Richard Head

Richard Head in a portrait attached as the frontispiece to the second edition of his English Rogue (London: F. Kirkman, 1666).

Richard Head (born around 1637 in Ireland ; † before June 1686 at sea near the Isle of Wight) was a 17th century English author, satirist, playwright and bookseller.

Life

Most of the available information on Richard Head - as recapitulated in the 2004 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - comes from William Winstanley's biographical entry in The lives of the most famous English poets (1687), pp. 207-210, and can be classified as reliable because Winstanley could refer to a personal acquaintance with Head.

After Winstanley, Head was born in Ireland to a Protestant clergyman. His father was killed in the Irish rebellion of 1641 - the incidents probably provided the model for the stories that Head's satirical novel The English Rogue (1665) later referred. Head's mother moved to England to live with relatives in Barnstaple . Further moves took them to Plymouth , Bridport and Dorset . Head attended grammar school there in 1650. He was accepted after school at the same Oxford College that his father had attended (presumably New Inn Hall ; there is evidence that a John Head graduated in 1628). Lack of money forced them to drop out of higher education. Head was apprenticed to a dealer specializing in Latin books and, according to Winstanley, acquired good professional skills. A passion for poetry led him to present his first own work with the satirical poem Venus Cabinet Unlock'd , the title given by Winstanley - an indication that Head is the author behind Giovanni Benedetto Sinibaldi (1594-1658) The cabinet of Venus unlocked, and her secrets laid open. Being a translation of part of Sinibaldus, his Geneanthropeia, and a collection of some things out of other Latin authors, never before in English. (London: Philip Briggs, 1658) (library catalogs use the title without reference to this). Head married around this time and a little later gambled away his economic basis for the first time.

After losing the business, Head moved to Ireland, where he drew attention to himself with the comedy Hic et ubique, or, The Humors of Dublin , which was only privately received under the existing political circumstances . On his return to England he presented a printed version with a dedication to the Duke of Monmouth in 1663. However, the dedicatee did not return the favor to the expected extent and Head was forced to return to business as a bookseller. Several London business addresses have survived: Little Britain (according to Sidney Lee ), Petty Canons Alley, off Paternoster Row and opposite Queen's Head Alley (according to Gerard Langbaine ). Winstanley names Queen's Head Alley as the address. If his report is reliable, Head's business was successful but again ended in the gambling addiction debacle.

In 1665, Head published the first part of his The English Rogue . The manuscript brought the author significant problems with the previous censorship, which, according to Winstanley, took offense at the matter. The crude adventures, based on those of Lazarillo de Tormes in 1554, were portrayed in straightforward words; the censor rejected the manuscript as “too much smutty”. The toned book edition, which appeared in 1665 by Henry Marsh, was nevertheless a complete success. Head's satirical novel read according to the current fashion. Paul Scarrons novel Comique appeared in the same genre and fixed the genre of comic romance (so the English title Scarrons). Head himself, according to his own statements, which increase the scandalous value, seasoned his text with what he had experienced himself. The first publisher died in the year it went to press. The rights to Head's novel were taken over by his business partner Francis Kirkman , to whom Marsh was in debt. Kirkman brought out three further editions in 1666 and 1667 - an immense success in bookselling, with only the publisher earning second and third editions. The following volumes, which were supposed to exploit the business success, are difficult to classify: a second, third and fourth volume appeared in 1671, 1674 and 1680, a fifth was announced but no longer appeared. Winstanley lists Head as the author of all published volumes. Head himself distanced himself in the preface to Proteus redivivus (1675) from all volumes except the first. Kirkman claims joint authorship with Head for all volumes. Forewords can be found drawn by both, which makes Head's refusal of authorship seem questionable.

As a publisher, Head acted on several titles, as a writer he worked openly until 1677. According to Winstanley, he drowned on a trip to the Isle of Wight . The fact that Winstanley's Lives of the most famous English poets passed the censorship in June 1686 made this the commonly traded date of death; to speak of the terminus ante quem should be more precise.

influence

Title page and frontispiece of the German translation of Heads English Rogue (1665) published in 1672 .

Richard Head's English Rogue was the first English-language novel to be translated into German. The title was linked to the success of Simplicius Simplicissimus (1666–1668), which Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen had just presented: Simplician Jan Perus, whose birth and origins, two-part life course, different marriage, Rencke, Schwencke, misery, travel , Prison, Condemnation and Conversion (1672), so the German edition of the English Schelmen .

Various imitations appeared on the English market - titles such as The French Rogue: or, The Life of Monsieur Ragoue de Versailles 1672 (listed as Heads by many library catalogs). The most important descendant of Head's Schelmen was Daniel Defoe's The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders in 1722 .

Works

• A three-fold cord to unite soules for ever unto God. 1. The mystery of godlinesse opened. 2. The imitation of Christ proposed. 3. The crowne of afflicted saints promised. As it was compacted by M. Richard Head, MA and sometimes minister of the Gospel, in his laboratories at Great Torrington in Devon. Published now, after his death, for publike profit (London: Printed by EP for Fr. Coles, and are to be sold at his shop in the Old-Bayly, at the Signe of the Halfe-Bowle, 1647).
• The Christians dayly solace in experimentall observations; or, cordials for crosses in thse sad and calamitous times of affliction. By RH (London: printed for Richard Skelton, at the Hand and Bible in Duck-Lane; Isaac Pridmore at the Golden Falcon, near the New Exchange; and Henry Marsh at the Princes Arms in Chancery-Lane, 1659).
• Hic et ubique, or, The humors of Dublin a comedy, acted privately, with general applause written by Richard Head, Gent (London: Printed by RD for the Author, 1663).
• The English rogue described in the life of Meriton Latroon, a witty extravagant being a compleat history of the most eminent cheats of both sexes (London: Printed for Henry Marsh, 1665).
• The Red-Sea, or, The description of a most horrid, bloody, and never yet parallel'd sea-fight between the English & Dutch with an elegy on that truly valiant and renowned commander, Sir Christopher Minnes, who died in the bed of honor, in defense of his king and countrey by RH (London: Printed by Peter Lillicrap ..., 1666).
• The canting academy, or, The devils cabinet opened wherein is shewn the mysterious and villanous practices of that wicked crew, commonly known by the names of hectors, trapanners, gilts, & c. : to which is added a compleat canting-dictionary, both of old words, and such as are now most in use: with several new catches and songs, compos'd by the choisest wits of the age (London: Printed by F. Leach for Mat. Drew, 1673).
• The floating island, or, A new discovery relating the strange adventure on a late voyage from Lambethana to Villa Franca, alias Ramallia, to the eastward of Terra del Templo, by three ships, viz. the Pay-naught, the Excuse, the Least-in-sight, under the conduct of Captain Robert Owe-much, describing the nature of the inhabitants, their religion, laws and customs, published by Franck Careless, one of the discoverers ([ London: sn], 1673).
• Jackson's recantation, or, The life & death of the notorious high-way-man, now hanging in chains at Hampstead delivered to a friend a little before execution: wherein is truly discovered the whole mystery of that wicked and fatal profession of padding on the road (London: Printed for TB, 1674).
• The western wonder, or, O Brazeel, an inchanted island discovered with a relation of two ship-wracks in a dreadful sea-storm in that discovery: to which is added, a description of a place, called, Montecapernia, relating the nature of the people, their qualities, humours, fashions, religions, & c. (London: Printed for NC, 1674).
• The miss display'd, with all her wheedling arts and circumventions in which historical narration are detected, her selfish contrivances, modest pretences, and subtil stratagems by the author of the first part of The English rogue (London: Printed and are to be sold by the several booksellers, 1675).
• Nugae venales, or, Complaisant companion being new jests, domestick and foreign, bulls, rhodomontados, pleasant novels and miscellanies (London: Printed by WD 1675).
• Proteus redivivus, or, The art of wheedling or insinuation obtain'd by general conversation and extracted from the several humours, inclinations, and passions of both sexes, respecting their several ages, and suiting each profession or occupation collected and methodized by the author of the first part of the English rogue (London: Printed by WD ..., 1675).
• The life and death of Mother Shipton being not only a true account of her strange birth and most important passages of her life, but also all her prophesies, now newly collected and historically experienced from the time of her birth, in the reign of King Henry the Seventh until this present year 1667, containing the most important passages of state during the reign of these kings and queens of England ...: strangely preserved amongst other writings belonging to an old monastery in York-shire, and now published for the information of posterity (London: Printed for B. Harris ..., 1677).

swell

• William Winstanley: The lives of the most famous English poets (1687), pp.207-10. online at gutenberg.org
• Gerard Langbaine: An account of the English dramatick poets (1691), 246–7.
• J. Caulfield: Portraits, memoirs, and characters, of remarkable persons, from the reign of Edward the Third, to the revolution , 3 vols. in 1 (1813), 212-13.
• HR Plomer and others: A dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1641 to 1667 (1907), 94-5.
• S. McSkimin: Biographical sketches: some account of the noble family of Chichester , in: The history and antiquities of the county of the town of Carrickfergus , ed. EJ M'Crum (1909), 469-70.
• RC Bald: Francis Kirkman, bookseller and author , Modern Philology , 41 (1943–4), 17–32.
• Jonathan Pritchard: Head, Richard (c.1637–1686?). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), Last updated: 2004, accessed July 31, 2007.

Web links

• Publications from and about Richard Head in VD 17 .
• Richard Head in Munseys