Questions about Edmond Malone
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who was Edmond Malone and what was he known for?
Edmond Malone (the 4th of October 1741 - the 25th of May 1812) was an Irish barrister and Shakespearean scholar who produced influential editions of Shakespeare’s works. He is best known for his 1778 essay establishing the chronological order of Shakespeare’s plays, which made it conceivable to reconstruct a biography of Shakespeare through the plays themselves. The Malone Society, devoted to the study of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English drama, was named in his honour.
What was Edmond Malone’s contribution to Shakespeare scholarship?
Malone’s central contribution was "An Attempt to Ascertain the Order in Which the Plays Attributed to Shakspeare Were Written", published in 1778 in the first volume of a ten-volume edition. By sequencing the plays, he opened the possibility of using them as biographical evidence about Shakespeare. His findings are, according to scholars, still largely accepted. He also produced a major independent edition of Shakespeare’s plays and poems in 1790, and at his death left materials that became the 1821 Third Variorum edition in twenty-one volumes.
How did Edmond Malone expose the Ireland Shakespeare forgeries?
In 1796, Malone published an inquiry branding a collection of manuscripts attributed to Shakespeare as forgeries, making him among the first to publicly declare them fake. Many contemporary academics had accepted the Ireland manuscripts as genuine. This followed his earlier 1782 exposure of the Chatterton-Rowley forgeries, where he demonstrated through detailed textual analysis that poems supposedly written by a fifteenth-century monk were in fact composed by Thomas Chatterton using sources such as Shakespeare, Pope, and Dryden.
What was Edmond Malone’s relationship with Samuel Johnson?
Malone met Samuel Johnson in 1764, when a friend introduced them while both were at the Inner Temple in London. Martin, Malone’s main biographer, called it "the most important meeting of Malone’s life." Malone became, Boswell excepted, the most enthusiastic defender of Johnson’s writings and life. The friendship lasted until Johnson’s death on the 13th of December 1784. Malone kept notes of their conversations that James Boswell later used in The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), and the letter Malone received from John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington, is the best surviving account of Johnson’s last hours.
What happened to Edmond Malone’s book collection after his death?
Malone’s brother Lord Sunderlin, his executor, donated the larger part of the library to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Around 800 volumes were reserved for the Bodleian, while the rest was sold at Sotheby’s in 1818. The collection arrived at the Bodleian in 1821, and the library subsequently purchased many of Malone’s manuscript notes and literary correspondence over the following decades, including letters from Samuel Johnson acquired in 1864 and Oxford research notes in 1858.
When did Edmond Malone join The Club founded by Samuel Johnson?
Malone was admitted to The Club on the 5th of February 1782, attending his first meeting on the 19th of February 1782. Founded by Johnson and Reynolds in 1764, The Club was deliberately exclusive, limited to 35 members at the time, and Malone’s admission had been repeatedly delayed, partly because members kept David Garrick’s spot open after Garrick died in 1779. Once admitted, Malone became The Club’s treasurer, the only permanent office associated with the group.