A catalogue of his books lies before me dated 'January 1805.' It includes many works still upon our shelves.

Almon's _Memoirs and Correspondence of John Wilkes_, Samuel Richardson's _Life and Correspondence_, for example, several of the works of Maria Edgeworth, including her _Moral Tales_, many of the works of William Godwin, including _Caleb Williams_, and the earlier books of that still interesting woman and once popular novelist, Lady Morgan, whose _Poems_ as Sydney Owenson bears Phillips's name on its title-page, as does also her first successful novel _The Wild Irish Girl_, and other of her stories.

My own interest in Phillips commenced when I met him in the pages of Lady Morgan's _Memoirs_.[52] Thomas Moore, Lady Morgan tells us, had come back to Dublin from London, where he had been 'the guest of princes, the friend of peers, the translator of Anacreon!' From royal palaces and noble manors, he had returned to his family seat--a grocer's shop at the corner of Little Longford Street, Angier Street.
Here, in a little room over the shop, Sydney heard him sing two of his songs, and was inspired thereby to write her first novels, _St.Clair_ and _The Novice of St.Dominick_.The first was published in Dublin; over the second she corresponded with Phillips, and his letters to her commence with one dated from Bridge Street, 6th April 1805, in which he wishes her to send the manuscript of _The Novice_ to him as one 'often (undeservedly) complimented as the most liberal of my trade!' She determined, fresh from a governess situation, to bring the manuscript herself.

Phillips was charmed with his new author, and really seems to have treated her very liberally.

He insisted, however, on having _The Novice_ cut down from six volumes to four, and she was wont to say that nothing but regard for her feelings prevented him from reducing it to three.[53] _The Novice of St.Dominick_ was a favourite book with the younger Pitt, who read it over again in his last illness.