My Sentimental Library Collection

The collecting of books is inspired by a sentiment founded on reverence and hero worship. It would seem to follow that the more interesting the history of a particular copy of a book, the greater the appeal to the collector and the lover of literature.  If as Byron says, "a book's a book although there's nothing in it," surely a book is more than a book when the extra something in it takes the form of a presentation inscription by its author, or notes in the handwriting of a famous man who once owned and read it.

Harry B. Smith: A Sentimental Library 1914

I have more than a few books with that something extra in it in My Sentimental Library Collection.  These books give me a feeling of pleasure in knowing that a favorite author, a famous book collector, or someone else I admire once held this very book in his or her hands.  I get that same feeling when friends give me books.  And that is why their books stand tall on my bookshelves next to the spines of association copies in My Sentimental Library Collection.

One of my association copies is a book formerly owned by the English essayist and politician, Augustine Birrell (1850-1933).  The title of the book is Lectures on the French Revolution by Lord Acton, London, 1910.

Augustine Birrell added his ownership inscription on the half-title page:

And in the margins of the book, Birrell posted his thoughts on the French Revolution, liberty and other related subjects.  I found Birrell's marginalia relevant because he was the Irish Secretary at the time of the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916.  Birrell was sacked immediately after this rebellion.

This extra something led to my writing of the essay "Hither-unpublished Obiter Dicta,"  one of the essays published by the Caxton Club in Other People's Books:  Association Copies and the Stories They Tell, Chicago, 2011:

Lectures on the French Revolution isn't the only book in My Sentimental Library Collection formerly owned by Augustine Birrell.  I have his copy of The Coming of the Friars, London, 1889:

Now this copy really has something extra: Augustine Birrell's bookplate, Vincent Starrett's bookplate and autograph, Christopher Morley Jr.'s autograph, and last but not least, an autograph note from Christopher Morley to his son:

O.M. stands for "Old Mandarin," Christopher Morley's nickname.

Vincent Starrett appears five more times in My Sentimental Library Collection.

I have his copy of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb, New York, 1897.  We used this book to help catalogue Charles Lamb's library on Library Thing:

I have Starrett's copy of Dartmouth Verse 1922-1932, Hanover, 1932, given to him by one of the contributors, Alexander Laing, and with a lengthy and humorous inscription:

I have Starrett's copy of The Leigh Hunt Collection of Luther Albertus Brewer by J. Christian Bay, Cedar Rapids, 1933, given to him by the author:

And I have Starrett's copy of The Lovingood Papers 1964, Knoxville, 1964, given to him by Franklin Meine.  My friend Jonathan Meyers of St. Louis Books gave me this copy in 2006:

And last but not least, I have Harry B. Smith's copy of Vincent Starrett's book, Penny Wise and Book Foolish, New York, 1929:

Better known as one of America's great librettists, Harry Bache Smith (1860-1936), was the owner of perhaps the greatest collection of association copies in private hands.  His collection, which he called his Sentimental Library, contained association copies and presentation copies from the likes of Charles Dickens, Charles Lamb, Robert Browning, James Boswell, Leigh Hunt, and Alfred Tennyson, just to name a few.  Smith published a catalogue of his collection in 1914.  The complete title is A Sentimental Library:   Comprising Books Formerly Owned by Famous Writers, Presentation Copies, Manuscripts, and Drawings Collected and Described by Harry B. Smith. 

My copy of A Sentimental Library was formerly owned by Hugh Roberts Parrish (1900-1956), the nephew of Morris L. Parrish, whose  English Novelist Collection is at Princeton.  Hugh Roberts Parrish was no stranger to books himself, having worked in Philadelphia for Charles Sessler, Parrish and Co., and the A.S.W. Rosenbach Co..

Rosenbach bought Smith's collection.  When millionaires started buying up libraries in the early 1900s, Harry B. Smith could no longer compete with them, so he sold his Sentimental Library Collection en bloc to A. S. W. Rosenbach in 1915.

But Harry B. Smith continued to collect books.  He even tried his hand as a bookseller:

Mark Samuels Lasner browsed through Smith's bookseller catalogue when he visited my library in March 2010, and remarked that he thought Smith's prices were a bit high.  I agree:

Smith didn't have many sales at first, but he reissued his catalogue.  To further his own cause, he published a pamphlet containing glowing reviews and comments from the book world:

Smith had a second bookplate very similar to his librettist bookplate.  His friend Gene Buck engraved the bookplate for him. One of them is pasted in Smith's copy of Crowding Memories by Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Boston, 1920:

There was a second catalogue of Smith's library as well; an auction catalogue published after his death in 1936.  Crowding Memories is not listed in the catalogue, but Vincent Starrett's book, Penny Wise and Book Foolish is listed:

Of the many association copies in My Sentimental Library Collection, I have mentioned but a few.  By far, the most association copies are in my Mary Hyde Collection.  I will display and discuss my Mary Hyde Collection next month.

Finally, if you want to browse Harry B. Smith's Sentimental Library Collection, here is a link from Google Books.  But take your shoes off first!  Browsing this collection will knock your socks off!

Around the Dining Room Table: A View of My Shakespeare Collection

When I retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1989, I brought back about 200 books from England with me.  More than a handful of these books were books by or about Shakespeare.  I recorded these books in the very first catalogue of my library, citing   how much I paid for each book, and the source, with "B" denoting bookstore, "F" denoting book fair, and "A" denoting auction (the average exchange rate in the late 1980s was about $1.50 per £1).

Of these first Shakespeare books, there is nothing spectacular, monetary-wise.  The most I paid for one item was less than $13, and that was for the 1806 set:











Pleasing to the eye is the front cover of Sir Henry Lee's Life of William Shakespeare, displaying Shakespeare's coat of arms, but the cloth on the spine is badly faded.











These books that I brought back from England are the cornerstone of my Shakesepare Collection, and have a sentimental value that money can't buy.  Take for instance the third book on the list, the Shakespeare book with the first four pages of Intro missing.  This was my first ever bookbinding project and one of my first Shakespeare books.

These Shakespeare books, and their brothers and sisters that I have since acquired, have moved from room to room in our house here in Florida: from the living room, to the master bedroom, to the spare bedroom (converted into a library), to the hallway outside the library, and now to the dining room.  Yes, the dining room.

On one side of the dining room table is a cabinet containing my wife's Bing & Grondahl Plate Collection.  On the other side of the dining room table is my barrister bookcase, the new home of my Shakespeare Collection:

Wise bookmen have sat at this very same dining room table, ate lunch, and shared biblio talk with me:  first Paul Ruxin, and then Mark Samuels Lasner and Donald Farren.  If and when they return and sit around this dining room table, they can now view my Shakespeare Collection:

It is fitting that Shakespeare has found a home in my new barrister bookcase.  I received this barrister bookcase as an early birthday present from my wife.  And we celebrate Shakespeare's birthday in April. . . .Well, not everybody celebrated his birthday in April, thanks to the change of calendars . . .

On May 3, 1820, in an essay printed in his periodical, The Indicator, Leigh Hunt wrote,

"The fifth of May, making the due allowance of twelve days, the twenty third of April, according to the change of the Style, is the birthday of Shakespeare. Pleasant thoughts must be associated with him in everything.  If he is not to be born in April, he must be born in May. Nature will have her with him on her blithest holidays like her favourite lover. . . .

The favorite in my Shakespeare Collection is my married set of the First American Edition of Shakespeare's Works.  I almost sold this set in 2006 when I was anxiously awaiting approval of my disability retirement application.  And it is currently on consignment with a notable bookseller  SOLD!!

It is hard to believe that Shakespeare's works weren't published in America until 1795, yet that statement still holds true today.

But what is no longer true is that the frontispiece by Robert Field, in the first volume of the First American Edition of Shakespeare's Works is the First American Engraving of Shakespeare:

An article in an 1885 issue of Shakespeariana, a periodical I have in my Shakespeare Collection, heralded this portrait as the First American Portrait of Shakespeare
(click on image to enlarge):

This claim stood until the Shakespeare scholar, James G. McManaway, announced in the Spring 1961 issue of Shakespeare Quarterly that the First American Engraving of Shakespeare first appeared in a 1787 issue of The Columbian Magazine.  This engraving by James Trenchard is not even a frontispiece; it is an advertisement for a set of Shakespeare books sold by a Philadelphia bookseller:

 James Trenchard, one of the owners of The Columbian Magazine, engraved the advertisement himself.  The advertisement is inserted in the July 1787 issue of the Folger Shakespeare Library copy of The Columbian Magazine, and in the August 1787 issue of the Library Company of Philadelphia copy.  It is not in any issue in the Darlington Memorial Library copy at the University of Pittsburgh –– at least I couldn't find it!  The Darlington Memorial Library copy can be viewed online at archive.org.  Did someone swipe the engraving or was it never inserted in the periodical?  I notified Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh to physically check their copy in storage.

But there is  another contender besides Trenchard's engraving, and it is even a frontispiece!  In a 1917 Rosenbach Company catalogue, the renowned bookseller, A.S.W. Rosenbach, listed the following item:



Rosenbach was on target with the date.  Modern scholars cite 1794 as the date of publication of the Boston edition of this work.  S. Hill is Samuel Hill, a Boston engraver who is credited with engraving the portraits on the frontispiece of the Boston edition of Essays on Physiognomy  (the word physiognomy means a person's facial features).

A London edition of this work published in 1789 didn't have the frontispiece; the portraits were printed individually throughout the book.

In the portrait above, Shakespeare is facing in the opposite direction from Samuel Hill's portrait.  But surprisingly, Hill's portraits from the 1794 Boston edition were used as the frontispiece in another London edition published around 1800:

So even if Trenchard's engraving is disqualified from contention as being a mere advertisement,  Samuel Hill's engraving would be the winner as the First American Portrait of Shakespeare, and not Field's portrait from the First American Edition of Shakespeare's works.

 My set of the First American Edition of Shakespeare's works isn't even the oldest Shakespeare item in my library!   That honor goes to an odd volume of  Rowe's 1714 edition of Shakespeare's works, the first quarto edition published after the folios.  The title page and table of contents are lacking, but each play has its own frontispiece and title page:

Nicholas Rowe was the first Shakespeare editor to provide an extensive biography of Shakespeare.  Later editors would disapprove of his edition because the text of Shakespeare's plays is based on the text of the 1685 Fourth Folio and not on text of the First Folio.

I have one other married set of Shakespeare's Works, but these volumes are not in the  barrister bookcase.  In the barrister bookcase are odd volumes from an 1821 set formerly owned by the Ohio State Library, which I acquired to complete my set of this edition.  But these odd volumes are not compatible with the 19 of 21 volumes which are currently in  the bookcase  in the hallway outside of my library.  The odd volumes in the barrister bookcase do not have marbled edges.  And, unfortunately, they are smaller than the volumes in the hallway bookcase:

I have a number of other odd volumes of Shakespeare's works, most of which are in my barrister bookcase  Of note are odd volumes of The Bankside Shakespeare, a set of Shakespeare's works in parallel texts, published by the Shakespeare Society of New York beginning in the late 1800s.  On the left is the Players' text from the early quartos (1594-1622), and on the right is the Heminges and Condell text from the First Folio of 1623:

The newest addition to my Shakespeare Collection just arrived this week.   It is a two-volume set of Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps.  You may recall that I did my November 2011 blog post on him, and a December 2011 post on the Value of Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare.  My set is the 1898 tenth edition, and not of much value monetarily, but the books themselves contain a wealth of information.  The set is ex-library, and the spines have been crudely rebacked with two slightly different shades of green cloth, but I am not complaining.  After all, I acquired the set for less than six dollars, and with shipping included:

Not all of my Shakespeare books can be viewed from around the dining room table.  My association copies and gifts from friends are in my library room, as are two large odd volumes of the National Union Catalog, Volumes 540 and 541, covering the works of Shakespeare.  These books are too large for my barrister bookcase, as is an oversized volume of Shakespeare I bought when I worked at Waldenbooks in the 1990s.

Other recent additions include Shaksperiana: catalogue of all the books, pamphlets &c. relating to Shakspeare, by John Wilson, London, 1827, a gift from Per Rålamb, and Folomania! : stories behind Shakespeare's most important book, by Owen Williams, Washington, 2011, a gift from Paul Ruxin.  Thanks guys!

Without much ado, you can view these Shakespeare books and more on Library Thing.

On Or About Moi's Books About Books

Black's Law Dictionary defines the phrase "on or about" as a phrase used in reciting the date of an occurrence, to escape the necessity of being bound by the statement of an exact date.

I like that phrase! I will use it to help describe Moi's Books About Books Collection,  short for Moi Bibliomaniac's Books About Books Collection.

More people prefer the phrase "books on books" than "books about books." Google the former and you will receive on or about 2,540,000 results. Google the latter and you will receive on or about 377,000 results. But if you perform the search in Google Books mode, the results are much different. You will receive on or about 32,400 results for "books on books" and on or about 58,500 results for "books about books." From these results, I would venture to say that more bibliophiles prefer "books about books" over "books on books."

Now I can't tell you exactly when I started collecting books about books –– it was sometime in late 1985 –– but I can tell you the exact title and other bibliographical data of my first book about books: The Best Books: A Reader's Guide to the Choice of the Best Available Books (About 50,000) in Every Department of Science, Art, and Literature, With the Dates of the First and Last Editions and the Price, Size, and Publisher's Name of Each Book. A Contribution Towards a Systematic Bibliography by William Swan Sonnenschein, London, 1896. This book is known simply as Sonnenschein's Best Books. My wife found this book for me one weekend in late 1985 on the bargain table in Trinder's, a bookstore in a seventeenth-century building in Clare, England. I paid £1 for it, about $1.30 in American money.

I can also tell you when I first launched a website to display Moi's Books About Books: on or about Nov 21, 1999. It was the first of five webtv websistes I would create to display my book collections.  Its name? –– you guessed it–– Moi's Books About Books.  Today  I display a catalog of Moi's Books About Books on Library Thing, along with my other collections.

Yes, Moi's Books About Books is my largest collection –– 937 books (1,109 as of 11/15/15) –– almost one-third of my entire library.  Most of the books in Moi's Books About Books Collection are on the seven shelves along the south wall of my library.  Six of these seven shelves are exactly twelve inches high.

On the top shelf are Books About Books specifically selected because they are less than nine inches high.  Almost touching the ceiling is a spare set of Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual of English Literature, 5 books of essays by Augustine Birrell, 7 books from Henry B. Wheatley's Book-Lover's Library Series, and an assortment of  other smaller books, some of them belonging to other collections.

The next three rows below house what are mostly anecdotal books about book collecting arranged in alphabetical order.  Some of these books, you will notice, are part of My Sentimental Library Collection as well.  Having started collecting books while stationed in England in the late 1980s,  English bibliophiles are well represented in Moi's Books About Books Collection:  P.B.M. Allen, A. St. John Adcock, Augustine Birrell, Richard Booth, John Hill Burton, John Carter, Cyril Davenport, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Austin Dobson, Gilbert Fabes, Percy Fitzgerald, R. S. Garnett, Frederic Harrison, W. Carew Hazlitt, Alexander Ireland, Andrew Lang, Sir John Lubbock, Alfred W. Pollard, J. Roger Rees, and J. Herbert Slater to name more than a few.

And I have not ignored American bibliophiles in forming Moi's Books About Books Collection:  William Harris Arnold, Nicholas Basbanes, Luther Brewer, Eugene Field, Anne Fadiman, H. George Fletcher,  Helene Hanff, Laurence Hutton, Holbrook Jackson, Adrian H. Joline,  David Magee,  Brander Matthews, Christopher Morley, A. Edward Newton,  William Dana Orcutt,  Jean Peters, Lawrence Clark Powell, A. S. W. Rosenbach, Harry B. Smith, Vincent Starrett, William Targ, and John T. Winterich, to name more than a few.


Below those shelves is a shelf containing my reference books on book collectors, booksellers, publishers and printers.  Below that shelf is a shelf containing my books about bookplates, bookbinding, papermaking, and bibliography. On the bottom shelf are more bibliography books and some of my book-related periodicals.  On the floor below these seven shelves is my bookbinding equipment: two hot foil stamping machines, four boxes of letter type, two sewing presses and one finishing press.




On the east wall, to the right of the door are five shelves designed to store my oversized books.  Each shelf is on or about fifteen inches high. All but a few books on the top shelf are books by or about the Library of Congress.  Below that shelf are books about other libraries.  On the next shelf are the auction catalogues of two famous American book collectors:  John Quinn and Robert Hoe.  Also on this shelf are some of my oversized book-related periodicals.  The next shelf contains more bibliographies and more oversized book-related periodicals.  On the bottom shelf are oversized books, mostly from collections other than Moi's Books About Books Collection.

In case you're wondering what the thing is on the very top endshelf next to the door, here's a close-up view:

Do you know what it is?

 ––– Maestro! Christmas music please!

It's –– A  C-a-r-t-r-i-d-g-e  in  a  B-a-r-e  T-r-e-e. . .

. . . Speaking of books. . .

The remaining association copies from Moi's Books About Books Collection stand in the first section of the seven shelves on the east wall to the left of the door of my library.  This is the section where most of the books of My Sentimental Library Collection are located. The other sections contain my Charles Lamb, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell,  and Mary Hyde Collections. These seven shelves are the same dimensions height-wise as the seven shelves on the south wall of my library.

Below my work desk, and well out of foot range, are two big brown wicker baskets containing more book-related periodicals and loads of bookseller catalogues.

On the floor on the west wall in front of a bookcase containing my New York, Elements of Style, and Language Resources Collections is another big wicker basket containing still more bookseller catalogues.  And below my library table are more baskets containing fine press books and yes, more book-related periodicals.

And that, my friends, is a view of Moi's Books About Books Collection!

My Samuel Johnson Collection: Odd Volumes, Association Copies, and Other Interesting Items

. . . Every man is, or hopes to be an Idler.  Even those who seem to differ most from us are hastening to increase our fraternity; as peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy. . . .  The Idler, though sluggish, is yet alive, and may sometimes be stimulated to vigour and activity.  He may descend into profoundness, or tower into sublimity; for the diligence of an Idler is rapid and impetuous, as ponderous bodies forced into velocity move with violence proportionate to their weight . . . .

I read these words for the first time almost twenty-seven years ago in an antique store in England.  I  had picked up an odd volume of the Works of Samuel Johnson that was laying on top of a bookcase.  The words are from The Idler, the very first number, dated Saturday, April 15, 1758.  Little did I know when I first started reading this book,  that I would want more books by and about Samuel Johnson.  And more.  And more . . .

My first copy of Johnson's Dictionary, an 1874 Routledge edition, cost me a whopping 60p!  It was formerly owned by a Hilda Watts.  She signed her name three times on the front endpapers of the book, and once upside down on the rear free endpaper.

I've paid a bit more for my other editions of Johnson's Dictionary, including an odd volume of the 1770 fourth abridged edition, which has an interesting bookseller's ticket pasted on the front pastedown:

This is the bookseller's ticket of John Dunlap, the printer of the Declaration of Independence.  He had a bookstore on Market Store in Philadelphia.

Although remembered mostly as an early supporter of cricket, the original owner of my copies of Johnson's Poets, the Third Duke of Dorset, John Frederick Sackville (1745-1799), was the English ambassador to France prior to the French Revolution.  He was instrumental in communicating with the likes of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin which lead to trade treaties  between the United States and England.  Sackville's volumes of Johnson's Poets were most likely on the book shelves in Knole House, the residence of the Sackvilles where, years later, Virginia Woolf wrote her famous novel about the Sackvilles:  Orlando.  I bought Sackville's books in Hay-on-Wye in the late 1980s.  His bookstamp, the size of a dime, took me years to identify:

If my library is any indication, the English clergy had a liking for Samuel Johnson.  Fitzherbert Macdonald (?-1897), the Registrar for the diocese of Salisbury, had three choice first editions by or about Johnson and his travels in Scotland.   Here is Macdonald's bookplate:

In December, 1917, the author and statesman, Augustine Birrell (1850-1933), presented a copy of Aphorisms on Authors and Their Ways to his Diocesan at Norwich, Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919):

The complete title of Birrell's book, a rather lengthy one, is Aphorisms on Authors and Their Ways; With Some General Observations on the Humours, Habits, and Methods of Composition of Poets –– Good, Bad, and Indifferent    
Diligently Collected from Johnson's "Lives"


And then there is G.B. Hill's book, Footsteps of Dr Johnson (Scotland) which was formerly owned by Arthur Roland Maddison (1843-1912), priest-vicar of Lincoln Cathedral:

Speaking of G.B. Hill (1835-1903), I still haven't identified the American recipient of G.B. Hill's letter, dated June 1, 1893, that was inside the first volume of G.B. Hill's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson.  And I believe the Cowan clue mentioned in my research was a wild goose chase.  The bookseller's ticket of the Chicago bookseller Jerrold Nedwick (1895(?)-1966) was pasted on the first volume, and the set may have remained in Jerrold's stock until after his death.  The set may have been part of the 60,000 books the University of Louisville bought in 1966 from his estate.  I credit Donald C. Dickinson for providing the information about the sale of Jerrold's stock in his book, Dictionary of Antiquarian Bookdealers, Westport, 1988, a book I want to acquire for reference purposes one of these days.

And now for a rant!   I have an offprint from The Age of Johnson A Scholarly Annual published by the AMS Press.  It is an article about Johnson and Hill that the G.B. Hill scholar Catherine Dille  sent me.   The title of her piece is  "Johnson, Hill, And The Good Old Cause:  Liberal Interpretation In The Editions of George Birkbeck Hill." An excellent article and one I did not have access to online via my KB Library Pass.  In fact, very few of the articles published in this periodical can be viewed online. As for buying the periodical, would you agree that $182.50 for each issue of this periodical is ridiculous?  An inexpensive periodical on Johnson, and one I recommend –– only $12 a year for two issues –– is The Johnsonian News Letter.

I particularly enjoy acquiring copies of Johnsoniana that were formerly owned by Johnsonian scholars and notable Samuel Johnson collectors.  When I hold a book they formerly owned, I feel I am sharing in their enjoyment.

I have more than a few books of Johnsoniana formerly owned by Mary Hyde  –– more than enough to warrant a separate posting of my Mary Hyde Collection at a future date.

I have two books formerly owned by Allen T. Hazen (1904-1977), who collaborated with R.W. Chapman (1881-1960) in writing the supplement to Courtney's Bibliography of Samuel Johnson.   Hazen received a copy of Philosophic Words:  A Study of Style and Meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson from its author, W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. (1907-1975), along with a scholarly letter  from Wimsatt, well worth reading that identifies some of the anonymous quotations in Johnson's Dictionary.  Hazen's other book is a presentation copy from Charles H. Bennett (1906-1957),  one of the co-authors of a 1936 edition of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, "now first published from the original manuscript."

Do authors enjoy reading about themselves?  Are the books they authored personal keepsakes?  William K. Wimsatt, mentioned in the previous paragraph, is one of the authors of Boswell for the Defence 1769-1774.  He had a copy of his own book sent to himself straight from the publisher.  He inserted the shipping slip and complimentary card from "the authors" inside the front of the book:

He also inserted a review of the book from The Times Library Supplement:

And a Christmas card from Donald and Mary Hyde:

In May 2011, I acquired two books from the library of the Johnsonian, Gwin J. Kolb (1919-2006).  Now the only mark of provenance in these two books is Kolb's signature, but I feel closer to him than I do to Wimsatt, probably because I am more familiar with Kolb.  Over ten years ago, I acquired a copy of the pamphlet, The Reynolds Copy of Johnson's Dictionary by Gwin J. Kolb and James H. Sledd, a reprint from the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.   It is an outstanding article –– read my review –– I enjoyed it so much that I soon acquired a copy of their book, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary:  Essays in the Biography of a Book, Chicago, 1955.   Fast forward now to January 2009.  I had received a review copy of Brian A. Garner's book, Garner on Language and Writing, the month before, read it, reviewed it, and  lambasted the author for his review of the book Gwin J. Kolb co-edited with Robert Demaria, Jr., Johnson on the English Language.  Garner titled his nasty review, "Harmless Drudgery?"

I have no idea who its former owner is because she left no marks of provenance in her copy of Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763.  But she did leave three newspaper articles about Boswell from the 1950s:

And finally, no collection is complete –– in fact, no collection should even begin without a bibliography.  I have two bibliographies of Samuel Johnson:

I have only turned a few pages, so to speak.  So feel free to browse my Samuel Johnson Collection at your leisure.  Queries are welcome.  And comments are appreciated!