Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-20T01:47:48.536Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Edmund Burks and the Two Annual Registers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2021

Bertram D. Sarason
Bertram D. Sarason*
Affiliation:
New Haven State Teachers College New Haven, Conn.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

All of Burke's major biographers have said that he edited Dodsley's Annual Register and wrote its famous Historical Article from 1758 to at least twenty-five years beyond that time. Such statements have been made without the support of an iota of evidence. As a result Burke's share in the Annual Register still remains to be determined. The subject has held the interest of contemporary scholars. Donald Cross Bryant in his account of Burke's literary friendships devotes a separate chapter to the problem. The most recent study of Burke, Thomas A. Copeland's Our Eminent Friend Edmund Burke (New Haven, 1949), contains two such chapters. The matter receives special consideration in Sir Philip Magnus' life of Burke, the latest biography as of today. Burke's other biographers were also interested in his editorship. Macknight observed that “the value ... of the Annual Registers to one who should undertake to write Burke's political history, cannot be exaggerated” (I, XI). Robert Murray says, “It is a valuable source of information on the growth of his thought from 1758 to 1791” (p. 83).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , June 1953 , pp. 496 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 496 note 1 Charles McCormick, The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (London, 1797), pp. 30-31; Robert Bisset, The Life of Edmund Burke (London, 1798), p. 50-, James Prior, Life of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, 5th ed. (London, 1854), pp. 54-56; Thomas Macknight, History of the Life and Time, of Edmund Burke (London, 1858), I, ix-xi; Robert Murray, Edmund Burke (Oxford, 1931), p. 83.

page 496 note 2 “Edmund Barke and His Literary Friends,” Washington unit. Studies (St. Louis, 1939), pp. 289-297.

page 496 note 3 Copeland had previously published his findings in PMLA, LIV (1939), 223-245, and LVII (1942), 446-468. References to Copeland that follow are to his book mentioned above.

page 496 note 4 Edmund Burke, a Life (London, 1939), App. 2. Magnus uses Copeland's work for his sources.

page 496 note 5 Quoted by Copeland, p. 99. Cf. Bryant, p. 295.

page 497 note 6 These were discovered by James Crossley who reported them in 1851 to Notes meed Queries, 1st Ser, II, 441. These receipts are dated as early as 1767 and as late as 1791. Two more are now in the Morgan Library, New York. The first is dated 6 Nov. 1767; the second, 30 Jan. 1793. Dr. Bryant calls these papers “specific evidence which fits the picture and is opposed only by allegation, conjecture, and casual reference to internal evidence” (p. 254).

page 497 note 7 St. James's, Chronicle, 18-20, 20-22, 25-27, and 29-31 Jan. 1791. These charges were made in a series of open letters addressed to Dodsley. Scott compiled them in a book, the publication of which was announced in the same newspaper on 12-14 April 1791. The Monthly Review took up Scott's cause (IV (1791), 451). But The Gazeieer and New Daily Advertiser, 27 Jan. 1791, characterized Scott's writings by pointing oat that “Major Scott's Utters to the Editor of the Annual Register have very properly been recognised at the Stamp Office at Advertisements to the Trial of Warren Hastinga. ”

page 498 note 8 Copeland, p. 117.

page 498 note 9 Rivington Register for 1791, Pref; cf. Septimus Rivington, The Publishing House of Rivington (London, 1919), p. 56.

page 499 note 10 As well as the Evening Mail ail, the Morning Put mi Gazeteer, the Gamal Evening Post, the Oracle and Daily Advertiser, the Gazeteer ami Net, Doily Advertiser, and the Oracle ami Public Advertiser.

page 499 note 11 And in the Oracle and Public Advertiser of 28 Aug. and 1 Sept. 1798.

page 499 note 12 This advertisement was repeated in the St. James', Chronicle of 4-6 Sept 1798, in The Morning Herald of 27,29 Aug, 5, 8 Sept, the Oracle Public Advertiser of 27 Aug, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 Sept., the General Evening Pott of 8 Sept., and the Morning Pott und Gazeteer of 27 Aug. and 6 Sept.

page 500 note 13 In advertisements in the St. James's Chronicle of 25-27 Sept, 2-4, 18-20 Oct 1798, and in the London Chronicle of 20-22 Sept., and 2-4 Oct.

page 500 note 14 This advertisement also appeared in the St. James'sChronicle at 15-18 Sept 1798, the Morning Herald of 15 and 17 Sept., the Oracle and Daily Advertiser of 20 Sept., the General EveningPast of 18 Sept, and 9, 11, 13, 16 Oct

page 501 note 15 This advertisement also appeared in the same paper on 15-18 Sept. 1798, as well at in the Morning Herald of 20-22 Sept., and the Morning Post and Gaseteer of 20 Sept

page 501 note 16 DNB, XXIV, 308; Biographical Memoir, of Luke Hansard, Esq. (London, 1829), pp. 10-11.

page 501 note 17 This advertisement also appeared in the Oracle and Daily Advertiser tat 29 Sept. 1798, the Evening Mail for3 Oct, the General Evening Post for29 Sept and 6 and 8 Oct, the London Chronicle for 2-4 Oct, and the Morning Herald for 2 and 8 Oct.

page 502 note 18 The error may be traced to the 19th-century bibliographer Lowndes, who wrote of the Rivington isiue as a “rival continuation.” Lowndes is the authority for the catalogue card of the Library of Congress. See William T. Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature(London, 1834), I, 48.

page 503 note 19 H&Q, 1st Ser., XII, 62. Cf. Gentleman's Mag LXXXVII, 1 (1817), 674.

page 507 note 20 The problem of the editorial assistants requires separate treatment. My tentative conclusions are as follows: The first assistant (1773-75) was probably Dr. John Campbell; the second might have been Walker King, although he does not fit English's description; French Laurence probably served for a brief period in 1787, not sufficiently long to be worth including in English's narrative; his brother Dr. Richard Laurence was certainly the third of the editors mentioned.

page 507 note 21 Bryant, p. 293.

page 507 note 22 Otridge Register for 1798, “Appendix to the Chronicle,” p. 178. Burke had received his pension five days before. Perhaps Burke's influence procured English this grant.

page 507 note 23 On 12 Aug. 1791 William Windham recorded: “I had called at Burke's in the morning and had accepted an invitation to dine at the Gray's Inn Coffee House, with O'Hara [a friend of Burke]. On the same day I had gone with Burke and Sir Joshua to see the Duke of Grafton. The dinner at O'Hara's was tar from unpleasant; there was a medley of odd people; one of whom, however, was very curious, a Mr. English, an Irishman, who writes the historical part of the ‘Annual Register’.” The Diary of William Windham, ed. rs. Henry Baring (London, 1866), pp. 233-234. Windham's diary reveals a dote association with Burke from 1784 on. John Morley in his Edmund Burke (London, 1879), p. 191, designates Windham as the chief spokesman for Burke's political ideas in 1794. Here then is testimony from a reliable source concerning English's work on the Register.

page 508 note 24 Gentleman's Mag., LXVIII (1798), 448-449.