William Congreve

“ The finding lists of libraries (where copies of the exact editions in Congreve’s list may be consulted) have been arranged geographically, including usually one European library and several American libraries located from New England to the Pacific Coast. The ideal has been to find a copy in each of seven key libraries: the British Museum (Europe) , Harvard (New England) , The New York Public Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Library of Congress (Middle Atlantic) , the Newberry Library (Middle West) , and the Huntington Library (West) . ”

“ For Swift’s library we have an inventory made when Swift was about fifty. Another inventory at his death more than twenty-five years later showed but few additions. In the case of Congreve, the earliest inventory—the 587 items in the first hand made out about 1726—came only three years before his death. But active buying must have continued throughout his life as shown by the dates in the imprints. The thirty-one entries by the second hand seem to indicate approximately the purchases for 1727 and the forty-one entries by the third hand approximately those for 1728. ”

“ The influence of this fiction, if any, on Congreve’s own Incognita, and the influence of the literary criticism on his essay Concerning Humour in Comedy, are only two of many studies that might be based on Congreve’s book list. Perhaps someone will use the works on astrology to help account for one of his humorous characters, old Foresight of Love for Love. Since many of the 659 items consist of collected works, the library is actually more extensive than the number of items might indicate. Jacob Tonson had good reason for wanting his nephew to buy Congreve’s “genteel & well chosen” library. ”

“ Among the voluminous papers of the Leeds family now stored in the British Museum, the Public Record Office, and several other depositories in England are at least a half-dozen manuscript lists or catalogues of Leeds books. In one list from the middle of the eighteenth century appear a few of the books known to have been in Congreve’s library. ”

“ Congreve’s book list is here edited and printed for the first time. After the 659 numbers, which are supplied by the editor to facilitate cross references and indexing, the 659 items of the list are printed with spelling, capitalization, and punctuation as in the manuscript. Occasional raised letters, such as the “r” in “Mr.” and the “e” in “ye,” are brought down into the line. The great variety of dots and dashes used to indicate shortened titles are consistently eliminated. Underscored words are printed in italics. The line breaks in the manuscript are indicated by shilling marks (/) . ”

“ For books not at the British Museum, references are made to the Bodleian, the Bibliothèque Nationale, or other European libraries. 12 Books not at Harvard are most frequently found at Yale or the Boston Public Library. Those not at the Huntington Library are frequently at the nearby William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Of the American libraries in the finding lists, exclusive of the key libraries, the editor has examined practically all editions cited at the Boston Public Library, the Yale Library, and the Clark Library. ”

“ Especially significant is a letter to the editor dated August 20, 1949, from Her Grace Katherine, Duchess of the tenth Duke of Leeds, stating that many years ago she had herself “made a great hunt for any books at Hornby Castle bearing the signature of Congreve,” had found “numbers” of them, and had made a full catalogue with the aid of “Mr. Charles Whibley, the writer & bibliophile.” Unfortunately this catalogue has been lost. If it is ever found, it will be an interesting record of autographed Congreve books held together by one family for nearly two centuries. ”

“ In the printed book, line breaks in the Congreve catalogue were shown as virgules or slashes / (the “shilling marks” described in the editor’s Introduction) . The breaks have been restored in this e-text, retaining the slashes and all hyphens.
Bracketed periods [·] are in the orginal. They occur whenever a catalog entry ends with an abbreviation (“Tom.”, “Vol.”, “papr.”) ; the final period was supplied by the editor in most of these entries. ”

“ Such omissions were later made by men with much greater novels to their credit. In the sales catalogues listing the books of Defoe and Fielding, one looks in vain for Robinson Crusoe or Tom Jones.
But perhaps most important is the information given by the list about Congreve’s special fields of interest and the fact that the list provides likely sources for his literary work. Mention should be made of his fine collection of drama (Greek, Roman, French, and English) ; of some one hundred titles of literary criticism; of nearly as many carefully selected works in biography and history ”

“ His deficiency in German is strongly suggested by the fact that German is represented in the list only in translation.
As a translator from the Greek and the Latin Congreve first brought himself to the attention of Dryden, who pronounced the youthful Congreve “more capable than any man I know” to translate the whole of Homer. Congreve never completed that proposed translation, but years later he was singled out by Pope for the dedication of his Homer. ”

“ Poetry, Horace’s Art of Poetry by ye E. of Roscommon, and the Rehearsal”—the identical three quartos described in the Sotheby catalogue.
In June, 1930, while the “Selected” books from the Leeds library were being sold at Sotheby’s in London in a three-day sale (referred to hereafter as the Leeds Sale) , the “remaining contents” of Hornby Castle were auctioned off by Knight, Frank, and Rutley at old Hornby Castle in Yorkshire in a seven-day sale (referred to hereafter as the Hornby Castle Sale) . ”

“ About twenty titles in Italian make us reasonably sure that he read that language also. And since he had in Spanish only a Spanish-English dictionary and two Spanish books (for each of which he had a translation in another language) , we may assume that his knowledge of Spanish must have been slight indeed. ”

“ The two books that had been lent to “Ld. Hervy” (see Congreve’s Number 81) and to the Duchess of Marlborough (see Number 372) were in place at the time of the inventory, and each was duly acknowledged by a cross. An additional larger cross surrounded by four dots appears before eleven items (Numbers 36, 65, 120, 232, 256, 283, 298, 303, 462, 484, and 516) to indicate books sent—so the librarian says in a marginal note—to the Duchess of Leeds. These larger crosses could not have been made, of course, before 1740. ”

“ We do not, however, need to depend on this reading to prove that the manuscript lists the books of William Congreve, Esquire. All the proof needed is to be found in the list itself. The 659 items bear dates between 1515 and 1728, with fourteen entries for 1728, the last year of Congreve’s life. ”

“ The editor 9 of this work will be grateful for information concerning the location of other volumes bearing the true signature of William Congreve (1670–1729) . Such volumes will be doubly interesting if annotated in the dramatist’s handwriting. Some of the books were thus annotated, according to Jacob Tonson, in his letter of 27 January 1728/29 (a few days after Congreve’s death) , to his nephew, Jacob Tonson, Junior: “His [Congreve’s] collection of Books were very genteel & well chosen. I wish you should think them worth your buying ”