Select Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (1768)

As scholars have noted for more than a half century now, the eponymous Bowdler of “bowdlerization” and its derivatives is rightfully Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1750-1830), not her brother Dr Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825). The unrevised entry in the OED continues to credit Thomas as the etymological source for “bowdlerize”—“To expurgate (a book or writing), by omitting or modifying words or passages considered indelicate or offensive; to castrate”—by citing his 1818 edition of a collection of Shakespeare’s works, marketed for its omission of words and expressions that could not be read aloud with propriety in a family setting. But the first edition of the Bowdler Family Shakespeare, published anonymously in four volumes in Bath in 1807 and containing twenty plays, was the work of his sister Henrietta Maria.[1] Anonymous publication was not unusual at the time, especially for women, and the omission of Henrietta Maria’s name from the 1818 and subsequent editions likely reflects her own sense of public propriety rather than brotherly suppression. In recent years, scholars have also started to recuperate Henrietta Maria and Thomas as editors and popularizers, pointing out that Shakespeare’s plays had long been subject to varying degrees of “bowdlerization” avant la lettre, and that the Bowdlers were not alone in revising texts to create new readerships for Shakespeare in the nineteenth century: Charles and Mary Lamb’s immensely popular Tales from Shakespeare also first appeared in 1807.[2]

This copy of Select Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (Glasgow, 1768) features Henrietta Maria Bowdler’s beautifully hand-painted book label, dated 1786. The label appears on the verso of the second front flyleaf, facing the title-page of volume 1. The chain surround and lettering are painted in watercolor with a dark green shading a lighter green, overlaid with delicate black highlighting and every detail meticulously bordered with gilt. Whatever her attitude to the texts of these plays, Henrietta Maria Bowdler treasured her books. The two-volume set remains in its original half-leather binding with marbled paper and decorated spine, and features no markings in the text itself.

The only additional provenance information in the set is an inscription on the verso of the final rear flyleaf in volume 1: “Charles Brecknell Bought Miss Waseys sale October 17 / 1877.” Charles Brecknell eludes identification, but “Miss Wasey” likely refers to Mary Wasey (d.1880) of Priors Court, Chieveley, Berkshire: in the 1850s, Miss Wasey founded a school, “Miss Wasey’s Chapel School” or “Miss Wasey’s Voluntary,” in Curridge, in the parish of Chievely. The school remains in operation, as Curridge County Primary. The inscription could refer to a sale held at the school, or to a sale of books owned by Miss Wasey.

The edition itself represents an effort to popularize select plays of Beaumont and Fletcher for a later eighteenth-century readership: it was preceded in the century only by a seven-volume Works (1711) and a scholarly ten-volume Works (1750). Charles Lamb would include selections from three plays by Beaumont and Fletcher in his influential follow-up to Tales from Shakespeare: Specimens of English Dramatic Poets: who lived about the time of Shakespeare (1808). Henrietta Maria Bowdler’s edition of Shakespeare reveals a shrewd understanding of the language and idiom of early modern drama, and this volume likely represents one of the means by which she gained that knowledge.

Source: Private collection. Photos reproduced with permission.

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[1] Evidence includes acknowledgements of her responsibility in letters circulated among family and family friends: see Noel Perrin, Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America (New York: Atheneum 1969), 60-86. Many online library catalogues also continue to credit Thomas as the editor of the 1807 Family Shakespeare. Thomas added sixteen plays in his 1818 edition and revised the twenty plays Henrietta Maria had edited in 1807; this complete edition became a best-seller. See also the ODNB entries for Henrietta Maria Bowdler and Thomas Bowdler, both by M. Clare Loughlin-Chow.

[2] See e.g. Colin Franklin, “The Bowdlers and Their Family Shakespeare,” The Book Collector 49.2 (2000), 227-43; Adam H. Kitzes, “The Hazards of Expurgation: Adapting Measure for Measure to the Bowdler Family Shakespeare,” JEMCS 13.2 (2013), 43-68; Molly G. Yarn, Shakespeare’s ‘Lady Editors’: A New History of the Shakespearean Text (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2022), esp. 22-23, 29, 228.

Jean Dubreuil, La perspective pratique, vol. I (1663)

By Leo Cadogan

This post concerns a now-sad copy, with a board detached, of volume one (of three) of a heavily illustrated manual on practical perspective, intended for painters, engravers and others in the design trades.

It was inscribed in the mid-eighteenth century by an eleven-year-old English girl visiting Paris, who a few years later became a recognized amateur artist and printmaker. Our copy of Jean Dubreuil, La perspective pratique, necessaire à tous peintres, graveurs, architectes, brodeurs, sculpteurs, orfèvres, tapissiers, et autres qui se meslent de desseigner […] première partie, seconde edition (Paris, Jean Dupuis, 1663) has a neatly-written note to front free endpaper “Louisa Augusta Grevile, Paris, 23d. of Aug.st 1754.”

This was Lady Louisa Augusta Greville (1743–1779).[1] What she was doing in Paris, I have not discovered. She was the daughter of an earl (Earl Brooke, who became also the earl of Warwick). As an artist, we do not know what professional training she might have had or how much she was reliant simply on teaching herself from books such as the present one. She was to produce etchings based on her own drawings and after artists including Nicolaes Berchem, Annibale Carracci, Pietro Francesco Cittadini, Guercino, Matteo Ricci, and Salvator Rosa. She made her first known dated print in 1757 and, as a teenager, was awarded prizes for her drawings by the Society of Arts, in 1758, 1759, and 1760. Holdings of her prints can be found in the British Museum and Calke Abbey, Derbyshire (National Trust). Her last year of production was 1770, which was the year of her marriage, to William Churchill of Henbury, Dorset (d.1808).

Print by Louisa Augusta Greville, 1755-1757? © The Trustees of the British Museum.

On Louisa Augusta’s death, this item from her professional library—which, when she acquired it, presumably had all its volumes—remained with her immediate family, first her husband and then probably their son, William Churchill (d. 1835).[2] The bookplate of husband or son is affixed to front pastedown.

In 1836, one Caroline Greville wrote her name directly below Louisa Augusta’s. This new owner is likely to have been Lady Caroline Greville, who died, unmarried, in 1844.[3] She was Louisa Augusta’s niece, the daughter of Louisa Augusta’s brother George Greville (1746­–1816). Caroline would not have known her aunt, as her parents only married in 1776. However, from where she places her inscription, we can see that she was keen to create an association with her. Possibly contributing to Caroline´s understanding of Louisa Augusta was a shared family background of connoisseurs and collectors.[4]

Caroline’s father, who became the earl, was a renowned art collector; her father’s brother Charles Francis Greville (1749–1809) was a collector of plants and minerals and patron of the painter George Sandby (1730–1809); her grandfather (Louisa Augusta’s father) was a patron of Canaletto; and his brother-in-law (Louisa Augusta’s maternal uncle) was the collector and diplomatist Sir William Hamilton (1731–1803). Social and cultural experiences derived from this family milieu may have helped Louisa Augusta form her ambitions as an artist. It was unusual for a woman to have made a mark in this connoisseurs’ world. It is quite possible that this impressed Caroline. 

The next recorded owner was the painter and civil servant Angelo Collen Hayter (1819–1898).[5] The natural son of the painter Sir George Hayter (1792–1871), he had exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy in the years 1848–1852 but had given up professional artistry by the time he acquired the volume, or volumes, in 1870. He was more successful in his new career, which saw him rise to chief reviewer of wills in the government offices at Somerset House. He would not have obtained the item for immediate professional needs, but he may have been intrigued by the provenance.

As for subsequent ownership, the book carries an old penciled price (10 shillings). It was acquired as part of lot 607 at Mallam’s (Oxford) on 29 January 2020. In the lot there was also an English student’s manuscript, c.1800, on the subject of perspective, and folded loosely into that other item are bibliographical notes from the twentieth century, relating to our volume, which by then certainly appears to have been single. The writer of the notes checked books in Cambridge University Library and may have been connected to the university. Both the present volume and that manuscript have since the sale been acquired from me by the bookseller Susanne Schulz-Falster.

Source: book in private ownership. Photos by Leo Cadogan, reproduced by permission.

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[1] On Greville, see: ‘Greville, Louisa Augusta, Lady‘, in Benezit Dictionary of Artists online (henceforth Benezit) (published 31 October 2011; accessed 26 August 2020); also notes by Nicholas Stogdon, on the Sanders of Oxford website (henceforth Stogdon (Sanders)), and on the British Museum website. British Museum holdings of her prints can be seen here and Calke Abbey holdings here.

[2] On William Churchill of Henbury (d.1835), see An inventory of the historical monuments in Dorset, volume 2, south east (London, 1970), Sturminster Marshall (283-290), on the

British History Online website. A note on Greville´s husband is found in Stogdon (Sanders), who mentions Greville and her husband having a son and cites the husband´s contemporary memorial notices. These last indicate that, although he remarried after Greville´s death, he only had that one child. William was therefore Greville´s son.

[3] On Lady Caroline Greville, see Cracroft’s Peerage, ‘Warwick Earl of (GB, 1759)’; also (confirming her non-married status), Sarah Spencer, Lady (afterwards Lady Lyttelton), Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, Lady Lyttelton, 1787-1870, edited by her great-granddaughter, the Hon. Mrs. Hugh Wyndham (London 1912), 118 n.4.

[4] On Caroline’s father, see Matthew Kilburn, ‘Greville, George, second earl of Warwick and second Earl Brooke (1746–1816)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online (henceforth ODNB) (published 25 September 2014); see also Michael P. Cooper, ‘Greville, Charles Francis (1749–1809)’, ODNB online (published 25 September 2014); and Geoffrey V. Morson, ‘Hamilton, Sir William (1731–1803)’, ODNB online (published 25 September 2014). On Caroline’s grandfather (Louisa Augusta’s father), Francis Greville, first earl of Warwick (1719–1773), see Kilburn (above). For more family artistic connections see Stogdon (Sanders).

[5] On Angelo Collen Hayter see ‘Hayter, Angelo Collen’, Benezit Dictionary of Artists (published 31 October 2011); also Barbara Coffey Bryant, ‘Hayter, Sir George (1792–1871)’, ODNB online (published 17 September 2015).

Richard Sibbes, The Soules Conflict (1636)

The Folger Library houses a particularly interesting copy of Richard Sibbes’s The Soules Conflict (1636) with multiple signs of female ownership. (I have reproduced the EEBO version of the title page of the same book held in the Cambridge University Library, since the Folger website does not include a title page.) This book must have been special to its owner Anne Lake, who had it bound by the masterful binder William Nott, also known as the Queen’s binder. Not only did she have a book label (of full page size) pasted on the front of the book, which  includes her name and the date (1638), but the lovely leather binding also displays her initials. Book labels were frequently used by women, either to denote ownership or to include in a book presented as a gift.

Two other owners left their mark on the pastedown: Sir R. Leicester and Mary Griffiths, whose dating shows she owned the book 90 years after Anne Lake acquired it.

Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) was a fairly moderate Puritan theologian and preacher, active in Cambridge and London. Nothing else is known (yet) of Anne Lake or Mary Griffiths.

Source: EEBO Cambridge University copy of STC (2nd ed.) / 22509. Folger Luna, STC 22510. Reproduced with permission by Creative Commons License.

Further Reading

Brian North Lee, Early Printed Boook Labels: A Catalogue of Dated Personal Labels and Gift Labels Printed in Britain to the Year 1760. Pinner: Private Libraries Association and the Bookplate Society, 1976.