Life
1741-1812 [var. Edmund]; b. 4 Oct., in Dublin, son of Edmund Malone (1704-1774),
a barrister, yngr. br. of Richard Malone, Lord Sunderlin (1738-1816; as
infra); 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, and James Boswell, and was the sole helper acknowledged
in the preface to Boswell’s life of Johnson; first to edit Shakespeare’s
poems; contrib. supplement to Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare (1780),
including apocryphal plays incl. Locrine and reprint of Arthur
Brooke's Romeus and Juliet; transcribed Henslowe’s papers
and the diary of Henry Herbert, which has survived only in his notes;
contrib. first part of his life of Shakespeare to Steeven’s second
edition of the works, enquiring into the chronology of the plays, using
Stationers’ Register entries, 1778; joined the Literary Club, 1782;
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); undertook edition of Shakespeare in 11 vols.,
1790, professional rivalry prompting Steevens to quarrel with him; collected
materials for new edition, published by James Boswell Jnr., 21 vols.,
called ‘third variorum’ ed. (1821), generally thought the best;
also ed. works of Dryden; projected new ed. and history of Elizabethan
stage; exposed the forgeries of Samuel Ireland, 1798; accredited with
establishing principals of textual scholarship and basis of authentic
theatrical history; awarded DCL by Oxford, 1798; his edition of John Dryden
(1800) later praised by Sir Walter Scott; supported the Act of Union;
DDL awarded by University of Dublin, 1801; d. 25 April, buried in Kilbixy
churchyard, near Baronstown; bequeathed his library to his brother, who
presented the Shakespeare materials to the Bodleian. RR DNB PI
DIW DIL/2 OCEL CAB OCIL WJM
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Works
The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare [...], 21 vols.
(London: F.C. & J. Rivington 1790).
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Criticism
J.K. Walton, ‘Edmund Malone, an Irish Shakespeare
Scholar,’ in Hermathena XCIX (Autumn 1964), pp.5-26.
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.
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.
Peter Martin, review of Edmund Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography [Studies in 18th c. English Literature and Thought] (Cambridge UP 1995), 298pp., ill.
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.416-19.
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Notes
Dictionary of National Biography, lists Edmund Malone (the Elder),
judge, English bar, 1730, Irish courts from 1740s; MP Granard, IP, 1760-66;
court of Common Pleas, 1766. DNB 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.
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)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)