University of Virginia Library

The Murray Reprints of George Grabbe: A Publisher's Record
Franklin P. Batdorf

IN the nineteenth-century business records of the publishing house of John Murray, in London, are data not elsewhere available regarding the publication by Murray of George Crabbe's works after the poet's death.[1] These records contain an account of the reprints of both the eight-volume edition which first appeared in 1834 and the edition complete in one volume which was published first in 1847. The information concerning the number of copies received from the printer, the dates when they were received, and the rapidity of the sales should be useful to students of Crabbe's success and reputation as well as to librarians, collectors, and bibliographers. For the present this information must be regarded as a means of checking bibliographical evidence rather than as definitive material, since even a superficial preliminary survey reveals discrepancies between the publisher's records and the bibliographical facts which can hardly be accounted for without a thorough study of the extant volumes themselves.[2]

The Murray stock books make clear, however, that the eight-volume edition came out originally in monthly numbers, as the dating, February-September, in Huchon's list of the publications of Crabbe suggests.[3] The original printings of the first two volumes are dated in the stock book February and March, respectively; and those of the other volumes are dated specifically the first day of each succeeding month.[4] Apparently, Huchon did not make use of the Murray stock books. I find no mention of them in his study, the scope of which, indeed, hardly includes the history of the Murray editions published after Crabbe's death.

The dates recorded in the stock books for the reprints of these individual volumes throw doubt upon Bartholomew's listing of the reprints of 1835 and 1836, in which it is indicated that the set was reprinted in toto in

both of these years.[5] The stock books show that all of the volumes were reprinted once during 1835, but in three different groups.[6] There is no record in the stock books, moreover, of any reprint of Volumes III and VIII during 1836. At the moment it is impossible to say whether any copies of these two volumes were issued with cancel titles bearing the date 1836. This seems improbable on account of the variety of dates in extant copies of this eight-volume set, which suggests that no effort was made to achieve the appearance of uniformity.

This variety of dates is accounted for by the indication in the stock books that between December, 1834, when the entire set was reprinted, and February, 1847, when it was reprinted again, there were many reprints of individual volumes or groups of volumes, but none of the set as a whole.[7] Thus the suspicion of numerous cancel titles is somewhat allayed, and the impulse to assume frequent reprints of the whole set with numerous shiftings, by booksellers and other owners, of copies from one issue to another is held in check. The table below summarizes the facts as to the dates of the reprints.

The records of the number of copies disposed of are a little less clear than those of the dates of the various reprints, because some of the entries showing numbers of copies disposed of seem to represent an accumulation and not to belong specifically to the dates assigned to them. This is indicated by several facts: first, that there is only one entry showing the number of copies of Volume I presented as gifts; second, that this number and the numbers of copies in the entries showing coffee-house sales are comparatively large; third, that these figures representing accumulations are rather infrequent for some of the years covered by the records; and fourth, that in a few cases the number of copies recorded as having been sold by a certain date exceeds the number recorded as having been printed by that date. It is possible, however, to get a fairly trustworthy idea of the rapidity of the sales of the various volumes of this edition as well as of the issues that were printed together as sets, for the total number of copies disposed of plus the number not disposed of corresponds exactly to the number printed. I shall give the record of the number of copies printed as it appears in the stock books, because these entries are intelligible without interpretation. But instead of putting down all the various entries in the records of sales, I shall summarize these and relate them to the records of printings.

The reprints of the individual volumes of Crabbe's works are recorded in the stock books as follows:

THE EIGHT-VOLUME EDITION OF CRABBE'S LIFE AND WORKS INDIVIDUAL VOLUMES

Table of Printings[8]

                                                               

Date	Number of Copies Printed
	Volume I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII
Feb., 1834	7,090
March, 1834		5,062
April 1, 1834			5,062
May 1, 1834				5,040
May, 1834		504
June 1, 1834					5,098
July 1, 1834						5,092
Aug. 1, 1834							5,100
Sept. 1, 1834								5,064
Sept., 1834	504		502
Dec. 1, 1834		506	506	504	504	506	506	1,000
Dec., 1834	502
Feb. 25, 1835		502		490
June 19, 1835	505				500	506	506	506
Sept. 19, 1835			504
April, 1836	252	250		502	252	250	252
June 7, 1836					250
June 7, 1837								250
Jan., 1838	250	252	252			254	250
Feb., 1839								250
July, 1839				250
Feb., 1840	252	252	252	252	252	252	252
Sept., 1841								250
Dec., 1842					250	250	250
Dec., 1843		252	252
Jan. 1, 1844	234
March, 1844								252
Dec., 1845					252	252	252
March 1, 1846				252
	9,589	7,580	7,330	7,290	7,358	7,362	7,368	7,572

Although the column for each of the volumes in the 1832 stock book ends with the notation "To new book," I have found no entries in the next book, the one opened in 1844, for any of the volumes except the first, and only one for that, i.e., the one for January 1, 1844, given in the table above. Perhaps the phrase "To new book" refers to the records of the reprints of the set as a whole, which do appear in the 1844 book; or perhaps when the new book was opened it was contemplated that there might be further reprints of the individual volumes. In any case, I believe that these records as I have given them are complete, since they extend through 1846, the year before the set as a whole was reprinted. Regrettably, the stock books do not indicate whether the type for any of the volumes was distributed

and re-set between 1834 and the last reprint of the set.[9] Nor do they show whether all of the printing was done by Spottiswoode. This writer has seen no copies of any of the volumes bearing the imprint of any other printer; and Spottiswoode is mentioned in the 1844 stock book as the printer of the 1847 issue.

The records of sales indicate that up to and including the year 1846 the individual volumes were disposed of as follows:

THE EIGHT-VOLUME EDITION OF CRABBE'S LIFE AND WORKS INDIVIDUAL VOLUMES

Table Showing Disposal of Copies[10]

                                   

Year		Taken Over by Booksellers, Sold at the Murray Shop, or Presented
	Volume I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII	VIII
1834	7,751	5,914	5,671	5,477	5,377	5,357	5,316	5,551
1835	541	455	444	509	501	481	506	573
1836	273	256	246	252	316	308	298	324
1837	250	217	214	224	232	236	242	225
1838	150	137	131	113	134	161	148	147
1839	122	131	52	123	116	139	141	139
1840	12	22	22	16	17	17	17	27
1841	82	77	72	82	76	75	75	84
1842	118	117	122	110	120	126	125	123
1843	17	15	14	17	12	22	23	10
1844	167	128	136	142	136	163	166	146
1845	43	82	32	28	38	23	31	31
1846	24	8	46	45	48	58	58	52
	9,550	7,559	7,277[11]	7,138	7,123	7,166	7,146	7,432
To new book	39	21	53	152	235	196	222	140
	5,589	7,580	7,330[11]	7,290	7,358	7,362	7,368	7,572

The rather extreme fluctuation of sales for the eighteen-forties suggests the possibility that some of the sales may have been recorded for the wrong year, perhaps on account of the use of a lump figure representing transactions over a period of time; but, as I have already said, the total number of copies disposed of corresponds exactly to the total number printed. I have not found any record of the disposal of the copies which are designated as

carried over to the new book, but the general trend of the demand for these volumes is clear enough nonetheless.

It is interesting to note that the Volume I, containing the memoir of Crabbe, sold better than any of the volumes of his poetry except Volume II, which contained the poems that appeared first in 1807, and that Volume I maintained its position fairly consistently throughout the period represented by the figures. This fact is accounted for partly, of course, by the fact that the memoir was a new work. Although Crabbe's biography can scarcely be expected to have had a sale comparable with that of Boswell's Life of Johnson, also chronicled in the Murray stock books, it may nevertheless be worth mentioning that from 1835, when the house of Murray brought out the latter in ten monthly volumes, until 1839, these volumes sold roughly at the rate of 900-1000 copies each per year.

The superior popularity of Volume VIII is doubtless due also to the fact that its contents, the Posthumous Tales, were appearing for the first time. It is to be noted that Volume VIII tends to lag behind the others after the first three years following publication.

The principal significance of these figures, of course, is that they indicate how rapidly the popularity of Crabbe declined in the years following his death. It is to be remembered, however, that what we have here is only a partial record. The publication of Crabbe by other houses doubtless contributed to the decline of the sale of the Murray edition; but we cannot say how much.[12] Unfortunately no figures are at the moment available showing the rapidity of the sales of the editions brought out by other publishers.

The story is carried forward by the record of the printing and disposal of the eight-volume set as a whole. The stock books indicate that it was printed as follows:

                 

February, 1847	Life and Works Complete, 8 vols.	Spottiswoode
	Fcap 8 vo	252
January 1, 1849	Reprint	252
	Returned by Trade	24
		---
		528
1853	Reprint	250
		---
		778[13]

The probable meaning of the item "Returned by Trade" is that some of the copies which had been taken over by booksellers or coffee houses and recorded as having left the stock room were returned, so that when these were again disposed of their number was again added to the record of copies taken from the stock. The number of copies returned had to be added to the record of stock received from the printer in order to make the books balance. The number of copies of the set printed, then, was 754 instead of 778.

The 1849 and 1853 reprints have not been listed by Crabbe's bibliographers, nor have I seen copies of them.[14]

The following table is derived from the stock book record of the disposal of these complete sets:

THE EIGHT-VOLUME EDITION OF CRABBE'S LIFE AND WORKS COMPLETE SETS PRINTED IN 1847, 1849, AND 1853

Table Showing Disposal of Copies[15]

                         

Year	Copies Disposed of	Year	Copies Disposed of
1847	240	1858	9
1848	20	1859	30
1849	50	1860	9
1850	131	1861	7
1851	51	1862	7
1852	119	1863	1
1853	1	1864	2
1854	23	1865	8
1855	24	1866	2
1856	19	1867	4
1857	21		---
			778 (total)

Since the last recorded sale is dated April 4, 1867, and since the total number of copies disposed of equals the number received, the eight-volume set must have gone out of print at that time, except for a few copies of volumes printed individually before 1847 which may possibly have been left.[16] Since the eight-volume edition was in competition with the one-volume edition as early as 1847, the significance of the record of sales of the former will not appear until after I have given the figures for the latter.

The Murray records show printings and reprintings of the one-volume edition as follows:

                     

	Crabbe's Life & Works	Clowes
March, 1847	One Volume, Royal 8 vo	2000
	Overplus	23
		-----
		2,023
Nov. 13, 1850	Returned by trade	46
Feb., 1851	" " "	38
Dec., 1850	Second edition	1,011
July, 1854	Returned from shop	2
		-----
		3,120[17]

                   

	Crabbe's Works	Clowes
Aug. 11, 1854	1 vol. royal 8vo	1,010
June, 1860	Returned from trade	10
Mar., 1861	................ shop	4
		-----
		1,024
		999
		----
	To other edition with plates	25[18]
	1901	1,010

I have not seen the stock book entry for the 1901 reprint; it was transcribed for me by Mr. James Farquharson, of the house of Murray, who has told me that the volume has not been reprinted since that time, and has given me the following additional information from records accessible to him: The Poetical Works of Crabbe with his Letters and Journals and his Life was published by Murray, with illustrations, in seven parts royal octavo at one shilling each in 1860;[19] then in 1866 a one-volume edition made up of previously published monthly parts was issued with a new volume title.[20]

The Murray records add one reprint, that of December, 1850, to the list of reprints of the one-volume Murray edition given by Crabbe's bibliographers. The reprint listed by Huchon as belonging to the year 1867 may be the title-page edition of 1866, as the date on the title-page would probably be 1867 if the edition was issued late in the year 1866. Bartholomew, however, lists a one-volume edition for 1866.

The records of the disposal of the one-volume edition which I have seen extend only through the year 1854. They show the following:

THE ONE-VOLUME EDITION OF CRABBE'S LIFE AND WORKS

Table Showing Disposal of Copies[21]

                     

Year	Copies Disposed of
1847	1,765
1848	72
1849	132
1850	502
1851	238
1852	125
1853	269
1854	17
	-----
	3,120

These figures account completely for the first and second issues of the one-volume edition, but for no others. The belief has been expressed to me by Mr. Farquharson that the one-volume edition is not even yet quite out of print.

The demand for Crabbe's works in the forties and fifties of the nineteenth century can be seen more clearly from a combination of the sales figures for the eight-volume set with those which are available for the one-volume edition. These combined figures are given below:

THE EIGHT-VOLUME AND THE ONE-VOLUME EDITION OF CRABBE'S LIFE AND WORKS

                 

Year	Copies Disposed of
1847	2,005
1848	92
1849	182
1850	633
1851	289
1852	244
1853	270
1854	40

It is regrettable that this series cannot be continued, for it would be interesting to know whether the slump of sales in 1854 represented a trend. Perhaps it did not do so any more than did the low figure for 1848.

On the whole these data do not give the impression that all interest in Crabbe ended with his life. To be sure, the number of purchasers of his works was small in the years immediately preceding 1847, when Murray's two complete editions were published, and in the following years as well; but the sale of two thousand copies by a single publisher in 1847 and the comparatively steady sale in the following years are impressive.

Notes