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Rasselas: Purchase Price, Proprietors, and Printings by Gwin J. Kolb
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Rasselas: Purchase Price, Proprietors, and Printings
by
Gwin J. Kolb

The ledgers of the great eighteenth-century printer-bookseller William Strahan (and of his son Andrew), now happily accessible for scholarly examination,[1] enable a new editor of Rasselas to confirm, extend, and, in one instance, to correct statements about the purchase price, proprietors, and printings of the tale which appear either in the introduction to R. W. Chapman's edition (1927) of the work or in notes to his edition (1952) of Johnson's letters.

To begin with, the ledgers seem to confirm Chapman's tentative conclusion regarding the amount Johnson received for the first edition of the tale. Sir John Hawkins, as Chapman said, asserted merely that "the sum . . . is variously reported;'" "Boswell," on the other hand, "states positively that 'Mr. Strahan, Mr. Johnston, and Mr. Dodsley purchased it for a hundred pounds, but afterwards paid him twenty-five pounds more, when it came to a second edition.'" Since "the second half of this statement can be proved


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to be true, . . . it is unlikely," Chapman concluded, "that the first half is inaccurate."[2] Now Strahan's Ledger J (compiled, apparently, in 1778) contains an alphabetical listing of works in which Strahan owned shares, the amounts of the shares, usually the dates when the shares were acquired, the names of the persons from whom the shares were bought, and the sums paid for each of them. The following entry appears on f. 19v: "1/3 Rasselas 2 v. Dr Johnson 33 6 8." Although the entry is undated, another entry (from Ledger B) cited in the next paragraph of this article shows that, beginning with the first edition, Strahan, Dodsley, and Johnston were equal "partners" in Rasselas. Three times the amount Strahan paid Johnson for his share of the work equals, of course, exactly £100. Thus Chapman's conclusion, based in part[3] on Boswell's information, would appear to be accurate.

Secondly, the ledgers make clear the identity of the proprietors of the work. Chapman thought that Strahan "was perhaps the real publisher, [Robert] Dodsley and [William] Johnston being his agents, though only their names appear on the title-page" of the first edition.[4] Actually, however, the three men were equal partners in the work. Their names head a group of entries in Ledger B (f. 33r) dated April and June of 1759 which are concerned with Rasselas; elsewhere, as in the entry above from Ledger J, Strahan recorded his share in the book as one-third; and in 1765, below the caption "Partners in Rasselas" and among other entries about the tale, Strahan wrote: "Mr Johnston 1/3," "Mr Dodsley [James, not older brother Robert, who had died in 1764] 1/3," and "Myself 1/3" (Ledger B, f. 57r). The names of E. Johnston, it may be noted in passing, replaced W. Johnston on the title-page of the fifth edition (1775); and T. Longman replaced E. Johnston on the title-page of the sixth (1783). The title-pages of the seventh (1786), eighth (1790), and ninth (1793) editions contain the names of these persons: J. F. and C. Rivington, J. Dodsley, T. Longman, and G. and T. Wilkie.[5]

Thirdly, as R. A. Austen-Leigh's article in the Library in 1923 showed,[6] the ledgers establish the accuracy of Chapman's guess (in 1927) that Strahan


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"may probably have printed"[7] Rasselas, and they also provide detailed information about the printing of the first eight editions. In an entry dated April, 1759 (Ledger B, f. 33r), Strahan recorded the number of sheets (21½) which make up the first edition, the number of copies printed (1500), the cost per sheet (£1:4:0), and the cost (£25:16:0) of the initial printing; he noted, too, "Extra Cor. in D°" which came to £2:4:6. The next entry (Ledger B, f. 33r), dated June, 1759, recorded the printing of the "2d Edit.," which consisted of 1000 copies and which cost "19s" per sheet (or a total of £20:8:6 for the 21½ sheets). Strahan added the cost of the first two editions and noted that the resulting sum — £48:19:0 — was "Paid in a Note July 31. 1760."[8] The third edition of the tale was printed in December of 1759;[9] the number of sheets, cost per sheet, and number of copies printed were the same as for the second edition. The printing bill was paid, according to the ledgers (B, f. 39r), on May 9, 1761.

Six years to the month after the printing of the third edition, Strahan recorded, under date of December, 1765 (Ledger B, f. 57r), the printing of the fourth, which corresponded exactly to the second and third in number of sheets, cost per sheet, and number of copies printed. The paper for the fourth edition came to 43 reams, at 12 shillings a ream; the cost of the advertisements was £3:15:6. The total bill was an even £50; Johnston's and Dodsley's shares — £16:13:14 each — were marked as paid on "Decr 17. 1765. By Notes in Four Months."

Ten years later, under date of March, 1775,[10] Strahan noted (Ledger D, f. 20r), below the heading "Partners in Rasselas," the printing of the fifth edition, in one volume and "13 Sheets." One thousand copies were printed at £1:2:0 per sheet. The bill, £14:6:0, was paid on April 18, 1775. According to the ledgers (E, f. 21r; F, 21r), the sixth edition, identical in sheets, number, and cost to the fifth, was printed in March, 1783;[11] the bill was paid, by "Mr Longman" (Ledger H, f. 42v),[12] on June 12 of the same year.


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The seventh edition of the tale was printed in September, 1786 (Ledger F, f. 78r). It cost one shilling more per sheet (£:3:0) than its two immediate predecessors but was identical to them in number of sheets and copies. The bill — £14:19:0 — was paid by "Mr Longman" (Ledger H, f. 52v) on January 11, 1787. The eighth edition, printed in December, 1789 (Ledger F, f. 104r), consisted of the same number of sheets as the seventh. The cost per sheet was £1:10:0, however, and 1500 copies were printed. The bill was paid "in Notes Jan. 28. 1790." An entry in Ledger H, on a page (f. 61v) enumerating "Cash Received for Printing" in 1790, reveals that "Mr Longman" again paid the printing bill of £19:10:0. A later entry in the same ledger (f. 67r) notes the receipt, on July 24, 1793, of another £19:10:0 "From Mr Longman for Rasselas"; presumably this amount was payment for the printing of the ninth edition, which appeared in 1793.

Notes

 
[1]

The material in this article is drawn from a microfilm of the ledgers which was deposited in the Bodleian Library by William Todd, who numbered the ledgers A through K. References to specific ledgers are included in the text (e. g., Ledger J, f. 19v, etc.). For help in the preparation of the article, I am indebted to Miss Patricia Hernlund, graduate student in the English Department at the University of Chicago.

[2]

Rasselas, ed. R. W. Chapman (1927), p. xiv; cited hereafter as "Rasselas."

[3]

Chapman also quotes (ibid., pp. xiii, n. 1; xiv, n. 4) anecdotes in Sir James Prior's Life of Edmond Malone and a letter by Horace Walpole which suggest £100 as the purchase price of the first edition. This amount is not the same, however, as any of the three alternative prices mentioned in Johnson's letter of January 20, 1759 to William Strahan (Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman [1952], I, 117-118; cited hereafter as "Letters"); I have in preparation a new interpretation of Johnson's letter, entitled "Johnson's 'little Pompadour': A Textual Crux and a Hypothesis."

[4]

Letters, I, 118.

[5]

For information about the title-pages of the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions, I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Robert F. Metzdorf, of Yale University Library.

[6]

"William Strahan and His Ledgers," Library, 4th ser., III (1923), 283-284; cited hereafter as "Austen-Leigh."

[7]

Rasselas, p. xi, n. 2. In his and Allen Hazen's "Johnsonian Bibliography: A Supplement to Courtney" (Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings & Papers, V [1936-39], 142), Chapman says flatly, "The printer was William Strahan," and refers to Austen-Leigh's article.

[8]

The ledger entries about the printing of the first two editions are also summarized in Austen-Leigh's article (pp. 283-284). The first edition was published on April 19, 1759; the second on June 26 (James L. Clifford, "Some Remarks on Candide and Rasselas," Bicentenary Essays on "Rasselas," ed. Magdi Wahba [1959], p. 8; Rasselas, p. xvi).

[9]

According to a notice in the Public Advertiser, the third edition was published on April 11, 1760.

[10]

According to a notice in the Public Advertiser, the fifth edition was published on May 13, 1775.

[11]

It was published, according to a notice in the Public Advertiser, on May 31, 1783.

[12]

The "Mr Longman" of this, and later, entries was apparently either Thomas (II) or Thomas Norton. Thomas (II) was born in 1731 and died in 1797; Thomas Norton, who was born in 1771, "began to take his father's place in the firm about 1792" (H. R. Plomer, Dictionary of . . . Printers and Booksellers . . . from 1726 to 1775 [1932], pp. 158-159).