Journal Article

The English Mercurie Hoax and the Early History of the Newspaper

Ellis, Markman

2019

Overview

[...]he stated: \"What was the object of the English Mercury is not easy to settle\".12 This article seeks to answer Thomas Watts's question. First among these was the publication in 1742, in seven vast folio volumes, of the state papers of John Thurloe, secretary of state during the English Republic and Protectorate.31 After that, Birch took on the life of Robert Boyle, a substantial 458-page biography, published in Boyle's Works (1744).32 Birch was also undertaking research for Nicholas Tindal's continuation of his translation of the Huguenot historian Paul de Rapin Thoyras's History of England (1726–1731). [...]the outcome was less orthodox. Thomas Chatterton, George Steevens, and William Rufus Chetwood (not usually counted as a forger), though he determined that their handwriting and literary styles did not match.112 Only six weeks after Watts published his open letter to Panizzi, Sir Henry Ellis, Principal Librarian of the British Museum, had exposed Yorke as the author of the mercuries in a private letter, citing a match of his handwriting, which had been identified by John Cates, superintendent of the reading room.113 Cates further concluded that the manuscript emendations were by Birch, who thus was now included amongst those guilty of the forgery.

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: 18th century / Archives & records / Encyclopedias / English language / Forgery / Handwriting / History / Hoaxes / Literary translation / Museums