ascertained: in the mid-1880's, Pratt had a store
on High Street in Guildford, Surrey; and at some time before June, 1882,
Dr. Brushfield, who was at the time director of the Brookwood Asylum,
near Guildford, bought this set of the
Gentleman's Magazine
from him.
[48]
The details of Brushfield's purchase of the Nichols collection are
provided in a note which Dr. Brushfield tipped inside the back cover of
Vol. I:
Gents Mag. At the sale of the Library of the late Mr
——— Nichols at Sothebys. Lot 774—consisting of the
Gentlemans Magazine from its commencement in 1731 to
June 1863, with Indexes ['to 1844' deleted].—(wanting vol
4 & 42). in all 218 vols. with "portraits and plates, and numerous MS.
notes and portraits inserted" was purchased by a Guildford furniture dealer
& for £ . He subsequently sold the Index vols . . . years after he
had bought it. I saw some of the vols packed away in chests of drawers
& misc. ['art' del.] art. of furniture.— No bookseller
had seen it, he told me, — it was much in his way and would I purchase
it—['I gave him' del.] I bought it, and it may be accepted
as an evidence of its value when I state that on subsequently showing one
of the vols to a bookbuyer for one of the largest 2nd hand book dealers, he
offered me three times the price I paid for it— which I declined
It is fortunate for the modern scholar that Dr. Brushfield, apparently quite
by accident, came across the Nichols collection in Pratt's shop within a few
years of the Sotheby auction. Very likely, if Brushfield had not bought it,
the set would have deteriorated badly or would have become dispersed.
Brushfield, on the other hand, was an ideal custodian. Noting that the
"Historical Chronicle" for April was missing from Vol. VI (1736), he
inserted a fair copy of these pages.
[49]
As documentation of provenance, he tipped inside the front cover of Vol.
I a slip quoting the Sotheby catalogue description of the set. Although he
does not appear to have added his own annotation to these volumes, he did
consult them closely enough to compile information about the numerous
articles by Richard Gough which Bowyer Nichols had identified.
[50] Dr. Brushfield recognized not only the
authenticity of the collection but also its potential
importance for scholarship about the
Gentleman's Magazine.
In the early 1880's, when Sir Laurence Gomme's massive
Gentleman's Magazine Library began to appear, Brushfield
let him know that the Nichols annotated volumes were available. Gomme
was reprinting the articles from the
Gentleman's which he
considered most significant, and in his preface to the volume
Dialects,
Proverbs,
and
Word-Lore (1884) he acknowledged Brushfield's offer of help in
establishing the identities of the writers whose work he selected.
After the death of Dr. Brushfield, the Nichols collection of the
Gentleman's Magazine was once again offered to the public,
this time by James G. Commin, a bookseller in Exeter. Presumably
Commin had served Dr. Brushfield often enough during the previous
thirty-odd years, while Brushfield was living nearby at Budleigh-Salterton.
When Brushfield died (28 Nov. 1910), Commin purchased his entire library
of 10,000 volumes from
the executors and advertised it during 1911 in a series of five
catalogues.
[51] The annotated volumes
of the
Gentleman's Magazine from the Nichols family are
listed in item no. 772 of the first catalogue.
[52] Commin priced the collection at £25,
more than twice the amount paid at the Sotheby auction, but the collection
now included various related materials in addition to the volumes of the
magazine proper. At some time, Dr. Brushfield had acquired independently
of Pratt's run of volumes "5 thick 4to
volumes of MS. obituary
notices" compiled by Bowyer Nichols, a set so interesting to bidders
at the Sotheby auction in 1874 that it had fetched £26.
[53] He had also acquired, perhaps in part
from Pratt,
[54] "several thousand
letters addressed to the editor principally from well known archaeologists."
The volumes of obituary notices and the manuscript
letters (stored in "a large tea-chest") enhanced the documentary richness of
the collection, though the rather long description of this item in the
catalogue called attention primarily to the provenance and the unique
properties of the volumes of the magazine itself. The offering was
altogether a very attractive one, and in the summer of 1911 Henry C.
Folger responded by getting the collection for his own growing
library.
[55]
A century has elapsed since this set of the Gentleman's
Magazine first passed from the Nichols family into other hands.
While they maintained it, the set possessed for successive generations of the
family considerably more than sentimental value. The early volumes, it is
true, came from the library of an old family friend, but these were not to
be filed away, like the run of volumes with uncut pages sold in 1856, in a
passive state of preservation. Gough's volumes and those which were added
to his became the central repository within the family for documentary
information about this periodical. The annotations which members of the
family were in a unique position to make they made in these volumes, and
they returned to this set for reference when they wished to ascertain facts
about
the history of the
Gentleman's Magazine. During the past
century, this important collection has been virtually unnoticed in scholarship
on the English periodical. Although Dr. Brushfield treasured it and Sir
Laurence Gomme knew of it, the set has remained in obscurity, and its
credentials have never been recognized clearly by anyone outside of the
Nichols family. In its various bindings and with its assortment of different
editions in the earliest volumes, this set appears to have little particular
bibliographical significance, to be in fact like many another run of volumes
currently available.
[56] Retaining as it
does, however, the significance of special editorial attention over so many
years, the set of the
Gentleman's Magazine in the Folger
Library is unparalleled in authenticity and unequaled in its potential value
to scholars.