Edmond Malone (1741-1812)


Life
[occas. err. Edmund;] b. 4 Oct., in Dublin, son of Edmund Malone (1704-1774), a barrister, yngr. br. of Richard Malone, Lord Sunderlin (1738-1816); matric. TCD, 1756; A.B. degree at TCD, 1761; entered Inner Temple, London, 1763-67; met Dr. Samuel Johnson 1765 and began writing essays and articles for Irish newspapers; Irish bar, 1767; practised with little success on Munster circuit up to his father’s death, when he inherited a modest income; began work on edition of Goldsmith, 1776, published 1780; produced edition of Goldsmith (1780), commenced in 1776; settled in London, 1777; intimate with Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds (who painted his portrait), Bishop Percy, Burke; joined the Literary Club, 1782;
 
; contrib. a scholarly supplement to Johnson and Steeven’s edition of Shakespeare (1783), which incl. the apocryphal plays Locrine and Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem Romeus and Juliet (1562)- a key source for Shakespeare‘s play; contrib. the first part of his own life of Shakespeare to Steeven’s second edition of the works, enquiring into the chronology of the plays, using Stationers’ Register entries, 1778; assisted [James] Boswell with revision to subsequent editions of his classic life of Johnson (1st edn. 1791) - being a firm personal friend since meeting his Tour of the Hebrides (1785) at the printer, and seeking introduction; transcribed Henslowe’s papers and the diary of Henry Herbert, which has survived only in his notes;
 

exposed Chatterton’s ‘Rowley’ forgeries, in the Gentleman’s Magazine (1782); was present at the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and gave account of Burke’s performance to Lord Charlemont, 1786; attempted to ascertain the order in which the plays attributed to Shakespeare were written; issued Historical Account on the Rise and Progress of the English Stage (1790); professional rivalry prompting Steevens to quarrel with him over his (Malone’s) corrections to Steeven’s annotations and refused Steevens permission to reprint his earlier annotations uncorrected in Isaac Reed’s edition of Shakespeare (1785); publ. his magisterial edition of Shakespeare (Plays and Poems, 10 vols. in 11, 1790) - being the first to edit Shakespeare’s poems; collected materials for new edition of Shakespeare, published by James Boswell Jnr. in 21 vols. as the ‘third variorum’ edn. (1821) - generally thought the best; also edited prose works of Dryden (Critical and Miscellaneous Prose, 1800) - later praised by Sir Walter Scott;

 
projected a history of the Elizabethan stage; exposed the Shakespearean forgeries of Samuel Ireland in a correspondence with Lord Charlemont, 1798; accredited with establishing the principals of textual scholarship and gthe basis of authentic theatrical history; awarded DCL by Oxford, 1798; supported the Act of Union; DDL awarded by University of Dublin, 1801; d. 25 April, bur. in Kilbixy churchyard, near Baronstown, Co. Westmeath; bequeathed his library to his brother, who presented the Shakespeare materials to the Bodleian (Oxford); there is a portrait by his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. RR ODNBPI DIW DIL/2 OCEL CAB OCIL WJM

 

Works
The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare [ ...], 21 vols. (London: F.C. & J. Rivington 1790). See also Arthur Tillotson, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Edmund Malone (Baton Rouge 1944).

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Criticism
  • Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.416-19 [“Edmund [sic] Malone” - see extract as attached].
  • J. K. Walton, ‘Edmund Malone, an Irish Shakespeare Scholar,’ in Hermathena XCIX (Autumn 1964), pp.5-26 [see extract].
  • Arthur Tillotson, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Edmund Malone (Baton Rouge 1944).
  • Robert E. & Catherine Ward, eds., Letters of Charles O’Conor of Belanagare (Washington 1988), pp.496-88 [see extract].
  • David Wormsley, review of Peter Martin, Edmund Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography (Cambridge UP 1995), in Times Literary Supplement (4 Aug. 1995), pp.5-6 [see extract].
  • Peter Martin, review of Edmund Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography [Studies in 18th c. English Literature and Thought] (Cambridge UP 1995), 298pp., ill.
 

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Commentary

EDMUND MALONE [sic]

[...]

While Mr. Malone was engaged in his Shakspeare, he received frpm Mr. Steevens a request of a most extraordinary nature. To a third edition of Johnson and Steevens’s Shakspeare, which had been published under the superintendance of Mr. Reed, in 1785, Mr. Malone had contributed some notes in which Mr. Steevens’s opinions were occasionally controverted. These he was now desired to retain in his new edition, exactly as they stood before, in order that Mr. Steevens might answer them. Mr. Malone replied, that he could make no such promise; that he most feel himself at liberty to correct his observations, where they were erroneous; to enlarge them, where they were defective; and even to expunge them altogether, where, upon further consideration, he was convinced they were wrong; in short, he was bound to present his work to the public as perfect as he could make it. But he added, that he was willing to transmit every note of that description in its last state to Mr. Steevens, before it went to press; that he might answer it if he pleased; and that Mr. Malone would even preclude himself from the privilege of replying. Mr. Steevens persisted in requiring that they should appear with all their imperfections on their head; and on this being refused, declared that all communication on the subject of Shakspeare was at an end between them*. In 1790, Mr. Malone’s edition at {418} last appeared; and was sought after and read with the greatest avidity.

Ftn. These particulars are collected from the correspondence which passed between them, which Mr. Malone preserved.

In 1791 appeared Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson, a work in which Mr. Malone felt at all times a very lively interest, and gave every assistance to its author during its progress which it was in his power to bestow. His ac-quaintance with this gentleman commenced in 1785, when, happening accidentally, at Mr. Baldwin’s printing- house, to be shewn a sheet of the Tour to the Hebrides, which contained Johnson’s character, he was so much struck with the spirit and fidelity of the portrait, that he requested to be introduced to its writer. From this period a friendship took place between them, which ripened into the strictest and most cordial intimacy, and lasted without interruption as long as Mr. Boswell lived. After his death, in 1795, Mr. Malone continued to shew every merit of affectionate attention towards his family; and m every successive edition of Johnson’s Life, took the most wearied pains to render it as correct and perfect us possible.

In 1795, he was again called forth to display his seal in defence of Shakspeare, against the contemptible fabrications with which the Irelands endeavoured to delude the public. Mr. Malone saw through the falsehood of the whole from its commencement; and laid bare the fraud, in a pamphlet, which was written in the form of a letter to his friend Lord Charlemont.

[...]
See full copy - as attached.

J[ames] K. Walton, ‘Edmund Malone, an Irish Shakespeare scholar,’ in Hermathena XCIX (Autumn 1964), pp.5-26, Malone, 1741-1812; b. Dublin, barrister’s son; ed. Dr. Ford’s Sch. Molesworth St., and TCD; Irish bar, and journey to France, 1767; ten years on Munster circuit before going to London, 1777; supporter of Henry Flood; contrib. Baratania, according to his biographer, Prior; address to Dublin Univ. electors, 1774; letters of congratulation to Lord Charlemont, 1782; turned Shakespearean scholar with An Attempt to ascertain in which order the plays attributed to Shakespeare were written (1778); See also the Malone Society of Elizabethan scholars. His Works of Shakespeare (1790) contains a Life of Shakespeare, as well as revised versions of The Chronology, the History of the Stage, and his Dissertation on the three parts of King Henry VI, first published 1787. In Malone’s Shakespearean writings are found according to C J Sisson ‘the foundations of modern documented study.’ Malone exposed the Shakespeare forgeries of William H. Ireland in Letter to Lord Charlemont (1796); Other works include editions of Goldsmith (1780); Reynolds (1791), and prose works of Dryden (1800). He helped Boswell with his Life of Johnson, being the only helper acknowledged in the preface, also revised Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1785). To Bishop Percy, he wrote, ‘I always made battle against Boswell’s representation ... in the Life of Johnson, and often expressed to him my opinion that he rated Goldsmith much too low’; while Boswell testified to Malone’s every effort to render the Life perfect in successive editions by the addition of many notes [notably the third and sixth eds.] Malone’s monumental edition of Shakespeare was published by Boswell’s son, in 21 vols., 1821. Malone had Irish estates at Shinglas, Co. Westmeath and another in Co. Cavan; he was a fnd. member of the RIA, and attended meetings in 1791; LLD TCDE, 1801; died while his 1821 ed. of Shakespeare was in preparation with the printers; buried near Clonmacnoise. In his will, Malone bequeathed his collection of Shakespeare first eds. to TCD, but his executor, Sunderlin, gave them to the Bodleian in 1821.

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Robert E. & Catherine Ward, eds., Letters of Charles O’Conor of Belanagare (Washington 1988), Malone wrote to O’Conor in 1787, seeking information on his family history relative to the new entry on his br. Lord Sunderlin in Lodge’s Irish Peerage; and specifically enquiring the meaning of termon, and if the Clan Murray was not originally Scottish; O’Conor replied on 24 Dec., asserting that the Malone’s were a princely tribe established in Connaught by the O’Conors (grouped with them under the original line of Clan Murray, or Siol Murray), with power ‘in the country of Breaghmary [elsewhere copied as Breaghmany; p.487] bordering on the Termon of Clonmacnoise [and] ornamented the city with some of its principle buildings as our annals testify.’ He further asserts that the O’Malone’s of Balinahown in Connaught, who still hold 2,000 acres at the time of writing, are residual members of the family’. The complementary part of the letter refers to the lustre of Merlin’s father - to whom he claims to have ‘often listened’ - and his three sons, of whom the addressee is said to have ‘thrown lustre back on [his] ancestors ... without deriving any from them. Your natural powers under the highest cultivation constitute a singularity of eminence independent [and] self-derived’; a second letter from Malone seeking to know when the name of O’Malone first appeared in the annals, and dated 28 Jan. 1788, elicits a reply in Feb., ‘for 500 yrs. at least that family continued in the chieftainship of their territory in Breagh Mowr and since the succession of James I they continued possessed of good estates in their country to this day.’ (pp.496-88.)

David Wormsley, review of Peter Martin, Edmund Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography (Cambridge UP 1995), in Times Literary Supplement (4 Aug. 1995), pp.5-6; argues that Malone’s production of the Shakespeare Edn. of 1790, and preliminary publications leading up to it such as essay of 1778 on the order of Shakespeare’s plays are events of the first importance in the history of editorial scholarship generally; Malone unmasked Chatterton’s Rowley poems and Ireland’s collation of Shakespearean mss. and documents; collaborated with Boswell on Johnson’s Tour of the Hebrides and Life of Johnson; edited works of Sir Joshua Reynolds; pub. edn. of Dryden forming foundation of Walter Scott’s letter edn.; showed aggression towards France in writings of the 1790s (‘opprobrious den of shame’); engaged in defence of English constitution which he regarded in Burkian fashion as accumulation of English political practice; with Burke, men of letters [who] took the lead in producing documents central to the formation of a national identity which was often dubbed British, but which was in reality centrally English, and for the most part exemplified in purely English figures and events; Wormsley considers Martin’s book ‘timid’ and ‘an opportunity fumbled’.

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References
Dictionary of National Biography, lists Edmund [sic] Malone (the Elder), judge, English bar, 1730, Irish courts from 1740s; MP Granard, IP, 1760-66; court of Common Pleas, 1766. ODNB also lists Lord Sunderlin (1738-1816); ed. TCD, BA, 1759; Irish Parl. MP, 1768-85; raised to peerage, 1785.

Justin McCarthy, ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America 1904), gives extract from An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the English Stage [first appeared 1780, in suppl. to Steevens’s edn.].

Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Stage (1946) cites Edmond [sic] Malone, Historical Account on the Rise and Progress of the English Stage ... (1790).

University of Ulster Library (Morris Collection) holds Complete Edn. of Malone’s Shakespeare.

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Notes
Robert Jephson’s lively letter to Malone in James Prior’s Life of Edmund Malone (London 1860), p.190-91, claiming that ‘the book will at least have the outside of a gentleman.’ (Cited in W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition, 1984, p.110.)

Impeachment of Warren Hastings was attended by Malone, who gave an account of Burke’s opening address in a letter to Lord Charlemont. (See under Burke, supra; also under Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody, 1992)

Oh DNB!: Note that the [Old] ODNB lists Edmund [sic] Malone in error for Edmond, confounding the form of his given name with that of his father, a an error corrected in the New DNB (2005). (See Times Literary Supplement, 14 Feb. 2005, p.17.)

Pater familias: Edmund Malone (1704–1774), a Protestant from traditionally a Catholic family, was the father of Edmund [for Edmond] and Richard (1st Baron Underlin); born Baronston (or Baronstown) House, Ballynacarrigy, Co. Westmeath, 2nd son of Richard Malone and Marcella Molady, dg. of Redmond Molady of Robertstown, Co. Kildare, nephew and heir of Sir Patrick Molady. Richard Malone was a successful lawyer who undertook several diplomatic missions for William III; his eldest son, Anthony was a became Serjeant-at-law, a government post. Edmund entered Middle Temple (London), 1722 and was called to the English bar, 1730; practised successfully in England but returned to Ireland, settling at Shinglas estate in Westmeath; called to the Irish bar, 1740; appt. King's Counsel, 1745, and then Second Serjeant-at-law at death of his yngr. br. Richard Malone, 1759 - an appointment which aroused comment in view of family privilege; sat in Irish House of Commons as MP for Askeaton, 1753–61, and then Granard 1761–67, when he was appt. justice of the Court of Common Pleas; m. Catherine Collier, a relative of the first Earl of Catherlough, 1736, with whom sons Edmond and Richard Malone and dgs. Henrietta and Catherine. (Wikipedia - online; accessed 18.01.2024.) The family estate was inherity by Anthony, who had no heir and passed to a nephew Richard who died likewise childless in 1816.

[Note: the Wikipedia article shows some confusion about the orthography of "Edmond" in ascribing that form to the father (1704-77) in thetitle-line though not in the text, and the other (Edmund), to the Shakespearean scholar (1741-1812.)]

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