A little about Woodward

Born in Birkenhead, George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934) attended Elstree and Harrow Schools and won a Scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He read classics, not perhaps very attentively, coming away with a third-class degree and a vocation to the Anglican Church. His long career was spent at various churches in London, Norfolk, and Suffolk. In his country livings he was a keen bellringer and beekeeper. He retired a widower in 1906 and moved to 48 West Hill, Highgate, a distinguished old rental property, in 1916.

In the last years of his life he became a prolific self-publisher of, among other things, tiny books of translations of Greek epigrams into rhyming verse. He made them all at home in Highgate, where he installed a printing press. The books seem to me unusually sized: each page measures five by three-and-three-quarter inches, half the size of a duodecimo. The sheets are hand-cut, and typically joined by a simple double stitch. Covers are of brown card, of thinner stock than the pages they contain. The print-runs (120 or 136 copies) were almost as tiny as the books themselves, each copy being hand-numbered. There seems no indication that he offered them for sale.

If I have it right, the thickest of these pamphlets (Greek Anthology: 133 Love Epigrams in English Verse) is also the earliest (1924). Woodward had been in Highgate for eight years and was well into his seventies. The greatest concentration of his epigram volumes appeared hot on each others' heels in 1931, when he would have been 83 or thereabouts. I wonder if he was working the press by himself, or had help: I expect he had domestic staff. [update: he had two presses there, and in his last years his housekeeper operated them. He left one of the presses to her in his will] His papers are held at UCLA but it does not immediately sound as if they will shed much light. In the meantime I've ordered the biography by John Barnes. [update: it's a lovely book]

I've begun a list of Woodward's possible or (emboldened) definite epigram books, which I'll add to if I find more. I don't know the order in which volumes appeared in years when he issued more than one; I don't yet even have a sense of whether it can be known.

1924    Greek Anthology: 133 Love-Epigrams in English Verse

1925    Domestica: Being Greek Epigrams Turned into English Verse

1926    Greek Anthology: Beauty-Epigrams (I wonder if this is code for AP12?)

1928    Tart and Homely Gibes of Greek Epigrammatists

1928    Gleanings from Ancient Olive-Yards, Greek and Roman (mixed poets, non-Anthology)

1928    ? Spring-Time Songs Translated from the Greek (unclear if includes epigrams; not yet seen)

1929    Greek Epigrams on and by Famous Poets and Musicians

1929    Greek Anthology: Epigrammata Heroica

1929    ? A Bunch of Grapes from Ancient Greek Vineyards Crushed into English Measures (unclear if includes epigrams; not yet seen)

1929 ?  Greek Witticisms told in the English Verse (unlikely to include epigrams, but not yet seen)

1931    Epigrams on Sappho and Other Famous Greek Lyric Poetesses

1931    Greek Epigrams: Religious and Dedicatory, Part I

1931    Greek Epigrams: Religious and Dedicatory, Part II

1931    Greek Epigrams on Timon, Diogenes & Others

1931    Five and Forty Examples of the Epigram Sepulchral

1931    Tales of Sea-Sorrow from the Greek Anthology

1931    ? A Garland of Spiritual Flowers (unlikely to include epigrams, but not yet seen)

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