Greetings, dear reader! I suddenly find myself half-way through February, and thus I am scrambling to post my monthly check-in. This month’s status update is brought to you by the letter L, indicating that I finally finished L with its small cache of wonders. I’m starting on M next, obviously, and not particularly looking forward to the unfortunate number of libraries titled “Main.” This letter looks to have around 200 entries by volume, so it should be do-able in a month’s time.
Things I learned from L:
- In addition to a number of various copies of Memoirs of the Duke of Sully in all its assorted names, the Langsam Library at the University of Cincinnati has a copy of that rare bird, Hermione, or the Orphan Sisters, published by Minerva Press in 1791. Now this gothic potboiler was published anonymously and its attribution to Lennox is, let’s say, tenuous at best. By 1791, however, Lennox was in pretty dire straits financially speaking. Euphemia, published in 1790, wasn’t successful, and most of her formerly influential publishing friends had died some years before. I know that Cadell, who took over for Millar’s bookshop, was good friends with Johnson, but I haven’t looked deeply into his relationship with Lennox and whether her falling out with Johnson affected their business together. Regardless, Lennox was not above doing what was needed to make money, Minerva Press was open for submissions, and thus it’s possible Hermione is hers (or at least it’s a really interesting question as to why it was attributed to her, if not).
- The Library of Congress has at least a month’s worth of content for me to parse through. This probably isn’t surprising in the least, but that doesn’t make me any less excited.
Number of libraries confirmed: 351
Number of libraries entered into the database: 118
Number of extant copies confirmed: 1227
Lennox Bibliography Project 