Seder Hagadah shel Pesach

THE FIRST HAGADAH PRINTED IN LONDON. In his Bibliography of the Passover Hagadah, Yaari records a non-existent London Hagadah of 1709, based upon the earlier record of Jacobs & Woolf’s Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica (1888) no.1511. Cecil Roth in his study of Hebrew Printing in London corrects this error noting that Jacobs and Woolf simply recorded an erroneous date - a misprint for 1790 (see Kiryat Sepher, vol.XIV, p.99 no.4). Roth, however, did not know of the present 1770 edition and it is Yaari, in his addendum to Roth’s listing, who brings this Hagadah to attention (Kiryat Sepher, vol.XIV, p.388 no.2). Unfortunately it was now Yaari’s turn to misread the chronogram on the title page, an error repeated in his later Hagadah Bibliography. Consequently, the Hagadah recorded (no.197) as a 1780 London edition is no more than a phantom; what Yaari was in fact looking at was our 1770 edition that he notes (no.166) as ostensibly unseen! Ruth Lehmann in her Bibliography of Anglo-Jewish Hagadoth correctly records this 1770 edition as the first Hagadah printed in London (see, Remember the Days - Essays in Honour of Cecil Roth (1966) p.335 no.1 - illustrated opp. p.85). See also Vinograd, London no.50.