Odd Index
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For the reader of English literature: Scott, Wilde, the Anti-Jacobin and the case for Bacon

English writing read closely: a Highland poem, a letter from prison, verse against the French Revolution, and a Frenchman explaining the English through their books.

De Profundis, Oscar Wilde

Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake, set in the Scottish Highlands, is here in an 1883 edition. Oscar Wilde wrote De Profundis in Reading Gaol, as a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas. The Anti-Jacobin’s verse was written against Jacobin politics and the French Revolution, and L. Rice-Oxley edited it in 1924. Hippolyte Taine explained the English through their literature in five volumes in 1873, and in 1902 Edwin Reed argued that Francis Bacon wrote the plays we call Shakespeare’s.

The Lady of the Lake, Sir Walter Scott
No. 0021 · 1883
The poem that sent visitors to the Scottish Highlands

Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake, in an 1883 edition.

De Profundis, Oscar Wilde
No. 0009 · 1909 (revised copyright)
Wilde’s letter from Reading Gaol

De Profundis, written to Lord Alfred Douglas, in a red gilt binding.

Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, L. Rice-Oxley (editor)
No. 0119 · 1924
Verse against the French Revolution

The Anti-Jacobin’s satire, edited by L. Rice-Oxley in 1924.

Histoire de la littérature anglaise (complete 5 volumes, 1873), Hippolyte Taine
No. 0007 · 1873
A Frenchman explains the English through their books

Hippolyte Taine’s history of English literature, in five volumes, 1873.

Francis Bacon: Our Shake-Speare, Edwin Reed
No. 0118 · 1902
The case that Bacon wrote Shakespeare

Edwin Reed’s 1902 argument.

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Odd Index · written from the catalogue records
  • Every statement about a copy (stamps, inscriptions, condition, edition) comes from that copy’s own catalogue record and photographs; nothing is carried over from another copy.
  • Interpretations are labelled as interpretations. Background that the records do not contain has not been added.
  • Several readings here are tentative or carried over from earlier records (Carmichael, Howland, Havens, the Stately Game’s addressee); each is hedged in the text and flagged on the object page.

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