The Least Successful Collector

Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting. She

was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had

amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the

works of Shakespeare.

One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond

legibility. Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The

remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.

The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned

the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the

French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.

-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"