Halliwell’s wife, Henrietta, had a riding accident causing a severe brain injury and Halliwell had to take over the management of her Worcestershire properties. As a result of this Henrietta’s Grandfather instructed in his will that Halliwell should add Phillipps to his name, which he did in 1872.

Halliwell was very hard up as he had no real income and in 1857 he held a three day sale of his Shakespeare collection which brought him in a lot of money. In 1862 he made visits to Stratford to catalogue and arrange the Shakespeare collection which he did for free and in 1863 initiated the purchase of New Place, the site of Shakespeare’s last dwelling, as well as the garden, making them over to the Stratford Corporation.
Halliwell presented a locked case to the Birthplace Museum in 1872 on condition that it should not be opened until his death. It was unlocked on 14 Feb. 1889, and was found to contain 189 volumes of manuscript notes and correspondence, and pamphlets chiefly dealing with Halliwell's own folio Shakespeare edition. He had also made huge bequests to other libraries – over 1700 books to the library in Penzance because he liked the place. He gave over 3000 items to the Che(e)tham’s library in Manchester, a valuable library to Edinburgh and large donations to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.

The books we are supposed to have in the library are
Life of William Shakespeare, including many particulars respecting the poet and his family never before published1848
A Historical account of the New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon: the last residence of Shakespeare This was a presentation copy from Reverend Dr Collis of Stratford presented in 1871
After 1870 he devoted himself  to elucidating the details of Shakespeare's life. He collated all the available facts and in his
Outlines of the life of Shakespeare 2nd edition 1882. This is the only one we have found.

Halliwell was a great Shakespeare scholar and one of life’s good guys. (Librarians do not think of him so fondly as he used to cut up books and stick bits of them into his notebooks destroying 800 books.)
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In 1848 he produced his 'Life of William Shakespeare, including many particulars respecting the poet and his family never before published.(not in the Charlecote Library) ' The preparation for this began about 1844 with a study of the records at Stratford-on-Avon, and was the first that made any detailed use of the Stratford records. Halliwell's 'New Boke about Shakespeare and Stratford-on-Avon' (1850) (not in the Charlecote Library) gave the results of further investigation at Stratford. In 1853 he issued the first volume of his magnificently printed folio edition of Shakespeare, with notes, drawings, and complete critical apparatus, aiming, as he said, at 'a greater elaboration of Shakespearean criticism than has yet been attempted.' The edition was limited to 150 copies. F. W. Fairholt prepared the wood-engravings. The sixteenth and last volume appeared in 1865.
Another expensive enterprise was the private issue between 1862 and 1871 of lithographed facsimiles, by Mr. E. W. Ashbee, of the Shakespearean quartos in forty-eight volumes. The price of each volume was five guineas, and although fifty copies of the series were prepared, the editor destroyed nineteen, so that thirty-one alone survived. A fire in 1874 at the [Pantechnicon in Motcomb Street, Belgrave Square, the ] warehouse in London where unsold copies were stored, further reduced the number of sets, and Halliwell, writing on 13 Feb. 1874, was of opinion that only fifteen complete sets were then in existence.