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Notes
Willard Connely, Sir Richard Steele (New York, 1934), pp. 399-400. Mr. Connely was misled by a manuscript note in Francis Grant's Scrapbook of Printed Matter Relating to Sir Richard Steele, p. 16 (now at Harvard): "Lintot's Accounts . . . March 1722. £25 for 1/2 of Sir R. Steele's Comedy that was to be published. (Conscious Lovers) Oct. 26, 1722. £70 for assignment of half of the Conscious Lovers. These £25 and £70 were probably paid to old Jacob Tonson who was the publisher of Steele's plays. Oct. 10, 1722. £14.14 to print 1500 copies of the Funeral, and the Tender Husband." If Grant got his data from Nichols' Anecdotes, one wonders why he had to guess about the recipient, unless he was trying to distinguish between the two Lintots. Mr. Connely, knowing that old Jacob Tonson was at Ledbury in the fall of 1722, correctly inferred that on 20 October 1722 Lintot could not have paid him. But he did pay Jacob Tonson, Jr.
John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, XIII (London, 1814), 303. Nichols printed his list from "a small Memorandum-book of these enterprising Booksellers [the Lintots], intituled, 'copies when purchased.'"
This agreement, now in the Widener Library, is reprinted by the kind permission of Harvard University, which also permitted the use of the Grant Scrapbook. At this time Somerset Draper was presumably an employee in the Tonsons' publishing house. Between 1743 and 1753 he was a bookseller and publisher in London. H. R. Plomer et al., Dictionary of Booksellers and Printers, 1726-1775 (Bibliographical Society, 1932), p. 79. By 1751 he had purchased a share in the copy of this very play.
George A. Aitken, "Steele's 'Conscious Lovers' and the Publishers," The Athenaeum, No. 3345, (5 December 1891), p. 771, citing Chancery Pleadings, Winter, 1714-58, No. 690.
Idem. In his edition of Steele's plays published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1894, Aitken combined these transactions: "As early as March 1, 1772, Lintot has agreed to give Tonson £70 for a half share of Steele's comedy that was to be published." The "1772" misprint was allowed to persist in later printings of this Mermaid edition.
Half of the copyright of The Tender Husband was evidently included in the bargain, for immediately following the memorandum of The Conscious Lovers is the notation "Half of the Copy of the Tender Husband."
It was advertised for publication in The Post Boy from November 27-29, and the number for December 1 announced, "This day is published The Conscious Lovers." Grant, Scrapbook, p. 82. The Daily Courant also carried this announcement: George Aitken, The Life of Richard Steele (Boston, 1889), II, 276. In the early histories and hand-books of the drama The Conscious Lovers is regularly dated 1721. In his Bibliography Britannica Watt even moved it back to 1720. Even after Aitken fixed the precise date scholars have continued to err. In the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature and in Allardyce Nicoll's XVIII Century Drama (Cambridge, 1925), p. 357, it is assigned the date on the title-page, 1723. In his Publishing and Bookselling (London, 1930), p. 178, F. A. Mumby moved it up to December, 1723.
Thomas Gent, Life (London, 1832), pp. 143-44. Susanna, or Susannah Collins is not listed in Plomer's Dictionary and was incorrectly identified by Nichols. She lived in Black and White Court until her death 2 June 1724.
G. A. Aitken, "Steele's 'Conscious Lovers,'" citing Chancery Pleadings, Winter, 1714-1758, No. 690 and Chancery Decrees 1722 B, 30, 33, 114.
At least it is dated 1722 on the title-page. In his Life of Richard Steele, II, 391, Aitken cites a copy in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.
This was presumably published by the same T. Johnson who about 1710 or 1711 published in ten volumes "A Collection of the Best English Plays, printed for T. Johnson, Bookseller at the Hague," including, for example, Steele's Funeral. Whether this T. Johnson ever published in London seems problematical. Some of these volumes bear the imprint "LONDON," and in 1742 a T. Johnson was issuing pamphlets from near Christ's Hospital in Newgate Street. But a Thomas Johnson, probably the same T. Johnson who reprinted plays, was in 1735 a bookseller at Rotterdam. H. R. Plomer et al., A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers from 1726 to 1775, P. 142.
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