The son of Thomas Halliwell, he was born in London and was educated privately and at Jesus College, Cambridge. He devoted himself to antiquarian research, particularly of early English literature. Beginning at the age of only 16, between 1836 and 1837, he contributed 47 articles to The Parthenon. A Weekly Journal of English and Foreign Literature, the Arts, and Sciences; in 1839 he edited Sir John Mandeville's Travels; in 1842 published an Account of the European manuscripts in the Chetham Library, besides a newly discovered metrical romance of the 15th century. In 1841, while at Cambridge, Halliwell dedicated his book Reliquae Antiquae to Sir Thomas Phillipps, the noted bibliomaniac. Phillipps invited Halliwell to stay at his estate, Middle Hill. There Halliwell met Phillipps's daughter, Henrietta, to whom he soon proposed marriage. However, also around this time, Halliwell was accused of stealing manuscripts from Trinity College, Cambridge. Although never prosecuted, Phillipps's suspicions were aroused and he refused to consent to the marriage. This led to the couple's elopement in 1842. William A. Jackson, bibliographer and Harvard professor, also argues that Halliwell stole an exceedingly rare 1603 quarto Hamlet from Phillipps, removed the title page and later sold it. Phillipps refused ever to see his daughter or Halliwell again. In 1842, Halliwell published the first edition of Nursery Rhymes of England followed by Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales, containing the first printed version of the Three Little Pigs. and a version of the Christmas carolThe Twelve Days of Christmas. From 1845 Halliwell was excluded from the library of the British Museum on account of the suspicion concerning his possession of some manuscripts which had been removed from the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He published privately an explanation of the matter in 1845. Halliwell also had a habit, detested by bibliophiles, of cutting up seventeenth-century books and pasting parts he liked into scrapbooks. During his life he destroyed 800 books and made 3,600 scraps. In 1848 he published his Life of Shakespeare, illustrated by John Thomas Blight, which had several editions; in 1853–1865 a sumptuous edition, limited to 150 copies, of Shakespeare in folio, with full critical notes. After 1870 he entirely gave up textual criticism, and devoted his attention to elucidating the particulars of Shakespeare's life. He collated all the available facts and documents in relation to it, and exhausted the information to be found in local records in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. He was instrumental in the purchase of New Place for the corporation of Stratford-on-Avon, and in the formation there of the Shakespeare museum. He assumed the name of Phillipps in 1872, under the will of the grandfather of his first wife, Henrietta Phillipps. He took an active interest in the Camden Society, the Percy Society and the Shakespeare Society, for which he edited many early English and Elizabethan works. He died on 3 January 1889, and was buried in Patcham churchyard, near Hollingbury in East Sussex. His house, Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, was full of rare and curious works, and he generously gave many of them to Chetham's Library, Manchester, to the Morrab Library of Penzance, to the Smithsonian Institution, and to the library of the University of Edinburgh.
Works
His publications in all numbered more than sixty volumes, including:
An Historical Account of the New Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Last Residence of Shakespeare
. A Hand-Book Index to the Works of Shakespeare: Including References to the Phrases, Manners, Customs, Proverbs, Songs, Particles, &c., Which Are Used or Alluded to by the Great Dramatist. J.E. Adlard
