Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/139

 ii s. VIL FEB. 15, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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a Supplement to Galignani's Grammar and Exercises," was published by Montucci in 1806, and passed into a second edition in 1818.

The author was Giovanni Antonio Galig- nani, an Italian, who had resided in England for about four years before 1796. He estab- lished an English publishing house in Paris during the short Peace of Amiens ; brought out in 1808 a monthly magazine entitled The Repertory of English Literature, Arts, and Sciences ; and after the fall of Napoleon, in 1814, started Galignani's Messenger. He died in Paris early in 1821. A notice of him is in the Messenger, but the numbers of the paper for that year are not at the Museum. (Illustrated London News, 1874, part i., p. 48 ; Boase, ' Modern English Biography,' vol. i.)

About 1820 the firm of Galignani played much the same part with regard to English literature which Tauchnitz performs in our days. They published at popular prices many volumes of English poetry. Their issues of Lord Byron's works were very popular. Particulars of them are given by Mr. E. H. Coleridge in his Biblio- graphy of that poet ('Byron's works,' vii. 94-121). The firm also brought out in 1824, in two volumes, an edition of Thomas Medwin's ' Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron.'

Byron was a subscriber to, and a diligent reader of, Galignani's Messenger. He ad- dressed to it from Venice, on 27 April, 1819, a letter of protest against its attribution to him of the authorship of ' The Vampire.' In his letters to John Murray he repeatedly refers to the desire of the firm to be pro- tected against a piracy of their edition of his works (' Letters,' iv. 256-8, 392 ; v. 41, 251, 493). An edition of Moore's Works was published by the firm in 1819, in six volumes. Moore purchased them for 40fr., but called the publication " cruel kindness, to rake j up all the rubbish I have ever written in my life good, bad, and indif- ferent : ' ('Memoir,' iii. 8, 11). In March, 1821, he transferred to young Galignani, for 2,000fr., the rights which he may have possessed over the publication in France of his works (ib., 209), and in the next few years several issues of his works came from their press.

In the years 1829-30 there appeared Galignani's ' Complete Edition of the Poets.' Cyrus Redding wrote several Memoirs for insertion in the issues by Galignani. For the Life of Shelley an attempt was made by him but in vain to get some information through Horace Smith (Redding, * Past

Celebrities^' ii. 199 ; ' Fifty Years' Recollec- tions,' ii. 35-7, 199, 200, 350-53 ; ' Yesterday and To-day,' iii. 108, 318). Shelley's poems appeared in 1829 in the same volume with those of Coleridge and Keats. Numerous guide-books published by the firm will be found under their name in the Catalogue of the British Museum Library. They include a ' Picture of Paris,' 1814, which subsequently became Galignani's ' Paris Guide,' Galignani's ' New Paris Guide,' and Galignani's ' Illustrated Paris Guide,' and passed through many editions ; a Traveller's Guide through Switzerland ; and similar works for France and Italy. The rooms of the firm were, after the Restoration, the lounging-place of the British tourist. When Scott first entered them he was not recognized, but as soon as he became known the place was " in a commotion." Galig- nani offered him 100 guineas for " the sheets of Napoleon to be reprinted at Paris in English" ('Journal,' pp. 286, 298).

The Paris Monthly Review of British and Continental Literature, " by a Society of English Gentlemen," was started at Paris in January, 1822, being " printed by J. Smith ; rue Montmorency." A complaint was made in a preliminary leaf that the Galignanis had refused to insert in their paper an advertisement of it, and had announced an English monthly of their own. This review lasted for twelve numbers (3 vols.), when it became Galignani's Jbfaga- zine and Paris Monthly Review. Three numbers of it February, March, and April, 1 823 are at the British Museum. A volume entitled ' A Diary of the Siege of Paris, taken from Galignani's Messenger,' was pub- lished in 1871.

During part of the year 1885 the fact is recorded in the life by G. B.-J., vol. ii. p. 160 Burne- Jones was " so sick at heart about Irish matters " that he took in no English paper, but subscribed to Galignani instead.

G. A. Galignani had two sons, who con- tinued the business at No. 18, Rue Vivienne, at Paris. The- elder, John Antony, was born in London in 1796, and died in Paris in December, 1873. The yoimger, William, was born in London in 1798, and died in Paris in 1882. An edition in two volumes of Hazlitt's v Table-Talk, or Original Essays ' (1825), is among the other English works which were published by A. & W. Galignani. Some particulars of their lives are given by Mr. Frederic Boase. Both of them were very liberal in the distribution of the fortune which they had accumulated.

W. P. COURTNEY.