Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature (Samuel Halkett and John Laing); Volume eight, 1900-1950

Rhodes, Dennis E., and Simoni, Anna E. C. [In continuation of the work of Dr. James Kennedy, W. A. Smith, and A.F. Johnson)

Published by Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1956

About this Item

The format is approximately 7.5 inches by 10.5 inches. viii, 397, [3] pages. Index of Authors. Index of Initials, Pseudonyms, etc. Soiling to dust jacket and edges noted. This work is largely in a two-column format. Ex-library with some of the usual library markings. The dust jacket is in a plastic sleeve affixed to the boards. The new and enlarged edition of Halkett and Laing appeared in six volumes between 1926 and 1932 and was followed n 1934 by a final volume containing an index and second supplement. It has now been decided to issue two further supplementary volumes, the first containing additions from 1900 as far as 1949, and a second consisting entirely of additions and corrections for the period before 1900. The aim of the first of these supplementary volumes is simply to give the authorship of as any s possible of those anonymous and pseudonymous books which were published in he English language between 1900 and 1949 inclusive; form 1950 onwards the relative information may to a great extend be found in the British National Bibliography and for this reason only a limited number of entries for books dated 1950 will be found in this volume. Dennis Everard Rhodes was a Gold Medallist of the Bibliographical Society in 2007 and staunch contributor to The Library from 1952. He was born on 14 March 1923 at Stourbridge in Worcestershire. Dennis was educated at Nottingham High School from where he won an open scholarship in Classics at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. His studies began in 1941 with classical Greek, but he soon switched to Italian language and literature. When a year later they were interrupted by military service, he was already fluent enough in Italian to join the Intelligence Corps as interpreter during the Italian Campaign. In this role he not only perfected his use of the language, but it opened up to him a country, its culture and its people that he came to love and where he felt at home. He carried this association seamlessly over into his later professional life. Thus, he had the good fortune that his military experience turned out to be a perfect complement to his academic education. Italy in all its great cultural variety remained one of the two poles between which he conducted his life, the other being the British Museum, not less so when it was transformed into the British Library. On demobilization he returned to Cambridge and graduated in 1946. He successfully applied for the post of Assistant Keeper in the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum Library. When he took up the post early in 1950 his mentors were Victor Scholderer and Leslie A. Sheppard. Both were deeply immersed in the cataloguing and investigation of early printed books in the collection, and Dennis followed them in the same direction. He thrived in the Italian section, dealing with material of every century of printing, but his particular interest was in incunabula, later extended to Italian printing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Meanwhile, he was awarded in 1956 his doctorate from University College, London, for his thesis on 'Vivaldo Belcalzer and the Mantuan dialect of c. 1300', supervised by Professor Roberto Weiss. Dennis remained utterly loyal to his two mentors; his commitment to the library lasted his lifetime, through its separation from the Museum and becoming the British Library in 1973, his appointment as head of incunabula in 1974 as successor to George Painter, his promotion to Deputy Keeper on merit in 1978, his retirement in 1985, and the move to the new building in 1998; almost to the end of his life he simply stayed on, most of those years continuing with work behind the scenes. There are obvious milestones in his long career in the form of the publication of books. Dennis accomplished (together with his colleague Anna Simoni) the publication of two revised volumes of Halkett and Lang's Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature (1956, 1962). Anna Elisabeth Charlotte Harv.

Seller Inventory # 91739

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature (Samuel Halkett and John Laing); Volume eight, 1900-1950
• Publisher: Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh
• Publication Date: 1956
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good