Richard Garnett

"Printed Books": Caricature of Richard Garnett by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, April 1895. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Richard Garnett CB (27 February 1835 - 13 April 1906) was an English poet, prose author, and librarian.

Life

Overview

Garnett, the son of Richard Garnett, an assistant keeper of printed books in the British Museum, was born at Lichfield, and educated at a school in Bloomsbury. He entered the British Museum in 1851 as an assistant librarian. There he remained for nearly 50 years, and rose to be keeper of printed books. He acquired a marvellous knowledge of books, and of everything connected with pure literature. He made numerous translations from the Greek, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; wrote books of graceful verse, The Twilight of the Gods, and other tales (1888), The Age of Dryden, a History of Italian Literature, and various biographical works on Carlyle, Milton, Blake, and others; and contributed many articles to encyclopædias, and to the Dictionary of National Biography.

Youth and education

Garnett was born in Beacon Street, Lichfield, the elder son of Richard Garnett by his wife Rayne, daughter of John Wreaks of Sheffield. 3 years after his birth his father moved with his family to London on becoming assistant keeper of printed books at the British Museum.

Richard was chiefly educated at home, but he spent some time at Rev. C.M. Marcus's small private school in Caroline Street, Bedford Square, where his companions included Sir John Everett Milla, Edward Hayes Plumptre, and William Jackson Brodribb. He was also for a term at the end of 1850 at Whalley grammar school.

Garnett showed exceptional intellectual precocity as a boy. He inherited his father's faculty for acquiring languages, and before he was 14 he had read for his own amusement the whole of the Poetæ Scenici Græci, Diodoras Siculus's History, the works of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, and the stories of Tieck and Hoffmann. All his life he studied not only the classics but the literature of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. His interest in current affairs was at the same time singularly active in youth, and he assimilated with avidity details of home and foreign politics and records of sport.

Career

After his father's death in September 1850 he declined, from a confirmed if somewhat precocious distrust of the educational efficiency of both Oxford and Cambridge, his kinsfolks' proposal that he should prepare for a university. In the autumn of 1851, through the good offices of Anthony Panizzi, his father's colleague at the British Museum, he became an assistant in the library there. With the British Museum he was closely identified for the greater part of his career.

His earliest employment was in copying titles for the catalogue, but he was soon engaged in the more responsible task of revising the titles. Panizzi quickly recognised his ability, and entrusted him with the duty of classifying fresh acquisitions and placing them on the shelves. Panizzi won his whole-hearted admiration, and he set himself to carry on the traditions which Panizzi initiated at the museum.

Garnett married in 1863 Olivia Namey (died 1903), daughter of Edward Singleton, co. Clare, who bore him 3 sons and 3 daughters. His 2nd son, Edward (born 1868), was a well-known author and dramatist.

After devoting 20 years to subordinate labour at the museum, he was made in 1875 assistant keeper of printed books and superintendent of the reading room. In spite of his shy and nervous manner he at once won golden opinions by the courteous readiness with which he placed his multifarious stores of knowledge at the disposal of readers.

He was soon engaged on a heavy piece of work which added materially to the usefulness of the library to the public. In 1881 the printing of the general catalogue of books which had been suspended since 1841 was resumed. The superintendence of the enterprise fell to Garnett. He devoted immense energy to this great undertaking. In order to concentrate his energies upon it, he in 1884 retired from the reading room, and was mainly occupied in editing the catalogue until 1890.

In 1890 Garnett was appointed keeper of printed books, and the catalogue was completed by other hands. In 1882 he had been an unsuccessful candidate for the librarianship of the Bodleian library, Oxford, but his promotion to the headship of his department at the British Museum fully satisfied his ambitions. Many important additions were made to the library under his rule. A Description of Three Hundred Notable Books (which he purchased for the museum during his term of office) was privately printed in 1899 in honor of his services on his retirement, and proves the catholicity and soundness of his judgment. He was keenly alive to the need of providing room for future accessions to the library, and in 1887 introduced "the sliding press," which greatly economised the space at his disposal.

Although he was not a scientific bibliographer, he was interested in the purely professional side of his work, and won the regard of his fellow-librarians. In 1892-1893 he was president of the Library Association of the United Kingdom, to whose Transactions he frequently contributed. He edited a series of Library Manuals and was president of the Bibliographical Society in 1895-1897.

In 1899, a year before he attained the regulation age for retirement, he resigned his post, owing to his wife's failing health, after 48 years' service at the museum. Bishop Creighton called him "the ideal librarian" — a title which was well justified by his width of literary knowledge and his zealous desire to adapt the national library to all reasonable public requirements.

He died at his house, 27 Tanza Road, Hampstead, on 13 April 1906, and was buried in Highgate cemetery.

Writing

From early days Garnett devoted his leisure to literature, and during his career at the museum steadily won a general reputation as a man of letters. After his retirement from the museum his pen was exceptionally busy, and his literary work was in unceasing demand until his death.

In letters addressed between 1851 and 1864 to his younger brother, W.J. Garnett (then in Australia), he described his 1st literary endeavors as well as the varied experiences of his bachelor days in London. These letters, which have not been published, are now in the British Museum (Add. MS. 37489).

Poetry

Setting out with poetic ambitions which he never wholly abandoned, he published anonymously in 1858 his debut volume, Primula: A book of lyrics. This reappeared under his own name with additions the next year as Io in Egypt, and other poems, and was thoroughly revised for a 3rd issue in 1893. There followed Poems from the German (1862); Idylls and Epigrams; chiefly from the Greek Anthology (1869; republished as A Chaplet from the Greek Anthology, 1892); Iphigenia in Delphi (1891); One Hundred and Twenty-four Sonnets from Dante, Petrarch, and Camoens (1896); The Queen, and other Poems (1901); a dramatic jeu d'esprit in blank verse called William Shakespeare: Pedagogue and poacher (1904); and finally De flagello myrteo (1905; new edit. 1906), a collection (in prose form but of poetic temper) of 360 rather subtle "thoughts and fancies on love."

Garnett's verse displays a cultured, even fastidious, taste and much metrical facility, but much of it is a graceful and melodious echo of wide reading rather than original imaginative effort. The thought at times strikes a cynical note. Probably his most valuable poetic work was done in translation.

Prose

In prose Garnett's labours were extensive and unusually versatile. He was from early manhood a voluminous contributor to periodicals. At the outset he wrote for the Literary Gazette when owned by Lovell Reeve, and for the Examiner. Subsequently he regularly wrote on German literature for the Saturday Review.' Articles from his pen appeared from time to time in Macmillan's Magazine, Temple Bar, and Fraser's Magazine.

At a later period he wrote critical introductions to innumerable popular reprints of standard books, and he diversified literary criticisms with many excursions into biography. In the 'Great Writers' series he published monographs on Milton (1887), on Carlyle, which was drastically reduced before publication (1887), and on Emerson (1888). To the Dictionary of National Biography and to the Encyclopædia Britannica he supplied very many memoirs. He had no great powers of research and was prone to rely for his facts on his retentive memory, but his biographical work was invariably that of a tasteful, discriminating, and well-informed compiler. His range of biographical interest extended far beyond men of letters, and his biographies include those of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the colonial pioneer (1898), and of William Johnson Fox, the social reformer (published posthumously and completed by Garnett's son Edward in 1910).

Garnett's most important publications were Relics of Shelley (1862) and The Twilight of the Gods (1903). The former was a small collection of unpublished verse by the poet, which Garnett discovered among the poet's MSS. and notebooks, which had belonged to Shelley's widow, and passed on her death in 1851 to his son. Sir Percy Shelley. With Shelley he had many affinities. His good fortune in discovering the poet's unknown work gave great satisfaction to Sir Percy and to his wife, Lady Shelley. Garnett became their close friend, and they attested their regard for him by presenting him with Shelley's notebooka. Lady Shelley pressed on Garnett the task of preparing the full life of her father-in-law, but other engagements compelled him to yield the labour to Edward Dowden.

The Twilight of the Gods is a series of semi-classical or oriental apologues of pleasantly cynical flavor in the vein of Lucian. The book came out in 1888, and attracted no attention, though the earl of Lytton, then English ambassador at Paris, promptly recognised in a long letter to the author the fascination of its imaginative power and dry humor. A reprint in 1903 was welcomed by a large audience and established Garnett's reputation as a resourceful worker in fiction and a shrewd observer of human nature.

Among Garnett's later works were a useful History of Italian Literature (1897), and he joined Edmund Gosse in compiling an Illustrated Record of English Literature in 4 volumes; vols. i. and ii. were from Garnett's pen (1903).

Garnett cherished a genuine and somewhat mystical sense of religion which combined hostility to priestcraft and dogma with a modified belief in astrology. He explained his position in an article in the University Magazine (1880), published under the pseudonym of A.G. Trent, which was reissued independently in 1893 as The Soul and the Stars; it was translated into German in 1894. Garnett maintained that astrology was "a physical science just as much as geology," but he gave no credit to its alleged potency as a fortune-telling agent.

Miscellaneous

Besides the works enumerated, Garnett was author of 'Shelley and Lord Beaconsfield' (privately printed, 1887); 'The Age of Dryden,' a literary handbook (1895); 'William Blake, Painter and Poet' ('Portfolio' monograph, 1895); 'Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography' (1899); 'Essays of an ex-Librarian' (1901). He also laboriously compiled from the voluminous MS. collections, chiefly dealing with Shropshire, of John Wood Warter [q. v.] 'An Old Shropshire Oak' (vols. i. and ii. 1886; vols. iii. and iv. 1891), and he lent his name as editor to The International Library of Famous Literature, a popular anthology on a large scale, which an American publishing syndicate circulated in England in 1901.

Recognition

In 1883 the University of Edinburgh conferred on Garnett the honorary degree of LL.D.

He was made a Commander of the Order of Bath (CB) in 1895.

On his retiring from the museum in 1899 Garnett's friends presented him with his portrait by the Hon. John Collier. The portrait was passed to Garnett's eldest son, Robert. A photogravure of it is prefixed to Three Hundred Notable Books (1899). A better painting by Miss E.M. Heath was owned by Garnett's son Edward. A bust by George Frampton was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1899. A caricature by "Spy" appeared in Vanity Fair in 1895.

In popular culture

His poem "Where Corals Lie" was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar as part of Sea Pictures, and 1st performed and published in 1899.

Publications

Poetry

• Primula: A book of lyrics. London: R. Hardwicke, 1858.
• Io in Egypt, and other poems. London: Bell & Daldy, 1859.
• Iphigenia in Delphi: A dramatic poem; with Homer's "Shield of Achilles" and other translations from the Greek. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1890.
• Poems. London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane / Boston: Copeland & Day, 1893.
• The Queen, and other poems. London & New York: John Lane, 1901.

Plays

• William Shakespeare, pedagogue and poacher: A drama. London & New York: John Lane, 1905.

Short fiction

• The Twilight of the Gods, and other tales. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888.

Non-fiction

• Life of Thomas Carlyle. London: Walter Scott, 1887; New York: AMS Press, 1979; Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2004.
• Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. London: Walter Scott / New York: T. Whittaker, 1888.
• Life of John Milton (with bibliography by John Parker Anderson). London: Walter Scott, 1890.
• A History of Italian Literature. London: William Heinemann, 1893; New York: D. Appleton, 1893; Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970; Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2004.
• William Blake: Painter and poet. London: Seeley / New York: Macmillan, 1895.
• The Age of Dryden. London: George Bell, 1895.
• Richmond on the Thames. London: Seeley / New York: Macmillan, 1896.
• Edward Gibbon Wakefield: The colonization of South Australia and New Zealand. London: T.F. Unwin, 1898.
• Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography. London: George Allen, 1899; New York: Harper, 1899; Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2004.
• Essays of an Ex-Librarian. London: William Heinemann, 1901; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970; Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific, 2001.
• Coleridge. London: George Bell, 1904.
• De Flagello Myrteo: Thoughts and fancies on love. London: Elkin Mathews, 1905.
• The life of W.J. Fox: Public teacher & social reformer, 1786-1864 (with Edward Garnett). London & New York: John Lane, 1910.
• Shelley and Lord Beaconsfield : a lecture delivered to the Shelley Society on Wednesday, October 12th, 1887 (pamphlet). London: 1916.
• Constance Garnett: A heroic life. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991.

Juvenile

• The White Dragon. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963; New York: Vanguard, 1964; Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1970.

Translated

• Poems from the German. London: Bell & Daldy, 1862.
• Idylls and Epigrams, chiefly from the 'Greek Anthology'. London: Macmillian, 1869.
  • also published as A Chaplet from the 'Greek Anthology'. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1892.

Edited

• The Philological Essays of the Late Rev. Richard Garnett of the British Museum. London & Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1859.
• Coventry Patmore, Florilegium Amantis. London: George Bell, 1879.
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, Select Letters. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1882.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. London: Routledge / New York: E.P. Dutton, 1897.
• Elizabeth Shelley & Percy Bysshe Shelley, Original Poetry by Victor & Cazire. London & New York: John Lane, 1898.
• The International Library of Famous Literature. London: Edward Lloyd, 1900.
  • revised as The universal anthology; a collection of the best literature, ancient, medieval and modern, with biographical and explanatory notes (with Leon Vallée & Alois Brandl). London: Clarke / New York: Merrill & Baker, 1902. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III,Volume IV, Volume V, Volume VI, Volume VII, Volume VIII, Volume IX, Volume X, Volume XI, Volume XII, Volume XIII, Volume XIV, Volume XV, Volume XVI, Volume XVII, Volume XVIII, Volume XIX, Volume XX, Volume XXI, Volume XXII,Volume XXIII, Volume XXIV, Volume XXV, Volume XXVI, Volume XXVII, Volume XXVIII, Volume XXIX, Volume XXX, Volume XXI, Volume XXXII.
  • also published as The Book of Literature: A comprehensive anthology of the best literature, ancient, mediaeval and modern, with biographical and explanatory notes. New York: Grolier Society, 1923.
• English Literature: An illustrated record (edited with Edmund Gosse). (4 volumes), London: William Heinemann, 1903; New York: Macmillan, 1903. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV.

Letters

• Letters about Shelley: Interchanged by three friends, Edward Dowden, Richard Garnett and Wm. Michael Rossetti (with Edward Dowden & William Rossetti). London & New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1919.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Where Corals Lie - Elgar Garnett

See also

• List of British poets
• List of literary critics

References

•  Lee, Sidney (1912). "Garnett, Richard". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement​. 2. London: Smith, Elder. pp. 79-82. . Wikisource, Web, Jan. 14, 2018.

External links

Poems

• "Age"
• Garnett, Richard (1835-1906) (2 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Richard Garnett at Wikisource (4 poems & selected prose)
• Garnett in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "The Island of Shadows," "The Fair Circassian," "The Ballad of the Boat," "The Lyrical Poem," "The Didactic Poem," "On an Urn," "Age," "To America"

Books

• Works by Richard Garnett at Project Gutenberg
• Richard Garnett at Amazon.com

About

• Garnett, Richard in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dictionary of National Biography, 2nd supplement​ (edited by Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1912. Original article is at: Garnett, Richard