Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910) was an English textual scholar and editor. He married Eleanor Nickel Dalziel (1838?-1937) in 1862, but in 1883 they were legally separated. He never married again, but continued to pursue his open relationship with Mary Lilian ("Teena") Rochfort Smith (1861-1883), a young woman active in several of his literary societies and a transcriber of manuscript works. When she died in 1883 he "managed to surround himself with attractive young women the rest of his life."
These volumes of transcriptions have only been attributed to a "Mrs. Furnivall," but in the foreward to John Matthews Manly's volume Specimens of the pre-Shaksperean drama..., he states that the manuscript transcriptions were made by Mrs. Furnivall, and he names her as Agnes Furnivall. We have been unable to determine who Agnes Furnivall was. As of this date (October 2010) this repository does not know who is responsible for these transcriptions, but we lean toward Teena Smith and await help from readers for confirmation.
Source: William S. Peterson, "Furnivall, Frederick James (1825-1910), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004 online edition.
From the guide to the Mrs. Furnivall transcript copies of old plays, undated., (Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University)
