Here is the inscription
Halliwells 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 Henriettas 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 Shakespeares 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)thams 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 lifes 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.)
..
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.
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