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Chapter 2

Furious Booksellers and the “American Copy” of the Waverley Novels

The London book trade appears most interesting from the perspective of provincial publishers who tried to reach its marketplace, both to acquire books and eventually to sell their own. London was the teeming hub of their trade, an intense stage of fierce competition, and a high-stakes arena for professional maneuvering, especially for the trade in new, copyrighted literary texts. Nowhere was this more evident than with Scott’s wildly popular novels, which tested the ingenuity of book trades professionals around the Anglophone Atlantic. The centripetal pull of the London marketplace catalyzed an important relationship in the early 1820s between Archibald Constable, Scott’s Edinburgh publisher, and Mathew Carey of Philadelphia, his most important publisher in the United States. As noted in the previous chapter, the Waverley novels were printed in Edinburgh, but the majority of them were sold in London, where they reached their largest and most lucrative audience. For Mathew Carey and his son and partner, Henry, the city remained the distribution center of most books American publishers wanted to reprint—even those, like Scott’s, that were issued first in Edinburgh.¹ The strategies Constable and his junior partner, Robert Cadell, pursued in dealing with London directly affected Carey’s ability to reprint Scott during the hectic years when the demand for the Waverley novels overwhelmed literary publishers in the United States.² Meanwhile, the Careys’ strategies as reprinters of Scott proved of concrete importance in Edinburgh as Constable and Cadell used them to their own advantage. The frenzy over Scott’s novels put Carey’s and Constable’s firms into a direct relationship that circumvented London and proved mutually beneficial; it was forged through an intense conflict over transatlantic circulation.

Though marked by definite inequality—Scott belonged to Constable, after all, not Carey—the two provincial publishers became allies in the literary field. This alliance was in many ways exceptional, given Scott’s unmatched popularity, but it remains instructive for the way it highlights London’s importance in the book trade as a whole. “I am highly pleased with the communication respecting the Author of Waverley,” one of Scott’s London publishers, Joseph Robinson, wrote to Constable in 1825, about the latest novel, “and no doubt the work must be highly interesting to every individual in every corner of the Globe. However England is the great place for the sale of the Work to produce Profit for the Proprietors and therefore the mode of publication requires great Consideration.”³ In what follows, I provide a new story about such “mode[s] of publication,” both from the perspective of this conceited metropolitan and the provincial booksellers who worked so hard to get around him.

Bringing Scott to market was a heated emotional drama with many acts: Constable’s attempts to reach English readers, the difficulties Mathew and Henry Carey faced in cornering the American market, the epistolary exchange that brought the younger partners Henry Carey and Robert Cadell together as associates, angry disputes in American newspapers over errors in Carey’s hastily produced Scott editions, and furious debates in Edinburgh and London over the transmission of the “American Copy” of the Waverley novels. The story concludes in 1831 when an anomalous episode involving the “American Copy” led Scott to represent the process of transatlantic reprinting in the extraordinary preface he wrote for his last novels, the fourth series of Tales of My Landlord.⁴ The actors in this drama were a writerly and bookish crew, and I argue throughout that the language of the book trade is as interesting as it was important—as an expressive form, a means of establishing credit in business negotiations, a performative rhetoric of the marketplace, and, for Scott, an inspiring discourse for fiction. Michael Everton has recently argued that the business of publishing in the nineteenth century involved intense negotiations over morality, character, and ethics.⁵ The negotiations over Scott’s “American Copy” confirm this view and suggest that the book trade can only be understood by analyzing the language used to constitute it. My account also demonstrates the importance of the extralegal arrangements that governed the trade and to which scholars like Everton, Robert Spoo, and Melissa Homestead have recently turned.⁶ Such informal codes, known as “courtesy of the trade,” were especially important in the transatlantic marketplace for books because there were no accepted legal frameworks to guide production. The story of Carey, Constable, and Scott epitomizes the way that improvisation and custom affected transatlantic publishing. It also suggests that the American demand for Scott was far more important to his publishers than scholars have ever realized.

Early Trouble with the “American Copy”

Throughout Walter Scott’s career, reckless capital investments soaked up the profits from his busy pen, as he underwrote his Edinburgh printer, James Ballantyne; encouraged costly publishing ventures; and built his vast medieval castle at Abbotsford. Such investments and entanglements made Scott, Constable, and Ballantyne vulnerable to the fluctuations of the market, factors that led to bankruptcy of the Waverley machine in 1826. Even at the height of his popularity, Scott could be short on cash, as was the case in the 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 house. On April 27, Cadell wrote to Carey & Sons accusing them of this illegitimate method of acquisition, suggesting it had not occurred to him that they could have been the beneficiaries of Hurst, Robinson’s connections with Wardle. Cadell’s letter is remarkably harsh in its tone and presumption of guilt:

We now address you in consequence of being put in possession of information, that you have for some years, and are now, in the way of procuring the sheets of the new works published by us from the pen of the Author of Waverly [sic], through the means of some one of the workmen in the Printing Office where the productions of that Author are printed.

It may at present be sufficient to state, that we have taken means to put a stop to so irregular a proceeding, and if you suffer any disappointment in the matter, it will mainly arise from the course you have pursued being one of great uncertainty, to say nothing of the gross want of honesty in the person so transmitting early copies of the sheets to you.²⁰

Although it was the thief in the shop whom Cadell accused of “gross” dishonesty, the insult overflowed onto Carey himself, embroiled as he allegedly was in such an “irregular” proceeding. Cadell’s arrogance is manifest in his certainty of Carey’s guilt, his own ability to “put a stop” to the crime, and the implicit lesson he wished to teach the American about how to behave like a gentleman bookseller. His anger derived not only from the apparent violation of Ballantyne’s printing office—still closely guarded to protect Scott’s anonymity—but, as quickly becomes clear, from the injustice of missing out on the transaction. He questioned not the propriety of Carey’s procuring advance sheets, just his supposed method of acquisition. Cadell wanted the money himself: “[We] have no objections to treat with you or any respectable house for the privilege of any early dispatch we make of the sheets of any work of this author; there will be many more productions from the same pen, and if it is any object to you to have the early possession of such works surely it is to you greatly more certain to transact direct with the proprietors than through any disrespectable channel, but perhaps you are not aware of the source from which you procure the sheets being irregular.”²¹ The concession he made at the end of this passage merely trades the presumption of dishonesty for one of ignorance and does little to mitigate the accusation that Carey was flouting common courtesies of the trade. In the absence of an actionable legal offence, Cadell reasserted his firm’s ownership of the Waverley novels and resorted to shame as a disciplinary tactic.

In the rest of the letter, he suggested that Carey purchase the sheets from him, an ironic move given his disdain for Carey’s supposed methods. Cadell reported that he initially heard about the stolen sheets from a publisher in Baltimore who had written to him about the rumor and offered to purchase subsequent sheets himself. Cadell passed over the request from Baltimore and offered the deal instead to the offensive Philadelphians, whose enterprising negotiation of the marketplace Cadell seemed, despite himself, to admire. “[I]f as that letter [from Baltimore] states you have successfully brought out many of these books in succession,” he wrote, “we think there is a better chance of your understanding the matter than any person in a great degree unacquainted with it”; should they come to terms, he could “forward any portion of any new work.”²² It was precisely within the apparent irregularity of Carey’s practices that Cadell found evidence of his competency. In showing his own preference for the experienced Philadelphia firm, furthermore, Cadell betrayed his firm’s own preference—quite outside economic motivations—that the Waverley novels receive a “respectable” edition in the United States.

Upon receipt of this letter, Henry Carey was immediately concerned with defending his firm (now H. Carey & Lea), a simple task given the facts of the case but also an urgent one given the great potential of establishing a new relationship with Edinburgh. The letter he wrote in response, addressed to Archibald Constable, gave a full explanation of his actual practice, including the amount he paid Wardle for each novel, though he did not name Hurst, Robinson in order to avoid “any difficulty between you and them.” The letter is notable for both offended pride and solicitation. The backhanded preference Constable & Company showed for Carey over the gossipy Baltimore firm may have been an additional provocation over and above his actual innocence:

Had you known us at the time you wrote that letter we presume you would not have thrown out the ideas it contains with regard to our obtaining the books in the manner you speak of. Where we are known we do not imagine any such charge could be thought of as we have endeavored to conduct our business with as much regard to correctness as any house in this Country. Messr Longman & Co—Mr Miller … are our correspondents in London, to them you may refer for any information that you may desire respecting us. We mention these names from a desire that the impression you have received may be effaced. Had such a charge come from any person who had an opportunity of knowing us, we should hardly have considered it entitled to refutation.²³

Carey’s frustration is palpable in the repeated invocation of his firm’s obscurity (“Had you known us,” and so on). As Everton has written, “The rank of a printer or publisher depended on his character and reputation in trade.”²⁴ Such a reputation was not easily acquired across the Atlantic. Of course, Carey was disingenuous to claim that Constable’s ignorance was the only reason he deigned to refute this charge. The stakes were quite high, as a direct arrangement with Constable & Company could finally give him the real advantage he wanted in the reprint market and also solve continuing difficulties with his indirect London connection.

However disguised, the high stakes are revealed in the measures Carey took to vindicate his honor, including the invocation of his London agents, the detailed account of his dealings with Wardle, and his defense of the anonymous party Hurst, Robinson, who Carey well knew were Constable’s London partners: “Were we to mention the name of the house by which [the sheets] have been furnished you would be astounded to hear that such a house would be guilty of such conduct.” “For ourselves,” Carey continued, “we feel perfectly free from the slightest impropriety in the transaction & we presume you will be convinced of the same & regret having charged us as you have done.” He was confident enough to call a witness on his own behalf to turn the tables on the Edinburgh publisher, who now played the fool: “Since the receipt of your letter this morning we have seen the agent [Wardle] & he informs us that when he was last in London, one Vol of one of the works was rec’d & the head of the house assured him that it had that morning been put into his hands by Mr Constable himself.”²⁵ The arch tone was clearly a method, in itself, of earning credit in the eyes of his opponent; Carey’s honor was defined through its capacity to be thoroughly offended.

Carey also proved as capable as Robert Cadell in making a proposal couched in condescension and negativity. He aimed low in his offer for future novels, as anyone might while negotiating a price, but he emphasized over and over again that advance sheets might be less valuable than Constable & Company would wish. For most of the novels, he paid either $100 or $200, Carey wrote, and he added that “from these prices you may judge the value of the copies here,” even, as he said, “where the agent has the opportunity of making arrangements with any or all the Booksellers in the country.” Without a middleman, they might command an even lower sum, since in the current arrangement, agent and supplier split the profits. As Carey pointedly phrased it, “We could not believe that a house engaged in so large a business as they [Hurst, Robinson] would be guilty of so much rascality for the thrifty compensation they receive.” The implication was that such a cheap bundle wouldn’t even be worth stealing. In this context, his actual offer appears generous: “We are willing to pay fifty five pounds (about $250) for the first Copy of his future works.” Although this is more than twice what they paid for Ivanhoe, Carey felt it necessary to explain his low bid even further by mentioning that the swift arrival of the published books would erase the advantage of advance sheets, since in such cases, any bookseller “is sure of having the opportunity of taking part of an edition at cost of paper & print in less than 5 days after us.”²⁶ Throughout the letter, Carey seemed as interested in explaining the demand structure of the American book trade as he was in introducing himself as an honorable tradesman. In doing so, he allowed a hint of condescension, as if to assure the Edinburgh publisher that if he wanted to profit from content that would otherwise be free, he must know whereof he spoke.

The establishment of this relationship was more urgent in Philadelphia than in Edinburgh because Carey depended much more on profits from Scott’s novels than Constable did on fees from America. But in Edinburgh, Cadell was determined to take as much advantage of the American demand for Scott as he could. In investigating the supposed breach of Ballantyne’s printing office, he sent an inquiry to Hurst, Robinson, in a move that suggests he had not quite forgotten their claim on advance sheets. He soon received a satisfying reply, and the day after he wrote to Philadelphia, he wrote to Constable with an update on the matter. In this letter, Cadell gloated about the international demand for Scott’s novels, declared his own optimism about profit, and indicated his desire to circumvent the London trade:

I have today a letter from [Joseph] Robinson, very reasonable, about the American Copies—the fact is he must be so, as we are at this moment in correspondence with Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York on the same subject—R. alludes to arrangements for the Continent—I already stated to you that I have made a German arrangement—and I would suggest that whoever calls on R. should be referred to this, as we may get into confusion, and there is no occasion for any London commission on such matters—we are the managers and patrons of the books, have all the risks of Author and his connections and must make hay while the sun shines—I have no hesitation in saying if we manage these works with attention we will make £1000 extra on each.²⁷

It is unclear how Cadell could imagine making £1,000 on the kind of novel he had hitherto sold for only about £75, even with the Continent as a potential foreign market. What is clear is both his commitment to selling Scott’s books in unprotected markets and his palpable desire to take London out of the equation. As for Constable, he was more concerned with problems closer to home, namely, at Ballantyne’s. “The waste, thieving, and destruction during the last 18 years has been enormous,” he wrote to Cadell, in an immediate reply that presumed the printer’s guilt. “It would almost be worth our while to pay a warehouseman to superintend our property in the printing office. A severe example ought to be made of some of them.”²⁸ The transmission of the “American Copies” had always been handled with care, for fear they would be leaked to the press during a long, circuitous, and secret journey through the hands of various agents in Edinburgh, London, and Philadelphia. Writing to Hurst, Robinson regarding The Monastery, for example, Cadell cautioned, “We send you with this under a sealed cover Vol 1st of the M[onastery], which you may wish to send across the Atlantic but the parcel must on no account be opened.”²⁹ Transmitting sheets this way was a confidential business, containing equal parts profit and paranoia.

Furious Booksellers

Back in Philadelphia, as Carey waited for Constable to reply to his self-vindication, problems resulting from his arrangement with Wardle and Hurst, Robinson caused glaring errors in editions of the two latest novels, The Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel, which Carey issued, respectively, in February and July 1822. Because of changes made in Edinburgh after the shipment of the “American Copy,” The Pirate was missing a chapter and Nigel a preface—discrepancies that infuriated booksellers all over the Eastern Seaboard. Carey distributed the missing chapter of The Pirate on its own, and he belatedly printed the preface to Nigel in the second volume.³⁰ The ensuing outcry meant that Carey had to publicly explain embarrassing errors while he was appealing to the firm that had it in its power to prevent them. In late July, a sarcastic screed in the Boston Daily Advertiser complained about Carey’s editions, setting off a short dispute that illustrates just how uncourteous the reprint trade could be. The dispute brought the language of the book trade to the foreground, as the different parties argued about transatlantic reprinting and its effect on the integrity of texts.

The Boston complaint illustrates that, like Constable, its writer had heard his own rumors about Carey’s London connection:

[We] have had the misfortune to see a copy of the Philadelphia edition [of The Fortunes of Nigel], in which the whole introductory chapter is omitted. This Philadelphia edition is from the same press that also gave us the Pirate without a chapter…. These enterprising publishers are said to have an agent in England, who forwards them the new productions, in sheets, as they come from the press. When it is about time for the whole work to reach the hands of other American booksellers, the publishers of these Philadelphia editions, it seems, reprint what sheets they have received, more or less, and if a very characteristic introduction has not yet come to hand, or a chapter is wanting in the middle, why it only increases the interest of the story, and, in the course of the season, the missing sheets will arrive—be reprinted—and sent (wonderfully liberally) gratis, to those who have bought the book…. We should not be surprised if these Philadelphia editions should rival the renowned Irish pirated editions abroad.³¹

The Boston paper ridiculed Carey for unacceptable results and for his pretentious attempt to achieve insider status among English booksellers—just the kind of fool’s errand an “Irish” printer might pursue. In thus insulting Irish editions, the Boston paper invoked Mathew Carey’s well-known national origins and belittled reprinting as a practice despite the writer’s obvious desire that it prove effective. In this notice, authority resides in Britain, where the “whole work” was issued in complete and unadulterated form. Through fashioning excuses for the error in an ironic language of aesthetic pleasure (“it only increases the interest of the story”), the complaint located Carey’s highest offense in the destruction of the work’s unity. The “missing sheets” were the sign for the breakdown of the text as well as Carey’s commitment to its cultural value.

Henry Carey’s use of advance sheets proved more difficult to defend than the means he used to acquire them. His reply, printed in the National Gazette and reprinted in the Boston paper, included a defense of his father’s native land—“the same as Montgomery and Emmet,” but his excuses only confirmed the unreliability of his practice and, worse, tried to fashion his blatant commercial strategy as a public service. Volume 1 of The Pirate, he explained, “had the appearance of being complete,” but after examining “another English copy,” it was revealed “the author had added a chapter.” Regarding The Fortunes of Nigel, he said that they rushed to distribute its first volume “to guard against the edition, which … would be published in New York, immediately upon the receipt of the London copy,” but then he “found, upon receiving the remainder of the work, that there was an introduction,” and so he inserted it in volume 2. He attributed all this to “a desire to benefit the public,” to “enable us early to lay before them the most interesting of the English publications,” and he trumpeted “the pains we have taken and the expense we have incurred” to make this possible. Against all evidence to the contrary, but perhaps because of the Boston writer’s sarcasm, Carey implied the attack derived from envy about a London connection—as if it had done any good. “We trust it is not necessary to contend with an enemy who thus, without a name, shoots his poisoned arrows from his ambush, and would wound us even unto death for no other avowed reason than because we ‘have an Agent in England’ who forwards us ‘the new publications, in sheets, as they come from the press,’ to the end that we may as early as possible, gratify and inform our fellow countrymen.”³² Carey presumed his customers wanted to be up to speed with the literary scene in England. He tried to deflect the controversy by trading one temporality for another: the time pressure of the fierce reprint trade—where one day can make the difference—for a broader temporal context that bridged the Atlantic. The National Gazette reinforced this broader temporality in a note appended to Carey’s defense that also avoided the issue of the edition’s actual integrity: “What could be more absurd and unjust, than to arraign them for their exertions to supply the American public with the new productions of the British literati, as early almost as the readers of London are supplied.”³³ The provinciality of the American literary field is reflected in this entire exchange not merely through the evident demand for British literature but more profoundly by the continual invocation of London and England as the center of literary commerce and the location that governed literary time.

Not long after this domestic controversy, Carey received a letter from Constable’s firm that must have been extremely welcome. His self-defense was a resounding success, at least in establishing the facts about the “stolen” sheets. Indeed, the idea of a thief in Ballantyne’s print shop was pure fiction, and all parties were soon exonerated. “[W]e have no doubt the fault is on this side of the water,” Robert Cadell conceded, on behalf of Constable, suggesting too that Carey’s reply was successful because of its combative style: “[We] assure you, after such a letter it would ill become us to testify any other feeling than respect for the writers of it. The tone of candour throughout cannot fail to draw forth these feelings—and we hope we may have from time to time the pleasure of your correspondence.”³⁴ Even though flattery is standard on the occasion of an apology, in calling this “pleasure,” Cadell was clearly working hard to control the damage incurred by thus annoying his new associate. He may also have been motivated by a desire to vindicate his employer, Constable, whose authority Carey invoked in his earlier letter. “[O]ur Mr. Constable has been, from bad health unable to attend to business for 18 months past,” Cadell informed Carey, in perhaps a slight admission of his own guilt in mismanaging the situation.³⁵ Indeed, only a few days earlier, Constable had written to Cadell with some bewilderment about their American connections: “I have many applications for copies to send abroad, of Peveril of the Peak, but being ignorant of the arrangements that have been made, am prevented from giving even a satisfactory answer.”³⁶ America was clearly Cadell’s territory, not Constable’s, and he further sought to smooth things over by providing a document certifying Wardle’s purchase of the novels since Ivanhoe. Wardle traveled all the way to London to secure this confirmation, even though his services as a middleman were no longer required.³⁷

Though it was relatively straightforward to resolve the dispute over courtesy and honor, the negotiation over pricing proved more difficult, since Cadell lost no time in claiming his firm’s advantage as proprietor. In this perhaps he was encouraged by two new offers from America to pay for advance sheets, which he received from Thomas Dobson and W. G. Gilley at the height of Carey’s problems with The Pirate and Nigel.³⁸ In his defensive reply, Carey had labored to demonstrate the generosity of offering £55 per volume, but in London, John Miller was unable to secure less than £75, or £25 per volume, for the next novel, Peveril of the Peak (1823). “I could not make a better bargain with Constable & Co.,” Miller wrote; “they would not give way in the slightest degree.”³⁹ Carey agreed to this, but Peveril, like the last novels, also proved difficult: Scott wrote an extra volume and Constable insisted on the increased price of £100. This made Carey furious but to no avail. “We think the demands of Messrs. Constable as improper as any we have known,” he wrote to Miller, but still had little choice: “we hope,” he continued, “that you have made some arrangements with them; as it would be in the highest degree vexatious to us to be delayed.”⁴⁰ Though Carey desired that the novels be sent through Liverpool, subsequent novels were still sent through London, a task managed most often by Miller, acting as the Careys’ agent.⁴¹

The distribution of the next novel, Quentin Durward (1823), caused trouble on both sides of the Atlantic. Scott’s eleventh-hour addition of a postscript gave Carey the unwelcome task of defending himself yet again in the National Gazette, where he printed the extra text. On this occasion, Carey revealed his new, direct, and costly arrangement with Constable; confidently attributed any faults of his edition to its source, which, now identifiable, was beyond reproach; and emphasized, once again, that his service to the public resided not in shutting out his own competition but in narrowing the transatlantic time delay:

The American publishers of Quentin Durward have this day received advice from Edinburgh, that a small addition … has been made to the work subsequently to the dispatch of their copy. Having paid Messrs. Constable & Co. a large sum to have the volumes forwarded several days previous to their appearance in London, those gentlemen were pledged to furnish them complete; and their high standing in society warrants the belief that they had no idea of an addition…. Under their present arrangement with the publishers, nothing but so extraordinary a circumstance as the present, could have caused such an error. They hope it will be received as an apology for the omission, that the work was published here in twenty-two days after the day fixed for publication in England, and that no copy except their’s [sic] has yet been received in this country, nor will probably be received for eight or ten days, although published in this city a week since.⁴²

In trumpeting their “present arrangement,” Carey insisted that his circumstances were more reliable than before, even though they still resulted in an incomplete edition. Once again, he trusted that ample compensation for the error lay in his publication of the novel more than a week earlier than would have been possible without the “large sum” he sacrificed for the occasion.

Back in Edinburgh, an episode also involving Quentin Durward demonstrated that great anxiety surrounded the “American Copy” and its transmission. In London, a magazine got its hands on an early copy of the novel and printed copious extracts before it was officially published. Constable and Cadell, furious at the scoop, assumed—wrongly, it turned out—that the “American Copy” was the source of the extracts and shot off a number of accusatory letters. Constable immediately blamed the Careys’ agent for the leak: “Miller’s conduct is most disgraceful,” he wrote to Cadell, “and I now say must be punished.”⁴³ Meanwhile, in a tense correspondence with Cadell, Joseph Robinson, whose firm was formerly the trustee of the “American Copy,” saw fit to vent his feelings about the new arrangement between Constable and the Careys and cast a number of aspersions on Miller, now his rival, who was often in financial trouble and, according to Robinson, was not to be trusted. This clearly wasn’t just about the money. Robinson was indignant:

I think you might in great fairness have continued to give us the [copy] for America at all events it should not have been sent to a London Booksr (3 times a Bankrupt). I confess I felt hurt some weeks ago when told in confidence by a particular friend that he had seen part of Q. D. in the hands of your Confidential Booksellers & Foreign agents…. I will not say all I feel on this head but I think if any Bookseller in London was to be trusted with these sheets it might have been the individual who has been trusted and confided in on many important matters both of business and personal interest.⁴⁴

The “American Copy” had become a sign of intimacy between booksellers. This was because of the risk of sending the sheets, in vulnerable packages, through London—a metropolis teeming with eager printers and thousands of readers desperate for Scott’s novels. Perhaps Robinson, at that time an established London bookseller, can’t be blamed for reproaching Cadell’s trust in a bunch of Americans. Such scolding apparently was not enough, however. Robinson added a postscript to this letter threatening to complain to Scott himself, by way of Ballantyne. The comments were added quickly, later that night, and written crosswise on the page: “I feel so much hurt about the confidence you have given to Miller & refused to me that I return home this evening not fully decided as to the propriety of my writing or not to the authors agent [Ballantyne] to refer him to you to be informed who it is that violated his engagement. We are the sufferers but you are the sinners.”⁴⁵ (See figure 1.) As was true of the earlier dispute between Carey and Cadell, a number of nonquantifiable values were at stake, including trust, confidence, and honor.

Robinson’s accusation predictably failed to defuse any tension among this emotional bunch. “Robinson has no right to assume the tone he does,” Cadell wrote to Constable: “what right has he to sulk.”⁴⁶ Soon Robinson made good on his threat of writing to Ballantyne, and Cadell, writing to Constable, basically lost it:

I cannot but feel much incensed at Robinson’s conduct … now, I do say, that Robinson, our agent—without any share in the book—without having concern with the contracts—or the author, or the risk—or the advance—to have the impertinence to write to Ballantyne accusing us is not to be borne—I say it is a piece of high impudence & effrontery…. I cannot get over Robinson … all I can say is this[:] that I will not be able to submit to it. That we who have large advances—insurances—risks &c to make for the greatest living author are to be brow beaten by one London Commission agent—who only this week before had any right to the book at all—you will be assailed with noise and uproars.⁴⁷

Figure 1. Joseph Robinson to Archibald Constable, May 3, 1823.

Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.

Cadell’s fury was directed straight toward London, where Scott’s books were mostly sold, and where, as Robinson well knew, most of the money was. The fault with Quentin Durward lay, in the end, in an unexpected quarter—with a dramatist who had been given a copy to write a theatrical adaptation.⁴⁸ As his booksellers raged and tattled, Scott himself kept his cool. “I think you are right to be satisfied with an apology,” he wrote to Constable, and—no doubt pleased with the offenders—he later added, “Do not be hard on them.”⁴⁹

Scott and the Romance of Transatlantic Reprinting

Toward the end of Scott’s life, another scoop in the London press—this time actually traceable to the “American Copy”—brought the transatlantic book trade straight into the realm of fiction, in Scott’s last work, the fourth series of the Tales of My Landlord (1831), which contained both Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous. In a fascinating reversal of usual practice, the American reprint of this text appeared before the original. Delays in Edinburgh meant that Carey excerpted the first volume of Count Robert in his Philadelphia newspaper a full five months before the entire work was published in Britain. This gave the paper plenty of time to get across the Atlantic, and the excerpt, published in Philadelphia in July, was reprinted in a few London newspapers in August.⁵⁰ In a headnote to the excerpt, the editors of the Athenaeum explained to readers the origins of the traveling text. Scott’s novels, they wrote, “are regularly transmitted across the Atlantic, and the American bookseller, less cautions or less particular than Mr. Cadell, has given the following very copious extract to the National Gazette, a literary Philadelphia paper, for a copy of which we are indebted to [a] friend.”⁵¹ Scott found humor in the situation, and when he wrote his preface to Count Robert a few months later, he made the transatlantic publication of his work its subject and subtext.

The novel’s fictionalization of the episode considers transatlantic reprinting in a number of registers. First, Scott openly ridicules American printers who went to press with early versions of novels that did not include his final corrections and additions. The “Introductory Address” is narrated by Jedediah Cleishbotham, of Gandercleuch, the fictional character who has edited and prepared the previous Tales of My Landlord—including Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818), and The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), all of which derive from manuscripts written by Jedediah’s late antiquarian associate Peter Pattieson. Jedediah has recently found two additional manuscripts, Count Robert and Castle Dangerous, but leaves them aside until Peter’s surviving brother, Paul, shows up in Gandercleuch demanding them for his own use. Paul is a schemer and a rascal, and the manuscripts are in terrible shape, but Jedediah nevertheless employs him to prepare the texts and agrees to split the profits. At one point, Jedediah approaches Paul to complain about his progress, and the latter bursts out with this revelation: “Our hopeful scheme is entirely blown up. The tales, on publishing which we reckoned with so much confidence, have already been printed; they are abroad, over all America, and the British papers are clamorous.” Jedediah, astonished, asks “whether this American production embraces the alterations which you as well as I judged necessary, before the work could be fitted to meet the public eye,” and, receiving a negative answer, declares he would have never “remit[ted] these manuscripts to the press” unless “they were rendered fit for public perusal.”⁵² This exchange about the “American production” emphasizes Scott’s control over the texts as author. Jedediah’s complaint echoes those Carey faced at home from customers frustrated with faulty editions and, like those complaints, reinforces the superiority of authorized British publication over piratical American reprints.

Paul is not just a bringer of bad news, however; he is also a suspect. Jedediah accuses him of selling the manuscripts during an argument that resembles the initial dispute between Cadell and Carey over this same issue. Jedediah here is Cadell, and Paul is the falsely accused agent for Carey and also his defender: “I must of necessity suspect you to be the person who have [sic] supplied the foreign press with the copy which the printers have thus made an unscrupulous use of, without respect to the rights of the undeniable proprietors of the manuscripts” (xxxix). Paul responds by saying, “In the first place, these manuscripts … were never given to any one by me, and must have been sent to America either by yourself, or some one of the various gentleman to whom, I am well aware, you have afforded opportunities of perusing [them]” (xxxix–xl). Paul’s defense proves less effective than Carey’s, however, and Jedediah walks away absolutely convinced that he was “directly at the bottom of the Transatlantic publication, and had in one way or another found his own interest in that nefarious transaction” (xli–xlii). In reality, of course, the “Transatlantic publication” was authorized by the “proprietors of the manuscripts” in an arrangement of many years’ standing. This denial of the transatlantic arrangement, in addition to the repeated characterization of Paul in negative terms—“seedy,” “rusty,” “obstina[te],” “impuden[t],” “odious,” and “destitute of … amiable qualities” (xviii, xix, xx, xxxvii, xlii, xix)—suggests that Scott is denigrating American publishers.

But Scott is a great ironist, and nowhere is this more evident than in the prefaces to the Waverley novels, where we meet editors, antiquarians, legal scholars, roaming storytellers, royal ancestors, and any number of characters like Jedediah Cleishbotham who serve as unreliable sources for the novels that follow. It is impossible, therefore, to take Jedediah entirely at his word, and at times the preface suggests a more complicated view of Paul Pattieson and a more generous take on reprinting. In employing Paul to edit the manuscripts, for example, Jedediah has angered the people of Gandercleuch, who consider it an inexcusable act of neglect; as his wife reports, the local gossips believe he “spends all his time in tippling strong drink with the keeper of the public house” and leaves “book-making, and a’ the rest o’t, to the care of his usher” (xxvii–xxviii). Indeed, when Jedediah first reveals he has discovered Count Robert and Castle Dangerous, he provides no good reason for ignoring them before he “threw the manuscripts into [his] drawer” (xvii). He is not careful in accounting for the texts, and after handing them over to Paul, he holds “a sincere confidence that all was going on well” (xxiii). Scott prepares us to observe him in the same mistake Cadell initially made with Carey and thus undermines his own apparent critique of transatlantic publication.

A suggestive passage offers an implicit reconsideration of the actual relationship between Carey’s and Constable’s firms that the preface misrepresents. Jedediah’s internal thoughts invoke the circumstances of Cadell’s negotiation with Carey:

I began to perceive that it would be no light matter … to break up a joint-stock adventure … which, if profitable to him, had at least promised to be no less so to me, established in years and learning and reputation so much his superior…. I resolved to proceed with becoming caution on the occasion, and not, by stating my causes of complaint too hastily in the outset, exasperate into a positive breach what might only prove some small misunderstanding, easily explained or apologized for, and which, like a leak in a new vessel, being once discovered and carefully stopped, renders the vessel but more sea-worthy than it was before. (xxxiv–xxxv)

The “joint-stock adventure,” in which Constable & Company provided sheets and Carey payment, was indeed “profitable” to Carey and “no less so” to Constable; Cadell certainly considered himself and his senior partner “established in years and learning and reputation so much [the] superior” of their Philadelphia colleagues; his initial “complaint,” with its combination of both reprimand and solicitation, labored to avoid a “positive breach”; the issue of the stolen sheets proved a “small misunderstanding, easily explained or apologized for”; and the “leak” Constable and Cadell supposedly discovered at their printers was indeed “carefully stopped” by the arrangement with Carey, which provided revenue that “render[ed]” his company “more sea-worthy than it was before.” The passage implicitly issues a more balanced view of transatlantic publication than that contained in Jedediah’s other remarks and casts his own confidence in Paul’s guilt in terms just as faulty and presumptuous as Cadell’s repeated and unfounded suspicions. The resonances suggest the preface as a whole is more generous with America than it seems.

The eventual fate of the manuscripts brings to an intriguing point Scott’s consideration of his American publishers, which in the end amounts to something of an homage. For a moment, Jedediah considers amending the text with “adequate corrections of [its] various inconsistencies,” but he decides, in an allusion to Scott’s own declining condition, that “the state of [his] health” would make such an exertion “imprudent” (xlii–xliii). So he lets the American edition stand for itself, and we, as readers, turn the page and begin Count Robert. Scott has cast his own novel as a transatlantic reprint derived from the American edition. He has used the story of transatlantic publication as a literary device to apologize for faults in his composition, as elaborate a performance of authorial humility as any in the history of romance. In having Jedediah attribute to reprinters the lack of judgment his readers would inevitably trace only to himself, Scott allies himself with American publishers, gleaning benefits from them in the literary realm just as his late publisher, Constable, gathered profits from them as a bookseller.

Scott’s last novel reached the London marketplace by way of Philadelphia, an unusual geography made possible by delays in its publication. The episode signals, more broadly, that change had come to the book trade. The relationship between Constable’s and Carey’s firms exemplifies the cooperative transatlantic practices that became more common as publishers on both sides of the Atlantic devised extralegal arrangements in order to profit from selling books not easily protected by copyright. The acquisition of advance sheets in the United States was analogous to the processes that that led to authorized London editions of American texts—like Murray’s edition of The Sketch Book and dozens of other books in the 1820s—all of which depended on courtesies of the trade and the careful timing of a work’s transmission to the printer. These cooperative practices defined transatlantic publishing in subsequent decades as the nature of the book trade’s connectedness changed from a system dominated by the dissemination of London texts out to provincial markets to a more mixed system in which dissemination occurred in multiple directions. The episode with Scott’s last preface is one small example of this: the reprinting of Philadelphia’s National Gazette in London suggests that American texts were traveling more than ever before as the U.S. book trade continued to grow. Throughout the early nineteenth century, London proved extremely persistent as the center of the transatlantic trade and of English-language culture more broadly, but between 1800 and the 1830s, a considerable amount of excitement animated the provincial book trades. The following three chapters show how these dynamics shaped the aesthetic practices of the most influential Irish, Scottish, and American authors of the period.