James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (21 June 1820 – 3 January 1889) was an English Shakespearean scholar, and a collector of English Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales.
The son of Thomas Halliwell, he was born in London and was educated privately and at Jesus College, Cambridge.[1] He devoted himself to antiquarian research, particularly into early English literature. In 1839 he edited Sir John Mandeville's Travels; in 1842 published an Account of the European manuscripts in the Chetham Library, besides a newly discovered metrical romance of the 18th century (Torrent of Portugal). In 1842 he published the first edition of Nursery Rhymes of England followed by Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales, containing the first printed version of the Three Little Pigs.[2] In 1846 he published a version of the Christmas carol The Twelve Days of Christmas.[3] In 1848 he brought out his Life of Shakespeare, illustrated by John Thomas Blight (1835 - 1911), which passed through several editions; in 1853-1865 a sumptuous edition, limited to 150 copies, of Shakespeare in folio, with full critical notes; in 1863 a Calendar of the Records at Stratford-on-Awn; in 1864 a History of New Place.
After 1870 he entirely gave up textual criticism, and devoted his attention to elucidating the particulars of Shakespeare's life. He collated all the available facts and documents in relation to it, and exhausted the information to be found in local records in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. He was mainly instrumental in the purchase of New Place for the corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, and in the formation there of the Shakespeare museum.
His publications in all numbered more than sixty volumes. He assumed the name of Phillipps in 1872, under the will of the grandfather of his first wife, a daughter of Sir Thomas Phillipps the antiquary. He took an active interest in the Camden Society, the Percy Society and the Shakespeare Society, for which he edited many early English and Elizabethan works. From 1845 Halliwell was excluded from the library of the British Museum on account of the suspicion attaching to his possession of some manuscripts which had been removed from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He published privately an explanation of the matter in 1845.
His house, Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, was full of rare and curious works, and he generously gave many of them to Chetham's Library, Manchester, to the Morrab Library[1] of Penzance, to the Smithsonian Institution, and to the library of the University of Edinburgh.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.