B. The 1726 Pamphlets
The murder of John Hayes prompted the appearance of two different pamphlets presenting accounts of the case, pamphlets that were prepared even before the execution of the murderers in May 1726. On April 28, 1726, the Daily Post (2) announced that there was in the press a work entitled The Life of Mrs. Margaret Hays [sic]. This publication, according to the advertisement in the Post, would give
"Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him."
——The Newcomes, Chapter 10
At the end of April 1839, advertisements for the May issue of Fraser's Magazine announced that the issue would contain, among other items, "Catherine: a Story. By Ikey Solomons, Esq., jun."1
1. Works by Thackeray
The Book of Snobs. Ed. John A. Sutherland. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1978.
A Collection of Letters of W. M. Thackeray, 1847-1855. London, 1887 (abbreviated Collection).
The History of Henry Esmond. Ed. Edgar F. Harden. New York: Garland, 1989.
Despite her death at the end of Catherine, Catherine Hayes lived on, in a marginal way, in Thackeray's later works, even provoking a minor controversy by her appearance in the serialized version of Pendennis in 1850. Earlier she had made a brief, obscure appearance at the end of Vanity Fair, when the narrator recorded Becky Sharp's three lawyers as being Messrs. Burke, Thurtell, and Hayes, Burke and Thurtell being the names of two other notorious murderers.
A. The Newspapers of 1726
Thank you to Dino Felluga and Kenneth Crowell for bringing my edition of Catherine into the electronic era via Cove. I would also like to thank those who helped with earlier versions of this edition: Professor Ira B. Nadel, who supervised the Ph.D dissertation at the University of British Columbia, on which this edition is based, along with the other members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Herbert J. Rosengarten and the late Dr. William E. Fredeman.
To read James Malcolm Rymer's A Mystery in Scarlet in its original publication context, accompanied by other contents of The London Miscellany no. 1-18 (1866), please see the bound copy of that periodical in the collection of the Wells Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. This copy lacks the series of four promotional color prints titled Rich and Poor and accompanying the serial of that name; these prints are accessible elsewhere in this COVE edition.
