My Kingdom for a Hoax

by Alastair Johnston

Shakespeare's Richard the Third left us a few memorable phrases that have been delivered by everyone from Larry Olivier in a wig and mascara to Al Pacino in a backward baseball cap (but resisting the Brooklyn accent that would have made the king Richard da Turd), from Ian McKellen in jazz era Fascist drag to prize ham Richard Dreyfus in The Goodbye Girl, to Peter Cook in Black Adder. Richard the Third was even filmed thrice in the silent film era. Everyone knows, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse"; the opening lines are also familiar:

Now is the winter of our discontent
made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds, that lowr'd upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean bury'd.

The opening of Richard the Third in the First Folio of Shakespeare, 1623

In December 1960 my father was pleased to note a sign of literacy in Britain when a camping & sporting goods store ran an ad reading, "Now is the winter of our discount tents." But Shakespeare played fast and loose with the saga of this king, making him more of a Quentin Tarantino anti-hero than a real historical figure. He telescoped the action, making Richard's rise to the throne seem an overnight trajectory, though the time between Henry VI's murder (by his successor Edward IV) and funeral (1471), Clarence's imprisonment in the Tower (1477), to the Battle of Bosworth (1485), was fourteen years. 

The play was (probably) written and first performed in 1597. Shakespeare seems to have ignored published historical sources, but subsequently his version of the story has been taken as factual. The murder of Clarence (stabbed and drowned in a butt of malmsey) was pinned on Richard by the Lancastrians without much evidence. The princes in the Tower may have been killed by orders of Henry VII. Who knows? Did Prince Philip order the murder of Princess Diana for sleeping with Arab playboys?

Dr Johnson thought the play was overrated and Shakespeare "praised most, when praise is not most deserved; some parts are trifling, some shocking and some improbable."

Boydell's Shakspeare, 1803. Steevens' third edition, but a monumental work in English publishing. Printed by William Bulmer at the Shakspeare Printing-Office on Whatman paper and illustrated with numerous engravings. Reproduced from Peter Isaac's William Bulmer: the fine printer in context (London: Bain & Williams, 1993)

But George Steevens, Shakespeare's great editor, understood the secret of the play's success: it was an ideal role for actors like Burbage or Garrick because it showed a gamut of emotions from hero to lover, statesman to buffoon, from hypocrite to repenting sinner.

It was only a generation after Richard that Henry VIII sacked the monasteries in 1538. There was a free-for-all as the high-living priests were stripped of their accumulated wealth and luxuries, books, jewels and the like, while religious icons were smashed and destroyed, even graves were robbed. And the last Plantagenet King was forgotten — apart from a minor play. We know from Shakespeare that Richard's personal avatar was a boar.

The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,
That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough
In your embowell'd bosoms...

Things took an odd turn in May 2010 when someone with a metal detector found a silver boar pin and decided they had found the true site of the battle of Bosworth Field. Some coincidence. Like walking in Giza and stubbing your toe on an ankh ornament inscribed KLPTR in hieroglyphics. Even more coincidental is the discovery of the site of Greyfriars under a parking lot in Leicester (after others had searched for centuries), ten days ago, and, in less than a week, archaeologists had dug a trench, found the garden of alderman Robert Herrick (not that Robert Herrick) which had been located on the site, and soon hit upon the exact spot where the King was wrapped in a shroud and buried humbly over 500 years ago. Perhaps the posthumous saga of Richard 3 is a bit too Hollywood to be believed.

Many people have wondered what happened to the king after his death at the battle of Bosworth Field. Henry VII, not a pretty figure himself, didn't want him becoming sanctified, which might have happened if he had been returned to York and buried in the majestic minster there, so, after his naked corpse was paraded through Leicester (not as a warning to his followers, but to establish definitively his demise), he was turned over to some friars for a quiet interment. Bin Ladin disposal — burial at sea — wasn't thought of as an option.

York Minster (construction started in 627 C.E., still ongoing)

So the legendary King rises from the grave. It's better than Dracula! Today's news is that Richard wasn't a hunchback but had scoliosis — curvature of the spine — that made his right shoulder higher. He had an arrow in his back and an ax or sword blow to the skull that had finished him off. Maybe his last thought was "A hearse, a hearse! My kingdom for a hearse..." It's an incredible story, but could it be a hoax? We won't know until DNA tests are completed in a month or so, but it does seem as though they've found the ambitious duke who laid waste all rivals for the throne. If only the House of Windsor (né Battenberg) were so lively, instead of the sullen German upstarts they continue to be.

Shakespeare himself was almost lost to history, partly due to debased editions of his works but also perpetual copyright laws prevented their circulation. In 1680 one Crowne took Shakespeare's Henry VI, retitled the work The Miseries of Civil War, and claimed it as his own. Shakespeare's revival was due to Elizabethan scholar George Steevens, who restored the plays, and, since Steevens's re-edition, they have been continually performed and admired throughout the English-speaking world.

Steveens' edition, reprinted by Bensley in 1805, with a vignette after John Thurston, engraved by Charlton Nesbit: "Wisdom recovers from the grip of Time the laurels of which he had despoiled the tomb of Shakspeare."

Oddly, Steevens himself was involved in a hoax about another dead English monarch, the obscure Hardicanute. Steevens' dad was a director of the East India Company and young George had everything: "Every luxury was lavished on you — atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision." Well perhaps not as luxurious as Joe Orton's character — but he went to Eton and King's College, Cambridge. Then, with all the ease of a young gentleman born to a life of reading, dropped out of college. His life of privilege continued in a house on Hampstead Heath where he built a library of Elizabethan literature and collected Hogarths. He made daily rounds of the London bookshops and then came back to Hampstead to discuss his finds with his pal, Isaac Reed.

1803 stereotype edition of Steevens' Shakespeare, issued by Isaac Reed

In 1773 he produced his ten-volume Shakspeare. It was so good Dr Johnson deigned to add his name to the edition, though he didn't contribute much. But soon Edmond Malone and others muscled in on Steevens' turf so he turned his energies to subversion. While he was one of the first to expose the Chatterton-Rowley forgeries, and knew right off that William Henry Ireland's Shakespeare manuscripts were fakes, he also wrote a fictitious account of the Javanese upas tree, derived from the writing of an (imaginary) Dutch traveller (shades of Psalmanazaar). The Irelands' Shakespeare manuscripts had fooled a lot of people for a long time and certainly made an impact.

Reed published a new edition of Steevens' Shakespeare in 1785. At that point Steevens felt his authority had been usurped, so to reassert himself he created variorum editions, adding many valuable passages from Shakespeare's contemporaries to his notes.

Steevens last spectacular hoax was that of Hardicanute's tombstone. (A similar trick was pulled off in 1936 when members of the E Clampus Vitus fraternity conspired to plant the "Plate of Brasse" along the Northern California shoreline to give credibility to the notion that Francis Drake had anchored in Bolinas lagoon, or nearby, in his world tour of 1579. The perpetrators knew that Herbert Bolton, Director of the Bancroft Library at U C Berkeley, was desperately seeking the plate, so obliged him by planting a fake that was considered authentic for 40 years.)

Steevens's stunt was to get back at another Hogarth collector who had some early works that Steevens coveted, but who snubbed his advances for a trade. The Society of Antiquaries fell for the ruse, that a stone monument to King Hardaknut had been unearthed in the London suburb of Kennington, and the Gentleman's Magazine published this etching [above] of the inscription in Anglo-Saxon (concocted by Steevens). Son of King Canute, Hardy was another murderous monarch who eliminated rivals, taxed the bejesus out of his serfs, and when they objected, razed their cities. But right away someone noticed the etching technique of the inscription was modern, so the hoax didn't fly. 

Was Steevens malicious, or just a wry guy having fun at others' expense? I think the latter. And he had spent long hours poring over manuscripts and early printed books, reading "for my sake" and seeing "for my fake" over and over.

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Cashing-In on an Author's Death (18th Century Edition)

by Stephen J. Gertz

Yes, I knew [fill-in full name]. Though we met only once, I knew [fill-in last name] better than anyone else, or, at least, in a different way than any other person who has ever lived.


We met while in the check-out line at the supermarket. I was shy, and so waited a few minutes before assaulting [fill-in first name] with an introduction. Though our conversation (no idle chat, that) was brief, in those five momentous minutes we shared a lifetime of experience. 

I believe that when you trade tales of bruised fruit; wilted vegetables; rancid meat;  a fish so fresh you want to slap its face;  how, as in life, the cookie always crumbles when you least expect it; the virtues of Oreos v. Malomars; the state of tomatoes in New York City v. Los Angeles; and when did, all of a sudden, Balsamic vinegar become a necessary addition to American pantries; etc., you've broken through the surface and are mining a deep vein of gold, each word from [fill-in nickname]'s mouth a 24-karat revelation too precious to keep to myself.

At least that's what my agent said.

And so I present, My Groceries, My Self, and [Fill-in full name].

Frontispiece to the 2d Edition of Dr. Johnson's Letters (1788),
by James Sayers.

When a famous author dies, an industry of post-mortem exploitation begins. Friends and family members, close or distant, indiscreet or otherwise, or a loose acquaintance, contribute their two cents to the memory and reputation of the dearly deceased. All, of course, with the very best of intentions. A desire to ride the coat-tails of the departed's fame and make a buck, of course, never enter into the situation; it is all pure love.

The subject, and cynicism surrounding it, is not a modern phenomenon. When Samuel Johnson died quills swan-dived into inkwells and swam the crawl, sidestroke, and backstroke across sheets of paper. Often freestyle, the race to place their names alongside Johnson's led caricaturist James Sayers (1748 - 1823) to satirize these efforts as strictly dog-paddle strokes in his frontispiece to the second edition of  Letters to and from the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741 - 1821).

Mrs. Piozzi and her first husband, wealthy brewer Henry Thrale, had struck a deep friendship with Johnson and treated him as a member of their family; he lived with the couple for seventeen years, until Henry Thrale's death.

Here, Sayers reproaches Mrs. Piozzi, whose Letters... was published earlier in 1788, and had earned her £500. He portrays her sitting at her desk, writing "Dear Lady...," implying that she concocted some of the letters herself. In a shroud, Johnson's ghost enters her chambers, alarms her, points to portraits of Boswell and Sir John Hawkins on the wall - both of whom Sayers censures - proffers a purse of filthy lucre to her, and recites:

Madam! my Debt to Nature paid
I thought the Grave with hallow'd Shade
Would now protect my Name,
Yet there in vain I seek Repose,
My Friends each a little Fault disclose
And murder Johnson's Fame;
First Boswell with officious Care
Shew'd me as a Man would shew a Bear
And called himself my Friend.
Sir John [Hawkins] shew'd my hearse
And [John] C....[ourtenay] pester'd me with verse
You torture without end.

When Streatham spread its friendly Board,
I opened Learning's valued hoard,
And as I feasted, prosed;
Good things I said, good things I eat,
I gave you knowledge for your Meat,
And thought th'Account was closed;
If obligations still I owed
You sold each item to the Croud
I suffer'd by the Sale,
For Fod's sake Madam, let me rest
No longer vex your quondam Guest
I'll pay you for your Ale.

Boswell had not yet published his Life of Samuel Johnson. Here, Sayers nails him for the Tour of the Hebrides (1785): In the portrait, above left on the wall, Boswell points down to the picture of Johnson and him scaling the a mountain during the Tour.

But it is Sayers doing the finger-pointing, or, rather, finger-wagging at Mrs. Piozzi, Boswell, Sir John Hawkins, and John Courtenay, whose writing about Johnson is now valuable direct source material in Johnsonia. At the time, however, it was a scandal. Now, it's business as usual.

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[JOHNSON, Samuel]. [SAYERS, James (1748-1823), caricaturist). Frontispiece for the 2d Edition of Dr. J.....n's Letters. JS [i.e. James Sayers]. [Lond. on]: Pub. by Thos. Cornell 7th April 1788. Engraving, 9 1/4 x 7 inches.

British Museum, Satires 7417.
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Image courtesy of Bernard Quaritch Ltd., currently offering this engraving, with our thanks.
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Fashion Takes a Hike: Jane Austen in Drab Boards Walks the Runway at Sotheby's

by Stephen J. Gertz

The fashionable, glitzy, and glamorous world of rare books is rocked by the news that The Library of an English Bibliophile's collection of Jane Austen first editions will be seen in public wearing nothing but the dull, drab, and dreary publisher's original boards they were brought into the world with when they make their debut at Sotheby's in London, October 28, 2010.

Basil Tombstone-Epitaph, high society arbiter of taste, declared, "Books should be seen and not read. In outfits like this I'd rather be dead."

Collectors disagree. " I like my books like I like my women. Plain and simple on the outside, just like they were on the day they were born, readable on the inside," the mysterious English Bibliophile said.

The Mysterious English Bibliophile.
Artist sketch based upon witness sightings.

Indeed, first editions published during the Regency Period, their cheap bindings a scandal, are highly sought-after. The original buyers routinely took their copies to a binder and had simple-to-elaborate leather bindings made for them. Who knew that someday people would actually pay top dollar for the book as-is? Books in their original boards are rare; from this era, scarce.

A Celebrity-Only, Strictly on the Down-Low Sneak Preview was held in Sotheby's Sales Room in print. Booktryst was, of course, invited. Here's our report.

[AUSTEN, Jane]. Sense and Sensibility: A Novel. In Three Volumes.
By a Lady.
London: Printed for the Author, by C. Roworth, 1811.
Gilson A1. Keynes 1. Sadleir 62a.

Sense and Sensibility has never made more sense than in this sober frock. Three for the price of one! Quarter warm cream over misty-blue paper-covered cardboard with irresistibly attractive paper spine labels in roseate cockatoo pink. Look at them - so very little loss, and all text intact and va-va-voom visible! A bit soiled but we like our books a bit soiled, it shows character; the book's been around, it knows a thing or two, if you know what I mean. Only seven copies in this garb have come to auction in the last thirty-five years. It's sensibly estimated to sell for $62,500 - $93,500. And, did I mention? Uncut!

[AUSTEN, Jane]. Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion:
By the Author of "Pride and Prejudice;" Mansfield Park," &c.
With a Biographical Notice of the Author. In Four Volumes.
London: John Murray, 1818.
Gilson A9. Keynes 9. Sadleir 62e.

Dear Northanger Abbey:

My husband has fallen in love with another book! Like you, it was completed in 1798 (or 1799) and then substantially revised over time until posthumously published in 1818. He's in love with a ghost! Whatever shall I do?  It's spooky! Literary Ectoplasm-Envy in Zanesville, OH.

Dear L.E-E.:

BOO! (Sorry).

Look no further than this fine copy of my autobiography, published together with "Baby Jane" Austen's Persuasion! Proletarian-chic grey-brown boards, original spine labels, with the rubbing, bumps, and spots you'd expect to see from schlepping through one collection to another over the past 192 years but rarely so charmant for the wear! The estimate of $31,200 - $46,700 is quite persuasive, n'est pas?

[AUSTEN, Jane]. Emma:  A Novel. In Three Volumes.
By the Author of "Pride and Prejudice."
London: Printed for John Murray, 1816.
Gilson A8. Keynes 8. Sadleir 62d.

Just because she stooped from her class to appear in this fashion disaster don't think Emma clueless! All things considered, look at how fresh and clean she looks. She really knows how to wear clothes, transforming these sad-rags into glad-rags. Sheer elegance! This is surely her finest outfit. Yes, a few flaws to her spine labels but I like my books the way I like my women, with scars. Saddle-stitched, a plus. Estimated at only $31,200 - $46,700, this plain Jane Emma is the  emmis!

[AUSTEN, Jane]. Pride and Prejudice: A Novel in Three Volumes.
By the Author of "Sense and Sensibility."
Printed for T. Egerton, 1813.
Gilson A3. Keynes 3. Sadleir 62b. Ticknor 204.

Don't let pride and prejudice allow you to judge this book by its cover! Funeral-wear. Vapid. Lifeless. Ennui, oui? Non, ma cher! Only two copies of this most popular and lasting roman in its birthday suit have come to auction since 1975. To a collector, Yves St. Laurent could not have dressed her better; trés chic! Rebound in contemporary calf, it's a $65,000 - $75,000 book. Here, in the original binding only a mother (or collector) could love, the estimate is $117,000 - $156,000. C'est magnifique! 

[BRONTË, Anne]. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall..
By Acton Bell. In Three Volumes.
London: T.C. Newby, 1848.
Smith 4. Parrish 91.

Jumping on the fashion bandwagon and bringing up the rear, the last word belongs to Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, from the looks of her way behind in rent and tenement-chic. But at least she has some cloth on her back! Feel free to hang your laundry on this copy, the only one in original boards to show its face at auction since Gerald Ford was president of the United States, Harold Wilson ruled Britannia, flared denim skirts ended just below the knee, bootboy parallel jeans stopped at mid-calf, and plumbers pants began at mid-butt. It's estimated to sell for $93,500 - $109,000. A rags to riches story!

The reaction from fabulous fashionistas was mixed.

Actress/trendster Chloe Sevigny in a fundamentalist Mormon blouse by J. Smith.
"I can take or leave the peasant look," she said. Then she left.

Vogue editor Anna Wintour and designer André Leon Talley
could not contain their enthusiasm.
"Take me to your leader," they each commanded a Sotheby's functionary.

"I like my books the way I like my women," fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld said.
"Nowhere near the bedroom.
But these could change my mind.
Now, take me to your leader!"

Actress and fashion designer wanna-be Lindsay Lohan,
in attendance on a pass from rehab and radiant in a J. Crew hoodie,
was intoxicated by what she saw.
"I take full responsibility for my actions," she seductively slurred
to this reporter before she was handcuffed and taken away.
"I'm blotto for books."

 Not to be outdone, James Boswell pushed that most reluctant of mannequins, the anti-poseur himself, Samuel Johnson, onto the runway for a pass before the press.

BOSWELL, James. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD.
Comprehending an account of his studies and numerous works,
in chronological order; A series of epistolary correspondence and
conversation with eminent persons; and various original pieces
of his compositions, never before published.
London: Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1791.
First edition, first issue (vol. 1, p.135, line 10, "gve for "give").
Pottle 79. Rothchild 463. Tinker 338.

Original blue-grey paper boards with cream paper spines later lettered in black ink, minor localized marginal worming in volume 1, sans initial blank leaf in volume 2, occasional light spotting or soiling to boards, joints cracking, extremities worn but who's complaining? It's just great  to see the old man out and about, even in this shabby suit and without the initial leaf to cover his privates.

"I like my books the way I like my women. Like friends: few, well chosen, and modestly attired," Samuel Johnson said.

Not exactly a Don Juanson, and spoken like a man who buys his books at J.C. Penny. But not at this estimate: $23,400 - $31, 200. That's a lot of pennies!

Too many other goodies falling under the hammer at this sale to list in their entirety. But yet another ne'er-do-well shows up in original drab  boards, appearing, like its author, tubercular.

KEATS, John. Poems.
London: (C. Richards) for C. and J. Ollier, 1817.
Ashley III, p. 9. Hayward 231.

Doesn't look like much but, wow, what a personality! Don't forget, Camille was a catch and her kisses were  sweet, if sanguine. Estimated at $32,200 - $46,700. Yet the fashion cognoscenti will notice that this modest little miss is missing a key accessory necessary to make her ensemble complete. With the called-for and wholly intact printed spine label it's a $100,000 book.

That wraps up our report on Sotheby's upcoming Library of an English Bibliophile sale. Next week, we're in Paris for Le Bibliothéque d'un Bibliophile Français Fou sale. Strict dress code enforced: Straight-jackets only. Dust jackets verboten.

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Images courtesy of Sotheby's. 

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Pengiun to Publish Apocryphal Boswell MS. on Samuel Johnson?

Samuel Johnson in 1775, by Joshua Reynolds,
reading, with no little consternation, Boswell's
unpublished, other biography of him.

With the emergence of monsters reimagined into classic literature – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea-Monsters, and the upcoming Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter – it’s easy to forget that during full moons, Samuel Johnson, the most distinguished man of letters in English history, grew hirsute, lustful, and howled. Samuel Johnson, Werewolf?

No. As told by his amanuensis, James Boswell, it is the book he dared not publish in his lifetime from a manuscript long thought apocryphal or lost, The Other Life of Samuel Johnson.

Johnson, it turns out, was a deeply conflicted man who split his existence into two spheres, the Apollonian and Dionysian.

While working on his Dictionary of the English Language, he was simultaneously compiling a lexicon of sexual slang with particular attention to the acronym associated with for unwarranted carnal knowledge in all its variations, as well as the tender and not so tender nouns of the female mound and its environs.

And, as he wrote Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Johnson scribbled Lives of the Most Eminent English Buggers.

Johnson was doomed from the start: His father owned a book shop and with depraved indifference exposed his son to the printed word at an early age and thus condemned him to a life of reading and writing. Some parents are monsters. While there is as yet no direct proof, it is well-known that excessive reading causes scrofula, the tubercular disease of the lymph nodes that plagued Johnson in his early life. Surgical excision left him scarred on face and body, which from his perspective left him a hideous beast. He would, for the rest of his life, desperately try to keep the beast hidden away, caged in a corner of his mind. But the beast was strong and fearsome, and it would periodically escape the ganglia of neurons that tightly held it at bay to terrorize his quotidian self and those around him.

When his friend, Harry Porter, died, the widow took a shine to the twenty-five year old man twenty-one years her junior. Old broad, young buck: She saw the beast within and was delighted.

“A little travelin’ music, Sammy,” she’d exclaim when flushed with desire. Few are aware that Jackie Gleason’s classic, signature stage exit line has its origins with Johnson’s wife, Tetty.

Words, words, words; okay, the man cold write and liked to do so. But words won’t ease a gentle, restless soul or nourish the savage beast that shares office space with it.

And so, eleven years after meeting Boswell, Johnson is swingin’ through the Hebrides wielding a broadsword while dressed in Scottish drag and engaging in a highland fling as Boswell, the voyeur, takes notes. Where was YouTube when it was needed most to catch the raunchy Tory in all his glory?

Books rights to The Other Life of Samuel Johnson were recently acquired by Penguin, which appears to have cornered the market on classics gone wild. As print-ad tag-line for their series of resurrected classics, Pengiun exclaims, with a demented glee usually associated with Dr. Victor Frankenstein, “They’re alive! Alive!"

Johnny Depp has shown interest in acquiring the movie rights.

The book and film’s working title? Dr. Johnson and Mr. Hyde.

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New Online Dictionary For Word Mavens

In the beginning there was the Word.

But without a dictionary no one knew how to spell it, pronounce it, how to use it in a sentence, if there was another word that was its opposite or meant the same thing, or where the word came from. In short, the whole story of the word was unavailable to the speaker.
For the writer, fugetaboutit; tough enough to carve out those cuneiforms, you had to wing it on spelling and all the rest.

Thence wrote Samuel Johnson his dictionary. Then Noah Webster. The Oxford English Dictionary followed. (Yes, I know I’m leaving out the Grimm Bros. - yes, those Grimm brothers - Deutsches Wörterbuch of 1838, the largest early dictionary, and a bunch of others but I’m stickin’ to lexicons I can actually read and use).

Over the decades, however, the amount of info provided on a particular word in dictionaries has declined as the number of new words added has increased. Much has been lost.

For wordsters with a yen for everything you ever needed to know about a word, the good ship lollipop has weighed anchor and its name is Wordnik, a new online dictionary that aims to have it all.


Launched by Erin McKean, former editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik is a word-feast offering a summary, definitions from dictionaries old and new, related words, pronunciations, real-world usage examples, etymology, synonyms, antonyms, cross references, and usage statistics. One of its great advantages is the example sentences pulled from sources ranging from Twitter to newspaper articles. It even includes photos from Flickr to illustrate words.

"You can buy a camcorder that is almost as good as a professional video recorder. You can buy cooking equipment for your home that could be used in any restaurant," she said in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. "We don't have the pro-am version of a dictionary yet."

Wordnik is her very promising attempt to provide the amateur and professional writer, as well as the word-junkie, with a modern tool to satisfy their needs.

Workers of the word unite - and rejoice!
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