About Samuel Johnson's Undergraduate Library

From January to May 2008, I helped catalogue the library of Samuel Johnson on Library Thing.   But as one Johnsonian, A. W. Hutton,  put it,  Mr. Christie's 1785 auction catalogue was "the worst book catalogue ever produced."  Only twenty percent of the books listed in the catalogue were identified by title.  So we relied heavily on Donald Greene's guide.  And on May 12th, 2008, we called the cataloguing of Johnson's library complete.  Nine months later, however,  someone more versed than I in the good doctor's life told me about Samuel Johnson's "Undergraduate Library:" the books he had brought with him to college at Oxford:

There are also the 80 odd books that Johnson refers to in a 1735 letter to Gilbert Repington that he wished to have sent to him from Oxford as the basis for the library at Edial.  How many of these later followed him to London, one can only guess at.

I didn't remember reading anything in Boswell's Life of Johnson about a personal library of books that Johnson brought with him to college at Oxford.   Nor were these books mentioned in any of G. B. Hill's numerous notes either.  A. W. Hutton didn't mention them in his talk on "Dr. Johnson's Library" before the Johnson Club on June 11, 1892 (later reprinted in Johnson Club Papers, London and New York, 1899).  Nor did Austin Dobson mention them in his article on "Dr. Johnson's Library," which appeared in The Graphic on Oct, 8,1892 ( later reprinted in Eighteenth Century Vignettes II as "Johnson's Library" in 1894).

I grabbed Vol I of the Hyde Edition of the Letters  of Samuel Johnson 1731-1772 down from the shelf and read Johnson's letter to Repington.  Johnson  mentions writing a catalogue of the books on the other side of the letter.  But the catalogue does not accompany the rest of the letter in the Hyde Edition.  Instead,  there is a footnote, which reads "The catalogue lists eighty-six items, which are described in detail by A. L. Reade (Johns. Glean. V.214-29)."


From The Hyde Edition

A. L. Reade's Johnsonian Gleanings had already been on my want list; Part V quickly moved to my had-to-have list.  And soon,  Parts IV, V, and VI  of Johnsonian Gleanings were on my bookshelves—the ebay seller sent the wrong volume so I bought all three just to be sure I got Part V.   I also realized I needed more current biographies of Samuel Johnson in my library.  And in the months to follow I bought a few.  And I read what modern Johnsonian scholars had to say about the books Johnson brought with him to Oxford:

    In late October 1728 the nineteen-year old Sam Johnson and his father took the eighty-mile, two-day journey to Oxford on horseback.  A wagon lumbered behind, carrying Sam’s meager personal possessions and a substantial library of more than a hundred books in Latin and English.  Despite the often strained relations of father and son, they both valued these books, which had depleted Michael’s stock (31).
                                             Samuel Johnson:  The Struggle 
                                             By Jeffrey Meyers, New York: 2008

“With the clutch of books he had selected following later by wagon, he and his proud father set off for the academic Promised Land (72).”
                                              Samuel Johnson:  A Biography
                                               By Peter Martin, Cambridge: 2008

He had brought with him to Oxford a library of almost a hundred books, more than all but the most learned would have read by the time they left.  But for him, they were books to be read for amusement, not tomes to study:  what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripedes, and now and then a little Epigram (27).
                                              Samuel Johnson:  A Life
                                               By David Nokes, New York: 2009
                                                (uncorrected proof)

I disagree with David Nokes's opinion that Johnson's books were "books to be read for amusement, not tomes to study."  As Jeffrey Meyers pointed out, these books depleted Michael Johnson's stock.  Would Samuel Johnson have depleted his father's stock for amusement only?  He wanted the books for study at Oxford and would later want them for his students to study at the school he started in Edial.

Another modern Johnsonian scholar has a different opinion of what Johnson read while at Oxford:

The best evidence we have of what Johnson was reading shortly before and during college is a list of books he wrote on the back of a letter to Gilbert Repington, a friend of the friend with whom Johnson left his books when he departed from Oxford in December 1729 (92).
                        Samuel Johnson And the Life of Reading
                        By Robert DeMaria Jr. Baltimore 2009 (1997)

The reason why James Boswell, George Birkbeck Hill,  A. W. Hutton, and Austin Dobson didn't know about the books Johnson brought with him to Oxford was because they didn't know about Johnson's letter to Repington.  Gilbert Repington forwarded Johnson's letter to Richard Congreve (Johnson had asked about Mr. Congreve in the letter).  And the letter remained undisturbed in the Congreve Family papers for 174 years.

 We can thank J. Schomberg for discovering  Johnson's letter to Repington in the Congreve family papers, and submitting it to The Athenaeum for publication in 1909.  You can read her newspaper article below, or you can view it online at Haithi Trust:

Something needs to be said about J. Schomberg—her name is Miss Julia Schomberg—especially in light of her remarks about Mr.  Spicer, who had taken care of Johnson's books:

Mr. Spicer was a gentleman seemingly of temporary obscurity, who now, we may hope will attain immortality.

As far as Johnsonians are concerned, Miss Julia Schomberg appears to have been reduced to two footnotes in Johnsonian Gleanings, Part V, nary a footnote in the Hyde Edition of Johnson's letters, and seemingly, not a word of acknowledgment by Jeffrey Meyers,  Peter Martin or David Nokes in their biographies of Samuel Johnson..  Miss Julia Schomberg had previously sent The Athenaeum two other Johnson letters she discovered in the Congreve family papers, one on May 23, 1908 and another on May 8, 1909.  From what she wrote in The Athenaeum articles, she knew more than a little about Samuel Johnson, having researched Boswell's Life of SJ as well as "the sale catalogue of Dr. Johnson's goods."  Her own interesting papers are filed in the national archives at the Staffordshire County Record Office, along with the records of the Congreve family.

A. L. Reade published Part I of Johnsonian Gleanings in 1909, the same year Miss Julia  Schomberg  sent Johnson's Letter to Repington to The Athenaeum.  Reade would spend a lifetime researching the life of Samuel Johnson, privately printing Johnsonian Gleanings in eleven parts from 1909 to 1952.  Reade's papers at the University of Liverpool, Special Collections and Archives, indicate that he contacted the Congreve family at least once (in 1918).  Part V:  The Doctor's Life:  1728-1735 was first published in 1928 and set the record straight on Johnson's days at Oxford, including how long he was at Oxford.  And in Appendix K of Part V, Reade identified all but one of the books Johnson brought with him to Oxford.  Reade dubbed the books "Johnson's Undergraduate Library."  He mentioned that he had identified many of the books himself, but required the help of  L. F. Powell, Taylorian Librarian at Oxford, Dr. Henry Guppy, Librarian of the John Rylands Library at Manchester, and Mr. Leonard Whibley, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.   Reade's catalogue of Johnson's Undergraduate Library can be viewed online at Archive. org.

From December 2009 to June 2010, using Reade's Appendix K, I catalogued Samuel Johnson's Undergraduate Library on Library Thing.  And with today's research capabilities, I was able to identify several more possible editions of the books in Johnson's Undergraduate Library.  Just recently I may have identified the one book Reade had problems identifying:


Vol II only. Undergraduate Library listing reads: "Milton's Poems Vol. 2D."

 In Appendix K of Johnsonian Gleanings, Part V,  A. L. Reade wrote: "We can scarcely identify this edition. It is of interest to know that Johnson the undergraduate had some of Milton, whom he quotes frequently in the Dictionary."

And here's my research and listing from Library Thing:


 It is difficult, even today, to sort out Jacob Tonson’s editions of Milton’s Poems. He published Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d separately in numerous editions. And he combined them in a one-volume folio edition in 1695 under the title, The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton. Jacob Tonson published two-volume octavo editions using this same general title in 1705 and 1707. The general title, however, was printed on the half-title pages only. The title page of the first volume of the 1705 and 1707 editions contained the title, Paradise Lost, while the title page of Volume the Second contained the title(s), Paradise Regain'd, Samson Agonistes, and Poems Upon Several Occasions. In 1720, his nephew, also named Jacob Tonson, published a two-volume quarto edition—but the general title, The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, was printed on the title pages of both volumes. In addition to Paradise Regain'd, Samson Agonistes, and Poems Upon Several Occasions, Volume the Second also contained A Tracate of Education, a system of education Johnson discussed and Boswell recorded in his Life (Hill, III, 358).  It stands to reason that Samuel Johnson may have had Vol the Second (2D) of either the 1705, 1707, or—more likely—the 1720 edition of The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, in his undergraduate library. But we must also remember that Samuel Johnson was the son of a bookseller. And he may have considered Paradise Regain'd and the other poems published in the volume with it to be "Vol.  2D" of Milton's "Poems." In fact, Samuel Johnson owned a copy of the 1725 edition of Paradise Regain'd . . ., which is now in the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Samuel Johnson in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.  And that is probably the edition that Reade could not identify.

A Gathering Of Other People's Collected Letters

In my library, there is a library table in the design of a book.  And on this library table are two rows —and counting—of books of other people's collected letters:  from Charles Lamb's letters on the far left, to Michelangelo's letters on the far right.

And in the middle of my library table are the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Queen Victoria, John Steinback,  Louisa May Alcott, Alexander Woolcott, Charles Darwin,  Joyce Kilmer, Robert Southey, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, just to name a few.

And on my library shelves, in my Mary Hyde collection, are still more volumes of other people's collected letters—books which once stood tall on the bookshelves of the Four Oaks Library:

To me,  reading other people's letters is like being a fly on the wall who peers over the shoulders of authors as they share their thoughts on paper with friends and acquaintances.

Here is a gathering of ten other people's letters that you may enjoy reading:


TO THE REVEREND FATHER IN CHRIST, FRATE JACOPO JESUATO IN FLORENCE

Frate Jacopo—As I have to have certain things painted here, or rather to paint them, I have occasion to inform you of the fact, as I need a certain amount of fine quality azure, and if you have some you could provide me with immediately, it would be a great convenience to me.  So arrange to send to your brethren here as much of the fine quality as you have available and I promise to take it at the just price.  And before I collect the azure I'll have the money paid to you, either there or in Florence, whichever you prefer.
    On the thirteenth day of May [1508].
    YOUR MICHELANGELO SCULPTOR IN ROME

Sir Thomas Bodley's letter detailing the building of what is now known as Duke Humfrey's Library:

TO THOMAS JAMES, FIRST KEEPER OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY

Sir, Mr Principal Hawley, hath sent me some part, of your Cambridge collections :  which were worthy the copieng, for their age and antiquitie :  though they giue but little light, for any point that was in doubt, about the builders and building of our third erected Librarie.  Howbeit it should appeere, by Mr Principals letter, that yow have better stuffe behind, to cleere many doubts, that may concerne that whole foundation.  This makes me long for your returne, though I would not yow should hasten, to leaue any thing vnobserued, that is there to be had of any worthe, ether touching our foundations, or the order, and statutes, and regiment of their Libraries:  which also I hope, they will impart without any scruple.
   Within this fortnight, I trust,  I shall haue ended with my carpenters, ioiners, caruers, glasiers, and all that idle rabble : and then I goe in hand, with making vp my barres, lockes, haspes, grates, cheines, and other gimmoes of iron, belonging to the fastning and riuetting of the bookes : which I thinke  I shall haue finished, within two or three monethes.  But of this and other maters, we shall heereafter conferre, at very good leasure.  In the meane while, I can not but enjoine yow, to be carefull of your health, and not to be more lauishe, then yow must of mere necessitie, in wearing out your eies, with the transcriptes of those dustie, and rustie parchment manuscriptes.
                                          your trewe affected frind
From Aino [Aynho] Dec 24. [1599]      Tho. Bodley.

Yow must by no means omitte, to take good notice of their orders, in placing and disposing their librarie books : whether they doe it, by the Alphabet, or according to the Faculties.

I haue a brother dwelling at Bluntsham, within 10. miles of Cambridge : to whome I would intreat yow to conuey the inclosed by such meanes, as yow may ether finde out by the Cambridge London cariar, or by some other where yow are.

TO GILBERT REPINGTON

Sir                                               Lichfield, May 18th, 1735

   I hope You will not imagine from my Silence, that I neglected the kind offer which You[r] Brother was pleased to make, that You would take care about my Books; I had wrote much sooner, but that I did not know till to day wither to direct.
  The Books, (of which I have written a Catalogue on the other side) were left with Mr. Taylor from whom I had reason to expect a high regard to my Affairs.  There were in the same box, which I left lock'd, some papers of a very private Nature, which I hope fell into good hands.  The Books are now, I hear, with Mr. Spicer of Christ Church.  I beg you, Dear sir, that you will be pleased to collect them with what care you can, and transmit them directed to me at the Castle in Birmingham Warwickshire, to which a Carrier goes weekly from Oxford.  I will very thankfully repay the expenses of the Boxes, Porters, and Letters to your Brother, or whoever else You shall think fit to receive 'em.  I am sorry to give You this trouble which I hope You'll excuse from a former Schoolfellow.  Be pleased to answer this by the next post, for I long to know in what condition my affairs stand.  If Mr. Congreve be in college pray pay my compliments to him, and let him know I should think his correspondence a pleasure and would gladly write to him, if I was inform'd what college he is of.  I have many other Acquaintance in the University whom I remember with Pleasure, but shall not  trouble You with messages, for I shall esteem You sufficiently kind if you manage this Affair for, Dear Sir, Your humble Servant,

                                                           Sam.  Johnson
My humble Service to Mr. Spicer.

NOTE: "Johnson's Undergraduate Library," as these books became known as, is my tentative topic for next month's blog post.



TO S. T. COLERIDGE
                                                                         September 27, 1796

  My dearest friend,—White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family.  I will only give you the outlines.  My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother.  I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp.  She is at present in a madhouse, from whence she must be moved to an hospital.
  God has preserved to me my senses,—I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound.  My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt.  Mr. Norris of the bluecoat school has been very kind to us, and we have no other friend; but thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do.  Write,—as religious a letter as possible but no mention of what is gone and done with.—With me 'the former things are passed away,' and I have something more to do than feel.
  God Almighty have us all in His keeping!
                                                                                    C. Lamb
Mention nothing of poetry.  I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind.  do as you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a book I charge you.
   Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife.  You look after your family; I have my reason and strength to take care of mine.  I charge you, don't think of coming to see me.  Write.  I will not see you if you come.  God Almighty love you and all of us!

TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
         
To Walter Savage Landor, Esq.
          Kesdwick, Jan 23, 1811

. . . Your abhorrence of Spencer is a strange heresy.  I admit that he is inferior to Chaucer (who for variety of power has no competitor except Shakespeare), but he is the great master of English versification, incomparably the greatest master in our language.  Without being insensible to the defects of the Fairy Queen, I am never weary of reading it.  Surely Chaucer is as much a  poet as it was possible for him to be when the language was so rude a state.  There seems to be a material point of difference between us—you think we have little poetry which was good for any thing before Milton; I, that we have little since, except in our own immediate days.  I do not say there was much before, but what was there was sterling verse in sterling English.  It had thought and meaning in it.  At present, the surest way to become popular is to have as little of either ingredient as possible.
 Have you read Captain Pasley's book? I take it for my text in the next Quarterly, and would fain make it our political Bible.
                                God bless you!                          R.  S.
                                                                  [Robert Southey]

 

TO JAMES T. FIELDS:

                                                                 Concord May 28th [1864]
    My Dear Mr Fields

   Many thanks for the green 'Maine Woods,' through which I have been delightfully wandering in spite of rainy weather, feeling the while as if Thoreau were walking with me again, so entirely does he seem to have put himself in the book.
  Mrs. Hawthorne frequently expresses her satisfaction in & gratitude for the fitting & friendly cares bestowed upon her & hers during the sad yet beautiful Monday which will not soon be forgotten.  Mr Hawthorne is gone but [she] still finds herself patiently, hopefully awaiting his return.  Many of us have the same feeling, I fancy, because he was one of those who are felt not seen, & we all not really miss him till we turn the last leaf of his story without end.
  Father and mother desired to be remembered, & with love to Cousin Annie I am
                                                                          Very Truly Yours
                                                                          L. M. Alcott


TO THE CROWN PRINCESS OF PRUSSIA       15 February 1878

Mr. Gladstone goes on like a madman.  I never saw anything to equal the want of patriotism and the want of proper decency in Members of Parliament.  It is a miserable thing to be a constitutional Queen and to be unable to do what is right.  I would gladly throw all up and retire into quiet.
                                                                [Queen Victoria]

TO R. L. STEVENSON:
                                                  Box Hill, Dorking, April 16, 1879

MY DEAR STEVENSON,—I have had but the song of a frog for a correspondent since your last letter reached me; and my note is Batrachian still.  A hint of suppressed influenza seems to have been the cause. . . .
My 'Egoist' has been out of my hands for a couple of months, but Kegan Paul does not wish to publish it before October.  I don't think you will like it: I doubt of those who care for my work will take to it at all.  And for this reason, after doing my best with it, I am in no hurry to see it appear.  It is a Comedy, with only half of me in it, unlikely therefore to take either the public or my friends.  This is true truth, but I warned you that I am cursed with a croak.—I am about one quarter through 'The Amazing Marriage,' which I promise you, you shall like better. . . .
                                                      Yours very cordially,
                                                       George Meredith

TO AMY LOWELL:

           Dear Miss Lowell,                                3 March 1924 Paris

  It is simply ridiculous for me to try to thank you.  From the time that I posted my letter to you I lived in hope and fear that you would do precisely what you did—hope because I knew you could help me more than anyone else and fear because I know I had no right to ask you to do it. . . .
  Your suggestion that I do critical work to get into step with myself is a very keen bit of analysis.  I have a perfect clear cut dissatisfaction with what I have already done but no more than a sort of sense of gravitation toward the thing that would give me satisfaction to do.  Of course I have been trying to get my ideas into shape but they remain pretty nebulous so far.  The rhythmic problem troubles me for one thing.  I suppose the truth is that old brother Algernon made deeper ruts in my brain than I supposed.  Diluted Algernon of course.  I find that under the pressure of any sort of emotion I fall back into cadences which I know to be stale before I use them.   Working with deliberation I can get effects that don't disgust me on rereading but only then.  That's one thing.  The other is the equally basic problem of verbiage.  Where are the living waters of the word?  . . . The trouble is that you people who made poetry of natural diction, who threw the poetic vocabulary so-called into the ashes where it belonged, have left little for the bottom layer but extremities.  I don't mean that I sympathize with the position which you so effectively squash—the position of those who apparently put idiosyncrasy above poetry.  But I do mean that one must get hold of a speech which seems to him fresh—as you did—with the additional factor that you carried over the impression to the rest of the world.  I suppose one answer to my difficulty is the perfectly tenable theory that you can only get a certain amount of poetry out of the speech of any particular age anyway.  But one doesn't believe that sort of thing until one has to. . . .
As I say it is ridiculous for me to try to thank you.  But its all I can do.  Please believe that you have done one of the kindest and most generous things on record in the elaborate books.  Only the suspicion that I wasn't worth saving can possibly detract from your piece of mind.
                   Ada sends you her love and I that and all my gratitude.
                                                         Archie MacLeish

TO IRA GERSHWIN:
                                                                                           
                                                                               New York City
                                                                            November 10, 1934
          Ira Gershwin

        Listen, you contumacious rat, don't throw your dreary tomes at me.  I'll give you an elegant dinner of your own choosing and sing to you between the courses if you can produce one writer or speaker, with an ear for the English language which you genuinely respect, who uses 'disinterested' in the sense you are now trying to bolster up.  I did look it up in my own vast Oxford dictionary a few years ago only to be told that it had been obsolete since the seventeenth century.  I haven't looked up the indices in your letter because, after all, my own word in such matters is final.  Indeed, current use of the word in the seventeenth century sense is a ghetto barbarism I had previously thought confined to the vocabularies of Ben Hecht and Jed Harris.  Surely, my child, you must see that if 'disinterested' is in our time, intend to convey a special shade of the word 'unselfish' it is a clumsy business to try to make it also serve another meaning.  That would be like the nit-wit practice of the woman who uses her husband's razor to sharpen her pencil.  The point of the pencil may emerge, but the razor is never good again for its peculiar purpose.
                                        Hoping you fry in hell, I remain
                                                          Yours affectionately,
                                                           A. W.
                                                          [Alexander Woolcott]

                                                                                                 
References:

Harper, Henry H. (1905)  The Letters of Charles Lamb In which Mutilated Words and Passages Have Been Restored to Their Original Form; with Letters Never Before Published And Facsimiles of Original Letters and Poems (Volume II).  Boston: The Bibliophile society

Hibbert, Christopher (1985) Queen Victoria In Her Letters and Journals.  New York:  Viking.

Kaufman, Beatrice and Hennesey, Joseph (1944)   The Letters of Alexander Woolcott.  New York:  Viking Press.

Letters of George Meredith Collected and Edited by His Son Volume I 1844-1881 (1912) New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons.

Myerson Joel, Shealy Daniel and Stern, Madeleine B. (1987)  The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott.  Boston:  Little Brown and Company.

Ramsden, E. H. (1963)  The Letters of Michelangelo (Volume I).  Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Redford, Bruce (1992) The Letters of Samuel Johnson Volume I 1731-1772 (The Hyde Edition). Princeton:  Princeton University Press.

Southey, Rev. Charles Cuthbert [1850?] The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey.  New York:  Harper and Brothers.  Note: Reviewed in The American Review, March 1850.

Wheeler, G. W. (1926)  Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley To Thomas James, First Keeper of the Bodlean Library.  Oxford:  Clarendon Press.

Winnick, R. H. (1983) Letters of Archibald MacLeish 1907-1982.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company.

You can view the listings of all of my books of Other People's Collected Letters on Library Thing.

                                                               
                                       

Tidbits From My Books About American Book Publishers

Books about publishers are usually among the most unrewarding parts of literature.  Sometimes these volumes are products of  retired editors far sunk in gentlemanly anecdotage.  Sometimes such a book is a piece of self-glorification issued at a centenary of a famous house, perfect in typography and empty of critical content. 
Professor Howard Mumford Jones
New York Times Book Review, Oct 27, 1946

This may be as good a place as any to call attention to the difference between a bookseller, a stationer, a printer, a binder, and a publisher, yet all these trades frequently have been merged into one.  A bookseller must have a stock of books if he wishes to survive—if you don't believe it, ask Dr. Rosenbach.  A stationer, too, must have a shop in which he sells paper, pens, ink, etc.  A printer must have types, presses, etc.; and a binder pasteboard, leather, and tools.  But a publisher requires none of these things:  he can start a business using the other fellow's plant and the author's brains—and he frequently asks him to put up some money too (73).

A. Edward Newton, Rosenbach Fellow in Bibliography for 1936
Bibliography and pseudo-Bibliography

Click on the Links Above the Images
To View Listings of the Books on Library Thing

I have found interesting tidbits—at least to me—in some of my books about publishers.  And Professor Jones had nothing but good words to write about the book he reviewed, Of Making Many Books by Roger Burlingame.

As for A. Edward Newton's striking comment about publishers, I queried David Klappholz, the noted A. Edward Newton collector.  But he knew of no problems between Newton and his publisher.  Dave even has friendly letters between Newton and two of his editors in his own Newton Collection.  I should note that Newton partially supports his own viewpoint in his second lecture, stating that the Bronte sisters and Thomas Hardy had to put up some money in order to get earlier works published.

The Owl Among Colophons
Henry Holt as Publisher and Editor

Charles A. Madison, a retired editor himself,  used Professor Jones's quotation to begin the preface of his book about Henry Holt.  And while Madison had good words to write about Holt, he didn't glorify him.  One chapter is even titled, "Holt's Failures With Popular Authors."  In this chapter, Madison detailed Holt's problems with Jerome K. Jerome, Anthony Hope, and Paul Leicester Ford, all of whom left Holt for other publishers. Robert Frost, on the other hand, remained with Holt for forty-eight years, and considered himself to be "Holt's oldest employee."

Of particular interest to Newton's charge, Madison wrote that Henry Holt did not think Paul Leicester Ford's first novel would sell enough copies.  And he required Ford to put up some money in order to get his novel published.  The book, The Honorable Peter Stirling, went on to become a bestseller.


Growoll, It Should Be!

Not all books about publishers "are perfect in typography;" the author's name is misspelled on the spine of the book printed for the Dibdin Club in 1898.  This book, by Adolf Growoll, managing editor of The Publishers' Weekly, is about  book trade bibliography.  But added to the book is "A Catalogue of All the Books Printed in the United States" as of 1804.

The Publishing Experience

Cass Canfield was the first book publisher to become an A. S. W. Rosenbach Fellow in Bibliography.  And that didn't happen until 1968.   Canfield gave two lectures: "The Real and the Ideal Editor," and "How Publishing Has Changed and Is Likely To Change."  Of historical interest was Canfield's handling of the publication of Leon Trotsky's biography of Stalin, which he discussed in his first lecture.  Trotsky was assassinated before completing the biography, and Canfield selected a Russian scholar to complete the work.  Review copies were  sent out on Friday morning, December 5, 1941.  Two days later the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.   Realizing that Stalin would be America's ally, and would not be pleased with the book, Canfield withdrew it on Monday morning, and stored the entire edition under seal in a warehouse for five years, until Stalin was no longer considered an ally of America.


Of Making Many Books

First hundred years of the House of Scribner (1846-1946).   Burlingame's viewpoint concerning the publication of political books got my attention:

A book-publishing house is in a somewhat different spot, politically, from the publisher of the average magazine or newspaper.  With a few conspicuous exceptions, periodicals have always been committed to the political stand of the editorial boards.  It is traditional for a book publisher to keep free of "partis-pris." He feels that the pubic expects him to present all views provided they are expressed in good books.  His only standard is the goodness of a book as a book; if the book is political, then the author's case must be presented in the best possible way.  What the case is, is not his concern.  No matter how many heads may shake in his editorial office over the views in a book by Trotsky or Mussolini, the editor must give full attention to each—to its clarity, its perfection of form, its proper promotion—as if the views were his own. A general publishing house must be a forum (299).

Burlingame's mention in 1946 of a book by Trotsky is just too coincidental.  Canfield released Trotsky's biography of Stalin in 1946.  Was Burlingame saying that Canfield had the responsibility to publish Trotsky's book in 1941, regardless of the political consequences?  Canfield reasoned that his responsibility as a citizen outweighed his responsibility as a publisher.

The Country Life Press.

The Country Life Press was one of my first books about publishers.  I found it in the early 1990s on the Books About Books shelves of Mike Slicker's Lighthouse Books in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Two words on the front cover first attracted me:  Long Island—I grew up on Long Island!   And when I took a look at the Contents page, I knew the book was a keeper.

This book introduced me to The Country Life Press, a division of Doubleday, Page & Company.  And it told me more than a little bit about the authors whose works Doubleday published.  But the icing on the cake was the Kipling Index.  Doubleday published all but three of Kipling's works, whose contents are listed in over fifty pages in this book.  And then there is the O. Henry Index. . . .

A view of the front entrance of the Country Life Press serves as the frontispiece for another Doubleday book:

Homes of Doubleday, Doran, and Company

In his memoirs, F. N.  Doubleday reveals that it was his friend Rudyard Kipling who first tagged him with the nickname, Effendi—I thought it was Christopher Morley!


 Doubleday's Memoirs

In 1899, Rudyard Kipling came down with double pneumonia in New York,  and F. N. Doubleday served as his errand boy in the sick room.  One of Kipling's first requests was to keep him furnished with whisky, which Doubleday's friend, Andrew Carnegie, was glad to supply.  When Kipling was well enough for visitors, Doubleday suggested that Kipling invite Carnegie and thank him personally for supplying the whisky.  Doubleday relates that Carnegie got a little bit flustered when he finally met Kipling:

"Mr. Kipling, I regard this as one of the greatest honors that has come to me in my life.  That I should have been able to serve you in this small way has been the greatest pleasure to me, and as Shakespeare put it in his immortal verse—as Shakespeare put it in his immortal verse—"
He could not remember what Shakespeare put in his immortal verse, and Mr. Kipling's pulse was mounting by leaps and bounds.
"Or as Burns expresses it in his well-known poem—as Burns expresses it in his well-known—"
He could not remember what Burns had expressed and I thought Rudyard's life would go out. . . (60). 

House of Harper:  A Century of Publishing in Franklin Square
House of Harper:  One Hundred and Fifty Years of Publishing

In 1817, when the Harpers started in business, New York City had a population of nearly one hundred and twenty thousand and the nation nine million.  The country was slowly recovering from the effects of a second war with England, and the British were still jubilant over their defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.  At Abbotsford, Walter Scott was completing a new novel, Rob Roy, and copies of that book would soon reach New York via the just established Black Ball Lines, the first scheduled operation of packet ships between New York and Liverpool.  That same year the Great Lakes were demilitarized, making a fortless boundary between the United States and Canada.  To the South a new state—Mississippi—was carved out of territory abutting the Gulf of Mexico and added the twentieth star to the flag.  In March, the month in which James Monroe was inaugurated President, a new sign was hung in front of a small frame house at the corner of Front and Dover Streets, New York,  It read, 'J. & J. Harper, Printers" (Exman, 3).

The House of Appleton

Portrait of W. W. Appleton and a record of the first hundred years of the House of Appleton: 1825-1925.

The genius for publishing is a jewel with many facets.  It is not enough to be able to discover a great author or a great work.  One must be able to discover and supply a popular appetite.  The Appleton house has done this on more than one occasion.  Those of you who may read this and who are of my own age or older, can remember the vogue of books, often wholly pictorial works, published in small sections, monthly, to be afterwards combined and kept in portfolios or bound as the owner might wish.  I believe that W. W. Appleton supervised the first of these enterprises, conducted on a scale overwhelming in those days and not small in these.  This was the work called "Picturesque America," edited by William Cullen Bryant. . . . Of these 6,000,000 parts or 600,000 volumes were sold (10).

Inside Publishing

Bill Adler ran a successful literary agency, wrote a few bestsellers himself, and supplied others with ideas for books.  He was having lunch one day with his friend, William Safire, when Safire announced that he'd like to write his first novel, but didn't know what to write about.  Adler suggested he write about a President who went blind while still in office, bringing the Twenty-Fifth Amendment into the picture.   And that is how Full 
Disclosure came to light.  Doubleday bought it for $25,000.  The Literary Guild outbid the Book-of-the-Month Club with a bid of $275,000.  And Ballantine Books bought the  reprint rights for $1,350,000, the highest ever paid by a paperback house at the time for a first novel (104,105).

Little, Brown and Company

One of the most widely read books of its period, All Quiet on the Western Front, sold 3 1/2 million copies in three years in the original German and was translated into more than twenty-five languages.  It accounted for 20 percent of Little, Brown's trade sales in 1929, the year it was published, and became the number-one nationwide best-seller that year (82).

Horace Liveright

A most interesting book detailing Liveright's rise and fall as a publisher, and his constant battle against censorship.

By January 1928 there were approximately seventy modern books banned in Boston, although by this time no single group wished to claim credit for the wholesale suppression.  Neither the District Attorney, the Police Department, nor the Watch and Ward Society accepted responsibility for the action;  in fact, each accused the other of perpetrating it.  The sale of very popular novels like An American Tragedy, Elmer Gantry, and Oil! had been stopped, and other works—some of equal literary importance—were also unavailable in Boston.  Along with Kept Women and Loose Ladies were Count Bruga by Ben Hecht, What I Believe by Bertrand Russell, Blue Voyage by Conrad Aiken, Mosquitos by William Faulkner, Dark Laughter by Sherwood Anderson, Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (167,168).

Donald Friede

Donald Friede's obscenity trial for selling a copy of An American Tragedy in Boston is covered in both this book and the Liveright book.  By the time the case came up for appeal, Friede had left Boni & Liveright, and started his own firm with Pascal Covici.  But it didn't last long.

By midsummer of 1930 it became obvious that the whole face of the book business—and all other businesses as well—was changing, and that we had to do some pretty radical changing ourselves if we wanted to survive.  We took stock of ourselves and came to the very unpleasant conclusion that for an unforeseeably long time the market for limited editions was gone.  Our mailing lists, which in the past had helped us to dispose of the major part of any limited edition we chose to publish, were now drawing only fractional returns.  And the bookstores were ordering sparingly if at all.  Yet we had well over three times our original capitalization tied up in advance and preliminary costs on this type of publication.  We thought it over carefully, took a deep breath, and then wrote off every penny we had invested in future limited editions.  Illustrations, translations, typographical plans, all of them paid for in full, went into the safe until times should improve.  They never did.  The safe was still bulging when we ceased to exist eight years later (108).

Borzoi Books

Clifton Fadiman reviewed 5,000 books published under the Borzoi imprint during its first fifty years.  And these novels, novellas, short stories, reportage, essays, and verse he has chosen as the best of the lot.

Inserted in the slipcase of my copy of this book is Sir Edouard Morot's dinner invitation, along with the guest list of those invited to commemorate the Knopf's first book published fifty years ago.   Morot (1910-1993) was a French diplomat, author, professor, and cultural emissary—a prime player in the New York cultural scene in the 1950s and 60s.

Portrait of a Publisher

B. W. Huebsch, in a piece in Book II aptly titled, "The Publisher," provides an interesting viewpoint on the requirements of a publisher:

Is there any business so paradoxical, so self-contradictory, so baffling as that of the book publisher?  It calls for scholarship, artistic taste, psychological insight, business acumen, critical ability, poker sense, and a few other endowments. . .  (II, 125).

House of Dodd, Mead: 1839-1939

Publishing in this early days [1840s] was a highly respectable profession.  There must have been plenty of competition because authors and books were relatively few and sales on the average were high.  Trade ethics were very strong indeed.  There was no copyright for English authors in America, but in spite of that, 'honorariums' were paid punctiliously and publishers were very shy of poaching on a competitor's preserve (6).

Thomas Y. Crowell

In 1893, Mr. Crowell received a manuscript which attracted very little attention in the office.  It was very slight, less than thirty pages, and seemed at first hardly worth publishing in book form; but the title, What Is Worth While, was striking and he decided to try it.  The little booklet was given a very tasteful dress, and soon began to sell surprisingly well.  The author, Anna R. Brown, afterward the wife of Professor S. C. Lindsay of Columbia University, had the satisfaction of seeing her address, originally read before the Philadelphia Branch of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, become one of the best-selling books of its kind.  This venture was so successful that other booklets were brought out in similar style—and soon the 'What Is Worth While Series' included essays of Henry Van Dyke, J. R. Miller, Professor George H. Palmer, O. S. Marden, R. W. Trine, and other prominent writers.  The total sales of this series, which was one of Mr. Crowell's big successes, ran into millions of volumes (40,41).

Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich 

Publishing, too, is steady work, for there can be no end to the constant, perdurable need to instruct and to engage by art and entertainment the whole of society, no less than every one.  By its best, humanistic definition, publishing is a major means by which we conceptualize ourselves, by which we find out what the world is and what it wants of us.  Books and journals and films and other media that inform, that tell what is known and intimate what is not—these reveal the identity of the reader and viewer no less that that of the author or producer.  Assuming that men will always be curious about themselves, publishing must be, like awaiting the millennium, the longest-lived of professions (12,13).

And finally, here's a few tidbits from my books about American book publishing in general:


Book One of John Tebbel's Masterpiece

We tend to think of early publishing in terms of hardbound books, sturdy volumes in old calf; but in fact most early books were paperbacks.  Sermons, for example, a popular kind of reading, were published in paper because it was the cheapest method.  Some of the pamphlets or books even anticipated modern  paperbacks in their use of the "skyline," that is, a phrase or sentence on the cover which summarized the content and, in effect, was a selling message.

A History of Book Publishing in the United States
The Creation of an Industry 1630-1865

A History of Book Publishing in the United States, of which the present volume is the first of three, was conceived more than fifteen years ago in the process of shaping a series of lectures for a class of graduate students at New York University.  The course, which I was to teach for many years, appeared in the catalog as 'The Rise and Significance of American Publishing,' and was a synthesis of media history, including books, magazines, newspapers, and broadcasting (xi).

American Literary Publishing Houses

In Modern America, publishing, printing, and bookselling are discrete functions not normally performed, except in the smallest of operations, by the same firm.  Commercial publishers today select works to be published, negotiate with authors, make arrangements for the physical production of books, and finally either distribute them themselves or arrange for their distribution to booksellers.  The publishing house may have little or nothing to do with the making of the physical book—printing, binding and so on.  Although a few old houses, such as Doubleday, Harcourt Brace Jovanovic, and Barnes and Noble, still maintain retail bookselling operations, most American bookstores are independent organizations.  By contrast, early American printers frequently functioned as publishers and booksellers as well. For example, Isaiah Thomas, who published in Boston and Worcester,  Massachusetts from 1770 to 1802, was both a printer and a publisher.  Mathew Carey of Philadelphia began as a printer-bookseller but established a firm that, between 1785 and 1838, became one of first American publishing houses in the modern sense of the term.  In New York from 1816 to 1844 Mahlon Day printed, published, and sold children's books for which he became well known (xx).

The Displaced Book Collector and More

My Sentimental Library blog and my Biblio-Connecting blog are my two most popular blogs; but they are not my only ones.  I have five more blogs whose posts and individual page views you can view below.


 Displacedbookcollector.blogspot.com

May 2007  to displace:  to take the place of
pageviews:  74          

Jun 2007  A Shelf In My Bookcase
pageviews:  143

Jun 2007  Among the Leaves, Fruit
pageviews:  211

Jun 2007  My Library:  A View From the Crib
pageviews:  165

Jun 2007  Once a Book Collector . . .
pageviews:  127

Jul 2007  Moi the Bookplate Collector?
pageviews:  165

Aug 2007  Bookplate Literature
pageviews:  116

Oct 2007  The Displaced Book Collector Has Been Replaced
pageviews:  97



BiblioResearching.blogspot.com

Oct 2007  Researching a George Birkbeck Hill ALS
pageviews:  515

Oct 2007  Letters Found in Books
pageviews:  76

Feb 2008  Update on Letters Found in Books
pageviews:  53

Sep 2008  Charles Lamb's Library on Library Thing
pageviews:  55

May 2009  My Elements of Style Collection
pageviews:  1188

May 2009  William Strunk's Other Books in My Library
pageviews:  1060

Sep 2009  A Correction to the Copyright and Bibliographic Records of The Elements of     
Style
pageviews:  313

Apr 2010  Stylized and the Forgotten Edition of Strunk's Elements of Style
pageviews:  329

Jul 2011  A Statius Check
pageviews:  677

Jul 2011  Corrections to the 1810 Catalogue of Greek & Latin Classics in the Auchinleck Library
pageviews:  621

Dec 2011  Researching the Value of Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare
pageviews:  1056

May 2012  Biblio Researching 101
pageviews:  173

Sep 2012 About That Engraving by William Kneass . . .
pageviews:  410

Oct 2012  Researching Serving You. . . And Its Catalog Records
pageviews:  521

Feb 2013 The Boswell Copy of Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson?
pageviews:  145

May 2013  A Well-Lobbied Government:  How the NRA Won the Battle Over the Second Amendment
pageviews:  351

Oct 2013  Is America Lost in the Funhouse?
pageviews:  156

Dec 2013  About Bibliomites, Biblionotes, and Walter "Wally" Harris
pageviews:  296

Jun 2014  Some Auspicious Biblio-Sleuthing
pageviews:  406



Idlewildblueyonder.blogspot.com
non-bookrelated:  intended to be about my childhood, Air Force days, and beyond

Jul 2007  The Old Neighborhood
pageviews:  341

Jul 2007  My Old House:  It is Still Standing
pageviews:  38

Jul 2007  Stage Fright
pageviews:  29

Jul 2007  Peeping Toms
pageviews:  44

Sep 2007  Old Stoneface:  Memories of New York
pageviews:  177

Nov 2009  . . . But Not Forgotten
pageviews:  256

Nov 2009  On Thanksgiving Day
pageviews:  1105

Aug 2011  Loves Me, Loves Me Not
pageviews:  134

Jan 2012  The Night I Beat Up Johnny Polovoy
pageviews:  89



BibliophilesInMyLibrary.blogspot.com

Nov 2008  Mary Hyde and the Unending Pursuit
pageviews:  2213

Nov 2008  William Targ, Bibliophile
pageviews:  571

Mar 2009  Cataloguing Dead People's Books;  Namely, the Libraries of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and Charles Lamb
pageviews:  874

Apr 2009  Birrell, Starrett, Morley, But Who Is O. M.?
pageviews:  171

Aug 2009  Kings of Persia
pageviews:  122

Apr 2013  From Whence They Came:  Don Brady and His Miniature Books
pageviews:  461




moibibliomaniac.blogspot.com

Apr 2004   Contemplations of Moi Bibliomaniac:
(Blog revived below)


ContemplationsofMoiBibliomaniac.blogspot.com

Dec 2012  Contemplations of MoiBibliomaniac
pageviews:  211

Jan 2013  MoiBlogomaniac?
pageviews:  222

Feb 2013:  Jerry Morris:  The Never-Ending Story
pageviews:  233

Feb 2013  On Selecting a Bookplate For My Library
pageviews:  1878

Feb 2013  On Finding New Owners For My Old Books
pageviews:  134

Mar 2013  Library For Sale
pageviews:  162

Jun 2013  A Former Owner's Review of the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning
pageviews:  431

Aug 2013  A Most Heavenly Review?
pageviews:  159

Jul 2014  Are Libraries Obsolete?  An Argument For Relevance in the Digital Age
pageviews:  63

Aug 2014  A Second Book of Booksellers:  Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade 
pageviews:  159

Sep 2014  Johnny Evers:  A Baseball Life
pageviews:  71

Dec 2014  The Court-Martial of Paul Revere
pageviews:  17

Grangerisers: Number Three of the Twelve Blogs For Christmas

In 2012, I began a custom of sharing the essays contained in Contributions to Biblionotes with my friends and readers each Christmas.  Walter Harris wrote these essays for the Bibliomites in the 1950s.  And when he died in 1982, he was described in the Antiquarian Book Monthly Review as "one of the three most knowledgeable bookmen who ever lived."  

"Ex-Libris" was the first essay I shared, followed by "Chapbooks" in 2013.  And to provide more background information for you, I posted "About Bibliomites, Biblionotes and Walter 'Wally" Harris" on my Biblio-Researching blog in December 2013.


My Christmas gift to you this year is  Grangerisers: