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I
What I am saying has, of course, been often recognized—as one can see by glancing at past achievements. Until recently the principal activity, understandably enough, was concerned with colonial printing and bookselling. For the early period, the study of literary publishing per se has been, because of the nature of colonial book production and its utilitarian purpose, subordinate to a study of printers and their types, though one should not, for that reason, fail to examine the booksellers (or the bookselling function of the printers), for their techniques of promotion and distribution lie more nearly at the center of "publishing" (as opposed to "printing") history. It is natural that the presses of Stephen Daye, Benjamin Franklin, William Bradford, and William Parks would be among those which have attracted the most attention,[5] and natural, too, that the first printers in various colonies have frequently been the subjects of research.[6] As comprehensive guides to the period we do have the work of Lawrence Wroth, Douglas McMurtrie, and Rollo G. Silver,[7] which have supplanted the
If less has been done generally with the literary publishers of the turn of the nineteenth century, when Philadelphia was replacing Boston as the center of publishing and when the functions of printer, publisher, and bookseller were vaguely beginning to take their present shape, at least the two leading figures, Isaiah Thomas and Mathew Carey, have received their due in the researches of Clifford K. Shipton and E. L. Bradsher. The study of Carey has proceeded, in the hands of Lawrence Wroth, to one of Carey's traveling salesmen, the illustrious Mason Weems, and has moved on, led by David Kaser, to the years when the firm was known as Carey & Lea.[11] But in neither of these
The nineteenth century has been the field of greatest activity in recent years. William Charvat's Rosenbach lectures of 1957-58 survey brilliantly the whole field of literary publishing for the first half of the century, and Donald Sheehan does the same thing for the Gilded Age. Madeleine B. Stern covers the entire century with a series of short well-documented accounts of seventeen important publishers,[12] including James P. Walker and Horace B. Fuller (publishers to the transcendentalists), John Russell of Charleston, Robert Fergus of Chicago, A. K. Loring, Frank Leslie, G. W. Carleton, and Dick & Fitzgerald. The house that assembled the greatest galaxy of literary figures was, of course, Ticknor & Fields, which has, accordingly, been studied most intensively—by Warren Tryon, William Charvat, and James Austin— while James Osgood, one of the later partners of the firm that descended from Ticknor & Fields, has been treated by Carl J. Weber.[13] The later history of that company, as it transformed itself into Houghton Mifflin, has not been told in detail, nor have the literary activities of the other important Boston house, founded in 1837 by Charles C. Little and James Brown. In fact, one may say that the literary aspects of the large general publishers have been dealt with much less fully than have those of certain smaller, experimental (and perhaps more exclusively literary) firms. Our principal source of information about the great general houses of the nineteenth century, such as John Wiley (1807), Wiley & Putnam (1838), James and John Harper (1817),
Certain features of the literary book trade during this time have not gone unnoticed, however. Cincinnati, as the leading Western publishing center for much of the century (partly because of McGuffey's Readers), has been investigated by Walter Sutton,[15] and there have been briefer studies of other regional publishing activity, as well as regional book-trade directories.[16] But the phenomenon of the Bobbs Merrill Co. (Hood & Merrill, 1838) at Indianapolis, or of David McKay (1882) —known best perhaps to Whitman collectors—and John C. Winston (1884) at Philadelphia, has not been studied, nor have the numerous Chicago firms of this time, notably the forerunners of A. C. McClurg (W. W. Barlow, 1844). The whole problem of the geographical shifts in leadership, with New York assuming first place after midcentury, and with various outlying centers flourishing and declining, requires much further investigation, as does the popularity of reprints of British literature and the repercussions of edition binding. The relationships between authors and their publishers are important for understanding literary, as well as publishing, history, and they are beginning to be studied for the nineteenth century—in greatest detail, thus far, for Prescott, though that story involves English publishers as much as American.[17] This was also the age of dozens of companies
American literary publishers of the 1890's and the turn of the century were a colorful lot, but, despite their appeal (the piracies of Mosher and the Toulouse-Lautrec posters for Stone & Kimball were among the more glamorous, but not uncharacteristic, episodes), they have not been treated so fully as they deserve. If one thinks first of Stone & Kimball, it is partly because the history of that firm has been so thoroughly detailed by Sidney Kramer, in a book that includes bibliographical descriptions of all 309 titles issued and illustrates the use to which trade catalogues, advertisements, and book reviews may be put.[21] Hardly less influential as publisher to the American fin-desiècle
For the twentieth century, the scholarship is even more meager. The works that exist deal not so much with particular firms as with special subjects, such as private presses and fine printing,[27] best sellers,[28] university presses,[29] book clubs,[30] and even (though hardly literary) textbook and reference work publishers.[31] There is also no end to the general surveys of the state of the book industry—largely economic studies, not literary, though they will be useful to future historians of the literary economics of the mid-twentieth century.[32] But what solid work has been done on the individual publishers of literature in this century? Despite the logic of attempting to establish the record of these firms while it is still possible to consult the files or interview the persons involved, almost nothing has been achieved. Seemingly, no one has yet been attracted to those large publishers particularly associated with the first three decades of the century, like Frank N. Doubleday, George H. Doran, Stanley M. Rinehart, John Farrar, Alfred Harcourt,
The facts which author-bibliographies have turned up about some of these publishers cannot substitute for full-scale treatments of them as important men in their own right (not simply as the publishers of James Joyce, or Sherwood Anderson, or Edna Millay, and so on). The task is an essential one, and the materials for performing it are becoming more difficult of access every day, as anyone who has tried to compile a catalogue of a twentieth-century firm will testify. In absolute terms, of course, the materials are far more plentiful than for earlier periods, but that is to be expected; what is decidedly discouraging, however, is that scholars are not currently utilizing the masses of papers which, in the minds of too many publishers, are not worthy of preservation. We do at present have the means, if we have the will, to write the history of the publication of modern literature in America— and to write it fully, not as loose surveys of miscellaneous facts or as fanciful embroiderings of conjectured details, which some of our past histories of earlier publishers have had to be (or have been). Even a brief sketch of what has been accomplished in the historical study of American literary publishing reveals, besides the industry of a few dedicated scholars, the huge gaps, in all periods, which remain to be filled. And even a brief perusal of the prefaces to the studies mentioned here should provide a large enough record of difficulties, not to drive away future students, but to attract more of the same caliber.
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