Defoe Acquisitions at the Huntington Library

TN MAY I963, an examination of recently acquired tracts in the Henry E. Huntington Library led to the identification of eight which had not previously been recognized as Daniel Defoe's. In addition, there are in this group variants of two known Defoe tracts which seem to represent slightly earlier versions of what had previously been regarded as first editions.' Of these ten tracts, the five which will be considered first were secured in the Barry Brown collection in July I96I. The five others were purchased from Howey at intervals between July I956 and December I958. No one library in the world has anything like all the known Defoe items. The Huntington's Defoe collection has for some years been recognized as one of the first ten, but these additional items add considerably to the significance of its holdings. To anyone who is acquainted with the wide dispersion of Defoe's printed works, it may not be surprising that five of these tracts came to the Huntington from the Barry Brown collection in Ireland. Defoe's most important tract on Ireland, The Paralel (1705, for 1704), bears a Dublin imprint, although it was almost certainly printed in London, very probably under the auspices of Defoe's Anglo-Irish friend, Dr. Daniel Williams.2 On the other hand, Extracts from Several Mercators (I713) was printed in Dublin, to present significant excerpts where Mercator itself was not easily accessible.3 Defoe's recently identified Brief History of the Poor Palatine Refugees (I709)4 was reprinted in the same year in Dublinpresumably because the problem of resettling displaced persons from the Palatinate was almost as acute in Ireland as in England

History · Irish and British Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philippine History and Culture