Archive
Halliwell-Phillipps notebooks
Description
The collection consists of 128 volumes of mounted scraps, both printed and manuscript, cut from books, pamphlets and other sources dating from the 16th century onwards.
J O Halliwell-Phillips created these books at the time of compiling his edition of Shakespeare's works, published between 1853 and 1865 in 16 folio volumes. The notebooks were acquired in 1889 and are the property of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. The books from which the scraps were taken date from around 1600. According to his note inside most of the volumes, "these notes
are mainly the result of my readings in early English literature, but they include some critical observations of my own and a few derived form the works of others
.Many of the extracts have been taken by me from original copies of old books read for the purpose".
Each individual Shakespeare play or group of poems has one or more notebooks devoted to it, containing scraps chosen from a broad range of sources to illustrate words and phrases found in Shakespeare's works. Some scraps are identified by the compiler's brief holograph note alongside, for most there is no identifying information.