University of Virginia Library

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 Samuel Pegge."[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:

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.