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Notes
I am greatly indebted to Ben Harris McClary for querying me about John Miller when he was preparing his book, Washington Irving and the House of Murray (1969). At that time I was unable to provide much background on Miller, but since then I have gathered a good deal of material about him, and what follows is the result. I am grateful to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and to Houghton Library of Harvard University for permission to examine and quote from unpublished correspondence in their possession.
See Appendix for a chronology of Miller's business addresses. Letter of Mathew Carey to Longman & Co., 15 April 1817, in E. L. Bradsher, Mathew Carey: A Study in American Literary Development (1912), p. 79. See also D. Kaser, Messrs. Carey and Lea of Philadelphia (1957), pp. 19-20.
See letters of Miller to Carey, 7 Dec. and 14 Dec. 1820, Lea & Febiger collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For Irving's dealings with Miller, see S. T. Williams, Life of Washington Irving (1935).
An indication of Carey & Lea's initial dependence upon Miller may be conjectured from Miller's letters during 1821 which refer to at least 55 specific works excluding periodicals which he was forwarding to Carey & Lea for their consideration. As far as I can tell, 37 of these were eventually reprinted by the Philadelphia firm. In 1822 Miller dispatched about 50 books, of which at least 34 were subsequently reprinted by Carey & Lea.
For the various efforts of Carey & Lea to reprint British works, see especially Bradsher, Mathew Carey, pp. 35-36, 79-86, 129-130, and Kaser, Carey & Lea, pp. 42-44, 54, 69, 95-110, 149.
For the details concerning Miller's activities as a publisher's agent, see the following letters at Hist. Soc. Pa: 5 Apr. 28 Apr., 12 May, 20 Sept., 29 Oct. 1821; 1 Mar., 28 Apr., 28 Sept., 5 Nov., 9 Nov. 1822. Virtually no letters from Miller to Carey survive after 1822, though much can be reconstructed from surviving copies of letters to Miller from the Careys and others.
See copies of letters from Sparks to Miller: 8 Sept. 1826, 2 June and 9 July 1827, Houghton Library, Sparks letter books, MS. 147C, pp. 156-158, and MS. 147D, pp. 92-94 and 117-119.
Carey & Lea to Miller, 25 Nov. 1834, 31 Jan., 7 Mar., 15 Apr., 18 Apr. 1835, Hist. Soc. Pa., Carey & Lea letter book, pp. 254-256, 289-290, 326-329.
As far as one can tell, Carey did not succeed in making an arrangement with Longman & Co. for this encyclopedia. Several decades later Carey & Lea's successors, a firm called Lea & Blanchard, employed Miller's services to negotiate similar purchases of plates or copies of books in sheets for exportation to America. By the early 1850's the nature of the firm's business had shifted substantially away from general literature and much more heavily into technical and medical works.
For efforts to secure advance copies of Scott's novels, see references to Bradsher & Kaser at the beginning of this article.
Carey & Lea to Miller, 5 Jan., 31 Jan., and 2 Feb. 1835, Hist. Soc. Pa., letter book, pp. 222, 254-257.
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