David Lam's Home Page

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/ The Least Successful Collector                   \
|                                                  |
| Betsy Baker played a central role in the history |
| of collecting. She was employed as a servant in  |
| the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had  |
| amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition    |
| plays, including most of the works of            |
| Shakespeare.                                     |
|                                                  |
| One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of    |
| them charred beyond legibility. Betsy had either |
| burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The     |
| remaining three folios are now in the British    |
| Museum.                                          |
|                                                  |
| The only comparable literary figure was the maid |
| who in 1835 burned the manuscript of the first   |
| volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the    |
| French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.  |
|                                                  |
\ -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"   /
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                     Scowleton