OCLC records copies at BL and National Library of Scotland; University of Toronto, Library of Congress, University of Virginia, York University (Toronto), Folger, Chicago, Harvard, and University of Missouri-Columbia. COPAC adds copies at Bodley and Hull University. Circulated in manuscript prior to publication this privately published edition was produced to correct the version of the text that had been published (without authorization) as part of the collection The School for Satire, also from 1801.
A privately printed parody of Matthew “Monk” Lewis’s poem ‘The Grim White Woman’ and a burlesque on the vogue for sensational gothic literature. Written by the Jamaica-born anti-abolitionist MP George Watson-Taylor, who in addition to producing his own plays and poetry amassed an impressive library, before going bankrupt and dying in self-imposed exile.
In a short note preceding the main text of this book, Watson-Taylor recounts that this parody was “never designed for publication”; he wrote it down simply as a joke to pass around to his friends “long before the work, upon which they are founded, was presented to the Public” (p.3). This publication was produced in response to the inclusion of the text in the 1801 School for Satire collection, which shows “the many errors incidental to productions that pass through the hands of various transcribers” (p.3). The differences in the two texts are obvious, starting from the first verse in which the School for Satire version introduces the main character with “A spy-glass he us’d, for he could not well see, A spy-glass he us’d,/ for near-sighted was he” in place of “Thro’ fire, and water, and clouds could he see,/ For this bard, a profound necromancer was he” (p. 5).
Watson-Taylor’s verses mock “the popular romances of the day, where flit the ‘pale spectres,’ and ‘ghosts all in white;’… &c. &c. &c.” (p.11-12), and particularly the Gothic horror of Matthew Lewis, as a “motley generation” that combines Mother Goose-style nursery rhymes and scary stories in the worst way: “The horrible of the German blood, blended with the wonderful of that of the Goose’s, is finely exemplified in the works of their descendants” (p. 9). Such explanatory footnotes appear on every single page of the main text, explicitly marking where Watson-Taylor reuses ideas (and even complete lines) not just from “The Grim White Woman” but also from many more of Matthew Lewis’s works, such as “Alonzo and Imogine” and “Ofric the Lion”.
“If you wish me the moral, dear Mat, to rehearse,/’Tis, that nonsense is nonsense, in prose or in verse,/That all, who to talents claim any pretence,/Should not write at all, or should write COMMON SENSE.”
Matthew “Monk” Lewis (1775-1818), so nicknamed after the success of his controversial novel The Monk, was an MP, novelist, and playwright known primarily for his works of Gothic horror, which did not shy away from offending his contemporaries with gory and sexual content. His ghost story “The Grim White Woman”, which warns of the consequences of evoking evil magic, was published in 1801 as part of his anthology Tales of Wonder.
George Watson-Taylor (1771-1841) was born in Jamaica as George Watson. His marriage into the powerful slave-owning Taylor family gave him the addition to his surname as well as a significant sum of inherited money, which he proceeded to spend on amassing a large collection of fine art and furniture. He also collected books, becoming a member of the Roxburghe Club in 1822. Watson-Taylor also produced other plays and poems of his own in addition to The Old Hag in the Red Cloak. Like Lewis, he served as an MP, in which capacity he worked to preserve his plantation-based wealth by working against abolition measures. Unfortunately, his spending on his vast collections exceeded this wealth and he was forced to sell his possessions in 1823 before fleeing to Amsterdam and eventually a debtor’s sanctuary in Scotland, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Provenance: Jim Edwards, his small book label on the front pastedown.
