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Abstract
This article examines the records of the library of Queen Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737), wife of George II, focusing on the holdings of English poetry, drama, and prose fiction. It argues that Caroline’s English literary patronage has been underestimated, and that several members of her court were also active literary patrons. Looking at Caroline’s library can help us understand the nature and extent of early Hanoverian court patronage.
Notes
All the material in the British Library cited below is © The British Library Board. Use of material in the Royal Archives and Royal Library, Windsor is by the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
1 Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad (1728–43) is a notorious example. See Pope, The Dunciad in Four Books, ed. by Valerie Rumbold (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 1999).
2 See Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
3 See Emma Jay, ‘Queen Caroline’s Library and its European Contexts’, Book History, 9 (2006), 31–55; María Luisa López-Vidreiro, The Polished Cornerstone of the Temple: Queenly Libraries of the Enlightenment (London: British Library, 2005); John Goldfinch, ‘Royal Libraries in the King’s Library’, in 1000 Years of Royal Books and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathleen Doyle and Scot McKendrick (London: British Library, 2013), pp. 213–36 (pp. 219–24).
4 London, British Library (hereafter BL), King’s 308, catalogue of Caroline’s English plays, 1722–[29].
5 BL, C.120.h.6 (6–7), catalogues of Caroline’s library, [1727–42]. Goldfinch (p. 220) suggests that one of these catalogues originated in Hanover before 1714.
6 BL, Add. MS 11511, Caroline’s library catalogue, [1741].
7 Windsor, Royal Library, RLW 1028932, Caroline’s library catalogue, 1743–[60].
8 For more detail, see Jay, pp. 37–42.
9 H. M. Colvin et al., The History of the King’s Works, 6 vols (London: HMSO, 1963–73), v, pp. 242–43.
10 Katherine Eustace, Michael Rysbrack: Sculptor 1694–1770 (Bristol: City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, 1982), pp. 135–37; Richard Yeo, Encyclopaedic Visions: Scientific Dictionaries and Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 222–45.
11 Kew, The National Archives, LC 9/376, rough, imperfect and duplicate account books, part 2, accounts to Lady Day 1737.
12 The National Archives, LC 9/376, part 2, accounts to Michaelmas 1737.
13 Ibid., accounts to Midsummer 1741.
14 Ibid., accounts to Lady Day 1735 and Michaelmas 1736.
15 Jay, p. 34.
16 See Joanna Marschner, ‘Queen Caroline of Anspach and the European Princely Museum Tradition’, in Queenship in Britain 1660–1837: Royal Patronage, Court Culture and Dynastic Politics, ed. by Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 130–42.
17 Karl Heinz Weimann, ‘Hannover 1: Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek: Bestandgeschichte’, in Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, ed. by Bernhard Fabian, 27 vols (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1992–2000), ii:2: Niedersachsen H–Z, ed. by Paul Raabe (1998), pp. 18–27 (p. 20).
18 Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek: Kulturgeschichte einer Sammlung, ed. by Michael Knoche (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1999).
19 Jay, pp. 34–37.
20 Isobel Grundy, ‘Women and Print: Readers, Writers and the Market’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ed. by John Barnard, D. J. McKitterick, and I. R. Wilson, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–2011), v: 1695–1830, ed. by Michael F. Suarez SJ and Michael L. Turner (2009), pp. 146–59 (p. 148).
21 Clarissa Campbell Orr, ‘Lost Royal Libraries and Hanoverian Court Culture’, in Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity, ed. by James Raven (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 163–80 (p. 169).
22 Tracy Borman, Henrietta Howard: King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007).
23 Barbara M. Benedict, ‘Reading Collections: The Literary Discourse of Eighteenth-Century Libraries’, in Bookish Histories: Books, Literature, and Commercial Modernity, 1700–1900, ed. by Ina Ferris and Paul Keen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 169–95 (pp. 175, 188).
24 Jay, p. 36.
25 On foreign booksellers setting up business in London, see P. G. Hoftijzer and O. S. Lankhorst, ‘Continental Imports to Britain, 1695–1740’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, v, ed. by Suarez and Turner, pp. 513–22. On Caroline and Vaillant, see Jay, p. 38.
26 Jay, pp. 34, 43.
27 BL, Add. MS 11511. For an analysis of the percentages of subjects and languages, see López-Vidreiro, fig. 22.
28 John, Lord Hervey, Some Materials towards Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, ed. by Romney Sedgwick, 3 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswode, 1931), i, p. 262.
29 Tracts and Pamphlets by Richard Steele, ed. by Rae Blanchard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1944), pp. 453–68; Windsor, Royal Archives, RA GEO/ADD28/53, Caroline to Mrs Clayton, [March 1719].
30 Hervey, i, pp. 261–62.
31 Ray Desmond, Kew: A History of the Royal Botanic Gardens (London: Harvill, 1995), pp. 1–19.
32 See David Nokes, John Gay: A Profession of Friendship. A Critical Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 161–72.
33 The Letters of John Gay, ed. by C. F. Burgess (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 12, 13.
34 Die Werke von Leibniz gemäß seinem handschriftlichen Nachlasse in der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover, ser. 1: Historisch-politische und staatswissenschaftliche Schriften, ed. by Onno Klopp, 11 vols (Hanover: Klindworth’s Verlag, 1864–84), xi (1884), 49, 50.
35 John Gay: Dramatic Works, ed. by John Fuller, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), i, p. 344.
36 BL, Add. MS 11511, p. 175 (citations are based on the page numbers marked in the manuscript); The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. by Harold Williams, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963–65), iv, p. 99.
37 Nokes, pp. 398–406.
38 ‘A True Tale’, in Mary Barber, Poems on Several Occasions (London: C. Rivington, 1734), p. 12.
39 Windsor, Royal Archives, RA GEO/MAIN/54021, Caroline’s accounts, 1730–33. See Clarence Tracy, The Artificial Bastard: A Biography of Richard Savage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953).
40 Samuel Johnson, Life of Savage, ed. by Clarence Tracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 77, 81.
41 See Rose Mary Davis, Stephen Duck, The Thresher Poet (Orono, ME: Maine University Press, 1926).
42 Johnson, p. 103.
43 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 176, 187.
44 Ibid., p. 169.
45 Ibid., p. 165.
46 Ibid., p. 176. I have not found examples of Caroline subscribing to English literary works that were not in her library collection.
47 See W. A. Speck, ‘Politicians, Peers, and Publication by Subscription 1700–50’, in Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. by Isabel Rivers (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982), pp. 47–68 (pp. 55, 56).
48 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 187, 188, 187.
49 The London Stage Part 2: 1700–1729, ed. by Emmett L. Avery, 2 vols (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960), ii, p. 528.
50 BL, Add. MS 11511, p. 168.
51 Ibid., pp. 6, 175, 207. On the Countess, Rowe, and Watts, see Helen Sard Hughes, The Gentle Hertford: Her Life and Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1940), pp. 4–5, 23–24, 130, 353–54.
52 See Helen Sard Hughes, ‘Thomson and the Countess of Hertford’, Modern Philology, 25 (1927–28), 439–68; Helen Sard Hughes, ‘Thomson and Lady Hertford Again’, Modern Philology, 28 (1930–31), 468–70; Alexander Lindsay, ‘Thomson and the Countess of Hertford Once More’, Review of English Studies, 47 (1996), 539–41.
53 Johnson, pp. 36–38.
54 On the concept, see John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
55 Thomas Cooke’s 1728 translation of Hesiod had a particularly illustrious list. Caroline did not subscribe to it, though she owned a copy. See Arthur Sherbo, ‘“Hesiod” Cooke and the Subscription Game’, Studies in Bibliography, 41 (1988), 267–70.
56 See Harold Forster, Edward Young: The Poet of the Night Thoughts 1683–1765 (Harleston: Erskine Press, 1986), pp. 108, 120–21.
57 On the Whig tradition, see Abigail Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture, 1681–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
58 Peter Smithers, The Life of Joseph Addison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 108, 240–41, 293, 297.
59 London Stage Part 2, ed. by Avery, i, p. 337.
60 See Dustin Griffin, Literary Patronage in England, 1650–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 51–55, 156–57.
61 John Oldmixon, Memoirs of the Press, Historical and Political, for Thirty Years Past, from 1710 to 1740 (London: T. Cox, 1742), pp. 46–48, 55–56.
62 BL, Add. MS 11511, p. 176.
63 Christine Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725–1742 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 46–67; Goldfinch, p. 224.
64 BL, Add. MS 11511, p. 176; Pope, Dunciad in Four Books, p. 95, editor’s note.
65 Pope, Dunciad in Four Books, pp. 249–50, editor’s note to iv:233.
66 Unfortunately, her surviving account books stop at 1733, but it would have been interesting to see how she responded when Theophilus Cibber took a splinter group of Drury Lane players to the Haymarket in 1733–34.
67 The exact sums were £225 15s. 0d. (Wilks), £126 0s. 0d. (Rich), £52 10. 0d. (Cibber), and £2252 0s. 0d. (Kipling). I derived these totals by adding up the individual figures in her accounts: see Windsor, Royal Archives, RA EB/EB/18, fol. [8]r; RA GEO/MAIN/53998; RA GEO/MAIN/54011; RA GEO/MAIN/54020.
68 E.g. London Stage Part 2, ed. by Avery, i, p. 440.
69 The London Stage Part 3: 1729–1747, ed. by Arthur H. Scouten, 2 vols (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961), i, p. 120.
70 The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. by George Sherburn, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), i, p. 407; Diary of Mary Countess Cowper, Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales. 1714–1720, ed. by the Hon. Spencer Cowper, 2nd edn (London: John Murray, 1865), pp. 46–47.
71 London Stage Part 2, ed. by Avery, i, p. 440; ii, pp. 696, 613; London Stage Part 3, ed. by Scouten, i, p. 194; London Stage Part 2, ed. by Avery, ii, p. 956.
72 Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, iii, p. 441.
73 See Harry William Pedicord, ‘By their Majesties’ Command’: The House of Hanover at the London Theatres, 1714–1800 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1991), pp. 7, 9, 15–20, 25–27; London Stage Part 2, ed. by Avery, ii, pp. 1005–06, 1007, 1035; London Stage Part 3, ed. by Scouten, i, p. 8.
74 London Stage Part 2, ed. by Avery, ii, p. 960.
75 BL, Add. MS 11511, p. 187.
76 London Stage Part 2, ed. by Avery, i, p. 334.
77 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 169, 184, 185, 186; Windsor, Royal Library, RLW 1028932, Caroline’s library catalogue, p. 156.
78 BL, King’s 308, fols [17]v, [7]r.
79 The Works of Mrs Catharine Cockburn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical, ed. by Thomas Birch, 2 vols (London: J. and P. Knapton, 1751), i, p. xxxviii; ii, pp. 271, 291, 572–75. Cf. Gentleman’s Magazine, 7 (1737), 308.
80 Works of Mrs Catharine Cockburn, i, pp. xviii–xix. See also Anne Kelley, Catharine Trotter: An Early Modern Woman Writer in the Vanguard of Feminism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
81 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 168, 184, 173, 168, 173. See Kathleen M. Lynch, Jacob Tonson: Kit-Cat Publisher (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971).
82 On the monumentality of Pope’s 1717 Works, see James McLaverty, Pope, Print and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 46–81.
83 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 211, 208.
84 Ibid., p. 175. Caroline’s copy was BL 238.g.40-44. See G. Legman, ‘Pills to Purge Melancholy: A Bibliographical Note’, Midwest Folklore, 9 (1959), 89–102.
85 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 169, 172, 188.
86 See London Stage Part 3, ed. by Scouten, i, pp. cxxi–cxxii; Gerrard, pp. 119–20, 172–73, 220. On the grottoes, see Judith Colton, ‘Kent’s Hermitage for Caroline at Richmond’, Architectura, 4 (1974), 181–91; Judith Colton, ‘Merlin’s Cave and Queen Caroline: Garden Art as Political Propaganda’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 10 (1976–77), 1–20.
87 Daily Advertiser, quoted in London Stage Part 3, ed. by Scouten, i, p. lxxxiv.
88 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1 (1731), 307.
89 London Stage Part 3, ed. by Scouten, i, p. 164.
90 See BL, King’s 313, Hermitage verses, 1732.
91 See BL, Add. MS 32687, Newcastle Papers vol. ii, fols 468r–485r. I am grateful to Philip Woodfine for drawing my attention to these letters.
92 Ibid., fol. 469r. For the poem, see ‘Myrtilus et Lycidas, orti de Regibus ambo ...’ and ‘Two rival Youths, of Royal Race ...’, in BL, King’s 313, fols 44r, 45r–46r.
93 Ibid., fol. 469v.
94 Ibid., fol. 472r. Stone’s poem was never translated: see ‘O Sacra condis Quæ penetralia ...’, in BL, King’s 313, fols 38r–39r.
95 Ibid., fol. 492v.
96 See Lusus Westmonasterienses, sive Epigrammatum et poëmatum minorum delectus, quibus adjicitur, nunc primùm edita, solitudio regia, ed. by Robert Prior (Westminster, 1734), pp. [269]–90.
97 On the survival of manuscript culture, see Margaret J. M. Ezell, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 21–44. Earlier examples are given in Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, ed. by Scott McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle (London: British Library, 2011).
98 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 171–72.
99 John Gay’s A Letter to a Lady, Occasion’d by the Arrival of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales (1714) was republished in his Poems on Several Occasions, 2 vols (London: Jacob Tonson and Bernard Lintot, 1720), ii, pp. [271]–79.
100 For a list of some of the newspaper sources of the laureate odes up to 1737, see Rosamond McGuinness, English Court Odes 1660–1820 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 28–32.
101 BL, C.120.h.6 (6), fol. [88]v. The cataloguer uses the term ‘Biblioteque’ here, and throughout the notes this term seems to imply the St James’s collection, not the smaller collections at Richmond and elsewhere.
102 See The Poetical Works of Richard Savage, ed. by Clarence Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 183.
103 Jay, p. 43; See Richard Terry, Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past 1660–1781 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 93–141.
104 See Jonathan Brody Kramnick, Making the English Canon: Print-Capitalism and the Cultural Past, 1700–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Trevor Ross, The Making of the English Literary Canon: From the Middle Ages to the Late Eighteenth Century (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998).
105 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 173–74.
106 Ibid., pp. 174, 174–76.
107 Ibid., pp. 184–88.
108 On these definitions, see Terry, pp. 35–36. On the marketing of literary classics, see Ezell, pp. 123–39.
109 Grangerized copy of Thomas Pennant, Some Account of London [...]. The Fourth Edition, with Considerable Additions (London: Robert Faulder, 1805) in London, Sir John Soane’s Museum, 147/198.
110 BL, Add. MS 11511, pp. 110, 60.
111 Ibid., p. 6.
112 Ibid., p. 215.
113 Ibid., pp. 173, 188.
114 Ibid., p. 207.
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Notes on contributors
Emma Jay
Emma Jay works at The National Archives as engagement manager for archives in the east of England. She wrote her doctorate on the literary culture surrounding Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II, and she continues to research eighteenth-century court culture and English literature.