The Bibliography of Tennyson (1896)/In Memoriam: Mr. Richard Herne Shepherd
Ten years ago few figures were better known to the London bookseller than that of the eccentric littérateur who passed away on July 15, 1895. Four or five years ago, however, declining health necessitated his retirement from active life, and in a retreat at Camberwell his last days were spent in compiling for Notes and Queries a bibliography of Coleridge, and in preparing for the press a bibliography of Tennyson. He was a native and a resident of Chelsea, the son of Samuel Shepherd, F.S.A., and the grandson of a former minister of Ranelagh Chapel, the Rev. Richard Herne Shepherd.
To all collectors of the first editions of the works of Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Ruskin, Charles Lamb, Carlyle, and Swinburne the name of Richard Herne Shepherd is a household word. He may be said to have invented that class of bibliography which modern book collectors most esteem. A considerable amount of excellent work was also done anonymously by Shepherd for John Camden Hotten, William Pickering, George Redway, and other publishers. He was, perhaps, the last man who regarded a business letter as a literary composition, and his briefest note was turned out as if it were a contribution to the Athenæum. His zeal for literature as literature was such that every fragment of printed matter became precious in his eyes and worthy of preservation, and if the author of the fragment or the author's friends chanced to take other views—tant pis. A man who tries to subsist by literary work of the class which alone appealed to the sympathies of Mr. Shepherd has a desperate fight with circumstances, and sometimes a hit below the belt may occur on one side or the other. Those who at this distance of time can recall any disagreeable event connected with him who has left us must, however, be extremely few. Animosity could hardly continue with a man so fundamentally good-natured as Shepherd, and it is a fact that the last person against whom Mr. Shepherd brought an action, and lost it, subscribed to pay the plaintiff's costs,
His was a unique personality, and although he dropped out of London life some years ago, amusing stories are yet told of his eccentric appearance, of his manners and customs. As a literary workman he was conscientious to an extraordinary degree, and an hour's walk in order to verify a quotation or to cross the t's and dot the i's on a proof-sheet was to him positive enjoyment. He succumbed to cancer at the age of fifty-three.