THE LITERARY AND CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EARLY ROXBURGHE CLUB PhD 2015 Shayne Felice Husbands This thesis is being submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of PhD. Signed ………………………………… Date ………………………… This thesis is the result of my own independent work/investigation, except where otherwise stated. Other sources are acknowledged by explicit references. The views expressed are my own. Signed ………………………………… Date ………………………… This work has not been submitted in substance for any other degree or award at this or any other university or place of learning, nor is being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed ………………………………… Date ………………………… I hereby give consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available online in the University’s Open Access repository and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access previously approved by the Academic Standards & Quality Committee. Signed ………………………………… Date ………………………… ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My sincere gratitude is owed to Professor Helen Phillips for her unfailingly erudite guidance and support over what has proved to be a very long haul. This thesis would not have been completed without her immense kindness and encouragement. Many thanks also to Dr Rob Gossedge for his valuable insights, advice and humour, and to Dr Anthony Mandal and Professor Stephen Knight for their counsel at strategic points. Much appreciation is also due to Rhian Rattray for her kindness and for being efficient on the many occasions when I was not. I am grateful for the financial assistance offered by ENCAP which has contributed to the presentation of papers based on my research at Exeter and Leeds, and towards research trips to Oxford, Cambridge and London. Foremost among the many people outside of Cardiff University to whom I owe thanks, are the Roxburghe Club for their generosity in allowing me access to their archive, and with especial thanks to Nicolas Barker and Dr John Martin Robinson for their patience in answering my enquiries. Thanks are also due to the many archivists and librarians who have assisted me, with especial mention of those of the Society of Antiquaries, John Rylands Library and Chatsworth House archives. I am indebted to Peter Miles, my tutor at Lampeter University, who originally encouraged me to undertake postgraduate research. Special thanks are owed to my family for their patience and forbearance over the past seven years and especially to Iris who made this possible. Lastly, I am grateful to my parents, who although they did not live to see the completion of this thesis, encouraged in me a love of reading which was the beginning of everything. iii SUMMARY The Roxburghe Club has an unbroken publishing history from 1814 to the present day. Since the Club’s edition of Havelok the Dane appeared in 1828, the Roxburghe has gained a reputation as a producer of valuable editions of manuscripts and reprinted early books. The founding period of the Club, however, has been viewed with less approval, often seen as a frivolous, unscholarly period of wasted years when little of value was produced by a membership composed of dilettante aristocrats. Examination of contemporary sources presents an alternative narrative of the formative years of the Club showing that the early members of the Roxburghe, rather than being frivolous bibliomaniacs, were in fact educated men with serious literary purpose and ability. The origin of the inaccuracies about the Club’s history is shown to be traceable to one malicious source and an accurate alternative biography of the Club is presented in correction of this version. The books produced by the members during this period were important texts that contributed to the emerging field of English Literature. By examining the political and religious affiliations of the members, it is demonstrated that the social and political makeup of the early group was far more complex than previously acknowledged; a change of perspective that in turn has implications for the texts that were presented to the Club. The early Roxburghe represented a significant potential forum for the exchange of important ideas about early authors and texts. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 0.1 DATES ................................................................................................................................ 7 0.2 LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................................................. 10 THE PERSISTENCE OF MYTH ............................................................................................. 29 1.1 THE FORMATION OF THE CLUB ................................................................................. 29 1.2 THE FIRST ROXBURGHE DINNER .............................................................................. 32 1.3 THE ACTIVITIES OF THE EARLY YEARS OF THE CLUB ......................................... 34 1.4 SOCIAL AND MEDIA REACTIONS TO THE ROXBURGHE CLUB ........................... 41 1.5 THE ROXBURGHE REVELS .......................................................................................... 49 RESPONSES TO THE ATTACK ......................................................................................... 61 1.6 SATIRE AND THE ROXBURGHE CLUB ...................................................................... 66 1.7 THE ROXBURGHE CLUB AND THE POLITICS OF CLASS ....................................... 76 AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE ......................................................................................... 96 2.1 POLITICS, RELIGION, MONEY ..................................................................................... 96 2.2 CLUB MEMBERS AND THEIR BOOK COLLECTIONS ............................................ 127 2.3 THE LITERARY WORKS OF THE ROXBURGHE CLUB MEMBERS ...................... 156 2.4 THE BOOKS PRINTED BY THE CLUB ....................................................................... 191 2.5 THE PRIVATE PRINTING PRESSES ........................................................................... 237 THE LEE PRIORY PRESS .............................................................................................. 239 THE AUCHINLECK PRESS ........................................................................................... 243 THE BELDORNIE PRESS .............................................................................................. 245 2.6 THE LEGACIES OF THE CLUB .................................................................................... 250 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 290 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 297 ABREVIATIONS ODNB = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com> HP = The History of Parliament < http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org> v INTRODUCTION The Roxburghe Club was founded in 1812 and has enjoyed an unbroken record of private publishing to the present day. It was founded by a group of wealthy bibliophiles who shared an interest in the earliest printed books and who wished to share amongst themselves reproductions of rare volumes published at their own expense. The print runs were therefore small and the volumes available only to members and occasionally to close friends. The membership is still small (forty) but today the Club publishes 42 volumes of each publication for the members and Club, but additionally up to 300 for sale. The modern incarnation of the Roxburghe Club is that of a respected printing society publishing highly collectable modern editions and facsimiles of rare and important texts from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, with high standards of scholarly editing and luxurious presentation. Posterity has tended, on the other hand, to view the early years of the Roxburghe Club and its founder members in a distinctly dismissive manner, sometimes with ridicule, often with belligerence, but seldom with open-minded seriousness. In order to examine the Roxburghe Club and its long and complex connection with, and contributions to, the world of literature and the histories of editing and literary studies in Britain it appears to be necessary to look almost anywhere but in British literary history and commentary for answers. The history of the Club has been up to now almost entirely played out in the footnotes of books on other topics, which is a testament to the importance of many of the Roxburghe volumes, and yet explicit references to the Club’s early years tend to be with an eye to its denigration as a group of gourmandising, dilettante bibliomaniacs who published unscholarly editions of 1 trivial works, only of value to other collectors as a consequence of their manufactured rarity. The result of what can be seen as this belittling yet surprisingly tenacious creation myth about the Club has been to minimise and almost render invisible its serious and significant contributions in the early nineteenth century to the development of English literary studies, the formation of the history and canon of English literature, and also to the evolving practice and theory of editing and facsimile making in this period. The cultural significance, connections and legacy of the Club’s early decades have been treated as negligible.