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Mathew Carey's Proofreaders
by
Rollo G. Silver
Quite naturally, the division of function in the American book trade evolved gradually and at times imperceptibly. The first hundred and fifty years witnessed the progression from booksellers to some who were bookseller-publishers, and then to those who were primarily booksellers and those who were primarily publishers. As the economy grew in the 1790's the publisher apparently found that his volume of business no longer permitted him to do all the work himself. It is during this time, for instance, that Mathew Carey began to employ certain proofreaders over extended periods in addition to calling on others for extra help or for particularly specialized jobs. This was especially necessary when the author was not available or when new editions were issued. By examining the bills Carey preserved, it is possible to determine who these proofreaders were, some of the titles they worked on, and the prices they charged.[1]
The bills discussed in this paper comprise those submitted to Carey before January 1, 1817, when the firm became Mathew Carey & Son. From 1785, when he began publishing, to the day he took his son into the firm, he had published more than 650 editions, exclusive of his many Bibles and Testaments. It is not possible, of course, to account for the proofreading of every item, but the number of surviving bills is great enough to warrant study. They fall into three general classes: bills from his "regular" proofreaders, bills from proofreaders on special assignments, and bills from printers which include charges for proofreading.
In length of service and amount of work, Samuel Lewis heads the list of Carey's proofreaders. Known at various times as "map maker,
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1794 | |||
March | 18 | Extracting and making list of Plates in Animated Nature ... | $ 1.00 |
Correcting Map of North Carolina ... | .75 | ||
23 | Selecting and arranging Plates of Animated Nature ... | 2.00 | |
Correcting and examining Map of New York ... | 1.75 | ||
25 | Small Map of Kentucky ... | 3.00 | |
Small Map of Pennsylvania ... | 3.00 | ||
Additions to Map of Tennessee Government ... | 1.50 | ||
April | 3 | Small Map of New York ... | 3.00 |
11 | Compiling Tables of Exports ... | 1.50 | |
17 | To selecting Plates of Animated Nature ... | 2.25 | |
To copying Tables of Exports ... | .75 | ||
25 | To correcting Tables of Monies of various Places ... | 1.50 | |
June | 20 | To drawing Map of British possessions in North America ... | 12.50 |
To correcting and making additions to Map of Virginia ... | 1.50 | ||
Dec. | 27 | To Colouring three dozen St. Domingo ... | 4.80 |
1795 | |||
Feb. | 7 | To correcting proof of Map of Virginia ... | $ .33 |
21 | To correcting proofs of Geography ... | 2.42 | |
To correcting proof of South Carolina ... | .25 |
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March | 13 | To small Map of Maryland ... | 3.00 |
To do. Virginia ... | 3.00 | ||
To do. Tennessee ... | 3.00 | ||
To do. Georgia ... | 3.00 |
1801 | |||
Jan. | 2 | To correcting 200 sets of Bible ... | $ 5.25 |
April | 20 | To making four hundred pens ... | 1.00 |
May | 22 | To reading three proofs of an Oration ... | .75 |
27 | To reading thirty-five proofs of Conductor Generalis ... | 8.75 | |
June | 5 | To reading one proof of Columbian Spelling Book ... | .25 |
To do. three proofs of quarto Bible ... | 2.00 | ||
To making additions to, and correcting set of Maps for the "American Pocket Atlas" ... | 5.67 | ||
To writing proposals for publishing do. ... | .25 | ||
12 | To examining Index for Conductor Generalis ... | .25 | |
26 | To double reading proofs Q, R, S, T, U, of Bible ... | 6.67 | |
To reading two proofs, D, E, of American Atlas ... | .50 | ||
To 149 lines of additional matter, in Sheet B, of the American Pocket Atlas, at 1 dollar per page of 44 lines ... | 3.38 | ||
Aug. | 14 | To reading proof D of Apocrypha ... | .67 |
To reading two proofs, B, C, of Almanack ... | .50 | ||
To reading two proofs, Z, aA, of Complete Measurer ... | .50 | ||
To reading proof O of American Atlas ... | .25 | ||
To 34 lines of new matter in do. ... | .75 | ||
Time employed in copy Bon mots, &c. for Almanack ... | .21 |
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Sunday morning | 2 hours} | besides attending at Mr. Charless' at |
Monday do | 1 do.} | appointment, at one o'clock, and |
Tuesday do | 3½ do.} | until ½ past 4, for a proof to be ready— |
Wednesday do | 3 do.} | they saying it would soon be completed |
9½, | including waiting for Mr. Humphreys. |
From 1801 to at least 1816, Lewis served as part-time and full-time assistant to Carey. When he worked full-time, the bills read "To one week's attendance at Books, reading proofs, &c. $15.00." Part-time bills were more specific:
Dec. 26, 1801 | To Time employed this week, at Books, 36 hours | $ 8.00 | ||
Jan. 15, 1803 | To 25 hours employed at Books ... | 4.16 | ||
March 26, 1804 | To 21 hours correcting Bibles ... | 7.00 | ||
April 27, 1804 | To 18 hours correcting and enlarging Letterpress Copy of Traveller's Directory ... | 6.00 | ||
June 15, 1804 | To time correcting Bibles, 30 hours ... | 10.00 | ||
To reading H, O, S2, AA, whole sheets Bible ... | 2.00 | |||
June 18, 1804 | To 5 hours employed making list of American Books ... | 1.67 | ||
June 15, 1805 | To time employed at Books, &c. | |||
hours | ||||
viz. May | 16 | 3½ | headings to Ledger | |
18 | 3½} | |||
} | Bibles | |||
23 | 2½} | |||
June | 1 | 4½ | Ledger | |
12 | 3} | |||
} | list of Books | |||
15 | 9} | |||
26 hours ... | $ 8.67 | |||
Feb. 10, 12, 1807 | To 4 hours, making entries in Day Book and Journal ... | 1.00 |
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Jan. 15, 1803 | To 25 hours employed at Books ... | $ 4.16 |
reading proofs Q, R, S of Parent's Friend ... | .75 | |
do. do. D, E of Vade Mecum ... | .50 |
Aug. 10, 1805 | To 13 hours employed at Books ... | $ 3.25 |
reading G, H, Clerk's Assistant ... | .50 | |
do. I American Preceptor ... | .25 | |
do. B, C, D, E, and 4F, Doway Bible ... | 3.33 |
As publisher, Carey sometimes employed more than one printer for a book. The following bill, possessing bibliographical as well as historical interest, exemplifies the publisher's proofreader at work:
Aug. 27, 1812 | To reading 14 Sig. printed by Dickinson of Weems's Life of Washington ... | $ 3.50 |
Reading 2 do. -- printed by Aitken (O. P.) ... | .50 |
Throughout the period he read for Carey, Lewis maintained a rather stable price scale. Most of the proofreading jobs were billed at twenty-five cents per sheet; the Bible cost sixty-seven cents with the price doubled for a "double reading." As would be expected in so many documents, exceptions to these prices appear from time to time. Among them, two may be noted: in 1805, Lewis charged fifty cents a sheet for a Testament "as per agreement" and in 1816 he charged thirty-one and a quarter cents each for the proofs of Travels in the Interior of Brazil.
Carey's other principal proofreader was Daniel Humphreys, known today for the books and newspapers he printed and published. But his contemporary reputation included an additional occupation: in 1812, William McCulloch, writing to Isaiah Thomas, called him "the correct proof reader."[4] His earliest bills in the Mathew Carey Papers bear the date of 1801 and all of them refer to reading or revising Bible proof. In that one year, he corrected more than 275 sheets at a charge of five shillings each for reading and one shilling ten and a half pence for revision.[5] Two years later, he continued on Bible proof at the same
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1803 | £ | s | d | ||
Sept. | 26 | To reading 23 sheets Old Testament A to Z, &c.mmat; 10s ... | 11 | 10 | ... |
To do. 19 do. Apocrypha 2X to 3Q, &c.mmat; 5s ... | 4 | 15 | ... | ||
Nov. | 3 | To reading 43 sheets in Old Testament, &c.mmat; 10s ... | 21 | 10 | ... |
To. do. 19 do. in Apocrypha, &c.mmat; 5s ... | 4 | 15 | ... | ||
To do. 27 do. in New Testament ... | 6 | 15 | ... | ||
To do. 4 do. in Index ... | 1 | ... | ... | ||
To second reading one half of above ... | 7 | 10 | ... |
In 1803, Humphreys also read proof for the edition of Pennsylvania laws, printed for Carey by John Bioren, and the cost of this, $99.26, appears on Bioren's bill to Carey. During the following eight years, Carey gave Humphreys a variety of texts, some of which were:
1806 | |||
Aug. | 15 | To reading 9 proofs Vade Mecum ... | $ 2.70 |
To do. 140 do. Walker's Dictionary ... | 70.00 | ||
Sept. | 20 | To do. 26 do. Ferg. Mechanics, vol. 1 ... | 6.50 |
To do. 38 do. do. vol. 2 ... | 9.50 | ||
1807 | |||
Jan. | 15 | To reading 16 proofs Beattie's Elements ... | 4.80 |
To do. 13 do. Black's Lectures, vol. 1 ... | 3.25 | ||
To do. 55 do. vol. 2 ... | 13.75 | ||
To. do. 59 do. vol. 3 ... | 14.75 | ||
Feb. | 15 | To making Index for do. ... | 5.00 |
Dec. | 15 | To reading 14 proofs Goldsmith's History ... | 4.20 |
To do. 69 do. Roman Antiquities ... | 20.70 | ||
1808 | |||
Sept. | 20 | To reading 17 proofs Concordance ... | 12.75 |
To do. 7 do. Psalms ... | 3.50 | ||
To do. 2 do. Astronomy ... | .50 | ||
To do. 21 do. Tacitus ... | 10.50 | ||
To marking References for do. ... | 1.00 | ||
1809 | |||
May | 1 | To reading 7 proofs Gulliver's Travels, &c.mmat; 52 cts. ... | 3.64 |
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To do. 19 do. Washington's Life, &c.mmat; 28 cts. ... | 5.32 | ||
To do. 4 do. Ladies Library, &c.mmat; 63 cts. ... | 2.52 | ||
July | 15 | To 4 proofs Charlotte Temple, &c.mmat; 73 cts. ... | 2.92 |
Dec. | 30 | To 10 do. Letter Writer, &c.mmat; 33 cts. ... | 3.30 |
Of Carey's other proofreaders, only one, James Hardie, has been discussed in recent literature.[6] Hardie's career, pathetic though it be, did produce some useful publications and his name has not been forgotten. But one searches in vain for information about four of Carey's proofreaders. Who was the "Frans. Wright" who billed Carey in 1792 and 1793? The charges, one shilling three pence per signature, covered corrections for such works as Blair's Lectures on Rhetorick and Belles Lettres, Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, and O'Keeffe's Wild Oats. A Francis Wright appears in the Philadelphia directories for 1794, 1795, and 1796, listed in 1795 as a carter. It might be he. It could not, however, be the Frances Wright whose work Carey later published for she was not born until 1795. Nor does any information appear to be available about John Edington who, in May and June, 1795, received one pound four shillings for correcting eight proof sheets of Goldsmith's History of the Earth. John Lithgow's activities, at least, show some progress. According to the Philadelphia directories, he was a hosier in 1795 and 1796, a shopkeeper in 1800, and an "accomptant" from 1802 to 1804. His bill to Carey, dated 1800, is printed verbatim:
about two months ago I told you that you owed me for one week and one day which was chiefly for the first Volume history of Greece, some proofs reading, and arranging Cuts for small Books. all that I had done for you | |
for about a month before ... | 8.00 |
Since I have read 20 proofs ¼ per ... | 5.00 |
half a Day at the library ... | .50 |
_____ | |
13.50 |
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Whether these individuals possessed the background and skill required cannot now be determined, but other proofreaders employed by Carey were certainly well educated. Some were teachers, others ministers. Those perennially low-paid scholars most likely found proofreading rather agreeable as part-time work and Carey, in turn, could call on their talents whenever needed. Jesse Waterman was one such person, listed in the Philadelphia directories as schoolmaster and "teacher of the French and English languages" from 1791 to 1829.[7] His bill, submitted in 1796, shows that he was given appropriate work:
£ | s | d | ||
For correcting | 10 Sheets of Perrins french Grammar &c.mmat; 2/6 | 1 | 5 | ... |
18 Goldsmiths animated nature 2/6 ... | 2 | 5 | ... | |
32 do. Guthries Geography 2/6 ... | 4 | ... | ... | |
8 do. of Edwards affections &c.mmat; 2/6 ... | 1 | ... | ... | |
15 do. Jefferson's Notes &c.mmat; 2/6 ... | 1 | 17 | 6 |
Feb. 7, 1807: | |
To 4 months French Tuition of his Son, at $12 a quarter, due the 5th inst. ... | $16.00 |
To fire wood, quills and ink for said time ... | 1.33 |
To altering the proofs of the 1st Vol. of Telemachus ... | 9.00 |
1807: | |
To 1 quarter French Schooling of his Son, due May the 5th ... | 12.00 |
To fire wood quills & ink ... | 1.00 |
To correcting 8 books, adventures of Telemachus ... | 6.00 |
June 8, 1807: | |
To 1 month French tuition of his Son, due the 5th inst. ... | 4.12½ |
To correcting the last 4 books of the adventures of Telemachus | 3.00 |
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The frequent references to Bible proofs indicate the great care exercised in the publication of Carey's editions. His autobiography tells about the 1801 quarto:
As the volume of the publishing business increased after the turn of the century, proofreading gradually became an established occupation. William Christie, for example, is listed in some of the Philadelphia directories of the second decade as "translator and corrector of the press."[12] During the first decade, he preached Unitarianism, published some sermons, and also, at times, worked on proof for Carey in 1807, 1808, and 1809. One of his bills, June 10, 1807, refers to correcting nine sheets of Telemachus in French and English at fifty cents per sheet. Vallon, evidently, was not the only competent person to read the text even though his name is on the title page as reviser and corrector of the edition. This instance of distributing the sheets of one work among readers is, of course, not unique. In August, 1804, both Lewis and Humphreys read sheets of the Laws of the United States; two years later, both submitted bills for correcting sheets of Ferguson's book on mechanics. Unfortunately, Humphreys did not specify the
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In his bills, Christie was usually careful enough to note the imposition as well as the specific pages, as in these:
[c. 1807] | |
For reading, and correcting for the press, as follows, viz. | |
The Letters of Junius, from p. 49 to the end inclusive, with the Notes, Index and Contents p. 273, 12mo is 11⅓ sheets at 50 cents per sheet ... | $ 5.66 |
Dodsley's select Fables &c. 240 p. 12mo. is 10 sheets, at 50 cents per sheet ... | 5.00 |
Abridgment of Christian Doctrine for the Use of the Catholic Church &c. 48 p. 24to. is 1 sheet ... | .50 |
For correcting for the press Adam's Roman Antiquities, a work consisting of 632 pages 8vo. including preface contents &c. is 39½ sheets at 75 cents per sheet ... | 29.62½ |
A few bills in the Carey Papers show that an editor of a work sometimes included proofreading as part of the job. In 1813, Thomas Clark edited Caesar for a group of publishers. Carey took one-fourth of the edition and Clark's bill of April 12 is for one-fourth of $152.00, "being the amount of editing & proofreading of Caesar." For a cooperative edition of Horace, Clark's bill of Dec. 8, 1813, reads: "For revising; & for the collecation of the Delphini edition of Horace, with the original one of Paris, & with other [sic] of approved accuracy; — —— Like wise for Proof reading of the same —— a 3/20th part of the whole amount $200." In another joint publishing venture, the 1810 edition of Cornelius Nepos, the bill came from the printer. Nevertheless, Lydia R. Bailey added a proofreading charge of $3.88 to her bill for printing.
Finally, it must be noted that a proofreading charge also appears on a few printers' bills for books which Carey alone published. This may be seen in James Carey's bill of August, 1794, where proofreading
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As large as the Carey archive is, it still leaves many questions unanswered. The rather unsystematic bookkeeping of the period plus the lack of detail in many items cause puzzlement if not confusion. Yet in this group of bills, the beginnings of work specialization in American publishing can be observed. In the 1790's and early 1800's, no American firm was large enough to support a full-time publishing staff. But bigness was approaching, and proofreading became, during this period, a part-time occupation.
Notes
These bills are in the Mathew Carey Papers at the American Antiquarian Society and the information in them is printed by kind permission of Dr. Clifford K. Shipton, Director. Because the bills are indexed at the Society, citation footnotes will be omitted. In the abstracts, spelling has been modernized and the texts edited for purposes of clarity.
H. Glenn Brown and Maude O. Brown, A Directory of the Book-Arts and Book Trade in Philadelphia to 1820, (1950), p. 75.
"William McCulloch's Additions to Thomas's History of Printing," Proc. Am. Ant. Soc., XXXI (1921), 94.
According to The American Repository of Useful Information (Philadelphia, 1797), p. [64], $1.00 equalled 7s 6d in Pennsylvania currency.
Lawrence B. Romaine, "Talk of the Town: New York City, January 1825," Bull. N. Y. Pub. Lib., LXIII (1959), [173]-188; Rollo G. Silver, "Grub Street in Philadelphia, 1794-1795: More about James Hardie," op. cit., LXIV (1960), [130]-142.
Biographical information about Waterman also appears in Donald L. Jacobus and Edgar F. Waterman, Descendants of Richard Waterman (1954), pp. 635-636.
An interesting account of Farris is in Philip S. Klein, ed., "Memoirs of a Senator from Pennsylvania: Jonathan Roberts, 1771-1854," Pa. Mag. Hist. Biog., LXII (1938), 68-74.
Mrs. M. N. Lane informs me that biographical information about Marshall is in the Historical Foundation of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches, Montreat, N. C.
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