London and the Making of Provincial Literature. Joseph Rezek
summer of 1819, when unforeseen delays in the publication of Ivanhoe (1819) and the receipt of its profits led Scott to go behind Constable’s back and seek revenue elsewhere. The delay with Ivanhoe had to do with various complications, including difficulties with paper supply and arrangements with its London publisher. It was eventually published in late December 1819 by Constable and his joint partners Hurst, Robinson, a new firm that Constable helped establish in London in an effort to control the distribution of his books in England. Such efforts included a huge trade sale Constable orchestrated in London in November 1819, which featured the advance sale of Ivanhoe and the launch of the collected series The Novels and Tales of the Author of Waverley. Too impatient to wait for this, however, in August, Scott promised and sold the next two Waverley novels directly to Longman, who had been the partner in some of Scott’s previous productions but with whom Constable had considerable difficulties. Constable was still to be the Edinburgh publisher of these next novels, The Monastery and The Abbot, but the London firm got top billing on their title pages as Scott pulled in “£5000 in Longmans beautiful and dutiful bills,” as he wrote with apparent relief to Ballantyne.7 This paid his debts in 1819, even though similar measures could not stave off the bigger crisis years later.8
Longman could provide money for Scott; for Mathew Carey, in Philadelphia, the firm could provide books. Carey’s pioneering work in reprinting grew in the late 1810s with the increased involvement of Henry, who became his father’s official partner in 1817. The Careys sought out pecuniary relationships with London publishers to ensure the speedy delivery of new books by familiar authors who were already market tested in the United States. The direct shipment of new books helped them preempt the publication of the same books by rival printers in New York and Philadelphia. About a year before Carey published his extensive catalogue of “Novels and Romances” (discussed in the previous chapter), Henry wrote to Longman with this proposal:
We are very desirous to make some arrangement by which we should receive such new works that come out as may be likely to bear publication in this country. If you can make any such arrangements for us we will allow Two hundred fifty dollars per annum…. Our booksellers are so very active that it would require very considerable attention to forward them by first and fastest sailing vessels. We should wish to receive every new work of popularity and particularly those of Miss Porter, Lord Byron, Miss Edgeworth, W. Scott, Leigh Hunt, Author of Waverley, Moore, Miss Burney, Mrs. Taylor, Lady Morgan, Dugald Stuart, etc. etc.9
This list of desirable authors reveals much about American literary taste, not least through the irony of listing Scott twice, as himself and the anonymous “Author of Waverley.” In response to this request, Longman recommended they employ John Miller to acquire and deliver books. Miller became the London agent to Carey’s house, a role he sustained through the 1820s, even as he shepherded many American texts into transatlantic editions, including the first, self-financed volume of The Sketch Book as well as fiction by Catherine Maria Sedgwick and James Fenimore Cooper. Miller shipped Carey new works as soon as they were available in the metropolis. The scene in London could be especially hectic as the latest Waverley novel arrived from Edinburgh. “The Smack Ocean, by which the new work was shipped, arrived at the wharf on Sunday,” Constable wrote to Scott about the delivery of The Fortunes of Nigel in 1822; “the bales were got out by one Monday morning, and before halfpast ten o’clock 7000 copies had been dispersed.”10
In the United States, the demand for Scott was just as intense, and even a twenty-four-hour advantage could result in enormous profits for the reprinter who published first. This led the Careys to pursue more innovative measures than their arrangement with Miller: the purchase of advance sheets of Waverley novels, sometimes in proofs, before official publication. The first Scott novel to be received in Philadelphia early was Rob Roy (1817), dispatched in December 1817, eight months after Carey wrote to Longman with his initial proposal. The exact circumstances of the transatlantic sale of Rob Roy are unknown, but the dynamics of the London book trade made it possible. The advance copy of Rob Roy became available for transatlantic purchase as part of a deal Constable made with Hurst, Robinson to purchase his overstocked books and distribute them in London and overseas, including America. Such stock included the Edinburgh Annual Register, which Constable suggested they print “for the American market and say edited by Walter Scott, Esq—which is actually the fact.”11 The American demand for imported books clearly helped Constable: the potential profits from their sale provided him with leverage when he was making the distribution deal with Hurst, Robinson. This was the case with Rob Roy, which Constable offered them as an incentive for purchasing more than 1,200 copies of the Encyclopaedia Britannica meant for the London market. Hurst, Robinson found a buyer in Thomas Wardle, an American living in London, who, like John Miller, acted as an agent for American publishers; Wardle then sold Rob Roy to a bookseller in Philadelphia, probably Mathew Carey.12
Hurst, Robinson’s claim on these advance sheets was not, however, secure, and neither was Carey’s. In 1819, Constable received multiple offers from American publishers for Tales of My Landlord, Third Series (1819), and he leveraged such offers while dealing with Hurst, Robinson. In February 1819, Constable wrote to them, “We have had a good offer from Philadelphia for an early copy of this work—& you have not said what you will give for it.”13 In March he declared, “We have offers of £50 for an early copy from 3 different quarters, and having so many expenses attending business we really cannot afford to make your American agent a present of this work as we did the last.”14 It is not clear if Hurst, Robinson ended up purchasing these sheets, but it is clear Carey did not obtain them. Tales of My Landlord, Third Series was published first by Moses Thomas of Philadelphia and J. Haly & C. Thomas of New York, who declared in an advertisement that “the copy from which the present edition is printed, was sent from Edinburgh previous to the publication of the work there.”15 Advance sheets were apparently up for grabs.
Hurst, Robinson hurried and soon acquired Ivanhoe for their agent, Wardle, who sold it to Mathew Carey. By then, the Edinburgh publishers had a new term for advance sheets—the “American Copy,” as Cadell put it in numerous letters to Constable.16 The practice of transmitting sheets via Hurst, Robinson and Wardle continued with The Monastery, The Abbot, Kenilworth (1821), The Pirate (1821), and The Fortunes of Nigel (1822). Each volume was shipped as soon as it was printed. Carey could therefore expect the three volumes of a single work to arrive on separate ships, sometimes over the course of a few weeks or months, and he printed each volume as it arrived. Beginning with Kenilworth, Carey previewed each new Waverley novel in the Philadelphia paper The National Gazette by printing excerpts when he received the first shipment. As insurance while dealing with Wardle, Carey continued to instruct John Miller to send complete copies of the novels from London when they were published. In a few cases, the arrival of Miller’s copy proved crucial, since the arrangement with Wardle was tenuous and sometimes unreliable.17
A direct agreement between Carey’s and Constable’s firms emerged out of a heated dispute in 1822 between the two junior partners, Henry Carey and Robert Cadell, over this indirect process of acquisition. These junior partners were far more interested in exploring the transatlantic arrangements than their seniors. In 1817, Cadell wrote with great optimism to Constable about selling books in America, and in 1822, he declared that “with good management we may get a good thing from America—the Pirate has set them all at us.”18 The epistolary exchange that established the agreement is more significant than David Kaser, its only other commentator, suggested when he considered it half a century ago.19 Not only did it bring the firms together, as Kaser notes, but it also reveals dynamics and frustrations endemic to provincial publishing, as London remained a problem and professional alliances proved both alluring and troublesome. In the letters, the younger Carey and Cadell exhibited a fascinating combination of hostility and desire. The demand for Scott’s novels lent urgency to the matter, while the lack of copyright regulations meant that honor, courtesy, and pride provided the rules of conduct.
In the spring of 1822, Constable and Cadell heard a rumor, eventually proved false, that a reprinter in Philadelphia was purchasing advance sheets of the Waverley novels from a thief in the Ballantyne printing