Abstract
Fleay’s skirmish with Furnivall and the New Shakspere Society was a private matter, though Fleay later explained some of his difficulties with that organization in his 1875 book, Shakespeare Manual. Fleay would also make an enemy that would remain inveterately hostile to the New Shakespere Society: A.C. Swinburne. The resulting public spat, described by Simon Winchester as an “undignified feud,” lasted for over a decade, and while these were “miserable and exhausting years” for the New Shakspere Society, the campaign was, nonetheless, a great success for Swinburne: The Athenaeum, which had reviewed his poetry harshly, assessed his A Study of Shakespeare sympathetically: “it must be pronounced Mr. Swinburne’s greatest success in criticism.”