James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (born James Orchard Halliwell; 21 June 1820 – 3 January 1889) was an English writer, Shakespearean scholar, antiquarian, and a collector of English nursery rhymes and fairy tales.
Contents
Life
The son of Thomas Halliwell, a wealthy draper from Chorley Lancashire, he was born at Sloane Street, Chelsea, London and was educated privately and at Jesus College, Cambridge. He devoted himself to antiquarian research, particularly of early English literature. Beginning at the age of 16, between 1836 and 1837, he contributed 47 articles to The Parthenon. A Weekly Journal of English and Foreign Literature, the Arts, and Sciences; in 1839 he edited Sir John Mandeville's Travels; in 1842 he published an Account of the European manuscripts in the Chetham Library, besides a newly discovered metrical romance of the 15th century (Torrent of Portugal).
In 1841, while still a student at Cambridge, Halliwell dedicated his book Reliquae Antiquae to Sir Thomas Phillipps, the noted bibliomaniac. Phillipps invited Halliwell to stay at his estate, Middle Hill. There Halliwell met Phillipps's daughter, Henrietta, to whom he soon proposed marriage. However, also around this time, Halliwell was accused of stealing manuscripts from Trinity College, Cambridge. Although no prosecution was brought, Phillipps's suspicions were aroused and he refused to consent to the marriage. This led to the couple's elopement in 1842. Phillipps refused ever to see his daughter or Halliwell again. Despite this, the marriage seems to have been a long and happy one with Henrietta providing valuable support for his scholarly work.
In 1842, Halliwell published the first edition of Nursery Rhymes of England followed by Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales, containing the first printed version of the Three Little Pigs and a version of the Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas.
From 1845, Halliwell was excluded from the library of the British Museum on account of the suspicion concerning his possession of some manuscripts which had been removed from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He published privately an explanation of the matter in 1845. Halliwell also had a habit, detested by bibliophiles, of cutting up seventeenth-century books and pasting parts he liked into scrapbooks. During his life he destroyed 800 books and made 3,600 scraps.
In 1848, he published his Life of Shakespeare, illustrated by John Thomas Blight (1835–1911), which had several editions; in 1853–1865 a sumptuous edition, limited to 150 copies, of Shakespeare in folio, with full critical notes. After 1870 he entirely gave up textual criticism, and devoted his attention to elucidating the particulars of Shakespeare's life. He collated all the available facts and documents in relation to it, and exhausted the information to be found in local records in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. He was instrumental in the purchase of New Place for the corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, and in the formation there of the Shakespeare museum.
He assumed the name of Phillipps in 1872, under the will of the grandfather of his wife, Henrietta Phillipps. She died on 25 March 1879 after many years of ill health following a riding accident in 1872. He remarried Mary Rice (1851/2–1927) in June 1879.
He took an active interest in the Camden Society, the Percy Society and the Shakespeare Society, for which he edited many early English and Elizabethan works. He died on 3 January 1889 at his home, and was buried in Patcham churchyard, near Hollingbury in East Sussex.
His house, Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, was full of rare and curious works. During his lifetime he donated a number of collections to different institutions. There is a substantial collection of ballads and broadside at Chetham's Library, Manchester donated in 1852. There were also generous gifts to the Morrab Library of Penzance, to the Smithsonian Institution, and to the Edinburgh University Library. His principal remaining Shakespearian collections, once intended for Stratford, were sold to Marsden J. Perry of Providence, Rhode Island, and in 1908 passed largely to Henry Clay Folger and are now at Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
Works
His publications in all numbered more than sixty volumes, including:
(1840). The Connexion of Wales with the early Science of England.
(1840). A Few Notes on the History of the Discovery of the Composition of Water.
(1841). Shakespeariana. J. R. Smith (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00002-4)
(1842). Cambridge Jokes: From the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. Thomas Stevenson, Tilt and Bogue (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 978-1-108-00122-9)
(1842). An Account of the European Manuscripts in the Chetham Library, Manchester.
(1843). The Nursery Rhymes of England, obtained principally from oral tradition.
(1843). A Collection of Pieces in the Dialect of Zummerzet.
(1846). A Dictionary of Archaic & Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs & Ancient Customs, From the Fourteenth Century, Volume I A-I
(1847). A Dictionary of Archaic & Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs & Ancient Customs, From the Fourteenth Century, Volume II J-Z
(1847). An historical sketch of the Provincial Dialects of England, illustrated by numerous examples.
(1848). Some account of the Vernon Manuscript, a volume of early English poetry preserved in the Bodleian Library.
(1849). Notices of the History and Antiquities of Islip.