_______________________________________________________________ 
( 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"                                     )
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