University of Virginia Library

I

Howells was not one of the leaders in the movement to secure an international copyright law, but he greeted the prospect of one in the Christmas 1890 issue of Harper's Monthly by looking forward to the time when economic justice would finally be done to British authors. American publishers, he imagined, would pay foreign authors not only royalties but also, every year, a Christmas bonus in restitution for past deprivations. To keep these deprivations actively in mind a "Mount Restitution" would be built from old pirated editions, though Howells was afraid that Americans would take a "curious pride in such a colossal

witness of the national wrong-doing."[1] He of course knew that the British might well build a similar monument with their own piracies, but — as he had good reason to know — it would have had a significantly different moral foundation. For it had been possible for Americans to protect their literary property under British law, and Howells was one of the writers who had done so.

The story of Howells' publications in Great Britain begins with his first successful book, Venetian Life, first published not in America but in London, by Trübner, in 1866. Howells had made the final arrangements for this book on his way home from Venice, where he had been American consul. Trübner also published Italian Journeys in 1867, but from then until 1881 the only other of Howells' books to be published in Britain were the non-fiction Suburban Sketches (Sampson Low, 1871) and The Undiscovered Country (Low, 1880).[2] Howells was evidently little interested in securing a British audience for his novels during the 1870's, when he was establishing himself as a writer of "international" novels.[3]

In 1881 Trübner re-enters the picture briefly. In July he sent to the British Museum a sixty-one page pamphlet containing the first serial installment of Howells' Dr. Breen's Practice, to be published in America in the August number of the Atlantic Monthly.[4] The words "English copyright secured" were printed on the wrapper, and they indicate Howells' first attempt to protect his work in Britain. The typesetting of this first part and of the entire book, which Trübner deposited in October, is the same as that used for the James R. Osgood

edition in America. A letter of 30 June 1881 to Howells from Osgood, then in London, indicates that the type had been set in America and sheets of the first part sent to Trübner.[5] Thus Howells' first efforts to secure British copyright were made with sheets imported from the United States; for his next novel, and all subsequent ones until 1891, this arrangement was to be turned on its head. During the 1880's the type for Howells' novels was set in Britain and the plates made from it exported to the United States.

The next novel was A Modern Instance. At first the procedure was the same as for Dr. Breen's Practice, except that the parts Trübner used for copyright deposit — he sent in only the first and last serial installments of the novel — were not printed from Osgood's type. Trübner evidently had them set himself. But he did not publish the complete book, for it was at this point that David Douglas took over the publication of all of Howells' works in Britain. Douglas had A Modern Instance entirely reset and deposited it by 3 October 1882, with the words "All rights reserved" on the title page. For the next ten years Douglas would be exclusively charged with the protection of Howells' literary property in Great Britain.

Howells was indebted to Mrs. Sarah M. Sage and probably to Osgood for his introduction to Douglas. In 1879 Mrs. Sage, an American friend of Douglas, sent him a copy of The Lady of the Aroostook, introducing it as "by our best American Novelist Mr Howells."[6] It was a timely introduction, for Douglas had recently been reading

The books Douglas refers to here made up his American Author series, about which more will be said later. The point here is that Douglas had been reading Howells and the magazine Howells edited, and his name surely would have come up when Osgood visited in Edinburgh in the summer of 1881.[7] Though Douglas began to reprint Howells' novels in the spring of 1882, there is no evidence that the two men met personally until May 1883 when Howells wrote his father, from Venice, that "my Edinburgh publisher is here; a very nice old gentleman, whom I like very much, and who is very enthusiastic about my books."[8]

Douglas was sixty years old in 1883 and had been a publisher for almost thirty years. Between 1863 and 1869 he had been editor and publisher of the North British Review; he was to form, along with James Thin and Andrew Elliott, a famous trinity of booksellers in Edinburgh; he was a member of the Antiquaries from 1861 and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh from 1866; his editions of Scott's Journal and Familiar Letters were probably his most famous publications. As a publisher, his main concern was with Scotland — its history, geography, religion, and architecture; typical of this concern, his lavish publication of David MacGibbon's and Thomas Ross's The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland (1887-1888) is still used as a reference book in many Scottish architects' offices. Douglas's interest in the literature of the United States was a significant departure from this and was marked by his scrupulous concern for its authors' interests, even when their books could not be protected by copyright. The care with which he practiced his profession was a mark of the man himself, and the letters between Douglas and Howells, written over a period of thirty years, bespeak the most cordial friendship. Howells acknowledged his esteem for Douglas by writing, in 1893, that "English writers seem largely to suspect their publishers . . . I cannot say with how much reason, for my English publisher is Scotch, and I should be glad to be so true a man as I think him."[9]