University of Virginia Library

Cooper and His Printers

Having examined Cooper's characteristic degrees of control over his
closest collaborators, his family copyists, let me turn to a more detailed discussion
of his relationship with the printers of his first proofs. Except on rare
occasions where time or distance precluded review, Cooper always examined
and corrected the first proofs himself. For Cooper, the interventions of the
printers such review disclosed were ones he alternatingly welcomed and abhorred.
Unfortunately, his letters disclose far more concern with these collaborators'
missteps than with their improvements.

Writing to his first publisher, Andrew Thompson Goodrich, on 2 July

1820, Cooper concluded a letter filled with the anxieties of a first author with
the plea to "Hasten the first proof sheet [of Precaution], as it may suggest
some alterations in the Chapters and I hourly expect the "Union" in, and
must go to Sag-Harbor as soon as I hear of her arrival" (L&J, 1.46). Most curious
is this conjunction of concerns about his two immediate commercial
prospects: authorship and whaling. At this stage in his career, Cooper knew
a good deal more about the commerce of the sea than that of publishing. But
in his extensive correspondence with Goodrich, we see Cooper beginning to
learn the technicalities of composition, proofreading, and publishing the
hard way—on the job.

After several months of intense struggle with Goodrich, the best Cooper
could do to close the gap between the holograph final intentions and printed
text for Precaution was to include an errata sheet. But from his experience
with seeing his first manuscript through the press (discussed below), Cooper
developed practices to execute textual revisions that he used throughout his
career. He learned from Precaution how to define for publishers and their
compositors specific and delimited roles as collaborators in trying to construct
his final intentions for his major works. As we shall see, the unanticipated
demand for his second novel, The Spy (1821), provided Cooper with an opportunity
Precaution did not offer—to make significant revisions after the
first edition for three distinct new editions (two in 1822 and one in 1831).
Through 1831, his correspondence discloses that he revised, at least once,
every novel he wrote. His correspondence does not always indicate all the
editions he revised; editors must undertake extensive collations of all texts
possibly under his control to determine which contain variants likely to be
authorial. Although Cooper revised for subsequent editions only three ( Pathfinder,
Deerslayer, and The Two Admirals) of the twenty-one novels he wrote
after 1831, for many of these titles manuscript and other pre-publication
materials exist to aid the Cooper editor in determining the author's final intentions
for both substantives and accidentals.

Whatever romantic notions persist about the circumstances of Cooper's
writing Precaution, his correspondence with Goodrich about seeing the novel
through the press is grimly realistic. As a body, these letters show Cooper beginning
to develop his career-long expectations and demands for the kinds of
cooperation he wanted from the printing shop. Once the proofs began to arrive,
Cooper was appalled with the errors he soon detected. Cooper's first
extant response of 4 July 1820, in his characteristically conversational prose,
begins with polite but firm correction:

The substance here of the first sentence echoes throughout the thirty years
of Cooper's career that lay ahead with respect to the dual appeal for collaboration
with his various publishers: make "any little suggestions" that may improve
the work's success but correct the faults that "rest with the printer." To
guide this collaboration, Cooper exhorted his publishers and printers to take
care where he had not, especially to understand the idiosyncrasies of his writing
and orthography:

Cooper's first encounters with printers led him to pledge to take more
care with his writing and especially the punctuation ("I have paid more attention
to the pointing, and think it will be easier work as they proceed," 12
July 1820, L&J, 1.49). To aid his collaborators in the printing shop, in the
same letter to Goodrich he sent them "the spelling of the names—which written
off plainly on bits of papers will prevent the mistakes which occur sometimes
in the manuscript, creepin[g] into the proof sheets—."

These early letters to Goodrich—like several later concerning Precaution
and many about his subsequent publications—disclose Cooper's clear sense
of how he wanted his publishers and printers to collaborate. His role was to
acknowledge his own lapses and identify general problems (like consistency
of names). Their obligation was to locate and correct these lapses, as well as
to correct any other authorial oversights they detected.

Reading more proofs brought more problems and more appeals for care,
along with practical advice on difficulties compositors were likely to encounter
in an orthography Cooper was unwilling or unable to change: "I
like the frequent use of the dash—and believe they have ommitted [sic] it in
one or two cases where I was at pains to insert it. They must observe however
that I never use the period but close most of my sentences with the dash. This
of course is not to be printed so—" (17 July; L&J, 1.50).

Cooper concluded a second letter to Goodrich of 17 July with the expectation
he would soon be able to submit manuscript for the second volume of
Precaution. He anticipated that in his final review of the remaining manuscript
of the volume he might overlook "grammatical errors, and some words
may be omitted as I read it over very rapidly from necessity. If any such meet
your notice you will please alter th[is?] and I can see the proof afterwards . . ."
(L&J, 1.51). Two days later, he informed Goodrich of the necessity of leaving
Angevine (the farm near Mamaroneck that Susan Cooper's father gave them

in 1817) to attend to other business (including the newly returned whaling
ship). In his absence he pressed Susan into the role of proofreader, making
clear to Goodrich that her corrections should also be incorporated into what
he hoped was the increasingly correct text of Precaution.

However, three letters at the end of August convey his anguish at finding
the proofs of the second volume riddled with errors, most vexingly in passages
where he had already provided corrections. A letter (27? August 1820) details
Cooper's concerns with errors in the first volume, which Goodrich had presented
to Cooper as "ready for the public eye." In addition to numerous gaffes,
Cooper protested vehemently about the misuse of articles, since "the judicious
use of the articles and the qualifying words—is one of the characteristic
distinctions between American writers and the English[,] also of the affected
sentimental and plain good sense" (L&J, 1.56).

Eight more letters follow in September with more evidence of specific
passages requiring correction, resulting in Cooper's finally assenting to and
composing a detailed errata notice:

And finally in an almost stream-of-consciousness blending of concerns
about printers' errors, timely publication, and other business and personal
matters, Cooper wrote to Goodrich in mid-month:

When the two volumes of Precaution were finally printed and bound in
mid-October, Cooper confessed he could "honestly own I am pleased with my
appearance" (19-20 October?; L&J, 1.66), diplomatically blaming the faults
on his own casual approach to authorship rather than on Goodrich. But seeing
his first work through the press was a painful lesson in collaboration. His
volcanic outburst to Goodrich of 25 August records his bitterness with how
"they" (the printers) perverted his work with their unwanted interventions,

to the point where their collaboration destroyed his efforts. Indeed, with
mock solemnity, he invited Goodrich's printers to write their own book rather
than intrude on his:

(Ironically, Goodrich's printer was the highly-respected Cornelius van
Winkle, author of an important book on collaboration in the printing shop,
the 1818 The Printer's Guide, or an Introduction to the Art of Printing, Including
an Essay on Punctuation, and Remarks on Orthography.)[5]

Precaution was a modest success, but Cooper had, as early as his third
letter to Goodrich of 28 June 1820, begun work on a new work, The Spy,
which he reports "my female Mentor [doubtless his wife Susan] says . . . throws
Precaution far in the back-ground" (L&J, 1.44). Not until the second American
edition of 1839 did Cooper appear to return to his first novel to effect a
revision. While his last letters to Goodrich on Precaution disclose, on balance,
his pleasure with getting his first work through the fires of collaboration with
his printers, he entrusted his next two works—the ones that established his
career and reputation—to the more experienced New York firm of Charles

Wiley. The first editions of both The Spy (1821) and The Pioneers (1823) sold
very well, and popular demand in both cases led promptly to new typesettings.
And both novels were among the eight novels Cooper revised in the early
1830s for the Bentley Standard Novels series. These opportunities to prepare
revised editions for Spy and Pioneers provided Cooper with a new set of challenges
in collaborating with more experienced and professional firms to revise
early texts to embody his final intentions.

However, the first editions of The Spy and The Pioneers, published by
Charles Wiley of New York, are almost as error-laden as Precaution; indeed,
Pioneers also required an errata note. For better or worse, no correspondence
between Cooper and the publishers survives regarding the lapses of these first
Wiley editions. Fortunately, Cooper's second and third novels proved to be
sufficiently popular successes that the market immediately demanded new
editions for both. As the CE critical editions show, in both cases Cooper
worked hard and fast in these new editions to repair the blunders that had
escaped his notice in proofing the first editions.[6]

After the enormous success of Spy at home (and its pirating in London),
Cooper pursued the potential British market for Pioneers vigorously, and
initiated practices that continued for much of his career of sending his London
publishers corrected proofs of his American first editions. To John Murray,
the first London publisher to issue a Cooper novel by arrangement with
the author, Cooper sent the following instructions for collaboration on the
first British edition of The Pioneers:

From a collaborator's point of view, this combination of license to correct
and of caution to respect "one mans style" must have been perplexing,
doubtless even more so to London publishers with an established British
house style than to Goodrich (who received similar entreaties to correct
Cooper's lapses without interfering with his meaning.) Three weeks later,
Cooper sent the remaining text (in "two complete sets and part of a third")
for Murray's next volume, with a detailed commentary on how to respond to
authorial revisions made on the various proofs:

Clearly Cooper expected his new London publisher to exercise a prudent,
limited collaboration in preparing the novel for British audiences. In 1831,
Cooper returned to both Spy and Pioneers to prepare revised texts for the
"Bentley Standard Novels" series. He continued to count upon his British
publishers, now Colburn and Bentley, to instruct their printers to rectify
errors Cooper missed in preparing these early novels for re-issue in texts he
revised with more care than at any other occasion in his career. "I return the
whole of Spy, corrected," he wrote to Colburn and Bentley from Paris on 12
April 1831. "The proof-reader must be careful, and consult the sense, for it
is possible in the haste which you have exacted I may have made one mistake
in correcting another. The book was full of faults and I am amazed to see how
many had crept in through the carelessness of the printers, though Heaven
knows, there were enough of my own" (L&J, 2.67-68).

The interleaved text Cooper prepared for the Standard Novels revision
of Spy is extant, and provides scholars with the best evidence we have of the
kinds and degrees of changes Cooper made while revising the novel he deemed
the most in need of "a severe pen."[7] The interleaved revisions include hundreds
of changes, ranging from full pages through the smallest details of the
text (often involving the heightening or consistent registration of dialect).
Cooper even attended to punctuation changes, providing a good case study
of how authors can revise accidentals as well as substantives. In the first paragraph
alone of the revised Spy, he deleted six commas, presumably to pick up
the narrative pace. On the front of the interleaved copy, Cooper further instructed
the British printers as follows: "note Bene—No attention will be
given to the spelling, except in words of local use, the names, or those which
are evidently intended to be corrupt. The proof reader will take care of the
others."[8] In other words, in making his revisions Cooper sanctioned the
British compositors and proofreaders to correct errors in common words that
missed his attention, but to respect any changes he made in formal names or
in dialect ("words of local use . . . or those which are evidently intended to be
corrupt.")

This "note Bene" on the manuscript revisions for Spy captures Cooper's
expectations for his collaborators in the printing and proofing stages: correct

those errors you believe are authorial oversights but preserve those unconventional
forms that you believe are intended as such. However, the achievements
of Cooper's collaborators in this regard were often indifferent. As the
textual commentaries of many of the CE texts show, Greg and Bowers were
correct in arguing that successive re-composition of texts such as Cooper's
tended to move unconventional forms, especially dialect, towards conventional
ones.[9]

The CE texts of Spy and Pioneers also disclose that the Bentley compositor
followed Cooper's interlineated corrections with remarkable fidelity
(dialect aside), occasionally correcting errors Cooper had missed. Subsequent
letters to Bentley concerning the three historical novels set in Europe show
Cooper's appreciation of their workmanship. Concerning The Bravo, set in
Venice, Cooper admonished Bentley's staff in early June 1831 to respond
appropriately to both American and Italian forms:

Here as in all other London editions, Colburn and Bentley consistently followed
British usages in the spelling variants Cooper cited, with no known
protest from him.

Even after his return to the United States and residency in Cooperstown,
Cooper continued to entrust Bentley's staff with the difficulties of printing
from his manuscripts, as shown in his letter of 6 July 1837 concerning his
naval history:

Cooper again praised the Headsman (1833) proofreader when sending
the manuscript of Homeward Bound on 17 October 1837: