SOURCE: Myers, Robin. “Writing for Booksellers in the Early Nineteenth Century: A Case Study.” In Author/Publisher Relations During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, edited by Robin Myers and Michael Harris, pp. 119-55. Oxford: Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1983.

[In the following essay, portions of which previously appeared in the British Library Journal, Myers describes the grim life of an early nineteenth-century journalist and literary hack, Joseph Timothy Haydn, who wrote for forty years and barely earned enough to support himself and his family.]

To become an author by profession is to have no other means of subsistence than such as are extracted from the quill; and no-one believes these to be so precarious as they really are, until disappointed, distressed and thrown out of every pursuit which can maintain independence, the noblest mind is cast into the lot of a doomed labourer. Literature abounds with instances of ‘Authors by Profession’ accommodating themselves to this condition … merely to ‘Keep his Mutton twirling at the Fire’.¹

Isaac D'Israeli's picture is supported by Michael Harris's description of the operations of the ‘penny-a-liners’ who scratched a bare living in eighteenth-century Grub Street.² The disreputable, nondescript gentlemen of the Press gave way, in the early nineteenth century, to the professional journalists and men of letters who combined writing for newspapers of a distinct identity and sphere of influence with various other writing and editing, which often included the compiling of hack reference works issued anonymously by the publisher. It was not yet the thing for a real gentleman to write for a living or to live on the earnings of his pen and Gladstone, as Michael Foot has pointed out, considered it the proper thing to live on his private income and to donate the liberal fruits of his pen to charity, rather than take the bread from the mouths of those who depended on income earned from writing.³

It is now almost impossible to find out much about these literary drudges; but a happy series of coincidences has enabled me to compile quite a full dossier on Joseph Timothy Haydn who is remembered for his Dictionary of Dates and ironically for a series of ‘Haydn dictionaries’ which were published after his death, following the success of the ‘Dates’, but which he had no part in.⁴ He was awarded a small Civil List pension in his last, very ill, destitute month of life and this occasioned a burst of acrimonious comment and correspondence in the Press after his death. His widow, with the help of the polemical Alfred Bunn,⁵ vociferously pleaded her cause in the Literary Gazette, the Morning Chronicle, the Spectator, the Sunday Times and The Times. I suspect that it was this outcry, rather than Haydn's importance as a writer, which occasioned the perfunctory entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (which does not even give his date of birth), and the rather more circumstantial accounts in Crone and Boase.⁶ He described his life as ‘long and laborious … my calamity being wholly superinduced by extreme study, research, and toil, without having had one day of relaxation, writing chiefly for the publishers.’⁷ The present study was sparked off by the acquisition of a group of undated letters from Joseph Haydn, and his wife, to Edward Moxon, his chief publisher.⁸ I later acquired letters which Moxon, Longman, Henry Reeve and Octavian Blewitt⁹ wrote to him, and also Alfred Bunn's copy of the third edition of the Dates, containing annotations, press cuttings and letters which Haydn had written to Bunn in the last months of his life. Bunn, generally so quarrelsome and suspicious, was a good friend to Haydn. They ‘had known each other most intimately near forty years’,¹⁰ having met in 1827 when Bunn was lessee of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, and Haydn was dabbling in theatrical journalism. The letters that I had acquired raised many questions, as miscellaneous correspondence always does, but many answers were found in the Royal Literary Fund's file of Registered Case 1239 (1850-78)¹¹. Much of what Haydn and his sponsors wrote in applications to the Fund referred to his work as a journalist; searches in the Colindale Newspaper Library corroborated what was said, even though almost all Haydn's writing for the Press was anonymous. From these three sources, which led me on to his work for the booksellers, it was possible to gain a clear picture of the man and to give quite a full account of his life as an ‘author by profession’. The autograph material all dates from Haydn's last, low years when he clung like a drowning man to his fairly philanthropic publisher, Moxon, to Bunn, and to the gentlemen of the Literary Fund.¹²

Joseph Timothy Haydn was a Protestant Irishman, born in Lisbon in 1788,¹³ and educated abroad. Although his name puts us in mind of the composer, there is no evidence that he was called after him and, indeed, Haydn is a not uncommon Christian name in Wales showing Celtic connections. These were the days when the established Church of Ireland was Protestant, and Haydn's dissenting piety is emphasised by the superscription ‘IND’ or ‘in nomine Dei’ on his letters; while, at the end of his life, his ‘darling little daughter of thirteen’ taught in the ‘Sunday School’ of St Clement Danes.¹⁴ In 1809 he fled to England, in a

once-Danish frigate, with a Convent of 26 English nuns, who, like myself, were fleeing from Portugal to escape from the Duke of Abrantes (Marshal Junot) who, with the French army, soon after seized on that kingdom. The secretary (a nun) of the Lady Abbess, one evening during the voyage, called me to her. I was jocund, and full of spirits, and quite a heedless youth, and after some prefatory remarks she told me to remember her solemn words during the remainder of my life, for, said she, you will die of a broken heart! [I think Haydn means a broken spirit because his second marriage to a much younger wife appears to have been a conjugal success despite its pecuniary ups and downs.] I have often since pondered on this strange incident which I now relate … It operates on my mind as a certain event …¹⁵

He probably went straight to Ireland, and was certainly there in 1811 when he fell in with the self-styled ‘Captain’ Thomas Ashe ‘of the Light Dragoons’¹⁶ for whom he ghosted a History of the Azores. Haydn signed and dated the preface, and Ashe, in his dedication to this dreary epistolary work ‘demonstrating the importance of these valuable islands to the British Empire’, explains that he has ‘conveyed the information thus obtained to a respected friend in my native country’.¹⁷ The ‘respected friend’ with his Portuguese background probably supplied the information as well as the labour of writing; it is a mystery what part was played by Ashe, who does not mention the Azores in his extravagant, licentious, picaresque yet tedious memoirs published in three volumes in 1815. Haydn, writing to Bunn five weeks before his death, recalls ‘my first beginnings in Literature having appeared (a History of the Azores) in 1813, nearly 42 years ago’.¹⁸

It was the curtain-raiser on the long and laborious life of accommodation to the condition of a literary hack merely to ‘keep his Mutton twirling at the Fire’, and to a distinguished, if anonymous, career in political journalism. Knowledgeable and industrious though he always was, he was never much of a manager of his money. Yet he published enough to have made a moderate living had luck or good management been on his side. Alaric Watts¹⁹ who supported his third application to the Literary Fund considered that ‘Mr Haydn has little knowledge of the world, is of a nervous and timid temperament …’ This was the impression he gave at the end of his life; the progress and management of ‘The Stage: a theatrical paper published daily …’ in 1821 shews the same characteristic lack of financial acumen. Yet the optimistic, still youthful editors, Frederick Conway Esq. and Joseph T Haydn Esq. launched their production boldly:

The paper we have undertaken is necessarily a fugitive—an ephemeral production. It will be written for the most part, about the solemn hour of twelve; printed in the witching time of night, and published before the play-loving folk forsake their pillows in the morning … This is one of the heaviest conditions of the task we have proposed to execute. It will demand our time at a period when nature calls for rest … but … THE STAGE must be published every morning and written every night.

On 20 April the editors were exultant: ‘The present is only the 11th number of the Stage. Yet it surpasses, by many degrees, all the publications in Dublin of a similar description. Indeed its circulation is not only extraordinary but absolutely without a parallel in so short a compass of time.’ However, by 12 May they were announcing a change from daily to weekly publication because they clearly found that they were ‘not enabled to balance our profit and loss. What aggravates the expense is the nightly labour of the Printer and the Daily publication.’ They protested that ‘gain was not our object’ although I am not aware that Haydn had any other means of support. At all events, a short week later, after only one issue as a weekly, the Stage folded up, ‘concluding with the preceding number … Saturday 19th May 1821’. The progress of the Stage set a pattern for Haydn's own through life; he was never ‘enabled to balance profit and loss’ since gain appears to have been ‘insufficiently his object’.²⁰

After the demise of the Stage Haydn turned to political journalism and this, it would seem, was where he found his true métier, even though his successes are now forgotten and he never earned enough to support his family adequately. He came into contact with influential government personages who helped him in his declining years. Daniel O'Connell, giving his opinion of Haydn's fitness to conduct a newspaper from Limerick, in November 1833, was able to assure his correspondent that ‘he possesses to my knowledge more powers for conducting the public press than any other man I ever knew—and I have had no small experience in persons of that class.’ Stanley Lees Giffard,²¹ editor of the Standard, supporting Haydn's first application to the Literary Fund wrote: ‘I well remember your admirable management of “The Patriot” when it was the only Conservative Dublin Newspaper … as I have the means of knowing that you were one of the founders of the Dublin Evening Mail, and its principal Editor at a time when it was much better written and better conducted than it has been since.’²² Haydn founded and edited the Mail in 1823, describing it as ‘the chief Protestant newspaper in Ireland’.²³ Learning from the experience of the Stage that a daily was too much to keep up, he announced a ‘new Three-Day-a-Week Newspaper to be Published in Dublin …’ The British Library newspaper library at Colindale has Haydn's proof copy of the first issue, marked up for the printer, with its Prospectus preceding column I. This seems, though anonymous, to bear the stamp of Haydn's most sententious ‘public’ style:

It is a remarkable fact, that no NEWSPAPER—or at least what we would understand by the term Newspaper—is published at present, in the Metropolis of Ireland, on the evenings of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday! This deficiency is experienced at a time when Education has taken a most extensive range; when a Newspaper has become a necessary, not to be dispensed with even by the most homely appetite, instead of being, as in other countries, a luxury intended and reserved for the fastidious palate of the epicure … To remove from the City of Dublin—from the Irish metropolis, the shame of being without a newspaper on three nights of the week; and to afford to our fellow citizens, and our countrymen generally, an opportunity to regale themselves with the Evening News … it is proposed to publish … THE DUBLIN EVENING MAIL a twenty column paper … Our Business shall be to soften all political asperities—not to provoke the acerbity of party. We shall not excite the passions of one class of our countrymen, nor awaken the dormant prejudices of another. We would unite, not divide … But while we profess ourselves friendly to the Marquess Wellesley's Government in Ireland, we shall not be obseqious slaves of the ‘Powers that be’ … And we promise our Fair Readers … that the matter to be found in our Pages, shall never offend against the Delicacy of their minds …

At about the same time, ‘though a very young man’,²⁴ he founded the Statesman and then edited the Statesman and Patriot, an amalgamation of two papers. A few years later, he was editing the Limerick Star (1834-8?) and then the Limerick Times (1837-9?). He kept his promise to pour oil on troubled political and religious waters in the pages of his Dublin papers; he maintained that they were ‘emphatically Protestant’ yet also non-sectarian. This is particularly remarkable when we look at the inflammatory matter of some contemporary journalism. At the same time he may not have reached a very diverse readership since a subscription of three-and-a-half guineas a year must have put his papers beyond the reach of ‘homely appetites’. Haydn's placatory policy led to his getting help from those political opponents Palmerston and Disraeli fifteen years later, who both acted on his behalf and gave him substantial sums of money. He came to England in 1839 and continued to write ‘for a short time, for the papers here … and was, for fifteen years correspondent for the Courier … the principal Government newspaper in London’.²⁵

Soon after settling in London, he turned to writing for the publishers. Between 1842 and 1849 he revised ‘all the later editions’ of the Topographical Dictionaries originally compiled by Samuel Lewis the Elder in the early 1830s. This he mentioned to the Literary Fund in several letters accompanying applications for relief: ‘You are already aware, Sir,’ he told Octavian Blewitt in November 1851, ‘that I have been many years a compiler of works for the Publishers. Every line of Lewis's topographical dictionaries … all the later editions, ten quarto volumes, have been written or amended by me.’ Haydn's name appears nowhere in any of these works. In January 1855 he was revising a classical and historical work for one of Bohn's Library series, which I have not definitely identified; I believe, however, that it was a revision of Blair's Chronological Tables,²⁶ which Alaric Watts mentioned in his letter sponsoring Haydn's widow the next year, complaining that Bohn would not help the widow: ‘Mr Bohn has flatly refused to pay even the most moderate sum for four months' labour on a book of dates and chronology prepared for him.’²⁷ It was probably this work which ‘occupies me less than two days a week and I sadly, very want something more to do to fill up my time’.²⁸ He complained to Moxon that Bohn ‘has given me but £15 since last October for revising a work of great labour, and is now too ill at Twickenham to attend to business.’²⁹ Bohn was ill all summer although he did not retire from trade until 1864, long after Haydn had died.

Haydn found the Teggs, father and son,³⁰ equally stingy. He had ‘been advanced but £16 since February 4’, for a work which I have been unable to identify. ‘My state of mind makes me unable to get on with his book, in which 3000 new lives must be written: thereby to avoid plagiarism which he fears.’³¹

Let us, at this point, return to the circumstances of Haydn's private life, which have some bearing on his literary career. He married Mary, née Johnston, by consistorial licence at St Andrew's Church, Dublin, in 1836. Mary was born in 1820 and therefore could not have been the mother of his older children; however, I have not been able to find any details of an earlier marriage. In 1850 he told the Literary Fund that he had ‘two sons; one a printer, who has not fully served his apprenticeship; the other, yet a child; four daughters; two married and in easy circumstances; the third, living with a sister; the fourth, nine years of age.’ On his second application in 1853 he wrote of ‘a daughter, married to a gentleman having property in Wales. Two daughters at home ages 20 and 13; and two sons, both still young, and at school. A son, a printer, at the moment, unemployed; not living with me.’ Alaric Watts, in his sponsoring letter, takes up the case of the younger boys; ‘whilst we have gratuitous education for all who need beside, from the sons of the clergy down to the children of the pickpocket, there is none for the offspring of literary men—the outcasts, the Parias of Society. We send 20 millions of testaments to the Pig-Tails but can spare nothing for the education of the children of poor men of letters.’³² Eventually, after Haydn's death, seventy pounds was raised to get the youngest boy elected to the St Anne Asylum. The youngest was eight years old, his elder brother twelve; the previous year Haydn wrote to Moxon that he was ‘a youth of eleven, writes beautifully and is quick at figures … He is an artless boy; he is nearly ready for a bookseller's house …’³³ There was no response from Moxon, it seems. The girl was her father's favourite, ‘a fine, good and intellectual child … a sound grammarian, an excellent English and general historian, knows a little French, and writes a neat hand and correctly’.³⁴ She was then thirteen, and by the time her father died, and she was in her sixteenth year, she was well established on the pedagogic treadmill. Haydn wrote to Moxon in high spirits in 1853:

My dearest Sir, It will, I persuade myself, gratify your good and Christian mind to learn that my darling little daughter has been taken by the hand of Lord Shaftesbury, who has obtained for her a pupilship in a choice school under his own direction, a new and splendid institution close to town, where she will be highly educated so as to fit her for the situation of a Governess of the First Class. He pays for her 25 gns. per annum and all extra expenses; in this institution she can, if she likes, become by and by the Governess of a National School, with a Queen's Scholarship. My dear little girl owes this good fortune to her own conduct as a gratuitous Teacher in our Sunday School, St. Clement's Danes, where though only turned of thirteen, she had been teaching two years and a half … Mrs Haydn purposes calling upon you in a day or two to tell you all about her and about the great interest the good Earl takes in her. But I cannot resist the impulse of informing you of this much the moment it occurred …³⁵ [I surmise that this was the daughter mentioned in Longman's Divide Ledger, for 4 October 1858: ‘to 1 copy bound’ of the Book of Dignities, ‘to Miss Haydn … 1/2’.]

In the late 1840s Haydn undertook a modernisation of Beatson's Political Index which was published by Longmans as the Book of Dignities in 1851. It was, he told the Literary Fund in his first application for relief in 1850, ‘the Cause of his Distress’ because he had to neglect other work for it, and it brought about ‘the failure of his resources, as a public writer, a corrector of classical works etc’.³⁶ It should, he then found, ‘have been undertaken by one in more independent circumstances than myself—one to whom time was not an object’. He had hoped to earn a substantial amount for his years of work on the Dignities, having made a profit-sharing arrangement with Longman. But he lacked the capital to feed a large family in the meanwhile and had to borrow right and left. Charles Dickens, always generous to fellow-authors in need, lent Haydn ‘sums at various times’, he told the Literary Fund, for groceries, rent, school fees, coal, and ‘sundry pawnbroker's money, chiefly lent on books’, totalling £45 17s. Haydn repaid all ‘save a balance of £3 3s.’³⁷ He had not the temperament for hack work, and did not know how to cost his time; work on the Dignities ‘far exceeded the time which I had calculated and I was forced, in consequence, to part with my whole interest in it, quarter-share by quarter-share to the publishers.’³⁸ He gave rein to his bitter resentment of Longman's treatment in a letter to Octavian Blewitt (4 November 1851) which accompanied his second application to the Literary Fund:

You have seen that the £30 Mr. Longman gave me for my last quarter's share, was doled out to me in small sums, while finishing a work that he had made his own. Do you wonder that he was heir to a quarter of a million even after his father had lived at a most princely rate? And this, besides his enormous business, in which the value of his stereotypes alone, is estimated at £200,000.³⁹

Haydn told the Fund that he earned £270 from the Dignities, but Longman's Divide Ledger shows that he received £313 7s. 1d. Although Haydn was perhaps not compensated adequately for his time and care in revising the work, examination of the Ledger shows that Longman was not such a villain as Haydn makes out. The work cost £878 4s. 1d. to produce an edition of a thousand. As £478 2s. 9d. went on printing, paper and stereotypes, Haydn therefore received between a third and a half of the publisher's total outlay. He also had six complimentary copies, another interleaved and half-bound, while his wife and daughter got one each in 1854 and 1858. It took sixteen years to reduce the stock to forty copies, thirty-two of which were disposed of in a trade sale in June 1876 for 8s. 3d. a copy.⁴⁰ Thus it cannot be accounted a financial best-seller for either publisher or author, although the new and revised edition by Horace Ockerby which W. H. Allen brought out in 1890 and 1894 fared better and is still to be met with here and there in government libraries where it fills the odd gap which more up-to-date works fail to. Ockerby's edition added an index of names and restored some of Haydn's ‘too sweeping excisions’ of the original Beatson index. It was while working on the Dignities that Longman recommended Haydn for a British Museum reader's ticket. It was first issued to him 31 March 1849 and thereafter renewed until 10 November 1854, five months after he began to work at the Admiralty, and shortly before his last illness.⁴¹

There is no hint of strained relations in William Longman's bland but formal letter announcing the author's copies: ‘I am happy to say that the Book of Dignities will now be ready in a few days. We propose to send you half a dozen copies and we shall be glad of any suggestions from you relative to any copies it may be desirable to give to reviewers or others.’⁴² Twenty-five were duly despatched. One of these went to Henry Reeve, then on the staff of The Times, who sponsored Haydn's second application to the Literary Fund the same month. He considered the Dignities ‘a very handsome volume which is the result of your unremitting labours. I shall order another copy for this office, for you have rendered an important service to every branch of the Government as well as to History and Literature by the extent and accuracy of your researches.’⁴³ Review copies, at a cost to the publisher of 4s. 9d. each, also went to the Almanach de Gotha, Notes and Queries and the Gentleman's Magazine.

Once the Dignities was off the stocks, Haydn started work on a ‘Book of Sovereigns which will embrace the lives and transactions of more than 1,700 of the rulers of Europe’.⁴⁴ He had no commission for this and had not got very far when, on 24 October 1852, he fell on his back descending a flight of stairs and ‘broke a rib near its articulation with the vertibrae’.⁴⁵ For several months he was too ill and in too much pain to work; his handwriting on his third application to the Literary Fund in November 1853 is shaky enough to show that he was certainly ill, and the ‘Sovereigns’ seems to have petered out. By this time he was on cordial terms with the Secretary of the Literary Fund, Octavian Blewitt, who asked his advice on a family genealogy he was compiling. He also lent Haydn a collection of cuttings and essays on the life of the Fund's founder, David Williams. Perhaps this was for use in the current revision of the Dictionary of Dates, the first edition to include a note on Williams, though it must have been unusual, to say the least, to lend such an item to one in the middle of applying for charitable relief. ‘My dear Mr Haydn,’ Blewitt wrote, ‘you are the only man in London, to whom I would entrust the enclosed volume respecting David Williams. It is a precious possession of our Society, as it contains papers never to be collected again.’⁴⁶

Poor Haydn's distresses multiplied from the moment of his tumble downstairs, and not only did he never regain robust health but he was chronically, at times perilously short of money. Sheridan Knowles,⁴⁷ who supported each application to the Fund with characteristic kindness and warmth, wrote of his not having enough to eat, while Alaric Watts's supporting letter of 29 October 1853 found Haydn's situation ‘more distressing than I could have anticipated … and he was (with his family) really in want of the commonest necessaries of life; sinking, indeed, as it appeared to me from debility arising from insufficient nourishment.’⁴⁸ Two days later Haydn wrote to Moxon that ‘a truly good friend, Mr Watts, called upon us to-day, and explained the mystery [of five pounds sent by Moxon out of the blue] by saying, he had written to you, and mentioned our wants and Mrs Haydn's illnes … Of his having so written, I solemnly assure you we knew nothing until we heard it from himself.’⁴⁹ Haydn's and his wife's letters to Moxon in these last years contain six pleas for five pounds. Moxon gave a receipt for each or else wrote ‘£5 sent’ at the top of Haydn's letter. Some of the sums were payment on account, others, such as that solicited by Watts, were gifts. ‘As our rent is now due,’ Mary Haydn wrote, ‘and wanting many little things, Mr Haydn would feel greatly obliged if you would let me have £5 out of the ten which you are kind enough to say is at his disposal.’⁵⁰

‘Dear Mr Moxon,’ Haydn wrote from the Admiralty, ‘I hope you will not think me premature for praying for five pounds to pay my rent. Mrs Haydn will, with your leave, wait upon you for them tomorrow …’ An accompanying receipt in Moxon's hand, signed by Mary Haydn, shows that the money was ‘on account of the corrections, etc. of the 7th edition of the Dictionary of Dates’.⁵¹ Haydn, or his wife for him, made four successful applications to the Literary Fund between 1850 and 1855. Half of the fifty pounds granted on the third application in 1853 was given specifically ‘for the purpose of taking books and clothes out of pawn, and paying sundry small accounts’.⁵² The next year things suddenly, but fleetingly, took a turn for the better. In June 1854, ‘through the great kindness of Mr John Barrow of the Admiralty, a Situation as Extra Clerk in that establishment’ was found for him and ‘from that time … he was in receipt of an income which enabled him to support his family’, Mary Haydn told the Literary Fund on 1 May 1855.⁵³ Barrow himself wrote to support the fourth application and explain about the Admiralty job: his work was ‘preparing a digest and index of several volumes of Dispatches from the principal Secretaries of States, during the last Century. He was paid regularly at the rate of three guineas a week. His attendance was regular, & unremitting, and I need not say, his abilities were conspicuous. He was well pleased with his employment, happy and contented.’⁵⁴

The halcyon days were, alas, soon over; on Easter Tuesday 1855 Haydn was struck down by a ‘Visitation of the Almighty’, in the form of ‘a paralytic stroke which deprived him of the use of his left side and limbs, enfeebling his whole frame, and sensibly impairing his sight, mind and memory. This calamity, produced by a life of ceaseless study and research, disabled him from all mental labour.’⁵⁵ Mary Haydn wrote again to Moxon that she would feel ‘greatly obliged by your letting me have the £5 today as we are greatly in want of a little money. We have had a great deal of illness since we came here. Mr Haydn about 9 weeks ago had a dreadful fit …’⁵⁶ Haydn had written to Moxon:

I will not describe the privations which my innocent and helpless family have latterly been suffering. My rent and debts begin grievously to annoy us; and the longer I am in this state, the more both accumulate. Could I see my children in some way of life, I could cheerfully resign myself to the will of Heaven … Mr Alaric Watts … has just proposed a public subscription, to which I am averse as it is so humiliating; but I fear, notwithstanding, that it is inevitable.

To make things worse, my landlord died yesterday; and his widow (the widow of a sherriff's officer!) will, we dread, in a few days sweep everything we have gathered about us away for arrears of rent. Decrees have been obtained against me, though for trifling debts; and a prison may be my last sad resting place in this world.⁵⁷

It was only too appropriate that poor Haydn should live in Carey Street, proverbial street of bankrupts, with a bailiff for landlord; the widow took action and on 1 May 1855 Mary Haydn wrote to the Literary Fund:

… To add to our distress an execution was put into the house, an humble part of which we have occupied upwards of sixteen years, by the head Landlord, and we have thus been driven from our habitation under circumstances of the greatest privation and distress, to the Single Room without the means of providing the exigencies which must under much more favourable circumstances have arisen, or of administering the commonest comforts, I might say necessaries, to my Husband in his present afflicted condition.⁵⁸

The last letters come from 13 Crawley Street, Oakley Square, Euston (now all swept away by the encroachment of Euston Station).

The debtors' prison was fended off by Barrow, by the Literary Fund and by other friends rallying round, but the humiliating public subscription came at last. After his stroke Haydn had been ‘obliged to relinquish my Situation of extra clerk at the Admiralty, but the Lords graciously continued my salary for some weeks until the noblemen and gentlemen of the Literary Fund supplied me weekly with kind assistance, now terminated. In this emergency, some kind friends … bethought them of raising a subscription …’⁵⁹ which Haydn roughed out in a shaky hand and then turned over to Moxon and Benjamin Vincent⁶⁰ to polish and send back to him to get printed. ‘Donations for this purpose’ were to be received and acknowledged by ‘John Barrow Esq., Admiralty, Whitehall, and Edward Moxon Esq., publisher, 44 Dover Street, Piccadilly.’⁶¹ Lord Palmerston, to whom the Dignities had been dedicated, set an example by ‘enrolling himself among the noble band who “do good by stealth and blush to find it fame”’;⁶² Mary Haydn called on him at the Treasury ‘when he, without any formal application whatever, gave her, by Mr Charles Clifford, his private secretary, £100’.⁶³ Alaric Watts's letter to the Literary Fund supporting Mary Haydn's application in February 1856 discloses that this came out of the Compassionate Fund. ‘Mr D'Israeli and a few others added to this sum enough to purchase, for Mrs Haydn and family, a shop for the sale of stationery and newspapers.’⁶⁴ A small circulating library was also proposed towards which booksellers would contribute ‘a few superfluous books each to form a useful library. Mr Moxon, my publisher, has promised, and if a few of my old and good friends would purchase from Mrs. Haydn, each their little quantities of paper, it would encourage her more than anything else.’⁶⁵ Alfred Bunn worked in his vigorous, abrasive way to protect his old friend, and after his death the widow. He organised a parcel of books, ‘an elegant set, about 20 in number, the most useful and valuable, all quite new’,⁶⁶ which he teased out of Bentley and which arrived in December 1855, just as Haydn was beginning to think that Bentley would not keep his word about them.

But a woman could not, in those days of excessively unequal opportunity, hope to keep a dying husband in medicines and herself and at least three children in ‘frugal bread’ by unaided labour in such a ‘branch of light industry’. She was ‘constrained to throw herself upon the bounty of the affluent’ though she struggled ‘even to the serving of the newspapers like a common newswoman, to save the expence of a second boy, assisting her son [aged eleven] in the evenings …’ She feared ‘we cannot hold out, and eventually must close. We, in fact, commenced too soon and without capital. Not one shilling subscription came to us since Mr. D'Israeli's ten pounds, and it is likely never will; Who can be expected to assist us when, as now, we are in business? Yet we sometimes receive but 2d. a day, as on many days last week, during the bad weather.’⁶⁷ In Haydn's last month of life Palmerston got him a Civil List Pension of £25 a year. Haydn had previously asked: ‘Think you, dear Mr Moxon, could that most excellent man, a man so exalted in his nature, and who has attained more than a patriarchal age, think you, could be brought to do a little for me?’⁶⁸ (I surmise that this letter was written in 1855, when Palmerston was just seventy-one.)

Haydn's most substantial and lasting work was the Dictionary of Dates which bound him to Moxon almost from the time of his arrival in London until his death, six and a half editions later. ‘More than one volume of poetry over the Moxon imprint owed its appearance to the earning of Haydn's Dictionary of Dates,’ wrote H. G. Merriam.⁶⁹ Moxon was renowned for his friendly relations with his authors. It is no wonder, if such is the case, that Moxon and his first editor of the Dates should have been on terms which even a formal note accompanying the author's copies shows to have been warm; its tone is much in contrast with Longman's impersonal one on a parallel occasion: ‘I have much pleasure,’ wrote Moxon, ‘in sending you 4 copies … 2 for present and 2 for future use. With many thanks for your kind note, and trusting that you will excuse this short one, I remain, dear Mr. Haydn, ever most sincerely yours …’⁷⁰ Haydn probably started work on the Dates in the late 1830s if we judge from the time he spent on the compilation of the Dignities and the abortive ‘Book of Sovereigns’. We do not know Moxon's exact costs or profits because the ledgers disappeared, perhaps when Ward Lock took over Moxon's stock in 1871; all that I have found is a paper in Moxon's hand attached to Mary Haydn's application to the Literary Fund, and dated 1857.⁷¹ From this we learn that Moxon bought the copyright outright for £360 and made payments on each of the subsequent editions for a grand total of £797, excluding sums for ‘mourning’ and ‘£10 to purchase the boy's election to St. Anne's Society School’ after Haydn's death which were charitable donations. The seventh edition was the last that Haydn had anything to do with, and the work went slowly because it coincided with employment at the Admiralty. At last Haydn hoped to get up steam, however: ‘I was to have had a long interval from Mr Barrow, at Easter, to work on the new edition with the long days before me. In the rigid short days we previously had, I could not labour after hard work at the Admiralty, which you desired I should not relinquish.’⁷² Even after his stroke he still tried to interest himself in the Dates, perhaps because it was a steady seller likely to bring in a little more money. ‘I do not desire to interfere with the labours of your new Editor,’ he wrote, ‘but still though you wish I should not, I may save him time and trouble.’⁷³

‘Without chronology,’ it used with William Hales to be thought, ‘history would lose its most valuable characters of truth and consistency, and scarcely rise above the level of romance … It is the “eyes”, even the “soul” of history.’ History was then generally the mere memorising of strings of dates and events, so that a publisher might provide himself with bread and butter and a good backlist by such reference works as chronologies, historical tables and dictionaries of dates. Blair's Chronology, Hale's New Analysis of Chronology and Anderson's Genealogies⁷⁴ went into many editions and were steady sellers for the generations who were taught history on entirely chronological principles. Together with ‘handy-books’ of knowledge and potted encyclopedias they slaked the thirst of the growing numbers of the semi-educated as well as providing aides mémoires for the gentry and professional classes. Haydn's Dates is a companion to history, rather than a true chronology, since its articles are arranged alphabetically, not chronologically. He, in the preface to the first edition, hoped that his compilation would ‘in almost every instance, save the possessor the trouble of turning over voluminous authors to refresh his memory, or to ascertain the date, order or features of any particular occurrence’. The modern editor likes to consider parallel works as guides to method rather than repositories of facts, which, if he is conscientious he will try to extract from original documents. Haydn had the traditional reverence for an established body of learning, but he also drew on his personal experience as a journalist, a ‘public writer’, a civil servant and a friend of ‘the highest persons’: his years as a political journalist were a training for the reference work compilation he was now engaged on. Above all, the articles on voyages of discovery and arctic expeditions derived from his work at the Admiralty and his friendship with John Barrow and Lady Franklin.⁷⁵ Information from earlier works of reference was scrupulously attributed to ‘Usher’ or ‘Anderson’ at the foot of the quoted article. After his stroke he was anxious that Moxon and the new editor should have ‘an interleaved copy of the Dicty., that is at the Admiralty, and in which Mr. Barrow and other gentlemen there, have inserted new matter, as it occurred … The conclusion of the Arctic Expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, and the discovery of the N. W. Passage is there.’⁷⁶ These entries remained substantially unaltered during Vincent's years of editorship, although they were kept up to date.

Tegg's Chronology⁷⁷ was Haydn's great rival during the years that he himself edited the Dates. Its first edition of 1811 came out when Haydn was still ‘quite a heedless youth’ ghosting the Azores; it was a poor thing whose ‘General Events’ included such trivia as that ‘George III had the glass of his chair broke as he was conveying to the opera-house, June 25, 1777’. Among ‘Errors in Natural History’ we read that the ‘fable of the fox and grapes is taught us from childhood without ever reflecting that the foxes that we are acquainted with do not eat grapes’. By the time Tegg achieved a third edition in 1835 many such puerilities had been suppressed, while the fifth and last edition bears a distinct resemblance to the Dates both in format, arrangement and kind of matter included, so much so that Haydn believed that it plundered his own fifth edition of 1851.

Dearest Sir, I have now seen Mr Tegg's book for the first time and am indeed surprised. It is taken in whole pages from Dates (edition 1851) which he has made the groundwork of his compilation, without concealment or disguise. Yet, after all it is a crude performance, attempted by some superficial and incompetent person, in a higgledy-piggledy manner, with no judgement, method or erudition. Sentences, the most puerile and clumsy are interspersed throughout, preserved, it would seem, from his former editions. But the whole work is a disgrace, as well to the printer as himself. If you desire, and you have an ulterior object [of pursuing Tegg for piracy?] I will cheerfully look through the book systematically, and underscore the pirated passages …⁷⁸

Tegg's editor did, indeed, take the entries on the arctic expeditions, theatres, Linnean system and copyright almost word for word from Haydn. But in a few places Haydn seems to have returned the compliment in respect of Tegg's third (1835) edition even though he avowed ignorance of the Tegg work. Such cross-fertilisation is common in works of reference. Haydn, however, was up in arms in defence of his own opus. ‘Mr Alaric Watts,’ he told Moxon two days after looking at a copy of Tegg,

who calls to see us now and again, tells me that Mr. Cyrus Redding,⁷⁹ (this, I think, is the name) was the gentleman employed by Tegg to do his Dict. of Chronology; but that not being pleased with the performance (so I understand him) he did not adopt him as the author. I believe, however, that the past editions (four, it appears) were published under Tegg's name, and that the present is only a larger edition, with a new editor. Mr Bohn has told me that Mr. Griffin … who tried to depreciate the Dates in your eyes … is likewise engaged in a Chronology … Mr. Watts requests me to tell you what I do, about Tegg's book.⁸⁰

Both Tegg and Haydn may have used the ‘small compilation’ (which I have not identified) that ‘Bohn mentioned (and rightly enough) … which had suggested the Dates to me; and he added that he had a copy of the compilation in question by him. I, too, have a copy, and send it forthwith.’ Haydn was confident that his work was better than its competitors and would outlast them, as it has: ‘Tegg's Chronology cannot … in my opinion, harm the Dates in any serious manner.’ he told Moxon,

Mr. H. G. Bohn once said to me, over a glass of wine or cup of tea, I forget the particular occasion, that I had put it out of the power of any other individual to produce a like book, and that the good style in which you had printed it, would also prevent the attempt … On my telling Mr. Bohn that Murray had a notion of publishing an alphabetical Dictionary of the same kind, he said, he was certain it would be a failure, and he hoped so, as you were, (I use his own familiar words), ‘an excellent fellow!’ …⁸¹

Stanley Lees Giffard, who had known Haydn as a fellow journalist for more than thirty years, wrote to express concern at Haydn's need for relief in 1850 and added: ‘since the publication of the first Edition [of the Dates] I have never ventured to sit down either to read or to write … without my having “The Book of Dates” beside me on my table … [it contains] all the knowledge an English gentleman can want in the form of a compendium … which no English gentleman ought to be without.’⁸² The Dates, with only two editors in nearly seventy years, has a homogeneity which compensates for many shortcomings. Robert Collison, in his preface to Newnes Dictionary of Dates (1962), apologised that some of his own inclusions had ‘driven out more weighty items which have long graced the magnificent pages of the noble Haydn,’ and hoped that these will ‘encourage the reader to have recourse again to that matchless work’. True, its editors made extravagant claims for it, in the style of the day, so that George H Townsend tried to discredit the rival publication by saying, with justification, that ‘the statement made in the preface to the first edition … and repeated in every edition to the twelfth inclusive, published in 1866, to the effect that it contains “upwards of FIFTEEN THOUSAND ARTICLES, alphabetically arranged”, is altogether inaccurate.’ Townsend had a vested interest in picking holes in Haydn's work. Benjamin Vincent, who had the extensive library of the Royal Institution at his disposal and daily contact with scholars who used it, served the Dates even better, perhaps, in his forty years on the job than Haydn did in his fourteen; but Haydn was its creator and gave it the shape it retained through twenty-five editions. When it finally went out of print in 1910 it still remained on library shelves until, nearly sixty years later, Dover Books reissued it in 1969.

Haydn died in 1856, Moxon two years later, and in 1871 his firm was taken over by Ward Lock who also acquired, by an irony of fate, Moxon's rival Tegg's business in the 1870s. Their records went to dust and oblivion like the remains of their hard-pressed author. Joseph Haydn, though superior to the run-of-the-mill hack, is a prototype of those who made their living by writing for the publishers. If ‘diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation’, his, indeed, is a case where ‘the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy’, for it has dealt ‘without distinction to merit of perpetuity’ with his memory.⁸³ Once favoured ‘with the friendship of the highest persons’ his name now lingers a mere title to ‘a work which no English gentleman ought to be without’.

Notes

1. Isaac D'Israeli, The Calamities of Authors … new ed. (London, 1867), pp. 8-9.

2. ‘Journalism as a Profession or Trade in the Eighteenth Century’, see above pp, 38-62.

3. ‘Mr Gladstone and his Publishers’, see above p. 167.

4. These are: Universal Index of Biography, ed. J P Payne (Moxon: 1870); Dictionary of Science, ed. G F Rodwell (Moxon: 1870); Haydn's Bible Dictionary, ed. C Boutell (Moxon: London, 1871); Dictionary of Popular Medicine and Hygiene (Ward Lock: London, 1877).

5. Alfred Bunn (1796?-1860), theatrical manager, lessee of many London and Dublin theatres, including Covent Garden and Drury Lane; quarrelled with practically everybody except, it seems, Haydn and Moxon; playwright and author of autobiographical memoir The Stage, both before and behind the Curtain (2 vols, London, 1840).

6. J S Crone, Concise Dictionary of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1928); F S Boase, Modern English Biography (Truro, 1892), p. 1395.

7. Letter from Joseph Haydn to Alfred Bunn, 11 November 1855. Autograph Letters (hereafter ALs) 14, (see Appendix II).

8. Edward Moxon (1801-1858), publisher of poets and household works; married Emma Isola, Lamb's adopted daughter.

9. William Longman (1804-1869), grandson of the firm's founder who became head of the firm in 1842; Henry Reeve (1813-1895), man of letters, joining staff of The Times in 1840, he ‘guided its foreign policy for fifteen years’ and was editor of Edinburgh Review from 1855 to 1895 (see also ‘Mr Gladstone and his Publishers’ above p.169); Octavian Blewitt (1810-1884), Secretary of the Literary Fund (1839-84) and member of a well-known Welsh family and author of topographical works.

10. ALs 13.

11. The Royal Literary Fund (hereafter cited as RLF) was founded in 1790 by the Revd David Williams to help authors and their families in need. Applicants had, and still have to this day, to have published a work of approved literary merit to establish their literary standing. In Haydn's day it was also necessary to prove to be a man or woman of sound moral character.

12. There must be material, which I have not investigated, at the Admiralty, and perhaps some in Dublin.

13. Haydn gives his date of birth as 1788 on two of his applications to the RLF, and once as 1793, but always as 24 November. He always gives his place of birth as Lisbon, but Crone says ‘Limerick’, Boase ‘Ireland’.

14. ALs 6.

15. ALs 5.

16. Thomas Ashe (1770-1835), self-styled Captain of Light Dragoons, actually briefly captain of the 83rd Regiment of Foot. Ashe applied to the RLF—three out of four of his applications were rejected, and the fourth rescinded when it was discovered that Ashe was ‘as great a scoundrel as ever lived’. A ‘sort of literary jack-of-all-trades … of an Irish family … He must have written a great deal anonymously in the journals and papers … if he did not publish a great many works got up for booksellers’ (Notes and Queries, October 1868).

17. Ashe's dedication to A History of the Azores or Western Islands (London 1813).

18. ALs 14.

19. Alaric Watts (1797-1864), journalist and poetaster, editor of the Literary Souvenir (1824-38), of the first edition of Men of the Times (1856), etc. He supported Haydn's third application to the RLF in a letter of 29 October 1853 (document 25) and that of his widow (document 43), February 1856.

20. I have located only one copy of the Stage, in the British Library (C.134.b.3.).

21. Stanley Lees Giffard (1788-1858), first editor of the Dublin Standard from 1827, editor of St James's Chronicle, contributor to the Quarterly, Blackwood's, etc.

22. RLF document 6, letter from Giffard to Haydn, 8 January 1850, to be used in support of first application.

23. RLF document 2, undated, first application January 1850.

24. RLF document 2.

25. RLF document 2.

26. Mentioned in ALs 2, although there is no mention of Haydn in the index of F Cordasco, The Bohn Libraries: A History and a Checklist (New York, 1951). This seems, however, to be Blair's Chronological Tables revised and enlarged by J Willoughby Rosse (Bohn's Scientific Library: London, 1856). I am indebted to Nigel Cross, archivist of the RLF, for identifying this work; the RLF's copy was presented by Bohn in 1859.

27. RLF document 43, letter from Alaric Watts, 5 February 1856.

28. ALs 2.

29. ALs 5.

30. Thomas Tegg (1776-1845), remainder merchant and wholesale bookseller, renowned for ruthless business dealing, publisher of first three editions of Tegg's Chronology. William Tegg (1816-1895), respectable son of a disreputable parvenu father, publisher of handbooks, etc. and a bookseller.

31. ALs 5.

32. RLF document 43, Alaric Watts to RLF, 5 February 1856.

33. ALs 6.

34. ALs 6.

35. ALs 6.

36. RLF document 1, first application, January 1850.

37. RLF document 36, undated, in Haydn's hand.

38. RLF document 12, second application, letter to Blewitt, 2 October 1851.

39. RLF document 12.

40. Longman's Divide Ledger D 4, Haydn's Book of Dignities.

41. I am indebted to Miss K J Wallace, Archivist to the British Museum, for this information. I was prompted to find out if Haydn had ever been a British Museum reader by a question of Mirjam Foot's in the discussion following the giving of this paper.

42. ALs 17.

43. ALs 19.

44. RLF document 22, third application, letter to RLF in Haydn's hand, 2 November 1853.

45. RLF document 22.

46. ALs 16. The reference is to Thomas Morris, A General View of the Life and Writings of the Rev David Williams (London, 1792), a collection of cuttings, etc., of periodical essays on the life and works of the RLF's founder. It is still ‘a precious possession of the Society’.

47. James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), dramatist, and, at the end of his life, Nonconformist minister; supported all Haydn's applications to the RLF.

48. RLF document 43.

49. ALs 4.

50. ALs 3.

51. ALs 7.

52. RLF document 29, third application, November and December 1853.

53. RLF document 32.

54. RLF document 33, fourth application, John Barrow to Blewitt, 7 May 1855.

55. ALs 11.

56. ALs 10.

57. ALs 5.

58. RLF document 52, Mary Haydn to RLF, 1 May 1855.

59. ALs 11.

60. Benjamin Vincent (d. 1899), Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Royal Institution (1848-99), editor of the Dates from the seventh edition (1855-98).

61. ALs 11.

62. Bunn to The Times, 8 January 1856.

63. ALs 14.

64. ALs 14.

65. ALs 14.

66. ALs 15.

67. ALs 15.

68. ALs 5.

69. H G Merriam, Edward Moxon, Publisher of Poetry (New York, 1939).

70. ALs 18.

71. RLF document 71, Mary Haydn's application.

72. ALs 14.

73. ALs 12.

74. John Blair, The Chronology and History of the World from the Creation to the Year of Christ 1753, 1st ed., 1754, last ed. 1852; William Hales, New Analysis of Chronology (3 vols, 1809-12); James Anderson, Royal Genealogies of the Genealogical Tables of Europe from Adam to these Times, 2nd ed. (2 vols, 1736).

75. Lady Franklin (1792-1875), second wife of Sir John Franklin, Arctic explorer, fitted out five expeditions in search of her husband, and sailed herself for the North-West Passage in search of him.

76. ALs 12.

77. The Chronology or, the Historian's Companion … Thomas Tegg (1811); Tegg's Dictionary of Chronology, or the Historian's Companion, Tegg (1835): this is the third revised edition of the Chronology; Tegg's Dictionary of Chronology, or, Historical and Statistical Register, William Tegg (1854): this is the fifth revised edition.

78. ALs 7.

79. Cyrus Redding (1785-1870), journalist, man of letters, wine merchant, and author of a standard work on the History and Description of Modern Wines (1833). He does not mention any work done for Tegg in his Fifty Years' Recollections (1858).

80. ALs 2.

81. ALs 2.

82. RLF document 6, Giffard to Haydn, cited above, fn. 22.

83. Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial or Hydriotaphia, A Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk (1659), p. 46.

I am indebted to the Trustees of the British Library for permission to reprint substantial portions of the above paper, first published in the British Library Journal, vol. 2, Autumn 1979. I am also grateful to Messrs Longman and to the Royal Literary Fund for permitting me to make use of material in their archives. In addition to help from Nicolas Barker, Victor Bonham-Carter, Mirjam Foot and Michael Turner when I was preparing the earlier version of this paper, members of the audience and fellow speakers made helpful and stimulating suggestions when it was read at the conference whose proceedings are now published. Some of these I have been able to incorporate. I thank them all.

Appendix I: Chronology

Joseph Timothy Haydn (1788?-1856)

24 November 1788? (First application to RLF says 1793; second and third give 1788): born Lisbon, son of Thomas Haydn.

1809: came to Plymouth from Portugal in ‘a once Danish frigate’ to escape Napoleon's invading army.

1809-39: lived in Ireland, mostly engaged in journalism in Dublin, Limerick and Cork.

1813: History of the Azores ghosted by Haydn for ‘Captain’ Ashe.

c. 1820: probably met Alfred Bunn in Ireland.

1821 (April-May): edited and wrote, with Frederick Conway, The Stage.

1823-38: edited various government newspapers—the Dublin Evening Mail (1823), The Statesman and Patriot (1828-9), The Limerick Star (1834-8), The Limerick Times (1837-9?).

1836: married Mary, née Johnson or Johnston (b. 1820?) by consistorial licence in Dublin. Perhaps two sons and two daughters born in Ireland.

1839: moved to London, living 2nd floor, 44 Carey Street. Correspondent of The Courier (1839-54?).

1841: 1st edition of Dictionary of Dates, published Joseph Moxon. Haydn edited 6 editions (1841-55) and started work on the 7th.

1841: daughter born.

1842-9: edited and revised ‘all the later editions’ of Lewis's Topographical Dictionaries. 1st edition of England published 1830(?).

1843: 2nd edition of Dates published. A son born.

1848(?): son, Thomas Matthew, born.

1849-51: revised Beatson's Index, published as Book of Dignities by Longmans (1851).

1850s: engaged on biographical work for Tegg, revision of classical work for Bohn, 4th-7th editions of Dates; 7th edition finished by Benjamin Vincent, librarian of the London Institution.

January 1850: First application to Royal Literary Fund: granted £50.

August 1851: sponsored Eliza, widow of T M Hughes, in an application to the Literary Fund.

October 1851: Book of Dignities published and 5th edition of Dates.

24 October 1852: fell downstairs, having started work on the Book of Sovereigns.

22 November: second application to Literary Fund: granted £50.

1853: 6th edition of the Dates. Still at work on Book of Sovereigns. Third application to Literary Fund: granted £60.

1854: Alaric Watts applies to Charles Dickens for help from the Guild of Literature; grant inadmissible but Charles Dickens gives help out of own pocket: Sir John Barrow gets Haydn post as Extra Clerk at Admiralty (June 1854-Easter 1855).

1855: stroke leaving left side paralysed and sight and memory affected. Easter Tuesday, fourth application to Literary Fund made on his behalf by wife in May: £50 granted. Advance on 7th edition of Dates, £40. Mrs Haydn buys stationery shop and circulating library, 13 Crawley Street, Oakley Square, Euston. 12-year-old son assists with newspaper delivery.

1 January 1856: granted Civil List Pension, £25 p.a.

17 January: dies at Crawley Street in presence of wife and brother-in-law.

15 February: Mary Haydn applies to Literary Fund: granted £25.

1857: youngest son Thomas, elected to St Anne's Society (charity school) through good offices of Shaftesbury and others.

1878: Julia Rae (née Haydn), daughter of first marriage, applies to Literary Fund: application refused because rules permit grant to one relict: case closed.

Appendix II: Manuscript Sources and a List of Haydn's Published Work

A Autograph Letters (cited in footnotes by AL number)

From Joseph and Mary Haydn to Edward Moxon:

1 From 44 Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn, Wednesday, 18 January n.y. (from Joseph Haydn, hereafter J H).

2 From 44 Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn, Thursday, n.d. (from J H).

3 From 13 Crawley Street, Oakley Square, n.d. (from Mary Haydn, hereafter M H).

4 From 44 Carey Street, Monday, 31 October n.y. (from J H).

5 Tuesday Evening, n.d. (from J H).

6 Admiralty, Tuesday, n.d. 1854 (from J H).

7 From Admiralty, Whitehall, Tuesday, 16 January 1855 (from J H).

8 Receipt on account of work on 7th edition of the Dates, 17 January 1855 (from Edward Moxon, hereafter E M, signed M H).

9 Receipt (in J H's hand) for £5, 29 March 1855.

10 From 13 Crawley Street, 16 June 1855 (from M H).

11 Draft subscription appeal with letter n.d. (from J H).

12 From 11 Carey Street, Tuesday n.d. (from J H).

13 Wednesday, 21 November 1855 (from J H).

From Joseph Haydn to Alfred Bunn:

14 From Crawley Street, Oakley Square, 11 November 1855.

15 From Crawley Street, Oakley Square, 11 December 1856 [1855].

To Joseph Haydn from:

16 Octavian Blewitt, from the Royal Literary Fund, 73 Great Russell Street, 12 March 1853.

17 William Longman, from Paternoster Row, 28 October 1851.

18 Edward Moxon, Friday n.d.

19 Henry Reeve, from Whitehall, 1 November 1851.

From Alfred Bunn to Edward Moxon:

20 From 6 Chandos Street, Cavendish Square, 25 March n.y.

B From the Archives of the Royal Literary Fund

(i) Registered Case No. 1239. Mr Joseph Haydn, formerly Editor of the Dublin Mail. (Each application consists of a printed form filled in by the applicant with attendant correspondence.)

1st Application: 9 January 1850. (Includes letters of recommendation from Daniel O'Connell, Dr Dodd, S L Gifford, Lady Mole, Sheridan Knowles.)

2nd Application: November 1851. (Includes letters from Joseph Haydn, Gifford, Sheridan Knowles, and others.)

3rd Application: November 1853. (Includes letters from Joseph Haydn, John Barrow, Crofton Croker, Gifford, Alaric Watts.)

4th Application: 1855. (Includes letters from Joseph Haydn announcing £100 from Lord John Russell, from Mary Haydn, John Barrow, and Lionel Beale.)

Application from Mary Haydn: February 1856. (Includes letters from Mary Haydn, John Barrow, Charles Dickens [copy in Alaric Watts's hand], Alaric Watts, and account of sums paid for the first seven editions of the Dates, in Moxon's hand.)

Application from Mrs Julia Rae (née Haydn): 1878. (Assistance refused, case closed.)

(ii) The Claims of Literature: the Origin, Motives, Objects and Transactions of the Society for the Establishment of a Literary Fund (1802), 8° (Includes several essays by David Williams, founder of the Literary Fund.)

(iii) Thomas Morris, A General View of the Life and Writings of the Rev. David Williams (1792), 8°.

C From the Library of the University of Reading

Longman Archives

Divide Ledger D4, p. 257.

Divide Ledger D5, pp. 177 and 239.

Chronological Register no. 1, p. 84.

(These give details of costs, expenses, review copies etc. of The Book of Dignities, 1851-1876.)

D Joseph Haydn's Printed Works

Thomas Ashe, A History of the Azores, or Western Islands. Containing an Account of the Government, Laws, and Religion, the Manners, Ceremonies, and Character of the Inhabitants; and Demonstrating the Importance of these Valuable Islands to the British Empire. Illustrated by Maps and Other Engravings (London, for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, Paternoster Row, 1813), 4° (Preface signed by Joseph Haydn and dated 31 October 1811.)

Joseph Haydn, The Dictionary of Dates and Universal Reference, Relating to all Ages and Nations; Comprehending every remarkable Occurence, Ancient and Modern, the Foundation, Laws, and Government of Countries - Their Progress in Civilization, Industry, and Science - Their Achievements in Arms - The Political and Social Transactions of the British Empire - Its Civil, Military and Religious Institutions - the Origin and Achievement of Human Arts and Inventions, with Copious Details of England, Scotland, and Ireland; the whole Comprehending a Body of Information, Classical, Political and Domestic, from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time (London, Edward Moxon, Dover Street, MDCCXLI), 8°.

2nd ed. 1843 (no copy traced).

3rd ed. 1845.

4th ed. (no copy traced).

5th ed. 1851.

6th ed. 1853.

7th ed. 1855 (with additions and corrections by Benjamin Vincent).

8th ed. 1857.

9th ed. 1860.

10th ed. 1861.

11th ed. 1863 [1862].

12th ed. 1866.

Authorized American ed. published by G P Putnam, 1867.

13th ed. 1868.

14th ed. 1873.

15th ed. 1876.

16th ed. 1878.

17th ed. 1881.

18th ed. 1885.

19th ed. 1890, 91.

20th ed. 1892.

21st ed. 1895.

22nd ed. 1898.

23rd ed. 1904 (by the late Benjamin Vincent).

24th ed. 1901.

25th ed. 1910.

Dover Books reprint, 1969.

The first six editions were complied by Joseph Haydn alone. Benjamin Vincent was called in at the time of Haydn's fatal illness in 1855 to complete work on the 7th edition. The later editions, 8th to 25th, were all edited by Vincent, the last three being posthumous. Ward Lock, successors to Edward Moxon, were the publishers from the 14th edition 1873.

Samuel Lewis (the Elder), Topographical Dictionary of Ireland Comprising the Several Counties, Boroughs, Corporate, Market and Post Towns, Parishes and Villages, with Historical and Statistical Descriptions … Embellished with Engravings, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, S. Lewis & Co., MDCCCXLII), 4°.

Samuel Lewis (the Elder), Topographical Dictionary of England, Comprising the Several Counties, Cities, Boroughs, Corporate and Market Towns, Parishes and Townships, and the Islands of Guernsey, Jersey and Man, with Historical and Statistical Descriptions … Embellished with Engravings, 7th ed., 4 vols. (London, S. Lewis & Co., MDCCCXLIX), 4°.

Haydn, by his own account given to the R L F, also revised the 5th ed. (1842) and the 6th ed. for which no copy has been traced.

Samuel Lewis (the Elder), Topographical Dictionary of Wales Comprising the Several Counties, Cities, Boroughs, and Market Towns, Parishes, Chapelries, and Townships, with Historical and Statistical Descriptions … Embellished with Engravings, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, S Lewis & Co., MDCCCXLIX), 4°.

Haydn, by his own account also edited the previous 3rd ed. of 1843.

Samuel Lewis (the Elder), Topographical Dictionary of Scotland Comprising the Several Counties, Islands, Cities, Burghs and Market Towns, Parishes, and Principal Villages, with Historical and Statistical Descriptions … Embellished with Engravings, new ed., 2 vols. (London, S. Lewis & Co., MDCCCXLVI), 4°.

There is no reference to Joseph Haydn's hand in the works themselves, but he told the R L F that he revised all these Dictionaries (1842-9).

Joseph Haydn, (Author of the Dictionary of Dates and compiler of Various Works), The Book of Dignities - Containing Lists of the Official Personages of the British Empire, Civil, Diplomatic, Heraldic, Judicial, Ecclesiastical, Municipal, Naval and Military from the Earliest Periods to the Present Time: Together with the Sovereigns and Rulers of the World … and Numerous other Lists founded on Beatson's Political Index Modernised, Remodelled and and Brought down to 1851, (London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851), 8°.

Horace Ockerby, The Book of Dignities … Contained to the Present Times, 3rd ed., (London, W H Allen, 1890, 3rd ed., 1894), 4°.

E Newspapers and Journals with which Haydn was concerned

The Stage: A Theatrical Paper Published Daily … Containing Criticism on the Performances, Each Night, at the New Theatre Royal, Dublin, Dissertations on the British Drama, vol. 1 (no more published), (Dublin, 9 April to 19 May 1821).

Edited and written by Frederick W Conway and Joseph T Haydn. One week before ceasing publication it changed from being a daily to being a weekly.

Dublin Evening Mail, (Dublin, 3 February 1823 to 24 November 1828, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays).

Haydn was founding editor. No complete run has been traced. The British Library (Colindale) has Haydn's copy of the opening number, superseded by a printed prospectus, marked up by (or for) the printer.

The Statesman and Patriot, (Dublin, 1828-9, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays).

Haydn was founding editor of The Statesman (1828). No complete run of this paper has been traced. It was an amalgamation of two papers, The Statesman and The Patriot.

The Limerick Star and Evening Post, (Limerick, 7 February 1834 to 11 May 1838?, Tuesdays and Fridays).

Haydn was editor and probably founder. He told the R L F he was projecting a journal in Limerick in 1833. No complete run has been traced.

The Limerick Times, (Limerick 1837-9?).

Haydn was editor of the journal at some point.

Haydn also contributed (according to his account to the R L F) to: The Courier and Evening Gazette, (London, September 1792-1832) (contributions not identified), and to Bolster's Quarterly or the Magazine of Ireland, (Cork, 1828-31).