Title and statement of responsibility area
Title proper
Forster and Dyce Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts collection
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Fonds
Repository
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Issuing jurisdiction and denomination (philatelic)
Dates of creation area
Date(s)
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[ca. 1735]-1762 (Creation)
- Creator
- Richardson, Samuel
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[ca. 1735]-1762 (Creation)
- Creator
- Swift, Jonathan
Physical description area
Physical description
16 microfilm reels : positive
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Archival description area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Samuel Richardson (baptised 19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) was an English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). Richardson was an established printer and publisher for most of his life and printed almost 500 different works, including journals and magazines. He was also known to collaborate closely with the London bookseller Andrew Millar on several occasions.
At a very early age, Richardson was apprenticed to a printer, whose daughter he eventually married. He lost his first wife along with their five sons, and eventually remarried. With his second wife, he had four daughters who reached adulthood, but no male heirs to continue running the printing business. While his print shop slowly ran down, he wrote his first novel at the age of 51 and immediately became one of the more popular and admired writers of his time.
Richardson knew leading figures in 18th-century England, including Samuel Johnson and Sarah Fielding. He was also close friends with the eminent physician and behmenist George Cheyne and with the theologian and writer William Law, whose books he printed. At the special request of William Law, Richardson printed various poems by John Byrom. In the London literary world, he was a rival of Henry Fielding, and the two responded to each other's literary styles in their own novels.
His name was on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list established by the Pope containing the names of books that Catholics were not allowed to read.
Name of creator
Biographical history
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Swift is remembered for works such as A Tale of a Tub (1704), An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity (1712), Gulliver's Travels (1726), and A Modest Proposal (1729). He is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier – or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.
His deadpan, ironic writing style, particularly in A Modest Proposal, has led to such satire being subsequently termed "Swiftian".
Custodial history
The material in this collection comes from the private libraries of John Forster, biographer, editor and scholar; and the Rev. Alexander Dyce, Shakespeare scholar and editor of Elizabethan dramatists. The manuscript riches of the Forster and Dyce Collections represent one of the most substantial compilations of major literary works available from one source. Documenting the vast majority of literary activity in Britain this collection contains the original manuscripts, papers, letters and ephemera of some of the greatest literary figures of all time.
Scope and content
The "Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts" collection provides a wealth of source material on a range of major writers. John Forster owned the largest collection of Samuel Richardson manuscripts in existence. Forty-seven poems, including odes, sonnets, dramatic prologues and epilogues are included, along with the major archive of his correspondence. Eight-hundred and fifty letters are reproduced, many relating to his work on the major novels "Pamela," "Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison." A vast collection of literary manuscripts, letters and papers of Jonathan Swift are also included in Part Two. Among them is Swift's private diary, that dates from 1727, many personal accounts, correspondence, verses, riddles, a problematic first edition of "Gulliver's Travels" with manuscript alterations that may be autograph and the Dublin Inquisition's Commission of Lunacy on Swift of 1742. Manuscripts of Samuel Johnson include the proof sheets of his "Lives of the English Poets," along with varied correspondence. Correspondence of major authors of the period include that of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Mrs. (Elizabeth) Inchbald, Robert Burns, Edmund Burke, William Cowper, Horace Walpole and David Hume. Some early letters of William Wordsworth date from 1797 and there is a large volume of verse by James Thomson.
Notes area
Physical condition
Immediate source of acquisition
Purchase.
Arrangement
Language of material
- English
Script of material
Location of originals
MF 2947-2962
Availability of other formats
Restrictions on access
None
Terms governing use, reproduction, and publication
Queen's University Archives provides this material for personal study only. It does not provide research services for this material. Permission to publish must be obtained from property holder.