Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard
Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard (1820–89),English scholar. A founding member of the Shakespeare Society (1840), he published a Life of Shakespeare in 1848; an edition in fifteen volumes (1853–61); and from 1850 onwards a series of Stratford archives and legal documents, many of them collected into his Outlines for the Life of Shakespeare (1881). A scholar of great determination, not seeking controversy, his career was nevertheless marked by public scandal: as a young man, he was accused of stealing rare books and manuscripts from Trinity College, Cambridge; in his maturity he was hounded by his father-in-law Sir Thomas Phillipps for the theft and mutilation of one of two extant copies of the first quarto of Hamlet; his old age was marred by disputes with the New Shakespeare Society, the Birthplace Trustees, and the corporation of Stratford—the town which furnished him with most of his genuine and important...
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