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Notes
The British issues of Italian Journeys and Suburban Sketches are listed in The English Catalogue of Books and referred to in BAL, but I have not seen either of them or the Trübner issue of the second edition of Venetian Life (1867). It is likely that these were all made up from sheets imported from America. Other of Howells' books, including A Foregone Conclusion (see BAL 9568), are listed in The English Catalogue of Books under their American imprints. Low first published The Undiscovered Country under his imprint using sheets imported from America, but in 1881 he brought out a second edition of this novel, printed from a new typesetting, as part of his Select Novelets series. This edition is not listed in BAL; copies of it are at the British Museum and the Bodleian Library.
In 1879 Howells reported in Publishers' Weekly that he supposed he did not lose much in royalties because of the lack of an international copyright law: "it is very little, and mainly in Canada and Germany. Perhaps $200 or $300 a year" (1 March 1879, p. 262). Though Howells never did make large profits from the sale of his books in Great Britain, it is ironic that, as will be shown, it was exactly the novels he was publishing in the 1870's that were to be most popular with his British readers.
The copyright registration form in the Public Record Office is dated 28 July but lists 14 July as the date of publication.
A duplicate set of plates was probably made and sent to Trübner for his issue of the complete book; they were used again by Douglas when he published the book in 1883. Douglas's printer for this impression was T. & A. Constable, Edinburgh. No printer is identified in the Trübner edition. The letter cited in the text and all others, unless otherwise indicated, are at the Houghton Library. I am indebted to the Harvard College Library and to the Rutgers University Library for permission to quote the Howells-Douglas material in their collections. Permission to quote from unpublished letters written by Howells has been granted by William White Howells for the heirs of the Howells Estate. No republication may be made without this same permission.
Quoted from the "Private Scrap Book" compiled by Douglas for his family and now owned by W. S. Douglas. I am indebted to Mr. Douglas for his generosity in allowing me to study the notebook and to quote from it and from the letters written by David Douglas. Dean Sage was a lumberman, friend of Mark Twain, an expert on fishing, and author of Ristigouche and its Salmon Fishing, privately published by Douglas in 1888.
See Publishers' Weekly, 10 May 1884, pp. 549-550. But as late as 12 May 1885 Douglas reported his continued uncertainty on the matter to Howells: "I am trying to get at the bottom of this question of quasi copyright which, as you know, I have always feared will not hold good should any unscrupulous person choose to run the blockade. —I understand that not only is prior publication necessary but the residence of the author at the time of publication on British territory is essential."
For more on this passage and on the bibliographical complications of trans-Atlantic publication, see the "Textual Commentary" to The Rise of Silas Lapham, ed. Walter J. Meserve and David J. Nordloh (1971), pp. 373-388.
The print figures come from the Day Books of T. & A. Constable, Ltd., Douglas's printer in Edinburgh; I am grateful to C. W. Kilpatrick for permission to quote from them. Douglas's letter of 22 November 1884 to Howells indicates that Douglas wanted to print 500 copies from Howells' plates "so as to lessen the cost of making a duplicate set." This suggests that Douglas made two sets of plates, one for himself and one for Howells, but the Constable ledger indicates only one was made. It is possible that the "duplicate plates" refers to those made for the American Author series, but in accounting to Howells for this series Douglas elsewhere always viewed it and the trade editions as separate ventures.
Douglas and Howells had evidently discussed the possibility of charging more than 6s. for the trade editions and depending more entirely on sales to circulating libraries for their profit. Howells agreed with Douglas in rejecting this strategy in a letter of 20 February 1886 (Scrap Book).
On 31 August 1921 William Douglas, David's son, replied to Mildred Howells' inquiry about the trade editions by saying that the demand for them had ceased more than a dozen years earlier, that the bound stock had been sold to a second-hand dealer, and that the rest, save a few sets, was used as waste paper. If the story of these trade editions is a bleak one commercially, Douglas nonetheless made clear to Howells his own personal pleasure in being his publisher: "Now my dear friend though I am disappointed at the [illegible word] popularity of your books among British readers (as I daresay you yourself are) and at the comparative failure of my efforts to make them a big success, yet I am proud of having introduced them here and grateful to you for your appreciation of what I have been able to do" (letter of 2 October 1891).
A Foregone Conclusion was reprinted in September, A Chance Acquaintance in October. A Counterfeit Presentment was first printed in August and reprinted in December; Their Wedding Journey and The Lady of the Aroostook were first printed in September and reprinted in November and December respectively; Out of the Question was first printed in October and reprinted in December; The Undiscovered Country and A Fearful Responsibility were first printed in October and December respectively. It is evident that Howells' talents had begun to recommend themselves to British readers before the appearance of the Century article.
See for instance, [Margaret Oliphant,] "American Literature in England," Blackwood's Magazine, 133 (1883), 145: "The English public has taken a much longer time to discover Mr Howells [than it had to discover Henry James]; and it is, we think, chiefly owing to the agency of the 'Century' that he has stepped into the region of visibility between the two worlds on which we have finally made his acquaintance." Besides the piece on Henry James, Howells had published an essay on Mark Twain and his novel A Modern Instance in the Century Magazine. Mrs. Oliphant is identified as the author of the Blackwood's review by Walter Houghton, ed., The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (1966), I, 159; I am indebted to Mr. Houghton for his identifying also the authors of the reviews cited in footnote 18.
[Miss Amy Levy,] "The New School of American Fiction," Temple Bar, 70 (1884), 386; [John Mackinnon Robertson,] "Mr. Howells' Novels," Westminster Review, n.s. 66 (1884), 348.
Douglas went on to mention specifically his desire to print half a dozen of Aldrich's works and "to make them sacred." Between 1885 and 1902 he published seven books by Aldrich, and if he did not make them sacred to British readers, he was at least able to make them profitable for Aldrich. Douglas sent him, for instance, £50 on 7 October 1893 for Two Bites at a Cherry, published in that year.
The most likely instance of this is James Lane Allen's Flute and Violin, which Howells reviewed in Harper's Monthly in September 1891 (pp. 640-641); Douglas published the volume in April 1892. Howells had also reviewed Burrough's Wake-Robin and Locusts and Wild Honey and M. W. Wilkins's Humble Romance, but too long before Douglas published these books to suggest any direct recommendation as a result of the review. Howells would have known the work of all the authors Douglas published, and he at one time or another had reviewed most of them.
Little is known of how Douglas marketed the American Author series except that it rivaled in cost the least expensive novels and that Douglas's advertisements typically indicated that the books were "to be had at all the Railway Book-stalls." It is perhaps worth noting that the most popular of Howells' books in the series were the travel stories.
The printing costs given here include the cost of both printing and paper for the paper covers in which most copies were issued. The actual sewing and binding are not included. The Constable records indicate that in 1882-83 at least two-thirds of the print order of a new title would be bound in paper, leaving a third or less for cloth binding; subsequent reprintings were mostly bound in paper. The scarcity of American Author volumes is probably explained by the fact that the majority of them were bound so perishably.
The more numerous royalty statements sent in the 1890's confirm this pattern, except for the years 1892 and 1893 when Douglas's payments to Howells almost tripled. Douglas sent his statements in January and February for the preceding year. His letters and the amounts for the American Author series are as follows: 21 January 1892, £8/13/0; 24 January 1893, £65/7/9; 1 February 1894, £50/0/0; 5 February 1895, £15/0/0; 8 February 1896, £20/0/0. The only later statements to survive are dated 4 March 1906, £21/15/3 (in the Scrap Book, the amount covers royalties on both the American Author series and the trade editions); 4 February 1910, £4/9/0; and 4 February 1916 (paying for both the American Author series and the trade editions sold during the previous three years), £8/17/10.
Douglas was probably not making much on them, but in May and June of this year he brought out cheap editions of eight of Howells' dramatic farces: The Mouse Trap, The Garroters, Evening Dress, Five O'Clock Tea, A Likely Story, The Unexpected Guests, The Albany Depot, and A Letter of Introduction. Douglas printed 3000 copies of each play; his total printing costs for the series were £77/5/9. Two years later, on 5 March 1899. Howells wrote to Douglas to agree that free acting rights might be granted if that would aid sales (Scrap Book).
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