Edward Moxon. Publisher of Poets 9780231881425

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EDWARD Publisher

MOXON of

Poets

¿E COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

STUDIES

I N E N G L I S H AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE NUMBER

137

EDWARD

MOXON

Publisher of Poets By HAROLD

New

G.

MERRIAM

York : Morntngside

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1939

Heights PRESS

CoPYRIGlli

1939

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY * RESS, NEW YORK Foreign agents:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY ' HESS,

Humphrey Milford, Amen

House, London, E.C. 4, England, AND B. I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India;

KWANG H S U E H

Shanghai, China;

MARUZ'

r

BLISHING H O U S E , C O M P A N Y , LTD.,

140 Peking Road,

6 Nihonbashi,

Tori-Nichome, Tokyo, Japan MANUFACTURED I N T H E U N I T E D STATES OF A M E R I C A

Preface B Y T H E eighteen-thirties, in Great Britain, the powerful publishers like John Murray and Constable, who had been looked upon as and considered themselves as patrons of authors and therefore in a sense as arbiters of excellence in literature, had either crashed financially or suffered diminished influence at the hands of a public which determined its pleasure in reading by standards that were not aristocratic. The middle classes were becoming the principal support of booksellers and publishers. The prices of books were dropping; their formats were becoming less adapted to libraries of noblemen. Fiction, formerly issued at a guinea and more a novel, was cheapening in price as it swept into popularity. It and volumes of informative materials for general reading outstripped poetry. By 1830 Murray was refusing to read manuscripts of verse and was publishing few novels. Versifiers on social themes and poets who relied on the rhetoric of noble sentiment were in public favor. The great critical journals, the Edinburgh and the Quarterly, although still authoritative, were experiencing sharp competition from smaller, cheaper, and less intellectual periodicals. Financial distress and social unrest were in the air. Edward Moxon, Yorkshire born and apprentice bred, lover of poetry, ambitious, and looking back toward the great days of the publishers when the volumes of Lord Byron sold in editions of thousands, opened business in 1830 in London. The social connections he had made as a young man determined both the course his business should run and its tone. In spite of his upbringing among workingmen and his social sympathies, that tone tended toward the aristocratic, and the course was in the direction of a selected clientele. Elaborate illustrated editions of Rogers's poems were largely responsible. Soon Moxon was bidding for verse manuscripts. They came to him readily. When within two decades it was

[v]

PREFACE necessary for Her Majesty's ministers to appoint a poet laureate for Great Britain, the six poets who were considered for the post— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Samuel Rogers, Leigh Hunt, Henry Taylor, Sheridan Knowles, and Alfred Tennyson—had each published for a period of years with Edward Moxon. Another of his authors, William Wordsworth, had been poet laureate for seven years. Moxon had established, in the face of bad business conditions, of falling book prices, of the rise of a new reading public, a sound trade in the issuing and sale of poetry. Moxon priced volumes moderately, putting them within the financial reach of middle-class readers. He printed his books in clear type and designed them in good taste. He looked upon his business as something superior to mere trade. Poets liked to have their volumes come before the public over the name of Edward Moxon, publisher. Against a few more than twenty volumes of lesser poetry published by him there were fifty by major poets. No other publisher during the thirty years following 1830 showed any such list. Of the major Victorian poets Arnold, Rossetti, and Morris published nothing with Moxon. Only Arnold's first volume, The Strayed Reveler, and Other Poems, 1849, could have appeared from the firm of Edward Moxon, for Rossetti wrote in early life, but published late, in 1870, and The Defence of Guenevere, and Other Poems, the first book of poems by Morris, appeared in 1858. Moxon died in that year. Because Edward Moxon rose in early Victorian days to commendable achievement as a publisher of poetry and because he associated on friendly terms with many literary persons, his life is worthy of record. This book attempts to show his nature, his ideas about publishing, the manner in which he built and maintained his business, and his relations with the poets whose writings he placed before the public. No personal diary of Edward Moxon's, no business journal, and few of his letters have been available for the construction of this biography. There exist no important manuscript sources of information. Facts and ideas have of necessity been gathered from materials about the writers he published and the men with whom he associated. Their letters, diaries, autobiographies, and biogra[vi]

PREFACE

phies have been searched. Such accounts as members of the book trade have left of Victorian publishing have been read. The process of construction has been that of matching fact with fact, of placing comment beside comment. Several English and American scholars, librarians, booksellers, and men who possess knowledge concerning different phases of the subject have shown interest in this proposed life of Moxon and have offered counsel and whatever materials have been in their possession. I again express to them my gratitude. I am in particular indebted to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth, of Ambleside, England; Mr. de V. Payen-Payne, of London; the Rev. R. S. Moxon, of Lincoln, England; the Trustees and Mr. Stephen K. Jones, librarian, of Dr. Williams's Library, London; Mr. James Reynor, of Luton, Bedfordshire, and Mr. W. R. Le Fanu, of the library of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Professor Edith J. Morley, of Reading University, England, and the late T. J. Wise, of London, offered materials and advice. Miss Maud Moxon, of Brighton, granddaughter of Edward Moxon, answered inquiries and placed some letters and photographs at my disposal. In this country Miss Belle Da Costa Greene, of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, was especially helpful and gracious in allowing use of manuscript materials. The librarian of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, kindly gave access to the letters of Wordsworth to Moxon that were formerly in the Rowfant Library. Mr. E. D. North discussed with me Lamb documents. My colleague Professor Edmund L. Freeman has given the manuscript criticism. The librarians at Montana State University have been indefatigable in their aid. This study was begun under the counsel of the late Professor Ashley H. Thorndike, and completed under that of Professor Emery Neff, to whom I offer my gratitude for patient criticism and encouragement. H. MISSOULA, MONTANA SEPTEMBER 1 4 ,

1938

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G.

MERRIAM

CONTENTS I II

The Years before Publishing, 1801-30 .

.

.

.

1

Conditions of Publishing before 1830

.

.

.

17

.

III

Early Business Years

25

IV

Business Expansion

47

V VI VII VIII

Moxon and Charles and Mary Lamb

. . . .

60

Business Policies

75

Typical Relations with Authors

89

Trade Relations

101

Moxon and Established Writers:—Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Hartley Coleridge, Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley, Leigh Hunt, James Sheridan Knowles, and Thomas Campbell

110

Moxon and Wordsworth

130

New Names: Thomas Noon Talfourd, Coventry Patmore, Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning .

150

Moxon and Tennyson

169

XIII

Later Years

188

XIV

Evaluation

196

IX

X XI XII

Bibliography

201

Index

213

Chapter

i * T H E YEARS

PUBLISHING,

BEFORE 1801-30

E D W A R D M O X O N came of a family long established in Yorkshire as workers in the textile trade.1 His father, Michael Moxon, after some years in Leeds returned about 1798 to Wakefield, in that county. He married, November 30, 1800, Ann Watson, and to them were born nine children, Edward, the eldest, on December 12, 1801.2 Michael Moxon was a "cropper," 3 a worker who cut off the rough surface of the cloth with large shears before the material was pressed and finished so that the nap lay evenly.4 In the early nineteenth century Wakefield was a cloth center; it possessed several "cloth halls" for the sale of woolens. With cloth, however, Edward Moxon never had anything to do, since at nine years of age he was apprenticed to a bookseller. The town of Wakefield had a long history. With the conservatism of the north country it clung until late into the nineteenth century to picturesque customs and traditions. Henry Clarkson, a contemporary of Edward Moxon who perhaps knew him as a lad, in 1887 recalled that as late as his day the town was walled, 1 The Moxon genealogy has been fully constructed from the middle of the fifteenth century by the Rev. Dr. R. S. Moxon, headmaster of the Lincoln School, Lincoln, England, in an unpublished account. The writer was graciously allowed to consult this work. 2 The children were Edward, December 12, 1801; Mary, 1803; John, 1806; William, 1808; Ann, 1811; Elizabeth, 1812; Henry, 1815; Maria, 1818; and, according to Miss Maud Moxon of Brighton, England, granddaughter of Edward Moxon, Alfred, "who was very fond of poetry." "In the register of the Wakefield Parish Church is an entry of the baptism of Edward, son of Michael and Ann Moxon, December 12, 1801. This Edward Moxon I presume to have been the one in question."—Lupton, Wakefield, Worthies, p. 257. 3 A note, in the possession of De V. Payen-Payne, Esq., London, made by his mother, Mrs. J . Bertrand Payne. The Rev. Dr. Moxon, Lincoln, has the same information. The Rev. J . H. Lupton took some of his information from the Rev. Mr. Clarkson, Wakefield. See footnote 4, below. 4 Clarkson, Memories of Merry Wakefield, an Octogenarian's Recollections, p. 48; Hewitt, History and Topography of the Parish of Wakefield, p. 289: "One shear grinder's forge for making and grinding shears such as were then used by the 'croppers.' "

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BEFORE

PUBLISHING

with four entrances, Westgate Bridge, Warrengate Bar, Kirkgate Bridge, and Northgate. 5 It was controlled by a constable, and from ten at night to six in the morning old men kept watch, calling the hours. Clarkson remembered vividly the stormy weather that lasted from December, 1813, to April, 1814, which "took place a few months after the appearance of the great comet of 1813." He recalled the wrecking by Luddites of mills which had introduced machinery. He danced in memory the gay dances in the "assembly rooms." He saw a man and a woman in the pillory on the market place and many floggings in the streets, the "cat" at that time being "freely administered for comparatively slight offences." He vividly remembered the whippings. The floggings began at twelve, noon; schoolmasters dismissed classes at eleven forty-five. The culprit, tied with outstretched arms to the back of a cart, was flogged through the town and finally into the yard of an old inn, where wine was poured into the wounds. The last public whipping, he asserts, was in 1814, when Edward Moxon was thirteen years of age. Bear baitings were still common. On occasions an ox for roasting was led about the town "bedecked and with horns gilded." Clarkson recalled the performance at school of Hannah More's sacred drama Daniel. At the theater, which was on the York circuit, he saw Charles Kean in Richard III and Othello and Miss O'Neill as Juliet. Amid these events and customs young Edward Moxon grew into youth. The poems which he wrote before departure from Wakefield reflect this town life, especially the long poem "Christmas." Wakefield stands on a slight elevation in open country that stretches away to east and west, north and south. Small streams cut the fields, and occasional wooded hillocks break the sweep. The skies are often lowering and heavy, and winters are severe, with much wind and snow. Spring comes as lovely relief. A feeling for the out-of-doors entered the spirit of Edward and found expression in his early poems. When the fleeting skate shall sweep The brittle surface of the deep . . . 5

In Memories

of Merry

Wakefield.

O l

THE

YEARS

BEFORE

PUBLISHING

The fields, tho' clothed in partial snow, Shew thro' their white a crimson glow And every bush is glittering seen . . .6 At last sweet spring, she breaks her purple bound . . . I hear thee 'neath the milk-white scented thorn . . . Mowers he describes reaping "the trembling grain" and adds, See them outstretched, they form a rustic row, All bend at once the narrow blade to mow . . .7 To young Moxon the countryside of Wakefield was idyllic. After working hours he wandered over it, sat musing on its hillocks, delighted in its streams. When he had been in London a short while, walking its dreary streets, he thought he . . . should be blest if free to rove, Dear friend, those solitary vales with thee, Now that May holds her youthful jubilee, Filling with warblings wild the enchanted grove . . ,8 Upon leaving Wakefield he had sighed, Farewell! Adieu! Thou dearest resting place, Where soon again I hope my steps to trace . . .9 But even as he left, the town was yielding to the demands of industry and was soon no longer a place of rural delight: "How art thou changed, my birthplace," he sang in a sonnet after a visit a few years later, once the land Where mirth proverbial as thy bounty reign'd. . . . lo, where I stand The cheerful sun no longer may be seen. 6

From Christmas, a Poem. These three passages have been taken from Moxon's first volume, The Prospect, and Other Poems. 8 From a sonnet which Moxon included in his 1830 volume of sonnets and dropped from the 1837 reprint. 9 Opening lines of The Prospect. 7

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Streams where in boyhood I was wont to sport Polluted now, no more are the resort Of such as quiet seek. Time once has been When yonder spire alone was seen to rise Where now obnoxious chimneys pierce the skies Tainting the air, while 'neath their sultry walls Mechanic childhood for scant pittance toils Whose melancholy doom the heart appals . . .

The charity school which Edward Moxon attended, probably for only three or four years, was known as the Green Coat. It was founded in 1701 for the poor of Wakefield, and at various dates since then has been assisted "by gifts of land and money for teaching poor boys reading, writing, and arithmetic." 10 "The charity school," asserted Edward Parsons, in 1834, more than twenty years after Moxon had attended it, "is one of the best institutions in the county, and one hundred and six poor boys and girls, of Wakefield, are clothed and educated within its walls." 11 Mr. James Reynor, a pupil of the school and its last master, writes, The Green Coat School educated both boys and girls, but in separate buildings and under separate heads, the boys, at any rate in my time, greatly outnumbering the girls. . . . In the time of Moxon all were dressed in green, and the boys wore a flat pancake-shaped cap which it was their delight, when not under their master's eye, to send skimming through the air.12

The governors of the Charities of Wakefield under the Cross Chambers Charity, "which dated from about the same time as the Green Coat Charity," apprenticed and placed out boys to learn trades, educated them and clothed them, and "started each of them with a donation of £15 on the completion of their apprenticeship. As the recipients of the charity were almost exclusively taken from the Green Coat School, Moxon may have been one of 10

Banks, Walks in Yorkshire: Wakefield and Its Neighborhood, pp. 51-52. Parsons, The Civil, Ecclesiastical, Literary, Commercial, and Miscellaneous History of Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Dewsbury, Atley, II, 162. 12 Letter written from Luton, Bedfordshire, on July 14, 1926, to the writer of this biography. Mr. Reynor was a pupil-teacher from 1865 to 1870. The school was closed in 1875. 11

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BEFORE

PUBLISHING

13

them." Edward was apprenticed, in 1810,14 to "one, Smith, a bookseller." 15 With Smith he learned something about printing and books and more about the selling of them in a provincial town. He read books from his master's shelves, and saw contemporary magazines, perhaps the powerful new Edinburgh and Quarterly reviews.16 Being a charity apprentice and an eager-minded boy, he exercised diligence and faithfulness and acquired humility of manner, coupled with some facility in meeting people. Mr. Reynor's words, "placed out boys to learn trades, educated them," suggest that during the apprenticeship young Edward pursued some sort of formal education. His business training and his reading could not have been considerable, yet they set his ambition toward bookselling and toward the writing of poetry. Queen Elizabeth founded in Wakefield a Free Grammar School. It was housed in a stone building with pointed roof and mullioned windows. Its master from 1814 to 1834, the Rev. Joseph Lawson Sisson, befriended Moxon.17 Since this master had but recently taken his degree at Clare College, Cambridge, he was not so old as to inhibit confidence or to inspire awe. He was a strong influence upon Edward during his youthful years. In Moxon's first volume of poems (1826) he addressed him as "my worthy, reverend, trusty friend," and in his second as "cordial friend." A suggestion of the nature of their relations is in the lines, Do youthful joys thee still attend? Tho' learned rank and high degree Have proudly been conferr'd on thee, Will not the sight of this [verse] recal [sic] When thou wert foremost in the brawl? For youth is youth in every age; Philosophers, not always sage. 13

Letter from Mr. James Reynor, op. cit. "At the age of nine." Lee, "Moxon, Edward," Dictionary oj National Biography, XIII, 1136. 15 Hewitt, op. cit., lists an Edward Smith among "Tradesmen in Wakefield in 14

1812." 16

The Edinburgh Review was founded in 1S02; the Quarterly Review, in 1809. Peacock, History oj the Free Grammar School oj Queen Elizabeth at Wakefield. Information about the Rev. J. L. Sisson is also to be found in a footnote on page 233 of Lupton's Wakefield Worthies. 17

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YEARS

BEFORE

PUBLISHING

Some indication of Moxon's early reading may be suggested by the books he placed in the laborer's cottage described in his poem "Christmas": the Bible, England's Rights and Charters, Fox's Book oj Blessed Martyrs, Bunyan, the Psalter, Taylor's Rules for Holy Dying, "a few old volumes, murders, treasons, with Baxter's Rest, and Thomson's Seasons." Moxon left Wakefield about 1817 and set off for London. Presumably he went unaccompanied, for the tone of The Prospect, written after his arrival, indicates extreme loneliness. He may have carried letters to London merchants or to friends of his Wakefield acquaintances. Smith, the bookseller for whom he had worked, may have had influence with some London dealer in books. Sisson may have given him introductory letters to make his advent less distressing. But if he had recommendations, he made no reference to them in his poems. Not more than seventeen years old, he was young to be arriving from a provincial town in the confusing and impersonal city. Jobless and lonely, he felt pity for himself: "So through the world I solitary stray," he wrote, No breast to whom [sic] I can my thoughts confide, Not even a friend my erring steps to chide; No hopes to cherish, and no ties to bind, Save those I've left in sorrow deep behind. He yearned for the companionship of his Wakefield friends. The minor poems in The Prospect are "To the Rev. J.L.S.," "To Maria," "To Mary," "To Some Friends," "On Being Visited by an Old Friend after Long Absence," "On the Death of a Friend," "On Being Presented with a Rose by a Young Lady." He had left in Wakefield, too, a sweetheart; in one poem he wrote of Maria as ever in his mind—"with thee is my home"; he also mentioned a "rival." What his life during his first three or four years in London was it is impossible to state. There is no record of friendships, none of occupations. But in 1821 he entered the service of the firm of Longmans, publishers. There he "soon had conduct of one of the four departments of the country line." 18 Booksellers' accounts 18

Lee, in D.N.B.

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T H E

YEARS

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PUBLISHING

were, in those times, distributed into four divisions with a head for each. Young Moxon's knowledge of small-town trade, as well as his diligence, undoubtedly gave him rapid promotion into work that probably took him on trips over "the Fourth Division." Before many years he had revisited Wakefield and had seen the Lake country, possibly during business trips. He had also crossed the Channel and visited France. During the London years when he was in his late 'teens and early twenties Moxon was reading steadily and writing verse. The poems were, on the whole, unmusical, thin in thought, weak in emotion. They were not "laughable" or "absurd," as the Quarterly charged, noticing these early poems when criticizing Moxon's later sonnets,19 nor were they "promising," even for first attempts, as Charles Lamb maintained. 20 Moxon was a homesick, ambitious young man, assiduously trying to improve his mind. Not possessed of poetic invention or of vigorous imagination, his mind noted phrases in the poems he read, and in all likelihood was deceptively retentive, for much of the verse is derivative. Phrases like "athwart the purple sea," "where broods the sable night," "peeping Phoebus bright," "the feathered choir," "hollow echo that in cavern dwells" suggest the reading of eighteenth-century versifiers. Lamb, in commending The Prospect to Wordsworth's attention in a letter of September 6, 1826, assured him that though the images were common, the author had felt all he poured forth and had not palmed upon the reader "expressions which he did not believe at the time to be more his own than adoptive." 21 Lamb's words carry a misgiving. The reader of today finds many unmistakably "adoptive" phrases. Yet some lines, although not strikingly poetic, are not unhappy in expression; for example, The quiet vales more peaceful sleep below . . . Young Jenny, lovely, blushing in her prime . . . The swallow swiftly skims the silent deep.22 19

LIX, 209-17 (July, 1837). Lucas, The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1842, 1912, II, 760. All references to Lamb's letters throughout this book are to this pocket edition, the 21 most recent one, unless otherwise noted. The italics are mine. 22 From The Prospect, and Other Poems. 20

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In Moxon's description of his home a modern reader is aware of the sincerity which Lamb felt or knew. The young writer appealingly portrays the rustic cottage with woodbine oyer it, climbing roses, jessamine, "unspotted" walls, the smooth lawn running out to the road, the hawthorn hedge, and, within, clean floors. Likewise attractive, simple, and honest are his words about his father, mother, brothers, and sisters: Unletter'd here, in calm he spends his days, He gives to none, nor seeks from any, praise . . . Beneath the shade she reads God's holy word; He listens to the voice so oft he's heard; He hears those truths which make him to rejoice; She sees their force, and louder lifts her voice . . . Some take the garden, some the shade beneath, Some round the door, the evening air to breathe . . . In 1824 Edward Moxon submitted his poems to Charles Lamb for criticism, and through that means met him. 23 Something in the younger man appealed to the older, for the friendship, Talfourd wrote, became "habitual." 24 In his own memoir of his beloved friend, Moxon acknowledges "praise and friendly criticism," 25 and in the fifty or more letters from Lamb to Moxon which Mr. E. V. Lucas prints one finds much of both. The young man needed a friend and severer judge of his verse than Lamb's nature would allow him to be. Lamb, until his death, in 1834, criticized the young man's writings and counseled him in his actions. However, what Charles and Mary did for Moxon as a maturing young man by opening to him their home and their companionship was of much more importance. At about the same time, through Lamb, 20 Moxon met Samuel Rogers, then about sixty years of age but still an arbiter of the arts for social and literary London and the patron, or at least the friend in need, of more than one poet. Rogers, like Elia, after read23 Talfourd, Memoirs of Charles Lamb, edited and annotated by Percy Fitzgerald, 1891. 24 Talfourd, Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, p. 58. 25 M [ o x o n ] , Charles Lamb, a pamphlet of eight pages, dated January 27, 1835. 26 Lucas, Letters, VI, 760.

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ing young Moxon's poems in manuscript, "paid him some proper compliments, with sound advice intermixed." Encouraged by the approval of these two friends, Moxon published, in January, 1826, with the firm in which he was one of the "best hands," 27 Longmans, The Prospect, and Other Poems. The volume carried a dedication to Rogers, "in admiration of his poetical genius." The humility of its Preface reveals a timid youth who is very unsure of himself. The young man calls the book an "unworthy" volume; apologizes for it as the output of a "very young man" (although he was twenty-five years of age at the time), "unlettered, untaught, ignorant of every language except his native tongue, and even imperfect in that"; recites his life history with self-pity—how from twelve he has labored from sunup to sunset, how he has read and has educated himself on Sundays or during the "still more solemn hours of midnight"; naively asks indulgence on the ground that the poems have been set down "just as they originally emanated from the author's mind," and also that little time was employed in writing them and less time in correcting and amending them, "as the author generally found those lines which were written quickly and spontaneously the best." He has, he asserts, "little pretensions to originality or elegance" and hopes this modesty will "dull or smooth a little the too severe edge of criticism." After asserting claims on moral approbation, he confesses to "two plagiarisms" which he has left, as he has found it "easier to acknowledge these than to substitute words equally appropriate." The final sentence states that the "Muse who, in her conscientious rectitude," dictated to him the poems, also consoles by whispering in his ear "that it is noble even to fail, in good cause!" The writer had much to learn: self-appraisal, confidence, savoir-faire, especially. Where better could he learn those social essentials than in the Lamb household, under the gentle lash of Charles's wittily critical tongue, in the warmth of Mary's sympathy, and in contact with its interesting visitors? The purpose of the poem of 1,500 lines, according to the "Peroration" (for the book had all the trimmings that could be attached), was to wake pity for the poor, to remind the rich that "riches profit 27

The phrase is Lamb's.

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YEARS

BEFORE

PUBLISHING

nought, unless consign'd to noble purpose, or in virtue's cause," and to paint the noble toil of the husbandman's life. Solitary, the poet leaves home to see other lands, his "own to prize"; and observes "three different ranks respective roads pursue": the wealthy, cruel and hard, traveling a smooth way "with prospect bright and clear"; those seeking ambitious power traveling the second, pitiless toward the poor; a "lowly train" ("of such am I") plodding along the third, doing the work of the world. In this third section he writes his best verse, picturing the ideal husbandman, the sowing and reaping of grain, harvest dances, bird songs of the country, evenings, quiet for simple reading and musing, country Sabbaths, with their meek congregations (contrasted with the pomp and the vanity in the city churches), the churchyard, with its epitaphian teachings of life and death. We shall need to remember this strong sympathy for the poor when we come to consider the nature of the books that early issued from Moxon's publishing house. On vacation in the early autumn of this year, 1826, Moxon visited the Lake country. The letter of introduction which Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, dated September 6, 1826, tells us that young Moxon had "a Yorkshire head, and a heart that would do honour to a more Southern County"; that he knew the "trade" and could give a good account of it; that he was a "friendly serviceable fellow" who lugged from Longmans 28 to the Lamb home once or twice a week a "Cargo of the News and Novels" to gratify Mary's passion for them; that he was a poet of promise, a friend of Rogers, an admirer of the Lake poet. The meeting was the first of many friendly visits, which continued until Wordsworth's death, in 1850. A presentation copy of Moxon's verse, The Prospect, and Other Poems, followed the visit. Wordsworth read the verse and on December 8 wrote, "Your poem I have read with no inconsiderable pleasure; it is full of natural sentiment and pleasing pictures. This little volume, with what I saw of yourself during a short interview, interests me in your welfare." He added, as counsel, "Fix your eye upon acquiring independence of honourable business, and let the 28 Wordsworth was at that time publishing with the Longmans Company and Moxon was a clerk in its employment.

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muses come after, rather than go before." 29 Moxon accepted the friendly comment on his poems but did not immediately follow the poet's advice. Soon he became restless with the Longmans firm, wishing to better his position and salary. In September of the next year, 1827, Lamb recommended him to Henry Colburn as "of the highest integrity, and a thorough man of business." The change which Moxon made, presumably early in 1828, was, however, to Hurst, Chance and Co. There he worked until the summer of 1830, when he left to set up in business for himself. In their employment he formed a friendship with Evans, later of the firm of printers Bradbury and Evans. In these years we catch only glimpses of Moxon, such, for instance, as those of Lamb writing him in behalf of a possible volume or two of tales by P. G. Patmore 30 and of Moxon requesting album verses from Lamb for Hurst's annual, The Keepsake. In 1829 Hurst, Chance and Co. published their employee's second volume of verse, Christmas, dedicated to Charles Lamb. In the poems there is evident some advance in technique and more in sense, confidence, good taste, and harmony of parts. The poem has about 1,500 irregularly-rhymed iambic tetrameter lines. The rhythm and the words and phrases obviously echo Milton's VAllegro, even to what seems paraphrase— Come, come, ye sprites, on tiptoe throng; Weaving the merry dance along; Nor watch the moments as they go; But tread them lightly while we may, Ere youth and vigour pass away.

At one place he quotes— From store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence. 29

Knight, ed., Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 29. M o x o n himself published the first volume of poems, in 1844, of P. G. Patmore's son, Coventry. 30

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BEFORE

PUBLISHING

In the description of Christmas festivities, however, there is honest, realistic observation and adequate expression. H e knew the winter of Yorkshire and had grown up among cherished Christmas customs. T h e verses on weather are wintry; those on customs charming; and those on the evening of the Nativity and of the coming of Christ are strongly felt and tender. As the Christmas season approaches, the children rush more eagerly out of school; winter sports are played with hilarity; coaches rattle by, loaded with holiday crowds and Christmas packages—turkeys, geese, pies; workers walk home to their "thousand cheerful hearths." T h e Christmas-eve festivity at the Squire's Hall with its yule clog, harper, mince pie and spiced ale, and dancing, is contrasted with the festivity in the husbandman's cot, also with its yule clog, its cake and ale, its tales and carols. These lines run with vigor. On Christmas morning the bells peal out merrily; greetings run from person to person, from house to house. A t this point the narrative is interrupted by invocation of Crabbe for skill in portraying the village festivity. Then are described homecomings, decorations, cooking. A t night the hall is alight, "lifting its window'd wide expanse," and the cots twinkle as "satellites . . . of low degree." Again the celebration at the hall becomes graphic—the boar's head, "the knighted loin," pheasant, pie, turkey, savory chine, with toasts in wassail, a Lord of Misrule and Old Father Christmas, Dame Mince Pie, Robin Hood "in Lincoln Green," fair Maid Marian, and P u c k : Enough for me, in homely rhymes, If I an image here present Of joy and honest merriment, And hearts that beat in full content, Both high and low with one accord, In honour of our precious Lord, Of Christmas, and the good old times. Y e t with all its worthy intention and often cheery spirit, the poem is not exhilarating. A s in much of Moxon's early verse there is a steady burden of " L i f e ' s splenetic melancholy," and a shadow of gloom, cast by the "grave reality that comes with age," or by the "musing sullenness" haunting the persistent thought of the fading

[12]

THE

YEARS

BEFORE

PUBLISHING

of "all that is most fair." These are an old man's notions aped by a nostalgic young writer of verse. Moxon's inability to forget the harshness of life emphasizes the severity of his experiences as well as a certain kicking against the pricks that may have been admirable; but it also indicates a selfpity that must have worn on the patience of his friends. The joy he sings hath oft illumin'd His path, life's weary scenes among . . . and yet not "oft" enough, for he seems never to tire of bemoaning those weary scenes. As in "The Prospect" so in this poem "Christmas" Moxon evinces strong, though conventional, patriotism— England, comfort is with thee, Thy shores forever shall be mine; Where reigneth sacred liberty, And joy and truth, and love divine. Young poets of the eighteen-twenties and eighteen-thirties were similarly vocal about their country, though some of them did not achieve so simple a line as this first one by Moxon. One recalls that the youthful Tennyson shouted for England. Good sense, as in his earlier verse, is often lacking; for instance, irrelevant lines, like, The raging winds, tho' loud, have died;— So tyrants

breathe

and pass

away,31

break startlingly upon the reader. Weak lines abound. The writer is unaware of the marring effect of such lines as the wind "blowing with unremitted vigour" following the expression "Nor aught abateth of its rigour." Moxon's taste was unsure—Christmas enters "in a car" attended by the lovely Graces, "Heaven-born sisters," Youth, Beauty, Masque, Mirth, Laughter, Hospitality. A considerable number of pseudo-classical allusions appear—the moon, Cynthia, and "Ida's snow." There is conventional phraseology—women's eyes are "twins of light," and their tresses are 31

The italics are mine. [13]

THE

YEARS

BEFORE

PUBLISHING

"dark as raven's plumes." On the other hand there are successful phrases like, "She [ Judea] treads her dark unpitied way." In these two long poems, both of which have strongly autobiographical elements, one sees an ambitious young writer who is more aware of beauty than able to express it. A reader does not suspect that within a few years Moxon will be able to discern good poetry when he reads it and as a publisher place before the public the best verse written in his day. Moxon should by this time, 1829, have lost his false sense of humility and his moodiness. He had not fared badly in the eleven years of his residence in the metropolis. He had arrived a green youth from the country, unknown. He had had eight years, at least, of steady and fairly good employment. He had come to know personally three literary giants—Rogers, Lamb, and Wordsworth. As a familiar visitor in the Lamb home he had met people like Crabb Robinson, Fanny Kelly, George Dyer, and Thomas Hood; and as a friend in the Rogers drawing room, men such as Luttrell, Alexander Dyce, and Stothard. He was by this time, in all probability, also in correspondence with the poet laureate, Robert Southey, and knew Leigh Hunt well. In the Lamb household was living an attractive young lady, a sort of adopted daughter, Emma Isola. In 1820 she had visited with Charles and Mary during her Christmas holidays, a slip of a girl of twelve, "making dog's ears in books, and pinching them on Pompey," the dog. Upon the death of her father, Charles Isola, who had been the "Squire Bedell" at Cambridge University, she came to live with the Lambs. From that time until Charles's death, in 1834, she called out his playfulness and tender sentiment. When young Edward, twenty-three years old, came frequently to visit the home she was sixteen years of age, a "girl of gold," somewhat of a pensive cast, brown-eyed, blackhaired, and much the Italian in her aspect, as Lamb and Crabb Robinson described her. Moxon must have watched her interestedly. With her he found companionship such as he sorely needed. Thomas Westwood, a neighbor, in 1822 wrote of The brisk fire in the grate—the lighted card-table some paces off— Charles and Mary Lamb and Emma Isola . . . seated round it, play[14]

THE

YEARS

BEFORE

PUBLISHING

ing whist—the old books thronging the shelves—the Titian and Da Vinci engravings on the walls, and in the spaces between Emma Isola's pretty copies, in Indian ink, of the prints in Bagster's edition of The Compleat Angler?2 Undoubtedly Moxon was often a fourth at the whist table. N o record of growing mutual interest between the two young people exists, b u t the Lambs were probably not unaware of the appropriateness of marriage between them. Charles surely fostered their affection for one another. When, for instance, he made for E m m a ' s instruction and pleasure a book of poetical selections, mostly old ballads and poems by Marvel and Waller, he slipped in two sonnets by Moxon. Meanwhile Moxon's interests in writing had been turning to the sonnet form. A volume was ready for publication by the autumn of 1830. T h e love sonnets in i t 3 3 are the expressions not so much of a man in love as of a man who idealizes love before he realizes it. One cannot know, however, in what year or month each sonnet was written, and therefore they tell little about his affection for E m m a Isola. Other subjects for these formal poems reveal in Moxon no originality, but do indicate some of his interests. He composes two of the twenty-seven on his Yorkshire home, two on a sister who died young, several on nature—trees, streams, birds, including the nightingale, 34 and five on authors (Sidney, Walton, T h o m s o n ) . One is of a philosophical cast and another religious. T h e tone of many is pensive. T h e note of self-pity is still present. I n the year 1829 Moxon was considering the possibility of becoming a publisher. With H u r s t , Chance and Co. he m a y have been a literary adviser. Ainger thinks it likely. 3 3 With the Longmans firm he had learned handling of the country trade. Charles L a m b was ready to aid by counsel and by calling on his friends. By this 32

Lucas, The Life of Charles Lamb, 5th ed., II, 727. Nos. 2, 11, 13, IS, 20, 23. 34 Lucas, Letters, II, 920. (Lamb to Moxon, May 12, 1830.) "I made Rogers laugh about your Nightingale sonnet, not having heard one. 'Tis a good sonnet, notwithstanding." Whether it was Moxon's writing without having heard a nightingale that made Rogers laugh or Lamb's enthusiasm for the poem, not having heard that bird sing, is enigmatic. It was more likely the latter. 35 Ainger, ed., Letters of Charles Lamb, I, 222. 33

[15]

THE

YEARS

BEFORE

PUBLISHING

time Moxon probably desired marriage with Emma Isola 36 and realized that for a solid future he needed better-paying employment. Several members of his family had meanwhile come from Wakefield to London and were presumably dependent upon his earnings. Fortunately, his confidence in himself as a business man, if not as a poet, had strengthened. He now felt the comfort and power of friends. When, a year later, in 1830, a small sum of money was made available for his use, he did not hesitate to launch into a publishing career. 36 Curwen (A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New, pp. 348-49) drew on his imagination when he wrote: "Marriage with Miss Isola was out of the question until her lover had some more substantial manner of livelihood than the cultivation of the Muse seemed ever likely to afford him. In this strait [italics mine], Rogers came forward and generously offered to start him as a publisher, and, with the goal of matrimony in view, the offer was eagerly accepted."

Chapter

2 #

C O N D I T I O N S OF BEFORE 1 8 3 0

PUBLISHING

H A R R I E T M A R T I N E A U , writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, describes the change that had by that time come over bookselling and book publishing: Samuel Rogers lived through the whole period when the publishers were the patrons of literature, and witnessed the complete success of Mr. Dickens's plan of independence of the publishers themselves. He was a youth of fifteen or thereabouts when half "the town" was scandalized at Dr. Johnson's audacity in saying what he did to Lord Chesterfield; and the other half was delighted at the courage of the rebuke. He knew that kind of literary patronage which even the Priestleys of those days accepted as a matter of course: Dr. Priestley living with Lord Shelburne, without office; and afterward, his being provided with an income by the subscription of friends, to enable him to carry on his philosophical researches. Then came the new aspect of things, when the Byrons, the Moores, Campbells, and Scotts, were the clients of the Murrays, the Longmans, the Constables—that remarkable but rather short transition stage when, as Moore said, the patrons learned perforce, through interest, the taste which had not been formed by education. Those were the days of bookselling monopoly, when the publisher decided what the reading public should have to read, and at what price. Rogers saw that monopoly virtually destroyed; the greatness of the great houses passing away, or reduced to that of trade eminence simply; and authors and the public brought face to face, or certain to be so presently.1 Although wealthy men and titled men gave their patronage long after Johnson's "audacity," literary men preferred their influence. Samuel Rogers, 2 himself a poet, wealthy, moving in high circles, whose house in St. James's Street was a gathering-place for literary people, offered freely to literary men both his money and the use of his name. He gave five hundred pounds to help Moore free him1 Harriet Martineau, Biographical is dated 1858. 2 See Clayden, Rogers and His

Sketches,

"Samuel Rogers," p. 52. The Preface

Contemporaries.

[ 17]

C O N D I T I O N S OF P U B L I S H I N G

BEFORE

1830

self from the booksellers, five hundred as a loan to Campbell, the same sum as a loan to Moxon for setting up in business; he spoke a word to Lord Lonsdale that secured for Wordsworth a distributorship of stamps. By the first quarter of the century the man of influence had come to take the patron's place. The power of such a man among politicians and statesmen, however, was short-lived, since the government's efforts to help literary men at that period soon waned. T h e Pension List, established by a bill in 1834, became available to writers, and still is, and it often gave much needed help. Inaugurated as public recognition and later taking the form of relief, it carried such names as Southey, Harriet Martineau, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Leigh Hunt. T h e Literary Fund was founded in the late eighteenth century and from 1790 to 1844 expended 30,228 pounds in 2,076 grants to more than 1,000 applicants. 3 Yet it was dependent upon public subscriptions for maintenance and was not always approved by writers. Of the Literary Fund 4 Southey wrote to M u r r a y on August 14, 1812, in proposing an article for the Quarterly: " I should like to say something upon the absurd purposes of the Literary Fund, with its despicable ostentation of patronage." 5 T h e Fund's annual dinner 6 gave occasion for the attendance of titled men as presiding officers and for speeches by writers in response to toasts to drama and poetry; but its effectiveness as relief to literary men was never great. Political patronage, the giving of paid offices that were in reality sinecures, survived the early years of the century, but became less respectable and less used. The criticism under which such preferment came is shown in a comment on Scott, "if a Clerk of Session had any real business to do, it could not be done well by a man who found time for more literary enterprises than any other author of the age undertook." 7 3 Report of the Anniversary of 1844, London, J . J . Metcalfe, 1864, p. 2. Ditchfield (in Books Fatal to Their Authors) states that "since its foundation £115,677 has been spent in 4,332 grants to distressed authors." 4 Moxon was a member of the corporation. Report of the Anniversary of 1842, p. 4. 5 Smiles, Memoir of John Murray, a Publisher and His Friends, I, 237. 6 Jerdan, Autobiography—with His Literary, Political, and Social Reminiscences and Correspondence during the Last Fifty Years, IV, 35. 7 Quoted in Collins, The Profession of Letters, p. 247.

[ 18]

CONDITIONS

OF P U B L I S H I N G

BEFORE

1830

In 1821 the Royal Society of Literature got under way with a prize to Felicia Hemans for her poem on Dartmoor. King George IV as long as he lived gave 1,100 guineas annually to the fund, but with his death the Society practically ceased functioning. The literary man of the eighteen-twenties, it is clear, was considering himself a professional person able to earn his way with his pen and no longer a pensioner of individual or government. Neither did he think of himself as bound to booksellers and publishers. In the great days of Constable, "The Czar of Muscovy," and of Murray, "The Emperor of the West," of Longmans, and of other great firms, publishers decided, in Harriet Martineau's phrase, "What the reading public should have to read," and, even more important, who the reading public should be. They kept the prices high. The cheapest book by Scott sold for twenty-one shillings; each of his novels, in three volumes, for prices at first of a guinea and later thirty-one shillings and sixpence; The Lady of the Lake and Rokeby at two guineas each. Murray published Byron's poems—Childe Harold in cantos, The Corsair, The Giaour, and so on—separately at five shillings each canto. Southey's Thalaba was issued at two guineas. Clearly, these lordly publishers looked toward a narrow market. They did not consider the populace as readers of literature. "Longman and Rees and a few great booksellers have monopolized the trade," wrote Thomas Campbell in 1806.8 Robert Mudie, writing in 1838 on "The Copyright Question," argued that fashionable patronage held the prices of books so high "as to be altogether above the reach of the great body of the people." 9 It was a happy period for only the few successful writers and the grand publishers. Scott half-seriously characterized Constable and Murray as, "The Great Potentates of Literature." Blackwood in 1816 wrote to John Murray, In your connections with literary men, when I consider the books you have published and are to publish, you have the happiness of making it 8

Letter to Walter Scott, in Smiles, op. cit., I, 326. Mudie, The Copyright Question and Mr. Serjeaunt Talfourd's Bill, p. 26. H . B. Wheatley (in Prices of Books, p. 97) observed that in the early part of the nineteenth century "when it was the fashion to print in quarto" books were "very high priced." 9

[19]

CONDITIONS

OF P U B L I S H I N G

BEFORE

1830

a liberal profession and not a mere matter of pence. This I consider one of the greatest privileges we have in our business.10 But, as Harriet Martineau observed, these days of monopoly were a rather short transition period. Through that transitional stage of the early eighteen-hundreds and for many years previously a new extension of the reading public had been developing. Among the lower classes Dissent, especially Methodism, encouraged the printing of cheap religious books. Lackington, the establisher of the "remainder" business in bookselling, estimated that in 1790 the number of readers was four times as large as in 1770, owing partly to the increase in nonconformist Sunday schools.11 The workingman too was becoming a reader of both news and general information. In the early years of the nineteenth century the working classes tried to teach themselves.12 The story of Henry Hetherington, printer to the poor and martyr to their causes, reveals the determined effort to make education through reading possible to the workingman.13 Wrote Southey to Landor in 1822, The two-penny journals of sedition and blasphemy lost attraction when they no longer found hunger and discontent to work upon. But they had produced an appetite for reading. Some journeyman printers who were out of work tried what a weekly two-penny of miscellaneous extracts would do; it answered so well, that there were presently between twenty and thirty of these weekly publications, the sale of which is from 1,000 to 15,000 each.14 A writer on "Weekly Newspapers" in the Westminster Review, April, 1829, noted that "although much prejudice and much ignorance still prevail, there is already such improvement [which he attributed largely to reading in the coffee-houses] as must gratify every friend to liberality and to freedom of discussion," and that by discovering the increase in circulation of evening and morning dailies and of the Sunday papers and assuming that thirty people 10 12 13 14

11 Smiles, op. cit., I, 456. Knight, London, II, 367. Fay, Life and Labour in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 262-64. See Holyoake, The Lije and Character oj Henry Hetherington, 2d ed. The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, edited by C. C. Southey, V,

117.

[20]

CONDITIONS

OF P U B L I S H I N G

BEFORE

1830

read each paper, "one learns that in the last few years there has been an increase of nearly half a million readers." He also estimated that in 1829 there was one newspaper to every 357 persons. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, originating with the statesman Henry Brougham in 1826 and chartered in 1832, set out under the energetic management of Charles Knight to supply useful information to all classes of the community by the periodical publication of treatises. It published a Journal of Education, a Quarterly Journal, a Library of Useful Knowledge, a Library of Entertaining Knowledge, school books for children, the British Almanac, geographical maps, "maps of the heavens," and the "Farmer's Library." It also published works on brewing, political economy, medicine, commerce, the rights of industry, rights of property, division of employments, exchanges and equivalents, population and poor-laws, taxation, banking, Herculaneum and Pompeii, the Elgin and Phigalian marbles, and all manner of wild beasts, in addition to tales, apologues, histories of all countries, lives of all eminent persons, and "a countless variety of other productions." This is the list of an indignant critic, "C. H.," in a pamphlet probably compiled about 1830. 13 The Society also issued the Penny Magazine, which reached a peak circulation of 200,000 before 1835 and was read, it was estimated, by a million people, 18 and the Penny Cyclopedia, published in "numbers" at a penny apiece. The Society demanded that information in its books and pamphlets be accurate entertainment based upon information, the printing clear and good. It also insisted that each publication be cheap. Dobbs, surveying education and social movements from 1700 to 1850, finds that this Society "aimed too high," as the religious societies had aimed "too low," and that this was at the time a "common criticism." 17 The seriousness with which the Society was taken, even by the government, is shown in the fact that Charles Knight, its manager, sat in council with five cabinet ministers, "who felt most deeply that the 15 A coverless pamphlet entitled The Chartered Booksellers, in the New York Public Library, bound with other pamphlets under the title Publishers and Bookselling. 16 Jerdan, op. cit., I l l , 211. 17 Dobbs, Education and Social Movements, 1700-1850, pp. 189 ff.

[21]

CONDITIONS

OF P U B L I S H I N G

BEFORE

1830

education of the people, in its largest sense, was as much their business as the imposition of taxes." 18 Constable, one of the lordly publishers, who "made Edinburgh a great center of learning and literature," 19 so clearly saw this great reading public in process of growth that as early as 1825 he dreamed of selling books by the million. Although his house was in poor financial condition and indeed collapsed during the widespread business difficulties of 1826, he set himself to the publication of Constable's Miscellany. He perceived that among the middle and lower classes there was a reading public sufficiently large to justify "placing works before it at so low a price that only a very large sale would remunerate him." 20 John Murray, another of the publishing potentates, endeavored to promote the sale of cheap yet excellent books. H e and Constable planned to bring out an "Encyclopaedia for Youth," but discarded the idea for one which developed into the Miscellany. Before this, Murray, "entertaining the idea of a cheap and popular series of Voyages and Travels, had actually set in type a pocket edition of Parry's and Franklin's 'Voyages.' " 2 1 Longmans was spurred by the Murray-Constable project to publish The Cabinet Encyclopedia, 133 volumes of which were issued between 1829 and 1846. 22 Knight, in 1854, listed twenty-seven series as "the more important of the various collections that can be called cheap," comprising no fewer than 1,400 volumes. 23 George Miller, at Dunbar, printed between February 8 and March 18,4,800 halfpenny books and, soon afterward, 1,200 penny ones. 24 Among other agencies, circulating libraries, begun in the 1740's and already "very popular and widespread" in the 1750's, were meeting needs of this growing reading public. 25 In the development of the libraries the novel had become the chief form of writing in demand, so that Coleridge found the reading of the libraries' devotees to be on a level with "conning word by word all the adver18 Knight, The Old Printer and the Modern Press, pp. 240 ff. This book contains 19 a history of the Society. Smiles, op. cit., II, 56. 20 Nicoll, Great Movements and Those Who Achieved Them, pp. 174—75. 21 22 23 Smiles, op. cit., II, 246. Curwen, op. cit., p. 102. Ibid., pp. 266-67. 24 Couper, The Millers of Haddington, Dunbar, and Dumjermshire, p. 80. 25 Collins, op. cit., pp. 19, 55-57, 93.

[22]

CONDITIONS

OF P U B L I S H I N G

BEFORE

1830

tisements of a daily newspaper in a public house on a rainy day." Not all circulating libraries, however, carried only, or even largely, fiction. For instance, George Miller added in 1811 what he described as an "Agricultural, Commercial, Military Intelligence, News and Reading Room" to his bookselling and publishing shop.20 Knight, too, belabored fiction, believing that Scott's novels ruined the old circulating library. 27 He was pleased that the literature of travels and memoirs claimed a place, though an insecure one, by the side of the fashionable novel; he added that now, 1854, "the circulating library is, in many instances, a real instrument of popular enlightenment." "The author and the public [were] brought face to face," wrote Harriet Martineau; and by this time it was a many-headed public. Coleridge was disgusted and wrote in 1817 that the poet and the philosopher first addressed themselves to learned readers, then aimed to conciliate candid readers, then the amateurs of literature collectively; and "now, finally, all men being supposed to read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous 'public,' shaped into personal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal despot on the throne of criticism." 28 Any publisher, therefore, facing purchasers in 1830 had especial need to make up his mind who should be his readers; and any publisher contemplating profitable business in the publication of poetry had need, as well, of large and ardent faith. Scott and Ballantyne had crashed in the panic of 1826, as had the firms of Hurst and Robinson and of Hunt and Clarke, in 1829. John Murray, in 1826, lost 26,000 pounds on his newspaper, The Representative, alone.29 Poetry was a drug on the market. Murray ceased publishing it in 1830. The days of the great sale of Byron and Scott were over. The sale of the older favorites, Campbell and Rogers, was almost at a standstill. New poets could not find publishers. Thomas Pringle wrote to John Clare, "Poetry they [publishers] say is quite unsalable—and even Wordsworth and other well known writers cannot find a purchaser for their Mss. Smith, Elder 26 28 29

27 Couper, op. cit. p. 160. Knight, op. cit., p. 229. Biographia Literaria, p. 29. Paston, At John Murray's, 1834-1892, pp. 19-21.

[23]

CONDITIONS

OF P U B L I S H I N G

BEFORE

1830

& Co. will publish Poetry on no other terms but the Author's own risk"; 30 and H. F. Cary wrote to Clare that a sheet of paper would be better disposed of in keeping a piece of meat from being burnt while roasting "than in preserving the idle fancies of a poet." 31 "The burst of inspiration which had marked the commencement of the present century [19th] had all but died out [circa 1830], and the public demand for poetry, as well as the quality of the supply, had waned," wrote Smiles.32 In the Englishman's Magazine for September, 1831, Moxon's own undertaking, Lamb expressed his opinion of contemporary verse: "the vague, dreamy, wordy, matterless Poetry of this empty age." Landor informed Lady Blessington that he wrote as Englishmen did "before literary men courted the vulgar, or gentlemen were the hirelings of booksellers." 33 "By the early thirties," asserted Collins, "when Taylor came forward with 'Philip van Artevelde' and Tennyson appeared, the commercial boom in poetry was over." 34 In any period, of course, one can find poets inveighing against the public's neglect of them; but this period is distinguished, first by the unanimity with which both contemporary poets and later critics express distress and secondly by the poor quality of the verse that actually appeared. Under these conditions, then, of bad financial state, of failure of publishers, of transition in the publishing business, of change in the reading public, of stagnation in the writing of good poetry, of collapse of poetry as a money-maker, Moxon opened his establishment in New Bond Street, in June, 1830, with the ambition of being a publisher of poetry. 30

British Museum Eg. 2249 F 14. Smiles, op. cit., II, 374. 33 Nicoll and Wise, Literary Anccdotes 34 Collins, op. cit., p. 235. 32

31

Ibid. Eg. 2248 F 225.

of the Nineteenth

Century, pp. 189-90.

Chapter

3 *

EARLY

BUSINESS

YEARS

S O O N after dedicating his first poems to Samuel Rogers (1826), Edward Moxon became his friend and at breakfasts and dinners frequented his famous house, half museum of fine arts, at No. 22 St. James's Place. The intimacy grew naturally from the young man's conveyance of friendly messages from Lamb and Wordsworth and from their mutual interest in poetry, in excellent printing, and in good bookmaking. In conversation about the craft, with splendid specimens from the poet's library in their hands, they may well have discussed the desirability of Moxon's publishing in approved style a few of the classics of literature. In 1829 Rogers "volunteered" to lend the young tradesman five hundred pounds for setting up in business.1 Before acceptance, however, there was a careful canvassing with Lamb and with Rogers of the writers and purchasers that might be expected to aid a venturing publisher who was their friend as well as Wordsworth's and Southey's. By spring of the next year the decision had been made, and Moxon was planning his location, materials for sale, and style of printing. By May a small shop had been opened at 64 New Bond Street, not far from the fashionable shopping district, with stationery and new books on the shelves. Business was of course slow. The sooner a book could be published the better. But what should be the first book? "Cary consulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a lady's MS novel to," wrote Lamb to the proprietor on May 12, "I said I would write to you." 2 Nothing came of that project, we know, for the first book to appear with the Moxon imprint was a collection of Lamb's album verses, in June. 3 It was put forth, the 1 Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 916. Lamb (to Bernard Barton, June 28, 1830) used this word, adding, "such munificence is rare to an almost stranger." The added words are typical Lamb exaggeration springing out of his dramatic sense of appreciation. 2 Ibid., II, 910. Lamb to Moxon [May 12, 1830], 3 Lucas (in Life of Charles Lamb, II, 170) states "July" and Sidney Lee ("Edward Moxon," D.N.B.) "August." The English Catalogue states "June, 1830." The Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1830 (C, S43) announces the book as "preparing for publication."

[25]

EARLY

BUSINESS

YEARS

fledgling publisher made known, as an example of the style people could expect from the new house. It was a well printed, unpretentious volume. Neither Lamb nor Moxon thought highly of the verse as poetry, although in reality something is to be said for several of the poems. 4 Album Verses linked a potent name to the firm. Lamb, in the dedication to his publisher, skillfully referred to Moxon as a poet also, to the "fine-minded Veteran in Verse" [Rogers] under whose auspices the new house was set up and to Moxon's habits of industry and his cheerful spirit. William Jerdan's scathing review in the Literary Gazette brought Southey's twenty-seven-line poem of appreciation of Lamb and satire of Jerdan in the Times,5 and Hunt's, and perhaps Lamb's, epigrams in the Examiner,e as well as an evil-spirited attack in the Monthly Review—"a clamor," wrote Lamb, 7 ". . . as if we had put forth an Epic!" The hullaballoo attracted many a purchaser to the "shop without customers." 8 The edition in all likelihood was largely distributed by the publisher free of charge. Lamb excused the shortness of a note to Barton by the necessity of writing nineteen letters "for Moxon to send about with copies." 9 The way having been prepared by his friend, Moxon then published his own sonnets. 10 They were inscribed "most affectionately" to his brother William, then a young man preparing for the bar. There were thirty-two sonnets, one on a page, beautifully spaced, with clear, well-cut type, followed by a poem in twenty4 See Edmund Blunden's penetrative appreciation in Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries, pp. 190-92. Lucas's testimony ( L i f e of Charles Lamb, II, 111) does not place value upon the volume. 5 August 6, 1830. 6 Hunt's (in the first number of the Taller) was, "Last week a porter died beneath his burden. Verdict: Found carrying a Gazette by Jerdan." Quoted by Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 918. Jerdan edited the Literary Gazette from 1817 to 1850. From 1820 to 1830 he was considered "supreme in the literary world." 7 Ibid., p. 917. Lamb to Barton, August 30, 1830. s Ibid., 917. 9 Ibid., p. 916, June 28, 1830. 10 Surely it is of these sonnets that Lamb wrote to Moxon in a letter which Mr. Lucas dates April 10, 1833. It is true that they were later reprinted, but it is more than likely that Lamb did not wait three years after their publication to inform the poet that he was "destined to shine in sonnets." The letter should be dated in 1830. Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 967.

[26]

EARLY

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three quatrains "To the Muse." The book was finely bound. It, too, was issued for publicity rather than for profit and was distributed as a gift to influential persons. Unfortunately, it drew no immediate comment from the press. The sonnets, which were quite the equal of much of the contemporary versifying, brought notice, however, to the new house in this way—a young publisher was himself a writer of verse: was a second Dodsley among them? Surely, also, Moxon was bidding for the manuscripts of poets. An October publication was Songs of Shakespeare and Milton. That was a sufficiently safe undertaking, since the cheap reprint market had been the refuge of small publishers from the time, about 1819, when Thomas Tegg, himself a small publisher, breaking through the monopoly that allowed big publishers to sell shares in lapsed copyright, made a success in reprints. 11 It was also a book calculated to appeal to conservative readers and writers. Throughout his publishing career Moxon's cheap reprints of accepted writings at a half-crown apiece or at four or five shillings played no small part in support of his other, more venturesome, enterprises. The publication which gave the new house its first solid contemporary importance was the superbly illustrated edition of Rogers's Italy, jointly issued with T . Cadell, on December 18, 1830. Combining with another publisher for issuing an expensive work was a time-honored practice, although it was gradually being abandoned in 1830. 12 The book was, of course, a reprint, but an elaborately illustrated and highly expensive volume. The cost was met by the author; Moxon had no capital at command for such an undertaking. It is doubtful whether the book made money, although copies sold at one pound eight shillings. 13 The whole edition, 10,000 copies, including some separate proofs of the illustra11

Collins, op. cit., p. 183. Also, M u m b y , The Romance of Bookselling, p. 283. "The earlier spirit of cooperation still held men together [at the turn of 1800], although a new spirit of competition was inevitably making its way into publishing. . . . The old popularity of subscription as a method of publishing was passing, too." Collins, op. cit., pp. 105-6. "The [late] conspicuous instance of partnership publication, was Dr. Latham's edition of Johnson's 'Dictionary' which appeared in 1866." M u m b y , The Romance of Bookselling, p. 291. 13 According to the Athenaeum, January 29, 1831, and Moxon's o w n advertisement. 12

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tions, cost 7,335 pounds. On the 31st of December, a fortnight after publication, 3,959 copies had been sold, producing 4,252 pounds; at the end of the next half year, 1,416 more had gone. On the 17th of May, 1832, the total sale had been 6,800, leaving 648 copies to be sold before expenses could be met. The volume carried more than fifty illustrations, the finest product of the artist and engraver, including twenty-four from J. M. W. Turner's drawings. Every detail, of paper, type, size of page, illustration was given careful attention. Rogers was something of a martinet in matters of taste, and his young publisher was not far behind him. 1 5 "There had been nothing like them [ I t a l y and Poems, 1834] before," wrote Rogers's biographer, Clayden, in 1889. "There has been nothing fully equal to them since." This is the volume which Henry Telford, on February 8, 1832, gave to the boy John Ruskin, who at that time had hardly heard of Turner. Ruskin "fastened on the vignettes at once, took them for his only masters and set himself to imitate the engravings as far as he possibly could by 14 Clayden, op. cit., II, 4. Manuscript notes by Dyce in his copy of Italy (in the South Kensington Museum) state that the whole expense of the two volumes (Italy and Poems, in 1834) was 15,000 pounds. They state that Rogers told him that. Clayden's figures for the two total 14,990 pounds. 15 In the British Museum is a letter from Rogers to Moxon. It is dated 1832 and therefore must refer to a later edition. It reads: "Pray write me a line and tell me what you and Mr. Simmons incline to as the best page after all. I am still, I must confess, very unwilling to lengthen it and think the difference will strike the world as much in a longer page as in closer lines. Pray write me a line on the subject by return post and let me know if the paper has been sent in by Dickinson and is thought as good as the former. If not, it must be returned to him as before. Pray let me know if Gad [ ?] or McLucan [ ?] are at a stand or are likely to be so soon for want of fresh Instructions. I am sorry to trouble you on the subject, as you must just now be busy enough. But I have every day been in the hope of receiving a line from you." The letter is inserted in a British Museum copy of James Broden, A Rainy Day, or Poetical Impressions during a Stay at Brighthelmstone in the Month of July, 1801, printed for T. Egerton, Military Library, Whitehall, 1801. Rogers supervised all the printing for his books. "This shrewd supervision brought Samuel Rogers himself to Took's Court, where the 'Notes' to his 'Italy' were on the press in 1843. Rogers was so well satisfied with the result that for the remainder of his life he intrusted Whittingham with his printing. Although Moxon was the publisher, the printing account was against Rogers, who regularly drew his own checks for the amount due. Rogers would drive up to Took's Court for his proof sheets and when he had corrected them at St. James's Place he would drive again to the printing office, where, as the compositors said, 'he stirred up everybody with a long stick.' " Warren, The Charles Whittinghams, p. 144.

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fine pen shading. His work in life as the interpreter of Turner was decided for him." 16 It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of the book to the new publishing house. Rogers was influential among literary people; he enjoyed a long-established reputation for taste in art and literature; he was the friend of men and women in high society. The Italy gave prestige to the firms 17 that put it out and attracted customers to their premises. Leigh Hunt caught the significance when he commented in the Tatler, in June, 1831: "Mr. Moxon has begun his career as a bookseller in singularly high taste. He has no connection but with the select of the earth." Further, the volume of trade which came from its sale enlivened the shop and bestowed a pleasant feeling of success on the bookseller. It is to be noted, also, that no severer test could be placed on a publisher than the production of so fine a book for so fastidious a man as Samuel Rogers. As with Album Verses, magazine notoriety resulted from the Italy. A misunderstanding arose about the separate printings from the plates. Purchasers of the first, three guinea, edition felt defrauded. The Athenaeum, January 29, 1831, explained the matter satisfactorily, showing that "a fraud of this nature would have required a conspiracy, for no possible self-benefit, of publishers, bookbinders, and copper-plate printers"; the magazine was "authorized to say" that all parties were willing to testify to the truth of its explanation. All publicity, even seeming fraud, is good for a young trading house when the managers can be proved honorable by persons and publications of repute. Here, then, eight months after setting up in business for himself, was Moxon with an original book by Charles Lamb to his credit, a reprint of the sonnets of Shakespeare and Milton, and an elaborately illustrated poem by Samuel Rogers. He would seem to be if not well launched in publicity at least well introduced to writers 16

Cook, Life of John Ruskin, I, 33. Cadell had published for Rogers everything since his first volume of poems in print, An Ode to Superstition with Some Other Poems, in 1786, including Part I of Italy in 1822 and Part II in 1828. It was, therefore, a distinct favor for Moxon to be allowed to share in the production of Italy and, later, Poems. 17

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and to fastidious readers. What next should he put out? In March he published a forty-six-page anonymous poem entitled "Mischief." It was written by Edward Quillinan and had probably been made known to Moxon by Wordsworth, Quillinan's father-in-law.18 Its pages of advertisements list as "just published," Italy (1830), Lamb's two poems, separately, The Wife's Trial (June) and Satan in Search of a Wife (illustrated by George Cruikshank), The Sonnets of Shakespeare and Milton (1830), and James Kenney's opera Masaniello, and as "in the press" Landor's Gebir (April) and tales from the German of Tieck. To this first year of publishing also belong James Kennedy's History of Indian Cholera (October), a timely book since the disease was threatening Great Britain as well as the Continent, Selections from Southey (November), and Wordsworth: Selections from the Poems (May). 19 Of these seven publications, not a small list for a firm in its second year, four are reprints, 20 two are jeux d'esprit21 another is a nonliterary book of the hour. All were placed with Moxon through the friendship of either Lamb or Rogers. All were attractively printed. This varied list reveals not a publisher of fine taste in poetry or in any other form of literature but one who is seizing opportunities of whatever nature. Both his ambition and his groping for right channels are seen in another project of this year, 1831. In competition with such magazines as the New Monthly and the established quarterlies Moxon endeavored to interest the reading public in another monthly, the Englishman's Magazine.22 The great publishers of 18 A Byronian brochure, Hunt (in the Tatler, June 4, 1831) called it, "suitable to Bond Street, and not without wit. . . . A mere condescension to the elegance of the street in which he lives." Its author was Edward Quillinan, not Alfred, as stated in Stonehill, Block, Stonehill, Anonyma and Pseudonyma, II, 1433. 19 Edited by a schoolmaster near London, a Mr. Hine, who had "long wanted a text book of William Wordsworth" (Preface to the new edition, 1834). The poet gave him permission to select "without limitation, from his entire works." In a note at the end of the book Mr. Hine states that this "Divine Poem [The Excursion] will take rank with the first productions of the British muse, the Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, The Essay on Man, The Seasons, The Task." 20 Gebir, The Wife's Trial, and the two books of selections. 21 Edmund Blunden (op. cit., pp. 195-97) assigns to Satan in Search of a Wife a serious purpose. 22 There is a file of the magazine in the British Museum. For discussion of Charles Lamb's active interest in the magazine see Chapter V.

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the first quarter of the century, Constable, Murray, Blackwood, Colburn, and others, had issued magazines or quarterlies. Moxon, unlike them in that he was almost without funds, nevertheless either felt it incumbent upon him, pushed by his ambition, to own a magazine or was selected to edit one. The magazine ran to seven numbers, the first four published by Hurst, Chance and Co. (April through July) and the last three by Moxon (August through October). It started well and steadily improved. From the first Moxon may have edited it himself. 28 If so, he showed a surprising grasp of public affairs, a good feeling for relative values in materials, and a courageous and vigorous spirit. Some months after its discontinuance in October, Christopher North wrote in Blackwood's that it ought not to have died, "for it threatened to be a very pleasant periodical." Curwen rightly stated, in 1873, that its columns still presented matter of literary interest.24 Its sustaining spirit the magazine found in the work and nature 23

The evidence on this matter is not conclusive. There are (1) the footnotes in the April, May, and October numbers signed, "Ed. E. M . " (which may of course stand for "Editor Englishman's Magazine" or for "Edward Moxon") ; (2) Lamb's letter to Moxon: " I like your first no." (Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 938) ; and (3) Wordsworth's letter of July 21, 1831, to Moxon in reply to the latter's request for a contribution. This letter reads in part: ". . . may I take the liberty of expressing my regret that you should have been tempted into the experiment at all ? It must be attended with risk, and risk I am most anxious you should avoid. . . . Allow me to say also that I fear the proprietorship of a Magazine may tempt you to write yourself" (Knight, Letters of William, Wordsworth, II, 450). The April, May, June, and July issues bore the imprint of Hurst, Chance and Co. for whom Moxon had worked before setting up as a publisher. The August, September, and October numbers bore the imprint of Moxon. (4) Lucas ( L i f e of Charles Lamb), Sidney Lee ( D . N . B . ) , Lounsbury (Life and Times of Tennyson), and Curwen ( A History of Booksellers) either suggest or assert that he edited it after it came out over his own publishing name with the August issue. (5) The Tercentenary Handlist of English and Welsh Newspapers, Magazines & Reviews (The Times, London, 1920, p. 60) lists "The Englishman's Magazine (Ed. E. M o x o n ) " Vol 1, Vol. 2, No. 1-2, 1831. (6) The editorial manner and method seem to be the same throughout. G. C. Boase, writing of Leitch Ritchie in the Dictionary of National Biography, states that Ritchie, "in connection with William Kennedy, started a monthly periodical named 'The Englishman's Magazine,' which ran to seven numbers,—when his illness caused its abandonment." T h a t Kennedy was concerned with the magazine is established by a letter of Thomas Pringle to John Clare in the British Museum (B. M. Eg. 2248 f 397), October 29, 1831: "I took the liberty to hand them [two sonnets of Clare's] over to my friend M r . Kennedy who was bringing out a new magazine (The Englishman's) but that work stopped after a few nos. had appeared. . . ." Kennedy contributed two pieces of verse. 24 In A History of Booksellers, p. 349.

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of Daniel Defoe, whose "resemblance" was stamped on its "surcoat." It admired Defoe because he raised his "bold front before his countrymen" as "the dauntless advocate of stubborn truth . . . supported by the majesty of conscious rectitude," the "True-born Englishman." The editor of the magazine hoped to imitate Defoe's courage and independence. Furthermore, the writer of the aims of the magazine found the times of Defoe and the 1830's in similar need for exposure of "the sophisms of the faction." Defoe struggled, and the Englishman's Magazine pledged itself to do the same, for "Freedom of Conscience—for Freedom of Trade—for the privileges of the Commons of England—and for the amelioration of the condition of his fellow-creatures, wherever they were degraded by ignorance, or maltreated by injustice." It had "assistants among the most illustrious ornaments of literature," and "ample means to compensate talent," and it promised to keep free of coteries or the "ostentatious parade of a sounding catalogue of names." 25 The contents of the magazine do indeed reveal a fearless tone and a range of subjects in conformity with this editorial pronouncement. Every issue carried either an article on the Reform Bill or a running account of it under the heading "Reporting Progress." Three issues carried denunciatory articles or letters by the surgeon, James Kennedy, on the handling of Indian cholera, which had broken out virulently in Russia. There were uncompromising articles against slavery, on "Physic and Physicians in 1831," on management of the library of the British Museum, on Parliamentary reform. There was a clear impartial exposition of the Saint Simonians. On the back of the table of contents of the May number is this political appeal: To our Countrymen A word, friends of the COMMON CAUSE, ere we take our periodical leave of you. In the name and for the sake of the CAUSE, we entreat 25 This notice may have been the work oí more than one writer, not Moxon's alone; yet its prose is as flamboyant and unformed as we find Moxon's to be, and its ideas and attitudes are those Moxon at this time would have been likely to hold, especially social sympathy.

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you to be vigilant and firm. The corruptionists are banded as one man, resolute to employ, with all their might, the resources of wealth and long-accustomed power. It is for the sound constituency of Britain to oppose honesty to bribery, independence to iniquitous influence. Electors! You are called upon to preserve your country from the perils of wild anarchical change. The safety of our best institutions is linked to the success of R E F O R M ; and the opponents of the MEASURE are the only Revolutionists. Again, then, we repeat,—as you love your Altars and your Homes, be vigilant and firm! The Englishman The appeals signed "The Englishman," as well as considerable editorial matter and just possibly the material signed " D e Foe, Jr." in the last three issues may be Moxon's; but even if they are not, they had his approval. In the June issue in the same place is a long note on British laxity in combating Indian cholera: Why not call a meeting of the medical men of London? Why do not the heads of the profession themselves assemble? There is but one answer—from the peer to the pedlar, we are in such hot pursuit of the "main chance" that we have no time either to "fear God" or "regard man." In the July issue is a note on the antislavery question: We long to direct the attention of our readers to an able paper just issued by the Anti-Slavery Society, and stitched under the cover of the present number of the Englishman, in reply to the West Indian Manifesto, circulated with our last number. Men in public life, like Huskisson, were written about with freerunning criticism though without vituperation. A touching and terrible picture of workers was given in the article, "The Miners of Bois-Monzil," concerning miners who had been entombed for several days. There were contributions from Miss Mitford, Motherwell, Lamb, William Kennedy, John Clare, Tennyson, T o m Hood, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Pringle, Tom Moore, and other writers respected in their day. John Forster contributed three articles on "Early Patriots," which later were incorporated into his Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth. He may also have written the dramatic reviews. There were sections devoted to music, paint-

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ing, sculpture, drama, and science; and several series of comments, similar to "Peter's Net," which was written by Lamb. The Athenaeum for July 16 announced that the Englishman's Magazine would be published in the future by E. Moxon, "by whom advertisements will be received, and where all communications for the editor are requested to be addressed." The August issue announced that "contributions which have accumulated up to the present period, and which the pressure upon our pages obliges us to decline, will be forwarded to 65, St. Paul's [the address of Hurst, Chance and Co.], by the fifth of the month." In the Athenaeum for October 1, 1831, was an advertisement asking for "two shareholders for the above popular and patriotic periodical"; for particulars interested persons were directed to apply to E. Moxon, 64 New Bond Street. They did not present themselves, and the magazine suspended publication. Whatever losses may have been incurred by the first six numbers, under the imprint of Hurst, Chance and Co., were doubtless met, or at least shared, by that firm; the losses on the final three numbers, under his own imprint, Moxon himself probably bore. Upon suspension of publication Moxon wrote an explanatory letter to Lamb, which unfortunately has not been preserved, but which Elia found to have a "cheerful tone of reunuciation"; 26 it was so long that he thought it "would have made an article" and so good that rarely as he kept letters this one he would preserve. Lamb was sure Moxon had "done wisely" in discontinuing and recognized that he had "a weight" off his mind. Wordsworth, just after the July issue had appeared, had thought its appearance likely to be resented, first by the reading public when Moxon tried to "take it by storm, in putting forth distinguished personal friends" in the way he proposed to do, and secondly by the contemporary journals. 27 When the Quarterly later attacked Moxon,28 he thought he saw fulfillment of his fears: Robinson confided to his diary: "By the bye, W: speaks with indignation of the Quart: 26

Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 941. Knight, ed., Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 4S0, Lamb to Moxon, July 21, 1831. The letter is quoted only in part by Knight. 28 Quarterly Review, L I X 209-17, (July, 1837). 27

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Rev. attack on Moxon as base. It is a mere attack on the publisher under pretense of attacking the poet." 29 The magazine went down—partly, one suspects, for the same reason that liberal periodicals have always gone and still go down, namely, that there was not a sufficient number of interested liberalminded persons to support it. Moxon advertised the magazine more widely than he ever advertised his books; he solicited friends for attractive material; and he constantly endeavored to hit the popular taste by introducing new departments and features; but all was of no avail. This extended consideration of the Englishman's Magazine has been necessary to show its importance to Moxon and his capacity for taking responsibility. One can scarcely believe that here is the same man who only five years earlier had written a humble preface to his own poor verse. From this venture, although it was a failure, excellent publicity came to the firm of Edward Moxon. The names of only about twenty contributors are known, but it is significant that for half of these Moxon later published books. Abandonment of periodical publication, in spite of the relief he found 30 in suspending the Englishman's Magazine, came hard to Moxon. After fourteen months, during which his business expanded encouragingly, he again became, in 1832, the proprietor of a magazine, this time a weekly series of essays called the Reflector. Lamb, as usual, had been consulted about the project and had advised against it: "Wait till you are able to throw away a round sum (say £1500) upon a speculation, and then—don't do it." 31 But Moxon had come to know a brilliant young man, John Forster, 32 and their combined enthusiasms carried them into ac29 Unpublished diaries of H . Crabb Robinson, for August IS, 1837, in Dr. Williams's Library, London. 30 Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 941, Lamb to Moxon, October 24, 1831. 31 Ibid., p. 955, Lamb to Moxon, dated by Forster at the end: "Dec. 1832." 32 Forster had contributed to the Englishman's Magazine three articles on "Patriots" and an autobiographical essay entitled "Prodigious." Little is known of the relationship between M o x o n and Forster. They came together as early as 1831. Sir Sidney Lee, in the Dictionary of National Biography, states that Forster was "a constant friend and adviser," and yet no records of either of the men have anything to state of the friendship. Forster's introduction to Lamb probably came through M o x o n (see R. Renton, John Forster and His Friendships, p. 20) and a happy friendship, judging from the scraps of letters in the South Kensington M u -

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tion. Forster assumed the editorship and Moxon the financial responsibility. Lamb had agreed to continue in the Reflector his essay on "The Barrenness of the Imagination," part of which had appeared in the Englishman's Magazine,34 and Leigh Hunt' contributed. But only three issues were printed. 35 "Once again," writes E. V. Lucas truly, "Moxon seems to have miscalculated the cost." He also misplaced his confidence. John Forster, then only twenty-one years of age, was certainly much too young for so large a task. Unlike Moxon's first magazine, this second one brought his firm no prestige and gave the publisher himself no fresh contact with literary men. He never again entered the field of periodical publishing. The young publisher was still feeling his way. The publication of the translation of tales from Tieck, in 1831, was perhaps catering to the popularity of German literature that had been growing since the seventeen-nineties. This volume, which was the work of Julius Hare, offered to English readers for the first time "The Old Man of the Mountain," "The Love Charm," and "Pietro Abano." 36 Scott, Coleridge, and Carlyle had published translations from German literature, and Wordsworth had traveled and sojourned in Germany. Crabb Robinson had spent five years in that country. He knew Tieck intimately. He translated various bits of German literature. Zeydel asserts that in 1817 he possessed a German library second to none in London. Moxon, experimenting, made one other venture in this direction when, in February, 1833, he published Abraham Hayward's prose rendition of Faust, a scholarly literal translation. Previous versions in English had been either poor translations and garbled versions, like the work of Lord Francis Gower, or fragments, like the translations by Shelley. seum's Forster Collection, among the three resulted. The Selections from Southey, printed by Moxon in 1831, bears in Forster's hand, "From my friend, the publisher." However, Forster wrote several books and published none of them with Moxon. 33 Henry Morley (Handbook of the Dyce and Forster Collections in the South Kensington Museum, p. 60) states that Forster was "answerable" for the project. 34 Upon withdrawal of the Reflector the essay was printed in full in the Athenaeum. 35 No copy of the periodical has been found. 36 For accounts of Tieck in England see E. H. Zeydel, Ludwig Tieck, Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, and P. W. Stokoe, German Influence in the English Romantic Period, especially pp. 126 ff.

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The Hayward volume for the first time made the English people familiar with the exact contents of Part I of the poem. Before undertaking the translation Hayward had traveled in Germany; after making it he circulated his version among his friends and acquaintances for their opinions and criticism. Then he published the poem anonymously. Before revision for the second edition, which was demanded within a year and appeared with his name on the title page, he again visited Germany and consulted with Tieck, von Chamisso, Fouque, Franz Horn, Dr. Hitzig, Retzsch, Frau von Goethe, and others. He corresponded with Schlegel and Grimm and in his own country sought the help of Carlyle and Mrs. Sarah Austin, both of whom had been translating from the German language. 37 Hayward's biographer states that the success of the translation gave him an assured position in society. 38 Between 1831 and 1880 there were ten editions; the eleventh, in 1892, was revised by C. A. Buchbein. Another tentative venture of Moxon's was publication of selections from the annuals. They had been popular throughout the eighteen-twenties but expired in the mid-thirties. The cost of producing them was great, and Moxon did not have the capital for such an undertaking; but he saw an interesting and profitable book in selections from many of them. He therefore issued a collection in 1831, at ten shillings in cloth boards and eleven shillings six-pence in half-morocco. The journal Atlas reviewed it: A close and beautifully printed volume of the fleeting literature of the day. The choice bespeaks a cultivated judgment, and there is such excellent variety, we confidently recommend the volume to the lovers of light and pleasant reading. The most fastidious reader will be pleased with much that the Cabinet Album presents, and will agree with us in encouraging all attempts at snatching from doom, the accidental excellencies that our glutted markets exhibit.39 37

Hauhart, Goethe's Faust in England in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, especially pp. 42, 44, 10S, 106. Hayward wrote of the second edition, "The notes . . . contained the sum of all that could be asserted with confidence as to the allusions and passages which had been made the subject of inquiry." Select Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, ed. by H. E. Carlisle, I, 16-17. 38 Hayward, Abraham, in D.N.B. 39 1 believe this is not the Edinburgh bookseller Aitken's The Cabinet; or, The Selected Beauties of Literature, 1824, 1825, and 1831, to which Lamb contributed

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The year 1832 was a notable one for Moxon. Besides the unhappy Reflector there were published a dozen books. Their number, however, is not so important as their nature. With the printing of "The Hunchback" in April Moxon began a long association of profitable publishing with Sheridan Knowles, a playwright of that day whose dramas were highly regarded. 40 Kean, Kemble, and Macready acted in his plays; Lamb wrote prologues and epilogues for performances in Drury Lane and in Covent Garden; productions were current with publication. This was Moxon's first business association with the theater. In November of the same year he published a tragedy in verse, "Becket," written by Richard Cattermole, secretary of the Royal Society of Literature and a friend of John Forster. 41 Edward Moxon had known Leigh Hunt, through the Lambs, for some years. When, in this year, he published Hunt's poetical works he linked with the Moxon business, now nearly two years old, the name of an exceedingly well-known journalist and poet and opened a publishing relationship which lasted for sixteen years. Probably the step led to his printing in the same year a manuscript, Shelley's The Masque of Anarchy, which had lain in Hunt's hands, or in Mrs. Shelley's, since its submission to the Examiner in November, 1819. Hunt had not published the poem then, because he had not thought the public "sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse." In 1832 Moxon and Hunt discussed its possible appearance. There was danger in it, for example in the lines . . . Freemen never Dream that God will damn for ever Rosamund Gray. See Lamb's letter to John Aitken, July 5, 1825, in Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 736. The subtitle to Moxon's Cabinet Album is, A Collection of Original and Selected Literature. For discussion of the annuals see Collins, The Profession of Letters, op. cit., pp. 221-23. 40 Macready played "Virginius" "with great success" in 1820 and continued reviving it until 1851. The Diaries of William Charles Macready, William Toynbee, editor, consult index under "Knowles" and under "Virginius." See the chapter, "Moxon and Established Writers," "Knowles." 41 In the Forster Collection (South Kensington Museum) is a copy of the book, which contained other poems, with the inscription, "John Forster, from his sincere Friend, Richard Cattermole."

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All who think those things untrue Of which priests make such ado. Their place, Hunt suggested when he returned the printer's proof to the publisher, could be supplied by asterisks ; 4 2 but Moxon let the lines stand. The Preface, interesting in itself, has some of Hunt's most beautiful words about Shelley. If there ever was a man upon earth, of more spiritual nature than ordinary, partaking of the errors and perturbations of his species, but seeing and working through them with a seraphical purpose of good, such a one was Percy Bysshe Shelley. A fourth long publishing relationship established in this year of expansion, 1832, was that with Tennyson. Through Arthur Hallam, who, though young, had an entrée into literary circles through his father, Henry Hallam, the historian, business was begun in 1831 between Tennyson and Moxon. Hallam may have known Moxon through Leigh Hunt, to whom, as editor of the Tatler, he had sent copies of Alfred Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and Charles Tennyson's Fugitive Pieces.43 On October 4 Hallam wrote Tennyson that Moxon had "very civilly" sent him two copies of Lamb's Album Verses, "one for you," which he found "weak as water" and which Tennyson took two years to acknowledge.44 Moxon had without doubt read Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and had liked them, and this gift was his bid for the attention of Tennyson. When he was about to publish the Englishman's Magazine over his own imprint and wished to get out a "flash number," Moxon asked Hallam to persuade Tennyson, then only twenty-two years of age, "to forward to him a poem which would appear along with contributions from Wordsworth, Southey, and Charles Lamb." 4 5 Hallam wrote to Tennyson on July 15, but receiving no reply gave Moxon Tennyson's sonnet on the "Sombre Valley." It appeared in the August number, together with Hallam's essay "On the Genius of Alfred Tennyson." The 1830 volume of poems had come in for harsh criticism, as well as favorable notices; but this extravagant 42 43 44 45

Forman, The Shelley Library, pp. 113-14. An account is in Nicoli and Wise, op. cit., pp. 21-27. Hallam Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, I, 70. Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 80-81.

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essay brought Christopher North's comment that it sent the Englishman's Magazine to the grave: "The superhuman—nay supernatural—pomposity of that one paper, incapacitated the whole work for living one day longer in this unceremonious world." 46 Moxon nevertheless continued his relationship with Hallam, publishing for him a pamphlet on D. G. Rossetti's Disquisizioni sullo spirito Antipapale." Hunt, in a letter to Moxon which the latter showed Hallam, spoke courteously of these remarks on Rossetti.48 Hunt also praised Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical49 and, since he and Moxon were friends, doubtless strengthened the publisher's confidence in the new poet. On his visit to Somersby in 1832 as the accepted suitor of Emily Tennyson, Arthur Hallam persuaded Alfred to bring out a new book of poems, a project that had been under consideration.50 It was natural to turn to Moxon. Hallam wrote in August, 1831, to Merivale, who had been one of the "Apostles" in Tennyson's time at Cambridge University, asking him to interview Moxon and to ascertain what he would pay Tennyson for regular contributions to his magazine and whether he would give anything, and if so how much, for the copyright on sufficient material for a second volume of verse. Moxon was having difficulties with the magazine and therefore did not contract for contributions, but replied encouragingly about the collection of poems. Hallam wrote to Tennyson on April 10: "I don't know that you ought to publish this spring, but I shall never be easy or secure about your MSS until I see them fairly out of your control." 51 Doubtless Tennyson's carelessness with his manuscripts accounts for the anxiety. In June the poet was in London, with Hallam and other friends, and probably saw Moxon. Spedding stated in a letter to Thompson on July 18 that a new volume of Tennyson's poems was in preparation, to appear, he supposed, in the autumn. 52 Hallam, too, announced the probability of its appearance that year. 53 46

47 In Blackwoods, May, 1832. Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 89. 49 Nicoll and Wise, op. cit., p. 26. In the Tatler, II (February 24, 1831). 50 Lounsbury, The Life and Times of Tennyson, from 1809-1850, edited by W. L Cross, p. 282. 61 52 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., 1,84. Ibid., p. 86. 63 In a letter to R. C. Trench. Lounsbury, op. cit., p. 282, 48

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On October 13, 1832, Tennyson sent what seems to be his first letter to Moxon. Its caution, its evidences of delay in action, its insistence on a second reading of proof indicate the kind of difficulty which Moxon had with him for twenty-six years. 54 Somersby, Spilsby Dear Sir, Sometime ago Mr. Hallam (to whom I gave full powers to treat with you) informed me that you were willing to publish my book, going shares with me in the risks and profits, neither of which, I should fancy, would be very considerable. You will have received by this time the first proof sheet corrected—I think it would be better to send me every proof twice over—I should like the text to be as correct as possible—to be sure this proceeding would somewhat delay the publication but I am in no hurry. My MSS (i.e. those I have by me) are far from being in proper order and such a measure would both give me leisure to arrange and correct them, and insure a correct type. I scarcely know at present what the size of the volume will be, (for I have many poems lying by me with respect to which I cannot make up my mind as to whether they are fit for publication) most probably it would be about ISO pages—if such be the case and you send me every proof twice, how long would your printer be in getting the book ready—I will send you the remaining MSS as soon as possible. Believe me, Dear Sir Yours very truly, Alfred Tennyson Hallam Tennyson, in the Memoir, records that his father wrote to Moxon under date of November 20, withdrawing from the collection "The Lover's Tale" on the ground of its faults, and settled upon the title page as simply POEMS By Alfred Tennyson "(don't let the printer squire me), Be so good as to send me five copies." 55 54 The letter is in the possession of D e V. Payen-Payen, Esq., London. It is also quoted in T. J. Wise, Bibliography of Alfred Tennyson. 55 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit.: " M y father had some copies of the poem printed to see what it was like" (II, SO, a footnote to Mrs. Tennyson's journal under date of January 11, 1868). "In M a y 1879 m y father published in a revised form a poem

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The volume was published in December with an 1833 date oí» its title page. Moxon had early in the transaction been "in ecstasies with the 'May Queen,' " and he thought the volume must "make a great sensation," as Hallam wrote Tennyson late in 1832. 56 The publisher, who, Hallam Tennyson admits, "had some sparks of poetry in him," 57 had become enthusiastic. The color, the wealth of imagery, the profusion of fancy in this early Tennyson verse had caught his admiration to the immediate disadvantage of his business judgment. The ecstasy was no credit to his literary taste. As matters turned out Moxon was quite wrong about the great sensation, for Croker reviewed the book unfavorably in the Quarterly for April, 1833; 58 the Spectator dubbed the poetry "shadowy and obscure"; the Athenaeum abused the poet for compounding double words "after the German model"; and Jerdan's Literary Gazette classed him in the Baa-Lamb school and advised him to retire into an asylum. Moxon still held a cheerful countenance: according to Hallam's letter he thought the Quarterly article had "done good." It had not increased the sale, for he had printed 800 copies and by the spring of 1835 only 300 had been sold. 59 At that time John Stuart Mill and W. J. Fox, both stout minds and men of influence, championed the volume in the London Review and the Monthly written when he was seventeen, 'The Lover's Tale.' The publication was forced upon him, as it was being extensively pirated. He had already in 1875 suppressed an edition brought out by Mr. Heme Shepherd." (II, 239). Tennyson's own note to the poem (May, 1879) states that it was written in his nineteenth year and that one of his friends "distributed among our common associates of that hour some copies of these two [first two] parts, without my knowledge, without the omissions and amendments which I had in contemplation, and marred by many misprints of the compositor." He published the poem, with its third part, in 1879, "seeing that these two parts have of late been mercilessly pirated." T. J. Wise states (A Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, privately printed by R. Clay, 2 vols.) of "The Lover's Tale" that Tennyson had six copies struck off before the type of the volume (this would be the volume of Poems, 1833) had been distributed, and gave them to Hallam for himself and five other friends. The second "Trial Edition," much enlarged, was struck off in 1868, and the first printed edition appeared in 1879. The pirated editions are dated 1870 and 1875. See John Carter and Graham Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets, pp. 307-8. 53 57 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 88. Ibid., p. 80. 58 Sir Herbert Grierson, letter in the London Times Literary Supplement, April 24, 1937. 59 Harold Nicolson, Tennyson, pp. 111-12.

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Repository, respectively, and the sale may have picked up. In 1833 Hallam had written, "Your book continues to sell tolerably." As late as 1834 the Oxford Magazine passed judgment that "Alfred Tennyson is still more to be laughed at than wept over." Nevertheless Moxon had established relations with the steadiest and most remunerative single financial resource of his later years of publishing. The other books of this year of expansion, 1832, were reprints of Poet Laureate Southey's prose and verse (two volumes); two poetical works of old friends of Lamb: English Songs by Barry Cornwall, in the introduction to which the author wrote well of the nature of song and the scarcity of songs in English literature, and "honest" Allan Cunningham's poem in twelve parts, The Maid of Elvar. In this year, too, Barry Cornwall undertook to write a life of the actor, Edmund Kean, which Moxon published three years later. 60 A notable prose work was Madame D'Arblay's memoir of her father, Dr. Charles Burney, in three volumes. This publication was also a result of friendship with Lamb. The general tendencies of Moxon's career in business by this time, at the end of two and a half years, have been fairly well set. He is to be a literary-minded publisher, not merely a commercial maker of books. His printing, binding, and general book make-up are to be simple and tasteful. Moxon books are to be carefully selected, so that his imprint shall be a symbol of quality. He prefers to issue volumes of poetry. His place of business is to be a literary center, if possible, really an "establishment." 6 1 He would like to become a patron-publisher and possess a salon which literary gentlemen should frequent. H e is a genial man, who has time for a chat or for serious conversation. His "authors" are to be his friends, and he always their friend. He will spend a good deal of time at breakfasts and luncheons of literary men, and in return will give similar entertainment in his own house. His business 60 In the Morgan Library, New York City, is a letter from Procter to Moxon dated January IS, 1835, stating that he will "bring the whole of the first part to Dover Street on Monday morning between 11 and 12. If you continue to be there I shall be glad." 61 His granddaughter, Miss Maud Moxon, of Brighton, England, says that her grandparents never spoke of it as a "shop."

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methods are to be conservative. There shall be no display, no bold advertising or noisy publicity. Well-bred people are to say "Moxon has just published . . . and that will be a recommendation of his books. Yet he has "a Yorkshire head," which doesn't lose itself in the clouds. He will drive good bargains, in a firm, quiet way; whenever advisable an author will finance his own book. He will pick up an occasional steady money-making book, of good quality —not fiction, but a reference book, perhaps; not religious books, the standbys of so many publishers; not textbooks, except possibly a collection like that of Wordsworth's poems; not cookbooks, or guidebooks; occasional travel books, for he himself loves travel. With respect to other publishers he is to be independent though cooperative. Such a stream of thought never went through his mind, in all probability, yet study of the development of his business leads one to suspect that at different moments some of these ideas were conscious formulations. Although this summary has run ahead of the year 1832, the main features in it have by that time been laid out. Moxon is now a publisher of fairly wide recognition, with a going concern. Once again consider the list of his authors: Charles Lamb, Samuel Rogers, Robert Southey (never really a Moxon "author"), William Wordsworth (who in 1835 was to transfer all his publishing from Longmans to Moxon), Walter Savage Landor (a name which appeared occasionally), Mme D'Arblay, Barry Cornwall, Allan Cunningham, James Sheridan Knowles, Leigh Hunt, Tennyson (as yet not an asset). Already he has issued the first collected edition of Hunt's poems; he is soon to put out the first of Shelley and the first of Keats. Several names already familiar to the readers of the first third of the century he is to add to these within the next few years: Isaac Disraeli, H. F. Cary (the translator of Dante), Thomas Campbell, Thomas Pringle, Coleridge, Basil Hall. And what is more striking, several new names will appear: Benjamin Disraeli (a published poet, whose Vivian Gray had already been a success, and who offered to become Moxon's partner); 62 Thomas C2 Moxon published The Revolutionary Epick, in two parts, in March, 1834; the third in June. The Duke of Wellington refused to allow this volume to be dedicated to him. Monypenny, Lije of Benjamin Disraeli, I, 246-47. M o x o n sold only fifty

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Noon Talfourd (an admired dramatist of the day), Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, Richard Trench (one of the Cambridge "Apostles"), Coventry Patmore, Richard Monckton Milnes (who became Moxon's life-long friend), Henry ("Van Artevelde") Taylor, and the formidable Harriet Martineau. Moxon may not have realized it, but by 1832 he had withdrawn from active interest in social conditions. He had been acutely conscious of the workingman's condition, as we have seen in the Englishman's Magazine, and he had projected a series of books entitled "Founders of English Liberty"; but from now on few socially-minded books come from his house. Yet he always favored as cheap a selling price for his books as was consistent with the cost, courting the trade of persons of moderate means and good taste. For example, without Rogers's specific permission 63 he issued (1834) in ten monthly parts at four shillings each a combined edition of the Italy and the Poems, advertising the new volume as "illustrated by 12 8 vignettes from designs by Stothard and Turner." These "Poetical Works" when completed were in two volumes, to be "had separately," and sold at two guineas. Publication in separate parts was, of course, a proved device of the trade. As far as records show he published no other work in this way. Many of his books, Keats's Poetical Works, for instance, sold at two shillings sixpence. The usual price of an ordinary Moxon book was between two and ten shillings. At this time, about 1833, one can hardly recognize the callow ambitious youth who came to London fifteen years earlier, or the humble, whining writer of the Preface to The Prospect, or the lonely young man writing poor verses and reading literature Sundays and nights, or the clerk in the house of Longmans and in the firm of Hurst, Chance and Co. Here is a friendly, self-confident man, frequently a companion of prominent writers; a lover of verse copies. "Moxon told me on Wednesday [April, 1847] that some years ago Disraeli had asked him to take him into partnership, but he did not know how Dizzy would like to be reminded of that now." The Greville Memoirs, Henry Reeve, editor, Pt. II, Vol. I l l , p. 75. See also Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli, p. 64 n. 63 Clayden, op. cit., II, 116: "My monthly numbers," wrote Rogers to Richard Sharpe, "I know little about. It is a scheme of Moxon's."

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who, for the most part, no longer indulges himself in the writing of it; a reader of manuscripts who makes up his own mind about their quality; a business man. It is significant that he was pleasing the men who had backed his business venture. Wordsworth in 1834 heartily congratulated him on his "success as a Publisher of which our common friend Mr. R[ogers] gives me most favorable accounts." 64 Lamb, too, was happy over the young man's handling of himself and his business. 04

Letter from Wordsworth to Moxon (August 25, 1834) in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, numbered H.L. 2088.

Chapter

4

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EXPANSION

A s E D W A R D M O X O N ' S business seemed to him to approach stability, he considered moving his establishment into larger quarters and to a more advantageous location.1 He consulted Samuel Rogers, who was still interested in the bookpublishing venture, and was given encouragement.2 The site selected, at 44 Dover Street, was in a district frequented by the "best people," in the club section of London and among shops patronized by persons of fashion and wealth. It was only a short distance from John Murray's famous publishing house in Albemarle Street, and that fact pleased Moxon. In his mind still ran the idea of rivaling the great booksellers as they were in their heyday earlier in the century. The move was made by the end of January, 1833.3 In the new quarters he was addressed in a letter by Lamb, with bubbling humor, as "Dear Murray; Moxon, I mean." Lamb added a line from Pope for his "fallen predecessor in Albemarle Street" to whom "must be given the coup du main"—"Murray, long enough his country's pride." 4 The new establishment was made as little like a tradesman's shop as possible and as much like a browsing place for readers. The portrait of Milton, which John Lamb, his brother, had given to Charles and Charles to Emma Isola, hung famously in the 1 Curwen {op. cit., p. 352) states that Moxon moved to Dover Street "with a view to" the publication of Rogers's Italy. This is a mistake: the Italy was published in 1831, and the Poems not until 1834. 2 "Rogers approving, w h o can demur?" Lamb to Moxon, January 24, 1833, Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 9S8. 3 On February 11, 1833, Lamb wrote to Moxon, "Pray give me one line to say if you received and forwarded Emma's paquet to Miss Adams, and h o w Dover Street looks." Ibid,., p. 959. Lucas (in Life of Charles Lamb, p. 801) after quoting from a letter dated March 30, 1833, writes: "He [ M o x o n ] had just moved to new premises, in Dover Street." The word "just" must be broadly understood. 4 Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 958.

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5

"Murray-like shop." Moxon was so solicitous not to urge purchases upon his customers that Leigh Hunt once called him a secreter of books rather than a publisher of them.0 By this time, although he was still a seller of books and stationery, Moxon had become important principally as a publisher. In the business of printing, following the growing practice of his day, Moxon had no financial interest. From the beginning his printing was done by Bradbury and Evans, Bouverie Street. Moxon and Frederick M. Evans, of that firm, were friends over a period of nearly thirty years. Evans was finally "one of the Trustees of the late Mr. Edward Moxon." 7 Only one Moxon publication was not printed by that firm.8 As if he were opening his business anew upon removal to Dover Street, Moxon published, as in 1830, a collection of his own sonnets, largely for free distribution, as was the first collection. They were finely printed and bound and were used for publicity. Lamb thought that the publisher had foresworn the writing of verses. In the dedication of his Album Verses in 1830 to Edward Moxon he had placed the sentence, "But I forget—you have bid a long adieu to the Muses." It was not, however, until 1835 that the poetpublisher allowed the farewell to become final. Even after that date he reprinted his sonnets—in 1837 and in 1843. During the winter of 1832-33, in anticipation of the new volume, he polished his poems and told the Lamb household what he was doing. Lamb's letters to him during the spring of 1833 insist on seeing the sonnets —"Ain't we to have a copy of the sonnets?" he queried, "Bring the sonnets," and "Why not publish 'em—or let another Bookseller?" When they did at long last see the sonnets, the members of that household were strongly approving; Charles looked upon Edward as a protégé, Mary held him in strong affection, and Emma Isola was by this date definitely looking upon him as her lover. Charles 5 Lucas, op. cit., p. 973, Lamb to Wordsworth. The portrait was to have been left to Wordsworth, who, at his death, was to have bequeathed it to Christ's College, Cambridge. It n o w hangs in the Public Library, N e w York City. 6 Blunden, Leigh Hunt, p. 289. 7 A Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, II, 3-7. Mentioned in the "Bill of Complaint" of Tennyson vs. J. C. Hotten, July 30, 1862. 8 That book was printed by Robson, Levey, and Franklyn.

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himself reviewed the 1833 volume in the Athenaeum for April 13 and gave them at least their full due.9 The critics of the later, 1835, volume, which carried many of the same sonnets, were scathing in their condemnation. The poems are comparable to much of the writing that was then being issued. Again, as in 1830, when he first began business, Moxon published a volume written by Charles Lamb, the delightful Last Essays of Elia. The letters of Lamb to Moxon, dated January, 1833, carry several references to the forthcoming book. It was out by May at the latest, with a "character of the late Elia," a friend's Preface. In the book are "Old China," "Blakesmoor in H—shire," "Barbara S ," and other essays that are now favorites with readers of Elia. Other interesting publications of this first year in the new location were two of a social nature, John Minter Morgan's Hampden in the Nineteenth Century; or Colloquies on the Errors and Improvements of Society, two volumes at thirty shillings, and John Kenyon's Rhymed Plea for Tolerance, in two dialogues, four shillings. These books suggest that Moxon inwardly cherished some social interest. The latter book, in heroic couplets, was given to Crabb Robinson for the marking of bad passages: "My marks are numerous—it is but ill written," he recorded. "I cannot account for the favorable opinion of so fastidious a judge as Wordsworth." 10 There were also two translations in this year: Abraham Hayward's translation of Faust, Part I, already noticed, and, in September, H. F. Cary's Pindar in English Verse—"Never," Landor asserted to Crabb Robinson in December, "was anything so like the original." 11 Yet the book did not sell. As late as June 6, 1842, Cary 12 noted that the edition was still not half sold. Yet in 1838 Moxon issued Cary's Pindar, Carmina. Save for a reprint of Middleton 9 Lucas ( L i f e of Charles Lamb, II, 801) states, "reviewed, almost certainly by Lamb." The spirit of the review justifies this conclusion, and a letter from Moxon to Emma (Henry Sotheran, Piccadilly Notes, No. 13, p. 445) states that Elia "has just written a very kind letter in the Athenaeum of my poor little book." 10 Unpublished Diaries, Vol. XV, January IS, 1834. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 11 Correspondence oj H. C. Robinson with the Wordsworth Circle, edited by Edith J. Morley, I, 254. 12 Henry Cary, Memoir of the Rev. H. F. Cary, II, 325.

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and Melmoth's Life and Letters of Cicero, he accepted no other translation during his remaining twenty years of business. He had learned that that field was not for him. He was not himself a reader of the classics in their original languages and could not be a competent judge of translations. This year of 1833 was marked also by another event of importance to Moxon. For some time he had been in love with Emma Isola. As soon as he felt himself established in his new business quarters he considered that his position in life, his prospects, and his earnings warranted proposal for her hand. 13 Emma, too, had been in love. She had watched with impatience for the coming of the postman with his letters; 14 she had followed with approval his move to the new premises; 13 she had received gifts of books from him and valentines.16 The two young people had for years been steadily thrown together. As early as 1827 Lamb had written to P. G. Patmore that Moxon had fallen in love with Emma, our "nut-brown maid," but the remark occurs among sentences of nonsense and is not to be trusted. 17 For two years, from 1828 to 1830, they saw little of each other, for Emma had become a governess at Fornham rectory, in Suffolk. Under the tutelage of the Lambs, brother and sister, she had become "not ill-qualified" in French, Italian, Latin, music, and drawing. Coleridge bore witness to the very excellent manner in which she read to him some of the most difficult passages in Paradise Lost.18 Lamb once told Crabb Robinson that she was the best female talker he knew.19 In 1830 she suffered a long illness, and upon recovery she returned to her 13 I find no reason to put faith in Crabb Robinson's comment (in Selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson, edited by Edith Morley, entry under the year 1829) that Lamb "induced" Moxon to marry Emma. 14 Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 962. 15 Ibid.., p. 958. Lamb to Moxon: ". . . congratulations of Sister, brother, and 'Silk Cloak' [ E m m a Isola] all most cordial on your change of place." Writing to Talfourd in February, 1833, on his advancement to Serjeant, Lamb stated: "Emma alone truly sympathized. She had a silk gown come home that very day, and had precedence before her learned sisters accordingly." Ibid., p. 960. 16 Ibid., pp. 965, 819. 17 Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 785—letter from Lamb, and Lucas's discussion in a note. 18 Lamb to R. S. Jameson, August 29, 1827, a letter in the Morgan Library, N e w York City. 19 Unpublished diaries in Dr. Williams's Library, London, entry for July 23, 1832.

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home with the Lambs. The accomplishments which fitted her for a position as a governess fitted her to be the wife of a rising publisher who would be entertaining men of note in his home. In the spring of 1833 Moxon introduced Emma to Samuel Rogers, his benefactor, who smiled upon the project of marriage. By the last of April agreement between the Lambs, Emma Isola, and Edward Moxon had been reached, and the marriage was arranged to take place late in August. In the early summer Emma went to visit in the Moxon home, where, in Lamb's words, was now "the whole Moxonry," brothers and sisters.20 She remained there until the middle of July, 21 when she returned to the Lamb household. There preparations were made for the wedding. Soon after her return home Edward sent her a watch, a gift which evoked from Lamb one of his most humorous letters: "For God's sake, give Emma no more watches. One has turned her head . . . she has kissed away 'half-past 12,' which I suppose to be the canonical hour in Hanover Sq. Well, if 'love me, love my watch,' answers, she will keep time to you. 22 Edward and Emma were married a month earlier than they had intended, 23 on the thirtieth of July, and went to Paris on a honeymoon trip, where they flaunted it about "a la Parisienne," 24 as Lamb informed Cary on September 9. Bridecake duly arrived at the homes of friends. 25 Lamb published in the Athenaeum for December 7,1833, a poem on the marriage. His great affection and esteem for Emma came out in his lines, which endowed her with A mind exempt from every low-bred passion . . . an understanding sound; just views of right and wrong . . . perception full . . . wit 20 As early as November, 1830, Lamb refers to a sister. In July, 1831, he asked that she be left with them for a few days. In February, 1833, he invited Moxon's brother (this would be William) to visit them. 21 Lamb to Moxon, July 14, 1833. Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 975. 22 Lamb to Moxon, July 24, 1833. Ibid.., p. 976. 23 On March 30, 1833, Lamb had written to M o x o n (ibid., p. 966): "Mary and E. do not dream of anything we have discussed," which Mr. Lucas takes to be reference to an offer for Miss Isola's hand. If the reference is to marriage it probably was a matter of maturing of plans for marriage earlier than the two lovers had hoped. 24 Ibid., p. 978. In a letter from Lamb to H . F. Cary. 25 T. Robinson wrote of it from Bury St. Edmunds to his brother, Crabb, on August 4, 1833. H. Crabb Robinson's letters in Dr. Williams's Library, London.

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above her sex . . . exuberant fancies . . . mirth . . . a noble nature . . . a keen sense of benefit, and of offence, with reconcilement quick . . . and beauty. In the Morgan Library, New York City, in an undated letter written from "enf"[ield] Lamb mentions Emma's leaving as an "unhinging time." The young husband's love for E m m a inspired the composition of several sonnets, both before and after their marriage. The poems were filled with conventional poetic phrases and occasional awkward ones and yet also with the stir and lyric beauty of the feeling which motivated them: Fair art thou as the morning, my young Bride! Her freshness is about thee; like a river To the sea gliding, with sweet murmur ever Thou sportest; and, wherever thou dost glide, Humanity a livelier aspect wears. Fair art thou as the morning of that land Where Tuscan breezes in his youth have fann'd Thy grandsire oft. Thou hast not many tears, Save such as pity from the heart will wring, And then there is a smile in thy distress! Meeker thou art than lily of the spring, Yet is thy nature full of nobleness! And gentle ways, that soothe and raise me so, That henceforth I no worldly sorrow know! Their first child, Edward, born in November, 1834, lived less than seven years. Their other children, two boys and five daughters, grew to maturity. Moxon had an affectionate nature, as both his sonnets and his letters to Emma attest. 2 8 The match was, one judges, a happy one. Crabb Robinson, however, recorded that M a r y Lamb said Charles was shocked at the sight of Moxon's child— He loved the mother and she him, but it would do [sic]. The disproportion was too great in their age—but M. was not fit for her—"She is such a nice ele26 Henry Sotheran (in Piccadilly Edward M o x o n to Emma.

Notes,

N o . 13) offered for sale 24 letters from

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gant creature and he looks so dirty." Except this last—every other judgment was, I need hardly repeat here, utterly wild and groundless.27 Moxon settled into even more vigorous work after his marriage. He issued Samuel Rogers's Poems in a companion edition to the Italy, with illustrations from Stothard and Turner. The bankerpoet's biographer, Clayden, thought the book a "marked event in the history of art"; 28 and a contemporary artist, C. R. Leslie, esteemed it as "one of the most beautifully illustrated volumes" that had ever appeared. 29 The cost of the volume was close to eight thousand pounds, of which about nine hundred went into illustrations. The book sold well: "For the next twenty years," asserts Clayden, "there were few drawing-rooms in which one of these books Italy or Poems was not on the table, and probably there were no cultivated people who had not turned to them again and again with ever-increasing delight." 30 By this time Moxon was not only a frequenter of the famous breakfast parties of Rogers but also was a friend on intimate terms with him. At one party, for instance, he "asked for a certain portfolio of engraved heads which had been made from time to time of Rogers," and this was brought and opened for examination.31 In 1844, Rogers, lonely at a seaside, requested Moxon to join him. The publisher did so and for three days enjoyed himself "so exceedingly that when he came to town on the 9th nothing would satisfy his wife and sister but they must go too." 32 The publisher was one of the seven men, among whom were Tennyson and Crabb Robinson, invited to dinner in the "shadowy dining-room" 33 to 27

Unpublished diaries, January 12, 183S. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. Clayden, op. cit., II, 5-7. 29 Leslie, Autobiographical Recollections, Tom Taylor, ed., p. 134. 30 Clayden, op. cit., II, 7. 31 Recorded by James Fields in Yesterdays with Authors, p. 390. 32 Rogers to his sister, Clayden, op. cit., II, 246. The letter is dated October 18, 1844. 33 The dinner was on January 26, 1845. "It was owing to this weakness of voice that no candles were put on his dinner table; for glare and noise go together, and dimness subdues the voices in conversation as a handkerchief thrown over the cage of a canary subdues its song. The light was thrown upon the walls and the pictures and shaded from the room. This did not suit Sidney Smith, who said that a dinner at St. James's Place was 'a flock of light on all above, and below nothing but darkness and gnashing of teeth.'" Henry Taylor, Autobiography, I, 321. 28

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meet an unknown lady. Arriving late, she proved to be none other than Mrs. Caroline Norton, "quite able," her biographer asserts, "to hold her own in that society of poets and publishers." 34 Breakfasts consisted of "reindeer's tongues, sweetmeats, fruit, and ices." 35 The Rogers house was a "cabinet of arts"—a chimney piece by Flaxman, a noted Giorgione, Etruscan vases, Egyptian antiquities, a Raphael, a Sir Joshua Reynolds, "an antique female hand as a weight to the drawing-room door." Crabb Robinson thought that everywhere there was "the most perfect taste imaginable." 36 The talk was eclectic, elegant, gossipy. Here for Moxon was an atmosphere which differed from that at the Lambs' home, and another circle of acquaintances. Here congregated painters and sculptors, poets, wits, members of the nobility, and occasionally a lady of note. Moxon attended a dinner at which Mary Shelley was present. The contacts which he made were of both social and business advantage. They also flattered and maintained his self-respect. They perhaps quieted his concern over unhappy conditions in society. These two homes, the Lamb cottage and the Rogers mansion, and their occupants were the principal sources of Moxon's social development and the means for early business expansion. In the former were persons who were natural, filled with genuine enthusiasm—for Dante, for humanity, for old drama and old china, for classic texts, old prints, wit, and simple songs and lyrics. In the latter were sophisticated persons, authoritative, intellectual, critically antiquarian in interests, politely gossipy, aesthetic. In 1834 the young publisher found a third friend who became a focus for breakfast groups, Richard Monckton Milnes.37 These groups introduced Moxon to a third type of society. Milnes, in the mid-twenties in age, a former "Apostle" at Cambridge with Tenny34

Jane Gray Perkins, The Life of the Honorable Mrs. Norton, p. 194. Letters from a Friend to Kindred at Home, by the author of "Hope Leslie" [Catharine Maria Sedgwick], I, 77 ff. 30 Unpublished diaries, entry for March 3, 1835. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 37 For an informal, charming account of Milnes see the chapter in Ince, Calverley and Some Cambridge Wits of the Nineteenth Century. The principal account is The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton, edited by T. Wemyss Reid, in 2 vols. 35

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38

son, through whom Moxon may have met him, at that time became a member of Parliament and busied himself with the copyright question. Moxon, too, for years was deeply concerned with this matter. Milnes's friendliness, natural intellectual curiosity, and his political career made him early in life an influential "man of letters and patron of genius," and many a writer was to become his debtor not only for courtesy and encouragement but also for practical benefits. Even Tennyson profited, for Milnes obtained for him a pension from Sir Robert Peel after the poet lost money through investments in Dr. Allen's Patent Decorative Wood Carving Company. Samuel Sharpe, the nephew of Rogers, met Monckton Milnes at one of his uncle's Tuesday breakfasts in 1840 and found him young and with his ability "hidden in his wish to be a fine gentleman." 39 T h e breakfasts and luncheons given by Milnes were famous for reckless mixing of guests. The Duke of Argyll, whose Essay on the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland Moxon published in 1849, recalled no circumstance with greater pleasure than the habit among literary men of giving each other breakfasts. The meal began at nine-thirty or ten in the morning and lasted for an hour and a half or two hours; enough guests were present "to afford some variety, and never so many as to prevent the conversation from being general." T h e Duke listed Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Henry Hallam, Lord Macaulay, Lord Mahon, Sir Charles Lyell, and Monckton Milnes as the principal hosts at breakfasts and recorded that at Milnes's table "one was perfectly sure to meet some political refugee from the storms of Continental revolution, amongst whom his selection was not conventional." 40 Crabb Robinson recorded the attendance at a Milnes breakfast in 1844: " a strange party—Lord Littleton, Sir Robert Inglis, Moxon, Milman, Nightingale, Sir A. Gordon, and several young men." 4 1 And at a dinner in 1838 were 38 Of this Cambridge University group Moxon published books by Tennyson, Milnes, and R. C. Trench, archbishop of Dublin. 39 Clayden, Samuel Sharpe, Egyptologist and Translator of the Bible, p. 93. 40 George Douglas, Eighth Duke of Argyll, K. G., K. T., Autobiography and Memoirs, edited by the Dowager Duchess of Argyll, II, 400 ff. 41 Unpublished diaries, Vol. X I X , April 20, 1844. In Dr. Williams's Library, London.

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"a number of young men . . . and Moxon also. Among them were Urkart or Urquhart with a Turkish servant, Polcy, Attaché to the Prussian minister." 42 Such gatherings introduced the publisher to prominent political men of the day. In 1834 Moxon published Milnes's Memorials of a Tour in Greece. Within the next eighteen years he put out nine other volumes for Milnes. Since the author possessed money, it is likely that the publisher ran financial risk with none of them. Indeed, during this period of his business so many Moxon authors were men of means that his financial problems may have been considerably simplified. If Moxon had published only poetry of genuine value he would not have issued Monckton Milnes's poetical works in two volumes in 1838 or the enlarged 1852 edition in four volumes, for their merit is slight. Poetry of the People, 1840, would have had more appeal for Edward Moxon because, in the spirit of the Young England movement, they portrayed conditions of the working people and expressed a sympathy for them that he himself had known and seems still to have possessed, though probably dormantly rather than actively. Socially Milnes was in the circle of the Young England enthusiasts, and politically he hovered sympathetically about it. Moxon, although his interests in publication were not with writings about or for the people, would applaud the devotion of Young Englanders to the cause of social reform. 43 The verses of Milnes are uninspired and moralistic, although earnest in tone. The last four lines of the poem entitled "Labour" indicate their nature: And he is bravest, happiest, best, Who, from the task within his span, Earns for himself his evening rest And an increase of good for man.

The other books by Milnes to appear over the Moxon name were a second travel account and three other collections of verse. 42 Unpublished diaries, Vol. X V I I , March 25, 1838. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 43 See Monypenny, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. II, chaps, vi, vii, viii, ix, for an account of this movement.

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Still another friendly and business relationship of 1834, one which helped to satisfy Moxon's love of the theater, was formed with Henry Taylor. Philip van Artevelde, a poetic tragedy, had been refused by John Murray's advisers, Milman and William Harness. But Moxon accepted it and put out an edition of five hundred copies. The poem became, as Browning discovered on his return from Russia that summer, "the literary event of the day." 44 Macready found Henry Taylor's Philip van Artevelde charming: "There is so much truth, philosophy, poetry and beauty, combined with passion and descriptive power of no ordinary character, that I was obliged to force myself to lay the book down." The play so haunted his affections that thirteen years after its publication and his first reading Macready made a stage version and proposed to Taylor the presentation of it. On October 19, 1847, he read the play to a group of friends including Dickens and Forster, and four days later to his company of players at the theater and a few friends, including Spedding, Forster, and Moxon. They all approved except the theater's manager, Mr. Maddox, who had to be persuaded. When it was produced, late in November, 1847, the manager's judgment proved good—"Failed; I cannot think it my fault," recorded the actor in his diary. 45 Still, publication of the play had justified itself—Southey thought Henry Taylor's tragedies "the very best kind," and Philip van Artevelde of "singular beauty" and "written with sincerity." 46 William Harness, who had advised against publication, was surprised when he read the book, it "looked so different in print from what it did in manuscript." 47 The Quarterly gave twenty pages to a review of the play, the Edinburgh the same space, and the Athenaeum fifteen. The later plays of Taylor were less successful. Eight years after this first one Moxon published his second: "Henry Artevelde Taylor," wrote Fitzgerald to Barton, 48 "has got a Saxon story; which will be a 44

Griffin and Minchen, Life of Robert Browning, p. 72. Diaries of Macready, I, 169; II, 374-75, 377. 46 See letters, to Grosvenor Bradford, July 3, 1834, and to Charles Swain, October 27, 1836, in Warter, op. cit. 47 L'Estrange, The Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness, p. 173. 48 Some New Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, edited by F. R. Barton, p. 56. 45

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d—d bore, I should think." It was Edwin the Fair. Browning found it "affected, unreal putting together" and assured Domett that the play "is the flattest of fallen." 49 One may pause here to consider Moxon's interest in drama and the theater. As frequenter of the Lamb household he had been attracted to such interests by Charles's and Mary's talk of Munden and Charles Kean, of Sadler's Wells, Covent Garden, and the Lyceum, of the classic dramatists of England, and by the frequent visits of Fanny Kelly. Doubtless his careful and loving publication of his series of old English dramatists stemmed from that intimacy. In 1838 Gifford edited the Ben Jonson volume; Hartley Coleridge undertook in 1840 to write the lives of Massinger and Ford and make notes on their dramas; Darley prepared a two-volume Beaumont and Fletcher in the same year, and in 1843-46 Dyce edited the eleven-volume work. On each of these books Moxon labored hard. He "locked up" on each, he wrote Wordsworth, as much as a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds.50 In his first six years of business he published five plays by Knowles, three poetic tragedies by Richard Cattermole, Henry Taylor, and Thomas Noon Talfourd, and a translation of Faust. He also published Kennedy's The Siege of Antwerp (1838), Leigh Hunt's The Legend of Florence (1840), Darley's Thomas a Becket (1840), and John Sterling's Strafford (1843). In 1848 he issued Shakespeare's works, Thomas Campbell contributing notes and a slight account of the dramatist's life. Previously he had approached Macready, through John Forster, with the proposal that the actor edit the plays. 51 He thought he was "most unfortunate" with his editors,52 but on the whole they were able men, and the editions they made were creditable. Lastly, one must not forget in this account of Moxon's interest in drama the reprint of Lamb's Specimens of Dramatic Poets which he published, or the first life of Edmund Kean and the life of Mrs. Siddons. Aubrey De Vere was once in touch with Moxon concerning the 49 50 51 52

Some New Letters, op. cit., p. 45. August 27, 1839. Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. Diaries of Macready, op. cit., I, 372, January 18, 1837. August 27, 1839. Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq.

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elder De Vere's play Mary Tudor, a drama which Cardinal Manning and Gladstone agreed in placing "next to Shakespeare." 53 On June 24, 1846, he wrote to his father that he had "met Moxon, who immediately enquired what you were going to do about publishing. I mentioned what your intentions were, and he advised me first to make Macready's acquaintance, and if nothing came of that, to make acquaintance with Mr. Webster, the manager of the Princess's theatre." He called on Macready with a letter from Thomas Noon Talfourd and left the drama and called again some days later, discovering that Macready had interest in the play and would do for it what he could "in the way of furnishing letters of introduction to the managers" but that he was of the opinion that there was no theater in London in which "a work of high dramatic claims" could be worthily brought out, "nothing being thought of but music and pantomime." 54 In the following year, 1847, the play was published, not by Moxon but by Pickering. Tennyson did not write his dramas until some years after Moxon's death. This glance at Moxon's interests in drama has taken us beyond 1834. When we look at the years 1833 and 1834, we see that they were marked by business expansion, by valuable new and renewed contacts, and by the publisher's marriage. He wrote, published, and distributed better sonnets than he had yet composed and issued the Last Essays of Elia and the illustrated Poems of Samuel Rogers. He began a lifelong friendship and business activity with Richard Monckton Milnes and allied his house with the name of Henry ("Artevelde") Taylor. His books of this year show only a smoldering concern in humanitarian affairs. At the end of the year Charles Lamb died, and celebration of his friend's life and writings gave Moxon immediate activity. 63 54

Recollections of Aubrey De Vere, p. 2IS. Ward, Aubrey De Vere, A Memoir, p. 109.

Chapter

5 JI M O X O N AND C H A R L E S AND M A R Y L A M B

E D M U N D B L U N D E N, the latest biographer of Charles Lamb, records that in his later days, out of the number of young men of good sense or genius whom his paternal instinct sheltered and blessed, he "was shaping one life above the rest—the publisher, Moxon's" 1 Crabb Robinson believed that Moxon "owed everything" to Samuel Rogers. 2 Moxon's indebtedness to the two men was great. To the old poet banker he truly owed debts of many kinds—for loans of money, for the opportunity of putting out elaborate illustrated editions of Italy and Poems, for important social and business contacts, for encouragement and for friendship— all of which were powerful elements in his establishment as a business man and as a person among authors and artists. To the gentle essayist he owed similar debts and in larger measure mental and spiritual development. Moxon expressed his gratitude to Rogers in gracious but formal lines: Happy the man who, while his spirit soars And themes immortal his pure thoughts engage, Can stoop to earth, Heaven's messenger of love, Jealous the wrongs and hardships to assuage Of struggling genius or desponding age. Of Lamb, upon his death, he lovingly thought as "the kindliest sprite earth holds within her breast." The tone of his sonnets to Lamb is intimate and less marked by sententiousness than is his poem to Rogers. Charles Lamb chose his friends for some individuality of character. Purnell thought that any friend of his had "some tincture 1

Blunden, Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries, p. 188. Unpublished Diaries, Vol. XXII, April 11, 1851; in Dr. Williams's Library, London. 2

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3

of the absurd" in his character. De Quincey, in defense, with his usual lack of humor assured readers that Lamb was far from welcoming clever but wicked, profligate, or dissolute people "by preference" 4 and welcomed the oppressed, the calumniated, the wronged.5 Barry Cornwall noted that each of Lamb's companions was "notable for some individual mark of character." 6 The records reveal no striking characteristic in young Moxon, though to Elia the extent and nature of his ambition might well have seemed absurd; yet Lamb in his forty-ninth year chose, or accepted, him and cherished the friendship until his own death ten years later. Moxon rapidly became the sort of friend who happened in to tea, or supped with the Lambs, with or without invitation, on bread and cheese and gin and water. "If an acquaintance dropped in of an evening before supper," Moxon stated in his Memoir of Lamb, "he would instantly, without saying a word, put on his hat, and go and order an extra supply of porter. He has done this for us a hundred times!" Occasionally Moxon would bring a sister or a brother into the Lamb household, always sure of their welcome. He was soon so fully at home there as to keep himself in the background. He lent new books to Mary, first from the stocks of the firms for which he worked and later from his own, with instructions that the pages were not to be cut open or the books long retained. Westwood, in his "second batch of recollections," pictures himself and "Bridget" "tunneling the pages" they were not allowed to cut. Lamb stated in a letter to Mary Shelley, in 1827, that his sister Mary was "pining for Mr. Moxon's books and Mr. Moxon's society"— 7 "He is her Bodley." 8 "This is not weather," he wrote to the young man one Sunday afternoon in 1828, "to hope to see anybody today, but without any particular invitations, pray consider that we are at any time most glad to see you, You (with 3 The Complete Correspondence and Works of Charles Lamb; with an essay on his life and genius by Thomas Purnell, aided by recollections of the author's adopted daughter, I, xxiii. 4 Italics mine. 5 "Recollections of Charles Lamb," in Literary Reminiscences, p. 80. 6 7 In Purnell, op. tit., IV, 550. Helen Moore, Mary W. Shelley, p. 330. 8 Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 760.

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Hunt's 'Lord Byron' or Hazlitt's 'Napoleon' in your hand) or You simply with your switch & c." 9 Everyone who was a friend of Lamb knew him intimately. John Forster recorded that, "when you entered his little book-clad room, he welcomed you with an affectionate greeting, set you down to something and made you at home at once." 10 Moxon noted, in the Memoir, that Lamb's friends "sat among his books—goodly folios in quaint bindings—in rooms scantily furnished, but rich in the gifts of genius, walls hung round with Raphaels and Da Vincis, with Poussins and Titians, and the work of the immortal Hogarth." The young man caught something of the spirit of Lamb. At times he even went to the extent of playing practical jokes in the Lamb manner. On one occasion, for instance, Hone had inserted in his Table Book a sonnet by Lamb, presumably on Miss Kelly's appearance in the opera of "Arthur and Emmeline" but really on her appearance earlier in "The Blind Boy." "Somebody," Lamb assured Hone, "has fairly played a hoax on you (I suspect that pleasant rogue Moxon) . . . I suppose our facetious friend thought they [the verses] would serve again, like an old coat new-turn'd —Yours (and his, nevertheless)." 11 After retirement from the India House in 1825 Lamb was uneasy in his state of idleness, writing, apparently, only under a riding necessity or an unusually strong impulse. He made a few contributions to the London Magazine and wrote a series, "Popular Fallacies," for the New Monthly. Hone's Everyday Book, begun in 1825, and later his Table Book stimulated him to desultory and fragmentary writing. But neither the magazines nor Hone's ventures excited Lamb so much as Moxon's step into publishing. It was the sort of venture that would engage his quick intelligence. Once the idea was in mind Lamb urged the project forward. He threw himself into it, gave it consistent attention. He busied himself for Moxon in specific interests: "I wish you would call on the Translater of Dante at the British Museum, and talk with him. He 9

Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 818. Forster's "Biographical Memoirs of Charles Lamb," in T. N . Talfourd's oirs of Charles Lamb, edited and annotated by Percy Fitzgerald, p. 236. 11 Hazlitt, ed., Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 2 4 6 ^ 7 . 10

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is the pleasantest of clergymen. I told him of all Rogers's handsome behavior to you, and you are already no stranger. Go." 12 He was solicitous of business advantages: when James Kenney told him that he had "just touched one hundred pounds from the theatre" he hastily addressed Moxon, who had published the opera "Masaniello" and therefore was entitled to a share of its earnings, "You are a damn'd fool if you don't exact your Tythe of him." 13 Concerning the Last Essays of Elia he counseled: "Be cautious how you name the probability of bringing 'em out complete—till these are gone off—Everybody'd say, 'O I'll wait then.' " 14 Again, when publication of the Englishman's Magazine began he was a moving spirit behind it. Lamb's first known contribution to the magazine was his essay on the actor Elliston, in the August number, but it is a fair assumption that he contributed to earlier numbers. Only four prose articles and two poems are known to be his.15 Not all of the prose is in the Elia vein, as Mr. Lucas notices, but one essay, "Newspapers Thirty Years Ago," has the old flavor. In response to Moxon's letter announcing discontinuance of the magazine he replied that when he faced the necessity of supplying an article each month "it seemed a Labour above Hercules's 'Twelve' in a year," and now that he was emancipated he felt as if he had a thousand essays swelling in him—"false feelings both." At that moment he was warming his hand "at a ludicrous description of a Landscape of an R. A." Mr. Lucas comments that Lamb's return to essay writing was very good for him "while it lasted." It was also "very good" for the magazine. Lamb's concern for the "Peter's Net" feature of the Englishman's Magazine, which he was conducting, reveals the active nature of his counsel: 12

Letter to Moxon, M a y 12, 1830, Lucas, Letters, II, 910. T o Moxon, July 14, 1831, Lucas, Letters, II, 93S. 14 T o Moxon, ibid., p. 961. 15 In August issue: Reminiscences of Elliston (essay) ; Hercules Pacificatus (verse). In September issue: The Latin Poetry of Vincent Bourne (critical n o t i c e ) ; Recollections of a late R. A. ( e s s a y ) ; Lines suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross (verse). In October issue: On the Total Defect of the Faculty of the Imagination etc. (which was a curious mistake, for the essay that appeared under this title was actually "Newspapers Thirty Years Ago"). 13

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The Peter's Net does not intend funny things only. All is fish. And leave out the sickening Elia at the end. Then it may comprise letters and characters addressed to Peter—but a signature forces it to be all characteristic of the one man Elia, or the one man Peter, which cramped me formerly— Could you get hold of Procter . . . or of James Weathercock? Both of their prose is capital. Don't encourage poetry. He suggested sending, in his name, a copy of the magazine containing the article on the "R. A." to Daniels and Westall, for then it would fly "like wild fire among the R[oyal] Academicians and artists." 10 For the August contributions Moxon sent Lamb ten pounds, which he accepted, realizing that without the stimulus he would "drag sadly"; but he held the money until he should see Moxon over the next first of January, when he would "look upon it as earned." 17 This same payment, when the magazine was discontinued, caused him embarrassment: he kept it but refused money for Satan in Search for a Wife, which Moxon had calculated would net about ten pounds. 18 It is pleasant to record that Moxon, in recognition of his constant indebtedness, was so generous in his gifts of books to the Lambs that Charles time and again warned him that he would pay for copies—"I am settled in any case to take at Bookseller's price any copies I have more." 19 In the trouble with John Taylor, 20 who had originally printed in the London Magazine some of the essays to be included in the Last Essays of Elia, Charles and Mary Lamb were so anxious to avoid litigation for their young business friend that Charles urged his friend, B. W. Procter, to settle the matter with Mr. Taylor— "do it smack at once, and I will explain to M [oxon] why I did it." He put thirty pounds, then "literally rotting" in his desk, at Procter's disposal. 21 Happily, Moxon did not allow the generosity to be accepted. In these/ and other ways Moxon was not only assisted and heartened but also molded in attitudes and practices. The number of Lamb acquaintances whose books Moxon published and whose 16 17 18 19 21

To Moxon, Lucas, Letters, II, 938. Ibid., September S, 1831, p. 939. Ibid.., October 24, 1831, p. 941. Ibid., p. 962. 2° See chap. viii. To B. W. Procter, Lucas, op. cit., p. 963.

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favors he received is extensive: there were Hood, Hunt, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Hazlitt; in drama, Fanny Holcroft, James Kenney, Darley, Talfourd, Henry Taylor, and Sheridan Knowles; in poetry, Allan Cunningham and Barry Cornwall; among translators and editors, Cary, Crabb Robinson, Dibdin, Dyce, Barron Field, and Elton. In his first five years of business, books by these friends of Lamb represented more than 60 percent of Moxon's total output. Moxon noted in his Memoir that Lamb was not a man of business; yet the assiduity of his attention to the young man's interests, the shrewdness, the common sense of his advice, the comment on books which Moxon issued, and his help on the Englishman's Magazine prove that he was at least a valuable counselor to a man who did have business ability. As the result of a fall, Charles Lamb died on December 27,1834, "murmuring the names of Moxon, Procter, and some other old friends" who apparently were to be invited to partake with him of a turkey recently sent him.22 Mary Lamb immediately became ill and remained so for a long period.23 Talfourd and Ryle, Lamb's friend of clerking days, were the executors of his estate, all of which was left in trust for his sister during her lifetime. Upon her death the estate was to go to Emma Isola Moxon. Few friends attended the funeral—only Moxon, Talfourd, Ryle, Hood, Allsop, and friends at the India House. Articles upon his character and writing were published by Procter in the Athenaeum, by Forster in the New Monthly, by Patmore in the Court Magazine, by Moxon in Leigh Hunt's London Journal. There were many anonymous notices. Moxon immediately set himself to the task of issuing a life and works of his friend. He assured Robinson that there would be a complete edition of Lamb's works "like those of Lord Byron and Crabbe." 24 But none was published. Earlier he had published the essayist's prose works in three volumes at twenty-seven shillings and sixpence; soon after Lamb's death he advertised the three 22 23 24

Talfourd's account. Quoted in Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb, II, 831. Robinson, unpublished diaries, February 16, 1835. In Dr. Williams's Library. Ibid., January, 1835.

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volumes "reduced to eighteen shillings." The Prose Works in four volumes appeared in 1839. Also, in June of 1835 he reprinted Specimens of the Dramatic Poets, formerly published by the Longmans Company in 1808 and negotiated for but not published by John Murray in 1830. Lamb had revised the edition and added from Hone's Table Book the Garrick extracts; it was this collection that Moxon published. A second edition was demanded in 1854. The third Lamb publication of 1835 was Rosamund Gray; Recollections of Christ's Hospital . . . which had been originally published by Lee and Hurst in 1798 and which Moxon reprinted a second and a third time in 1841 and 1849, respectively. Only a few weeks after Lamb's death Moxon issued for private distribution his memorial essay, which, in spite of sentimentality, classical allusions, the use of the second person singular, and many exclamation marks, is in passages not only eloquent but also touchingly sincere.23 Because of the scores of times he had visited in the Lamb household, he wrote familiarly of small, homely details— "tripe and cowheel were to him delicacies," "relics and keepsakes had no charm for him," "he could not pack up a trunk nor tie up a parcel." Of all the men he knew Lamb was "in every respect, the most original, and had the kindest heart." Moxon himself at first considered writing the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb together, as a letter of Barron Field to H. C. Robinson on February 16, 1835, states, I shall send him [Moxon] my letters. . . . Southey would make the best Editor. I should make the next best. But I think Moxon will do very well. I know Lamb had been long feeding him with materials and letters for his life. . . . Talfourd has too much to do and would write too fine. But heaven preserve us from a monster of the name of Forster! 26

What Field meant by "fine writing" is seen in this sentence of Talfourd's: Lamb lived "along the gold fibres of affection by which 25 Copy in the British Museum. Lucas prints a few paragraphs from it in his Life of Charles Lamb, II, 802-3. 26 Among Crabb Robinson's letters, 1834-35, in Dr. Williams's Library, London. Lucas quotes it in his Life of Charles Lamb.

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the Brotherhood of man was bound together." 27 Yet when the life and letters of Lamb appeared, Talfourd was the author. Moxon, among others, supplied Talfourd with much material. Throughout the year of 1835 he was indefatigable in collecting letters from Elia's friends. Even before Lamb's death Barron Field had seen "in Dover Street" letters from "Coleridge, Rogers, etc." On the seventh of January, 1835, Moxon informed Wordsworth of the death of their friend; the poet answered five days later: We can all under my roof sympathize with your heavy loss and Mrs. Moxon.—You allude to his letters—I agree with you they must be valuable. Unfortunately we possess very few. Much the most interesting one we ever received unaccountably disappeared within a day after its arrival.28

Moxon had written earlier to Southey, who replied on December 31, 1834: his letters "will form a most delightful collection, when the time comes for publishing them." 29 In 1837, more than two years after the essayist's death, appeared, then, Talfourd's Letters, with Life, of Charles Lamb, in two volumes at a guinea. " T : has showed great judgment," Robinson noted in his diary, August 12, "in the veil he has thrown over what ought not to be too palpable and intelligible." Southey thought "the book must be purely delightful to every one, the very few excepted to whom it must needs recall melancholy recollections." 3 0 In his Preface Talfourd wrote: The reader's gratitude for the pleasure which he will derive from these memorials of one of the most delightful of English writers, is wholly due to his correspondents . . . and to Mr. Moxon, by whose interest and zeal they have been chiefly collected. . . . Of the few additional facts of Lamb's history the chief have been supplied by Mr. Moxon, in whose welfare he took a most affectionate interest to the close of his life; and who had devoted some delightful sonnets to his memory. 27

Quoted in Redding, Fifty Years' Recollections, Literary and Personal, II, 141. "In the Castle near Penrith." Wordsworth to Moxon, H. L. 2090. 29 Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, edited by J. W. Warter, IV, 394. 30 The Life and Correspondence of Robert W. Southey, edited by his son, the Rev. C. C. Southey, p. 335. 28

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To his requests for Lamb materials Moxon received wholehearted response except from Wordsworth. The poet dreaded publicity of personal matters ; yet he sent such a selection as appeared "not unfit for immediate publication," with the suggestion that certain parts had better be omitted. 31 It was perhaps Wordsworth's reluctance which occasioned this note in Talfourd's Preface: I do not think the reader will complain that—with some very slight exceptions, which personal consideration still render necessary—I have made him a partaker of all the epistolary treasures which the generosity of Lamb's correspondents placed at Mr. Moxon's disposal.

Talfourd began the labor of writing the life and editing the letters in 1835. Robinson noted in his diary, February 5, 1836, that "the work of Talfourd is going on as it ought." He also left a picture of three friends of Lamb's toiling over the letters, the task undertaken at Wordsworth's earnest request: Went to Serjeaunt Talfourd's with whom Moxon and I dined. The evening till past 12 was spent in looking over Lamb's letters to Wordsworth and when they were gone L's letters to Manning which letters are the very best but they require a sedulous sifting. W : is very particular and has noticed as doubtful what appeared to us unexceptionable and we were frequently embarrassed and finally I daresay W: will be dissatisfied as he will be very angry at several things in the correspondence published by Alsop which I have now finished.32

When Robinson was at Rydal Mount, five days later, for a sixweek visit, he went over the letters which Wordsworth had withheld. They did appear, but only after careful selection and editing, in the 1848 edition of Talfourd's collection. Crabb Robinson also approached Joseph Cottle, in September, 1836, for Lamb letters—"so I went begging for Talfourd." 33 Cottle found none but agreed, if he later found any, to send them to the editor. He did discover pictures of Wordsworth, Coleridge, 31

Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb, II, 832. Correspondence of H. C. Robinson with the Wordsworth ber 20, 1835. 33 Correspondence of H. C. Robinson with the Wordsworth ber 16, 1835. 32

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and Southey, "a very pleasing" picture of Lamb, in quest of which Robinson later sent. An interesting unpublished letter from Moxon to W. Wilson, Lamb's "fellow-Tea-Journalist," and editor of Defoe, reveals Moxon's tact and generosity in this mission: Many thanks, My dear Sir, for your very interesting Recollections of our poor friend. In return I beg your acceptance of a set of his works, also of a little volume of my own in which you will find some mention of him. Mr. Talfourd informs me that he wrote to you yesterday. The letters, which I have collected from almost every quarter, will form the principal feature in the Life Mr. Talfourd had kindly undertaken to write. If the few you have by you are not of too private and [ . . . ? ] I should be glad if you would favour me with them. They should be carefully returned to you. I hope to see Miss Lamb in the course of a few days when I will not forget to read to her your kind letter. She is still at Edmonton. Mrs. Moxon begs to be kindly remembered to you. With best wishes, believe me, dear sir, Yours very truly, Edwd. Moxon.34 Robinson had Southey meet Talfourd, January 25, 1837, to discuss the intended publication of the letters: they concurred in thinking it on the whole to be wished that the publication could be postponed till Miss Lamb's death— But that can hardly be, as the engagement to Moxon, or at least the understanding between them is that an early publication should take place.35 For nearly a year after Lamb's death there had been discussion about the writing of his life, the publishing of his letters, and the placing of a memorial to him. In November, 1835, Mary Lamb, Moxon, the executors, and possibly other friends decided to ask Wordsworth for lines to be cut on Lamb's tombstone. The poet sent 132 lines, quite unfitted for their purpose, as he surmised they might be. A week or two later he sent Moxon "an Epitaph volunteered for Ch. Lamb by the son of his old friend Charles Lloyd," to whom he had shown his own verses: "Mr. Owen Li's verses are not without merit and would be read with pleasure in many a church or ch. yd.—but they are scarcely good or characteristic for 34 35

In the Bodleian Library. Bodleian, 25445 f 213, August 26, 1836. Unpublished diaries, under that date. In Dr. Williams's Library, London.

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36

the subject." In the same letter he stated that he had also shown his verses to Hartley Coleridge and asked him "to try his powers." With the letter he enclosed a copy of "a Newcastle Journal" with some of his lines "suggested by the Death of the Ettrick Shepherd" which grandly mentioned both Lamb and Coleridge. Eventually H. F. Cary wrote the twelve lines which were cut on the stone at the graves of Charles and Mary Lamb. 37 The attention of Edward and Emma Moxon to Mary Lamb during the twelve-and-a-half years following her brother's death was faithful. She was not urged to live with them, for she could not have endured a household of so many children or such an active social life. They did not need to supply her wants, for the estate Charles left was, according to Procter, who drew up his will, two thousand pounds, and out of the East India House Clerk's Fund she was allowed, in March, 1835, a hundred and twenty pounds a year. 38 Crabb Robinson's diary 39 is a source of information about Mary's last years. In it there is only one suggestion of lack of attention by the Moxons: Robinson found Moxon, when he called upon him in February, 1837, "troubled by an intimation made him by Rogers that Talfourd thought him inattentive to Miss Lamb." Fortunately, in the evening of that same day Talfourd called on Robinson, was told of Moxon's feeling, and, being sorry, left a few lines that would be some relief to Moxon. Two days later Robinson called on Moxon and gave him Talfourd's note. Thereupon "M: was appeased" and wrote a conciliatory answer. Several notes indicate that Edward Moxon kept a careful eye on Mary Lamb's condition and comfort. For instance, on the seventh of January, 1835, Moxon gave Robinson "a very unfavor36 Wordsworth to Moxon (December 6, 1835), in Huntington Library, numbered H.L. 2093. 37 Quoted in King, The Translator of Dante, the Life of Henry Francis Cary, p. 254. 38 In Crabb Robinson's unpublished diaries, II, 207. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 39 All further references in this chapter, unless otherwise noted, are from the original pages of the Robinson diary in Dr. Williams's Library, London.

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able account of the people with whom Miss L: is. She ought to remove to Miss James." About five weeks later, 16th February, Moxon told him that she still had not quite recovered and "bares [sic] her loss with unexpected composure. She expressed her wish to live in town, if she had the means and M: informed her of what I had said and assured her she would not be suffered to want for anything." On the evening of December third he went to Moxon's and found Mary Lamb there: "She was very comfortable—not in high spirits—but calm, and seemed to enjoy the sight of so many old friends. There were Cary, Allsop, and Miss James." 40 On February 5, 1836, calling at Moxon's, Robinson had "a sad account of Mary Lamb," who was still at Edmonton, and three months later, when Landor and he called, Moxon reported Miss Lamb's inclination to come to London, "at which he rejoices." Early in November he "went to Moxon and made arrangements with him for his endeavoring to get Miss Lamb to come here [London] on Wednesday with the hope that she may be induced to go to Miss James." 41 Mary Lamb must have been obdurate, for ten months later, August, 1837, she was still in Edmonton. Two years later Robinson visited her there. In 1841 she was moved to the house of Miss James's married sister, Mrs. Parsons, and there, surrounded by the Lamb books, in pleasant rooms overlooking a garden, she lived for six years, visited, when she was not ill, by her friends: Barron Field, Mr. and Mrs. Kenney, Tom Hood, "Little Miss Kelly," Godwin, Robinson, the Moxons, and others. They sent her gifts, as they had been accustomed to do when Charles was alive, and the Moxons evidently looked after the acknowledgments: "I thought Mr. Moxon had written to thank you—the turkeys and nice apples came yesterday." 42 Mary Lamb died in May, 1847, and was buried beside her brother in the Edmonton cemetery. The Robinson diary for May 28 contains an account: 40

Quoted by Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb, II, 842. The italics are mine. The words indicate some of the difficulty with which the Moxons met in caring for Mary Lamb. 42 Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 1006. 41

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I attended dear Mary Lamb's funeral. A coach fetched me in which were Talfourd and Forster. We were driven to St. Johns Wood where we found Moxon, Ryal [sic], and Martin Burney, and after taking some refreshment drove to the Enfield Churchyard [sic] and on the road the second carriage was filled by Alsop and an uninvited stranger who volunteered to join us, Moxon, the man who built the Commercial Hall in Threadneedle Street, a shy man who would not join us when we went to Lamb's old house, where a cold luncheon was provided for us . . . Martin Burney shed tears and uttered extravagancies . . . Talfourd it is understood will now relate the whole history of the death of her mother. It is to be regretted that no accounts of Emma Isola Moxon's attention to Mary Lamb exist. Edward Moxon wrote lines upon the death of Charles which tenderly express Mary's affection for her brother and Edward's for Mary: His only mate is now the minstrel lark, Who chants her morning music o'er his bed, Save she who comes each evening, ere the bark Of watch-dog gathers drowsy folds, to shed A sister's tears. Kind Heaven, upon her head Do thou in dove-like guise thy spirit pour, And in her aged path some flowerets spread Of earthly joy, should Time for her in store Have weary days and nights, ere she shall greet Him whom she longs in Paradise to meet. Upon Mary Lamb's death Talfourd began a new volume on Charles Lamb. It appeared in June or July of 1848 as Final Memorials of Charles Lamb. Moxon and others had collected new letters, especially those formerly withheld by Wordsworth. Mrs. Wordsworth entrusted them to Robinson on one of his regular Christmas visits at Rydal Mount. He examined them carefully and took them to Talfourd, who decided to use all of them. Robinson was apprehensive that the decision might not please Wordsworth. It did not; for the poet, to the editor's chagrin, took no notice of the dedication of the volume to him. Moxon and Robinson agreed that the account of Wainewright ("Janus Weathercock") was "a [72]

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blotch and stain on the book." The reviews of it were favorable, although critical of Talfourd's style. Moxon was eager to keep Lamb's writings before the public and of course to make them pay. He printed or reprinted after Lamb's death seven books by or about him which demanded, by 1850, eight reprintings. This record does not indicate a lively sale. It is safe to state that he made very little money out of Lamb's writings. The story of the ten years of friendship between Moxon and Lamb, although bound up with business, is one not of money-making but of the delightful companionship of a man in the fifties and a man in the thirties. Upon Mary's death, Lamb's library came into the hands of Moxon. Instead of cherishing it, he sold it in 1846 to Bartlett and Welford, booksellers, Astor House, New York City. This action brought condemnation upon him. Mr. Lucas quotes 43 from the Dibdin Club pamphlet the most nearly complete account of the transaction: Moxon selected upwards of sixty volumes from the mass as worthy of presentation [preservation?] because of the notes & c, which they contained, by Lamb and his friends, and then destroyed the remainder of the library. Charles Welford, then of the firm of Bartlett and Welford, an intimate friend of Moxon's, on learning that the collection was to be sold, induced Moxon to let him carry off the prize to America. The books were brought to this country early in 1848, and were placed on exhibition in the store of Bartlett and Welford at Nos. 2 and 4 Barclay Street, in Astor House, New York. There they were sold, piecemeal, to many admirers of the "gentle Elia," who had come from California and Oregon as well as from Eastern States, and from Labrador to Mexico. Mr. Lucas comments, It is melancholy to reflect that Moxon's curious willingness for Lamb's books to leave this country should have lost us so valuable a possession. His behaviour will probably ever remain a mystery. . . . Thomas Westwood, who had learned to love literature from Lamb's shelves wrote, "I have been told that his books were sold to the Yankees, Oh, 43

I n his Life of Charles

Lamb.

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pity! Oh, shame! They should have been held in honour and charge by some Londoner who was a London lover—a haunter of the old streets and bookstalls." 44 Percy Fitzgerald makes the excuse for Moxon's action that he was duped, an account that sounds improbable. Sometime before Mr. Moxon's death, a "sharp" gentleman of that country talked to him of the idolatry with which Lamb's memory and writings were regarded in this country, and persuaded the publisher that no greater homage could be paid to that memory than to allow these relics to pass into their custody. On which specious representation the books were actually sent, and are now in some library in America. The library was sold just at the time when Final Memorials of Charles Lamb was being put before the public. Moxon's knowledge of the value of the books and his long friendship with Lamb should have kept him from letting them out of his hands. He must have consulted his wife on such a matter, and her willingness, too, is difficult to understand. It may be that interest in Lamb's writings in England at the time was slight and that Moxon believed there was American enthusiasm for them. With all of Rogers's help, with all of his own quiet, persistent purpose, without familiarity with the Lambs, Edward Moxon would probably have become simply another publisher rather than "kind, gentle Edward Moxon" who published the best poetry of his day and was the friend of men of large spirit. 44 Lucas lists Lamb's book in his Life of Charles Lamb. The books were sold in America by Bartlett and Welford and then regathered and auctioned on October 21, 1848. See the pamphlet, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb.

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A L T H O U G H Edward Moxon published until April, 1858, after 1835 he added no new names to his list of authors whose work was significant and was issued steadily. Elizabeth Barrett came to him in 1844 but deserted him two years later when her husband left him. In the same year Coventry Patmore put out his first volume of verse with Moxon and was unhappy in the experience. Harriet Martineau came to him in 1839 upon the recommendation of Samuel Rogers, and for nine years had profitable business with him, leaving him through no dissatisfaction. Her writings were largely journalistic. Later than 1835 Moxon published Shelley and Keats, Joanna Baillie and Longfellow. The first two will be considered later, since the editions of their writings were a service to literature. On the whole, then, the first six years of Moxon's publishing set the tone of his house, established his policies, and gathered to him his important authors. The year 1835 is notable for the publishing of the first of a long series of Coleridge's writings, for the first collected edition of the poems of Thomas Campbell, for Moxon's first printing for Robert Browning, and, finally, for the business relationship of fifteen years with Wordsworth. It was a full year, for during it appeared, in addition to books by these writers, Cornwall's life of Edmund Kean, three of Lamb's works, Talfourd's Ion, Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir James Mackintosh, Rogers's Poetical Works in a cheap edition, R. C. Trench's Story of Justin, Martyr, and Other Poems, Mrs. Sarah Lee's Stories of Strange Lands, and Pringle's Residence in South Africa. About half the writings are poetry; Moxon's interest in drama and his smoldering concern in public matters are also represented, and a later fairly strong inclination toward the publishing of travel narratives is foreshadowed. The tone of the house of Moxon had been set by the expensive editions of Rogers's writings and by the Lamb publications. Cur-

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wen, too exaggeratedly, but with some truth, asserts that to have been a protégé of Lamb "was a passport into all literary society." So, also, to be known as a friend of Southey, Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, and Rogers. To write poems oneself and to issue them in handsome volumes was a distinction. Leigh Hunt early wrote of Moxon as a bookseller among poets and a poet among booksellers. To have the right people frequent one's shop was good for one's reputation. Later Mr. and Mrs. Moxon were often hosts in their home to Wordsworth, poet laureate, and to Tennyson, both when he was becoming famous and later when he was the laureate. "On getting home," wrote Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, "I found letters and letters—the best being a summons to meet Tennyson at Moxon's on Tuesday." Present at the gathering was also "Keats' Severn." 1 At the time of his death it was recalled that Moxon was "the genial cicerone of many of the transatlantic admirers" of Rogers, Lamb, and Tennyson. 2 The old poet Thomas Campbell spent hours in the Moxon shop. When Browning asked the proprietor who it was in a drowse over the fire, "Very likely Campbell," Moxon replied, "he does not know where to go to kill time, and we take no notice of him." 3 Moxon had a warm admiration of genius.4 "Kind," "tasteful," "genial" are other words used descriptively concerning his nature. After announcing himself as a publisher Moxon was successful in a remarkably short while in establishing confidence in his judgment of literary values and in his taste in printing, formats, and bindings. "No one knows better how to get up a book," wrote Southey to him in 1835, and Southey was an experienced man in such matters. The type in Moxon books was clear-cut and well spaced, even in cheap editions with double-columned pages. The title pages were simple and dignified, usually without rulings or ornaments. The binding was simple but elegant for his more ex1

The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, 1845-1846, II, 143, ISO, May 11, 13, 1846. 2 H. T. Tuckerman, quoted in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, under "Moxon, Edward," II, 1383. 3 Browning to Domett, March 5, 1843, in Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, edited by F. G. Kenyon, p. 52. 4 The phrase is Curwen's in A History of Booksellers, p. 357

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pensive books, and simple and substantial for his cheaper ones. Allibone's Dictionary of Authors states of Moxon that he was "deservedly commended for the excellent style" in which he "got up" his authors. Sidney Lee 5 wrote of Croker's unfair depreciation, in his Edinburgh Review attack on Moxon, of "the neatness and the delicacy in external details that characterized all Moxon's publications." And Curwen notes that all the volumes he issued "were indeed remarkable for the beautiful manner in which they were 'got u p . ' " 6 Today one need only handle a Moxon book to realize the care and taste of the publisher and his thoughtfulness of the reader. Moxon's advertising policy was formed early and did not change throughout his business life. He advertised little and used small space. The advertisements were brief and in excellent taste: even the fastidious Browning was moved to remark on their good taste. 7 This policy does not vary from the usual procedure of publishers then and now. Moxon's business was the publication of poetry, which has seldom been elaborately advertised. Had he been a seller of popular fiction, like Colburn, his advertising policy might have been different. From the beginning he used the Athenaeum consistently as a medium, partly because that weekly circulated among the class of readers he wished to interest and partly out of friend5

"Moxon, Edward," in D.N.B. Op. cit., p. 353. I have found only t w o complaints of M o x o n printing; one was Arthur Hallam's, which scored his article on Tennyson in the August issue of the Englishman's Magazine as "so execrably printed that every line contains an error, and those not always palpable." Autobiography and Letters of Dean Merivale, edited by his Daughter, p. 160. The other was Crabb Robinson's (unpublished diaries, Vol. X V I , March 30, 1836. In Dr. Williams's Library, L o n d o n ) : "A call from Moxon with the new edition of Wordsworth's last volume. The worst printed book that ever came from the press." This must have been the first volume of the six-volume edition that Moxon published in 1836-7. The first t w o volumes were published in 1836. Harper states that the Wordsworth family spent eight months revising poems and correcting proof for this edition. 7 "All your advertisements are in such good taste . . ." Robert Browning to E d ward Moxon, February 24, 1847. Letters from Robert Browning to Various Correspondents, edited by T. J. Wise, Vol. I. Moxon's first advertisement in the Athenaeum (July 17, 1830) shows his standard form: Just published, price 7s. e

Album Verses, The Wife's Trial, and Other Poems by Charles Lamb London, Edward Moxon, 64, N e w Bond Street

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ship for the editor, C. W. Dilke, whom he had come to know through Lamb. Rogers's Italy, to consider a specific book, was advertised in the Athenaeum, issues of May 21, August 13, November 5, November 19, and December 17 of 1831. He also used space in Hunt's London Journal, possibly for the same reasons, and of course in the Times. In Notes and Queries for 1845-50 thirteen of the better-known publishers advertised and many of the less-known, but Moxon is not among them. Moxon used the same copy repeatedly, either believing in the effectiveness of repetition or not esteeming advertising sufficiently to change the copy. Moxon valued social talk, business reputation, and reviews much more highly than advertising. "A review," he wrote to Wordsworth in 1842, "even with a sprinkling of abuse in it, is, in my opinion, worth a hundred advertisements." 8 When he was making a preliminary estimate for the publication of Wordsworth's poems in six volumes, 1836-37, he figured only twenty pounds for advertising. Writing to Wordsworth in January, 1839, he noted in mild protest that on that same publication one hundred and twenty pounds had already been spent in advertising.9 A year later, when projecting a one-volume edition of Wordsworth's poems, he placed in the estimate of expense only forty pounds for advertising.10 His principal reliance for publicity was upon notices of his publications on the flyleaves of books issued by himself. Usually he ran four or eight pages of notices at the back of books, as one sees in his Poems by Aljred Tennyson (1833), Last Essays of Elia (1834), Poetical Works of Shelley (1833), and other volumes. The eightpage advertisements form a compact catalogue of his recent publications.11 8

Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq.

sIbid.

10

11

Ibid.

On the eight pages at the back of the 1843 edition of his o w n Sonnets he classifies his publications under the headings, "Dramatic Library (editions of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Jonson, Massinger and Ford, Wycherly, Congreve and Farquhar); Rogers's Poems (3 issues); Shelley's Works (3 issues); Charles Lamb's Works (2 issues); Disraeli's Works (3 issues) ; Chaucer (Tyrwhitt) and Spenser (2 issues); Miscellaneous (18 volumes) ; Poetry (15 volumes—Tennyson, Milne, Hanmer, Trench, Browning, Leigh, Cary, Sterling); cheap editions of Popular Works (many titles)."

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This attitude differed from that of other publishers. Constable, who, of course, had a wider variety of books to offer, expressed his belief in 1835 that "advertisements in the ordinary way in newspapers, you may depend upon it always pay. You may think otherwise and be told otherwise; but I say—advertise judiciously and you will never fail to reap the benefit." 12 Colburn, publisher of popular novels, "was a prophet of the modern spirit and his advertisements were at once the scandal and the admiration of the literary world. Around 1830 he was spending, on an average, £9000 a year on them." 13 Thomas Frognall Dibdin noted in his Reminiscences, in 1836, that "in eighteen months the firm of Longmans spent not less than four hundred pounds in Advertisements" on the six volumes of his Sunday Library, "and upward of 200 copies of the same were gratuitously distributed to the Proprietors and Editors of Newspapers and Critical Journals . . . To give notoriety to the fact of publication, throughout this ever-agitated empire, is no trifling effort; and is attended by no mean expense." 14 The lives of Scott and Byron, and of the publishers Murray, Constable, Blackwood give evidence of publishers' belief in advertising and instances of the large sums they expended. In 1806 John Murray expressed to Constable his confidence in it: It is inconceivable how effectually the continued advertising of a book long previous to publication operates upon people in the country, and upon the booksellers, who, having heard the book mentioned, and having received orders for it, subscribe voraciously; and, indeed, it occasions many people to order or buy the book immediately, who would otherwise have waited for the opinion of their Review, and, had this proved cold or unfavorable, would not have been purchasers. The nature of Moxon's business did not require extensive advertising; even so, his purse was very narrowly open to that form of publicity. Yet he expected his books to receive reviews, and they did, in the very journals he was meagerly patronizing. When Wordsworth 15 refused to have review copies of his works sent to 12 13 15

Constable, Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents, II, 341. 14 Collins, op. cit., p. 192. Dibdin, Reminiscences of a Literary Life, II, 862. See chapter "Moxon and Wordsworth."

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the journals Moxon was "not certain" they were "acting wisely" in deviating from the usual custom, especially as they could not "prevent parties from purchasing the book and noticing it." 16 "Besides," he added, "we shall be obliged in order to make the volume known, to spend more money on advertising it." This attitude was habitual with him. 17 Browning complained of his slowness, his lack of advertising, his lack of enterprise: "If one of his books can only contrive to pay its expenses, you may be sure that a more enterprising brother of the craft would have sent it into a second or third edition." 18 I t should be noted, however, that when Moxon had more salable material than the dramatic pieces of the "Bells and Pomegranates" series he was less slothful. The relations between him and Harriet Martineau, for example, reveal an alert business man. Still, on the whole Moxon preferred to move slowly and to be known as conservative and reliable. M a n y of Moxon's books received not only a "sprinkling of abuse," but a whole magazine article of it. His own sonnets, for instance, Dyce's Rogers's Table Talk, Lamb's Album Verses, Browning's poems, the forged Shelley letters, of course, and many another of his publications were abused. Moxon kept a scrapbook of notices, amused, as who could help being, by them. " M y publisher and I had fairly to laugh," Browning was entertaining Elizabeth Barrett, " a t his 'Book'—in which he was used to paste extracts from newspapers and the like—seeing that, out of a long string of notices, one vied with its predecessor in disgust at my 'rubbish,' as their word went." 19 Yet generally Moxon's discrimination was such as to elicit favorable reviews of his books. All the Tennyson volumes after 1842, Moxon's carefully edited reprints of the old dramatists, and the Coleridge volumes, for example, were 16

Letter of April 9,1842, in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. It must be remembered that at this time and until 1853 the government tax on advertisements was heavy. A tax of three shillings sixpence, "nearly one-half of the charge on the advertising," was laid on "the smallest advertisement" in a newspaper. Babbage, On the Economics of Machinery and Manufacture, 3 ed., p. 209. The advertisement tax in 1830 yielded the government 155,000 pounds revenue. Westminster Review, Vol. XIII, April, 1830, p. 417. 18 Letters of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, II, 485, Robert to Elizabeth, August 28, 1846. 19 Ibid., I, 322, December 9, 1845. 17

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appreciated by the reviewers. Several of his books, too, one must remember, like the Shelley volumes, were in his day debatable ones which could not command universally favorable comment. Moxon held no illusions about how reviews were obtained or why they were or were not favorable or what was their literary value. All publishers, of course, watched the reviews of their books, and many publishers arranged for their appearance. "The Chronicle review was through Moxon, I believe," Browning wrote Elizabeth Barrett. 2 0 "Landor had sent the verses to Forster at the same time as to me, yet they do not appear." Forster, himself a reviewer, was in position to obtain reviews for books. Moxon undoubtedly owed much to his friendly influence. Saunders, of Saunders and Otley, once invited Harriet Martineau into his back parlor to "write notes to friends and acquaintances connected with periodicals, to request favorable notices" of her book—"It is the universal practice, I believe," he assured her. 2 1 Browning recounted to Elizabeth Barrett, Moxon's remarks concerning how badly critics were paid: "How should they be at the trouble," the publisher asked, "of reading any difficult book so as to review it—Landor, for instance?" Moxon gave him a particular instance: A friend of my own has promised to write a notice in the Times—but he complains bitterly,—he shall have to read the book, he can do no less,—and all for five or ten pounds! All which Moxon quite seemed to understand—"It will really take him some three or four mornings to read enough of Landor to be able to do anything effectually." I asked if there had been any notices of the Book [number VIII of Bells and Pomegranates] already—"Just so many," he said, "as Forster had the power of getting done." In the same conversation it was noted that a M r . White had written a play "the poorest stuff imaginable," yet it was immediately reviewed in Blackwood's "because," continued Moxon, "he is a Blackwood reviewer, and may do the like good turn to any of the confraternity." 22 20

Letters of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, p. 297, November 24, 1845. Harriet Martineau, Autobiography, with Memorials by Maria Weston man, I, 404. 22 Letters of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, II, 342. 21

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Moxon loved to travel. Travel books had for many years proved profitable business for British publishers. The Empire during the 'thirties and 'forties was growing so fast that Britishers needed to learn quickly about many of the world's countries. In the midnineteenth century even comparatively near regions were with difficulty accessible, either by journey or by quick mechanical report. The impressions of travelers were therefore eagerly welcomed. After Scott's collapse and Byron's wane in popularity John Murray pushed his travel books. It was therefore natural for Moxon, who kept an eye on the established publishers as well as on the public, to turn to travel books for income. He published, on an average, one travel book a year. Among them were four by Basil Hall. This writer was a popular captain in the British navy who, in 1817, began writing his travels for general reading. He then issued a narrative of a trip to the coast of China and the Loo Choo Island, including an interview with Napoleon at St. Helena, which was published by John Murray. The book went through several editions and in the process acquired many additions. Moxon put out a reprint of it in 1840. For two years Hall was stationed on the west coast of South America; after his marriage to the daughter of the Spanish consul general he traveled in Spain; after retirement from the navy, in Europe and in America. Out of each of these experiences he made volumes of travel that ran through edition after edition. Of his Fragments of Voyages and Travels there were three series of three volumes each. His three volumes on travel in North America contained frank criticism of American customs that caused indignation in the United States. Catharine Sedgwick, American, in her Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home, published by Harpers in New York in 1841 and in London in the same year by Moxon, came to know Captain Hall while he lived in Portsmouth and discovered that Americans had "misunderstood" him, although he admitted that being "a seaman and a Briton" he might have been led to "unphilosophic judgments," and that it was "easy to see how, among strangers, they might betray him into some little extravagancies." 23 23 I, 14, 16, 43. Also, Elizabeth Barrett inquired of R. H. Home, on July 24, 1841: "Have you seen Miss Sedgwick's book, & heard the great tempest it has stirred up

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Another traveler whose books had been published by Murray and whom Moxon reprinted was Henry Ellis, who also wrote of China. Thomas Pringle, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, compiled a book on residence in South Africa, which Moxon published. In 1840 Moxon put out J. S. Bell's Journal of a Residence in Circassia, 1837-39, and two years later F. J. Cleveland's Narrative of Voyages and Commercial Enterprises. Monckton Milnes, after the diminishing of the family fortune, had lived as a boy abroad and in early manhood had traveled extensively in Europe. His first book recorded his tour in Greece, and, like his second, Memorials of a Residence on the Continent, included some poems. Moxon published both books. Also, he issued several volumes such as Dora Wordsworth Quillinan's Journals of a Residence in Portugal, Miss Lamont's Letters from France and Switzerland, and Mary Shelley's Rambles in Germany and Italy. These books were largely picturesque travel narratives, and were strongly personal records. They probably tided the publisher through some tight financial periods. Moxon's list of novels suggests that he published few at his own expense. He was not interested in fiction; he did not wish his house to be known for publication of it. Aside from Harriet Martineau's fiction and a reprint of Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, his list carries only six titles, half of them romance and half studies in contemporary life. The titles of the former were Monaldi, Agathonia, Sydney Morcum,24 Crabb Robinson has left a sketch of around you in London, without a Franklin to direct the lightning? She was received from America 2 or 3 years since, by certain societies, with open arms,—none ever suspecting her to be the chiel 'among them, takin' notes!' The revelation was dreadful. My friend and cousin, Mr. Kenyon—admitted to be one of the most brilliant conversers in London—fell upon the proof sheets accidentally, just half an hour previous to their publication and finding them sown thick with personalities, side by side with praises of his own agreeable wit, took courage and a pen, and 'cleansed the premises!' Afterwards he wrote across the Atlantic to explain 'the moral right' he had to his deed. For my own part . . . I am not quite clear about Mr. Kenyon's 'right.' The act was un peu fort in its heroism, and probably his American admirers may not thank him as warmly as her victims do." Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to R. H. Horne, edited by S. R. T. Mayer. 2i Monaldi, 1841, was written by an American painter, Washington Allston (17791843). Agathonia, 1844, a romance, was the forty-eighth publication of Mrs. Catherine Grace Frances Gore (1799-1861).

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the first one, which he thought "a very interesting story." The tale, he recorded, exhibits in contrast Maldura who is the victim of malignant passions— an unsuccessful poet he hated his early friend Monaldi the prosperous painter who had been accepted by the woman who rejected him. In revenge he hired an abandoned voluptuary to effect a separation between Monaldi and Rosalia—so well was his plot laid that M. stabs his innocent wife, but she convinces him of her innocence. He flies in despair and becomes a maniac—Maldura is tortured by remorse, saves Monaldi from death who recovers, but relapses into madness at Maldura's confession of his guilt. He dies a saint and Maldura too becomes a penitent and a monk.

" I t is a very painful tale," he comments, "and I do not wonder that it is not popular—Moxon says it does not sell." 25 Moxon's slight interest in fiction is shown by the fact that both Lamb and Southey recommended novels to him in vain. The studies in contemporary life were written by Lady Georgiana Fullerton, who represents in fiction the Roman Catholic spirit. 26 Her first story, Ellen Middleton, both Lord Brougham and Charles Greville had seen in manuscript and approved. "It is a very extraordinary performance," the latter recorded. 27 Gladstone reviewed the book in the English Review. Grantley Manor, also in three volumes, appeared in 1847 and was held to show advance in style and in character drawing. Lady Bird was issued in 1852. Her most popular novel Too Strange to Be True was not published by Moxon. In 1836 Samuel Sharpe, scholar of antiquities, a nephew of Samuel Rogers, took to Moxon first his Vocabulary of Egyptian Hieroglyphics and later his Early History oj Egypt from the Old Testament, Herodotus, Manetho, and the Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, offering to pay for their publication. Moxon suggested "a thin quarto of 172 pages with half-a-dozen plates," with large type 25 Unpublished diaries, Vol. XVIII, December 29, 1841. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. The punctuation is Robinson's. 26 Hugh Walker (The Literature of the Victorian Era, p. 709) states, "the High Church Spirit." But she became a Roman Catholic in 1846, soon after the publication of her first novel. 27 The Greville Memoirs, Pt. II, p. 20S and footnote, October 16, 1843.

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and ample margins, as "the only shape in which a scholar could put his work before the public." 28 In 1839 Sharpe's History of Egypt under the Ptolemies appeared in the same form, also at the author's expense, in 1840 his Egyptian Inscriptions, and in 1842 History of Egypt under the Romans. "I had pleasure," Sharpe wrote, in drawing them and pleasure in finishing my task. I print 102 copies, give away 15 to my friends, the public libraries seize 5,29 to which, however, they are quite welcome, and the rest are for sale, but I put my expectations too low to be much disappointed. M y publications are wholly my expense. But I have my satisfaction in it. It is not more expensive than keeping a saddle-horse.

In 1844, when his uncle's bank had been robbed and his financial resources had been reduced, Sharpe did "not feel rich enough to indulge" himself in "the expensive amusement of printing. . . . But fortunately Mr. Moxon, the publisher . . . proposed that I should unite the three books into one complete History of Egypt, and he offered to publish it on joint account." The volume came out in 1846. It "speedily attained some success and distinction," so that in 1851 a third edition in two volumes, about one-fourth larger, was issued.30 The fourth edition, 1859, the Moxon firm undertook entirely on its own account. 31 Beautiful printing of scholarly work by men of taste Moxon treasured, but not for financial returns. History Moxon let almost alone, but books on social subjects had attraction for him in his early years. Of solid secular history there are no books among his publications save those of Sharpe. He put out Essays toward the History of Painting, by Maria Graham (Lady Calcott) and her Histoire de France de Petit Louis, which went into a second edition. Moxon's social and political interests are best seen in the Englishman's Magazine; but he also printed, as already noted, Hampden in the Nineteenth Century and Civil War in Portugal and the Siege of Oporto. 28 29 30

Clayden, Samuel Sharpe, Egyptologist and Translator of the Bible, p. 68. Required by statute of every book from every publisher. 31 Clayden, op. cit., pp. 72, 83, 167, 168, 216. Moxon died in 1858.

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Controversial works he avoided. I t is significant of his change in attitude that all but one of his historical, social, and political publications appeared during his first six years in business. T h a t one, published anonymously, was the diarist Charles Greville's Past and Present Policy of England toward Ireland, 1845, a heated enough subject at that time. Books on religion generally sold well, but Moxon had little interest in them; he therefore published only a few, and those during his early experimental years. The first volume he put out was Parochial Sermons, 1838, by William Harness, the friend of Byron, editor of Shakespeare, and from 1826 to 1844 a popular preacher at the Regent Square Chapel, St. Pancras. The second came thirteen years later, Colloquies on Religion and Religious Education; and a third, in 1853, was Coleridge's Notes on English Divines. T h e Duke of Argyll's Ecclesiastical History oj Scotland he published in 1849. His only other publication that touched upon religion, Isaac Disraeli's Genius oj Judaism, appeared in April, 1833, anonymously. Since in it Disraeli protested against the social exclusiveness of the Jews of his own day and their obstinate adherence to superstitious practices and beliefs, 32 there was need of anonymity. With few histories on his list of publications, few religious books, no textbooks, few biographies, little fiction, practically none of the classics, no foreign books, and with the sale of poetry exceedingly slow, Moxon, one would think, must have had a difficult task to finance his business. Yet he prospered. Wordsworth once feared lest his financial stability might be weakening and wrote to Crabb Robinson to investigate. 33 Apparently the house of Moxon was stable. M a r y Shelley feared lest the expense of the law case in defense of publication of Shelley's Queen Mab should prove heavy, but the publisher did not allow her to become involved. When Moxon died he left his business in fair condition, although the list of books of his last two or three years shows a tendency to deteriorate in quality and decrease in number. This decline was owing to his failing health. Yet he left among his authors, Tenny32

"Disraeli, Isaac," in D.N.B.

33

See chapter "Moxon and Wordsworth."

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34

son, a selling line of old British dramatists, and a reputation as the poet's publisher that drew Swinburne to the firm and made possible a very popular library of poets, edited by William Michael Rossetti. Publishers generally possess some one line of books that supports their ventures in other lines. Cookbooks have been favorites, or textbooks, or Sunday school books. Moxon found one such anchor to windward in Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, 1841. a reliable reference work which, in new editions, is still in use. "The Design of the Author," the Preface to the first edition, May, 1841, states, has been to attempt the compression of the greatest body of general information that has ever appeared in a single volume, and to produce a Book of Reference whose extensive usefulness may render its possession material to every individual—in the same manner that a London Directory is indispensable, on business affairs, to a London merchant. . . . The Compiler persuades himself that the Dictionary of Dates will be received as a useful companion to all Biographical works, relating as it does, to Things as those do to persons, and affording information not included in the range or design of such publications.

The number of editions into which the book passed reveals both the author's success with his materials and its lucrativeness to the publisher. As Joseph Haydn's health was failing in 1855, Moxon engaged Benjamin Vincent to correct the press and supply continuations of the articles for the seventh edition—so states the Preface to the twelfth edition, February, 1866. The book originally contained 15,000 articles and was increased in size until in 1861 it was a volume of 762 pages. It was hailed by the Times, November 30, 1861, as the most universal book of reference in a moderate compass that we know of in the English language. . . . There is as little chance of this 34 D e V. Payen-Payne, Esq., London, told me that under his father's direction of the firm of M o x o n and Son, Tennyson's royalties during one year were £5,000. And Joseph Shaylor ( S i x t y Years a Bookman, p. 27) remembered that Enoch Arden, published in 1864, eight years after Moxon's death, had a large sale even in such a small town as Stroud—"I understand that 50,000 copies of this book were sold during the first year of its publication."

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book going out of print as of the extinction of the Postoffice Directory. . . . It has grown into an institution. The City Press, April 26, 1862, stated that "in the whole range of literature there is scarcely another volume that can be compared with it, for the value of its varied information." It is not unlikely that more than one volume of poetry over the Moxon imprint owed its appearance to the earnings of Haydn's Dictionary of Dates. These items of business policy, namely, desire for a tone of gentility, excellent printing and binding, advertising that did little more than offer in the most conservative places notice of publication, dependence upon reviews and social converse for publicity, close hold on poetry as his principal output, reveal Moxon as a conservative business man.

Chapter

7 J» T Y P I C A L R E L A T I O N S AUTHORS

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M O X O N ' S manner of dealing with authors was friendly and businesslike.1 In the notes that are preserved about him the tradesman spirit is dominant only in the brisk manner with which he presented bills. He was a selective publisher. If literary men wished to publish with his firm, he would gladly consider the worth of their writing, advise with them about type, pages, paper, binding, compute the costs, and decide whether he cared to assume the financial responsibility. His attitude became, after establishment, just about that aloof. The veteran poetess, Joanna Baillie, printed poems with him and in 1842 her Fugitive Verses. The profit on the former, about fifty-one pounds, she and her publisher split between them, but the deficit on the latter the author paid to the publisher, about fifteen pounds. 2 Moxon, recorded Browning, printed, on nine occasions, nine poems of mine, wholly at my expense; that is, he printed them and, subtracting the very moderate returns, sent me in, only, the bill of the remainder of expense. . . . Moxon was kind and civil, made no profit by me, I am sure, and never tried to help me any, he would have assured you. 3

On the other hand, Edward Moxon would have scorned such competitive bidding for an author's writings as Harriet Martineau records for the account of her American experiences. The transaction is worth examining in some detail. Upon Miss Martineau's return from America in November, 1837, three London publishers were in Liverpool awaiting her arrival—Bentley, Colburn, Saun1 See dealings with Sharpe, Milne, Hunt, Harriet Martineau, and others elsewhere in this book. 2 The Baillie family papers in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Information furnished by W. R. Le Fanu, Esq., librarian. 3 In an unpublished letter to Locker-Lampson, 1874. Quoted by E. Gosse, "Browning, Robert," in D.N.B.

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ders—who besieged her, bidding against one another for a book about the United States. First Bentley came, on strength of having met Miss Martineau previously, and "obtained entrance" to her study; then Colburn appeared with a letter of introduction from Thomas Campbell and "bided his time in the drawingroom"; finally Saunders, who had previously published her writings, arrived and was shown into her mother's parlor. The first offered "extravagant terms," throwing in an offer of 1,000 pounds for the first novel she should write. Miss Martineau refused. Saunders suggested 900 pounds for the first edition and twenty-five copies for her personal use. Miss Martineau thought the offer liberal, but she postponed decision. Colburn would not be refused, and after having been dismissed from her home he sent her a note some hours later offering 2,000 pounds on the supposition of a sale of a certain number and 1,000 pounds for her first novel and stating that he would call for an answer at ten o'clock that evening. At tea time Bentley submitted "a set of amended proposals," but was put off, and at ten Colburn was sent on his way. The book was published by Saunders and Otley. This competitive bidding, in Miss Martineau's opinion, illustrated how "the degradation of literature comes about, in times when speculating publishers try to make grasping authors, and to convert the serious function of authorship into a gambling match." 4 Moxon's spirit and methods were foreign to such action. His sense of dignified conduct doubtless played its part in keeping him the changeable Miss Martineau's publisher for the nine years during which six of her books and pamphlets were issued. In his dealings over several years with Harriet Martineau one sees Moxon's conduct. Deerbrook was her first novel. It was offered to John Murray, who, "though he had never listened to an application to publish a novel since Scott's," had told a friend he would consider a novel by her. 5 Miss Martineau thought he refused it because it was not of "the silver-fork school," the scene of it being laid in middle life and the hero being an apothecary. "People liked high life in novels," Miss Martineau commented, 4

For her own lively account see her Autobiography,

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5

Ibid., pp. 114 ff.

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and low life, and ancient life; and life of any rank presented by Dickens, in his peculiar artistic light, which is very unlike the broad daylight of actual existence, English or other, but it was not supposed that they would bear a presentment of the familiar life of every day. Moxon held no such social prejudice; and two large editions and a constant demand for her novel, even as late as 1855, confirmed his and Miss Martineau's judgment that it was a mistake to suppose the "silver-fork" portrayal necessary. The author thought the novel, indeed, to have been useful "in overcoming prejudice against the use of middle-class life in fiction." Crabb Robinson found it "a capital novel," though too full of preaching. 6 "Mr. Murray finally regretted his decision," Miss Martineau concluded. Indeed, Murray, seeing the book's success with Moxon, suggested to her the anonymous and secret publication in monthly numbers of another novel so that her writing might be "on thousands of tables" from which her name, because of the nature of her previous writing, would exclude everything published under it, which might help her to "a boundless fortune." The novelist refused, not out of loyalty to Moxon, but because she "could not adopt any method so unprincipled in an artistic sense as piecemeal publication." 7 Deerbrook appeared in the spring just before a protracted illness seized upon Miss Martineau. During it, her mind immediately and affectionately went back to the story of Toussaint l'Ouverture, which it had held in abeyance for some time. Under the title The Hour and the Man it appeared in December, 1840. Moxon, never too sanguine in temperament and by deliberate practice, it would seem, gloomy in forecasting sales to his authors, held out to her "a very poor prospect." He offered her twenty-five additional copies, both of it and of Deerbrook—"showing that he does not 6

Unpublished diaries, Vol. XVI, September 14, 1839. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 7 "Piecemeal" or monthly publication was an effort of certain publishers in the 1830's and '40's to make important writings available to people of small means. The novels of both Dickens and Thackeray were published in monthly numbers. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge carried the plan to extreme limits. Moxon engaged in it sparingly. It was also used at this time as a means of setting the novel reading public to purchase fiction rather than to obtain it from the renting libraries. In this way both author and publisher received a double profit.

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expect to sell them," she inferred. "If the book succeeds after this," she concluded, "it will be by its own merits purely." 8 Both books passed through two editions and by 1855 had been purchased from the author for a third edition. Forest and Game Law Tales, 1845, was a total financial failure; therefore, when in 1848 her book Eastern Life was ready, Miss Martineau wished to try "whether there was advantage, in point of circulation, in being published by Murray," who had agreed with her to issue it. But when Murray saw the contents he declined publication. Miss Martineau wrote to Moxon to tell him the facts of the case, and to offer him the publication, which he accepted by return post,9-"on the usual terms"; namely, that Moxon should take the risk and give the author two-thirds of the profits. Crabb Robinson noted in July of that year an article in the Christian Reformer on Harriet Martineau in which her anti-Christian suggestions were "earnestly lamented" and added, "I hope Moxon will not be a loser." 10 Evidently he was not, for the first year's proceeds from her two-thirds of the profits enabled the author to pay for her Lake country home. Moxon's third of the profit was a goodly sum. In the second edition she "declined all interest," desiring that her share of the proceeds should go to the cheapening of the book. Both Miss Martineau and Moxon were interested in lowering the prices of books. A publisher proposed to her sometime during the 1840's some sort of cheap publication; Moxon, upon consultation, had suggested that she learn the details of the offer. She made inquiry, with the result that she "dismissed the idea of the sort of cheap publication proposed." 11 "With respect for him [the other publisher] personally," she wrote to Moxon, "I doubt his power of commanding so good a circulation as you will, when the books are reduced to 6/. He thinks so too, and behaves as handsomely as you do—which is saying everything. So we will recur to our plan of a 6 / vol., if you please." The English Catalogue shows that none of her books was first published at six shillings; but in 1842 Deers 10 11

9 Autobiography, II, 157. Ibid., pp. 294-95. Unpublished diaries, Vol. X X I , July 7, 1848. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. An undated letter to Moxon in the Morgan Library, New York City.

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brook, originally put out at twenty-seven shillings, was reduced to six, in 1842 The Hour and the Man was reduced from thirty-one shillings and sixpence to six, and Eastern Life was ultimately reduced from ten and sixpence to six shillings. The practice of price reduction was then, as now, no new device for coaxing larger sales. In 1844 Miss Martineau was cured of long-standing illness by mesmerism. She found herself forced, mesmerism being then an object of public interest as well as ridicule, to publish, in the Athenaeum, some letters on her cure. 12 Moxon, seeing good business in them, wrote for and received permission to issue as a shilling pamphlet the Six Letters on Mesmerism. As he was proceeding to publish them, a lawyer who represented the magazine tried to stop the venture; but since the editor had paid nothing for the letters, Moxon, of course, was not hindered from getting out the reprint. The reception of the facts in the pamphlet was unkind, but sale of it was brisk, carrying it through three editions. The last writing of Harriet Martineau that was published by Moxon was Life in the Sickroom, 1841. The idea of the book occurred to her on the fifteenth of September, 1841, as a means of relief from mental depression; characteristically, six days later the first essay was written, and in November the last one. She wished the book to appear anonymously, not even her family knowing of its existence. Now she found it necessary to tell one person, a publisher. She addressed Moxon confidentially. On the same day he wrote to her, so that their letters crossed, asking if she were not able to supply him with a manuscript. The book came off the press during the first week in December. The whole edition was speedily sold.13 Moxon sent a copy to the Wordsworths, now neighbors to the author, but "kept his secret like a man." 14 Miss Martineau records that the publisher did his duty amply by it and me. I told him at first to say nothing to me about money, as I could not bear to think of selling such an experience. Long after, when I was in health and strength, he wrote that 12 13 14

She relates the story of this difficulty in her Autobiography, Autobiography, II, 170 ff. Correspondence of Robinson, II, 533, December 9, 1843.

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circumstances had now completely changed, and that life was again open before me; and he sent me a cheque for ¿75. On occasion of another edition, he sent me £50 more.15 However, she held some indignation against Moxon for failing to send copies to his New York agent, American friends having complained to her of inability to purchase the book.16 This account of Harriet Martineau and Moxon has revealed the publisher's fairness and courtesy, as well as his initiative and his eye to the business chance when dealing with popular materials. The 1840's were years of meager income for publishers, so that this popular writing of Miss Martineau's was a boon to Moxon. A different relationship is seen in Moxon's contacts with Robert Southey. The laureate's letter of May 31, 1830, mentions frequently having troubled the young bookseller with errands. 17 Moxon had been for some years a purveyor of messages between Lamb and Southey, and he doubtless performed book errands for the poet laureate both before and after setting up in business. The generous tone of the letter suggests cordial friendship of long standing: "I will mention you to my brother, and wherever else my goodwill and word can be of any possible use." Southey was a man who kept his word. Moxon had consulted him both about reprints of established books and about the poet's own writings. He expressed his belief, in the letter of May 31, 1830, that reprints, to succeed, "must either be very popular works, or of a religious character," and suggested "a beautiful edition of Herbert's 'Temple,' 18 with his 'Priest to the Temple,' (and Izaak Walton's life of him prefixed, and Barnabas Oley's Preface to the prose work)" as likely to sell among both the religious public and the lovers of literature. Moxon did not act on the suggestion. 15

Autobiography, II, 174. Letter in the Morgan Library, N e w York City, dated "Tynemonth, March 16th (1842)." 17 Southey to Moxon, Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, edited by his Son-in-law, J. W. Warter, Vol. IV. 18 "In 1835 Pickering began to publish editions of his works more complete than had ever before appeared." The English Works of George Herbert, edited by George Herbert Palmer, I, xiii. 16

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Eight days later, on June 8, Southey wrote Moxon about a Russian novel, Ivan Vejeeghan, translated by George Ross of Aberdeen. It was "a Russian Gil Bias, to those who wish to see a lively description of society in Poland and Russia." Moxon failed to act on this suggestion, also. On April 23 of the next year Southey proposed publication, at the author's expense, of a poem "wild, passionate, and in a high degree original" that had been put into the hands of Mr. Murray with high commendations by Mr. Washington Irving. Murray had declined the poem and so had Longmans. The poem, "Zophiel," was composed by an American lady, Mrs. Brooks, who wrote it mostly in the Island of Cuba and who called herself on the title page "Maria del Occidente." Southey thought it "by far the most original poem that this generation has produced—indeed, America has never before produced any poem to be compared with it." 10 Moxon's judgment of it ran counter to Southey's. Moxon's publication of selections from Southey's prose and poetry in separate volumes drew from the author the characteristic remark, in a letter to Moxon, dated May 3, 1833, when he judged from the publisher's silence that the books had proved an unfortunate speculation, "My day and popularity will come when I shall have said goodnight to the world." He had expected the volume to sell briskly, since a selection from Wordsworth's poems for young persons had "answered so well." Southey, supporting himself by the industry of his pen and possessed of a mind teeming with projects, made several other proposals to Moxon. The most elaborate one was an outline of "Christian Philosophy," a series of extracts from the most eminent English divines. The extracts were to make twelve volumes, to be issued in twenty-four monthly parts, an engraving of each divine, his parsonage, his parish church, "when it was worth giving," to accompany each extract; the lives of the divines, to be written by Southey "upon the scale of Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' " and to contain "a good deal relating to the literature and history of the time," were to make four additional volumes, or eight parts. 19

Southey, op. cit., VI, 233. The opinion was expressed in a letter to Lord Mahon.

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Southey set his price: six hundred pounds for each volume of 400 pages for the biographies, and compensation for making the extracts such as Moxon's judgment suggested, "either a sum, or a contingent profit." 20 Although Moxon had prospered in his two years and a half of publishing, a project so ambitious was beyond his financial ability; yet he considered the proposal seriously, as is shown in a letter of Southey's to him under date of October 5, 1833. The publisher suggested that the biographies be placed with the extracts rather than in separate volumes, sent a specimen page, which elicited Southey's praise though not his complete approval, and urged speed in the work. Southey, however, was not to be pushed; he felt that haste would force him to make summaries of the lives, giving the appearance of "a mere matter of trade speculation." Instead, he considered this work "a sure means of doing some good." 21 He felt confident that if such a plan should be executed as designed it could not "but be of great use." 22 He had so much work on hand, however, that he could not possibly start the new task "till the commencement of the year after next." 23 Such delay was far from Moxon's interest. In 1833 Moxon wrote him that two divines, Cattermole and Stebbing, were engaged upon a similar project. 24 Since they were to publish entire works, whereas he proposed extracts and since rather than the "biographical history of a branch of English literature" which he proposed, they were to make biography "a trifling feature," Southey thought that their bulky publication would not materially affect his project—"I shall continue, therefore, to make notes and collect materials." This was in January of 1834. He was still collecting materials in December, 1834,25 and in the course of 1835 he hoped and expected to take up the project as his "im20

T o Moxon, August 7, 1833, Warter, op. cit. T o the Hon. G. W. W. Wynn, M. P., November 17, 1833, Warter, op. cit. 22 T o the Rev. J. Miller, November 16, 1833, ibid. 23 T o Moxon, December 10, 1833, ibid. 24 It was issued by Parker and Son in thirty volumes as Sacred Classics, or Select Library of Divinity. 25 Southey, op. cit., VI, 224. 21

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mediate and main business." From the same letter, of December 10, 1834, we learn that he himself had written a life for the CattermoleStebbings publication, and that certainly he would not have done so had he thought their work likely to interfere "in the slightest degree." That Moxon from time to time proposed extracts to be included is indicated by Southey's firm note, "Watts is not an author for whom we shall have room." Moxon held his patience, apparently still interested in the project. In September, 1835, Southey was again collecting notes and materials, having already gathered much "for the 'Introductory View of the History of the Pulpit' ": "next year, if no farther calamities interrupt me, I hope to make it part of my regular occupation." 26 Moxon still waited. One hears no more of this project; but in July of 1838 nothing less than the publication of "the whole of our old ballads" had been proposed to Moxon. It would be a most desirable supplement, Southey thought, to Chalmers's and Anderson's poets "and a most precious volume in itself." Moxon promptly responded favorably, accompanying his response with a haunch of venison. The poet suggested arrangement of the ballads either by classifying them or by giving existing collections in chronological order, preferably the latter scheme. He suggested an additional selected edition to be made from the "Garlands" and from the "Broadsides." The Preface, he thought, would be "a curious chapter in literary history." Unfortunately, nothing came of this project, either. In May, 1839, Southey was engaged upon an introduction to Beaumont and Fletcher. He had not yet given up the project of the ballads, for he wrote Moxon in the same letter that it might be well "to announce our collection of Ballads & c," because another firm was seeking to forestall them; also, he possessed some materials which those publishers were "not likely even to have dreamt of." Moxon did not announce the project, probably by this time suspecting that Southey's mental grip on his work was slipping. In August he saw the poet and reported to Crabb Robinson 26

Mrs. Southey's mental derangement became serious late in 1834.

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27

Southey's loss of memory; but when writing to Wordsworth he expressed the belief of Southey's friends that with repose and an entire cessation from literary labor he would in short time "regain that which even now, I believe, only fails him occasionally." Southey died in March, 1843, without having done further literary work for Moxon or for anyone else. When Southey died Moxon naturally wished to publish literary "remains" and life and letters. He wrote to Wordsworth four days only after the laureate's death, asking him or any of his immediate friends, if consulted upon the subject of publication of Southey manuscripts, to "say a word or two" in his behalf. 28 In a letter of March 29 Wordsworth reported the situation: that Dr. Southey had declined to act as executor and that Mr. Taylor was "likely to throw much of the literary labor upon Cuthbert" the son; that when Mrs. Wordsworth had mentioned Moxon's application she had been told that Dr. Southey and Cuthbert had mentioned the name of Longman; that that very day he himself would write Cuthbert of Moxon's interest and that Cuthbert might soon be going to London where Moxon could talk with him himself.29 On April 27 he wrote Moxon that it was not likely that he, Wordsworth, would be consulted, that Dr. Southey and Mr. Taylor were the executors and that the latter would manage "the literary part," that Samuel Rogers was friendly with Mr. Taylor and might assist Moxon, that the well-known friendly disposition of Mr. Southey to Moxon as a publisher would be influential if Moxon himself would address Mr. Taylor. Whatever further effort Moxon made availed him nothing, for both the life and the correspondence came from the house of Longmans. The nature of Moxon's business arrangements with his authors varied with each author. There is clear indication of his business manner in a letter to Wordsworth, January 26, 1842, which threatened their amicable relations: 27 Robinson's report to Wordsworth of Moxon's report in Morley, op. cit., I, 392. Gordon Wordsworth, Esq., has in his possession Moxon's letter to Wordsworth of August 27, 1839, with similar report. 28 Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. 29 Wordsworth to Moxon, March 29, 1843, in the Huntington Library, numbered H.L. 2137.

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My dear Mr. Wordsworth, I am extremely sorry to differ from you, but I must again repeat that in the present wretched state of the publishing business it would in my opinion, and in the opinion of others whom I have consulted, be very unwise to print more than 2000 copies, especially as it is your intention to intersperse the poems in an edition of your works in one volume as soon as the present edition in six volumes is sold off. I enclose you an estimate of the cost, as near as it can be ascertained without the M.S., of the printing, etc. of 2000 copies, by which you will perceive that your share of the profits will amount to £260. You had better I think make sure of this sum rather than run the risk of reducing it by striking off an extra 1000, which unless you again reprint the six volumes would, I fear, remain on hand like Yarrow Revisited—Longman's second edition I mean—which I sold off the other day for tenpence a copy. I also enclose you an estimate of the cost of an additional 1000. Your share of the profits upon 3000 copies, provided that we could sell that number, would be £420. Now as it is very painful for me to oppose your wishes, I would suggest that we adopt a middle course, that is, that we print 2500, and that we divide the risk of the extra 500 between us. What say you to this? Say that you agree to it and send me up the M.S. without further delay. You will also be good enough to bear in mind that by publishing this proposed volume you will be greatly promoting the sale of the six volumes. You are quite right in your explanation of my proposal, which is that I take upon myself the entire cost of the 2000 copies, give you 25 for your own use, make out the Xmas [illegible], and hand over to you two-thirds of the profits, should there be any. I have fixed the selling price of the book at nine shillings, at which price it will be cheaper than Yarrow Revisited, which was not done up in cloth and contained only 350 pages. ever, My dear Mr. Wordsworth, Yours very faithfully, Edward Moxon P.S. Should you still incline to 3000 copies I will, in order to bring the matter to a conclusion, strike off the extra 1000, the risk being divided in proportion to the division of the profits, that is you bearing two-thirds and myself one-third.30 He was not always successful, of course, in his business relationships. One Pryme, for instance, was "very dissatisfied with Moxon," asserting that he "made extortionary demands" on a proposal to 30

The letter is in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq.

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31

print that author's poem, "Jeptha." One must know, however, that authors are sometimes embarrassingly insistent on the merits of their writings and sometimes cannot be made to understand that, however meritorious, their poems will not be profitable to a publisher. The publisher Marston in 1904 put one aspect of the matter clearly: "It is not his [the publisher's] business to set a value on the time and labour given to the work by the author, but to consider the chances of its success or failure. He makes his proposal accordingly." 32 A typical publisher's agreement of the mid-nineteenth century, known as the "half profits" arrangement, is that between Moxon and Leigh Hunt: Copy Memorandum of agreement made this first day of February 1844 between Leigh Hunt of 32 Edwards Sq. Vennington, in the County of Middlesex, Eng., of one part, and Edward Moxon of Dover St., Piccadilly, in the said county, publisher of the other part, as follows: Mr. Moxon agrees to publish a new edition of Mr. Hunt's Poetical Works to consist of 2000 copies and to be comprised in one pocket volume and the selling price to be two shillings and sixpence, the same to be printed, stereotyped, published, and advertised by and at the sole risk of Mr. Moxon. That the profits to arise from the publication of such new edition of the said book as aforesaid, after deducting and paying thereout the costs and expenses to be incurred by Mr. Moxon in printing, stereotyping, publishing, and advertising the same and all other expenses incidental thereto, shall be equally divided between Mr. Hunt and Mr. Moxon. That Mr. Moxon shall from time to time be at liberty to print and publish any further such edition or editions of the said Poetical Works (to consist of 1000 copies) as by him shall be deemed advantageous, the profits of such future edition or editions being divided as aforesaid. That Mr. Moxon shall at the end of every six months (at midsummer and Christmas) render an account to Mr. Hunt of the sale of each edition and shall thereupon pay him his share of the profits arising from the sales of such edition or editions. Leigh Hunt 3 3 31 € r a b b Robinson's unpublished diaries, Vol. X V I I , January 19, 1838. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 32 Marston, After Work: Fragments from the Workshop of an Old Publisher, p. 298. ™ B . M . 38110 f. 67.

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M O R E than once Moxon was involved in business difficulties. On each occasion he acted with decision. There was the lawsuit threatened by Taylor when Moxon printed, in 1833, Last Essays of Elia. We have already seen Lamb's concern and action in the face of this trouble; it remains to note Moxon's. When Taylor, publisher of the London Magazine at the time when some of the essays were appearing, claimed copyright in them and in March threatened an injunction, Moxon obtained from Lamb the facts of the matter and refused to recognize Taylor's rights—"No writing and no word," Lamb assured him, "ever passed between Taylor, or Hessey, and me, respecting my copyright. This I can swear. They made a vol. at their own will, and volunteer'd me a third of the profits, which came to £30, which came to Bilk, and never came back to me." 1 In the course of the correspondence Moxon, in savage humor, wrote Lamb, "If I do not cheat him, never trust me again," which drew from Lamb a letter just as fiercely humorous, "I do not know whether to admire most the wit or justness of the sentiment." 2 Iii September Taylor and Moxon were at law.3 Moxon won.4 The most severe lawsuit in which Moxon was involved came about through his publishing in 1840 the complete text of Shelley's Queen Mab. The trial of Moxon for publishing a "blasphemous libel" was held with a special jury, on June 23, 1841, in the court of the Queen's Bench before Lord Denman, the Lord Chief Justice, who was at that time and later so notably connected with suppression of the slave trade. The indictment was originally brought against Fraser and Otley, booksellers, as well as Moxon, but Moxon, as 1

Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 962. Ibid., p. 966. s it>id., p. 978. 4 According to E. V. Lucas, Life of Charles Lamb, II, 800. For Lamb's part in this difficulty see the chapter, "Moxon and Charles and Mary Lamb." 2

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the publisher, "accepted the sole responsibility." 5 There had been a series of prosecutions of publishers, several of them for blasphemy. Henry Hetherington had been convicted and sentenced to a four-month imprisonment in the Queen's Bench Prison,6 for publishing Haslam's Letters to the Clergy, in 1840. Repeatedly he was arrested or escaped arrest by disguise, and once he ably defended himself in court. According to Buxton Forman the prosecution originated among the very set who had been so largely influenced in their development by the circulation of the poem: Libel prosecutions had gone on with good success for some time when it occurred to my friend Mr. W. J. Linton that a test case might be instituted by prosecuting Mr. Moxon. There should not be one law for low booksellers of the Strand and another for the aristocratic booksellers of Dover Street. Accordingly a copy of Mrs. Shelley's second edition was purchased in order to prove the sale in the ordinary way (I have had a copy in my hands). Mr. Moxon was prosecuted for a blasphemous and seditious libel; convicted notwithstanding the eloquent and masterly defence of Talfourd, and heavily fined. Mr. Linton's party, be it recorded, having gained their point, which was to obtain a reductio ad absurdum, offered to pay the fine; but I have good reason to believe Mr. Moxon sternly refused the proffered amends.7

Mr. Richard Garnett noted that W. J. Linton, a celebrated engraver who was a Shelley enthusiast and a radical in religion and in social matters, was "especially connected with Henry Hetherington," 8 and G. J. Holyoake, who had been a close friend of Hetherington, in a biographical note on him states that it was Hetherington who brought the suit against Moxon upon the militant advice of Francis Place, "to ascertain whether the law had an equal application to gentlemen and workmen." 9 The law records show that in the trial of "The Queen against Moxon" one Thomas Holt "proved purchasing the complete edition of Shelley's works at the defendant's shop." In the cross examination Holt stated that he 5

0 J. Blackburn, in LR 3 Q.B. 374 R. v. Hicklin. Ibid. Buxton Forman, The Vicissitudes of Queen Mab, a Chapter in the History of Reform, 23 pp. 9 s "Linton, W. J.," in D.N.B. "Hetherington, Henry," in D.N.B. 7

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had made the purchase "by the direction of Mr. Hetherington," whom he understood to be the prosecutor in this case. 10 J. Blackburn believed everyone knew that "it was a prosecution instituted merely for vexation and annoyance," 11 and Sidney Lee repeated the remark; 12 but Holyoake, who stated that Moxon "was found guilty," satirically noted the "discovery" of Sergeant Talfourd, the defendant's counsel, that the power of indicting gentlemen for publishing the works of gentlemen "was a fearful engine of oppression." 13 Sidney Lee wrote of the Sergeant's speech, which Moxon published in that year, 1841, as "eloquent" and asserted that, though the judge "summed up largely in the defendant's favour," the jury found a verdict of guilty: "Moxon was ordered to come up for judgment when called upon, and received no punishment. The prosecutions against the booksellers were allowed to drop." 14 A pamphlet published in 1854, A Memoir of Mr. Justice Talfourd by a member of the Oxford Circuit, stated that "everybody knew the defendant must be convicted, and would not be punished." 15 J. A. Hamilton, in his life of Lord Denman, affirmed that Moxon "was never called up for action." 16 The State Trials also state that he was "not called up for judgment." Mary Shelley found Talfourd's speech very eloquent, and so conclusive that I wonder that the jury was not persuaded by it; they ought to have been. I suppose there was some bigotted fool among them who made them go wrong. I like some things he says about Shelley very much, and he makes out an admirable case for you. You must receive some comfort from the kind and just representation he makes of your character and position.17 During Moxon's days of publishing there was no adequate protection from piracy for an Englishman's writing in America or for an American's writing in England. Piracy was also practiced by the smaller, the provincial, and the "cellar" book dealers and 10

11 State Trials, U. S. IV, 693-722. L. R. 3 QB 374 R. v. Hicklin. 13 "Moxon, Edward," in D.N.B. "Hetherington, Henry," in D.N.B. 14 15 "Moxon, Edward," in D.N.B. Published by Butterworths, London, p. 18. 16 "Denman, Thomas, first Lord Denman," in D.N.B. 17 Wise, A Shelley Library, p. 113. This letter was later inserted in a copy of Talfourd's speech for Moxon in Queen vs. Moxon, printed by Moxon in 1841. It is dated July 16, 1841. 12

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publishers. Moxon had particular difficulty in protecting Wordsworth's poetry. In 1843 the publisher Burns got out a book, Select Pieces from Wordsworth, edited by a schoolmaster, Mr. Gough, who had obtained the poet's permission to make a selection of poems "mainly of subjects relating to this county [Westmoreland] ," as Wordsworth informed Moxon, and principally intended for circulation among his own pupils.18 But Burns overstepped the permission. Moxon acted promptly; the matter was put into the hands of a referee, and settlement was made. Earlier a pirated Paris edition had lessened the sale of Wordsworth's volumes, but in that case there had been no redress possible. In 1843, also, Chambers had asked Wordsworth for permission to make extracts from his poems, "for his sikky-paddy," 19 and Wordsworth had given it, being very careful to state that Moxon's permission must be obtained. When Chambers also overstepped, Moxon took up the matter and was given £50 as "smart money." 20 Although he was usually upright, there are, apparently, one or two instances of Moxon's close dealing. If John Chapman, writing in the Westminster Review for April, 1852, can be trusted, Moxon acted with spleen toward a London bookseller unfortunate enough to sell a copy of a pirated American edition of Haydn's Dictionary of Dates. The book had been disguised by a new title, by a new name for the editor, and by preliminary and supplementary matter: "An importer, expecting an important original work, ordered, during 1851, eleven copies. When making a catalogue last Christmas, he discovered the nature of the book and immediately erased it from the catalogue, and withdrew it from sale." Moxon, according to Chapman, "called on the importer at the beginning of February, and not finding him at home, stated to the clerk in attendance that the 'World's Progress' was mainly a reprint"; he unsuccessfully called later, but "on the seventh of February," without any previous notice, "the publisher's brother personally served the importer with a summons to answer, in the court of Chancery," for having sold copies of The World's Progress. A copy had been sold, Chapman thought, by an ignorant apprentice and 18 10

See chapter "Moxon and Wordsworth." Coleridge's word for "encyclopaedia."

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Wordsworth's phrase.

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purchased "presumably for the lawyer." The importer offered the lawyer explanation, expressed regret, and offered to meet "any legal expenses already incurred, and to remunerate the publisher"; but the lawyer paid no attention. The offender went to Moxon himself with the same offers, unsuccessfully. The injunction was moved for and granted, but finally an out-of-court settlement was made for about forty-six pounds. "Thus our boasted English law," comments Chapman, is ready at any moment to lend itself to selfish, vindictive men as an instrument of rapacious oppression, against which its innocent victims have no protection and no redress . . . The motive for using it was, we presume, the desire to secure for two brothers, the one a barrister and the other a solicitor, a little professional employment.

In spite of this account one who knows Moxon's business conduct doubts both the complete "innocence" of the importer and the simplicity of the case as they appear in Chapman's account. However, sternness was certainly an ingredient in Moxon's behavior. That Moxon was a person to be reckoned with by his fellow dealers was shown more than once. For instance, when the Booksellers' Association, in 1852, was endeavoring to enforce its regulations, Moxon is mentioned in a letter to the Times by Bickers and Bush as among the men who were standing out against the Association; "among them (those who 'protest with us by either withdrawing from the association or by refusing to join it') will be found the names of Chas. Knight, Moxon, Bentley, Orr, Chapman, and Black of Edinburgh." 21 From the very beginning of the century the booksellers had endeavored to band together for mutual benefit, principally to control prices. A fairly stable organization seemed to have been formed in 1828,22 which soon, however, dwindled into impotency. In 1848 it was reformed, and in a routine way it existed until 1850, when it prepared a new "trade ticket" carrying regulations. Espe21

April 14, 1852. Much of the material used here is to be found in Publishers and the Public; reprinted from the Times of 1852, by G. E. Wright at the Times Office, London, 1906. See also Mumby, op. cit., pp. 325-29. 22

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cially it fixed prices at which books were to be sold and discounts to be allowed. On the fourteenth of July, 1851, a committee was formed with W. Longman, a publisher, as chairman to "execute the regulations of the Association." By this time the booksellers had been fairly well differentiated from the publishers, so that two sets of interests had developed. The booksellers asserted the right to sell a book at any discount they pleased, since the books they sold had been purchased and were their property; the publishers asserted the right of control of retail prices. A controversy that raged during the year was precipitated in January, 1852. When John Chapman sold American publications at reduced prices, members of the Booksellers' Association first refused to sell books to him and later expelled him. There were at this time in and close to London 1,200 booksellers and stationers, not more than half-a-dozen or ten of whom were undersellers, according to the testimony of Sampson Low before the committee later appointed to settle the difficulty. 23 Moxon was most likely not an underseller, but he certainly sided with the "Free Traders," as they were called. The Times also stood with them: between March 30 and June 21 it published thirty-three letters or articles dealing with the controversy. By April 1 the matter had become so difficult that the committee headed by W. Longman to enforce the regulations invited Lord Campbell, the Very Rev. Dean Milman, and Mr. George Grote to decide whether the Booksellers' Association should be "carried on under its present regulations or not." In April, John Chapman reprinted from the Westminster Review an article entitled "The Commerce of Literature" and bound with it an appendix, "Letters to the Times," of March 30 and April 16, and a letter sent to the Athenaeum that had been set in type but not printed. In the last he asserted, The real cause of dispute among booksellers and publishers is not that the discounts now allowed are too great, but that the right of the booksellers to sell their own property on such terms as they respectively 23

In a hearing before Lord Campbell, Dean Milman, Mr. George Grote, on April

14, 1852.

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deem most advantageous to themselves is not acknowledged. This is the beginning and the end of the difficulty. Were the indisputable right fully accorded, publishers might be safely left to themselves to determine what amount of discount would promote most effectually the sale of their publications. Chapman also printed a report of the proceedings of a meeting consisting chiefly of authors, with Charles Dickens presiding, that was held on May 6 at Chapman's, 142 Strand, for "the purpose of hastening the removal of Trade Restrictions on the Commerce of Literature." Several resolutions were presented and carried: 1. By Charles Babbage, that the principles of free trade having now been established by experience as well as by argument . . . they ought to be applied to books, as well as to all other articles of commerce; 2. By Charles Knight, that the principles of the Booksellers' Association are not only opposed to those of free trade, but are extremely tyrannical and vexatious in their application, and result in keeping the prices of books higher than they otherwise should be, thus restricting their sale, to the great injury of authors, the public, and all connected with literature; 3. By Prof. Newman, that this meeting considers the peculiarity of the book trade, viz., that the publisher fixes and advertises the retail prices of his publications, no valid argument for the maintenance of the present restrictive system, and that the less the office of promoting the retail sale is centralized in the publisher, and the more it devolves on the local booksellers, the better for the commerce of literature. Other resolutions concerning the advantages of free trade to the book business were offered, and Charles Dickens was authorized to write a letter to the committee headed by Lord Campbell stating why the authors assembled desired to send a deputation to appear before it. The committee had held one meeting on April 14. Between this date and the second meeting J. W. Parker and Sons had printed a pamphlet entitled, The Opinions of Certain Authors on the Bookselling Question, which was the result of a canvass of about one hundred authors, including Carlyle, Dickens, Darwin, Kingsley, Lewes, Tennyson, Trench, Spencer, Mill, with this query: Cio7 ]

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If a retail bookseller, of ascertained credit and respectability; applied to your publisher for copies of any book in which you are directly or indirectly interested, which he is ready to purchase on terms at which the publisher has offered them to the trade at large, but with the avowed intention of retailing his purchases at a smaller profit than that provided for between the wholesale rate and the retail price fixed for single copies, do you consider the intention to sell at a low rate of profit a good and sufficient reason why the publisher should refuse to supply him with books which he is ready to purchase and to keep in stock at his own risk? In answers ranging from Dickens's four word "No, most certainly not," to a thousand words they were almost unanimous in the negative. Tennyson replied, " I am for free trade in the bookselling question, as in other things." His opinion doubtless strengthened Moxon's. Gladstone was so aroused that he spoke in the House in condemnation of the book trade as "a disgrace to the present state of civilization," and, according to Mr. Mumby, he "personally supplied certain nonconforming booksellers with his pamphlets on Italy, which his publisher, being a member of the Booksellers' Association, could not sell to them." 24 The judiciary committee held a second meeting on May 18, and on the following day delivered judgment "that these regulations are unreasonable and inexpedient." Said Lord Campbell, "Such regulations seem prima facie to be indefensible, and contrary to the freedom which ought to prevail in commercial transactions." 25 There was nothing left for the Association to do but dissolve, which it did on May 28, after appointing a committee of twenty-two, Moxon being one of them, "to agree upon any system for the future regulation of the trade." The committee met on May 30 and again on June 2, finally voting twelve to ten in favor of the resolutions "that the trade allowances be allowed to remain as at present without alteration." Thereupon the publishers held two meetings to consider this resolution, and themselves passed three resolutions to the effect that they had no intention of taking steps to control dealings of retail booksellers with the public and that they thought it would be possible to reduce the retail price and trade 24

Mumby, op. cit., p. 327.

25

Quoted at greater length in ibid., p. 327.

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allowances and the rate of publication "before long" although it was not at present. The committee of twenty-two then met again, but finding it impossible to do anything adjourned sine die.26 Since none of the account books kept by Moxon during his twenty-eight years of business are now to be had and no journals and few letters of Moxon's are in existence, the publisher's trade relations can be seen and inferred only from incidental materials. Moxon doubtless underwent the usual relationships—publishing in combination with other publishers, purchasing as a bookseller from other publishers, participating in trade sales, and so forth. As defendant in the Queen Mab case he stood for all the better-class publishers' rights of publication; in prosecuting literary steals and excess appropriation of materials he was again the representative of all publishers; in dealing with literary forgeries he showed the dispatch expected of any reputable publisher; 27 in resisting attempted injunctions against his publication of Lamb's and Harriet Martineau's previously published letters, he acted with decisiveness. 26 Letter to the Rt. Hon. Lord Campbell respecting the Late Enquiry into the Regulations of the Booksellers' Association, etc. Parker and Sons reprinted from Frase/s Magazine for June, 1852, the article entitled, "The Makers, Sellers, and Buyers of Books," which reviewed all proceedings and answered recent counter attacks. The matter has been a source of difficulty to the present day. 27 See chapter "Moxon and Established Writers."

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E X A M I N A T I O N of any publisher's list of authors of the nineteenth century or of today would probably reveal a preponderance of names of an older generation with only a sprinkling of names not previously tested before the public.1 Moxon's list is surprising, since at one moment examination of it inclines one to praise his business initiative in publishing unknown writers and at the next his business conservatism in holding to tested names. Among the new names are notably those of Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett, Harriet Martineau, Robert Browning, Coventry Patmore; among the older names are notably those of Shelley and Keats, Lamb, Rogers, Wordsworth, Landor, Knowles, Campbell, Leigh Hunt, and Southey. This chapter considers his contact with some of the older writers. S. T. COLERIDGE A N D

HARTLEY

COLERIDGE

Moxon knew Coleridge through Lamb. He must have learned a good deal about Coleridge while talking at the Lamb fireside. Much of the prose of Coleridge he probably did not care for, but of the poetry he had a high opinion: He made the sweetest music of them all, And when he sang nor old nor young would stir; You could not even hear the waterfall While he rehearsed that "Ancient Mariner," Or told in accents, that like manna fell, The wild and wondrous tale of Christabel.2

He would naturally be eager to reprint the writings of this friend of his friend. Two years after Coleridge's death, in 1834, he issued 1 This would be true, of course, not of the writers of one or two volumes, but of those who published steadily over a period of years. 2 From Moxon's sonnet beginning, "The muses weep around their ancient seat."

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in two volumes under the editorship of Thomas Allsop, the poet's disciple,3 Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and between that date and his own death in 1858 twelve other volumes, all edited by some member of the Coleridge family, Henry, Sara, or Derwent. In the Allsop volumes, which Leigh Hunt found lacking in good taste, 4 Moxon, solicitous of just that matter, had suppressed passages that would be offensive. Crabb Robinson informed Wordsworth, "Moxon has a book in the press about Coleridge which will contain things that you will disapprove of— But much, very much more offensive are the passages which he has been able to suppress— Had he refused publication all would have appeared." 5 A disciple is seldom the person to write with restraint and good taste of his master. Hartley Coleridge thought Allsop's publication of his father's "natural complaint" of his own delinquencies deserving "a licking." 6 The difficulty of writing about Coleridge inoffensively was great: Crabb Robinson had been reading Henry Coleridge's edition of The Literary Remains in Prose and Verse of S. T. Coleridge, the first two volumes of which Pickering had issued in that year, and he discovered that even Henry Coleridge, the son, had "not been able to steer clear of objectionable matter." 7 He looked forward anxiously to Cottle's Early Recollections, Chiefly relating to S. T. Coleridge, during His Long Residence at Bristol, which the Longmans company were to issue in 1837, but it was a comfort that Moxon had visited Cottle and that Southey had approved of the intended publication. Yet when the book appeared Cottle was taken to task for making public several intimate letters referring to Coleridge's indulgence in opium.8 Moxon was to find the office of celebrating the memory of literary friends by publishing volumes of recollections for contemporaries no honored task. He performed the rites for Lamb, Campbell, 3

E. V. Lucas's phrase, in Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 591. Reviewing the book in the Journal, December, 1841. 5 Morley, op. cit., I, 287, December 8, 1835. 6 In a letter to his mother, quoted by E. L. Griggs, Hartley Coleridge, His Life and Work, p. 140 n. 7 Writing to Mary Wordsworth, October 27, 1836. Morley, op. cit., I, 320. 8 Haney, Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 57. 4

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Rogers, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, all of whom he had known well, and each book was severely criticized. When publishing the Englishman's Magazine Moxon had actively interested himself in preserving Coleridge's pension, withdrawal of which had been threatened by the shortage of funds at the Crown's disposal.9 In the June issue of the magazine was a spirited notice, closing with a telling appeal to Earl Grey. The note in the July issue was even more vigorous: The heads of the Royal Society of Literature have made a formal appeal to the Premier, and the representatives were heard with attention, ominous, we trust, of the only measure befitting an administration professing a proper deference to the popular voice. . . . Should ministers be resolute in enforcing an inflexible economy, it will be necessary for their reputation to account with the Lord Johns and Lady Georgianas 10 who crowd the pension list, ere they grapple with the mite appropriated to veteran scholarship. In Britain, the sublime inventions of a Milton or a Shakespeare lack the protection granted to a fabricator of an ingenious coal-scuttle. 11

These may not be Moxon's words, yet they received his approval. Most of the other Coleridge books which Moxon published were reprints. Biographia Literaria he issued in 1847, and in 1849, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, upon each of which both Sara and Henry Coleridge worked. The other volumes were Notes and Lectures on Shakespere; Essays on His Own Times; The Friend; The Constitution of Church and State; Lay Sermons; Notes on the English Divines; Notes Theological, Political and Miscellaneous; Dramatic Works; and Poems, new edition. These books were all carefully edited. Upon the Biographia Literaria (1847) Sara Coleridge had taken trouble "ridiculous to think of." 12 The Coleridge family spared no pains in their work, either for Moxon or for other publishers, in putting before the public the writings of their relative. We find traces of the family's appreciation of Moxon, who also 9

The Englishman's Magazine, I, 236-37. Later Moxon published two successful novels by Lady Georgiana Fullerton. The Englishman's Magazine, I, 411-12. 12 Sara Coleridge, Memoir and Letters, edited by her Daughter, p. 300. "I do wish poor dear indefatigable Sara would let her father's character rest." Mary Wordsworth to Crabb Robinson on February 24, 1849, Morley, op. cit., II, 689. 10

11

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labored diligently, in Sara's praise of his sonnets as a "pretty bed of heart's ease," 13 and in Hartley's friendly letters to him. It is doubtful whether these publications were financially profitable. One notes that it was not until his more affluent years that Moxon ventured to issue them. The publisher, in addition to the father's writings, endeavored to use Hartley Coleridge's literary effort. 14 In spite of difficulty with him regarding the edition of Massinger and Ford Moxon gave him "liberal remuneration." 15 Hartley had a kindness in his nature that even the unsympathetic Crabb Robinson had to acknowledge "made men willing to overlook his infirmities." 16 In 1839 and in 1841 Hartley Coleridge tried to interest Moxon in a collection of his poems; but the publisher, experienced now in Hartley's delays, used the wretched state of the book trade as reason for refusal. 17 In 1852, after Hartley's death, he did print the poems, with a Life by Derwent, and also Essays and Marginalia. Some three years before they appeared Robinson found the poems beautiful beyond his imaginings.18 Hartley was a careful writer: Derwent comments that Hartley transcribed the life of Massinger four times and that Moxon, who desired to suppress as many of the notes as he should consider redundant, "on looking them over, found that there were none that he could prevail upon himself to part with." "Of Genius he has not a little, and talent enough for fifty," Wordsworth thought, 19 and so did Moxon. Robinson characterized the younger Coleridges: "Derwent is a man of very inferior natural capacity to Hartley, but then he turns his faculties to account . . . Sarah [sic] Coleridge the daughter has as much industry as Derwent and as much genius as Hartley." 20 William Pickering, of Aldine editions fame, put out Samuel Taylor Coleridge's writings before Moxon did; but to the latter 13

Memoirs and Letters, op. cit., p. 500. See Hartley's letters to Moxon in Letters oj Hartley Coleridge, edited by Grace E. Griggs and Earl L. Griggs, Index "Moxon, Edward, Letters to." 15 Ibid., p. 235, March 12,1840, Hartley Coleridge to Moxon. 16 Morley, op. cit., II, 687. 17 Wordsworth to Moxon, November 5, 1841, in the Huntington Library, H. L. 2129. 18 Morley, op. cit., I, 19. 19 20 Ibid., I, 411, June 3, 1840. Ibid., II, 681, January 4/5, 1849. 14

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we owe the Letters, Conversations, and Recollections, which are the principal authority for the details of the poet's life from 1820 to 1826,21 and the first life, 22 and such collections as Dramatic Works (1852). JOHN

KEATS

For the editing of Keats's Life, Letters and Remains 23 Milnes received from Charles Armitage Brown the "carefully guarded literary remains of Keats," which he had himself intended to publish. He also had the aid of Charles Cowden Clarke, Edward Holmes, George Felton Matthew, and Henry Stephens, who proffered their recollections; of John Hamilton Reynolds, who "contributed the rich story of his correspondence"; of Charles W. Dilke and William Haslam, who gave reminiscences and letters of Keats's publishers, Oilier, Hessey, and Taylor; of "Mr. Jeffrey," who "contributed a great mass of letters and data." This was the first attempt to gather and evaluate Keats materials. Under the caption "Literary Remains" and scattered throughout the Life and Letters were published sixty-seven poems. Forman remarks (1906) that since the appearance of this collection "no substantive volume of fresh poems by Keats has been published," although additional individual poems have appeared. The book came out in "two of those handy and agreeable volumes, which, printed by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, issued in a steady stream for some years from the house of Edward Moxon of Dover Street." Moxon reprinted the volumes in 1851, and the firm of Moxon and Co. put out a new edition in 1867. Moxon had reprinted Smith's edition of Keats's Poetical Works (1841) in 1846, again in 1851, and with illustrations in 1854-56. SHELLEY

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Moxon published with devotion throughout his business career the writings of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, and Shelley; for 21

Haney, op. cit., p. 57. The Cottle recollections appeared in 1837 and the first volume of Gilman's Life of Coleridge, Pickering, in 1838. 23 The Poetical Works of John Keats, edited by H. B. Forman, pp. xiii ff. The material that follows is based on the Introduction. 22

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none of the publications did he have to pay dearly, in annoyance or in money, except for those of Shelley. He took over publication of Wordsworth's poetry after the tide of reading it had turned in that poet's favor; Coleridge was being issued by Pickering, Murray, and other publishers when Moxon printed his first volume; the Lamb publications were a labor of love, and in presentation of them to the public there was no obstacle to be overcome. But in 1839 Shelley was still in not-too-good repute, and in his poems there were inflammatory lines which a publisher printed at his risk. While Lockhart's remark of 1817 about turning his satire from Leigh Hunt to the "younger and less important members, the Shelleys, and Keatses, and the Webbes" would not have been approved in 1839, still less would have been Leigh Hunt's assertion, in his Preface to The Masque of Anarchy, that Shelley's writings had aided the general program of knowledge. In all, Moxon published seven titles by Shelley and by his wife, Mary, together with frequent reprints; at a considerable cost he purchased letters supposed to be by Shelley, which later proved to be forgeries; he stood suit in court, as we have seen, for printing Queen Mab. When The Masque of Anarchy was published,24 Moxon printed lines which Hunt had thought dangerous; but when Mary Shelley was preparing the 1839 edition of her husband's poems, he prevailed upon her to omit much of Canto 6 and all of Canto 7 of Queen Mab together with many of Shelley's notes to the poem. The Poetical Works appeared in May in four volumes. The omissions brought Moxon annoyance. John Trelawny recorded that at a breakfast at Sir W. Molesworth's the company disapproved any omission of Shelley's notes to Queen Mab and that he was asked to inform Moxon of their sentiment. He wrote a letter, both he and Molesworth signing it. It carried the Trelawny impetuosity and temper. When he later returned to London he met the delinquent publisher Moxon in the streets: "Mr. T.," Moxon said, "you have done me great injustice and given me great pain. I did not edit Shelley's works; I had no control; I am merely the publisher. Pres24

See chapters "Trade Relations" and "Early Business Years."

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sure has been put upon me, but, at whatever cost, I am determined to have a complete edition of that true poet's works.25 What pressure was brought on Moxon we can surmise; but that he should have denied control seems a subterfuge. Mrs. Shelley recorded in her diary under date of February 12, 1839, that she wished she had resisted Moxon's pressure, although before.acceding to his belief that the passages were "too atheistical" she had consulted Hogg and Peacock and Leigh Hunt and they had offered no objection to the omissions. 26 Moxon's contention that printing of these passages would injure the copyright of all the volumes prevailed upon her to omit them. She had written Hunt, on December 12, 1838, of her intention to publish, of Sir Timothy Shelley's permission "if there is no biography," of her need for a copy of the original edition of Queen Mab, and had added: "Moxon wants me to leave out the sixth part as too atheistical. I don't like Atheism—nor does he now [sic]. Yet I hate mutilation—what do you say?" 27 In another, undated, letter she informed Hunt that she had not made up her mind about the omissions. I have no scruple of conscience in leaving out the expressions which Shelley would never have printed in after life. I have a great love of Queen Mab. He was proud of it when I first knew him, and it is associated with the bright young days of both of us.28 Within the year a new edition was called for; in it Moxon not only allowed the omitted passages to appear and also the dedication to Harriett, but printed for the first time, "Peter Bell the Third" and "Swellfoot the Tyrant." 29 The latter, since it had been stifled promptly by the Society for the Suppression of Vice when it had been printed in 1820, was entirely new to the public. 25

Letters of Edward John Trelawny, edited by H. B. Forman, pp. 261-62. The account is also given and commented on in Massingham, The Friend of Shelley, a Memoir of Edward John Trelawny, p. 219. 26 See Mrs. Julian Marshall, Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, II, 289. 27 Quoted in Roger Ingpen, Shelley in England, pp. 619-20. 28 Letters of Mary Shelley, edited by H. H. Harper. The letter from which this quotation is taken is not dated. 29 Ingpen, op. cit., p. 622.

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One result of this courageous publication was that the impulsive Trelawny wrote an apologetic note to Moxon. Dear Sir, Admiration for Shelley, and the interest I feel for all that remains of his induced me to act discourteously to you some time back —by freely expressing my thoughts in regard to the omission of certain notes in your edition of Queen Mab; independently of my personal feelings on the subject my opinion is the notes are essential to explain Shelley's object in writing such a poem; they lay bare the thinkings of the Poet in his boyhood and explain the motives that then actuated him. Your subsequent edition of the work entire proves that you think so too, and that well timed caution alone influenced you. . . . You have acted most manfully. 30 Trelawny's relations with Moxon were thereafter cordial. A few days after the Queen Mab trial for blasphemy he offered to the publisher "purse and person—ready to serve—it is in such cases as these that I lament they are not greater." When in 18S7 he came to publish his Recollections of the Last Days of Byron and Shelley, it was Moxon whom he sought as publisher. He stated in 1875, with regard to ownership of the four blocks used for the cuts, that Moxon "was to be at no expense." 3 1 Moxon died while the book was in press. Mary Shelley was distressed by the trial of her publisher: "I know not what to say to your refusal of compensation," she wrote him just after it, for all the expense which the Liberals have put you to. Since the evil sprung from them solely, I think you ought to let them repair it—not by formal subscription—but by allowing them to take the fine on themselves . . . I shall certainly add a postscript with regard to the trial. I will send it you in a day or two . . . Let me have 25 copies of Talfourd's speech; send one to Jane Clairmont and one to Mr. Hogg.32 Moxon's difficulty during this trial in June was increased by grief for the death of his firstborn son and namesake, Edward. The two Shelley editions of poems sold well. Mrs. Julian Marshall, whose full biography of Mary Shelley was based on family 30 32

31 Letters of Trelawny, pp. 210-11. Ibid., p. 250. Wise, A Shelley Library, p. 113, July 16,1841.

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documents, asserted that the proceeds were such as to set Mrs. Shelley for some time "at comparative ease on the score of money," and that she and her son, with two of his college friends, set out in June, 1840, for travel in Germany and Italy. 33 This tour resulted in her two volumes, published by Moxon, Rambles in Germany and Italy. Before leaving, however, she had prepared a volume of Shelley's prose, which Moxon issued in two volumes as Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. In the Bibliophile Society's edition of Mary Shelley's Letters, 1918, Mr. Harper, the editor, includes undated letters from her to Leigh Hunt which seem to refer to this publication: "I want these two volumes to be popular, and would it be as well to defer this essay?" 34 On the fourteenth of November, she asked for originals of letters which appeared in Hunt's publications with asterisks, "it must be directly, as they are printing off fast." In another letter to Hunt, dated August 17,1839, she stated that she was about to publish Shelley's prose and asked his advice, "especially with regard to the translations of the Symposium. I want also to know whether you would assent to the letters you published in your Recollections being joined to such as I shall publish." The "handsome" two volumes of prose one judges were not immediately popular, for advertisements of them appeared during the next four years; yet in 1845 Moxon issued a second edition and in 1852 a third. As distressing to Moxon as the prosecution for blasphemy was the publication of twenty-five Shelley letters that proved to be forgeries.35 Icodad George Gordon Byron, who claimed to be a son of Lord Byron, "took great pains to collect materials for a new life of his alleged father." 36 He maintained that he had had 33

34 Lije oj Mary IV. Shelley, II, 293. Which essay we do not know. Seven letters were addressed to J. H . Graham, S to William Godwin, 3 to Horace Smith, 2 each to James Lawrence, P. W. Longdill, 2 unaddressed, and 1 each to Thomas Hookham, G. S. Marlow, John Keats, the Editor of The Statesman. Sotheby, see footnote 36, states that there were also "some scandalous letters from Shelley to his wife containing unfilial statements about the poet's father. These were the letters which Mr. White, acting under Mr. Moxon's advice, had previously tried to dispose of to Mrs. Shelley, incurring her wrath." Sir Percy Shelley bought these letters at the Sotheby sale. 36 See S. L. Sotheby, Frincipia typographica, II, 10S, 109. 35

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the Byron letters through Byron's half-sister, Mrs. Leigh, but in a public letter in the Athenaeum, April 1, 1848, Mrs. Leigh denied any such transaction; also, a firm of solicitors, in an earlier letter dated March 24, called attention to the falsity of his claims. Gordon Byron left England for the United States, where he pushed the project, asserting that he had one thousand Byron letters and the Ravenna Journal of 1822, and where two numbers of the life projected by him were published. The story of the letters is as follows. Early in 1848 a woman brought to W. White, a bookseller, letters of Byron and Shelley, one or two at a time, stating that she was forced to sell them. White purchased them, but later became suspicious and questioned the lady, who confessed that she was Mrs. Gordon Byron. Byron himself the next day called on White and asserted that the Byron letters were from "Mr. Hodges of Frankfurt" and "Mr. Wright of the Quarterly Review," the Shelley letters partly "from the box left behind at Mar low when Shelley moved." When Gordon Byron signed a written attestation of the genuineness of the letters White seems to have been satisfied. Soon he notified Murray and Moxon, publishers of Byron and Shelley, respectively, of his possessions, trying to interest them in purchase of the letters. Murray, who of course had a quantity of authentic Byron letters, spent a day studying the forty-seven alleged ones, comparing them with the real letters; he purchased them for £123-7-6, twoand-a-half guineas each. Moxon purchased the twenty-five Shelley letters, not from White, but later at an auction, held at Sotheby's in May, 1851, whither they had been sent in August, 1850, by White, at a price of £115—4—6. After holding the letters for nearly a year, in all sincerity he published Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, with an Introductory Essay by Robert Browning. The Introduction states: An opportunity having presented itself for the acquisition of a series of unedited letters by Shelley, all more or less directly supplementary to and illustrative of the collection already published by Mr. Moxon, that gentleman has decided on securing them. They will prove an acceptable addition to a body of correspondence, the value of which towards a right understanding of its author's purpose and work, may be said [119]

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to exceed that of any similar contribution exhibiting the worldly relations of a poet whose genius has operated by a different law. Their genuineness was first called in question by F. T. Palgrave, "who saw the book at Mr. Tennyson's house, and accidentally opened it at a passage which he recognized as taken from an article contributed by his father to the Quarterly Review." 37 The father, Sir Francis Palgrave, wrote at once to Moxon. Mr. Moxon was startled and stated his source of the letters. The DeputyKeeper of the Public Records was . . . equally startled. He wanted to see the letter. The letter was produced—"It looks genuine:—is it not genuine?" "I am the author of that passage, but not the writer of that letter," was the reply of Sir Francis. "But may not Sir Francis," it was urged to Mr. Moxon, "have seen this letter in the noble collection of autographs belonging to his father-in-law, Mr. Dawson?"—a question which only added a fresh difficulty to the solution sought.38 Moxon placed the letters in the hands of "a gentleman known to be conversant with autographs." Already they had been shown to postoffice clerks, who, to the best of their belief, pronounced them to be genuine. Next, the postmarks of Byron's letters to Murray posted from the same cities in the same month and year and to the same city, London, were examined. Here the letters failed: "Where 'Ravenna' on a genuine letter was in a small sharp type— in the Shelley letter it was in a large uncertain type;—and in the letters from Venice the postmark of the City of Palaces was stamped in an Italic, and not as in the Shelley specimens in a Roman letter!" The dates on the "specimens" agreed with Shelley's sojourns at the several places. Meanwhile the forgery had been exposed in the Quarterly Review. Moxon suppressed the publication, calling in the copies he had issued to the trade. 39 The letters later found their way into the British Museum; Mr. T. J. Wise states that the original letters "were presented by Moxon to the MSS Department of the British Museum"; this information came from a written statement of 37 38

Frank Karslake, Notes from Sotheby's, p. 337. See Athenaeum, N o . 1271, March 6, 1852.

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40

Moxon's. On March 4, 1853, W. White sent the letter that follows 41 to Sir Henry Ellis, of the British Museum: I have the honor to acknowledge your favour of yesterday in reply to my letter, and herewith forward the MSS consisting of 70 letters, 42 of Lord Byron's and 23 of Shelley. 42 Should you have leisure to look them over I think you will agree with me that all of these letters are forgeries.43

Moxon's other publications of Shelley materials were an edition of the Poems in three volumes in 1857 and in 1858 Hogg's Life of Shelley, in two volumes. After Moxon's death the firm continued publication of Shelley matter. LEIGH

HUNT

Of the personal relations of Moxon and Hunt there is little record, but they must have been cordial, and on the part of the publisher admiring. Moxon, in his early years, would have had warm sympathy for Hunt's social philosophy, particularly for his concern for human welfare. Lamb, who thought that "nobody was ever the wiser or better for reading Shelley," 44 could not have influenced Moxon to publish him; but Hunt, Shelley's admirer and close friend, doubtless increased Moxon's natural delight in him. Furthermore, Leigh Hunt was a constant friend of the Moxon business, and Moxon himself certainly furthered the interests of Hunt. One recalls Hunt's defense of Album Verses, his early congratulatory comment on Moxon's firm, his praise of Ten40

Wise, Letters from Robert Browning to Various Correspondents, I, 74. B. M. 19377 f 3. 42 H o w White came to have the letters, if they were the same ones published by Murray and by Moxon, is a question. Probably the publishers had turned the letters back to him. 43 B. M. 19377 f 3. Browning wrote to R. G. Furnivall from France on September IS, 1881, that when he arrived home he would give "in a few words the true account of the transaction—and perhaps some remarks on the essay by a very distinguished personage indeed"; but I have not found that he ever wrote the letter. Wise, Letters, I, 74. Cooke, in his Browning Guide Book, states that only half a dozen copies had passed out of the publisher's hands. This does not seem likely, since the book must have been on sale for about two weeks. 44 T o Bernard Barton, August 17, 1824. Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 698. 41

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nyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, his furnishing the publisher with The Masque of Anarchy, his contributions to the Englishman's Magazine and to the Reflector. In 1832 Hunt experienced one of his severest periods of financial difficulty. Moxon and Forster and other friends stirred themselves in behalf of a subscription edition of his collected poems. Moxon realized that printing by subscription was outmoded, but felt that there were occasions, like this one, when "delicacy has vindicated the most delicate of its privileges and converted what was objectionable in ordinary to a means of showing its sense of claims out of the common path." 45 The friends of Leigh Hunt, the notice continued, desired to put him "in advance of his difficulties" by issuing this first collected edition of his poems, a "handsome volume, octavo," price a guinea. The poems were selected by Hunt himself, "with corrections and emendations, the result of his experience." In behalf of this edition, Moxon wrote many letters, notably one to Robert Sou they, poet laureate, who objected to the enclosed circular, which Forster had drawn up, soliciting subscriptions on the grounds of Hunt's "labors as a public writer, his suffering in consequence, his disposition to discover all that is good and hopeful, and his habit of inculcating it." Southey so stoutly maintained his objection that the circular was rewritten and solicitation made purely on grounds of Hunt's literary merit. Southey considered that Hunt during the twenty years of his public life had not been "meritoriously employed," for he had been actively laboring to subvert Christian morals and the peace and order of society.46 However, a goodly number of subscribers was obtained, and the list of them, when it appeared in the Times, Hunt found "handsome . . . comprising names of all shades of opinions, some of my sharpest personal antagonists not excepted." 47 In the fifty-eight page Preface he expressed thanks to Moxon, who had "shown himself a friend." The collection itself 45 Printed in the back pages of Knowles's Hunchback, the edition of April, 1832, published by Moxon. 46 Warter, Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, p. 253. Southey to Moxon, December 10, 1831. 47 The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, edited by Edmund Blunden, p. SOI.

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Mr. Edmund Blunden, Hunt's latest and most sympathetic biographer, considers inadequate; Hunt's nervousness, he thinks, was at that time "too keen to allow him a mature feeling toward his own productions." 48 Hunt took much of his later publishing to Moxon—the Indicator and the Companion, 1834, reprinted in 1840 and again in 1848; his drama, The Legend of Florence; a pocket edition of the poetical works, 1844; and The Seer, 1848. In 1840 Moxon employed Hunt on two editing projects—the comedies of Sheridan and those of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, both books including biographies and critical comment.49 At the end of his prefatory essay Hunt discussed the opinions of Lamb and Hazlitt on the artificial comedy of the seventeenth century. This edition gave rise to Macaulay's article on Leigh Hunt in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1841, in which he castigated the Restoration writers for their obscenity but commented appreciatively on Hunt. The story of Hunt's play reveals its success for author and for publisher. Macready, after reading four acts, found The Legend of Florence "hopeless," although Bulwer-Lytton thought it "one of the finest plays that has been produced since Beaumont and Fletcher." 50 Hunt read the play aloud with "marvelous intonation and variety of expression" before Sheridan Knowles, Procter, Dickens, "and others," among whom doubtless was Moxon, and later before a group including Carlyle, who found it "a piece of right good stuff, solid and real." 51 When it was produced in Covent Garden Theatre on February 7, 1840, Hunt received the greatest ovation of his life. The Queen, according to Madame Vestris, saw it four times and finally ordered a performance at 48

Edmund Blunden, Leigh Hunt, pp. 245-46. Hartley Coleridge (in Derwent Coleridge's "Memoir" prefacing Poems of Hartley Coleridge, with life by D . Coleridge) wrote: "I see, by advertisement, that you have given Vanbrugh, Congreve, and Co. to Leigh Hunt. H e will make a good thing of it, if he takes care not to smuggle in any socialistic heresies, for which Vanbrugh, at least, in his 'Provoked Wife,' hangs out such tempting loops." 50 Quoted from the Monthly Chronicle in A List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, with a Chronological List of the Works of Charles Lamb, edited by Alexander Ireland, p. 169. 51 Blunden, Leigh Hunt, p. 279. 49

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Windsor. Macready could not believe the play "genuinely successful." But then, for years he had found Hunt "a bore," "particularly disagreeable," and "a coxcomb." Forster praised it highly in the Examiner. G. H. Lewes states that it ran "some fifteen or twenty nights." 52 Moxon published the play soon afterward, with a preface by Hunt, in which the author expressed appreciation for its reception. A second edition was quickly demanded. A typical Victorian hypocrisy and Moxon's acquiescence in it are illustrated in the printing of the poem "The Gentle Armour." The incident indicates the care a publisher in the 1830's needed to practise in order to avoid offense and show "good taste." The poem was founded upon a French fabliau, Les Trois Chevaliers et la Chemise, the story of a knight who "fights against three other knights in no stouter armour than a lady's garment thus indicated." It had some years previously been translated as The Three Knights and the Smock, but "so rapid are the changes that take place in what is decorous that 'smock' was soon changed to 'shift,' then to 'chemise.' " Some customers of Moxon's objected to the use of the word "shift." After discussion with the publisher Hunt changed the title to The Gentle Armour "to please these gentlemen," and in a subsequent edition of the works, the poem itself was withdrawn from their virgin eyes. The terrible original title was the Battle of the Shift; and a more truly delicate story, I will venture to affirm, never was written. Charles Lamb thought the new title unworthy of its refinement, "because it seemed ashamed of the right one." He preferred the honest old word. 53

Probably Moxon did, but he sedulously avoided offense to his customers. JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES

Sheridan Knowles, whom the elder Hazlitt befriended and introduced as a boy to Coleridge and Lamb, Moxon almost certainly 52 53

In Modern British Dramatists, 1867, quoted in Blunden, op. cit., p. 282. Hunt, Autobiography, p. 501.

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met in the Lamb home during his early acquaintance there. Moxon was his publisher from 1832 to 1849. Although Knowles was seventeen years Moxon's senior, a warm friendship existed between them. Knowles is now little esteemed as a playwright, but in his own time, when Hazlitt, in 1825, regarded him as the first tragic writer of his age,54 when the Edinburgh Review, in 1833, described him as "the most successful dramatist of the day," and when BulwerLytton, though admitting "the grave faults of his diction" and his narrow knowledge of character and life, wrote in 1847, that he formed "an actual, living and imperishable feature in the loftier literature of his time," 53 he was thought not only to possess extraordinary dramatic power but also, in Talfourd's words, to have "unveiled the sources of the most profound affections." Lamb, who "had almost lost his taste for acted tragedy—made an exception in favour of the first and happiest part of 'Virginius'— those paternal scenes, which stand alone in the modern drama." 56 Moxon undoubtedly shared Lamb's regard for Knowles's writings. Moxon published for Knowles not fewer than nine plays and, when the playwright abandoned the theater, his two novels, Fortescue and George Loveil.7,1 In the Morgan Library, New York, are two letters concerning the novels. The first is evidently in response to remonstrance from Moxon; the second followed a long silence on Moxon's part and doubtless further remonstrance. Both show Knowles's friendliness. Moxon had published not only all of Knowles's writings save his theological ones but also The Maiden Aunt, a comedy by his son, Richard Brinsley Knowles. The second letter is largely self-explanatory. One would like to know, however, what Moxon did in the end pay for each novel. The dictionary was a "Pronouncing Dictionary," published at a high price by De Porguet, in 1835, which Moxon had just republished in a cheap edition and which H. Bohn issued in a still cheaper one 54

55 Spirit of the Age, in Works, IV, 368. In a note to The New Timon. Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by T . N. Talfourd, revised edition by W. C. Hazlitt, II, 87. 57 " 'Fortescue' appeared in the 'Sunday Times,' and was afterwards published by Moxon, as was 'George Lovell.' Between them he [Knowles] netted about £600." Memoir of J. S. Knowles, by his son, Richard Brinsley Knowles, p. 134. 56

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in 1861. Moxon's respect for Knowles's plays was such that in 1847 he issued the Dramatic Works in three volumes. Llanrwst Denbighshire N o r t h Wales 21 M a y , 1846 Dear Moxon, M y agreement with the Sunday Times, leaves the copyright of the novel [Fortescue] solely in my hands a t the termination of the year. Perhaps therefore it is not now too early to talk about its publication in three volumes. How do you say? They pay me five hundred for their use of it. N o t a thousand would have drawn me from you, had you not left me at liberty to print it as I chose, when I paid you back the hundred pounds that you had advanced upon it—To say the truth I dreaded to make any further overture to you, than I had done upon that occasion. Write to me a t your leisure—and believe me ever with attachment yours, J. S. Knowles In the last volume I have given the true version of the hundred pounds succour to Brinsley Sheridan, and done Rogers Justice. Have you at all looked at my book? 19th Oct. 1846 1 Post Street Torquay Devon M y dear Moxon, You surely will recollect, when I remind you of it, that you yourself put an extinguisher upon former terms—expressly—when I returned the hundred pounds which you had advanced. Moxon, I only left myself their possession for a few weeks—and was obliged to borrow ten pounds of my sister, to enable me to carry on. I told you at the time that I then saw my way clear before me, and t h a t I could complete the novel by the following Nov., but, taking the money you said it would be better to let the matter stand in its altered position—in plain words, you yourself, put an end to the engagement. M y position now is a different one from that under which that engagement was entered into. M y abilities then as a novelist was [sic] problematical. If I may believe the opinion of others—of everyone who has spoken to me upon the subject—they are now established, and upon no humble basis. Chapman himself has cautioned me to look for superior terms, for the republication—warning me on no account to throw the work away.

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I have had some conversation here with Mr. Elliott—a gentleman who keeps a library and who was bred to the trade in London; and he gives me the most substantial grounds for believing that the information upon which you rely for the probable sale to libraries alone is incorrect. However that is a matter for you to consider. At present you are the only publisher I have had any communication with, direct or indirect, and as we have worked together for so many years I am anxious that it should be Moxon and Knowles still, as publisher and author. Accordingly, until I receive your decision not to treat upon any terms than those which you yourself, and not I, have rescinded, I shall not open any négociation with another publisher. Will you buy an edition of 1000-1500-2000 of the novel—and if you will, what will you give for it? My chief reason for wishing to deal in this fashion is the fact that at sixty-three, I am not as sanguine as I was at fifty, and that I had rather put up with certainty that was near the mark, than encounter a contingency that might be far over it, with all the attendant anxiety and incertitude. I do not wish to be hard upon you old boy. If you offer me anything in reason, I shall accept it. Be so kind as to tell me when you published the 1000 of the dictionary. Also what your views are with respect to my plays— It is strange that they should remain so long out of print— Would not they do in one cheap volume 8 vo? Can you point out to me any way of raising money by them or the dictionary? Your early answer will oblige me. I began to lose all patience at your long silence—and believe me, dear Moxon, I am heartily sorry at the case. You and I old fellow have not been together like ordinary Publishers and Authors! My new novel is yet more powerful than Fortescue. I am now in the middle of the second volume—with my road to the end, abounding in delightful prospects, and lying right before me. Write and Recollect. Yours ever faithfully J. S. Knowles Knowles, in spite of fair earnings by his writing, was often in need and both borrowed money from his friends and obtained advances from his publisher. In 1847, after he had suffered from partial paralysis, a government pension of £100 per annum was offered him by Lord John Russell, which he refused. 58 Moxon had bestirred himself more than once in matters of pensions for literS8

Macready, Diaries, op. cit., II, 370.

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ary men, and doubtless was active for Knowles. In 1848 the author was placed on the Civil List for a pension of £200. Moxon apparently disposed of his rights in the two novels Fortescue and George Lovell in 1849 to the publisher Nattali, and after that he published nothing by Knowles. THOMAS

CAMPBELL

Moxon's treatment of Thomas Campbell, once so admired and in later days so broken a man, reveals another close relationship. Cyrus Redding, Campbell's coeditor on the New Monthly Magazine, who wrote not too sympathetically of the old poet, placed the height of his ability at about 1812, loss of power during the next thirteen years, and rapid decline from then until his death' in 1844. At the time Moxon met him, probably through Samuel Rogers, several publishers were reissuing his poetical works. The edition illustrated by J. M. W. Turner came out in 1837.59 Moxon published Poetical Works in 1839, a smaller, cheaper issue ten years later, and a new collection, The Pilgrim of Glencoe and Other Poems, in 1842. The long poem was coldly received, but the minor ones were praised. Redding thought all of them "wholly unworthy" his genius and reputation. 00 The books must have been at least not unprofitable. By the eighteen-thirties Campbell was unsystematic in his work and life, his powers of expression were fading, and he was drinking heavily. Yet the publisher employed him on two important tasks, as has been noted, the life of Mrs. Siddons and an edition of Shakespeare's works. For the former he paid the biographer four hundred pounds. 61 He was such a constant frequenter of the Moxon establishment that the proprietor and clerks paid little attention to him. In 1844 Moxon, learning that Campbell was ill in Boulogne, went to see him two days before his death—"and glad I am," he wrote Wordsworth, 59

"For the drawings he paid £25 each—£350 for the whole. When Campbell sought to sell them, he did so in vajn, offering them for £300, but finding no publisher, until Turner himself bought them back for £200,—bits of painted pasteboard, Campbell called them. . . . They would now [1874] probably bring £5000 if offered for sale." S. C. Hale, A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women, 2d ed., p. 351. 60 Redding, Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell, II, 325. 61 Collier, An Old Man's Diary, p. 3.

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"that I paid him that mark of respect." Four years after the poet's death he published Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell, by Beattie, a work that is basic for later biographers. 62 Moxon to Wordsworth, June 18,1844; letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq.

Chapter

10 * M O X O N AND W O R D S W O R T H

M O X O N loved travel and talk with friends. Whenever he could take a holiday he posted from London, in his early years to visit England, and later, both in England and on the Continent. He was sometimes absent from his business for two or three months at a time. On the day in early autumn, 1826, when he went to the Lake country and met Wordsworth a pleasant friendship of twenty-four years began. Wordsworth patted the young man on the head, as requested by Lamb, asked him "a civil question or two" about his verses, and favored him with his autograph; 1 in return the poet of fifty-six years received from Moxon embarrassed homage and a report on the book trade in London. This information interested Wordsworth genuinely, because his volumes of poems for a number of years had been leaving the Longman warehouse slowly. In 1825 he had complained to Samuel Rogers that after the first expense of printing and advertising had been paid out of an edition, "the annual expense of advertising consumed, in a great measure, the residue of profit to be divided between author and publisher"; 2 he had, he stated, written Longmans that it was not worth while to undergo the trouble of carrying his works through the press unless a more favorable arrangement could be made. Young Moxon, at the time an employee in the Longmans firm, knew of this discontent; when he became a publisher in his own right he had strongly in mind the idea that Wordsworth might be induced to leave Longmans. What is the condition of the trade, one imagines the poet asking, and why? The young clerk told him it was bad partly because of the hard financial times and partly because of a lack of good writing. The poet "gave young men the impression that he con1

Lamb to Wordsworth, September 6, 1826, Lucas, Letters

of Charles

760. 2

Wordsworth to Rogers, January 21,1825, Clayden, Rogers, I, 406.

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sidered their opinions intelligent and valuable, even though they might be mistaken." 3 Moxon's confidence increased in his presence. For the next four years the friendship developed naturally. In May, 1828, Wordsworth was in London visiting the Quillinans, and Crabb Robinson mentions accompanying him twice to Longmans.4 Moxon, however, had changed his position and was then with Hurst, Chance and Co. If he saw Wordsworth, it is more than likely that they met at Lamb's. In 1830 Moxon opened his business and sent cards announcing the venture to his acquaintances, with request for distribution. He asked some friends for manuscripts. He doubtless knew of Wordsworth's recent attempts to arrange for publication, first through Rogers with John Murray,5 then through Alaric Watts with Hurst and Robinson,8 and thirdly, in 1826, through Crabb Robinson 7 with any publisher 3

Batho, The Later Wordsworth, p. 7. Crabb Robinson, unpublished diaries, May 13, 1828; also May 14, 1828. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 5 See Clayden, op. cil., I, 402 ff. On January 21, 1825, he wrote Rogers asking that he find a publisher with "more liberality than Longmans, more enterprise, or more skill in managing the sale of works charactered and circumstanced as mine are." On February 19, 1825, not having received answer from Rogers he wrote again with the same request. On March 23, 1825, he wrote a third time. Meantime Rogers had seen Murray, who, apparently, had adopted the tone and airs of a patron, for Wordsworth replied: "I would a thousand times rather that not a verse of mine should ever enter the press again, than allow any of them [publishers] to say that I was to the amount of the strength of a hair dependent upon their countenance, consideration, patronage, or by whatever term they may signify their ostentation or selfish vanity." Rogers almost concluded arrangements with Murray; but August 15, 1825, Wordsworth again wrote to Rogers, offended that Murray had been so long silent, and canceled any arrangements. There was fire in the man that Moxon had in future years to learn how to handle. 6 Robinson, Reminiscetfces, 1834, No. 479. The entry is under the year 1826. Unpublished manuscript in Dr. Williams's Library, London. "I saw several times Alaric Watts, who had undertaken this [finding a publisher] for Wordsworth. But ultimately he did nothing—except I believe in publishing some small pieces in an Annual, of which he was editor. Wordsworth was averse to let anything of his appear in these poor imitations of the German Musen-Al-manachs . . . I fear neither the poet nor editor was satisfied with the result." Wordsworth wrote to Robinson at length about Watts's efforts. See Knight, op. cit., II, 285-88, April 27, 1826. 7 Robinson, ibid.., No. 479: "He [Wordsworth] had so little acquaintance with the business part of literature that he applied to one even so ignorant as myself to negotiate with a publisher for him." On April 27, 1826, Crabb Robinson wrote to Wordsworth that he had "in the whole trade but one personal acquaintance, the principal partner Baldwin (the house of Baldwin, Craddock & Joy of the Row)." He 4

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he might find agreeable to the plan for change upon which he had decided. Moxon knew also that nothing had come of these attempts and that Wordsworth still was asking for a publisher with more liberality, more enterprise, and more skill in managing the sale of works "charactered and circumstanced" as his were.8 He therefore asked Wordsworth for a manuscript. The poet was pleased to learn of the young man's venture into business and sent cordial wishes for success; he would gladly distribute the cards of announcement, but as for publishing anything himself, he was "not prepared for it." 9 However, he had been thinking of republishing the volumes of 1827 in a cheap form, "something under a pound, contrast of 45 shillings, the present price." What advice had Moxon for him? Moxon admired and loved Wordsworth's poetry; he was, he believed, the kind of business man who knew how to manage the sale of such writing. His suggestions to the poet we do not possess, but soon the young publisher asked for and, as we have seen, obtained permission to reprint selections of poems for school use.10 Wordsworth highly approved the selection that the editor made. 11 Crabb Robinson thought the book "must serve as the best of advertisements," and added, "Moxon is a very worthy man." 12 It was a good stroke to have pleased Wordsworth with this first publication. objected that the season was already too far advanced; and demanded to know the definite terms of a contract and who was Wordsworth's choice of a publisher. He suggested Colbourn [sic] as "The most bustling man in the trade"; but Wordsworth, replying (in May, 1826), had a "mortal objection" to Colbourn as "so impudent a puffer." "Besides," he added, "my pride boggles at submitting any proposal to so very slender a person as T. Campbell." Morley, op. cit., I, 163 ff. 8 Clayden, op. cit., pp. 408 ff. This was written as early as January 21, 1825. 9 In the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, at San Marino, California, are more than 100 letters from Wordsworth to Edward Moxon. These letters were formerly in the Rowfant Library of Locker-Lampson. Some of these letters appear in Knight's Letters of the Wordsworth Family, several of them badly edited, many of them in excerpts only. I shall refer to these letters always as H. L. The letter here referred to is designated in the Huntington Collection as H. L. 2079. In Knight an extract of it appears in II, 432. 10 From the Preface to a new edition of the Selections, written from Brixton Lodge, Surrey, on November 18, 1834. The Longmans company consented readily to the reprint. 11 Knight, op. cit., II, 44S. Also II. L. 2080, June, 1831. 12 Robinson to Dorothy Wordsworth, March 6, 1832. Morley, op. cit., I, 228.

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In the summer of 1831 Moxon requested of Wordsworth a contribution for the Englishman's Magazine. He was then unaware of the poet's lifelong distrust of periodicals; but he soon knew of it, fully. The following letter, written at some "cost" and "out of sincere friendship," came to him: As you know well that I am anxious to serve you I have the less pain in saying that I cannot do it in this way. I have an aversion little less than insurmountable to having anything to do with periodicals . . . I not only feel this aversion myself but Mrs. W. has it in so strong a degree that, for the present, I put away all thoughts of looking for pecuniary emolument from that way of publication, which is tantamount to abandoning such expectations from any other.13

In 1833, seven years after their first meeting, Moxon again visited Wordsworth at Rydal Mount. Even before this date Wordsworth had come to look upon him as a friendly person, who would perform London commissions for him 14 and would remember him to London friends, in particular Samuel Rogers and "dear Charles and Mary Lamb." He would, for example, have repairs of articles made for Wordsworth; in exchange the poet would send him country products—hams, for instance. 15 He asked Moxon to "write a note to the Master of Harrow, begging . . . that he would cast his eye over my son's Latin translation of my Poem(s) . . . The republication of the six volumes is detained by want of them." 16 Wordsworth also introduced writers to the young publisher, with or without recommendation. 17 Moxon, in return, found pleasure in forwarding books to his friend, some of 13 An extract in Knight, op. tit., II, 450. The full letter is in H. L. 2081, July 21, 1831. In March, 1840, W. wrote to Moxon (Knight, op. cit., I l l , 197) that while he would like to have his eleven sonnets on "Capital Punishment" in circulation he could not print them in a magazine "for reasons you are aware of." Wordsworth's sonnet on viewing B. R. Haydon's picture had appeared in Hall's Journal; Wordsworth was particular to state that he "had nothing to do with its appearance." 14 Letter to Moxon thanking him for books, etc., H. L. 2082, July 19, 1832. 15 "Many thanks for the Hams, which have safely arrived and are excellent—the best I ever tasted." Moxon to Wordsworth, December 19, 1828; letter in possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. 16 Wordsworth to Robinson. Morley, op. cit., I, 394-95. 17 For instance, on December 31, 1833, he sent a letter introducing "Mr. Hamilton, author of Cyril Thornton." H. L. 2085.

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them in response to orders, but many of them gifts. In one way and another a large number of Moxon's publications found their way into the Wordsworth library. The poet often returned comments with his thanks. For instance, in 1833 he acknowledged Cunningham's Maid of Elvar and Kenyon's Rhymed Plea for Tolerance, finding the latter "ably done and full of animation." 18 One of Wordsworth's early commissions to Moxon was to receive in his shop the names of "such persons as it might suit" to purchase at a guinea the Pickersgill portrait of himself. The artist had spent ten days in the Rydal Mount garret 1 9 painting the poet. A later Pickersgill portrait of Wordsworth Moxon used in the popular six-volume edition which he published in 1836-37. 2 0 Such close friendship between author and publisher and frequent consultations about details of putting out books was bound to result sooner or later in business relations. B y the summer of 1834 Moxon not only was urging Wordsworth to publish with him but also was explaining how sales could be made profitable. His suggestion that the works be published in monthly parts found favor : the poet determined upon such a procedure if he should live to see another edition. 21 Moxon proposed that he be allowed to publish jointly with Longmans. The letter making the proposal Wordsworth found "very friendly and judicious"; he would be 18 H. L. 2084, n. d. See also Wordsworth to Robinson, Knight, op. cit., Ill, 23 : "I never suspected him of being a sinner in verse writing. The work does him great credit, less as a whole, than from the spirit of particular parts. Christians, however, will justly think that tolerance is carried too far by a philosophy that places all creeds so much upon the same footing." 19 Dora wrote a long, spirited letter to Mrs. Charles Lawrence about this picture and the painter's visit. The poet, she states, was "placed on or rather reclining upon, a rock on his own terrace with his cloak thrown over him, and a sweet view of Rydal Lake in the distance. The attitude is particularly easy, and the whole thing perfectly free from anything like affectation." If ISO purchasers could be procured at a guinea, "just to secure the engraver and publisher," a print would be made. "Upwards of a hundred persons" saw it at Rydal Mount, only one "good friend" a fault-finder. Knight, op. cit., II, 502-4, September 27, 1832. 20 Vols. I-II, in 1836; Vols. III-VI, in 1837. Reissued in 1839. Morley, op. cit., I, 316, September 12, 1836. I cannot refrain from quoting Crabb Robinson's quip when he found at Joseph Cottle's pictures of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Lamb: "As to your own picture—You have taken abundant care to let the world know that you did not marry Mrs. W. for her beauty. Now this picture will justify the inference that she too had a higher motive for her acceptance of you." 21 H. L. 2088. Knight, op. cit., Ill, 59, August 25, 1834.

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so happy and proud to have Moxon's name on the title page of his new volume that he himself had proposed joint publication to Longmans and Co.22 The title of the new volume, when it appeared in April, 1835, was Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems, and it bore on its title page the name of Moxon as well as that of Longmans. 23 Wordsworth had come to London in March, 1835, to see the new book through the press. He and Crabb Robinson spent six hours on Sunday, March 22, "in looking over and correcting his preface . . . especially a note on the Poor Laws—which will make enemies"; on the next day they were at the task again, Robinson taking dictation not too patiently. 24 The Yarrow volume sold well, and was generally liked. In August, Wordsworth stated that he was placing Moxon's name on the title page of his "little Book on the lakes." 25 Many letters about publication passed between the two men early in 1836; by the middle of March an agreement for transfer of publishing from Longmans to Moxon was made, which Wordsworth thought generous—"I sincerely wish that the bargain may be as advantageous to you as it is to myself." 26 Three thousand copies of his poems in six volumes were to be run off. They were to have the Pickersgill portrait, but no illustrations—"if we can get the 3000 disposed of in a reasonable time," the poet decided, "we can try our fortune with illustrations." He had no doubt that when the time came he could procure drawings from various artists, so that Moxon would incur expense only for the engraving of the plates and the striking off of copies.27 In this edition Wordsworth had confidence. "I am quite at ease," he wrote his new 22

H. L. 2088. This portion of the letter does not appear in Knight. "The proof of the title page of my poems has just reached me here [in the castle near Penrith], It gives me great pleasure to see your name there." H. L. 2090, January 12, 1835. 24 Unpublished diaries, Vol. XVI, March 22, 23, 183S. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. At this time, also, Robinson helped Wordsworth make his will. 25 H. L. 2091, August 2, 1835. 26 H. L. 2099. The letter is undated, but seems to fit with a letter written by Wordsworth "on the same day" to Robinson asking him to call at Moxon's "that he may talk with you about certain things I have mentioned to him relating to my poems." Morley, op. cit., I, 294. " "Ibid." 23

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publisher, "in regard to the reception which writings, that have cost me so much labor, will meet with in the end." 28 Moxon was confident that Wordsworth's poetry could be sold in quantity; yet by Christmas day of 1837, which was only a few months after the appearance of the sixth volume, 1900 copies of the edition remained in stock. The poet was "a little disappointed." 29 Letters between the two men bolstered their faith. The poet wrote to Robinson, December 15, that Moxon had been "something disappointed"; he feared Moxon was a little too sanguine, as he had expected a greater sale than came to Lamb's works; yet he, Wordsworth, had heard from another publisher that the demand was steadily increasing.30 Even so, the sale was not so slow as it had been for the last thirty years. In June, 1833, 1,600 of the 2,000 copies of the 1832 edition of his poems in four volumes had remained unsold. Wordsworth thought this a fact which, contrasted with the state of his poetical reputation, was "wholly inexplicable." 31 Critical recognition of Wordsworth's genius had been established some twenty years earlier, and to a large extent reader recognition also; 32 yet the volumes did not sell. It was, perhaps, only "the thing" to admire his writings. However, Moxon's confidence that he could sell the poems was in the end justified, for in writing of the copyright bill to Sir Robert Peel, probably in May, 1838, Wordsworth stated that he had received more money in the last five or six years than in the thirty preceding years. 33 From 1835 28

H e revised them several times later. This passage is in Knight, op. cit., I l l , 123. 30 H. L. 2104, postmarked December 25, 1837. Morley, op. cit., I, 352-53. Transactions of the Wordsworth Society, N o . 6, pp. 111-12. 32 See Elsie Smith, An Estimate of William Wordsworth by His Contemporaries, 1793-1822. Also Batho, op. cit., Appendix A, especially p. 356. "There is much more evidence to the same effect, that before 1815 Wordsworth had a few enthusiastic admirers and many detractors and that by 1820 the situation was completely changed." Yet the admirers were not in sufficient number in the eighteen-twenties to make publishing of Wordsworth profitable. "Up to 1820 the name of W. was trampled under f o o t ; from 1820 to 1830 it was militant; from 1830 to 1835 it has been triumphant." These are DeQuincey's ideas. Autobiographic Sketches, p. 562. 33 "Within the last four years [i.e., 1835-39] these works [Wordsworth's poetical writings] have brought the author a larger pecuniary emolument than during the whole of the preceding years in which they have been before the public," appears in an appendix to the three speeches on copyright by Talfourd. See Knight, op. cit., I l l , 112, 164. 29 31

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to 1838, Wordsworth's letter to Gladstone states, sale of his poetical works earned for him nearly fifteen hundred pounds.84 The fact is that Moxon secured Wordsworth's publishing at the right time for a steady sale. A new generation had grown up, bred in the romantic tradition. The letters from Wordsworth to Moxon, 1830 to 1849, which have been preserved are filled with proposals for new editions, for experimental forms of publication, and for fresh minor volumes, such as that of his sonnets. If alertness and persistency are indications of business ability these letters do not reveal the poet as the poor salesman of his products he has generally been thought to be. The record of them and of the twenty-five that have been preserved which Moxon wrote to Wordsworth 33 show a steady placing of editions before the public. By 1850 the 1836-37 six-volume edition of his poems had been reprinted at least six times, and a collection of the sonnets, The Excursion, a pocket edition of the poetical works, Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, Poems, in one volume, and Select Pieces, had been published and some of them reprinted. Of these the only one which was unsuccessful was the book of sonnets. It had been recommended by a nephew of Wordsworth and had seemed an excellent idea to both publisher and poet; but the volume, out in 1838, "did not clear itself," and in 1844 "a great part of the Impression, though latterly offered at a reduced price," still remained in Moxon's hands. This fact made them chary of the American Professor Reed's suggestion that a separate volume of Wordsworth's "Church-poetry" be issued.36 The years of 1841 and 1842 were bad for business.37 The publishing of Wordsworth had been unprofitable to Moxon, he wrote the poet. 38 Wordsworth was sorry, and, as usual, inquired the causes for the low state of the trade. 39 Moxon did not know, un34

To Gladstone, March 23, 1838, Knight, op. cit., p. 159. - 5 In the possession oi Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. 36 Broughton, Wordsworth and Reed, p. 129. 37 Knight, op. cit., I l l , 238. Moxon had given a depressed account of the trade. His printing bill with Bradbury and Evans for 1840 was 4,150 pounds; for 1841, 1,510 pounds; and for 1842, 1,150 pounds. 38 H. L. 2131, February 3, 1842. 39 JJ £ 2133, April 1, 1842.

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less "the immense number of weekly and Monthly publications— chiefly illustrated" had a good deal to do with it. He had been informed that Simpkin, Marshall and Co., wholesale booksellers, on the last day of each month paid no less than £10,000 for periodicals. It seemed to him that the taste for works of a high character and for literature in general was "sadly on the decline." 40 A few years later Wordsworth expressed the same opinion about the injury to book sales by periodicals: "You publishers are at the mercy of scribblers of publications of the day, the week, the month, or the quarter." He saw no remedy. 41 Nevertheless, during these two difficult years Wordsworth asked for a wider page, if the expense was not too great, to keep the lines of poetry from overflowing; complained of delay in bringing out the 1841 reprint of the six volumes; suggested the printing of his sonnets on capital punishment, if it would not injure the sale of the sixvolume edition; and proposed a new book of early and late poems, separate copies of The Excursion, a selection of his poems, to be made by Aubrey de Vere, thirty sonnets (seventeen of them on Italy), and a one-volume complete edition of his poetical works! The publisher acquiesced only insofar as his judgment dictated good business: he reprinted in 1841 and again in 1842 the original six-volume collection and in the latter year Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years. The one-volume edition was not to come out until 1845, the separate Excursion was merely a reprint of volume six of the standard edition; the De Vere collection of poems was never printed; the sonnets were incorporated into later editions.42 Wordsworth wished to be read widely. He was no aristocrat in his choice of readers; he was anxious that the poems should influence people—soothe them in affliction, uplift them when contemplative, lie comfortably in their hearts at all times.43 "Miss Mar40

April 9, 1842. Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. H. L. 2160, January 2 3 [ ? ] , 1845. Those on capital punishment, despite Wordsworth's aversion to periodicals, appeared in the Quarterly Review. 43 To Moxon, February 24, 1840. See Knight, op. cit., I l l , 194. 41

42

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tineau, I am told," he wrote to Moxon, "has said that my poems are in the hearts of the American people. That is the place I would fain occupy among the people of these Islands." 44 He was "persuaded that whatever there may be—in these [a proposed 'brown paper,' that is, cheap, edition] or my other works—fitted for general sympathy will find its way, as education spreads, to the spirits of many." 45 Once he wished to print his poems without prefaces or explanation, believing that poetry "should stand upon its own merits." 46 For the purposes of this wide reading both Wordsworth and his wife were constantly desirous of a cheap selling price for his books. He thought the price of Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, when issued as Volume VII of the large edition, should be reduced to seven shillings or even to five. He wished a book to be out by Christmas so that copies of it could be used as gifts. His books, he noted, much pleased, were in demand as prizes at schools. Mrs. Wordsworth hoped that the reprint of Burns's Select Pieces would be in the very cheapest form for the benefit of school boys of all classes.47 However, he thought that the proposed copyright bill would remedy the sale of his poems in America at so low a price as twenty-five cents.48 The Excursion he wished published in a double-column page and stereotyped that the book might be "acceptable for mechanics and others who have little money to spare." 49 To all these wishes Moxon brought business knowledge and good judgment, and he lowered the price when possible. Select Pieces, for instance, he put out at three shillings and sixpence. He reduced the price of the Sonnets from nine shillings to six—"without any beneficial results." 50 When the Sonnets were to appear, Moxon's proposal of nine shillings as the price alarmed Wordsworth; Southey's Madoc at that price carried 478 pages, whereas "with notes and S new 44

45 February, 1838. Knight, op. tit., p. 156. Ibid. Ibid., I l l , 312-13 47 H. L. 2193, [n.d.: March 12 ( ? ) , 1847], 48 H. L. 2114, December 11, 1838. 49 Knight, op. cit., Ill, 215. 50 Moxon to Wordsworth, November 29, 1843. Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. 46

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sonnets and a new preface," this volume would not number more than 440 pages. 51 Possibly two sonnets could appear on a page and thus the expense be reduced; but Dora disliked this device, and Moxon thought that they would have a better prospect of selling 750 at nine shillings than 1,500 at a considerably lower price, two sonnets on a page.®2 Wordsworth's interest in lower prices was also influenced by his belief that books were likely to be cheaper should the copyright term be extended. 53 Once only the relationship between the two men was strained, principally concerning the matter of review copies of Wordsworth's books, but aggravated by the publisher's complaint of lack of profit and of excessive corrections and by disagreement over the number of copies of each volume to be printed. Letters, vigorous in character, one of which has been quoted on page 99, passed between them. Moxon's January letter stated that he had closed out Longman's second edition of Yarrow Revisited at tenpence a copy.54 This reduction annoyed the poet, who replied in a pleasant but tight-lipped note, I am very sorry to learn that your connection with me, at least considered in its direct bearings, has been so unprofitable to you. . . . Of course I could not have broken my connection with the Longman's without relieving them of that Ed[ition]. . . . Your trade at present seems a very bad one for you; I fear I myself can with truth say, that the labour which from the first I have bestowed upon the forthcoming volume is not likely to earn for me the wages of 2 / a day. Take that up, men of the trade, and make the best of it. 55

Moxon had sometime earlier severely complained about heavy charges for correction of errors on proof: "the volumes should be carefully corrected before they are put into the hands of the Printers," he wrote, "the corrections of the latest edition cost me 51

H. L. 2106, March 13, 1838. Knight, op. cit., Ill, 157. Wordsworth to his nephew John. To Moxon, December 17, 1840, ibid., pp. 215-16. 54 See chapter "Typical Relations with Authors." 55 H. L. 2131, February 3, 1842. A letter from Moxon to Wordsworth which is in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. shows payments from 1843 to 1849 inclusive, from the publisher to the poet, to have amounted to £631. This sum, however, is not to be taken as a complete reckoning. 52 53

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£83. They were put down in the estimate at £ 1 2 - 1 2 - 0 . " 56 Wordsworth thought that the printers had been careless: "Of the alterations very much the greatest part were caused by the inattention of the printers to directions precisely given, or to their own gross blunders." In March the poet had insisted that the four errors in the three first pages of the poems upon Italy be corrected by reprinting, not by errata slips—"I cannot bear the idea that those Poems should start with 4 bits of nonsense." 57 In the same letter he also refused to allow the new volume to be sent to the reviews. From the standpoint of business his reasoning was extraordinary: If any work comes from an author of distinction, they will be sure to get hold of it; if they think it would serve their publication so to do; for if they be inclined to speak well of it, either from its own merits or their good opinion of the author in general, sending the book is superfluous, and if they are hostile it would only gratify the Editor's or Reviewer's vanity, and set an edge upon his malice. These are secrets of human nature, which my turn for dramatic writing (early put aside) taught me—or rather that turn took its rise from the knowledge of this kind with which observation had furnished me.58 Since Moxon valued reviews above advertising, he urged upon Wordsworth the supplying of copies. But on April 3 the poet saw no reason for changing his mind: "I cannot tolerate the idea of courting the favor (or seeming to do so) of any critical tribunal in this country, the House of Commons not excepted." Moxon, in view of the provocation, replied mildly, with the gentle threat that more money, then, would have to be put out on advertising. 59 Wordsworth was adamant: "I make no exception in this matter." 6 0 He however sent a copy to Lockhart, of the Quarterly Review, as a token of friendship. 56 M o x o n to Wordsworth, December 19, 1838. Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. The letter is dated 1838; Wordsworth's reply (Knight, op. cit., I l l , 232-33, and H. L. 2130) is dated December 24, 1841. Since the M o x o n letter is in response to one asking for a sufficiently wide page to avoid overflow of lines, its date probably should be 1841. 57 H. L. 2132, dated in pencil March 27, 1842. 58 Ibid. Also Knight, op. cit., I l l , 242. 50 Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq., dated April 9, 1842. 60 Knight, op. cit., I l l , 259, March 23, 1843.

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Some months earlier, in November of 1841, Wordsworth having heard that Moxon might crash and wondering, perhaps, at Moxon's hesitancy to accept his suggestions for various publications, requested Crabb Robinson to collect information "in a quiet way." 61 Robinson saw Moxon in December and reported to the poet on the fifteenth that the publisher thought the times bad, but not peculiarly so, although returns amounted to only "onesixth of what they were a year ago." 62 Knight had failed, and the Quarterly was changing hands. On January 25 Robinson reported : I dare say, he [Moxon] has never been regardless of his own interest in all he has done with you. Yet it is still never to be forgotten that he is the first publisher who has been instrumental in letting you receive the tardy and still inadequate remuneration of which low-minded critics during so many years have defrauded you. One hears Moxon giving the reminder to the inquiring friend. By April of 1842 all was as friendly between the two men as it had been in the spring of 1841. Soon Moxon was again being entrusted with important commissions. Late in October, 1842, for instance, Wordsworth was put on the civil list with a pension for life of £300 annually, and in April, 1843, he accepted the post of poet laureate. Both Moxon and Crabb Robinson disapproved his acceptance of the laureateship, on the ground of his age and independence of spirit. 63 Wordsworth, however, asked Moxon to call at St. James's Palace and receive his appointment. 64 Moxon always thereafter collected the laureate's remittance and his pension money and forwarded them. Or, again, Wordsworth asked him to look up Leigh Hunt's second son and give him three pounds. Moxon did so, but prudently gave only one pound and 61 "The fear has been expressed to me 'that Moxon may crash[?]'," Morley, op. cit., I, 448, November, 1841. 62 Correspondence of Wordsworth with Robinson in November and December, 1841, and January 1842, Morley, ibid.., pp. 448-50. 63 Unpublished diaries, Vol. XIX, April 8, 1842. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 64 H. L. 2139, 1843. "Sir William Martins of St. James Palace, has written to suggest that some friend of mine should call at his office there, to receive my appointment as Laureate. Will you be so kind as to render this service?"

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reported instability of character. Wordsworth was sure t h a t Moxon had "done quite well" in withholding two pounds. 6 5 N o t annually, as did C r a b b Robinson, b u t frequently, often a t Christmas time, Moxon visited the Wordsworth family at R y d a l M o u n t . H e was always welcome; he was repeatedly invited; and when he departed the ensuing letters of Wordsworth to him were especially affectionate: " W e had swarms of company since you left us, a great p a r t of whom we would willingly have exchanged," he wrote on September 12, 1844, " f o r a few days more of your s o c i e t y . " 0 8 I n 1844 Moxon gave R y d a l M o u n t " a hurried visit." 6 7 Wordsworth h a d wished t h a t Moxon a n d his family could have been with them in April when " u p w a r d s of three hundred children, a n d nearly half as m a n y adults," celebrated his seventy-fourth birthday on the lawn with music, singing, dancing, young and old, gentle and simple, mingling in everything 08 . . . I must own I wish that little commemorations of this kind were more common among us. It is melancholy to think how little that portion of the community which is quite at ease in their circumstances have to do in a social way with the humbler classes.69 This wish Moxon, not u n m i n d f u l of his humble origins, would have shared. I n July, Moxon indicated his and Rogers's desire to visit R y d a l M o u n t , and Wordsworth wrote t h a t it would be indeed a great treat to see you both, and I hope it may suit you to come together. Today as I rode up Ullswater side while the vapours "were curling with unconfined content" on the mountain sides, and the blue Lake was streaked with silver light, I felt as if no Country could be more beautiful than ours. 70 Moxon's love of country was doubtless an element in Wordsworth's affection for him and also in his own love of the poet's verses. 65

H. L. 2138 and H. L. 2141, both in the spring of 1843. H. L. 2156, September 12, 1844. Mary Wordsworth to Robinson, September 23, 1844. Morley, op. cit., II, 572. 68 Knight, op. cit., I l l , 301, April 15, 1844, W. W. to Moxon. 69 Ibid.., pp. 302-3, Wordsworth to Prof. Henry Reed, July 5, 1844. 70 H. L. 2152, July 21, 1844, also in part, Knight, op. cit., I l l , 306. 66

67

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When Robinson and Wordsworth were looking for a third person to tour Italy with them, they welcomed Moxon's company, although he could travel only as far as Paris. The trip, since it shows conditions of travel in those days and reveals Moxon's interests, as well as Wordsworth's, while in Paris, is worth detailed description. On the eleventh of March, 1837,71 Wordsworth put up at Moxon's house on Dover Street. On the fifteenth he and Crabb Robinson estimated their expenses at five hundred pounds. Two days later they purchased a carriage, for seventy pounds, giving in payment a cheque of Moxon's. On Sunday morning, March 19, the travelers 72 took a hackney coach for the quay, the poet of sixty-seven years, the diarist of sixty-three, and the young publisher of thirty-six. They took boat for the vessel, which stood out in the river. They were at Calais between nine and ten in the evening, and found bad accommodations. The next morning they discovered, to their consternation, that a duty of 400 francs, twothirds of it to be returned on departure from the country, had to be paid on the carriage, and that the unloading of it from the ship had cost twenty-three francs. They set out a little after one o'clock and drove thirty miles, when a snowstorm stopped their progress. On Tuesday morning they rose before six and drove two stages before breakfast. At Abbeville they did not even alight to see the cathedral. On this day they made more than sixty miles. At Beauvais, on Wednesday, they stopped to admire the cathedral. They were, however, so anxious to reach Paris that they offered the postboys forty francs for good driving; H. C. R. heard the boys say to one another, "On paye quarante." They arrived in Paris before six o'clock. At the barrier they were asked if they had any liquors on board. They lodged in the Hotel d'Angleterre, with rooms at eight shillings a day. After a comfortable dinner "W. 71 The details are taken from unpublished portions of the Robinson diaries in Dr. Williams's Library. Entries referred to are: June 4 and 5, July 9 and 14, September 7, October 1, 1836; February 1, 3, 17, 28, March 1, 6, 11, 1837. 72 From this point the narrative follows the first 114 pages of Crabb Robinson's travel book in manuscript in Dr. Williams's Library, London, labeled "Journey to Italy with Wordsworth."

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went in search of the Beaudoins," his daughter and her family, and H. C. R. and Moxon had coffee together. The next morning H. C. R. went to the Ministre des Affaires Étrangères and at once secured his favor by giving him autographs of "Wordsworth, Lamb, Rogers, Joanna Baillie and c"; that official quickly offered to take charge of the passports through the necessary routine. At one o'clock the three friends met and after a visit to the Prefect of Police went to the exhibition of the French living artists, which H. C. R. thought creditable to the managers, although he found the portraits painted very poorly and inferior to English masterpieces. They visited it again the next day and proceeded to the Luxembourg, where they saw "a few insignificant French works." The next morning, Friday, Moxon and H. C. R. returned to the Prefect of Police, to obtain their passports, and that gentleman showed them "works of Rogers expensively illustrated with drawings and engravings." Moxon at once thought of illustrating Wordsworth's poems in like manner. 73 Moxon "made some acceptable offer to F.feuillet: the prefect] of autograph engravings, and F's politeness was great towards both." He extended to them an invitation to a soirée that evening, to which they went, finding some agreeable people and seeing "curious autographs of Voltaire, etc. and c." On Saturday all three Englishmen again called on the Prefect, M. Feuillet, and Wordsworth wrote on a piece of vellum a strophe and his name, "and F. in return promised to facilitate the passport." Moxon and Wordsworth then went to see Montmartre, and later in the day Moxon and H. C. R. made a few purchases and dined in the Passage Vivienne, "W. being with his friends." On the next morning, Sunday, one week after their departure from London, the two friends saw Moxon off on his return, and they themselves set out for Fontainebleau, which they reached about dusk. They regretted Moxon's separation from them: "His desire to oblige and good humour made him an agreeable companion." Upon their return to London on the seventh of August, Robinson 73

He did not, however, issue such an edition.

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went immediately to his chambers and Wordsworth to Moxon's home,74 where he remained until some time in September. Robinson's diaries carry several references of his visits to Moxon's house and his seeing Wordsworth there: on the tenth he found John Kenyon with his friends; on the seventh of September Moxon had a breakfast party, at which he and Mr. Cookson were with the poet and the publisher, and later on the same day he found Cary and Kenyon with Wordsworth. Doubtless, whenever the poet was staying with him Moxon entertained as much company as Wordsworth would allow. The poet found the worst of his fatigues "residence in London, late hours of dining, and talking from morning to night." 75 When in town Wordsworth repeatedly stayed at the Moxon home. In 1845 Wordsworth received a second command to attend the Queen's Ball in order that he might be presented at Court. He could find no excuse, as he had done when first commanded. Wordsworth wrote that he should prefer to stay with Moxon rather than with Robinson. He requested Moxon to ask Mr. Rogers to put him "in the way of being properly introduced, and instructed how to behave" in such a situation.76 He arrived on Thursday and on Friday set out for St. James's Palace in Rogers's court suit. Moxon assisted in dressing him—"It was a question of getting a big man into a small man's clothes." 77 Wordsworth went through the ceremony and later spoke of the graciousness of his presentation to the young Queen, "I daresay it was my years; most likely she had not read many of my works"; he added that he had stipulated with the Lord Chamberlain that he should not just pass through the crowd, but should be noticed.78 On this visit Wordsworth saw Tennyson several times, for Moxon had long been the younger poet's publisher. He delivered his opinion that Tennyson was "decidedly the first of our living poets," and he was pleased with the acknowledgment of gratitude, 74 75 7,5 77 78

Unpublished diaries, August, 1837. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. Knight, op. ext., I l l , 158, 194. H. L. 2164, April 18 [18451, and Knight, op. cit., I l l , 313. Clayden, op. cit., II, 232. Charles and Frances Brookfield, Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle, II, ISO.

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"expressed in the strongest terms," although he felt sure that Tennyson could not be much in sympathy with the spirituality with which he, Wordsworth, had endeavored to "invest the material Universe" or with "the moral relations" under which he had wished to clothe its most ordinary appearance. 79 The Moxons solicitously took care of the Laureate, and he appreciated their attention: "I shall never forget your and Mrs. Moxon's kindness to me during my late residence with you, nor Miss Moxon's neverceasing attentions." 80 As early as 1847 Moxon had begun sending the Wordsworth accounts to John Carter and transacting business matters with him. There has been preserved no correspondence between the two friends during 1848. The last letter in the Huntington collection from Wordsworth to Moxon, October 31, 1849, carries a postscript, "We should be very glad to see you here whenever it might suit you." Two days earlier Mrs. Wordsworth had written to him— "The time is drawing on for our good friend Mr. Robinson's annual visit to us . . . a little of your company would be salutary to my husband." 81 Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850. Harriet Martineau wrote Robinson and Moxon of his death. 82 In November of 1850 Moxon was at Rydal Mount "for a few hours," 83 and from time to time until his death he visited Mrs. Wordsworth frequently. Harriet Martineau states that "the devoted friend, Mr. Wordsworth's publisher . . . paid his duty occasionally by the side of her chair." 84 The relationship between publisher and poet had been genuinely and informally friendly; of course the younger man had had great respect for the older, and the business relationship had protected Moxon from the patronizing an older man usually shows toward a younger. Wordsworth had often inquired about Moxon's children and had sent his regards to Mrs. Moxon and to Moxon's sister and brother. Mrs. Moxon had written notes to Mrs. 79 80 81 83 84

Wordsworth to Reed, July 1, 1845, Knight, op. cit., Ill, 318-21. H. L. 2164, May 12, 1845. 82 Knight, op. cit., Ill, 350. Morley, op. cit., II, 726. Quillinan to Robinson, November 5, 1850, ibid., p. 760. Harriet Martineau, Biographical Sketches, p. 87.

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Wordsworth, and Moxon's letters had been both businesslike and friendly. Gordon Wordsworth, the poet's grandson, has assured the writer of the genuine affection which the Wordsworth family bore for the publisher. Upon the poet's death Moxon pushed publication of the writings of Wordsworth. By June seventh he had sent proofs of The Prelude to Mr. Carter for Quillinan's and for Mrs. Wordsworth's approval as to "size, type and c." He printed 2,000 copies and was obliged to issue a new edition in 1851.85 Dr. Christopher Wordsworth set to work on a life of the poet. At first he proposed not to publish the life with Moxon, which intention Robinson thought unfair; however, he finally did, and the book appeared early in April, 1851. In 1840, when Barron Field wrote a critical memoir of the poet and took the manuscript to Moxon, the publisher thought to issue it; but doubting the propriety of printing "the letter at page 54" on the grounds that the public might not like "thus to be admitted behind the scenes," and fearing that Wordsworth's friends might find Field "rather heavy," 86 had sent a copy to Rydal Mount. Wordsworth replied on the eighteenth of January that he had set his face against the publication, that in Field's "notions" were "things that were personally disagreeable—not to use a harsher term," and that "the thing is superfluous." 87 To Field himself he had written two days earlier appreciation of the strong intent to serve him that was in Field's heart, but he was certain that publication would revive hostilities "in great measure passed away" and that notices in the manuscript were "full of gross mistakes, both as to facts and opinions." 88 Now that the good Dr. Christopher Wordsworth was writing the poet's life, Moxon had to print what was presented to him. There was criticism of the book. Before publication Crabb Robinson had objected to the canting paragraph about the poet's exposure in his youth to the perils of 85

Moxon to John Carter, June 17, 1850, in possession of Gordon Wordsworth,

Esq. 86

Moxon to Wordsworth, January 14, 1840, in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. 87 88 Knight, op. cit., I l l , 189-90. Knight, ibid, p. 188.

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Paris, "which might make one ignorant of Wordsworth's personal character imagine he had been guilty of some immorality!" He wrote to Quillinan, who, with Miss Fenwick and Mrs. Wordsworth, agreed with him; he consulted Moxon, who at one time assured him that it had been expunged; but when the book appeared, there was the offensive paragraph. It remained objectionable, and it misled critics for more than a half-century. Only recently has the "affair in France" been openly treated, although Mrs. Wordsworth knew of it. Moxon had long before sung the praise of the Lake poet: Wordsworth, of all men who have graced our age,— Whether the muse they served, or in the state, Stood at the helm, or in cathedral sate, Or judge's chair, or yet adorn'd the page Heroic deem'd, surpassing those of yore Who shone at Poictiers, Cressy, Agincour! — None have like thee from unknown sources brought The light of truth, the feeling, and the thought Dwelling in humblest things: the human heart Thou hast ennobled; and enlarged the spheres Of our perceptions, giving them a part In all that breathes; nor stone, nor flower appears, Whether in fields or hills retired and holy, For thy all-comprehensive mind too lowly. This sonnet, Wordsworth must have thought, praised him for the right accomplishment. The importance to society which Wordsworth accorded to the publisher and his own personal esteem of Moxon are indicated in his concern over the publisher's lack of health: Pray take care of yourself. Your life and health are highly important not only to your wife, family and personal friends, but also in no small degree to the country, your conduct as a publisher being eminently liberal and serviceable in proportion.89 H. L. 218S, April 2, 1846.

Chapter

11 * N E W

THOMAS

NOON

NAMES

TALFOURD

" O F H U M O R he had not a particle in his composition," gossiped Cyrus Redding of Thomas Noon Talfourd. 1 As an orator he "was certainly very richly gifted. His eloquence was innate," asserted a member of the Oxford Circuit. 2 In 1833 Crabb Robinson confided in his diary that Talfourd "is a prudent man and is not deceived by his prosperity." 3 Robert Browning, in a letter to Talfourd, wrote that his poetry had been "good for one of the best events in my life—it procured me the knowledge of you, the friendship with you." 4 And the London world of that day agreed that Talfourd's speeches in defense of Moxon and on copyright were masterful and brilliant. In 1835 he was returned to Parliament for Reading and sat as member through several sessions, proposing the Custody of Infants Act and the Copyright Act. In 1849 he was made a judge of the Common Pleas with the honor of knighthood, 5 and in spite of his busy life he composed, as Henry Chorley thought, "the most noble, highly-finished, and picturesque modern classical tragedy existing on the English stage [Ion]."6 He also narrated his travels and at Moxon's request edited the letters and wrote the life of Charles Lamb. Moxon received his legal advice until the judge died, in 1854. However, since his own brother William was a barrister and another brother, Henry, was a solicitor, he referred to Talfourd only his most important legal matters. Talfourd came to know Lamb in 1815, through William Evans, owner of The Pamphleteer, and, according to Redding, thought 1

Fifty Years Recollections, II, 144. A Memoir of Mr. Justice Talfourd, by a member of the Oxford Circuit, p. 10. 3 Unpublished diaries, Vol. XV, May 19, 1833. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 4 B. M. 36878 f 70. 5 From the Records of the Middle Temple, London. 6 Personal Reminiscences of Chorley, Planche and Young, I, 113. Chorley's writings did much to sustain the reputation of the Athenaeum. 2

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him "only second to Shakespeare in general wisdom and wise philosophy of a like species." 7 He wrote of Lamb's depth of friendship, of his pathos as drawing tears forth that it was "a luxury to shed," of his wit as full of "the warmth of humanity, ever scattering its soft and delicate gleams on some lurking tenderness of soul, some train of old and genial recollections, or some little knot of pure and delightful sympathies." 8 At Lamb's, Talfourd met ambitious young Moxon, and when later he needed a publisher adopted him, first in 1835, in publication of his plays for private circulation, and then continuously until his death nearly thirty years later. Talfourd's poems—he published a volume of poems at sixteen years of age and at twenty an essay entitled "An Attempt to Estimate the Poetical Talent of the Present Age" (1815) 9 —it is difficult to see how Moxon or anyone else could have valued. When his youngest child, named after Lamb, died in his early years, the father, who was forty years of age, wrote a nineteen-stanza poem which begins, Our gentle Charles has pass'd away From Earth's short bondage free, And left to us its leaden day And mist-enshrouded sea.10 Lamb's letter in response to the christening honor was better: I am proud of my namesake. I shall take care never to do any dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get myself hanged, for fear of reflecting ignominy upon your young Chrisom. I have now a motive to be good. . . . I shall survive in eleven letters, five more than Caesar. Possibly I shall come to be knighted, or more! Sir C. L. Talfourd, Bart.! 11 Talfourd, however noble a writer of classical tragedy, was no lyric poet. Crabb Robinson says that later in life he was ashamed of his early poems. 7

Op. cit., II, 141. Talfourd in his New Monthly, 1820, eulogy. Quoted in Redding, op. cit., II, 141. 9 In Evans's The Pamphleteer. 10 Lucas quotes it entire in an appendix to his collection of Lamb's letters. II Lucas, Letters of Charles Lamb, II, 846.

8

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Talfourd's Ion was twice privately printed before the trade edition of 1836; his Glencoe was anonymously printed for private circulation; The Athenian Captive appeared in 1838. The Dramatic Works of Talfourd, Moxon issued in a six-shilling volume in 1843 and a new edition in 1852. The last tragedy by this author, The Castilian, was privately printed in 1853 and publicly the following year. The plays of Talfourd today ring rhetorical, yet they animated and drew applause from the "right people" in early Victorian days: "I was at Covent Garden where Talfourd's Ion was brought out for Macready's benefit," Crabb Robinson noted in his diary for May 26, 1836. "It was most favorably received . . . The applause was immense and M:[acready] and E:[llen] T:[ree] were called out." Wordsworth and Landor and probably Moxon, a friend of them all, had just dined with the author, who "gave a supper on the occasion—a numerous party of legal and dramatic friends." 12 Chorley thought it was, not the great reputation of its author, but the "pathetic excellence of the drama and the rich poetry of the diction" which filled the theater with an audience "the like of which, in point of distinction," he had never seen in an English theater—"there were the flower of our poets, the best of our lawyers, artists of every world and every quality . . . the success . . . was superb." 13 An amusing glimpse of Moxon in relation to Macready is seen in the former's divulgence to Sheridan Knowles of the authorship of Talfourd's Glencoe. The play was to appear on the boards with anonymous authorship, but for some reason Knowles, as he purchased his ticket, announced that the play had been already printed by Moxon, who was his publisher as well as the publisher of the author, Talfourd. "Such," indignantly recorded Macready, who was frequently angry, "is Mr. James Sheridan Knowles." The actor told Dickens of the betrayal of the secret; Dickens told Talfourd; Talfourd wrote to Macready, "much annoyed by the treachery of Moxon and Knowles," and also to the miscreants; 12 13

Unpublished diaries, Vol. XVI. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. H. F. Chorley: Autobiography and Letters, edited by H. G. Hewlett, I, 113 ff.

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they replied to Talfourd, who the next day gave the letter to Dickens, who enclosed it in a letter to Macready. A great ado, since the secret was surely out by this time; for Macready himself, answering a curtain call the evening before, announced that the play was from the pen of a man who had invariably asserted "the benefit and beauty and blessing of an earnest faith in good, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd." 14 Moxon had published the book anonymously before its stage appearance. He no doubt spoke of the authorship to Knowles as a confidence between old friends. A publisher, however, is always accountable for his slips. The close association of Moxon and the poet-barrister is seen best in the preparation of the life of Lamb and in Talfourd's defense of Moxon in the Queen Mab suit; 13 they also worked together in behalf of a change in the copyright law. Although his speech in defense of Moxon was among his favorite speeches,16 the speech on copyright, in 1837, was generally held to be his principal oratorical accomplishment. In the same year he wrote to Moxon that "not one book in one hundred is of value beyond the present limit of copyright," that the proposed copyright of sixty years, which apparently Moxon favored, was too long. If we are to have a copyright of threescore years, the term had better be calculated from the birth of each of his offspring, rather than from the parent's death; for when a child, even in the shape of a book, has reached that stage, it is surely time for it to be settled in the world.

He suggested a flexible plan whereby copyright should exist as long as the public demands the book, as shown by the amount of stock of it a bookseller must keep. He also thought that many valuable books might be neglected during an author's lifetime and might be lost to the world, and he proposed that the past as well as the future works of all living authors be included in any large term of copyright.17 Of Moxon's response we know nothing; but we 14 Diaries of Macready, II, 61-62. On page 34 Macready interestingly relates how the play came to him as written by "Mr. Collinson." 15 See chapter "Moxon and Established Writers." 16 Memoir oj Mr. Justice Talfourd, p. 18. 17 James Holland and James Everett, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery, V, 279-80.

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do know that he interested himself in the subject, as many writers and publishers did during the middle years of the century. Talfourd was privileged to travel, and Moxon, himself a lover of wanderings, found his Vacation Rambles and Thoughts (1841-43) not only worthy of publication but of reissue in a second edition, a third edition, and a supplement. The book has colorful descriptions of Germany, France, and Switzerland. When Talfourd died, 1854, there was concern among his friends that his estate might not be adequate for the support of his family; Crabb Robinson wrote in his diary, "Moxon called—He says he thinks T. must have insured his life. He may but it cannot amount to much;" and six weeks later, "It seems Lady T. says their property has been exaggerated—It is not more than £16,000—so she told Moxon. They will reduce their style of living instantly." 18 Of Talfourd's less literary compositions, Moxon published Three Speeches on Copyright, Observations on the Law of Copyright (1838), Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1842), and of course the speech in defense of Moxon, which he distributed, one infers, broadcast. COVENTRY

PATMORE

The relations of Moxon and Coventry Patmore were unhappy. For some time, since his verse was reminiscent of the older poets and the book came from Moxon's house, the name Coventry Patmore was thought to be a notn de plume of Tennyson. Moxon must both have suffered annoyance and drawn amusement from the tenacious rumor. He had known the father through Charles Lamb almost from Coventry's birth. In June, 1844, he had published the son's Poems—the author was then twenty years of age—a book which "made rather an unusual amount of stir." 19 The numerous reviews ran from extreme admiration to "one of the most savage that ever appeared in 'Maga' even in its unregenerate days." 20 18 Unpublished diaries, Vol. XXIV, March IS and April 26, 1854. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 19 Champneys, Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore, I, 49 ff. 20 Blackwoods reviewed the Poems in the August, 1844, issue. It has been thought that Patmore's father was being got at by the reviewers rather than the poet, since

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P. G. Patmore, the father, wrote to Leigh Hunt thanking him for the favorable notice in Ainsworth's, "which (coming under your hand and seal) will do him more good (in various ways) than fifty Blackwoods can do him harm." 21 The reviews of course remarked on the likeness to the poems of Tennyson. Browning found the imitation "rather, a choosing of Tennyson's 'mode of the lyre,' as who should say, hearing a mode was in favor, 'I can adopt that, too,' " 22 and Elizabeth Barrett scanned the uncut pages with Miss Mitford enough to satisfy herself that the author was "not a Tennyson, and never could have been." 23 Yet the rumor persisted, and people sought his publisher to learn the truth. "Mr. Fryer writes to Mr. Sutton, 'I have just been to see Moxon. Patmore and Tennyson are not the same. Patmore's father is a literary man in poor circumstances. Patmore himself a barrister pupil under Barry Cornwall.' " 24 Browning rated the poems high, "Lilian could never be other than a great and—for a man of twenty—wonderful success under any circumstances." 25 In 1850 Ruskin wrote the author that if the poems were Tennyson's everybody would be talking of them, "but they are a little too like Tennyson to attract attention as they should." 26 Horatio Smith perused the volume "with very great pleasure." 27 As is well known, Tennyson's 1842 volumes played a part in Patmore's decision to become a poet. Patmore had been "most anxious" to make the acquaintance of Tennyson, considering him "the great poet of the Day." 28 Champneys thinks that the meeting probably took place through the Procters; it may have taken place through Moxon, who often invited people to his house to meet Tennyson. Under the charge of imitation of Tennyson Coventry smarted. He blamed Moxon for he had been a second in the duel in which Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, had been killed. Champneys, op. cit., p. 51. 21 B. M. 38, 524 f 1; January 2, 1845. 22 T o Alfred Domett, July 31, 1844. Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, edited by F. G. Kenyon, p. 107. 23 Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Addressed to R. H. Home, edited by S. R. T. Mayer, p. 235. 24 Champneys, op. cit., I, 59. 25 Browning and Domett, op. cit., p. 107, July 3, 1844, and February 23, 1845. 26 Champneys, op. cit., II, 278. 27 28 Patmore, My Friends and Acquaintances, II, 238. Ibid., I, 178.

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rushing him into print. He wrote to Bulwer-Lytton bitterly,

29

somewhat

I began "Lilian," and when it was about half completed I met with the misfortune of a publisher volunteering to produce at his own risk a volume of my poems as soon as I could get one ready. So "Lilian" was concluded with unwarrantable haste, and "Sir Hubert" became the offspring rather of the necessity (which Mr. Moxon urged) of filling fifty pages in half that number of days [Moxon similarly pushed Elizabeth Barrett], than of the judgment which, from the experience I had gained, ought by rights to have been brought to bear upon its publication, and to have rendered it as much superior as I fear it is now inferior, on the whole to its predecessors. Before offering to publish, Moxon had been "told by the knowing ones of the literary turf that Patmore was 'safe to win' "; 30 but, according to Browning, "the brutal paper" of "Maga" stopped short the sale of the volume, "whereat Moxon smiles grimly with a super Ossianic joy of grief, and says calmly, 'I published that one 31 book at my own risk—when I publish another . . He did not, at all events, publish another for Patmore. That poet's next volume, Tamerton Church Tower and Other Poems, 1853, was taken to Pickering, and his third, The Angel in the House, together with a reprint of Tamerton Church, to Parker and Son. Moxon's offer to publish, even though on a tip from knowing ones, was perhaps as much a matter of friendship for P. G. Patmore as it was of business. THE

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Since Moxon declined publication of Elizabeth Barrett's poems in 1843, remarking that "Tennyson was the only poet he did not lose by," 32 we can only conclude that he was not convinced of their selling quality. For he had already put before the reading public the writings of twenty-one different poets. All publication of poems, however, was financially precarious, then as now, and 1842, the 29

Lytton, The Lije of Edward Bulwer, First Lord Lytton, II, 61-62. Browning to Domett, July 31, 1844, Browning and Domett, p. 107. 31 Ibid., p. 112, February 23, 1845. 3 - Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, edited by R. Chorley, I, 213. 30

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worst year of a financial depression which had lasted since 1836, had been a very bad year for publishers. Midway in it Moxon had reported to Browning that the trade flourished more in one month, January, 1841, than in the first six months of 1842; 33 and to Wordsworth he confided in March, 1843, that business had never been so bad as for the last two years. 34 By the 1840's Moxon's firm name was worth something on the title page of any poet's verses. Doubtless Elizabeth Barrett was eager to use it. One suspects, too, that in order to get it she was one of those who assumed the expense of publication, for one year from the date of publishing the book, which was August, 1844,35 even though the volumes were "succeeding past any expectation or hope" of hers, 36 we find her settling a sixty-pound debt to Moxon.37 Elizabeth Barrett had previously published four volumes, with four different publishers,38 but this two-volume publication with Moxon was her real introduction to readers. It cost her a great deal of excitement. Its genesis and history are interesting. On December 20, 1843, she wrote to Home that her manuscripts had been ready for more than a year "when suddenly, a short time ago, when I fancied I had no heavier work than to make copy and corrections, I fell upon a fragment of a sort of masque on 'The First Days of Exile from Eden,'—or rather, it fell upon me, and beset me till I would finish it." 39 She had not then decided whether to print or not. By the last of March, 1844, she had "sent enough manuscript for the first sheet and a note" to Moxon, following at every point John Kenyon's counsel, presumably in the contract for publishing and in printing details. 40 Upon inquiry from the 33

Browning and Domett, op. cit., p. 42. Moxon to Wordsworth, March 25, 1843. Letter in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq. 35 Wise, Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse oj Elizabeth Barrett Browning, p. 40. 36 T o R. H . H o m e , December 3, 1844, Mayer, op. cit., II, 165. 37 To Robert Browning, September 4, 1845, Letters o) Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, I, 189. 38 (a) The Battle of Marathon, 1820, W. Sinsell; ( 6 ) An Essay on Mind, 1826, James Duncan; (c) Prometheus Bound, a translation, 1833, Valpy; (d) The Seraphim and Other Poems, 1838, Saunders and Otley. 39 Mayer, op. cit., II, 146. 40 T o John Kenyon, March 21, 1844, Kenyon, op. cit. 34

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publisher she advised him that the type and size of Tennyson's books seemed, upon examination, to suit her purpose excellently.41 Then, on his advice she decided to bring out two volumes instead of one. On July 28 Moxon discovered that the first volume consisted of 208 pages and the second of 280, and he proposed to Miss Barrett that several poems from the end of the second volume be transferred to the end of the first. In the language of the BarrettBrowning correspondence Moxon "uttered a cry of reprehension and wished to tear me to pieces by his printers, as the Bacchantes did Orpheus." Miss Barrett "could not and would not" hear of such procedure, because she had set her mind on closing the book with "Dead Pan." There was nothing for it but to finish a ballad poem called "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," which was lying by her. Moxon accepted this poem, printed it at the end of the first volume, and left "Dead Pan," the beloved poem which Browning "chaperoned about wherever his kindness could reach," at the end of the second.42 Miss Barrett was thoroughly pleased. There was also difficulty in deciding on a title. Her friends and probably Moxon desired a title other than simply "Poems," preferably "The Drama of Exile and Other Poems," toward which she herself inclined. Moxon knew from experience that an obscure poet's early publications sold better under specific titles; but Miss Barrett wavered, and at the last moment decided on "Poems." Later she congratulated herself, for it became clear, as she had anticipated, "that for one person who is ever so little pleased with the Drama, fifty at least will like the smaller poems." 43 Moxon published the two volumes in August. By early November Miss Barrett and he were able to list Ainsworth's, The Metropolitan, Tait, and Blackwood ("last and greatest beyond any comparing") as magazines that had been "kind and generous ac41

T o John Kenyon, dated "(about March, 1844)," op. cit. This matter is recounted in a letter to H . S. Boyd, postmarked August 1, 1844, Kenyon, op. cit., I, 176. J. H . Ingram asserts (in Elizabeth Barrett Browning) that Lady Geraldine's Courtship was written in order to make up the number of sheets required by the American publisher, w h o issued the volumes practically simultaneously. 43 Elizabeth Barrett to Mrs. Martin, September 10, 1844, in Wise, op. cit., p. 60. See also, on the same page, the letter to her American publisher, Cornelius Matthews, where the ratio was set at one to ten. 42

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44

cording to their measure." The Examiner sounded a clarion for her, stimulated, probably, by friendship for Moxon. Blackwood's "high help" was most appreciated. Then, a year later, she settled her debt to Moxon. The American printer, Matthews, who put out an edition that outshone the English edition,45 did better by her with the 1,500 copies he printed, 48 for on the very day she was paying Moxon she received from him a remittance of fourteen pounds. It was joyous, as she ironically wrote to Robert Browning, to discover that "one's poetry has a 'commercial value,' if you take it far away enough from the 'civilization of Europe.' When you get near the backwoods and the red Indians, it turns out to be nearly as good for something as 'cabbages,' after all!" 47 Six years later Elizabeth Barrett, then Mrs. Robert Browning, had found a new publisher, and the second edition, 1850, appeared over the firm name of Chapman and Hall. That company issued five editions before 1864. Moxon has been supposed to have published for Elizabeth Barrett in 1849 her antislavery poem, "The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," which had just been printed in America. Robert Browning assured T. J. Wise on August 3, 1888, in response to inquiry, that "the respectability of the Publisher and Printer is a guarantee that nothing surreptitious has been done. . . . The pamphlet was clearly a private issue for 'friends.' " 48 But Browning was mistaken, if he wrote this letter, since the printing has been proved by Carter and Pollard to have been a forgery. 48 Moxon unwittingly played a minor role in the romance of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Browning had been publishing with him since 1840 and was in the midst of the "Bells and Pomegranates" series; he frequently found a reason for visiting the Moxon establishment. There, sometimes from Moxon himself and sometimes from Moxon's brother, who told "odd stories 44

Mayer, op. cit., II, 165, November 7, 1844. Gould, The Brownings and America, p. 24. 46 Moxon's edition had also numbered 1,500 copies. Wise, op. cit., p. 40. 47 Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, I, 187. 48 Wise, op. cit., p. 93. 49 Carter and Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain XlXth Century Pamphlets, pp. 169-71. 45

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drily," he gathered bits of news, gossip, jokes, which he put into his letters to Elizabeth Barrett: I called . . . on Moxon, by the way, (his brother telling me strangely cheering news, from the grimmest of faces, about my book selling and likely to sell) . . . Moxon sent a curt message to me about my books "going off regularly"; . . . Moxon told me Tennyson was still in town . . . One striking celebrity at the Dickens dinner was—Lord Chesterfield—literary, inasmuch as a great "maker up of books"—for the derby. . . I called on Moxon, who is better, and reports cheeringly. 51

He repeated from Moxon, too, the enlivening account of William Howitt, who gathered literary gossip about Wordsworth from Wordsworth himself or about Tennyson. "Moxon said, 'Howitt is just gone to call on Tennyson for information—having left his card for that purpose.' 'And one day will call on you,' quoth Moxon, who is but a sinister prophet, as you may have heard—Dii meliora piis!" 52 In the shop Browning did not ask after Miss Barrett because he "heard Moxon do it." Much delightful news he gathered, "but did it not please me to call in at Moxon's and hear that (amongst other literary news dexterously enquired after) Miss Barrett's poems were selling very well and would ere long be out of print." 53 Moxon may not have been quite unwitting about the romance. The very lively Mrs. Brookfield gathered something concerning it from him and learned "selon Mr. Moxon" that the two poets were then in Italy "away from the brutish father . . . who opposed the match and entailed the necessity of its being achieved in a surreptitious (gracious! What a word!!!) manner." 54 Although Moxon was a source of many a lively passage in the poets' letters he was not contributing greatly to their financial betterment. When, in 1846, Browning had from another publisher a "direct offer to print a new edition" of his poems he was already 50

Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, II, 285. Letters oj Browning and Elizabeth Barrett; see Index, "Moxon, Edward." 52 Ibid., p. 118. 53 Ibid., p. 284. 54 Charles and Frances Brookfield, Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle, 1809-1847, December 5, 1846. 51

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in a dissatisfied mood concerning Moxon; his poems, "even in their present disadvantageous form, without advertisement and unnoticed by the influential journals" did somehow manage to pay their expenses. Yet Moxon's slow self, even, anticipates success for the next venture. Now the fact is, not having really cared about anything except not losing too much money, I have taken very little care of my concerns in that way—not calling on Moxon [i. e., asking for a settlement] for months together. But all will be different now—and I shall look into matters, and turn my experience to account, such as it is. 55

This note was written as the last of the "Bells and Pomegranates" series was put on sale. In spite of his ready acceptance of Moxon's proposal as to form and size, Browning had probably not really liked the series. In any case, the returns from the pamphlets could not have been large. But with marriage imminent, Browning needed money and felt impatience. It is probably true that Moxon was a "slow" publisher. But Browning had himself chosen Moxon, as he wrote William Fox, "on account of his good name and fame among author-folk," and because he himself had written, "as the Americans say—'more poetry 'an you can shake a stick at.' " 5 6 Yet he chafed under his dissatisfaction for nearly four years before he took a manuscript to Chapman and Hall. Until his later years he did not publish regularly with any publisher; from 1833 to 1850 he placed his poetry with four different houses, and after that date with three others, coming to rest with Smith, Elder and Co. Browning's first visit to Moxon, in April, 1835, was not auspicious. He was armed with a letter of introduction, which had been obtained through the influential Mr. Fox, editor of the Monthly Repository and champion of Pauline two years earlier, and with the manuscript of Paracelsus. N o sooner was Mr. Clarke's letter perused than the Moxonian visage lowered exceedingly thereat—The Moxonian accent grew dolorous thereupon: "Artevelde" has not paid expenses by about thirty odd 55

Letters of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, II, 485-86. Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Browning, new edition by F. G. Kenyon, I, 64, April 2, 183S. 56

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pounds. Tennyson's poetry is "popular at Cambridge," and yet of 800 copies which were printed of his last,57 some 300 only have gone off. Mr. M. hardly knows whether he shall ever venture again, etc., etc.— I called at once on Saunders and Otley.58

Effingham Wilson in the end published Paracelsus; and Browning's next book, Strafford, appeared over the name of the Longmans firm. Paracelsus seems to have been taken over by Moxon later, for advertisement of it appears on the third page of the wrappers of all "Bells and Pomegranates" pamphlets, with the exception of No. 1: " I t was as dead a failure as 'Ion' a brilliant success," Browning noted, 59 as also the publisher no doubt did. Although Moxon published nothing of Browning's before 1840, it is likely that Browning kept in touch with him during the preceding five years. W h a t could have induced Moxon to publish Sordello, the "noble picture with its face to the wall—or at least, in shadow," as Elizabeth Barrett called it, 60 one does not know. His friend Macready had found it not readable. Possibly Forster, another mutual friend, persuaded him. Possibly he himself liked it. T h e book was published at six shillings and sixpence in drab boards; it "sold slowly, and whilst still on hand the change in fashion (from 'boards' to 'cloth') took place, and copies were afterwards made up in dark-green cloth, lettered in gilt across the back, Sordello/R. Browning." 6 1 Gosse relates Moxon's next adventure with Browning: one day, as the poet was discussing with his publisher his failure to appeal to the reading public, the latter remarked that at that time he was bringing out some editions of the old Elizabethan dramatists in a comparatively cheap form, and that if Mr. Browning would consent to print his poems as pamphlets, using this cheap type, the expense would be inconsiderable. The poet jumped at the idea, and it was agreed that each poem should form a separate brochure of just one sheet—sixteen pages, in double columns, —the entire cost of which should not exceed twelve or fifteen pounds. 57

Published in December, 1832, twenty-seven months earlier. 59 Orr, op. cit., p. 65. Letters of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, I, 322. 60 Ibid., p. 193. 61 Nicoll and Wise, op. cit., pp. 364-65. "Some thirty years later" the "remainder" were sold at two shillings each. 58

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In this fashion began the celebrated series of Bells and Pomegranates. Pippa Passes led the way, and was priced first at sixpence; then, the sale being inconsiderable, at a shilling, which greatly encouraged the sale; and so, slowly, up to half-a-crown.62 It is not likely that Browning's father bore the expense of the eight parts of "Bells and Pomegranates"; 63 with the publication cost so low, Moxon would almost certainly bear the slight risk. 64 It should be noted in connection with the price of each number that only Numbers 1,3, and 5 kept to the 16 pages; that Numbers 2,4, and 6 ran to 20 pages, Number 7, which sold for two shillings, to 24, and the last, the only one to sell for half-a-crown, to 32 pages. At the end of Sordello Moxon advertised as "nearly ready" Pippa Passes, King Victor and King Charles, and Mansour the Hierophant [The Return of the Druses]. Possibly partly because it was the publication of Elizabethan dramatists that suggested the form and price of the "Bells and Pomegranates" series, but more because Browning's interest at this time was in dramatic writing, the series was intended to be one of "Dramatical Pieces." Such material would have pleased Moxon. After the first two numbers, however, which did not sell well, Moxon thought that for popularity's sake, as Browning wrote to Domett, the next issue should be composed of songs and small poems. When they appeared Browning somewhat apologetically gave out his now accepted definition of the genre: "Such poems as the following come properly enough, I suppose, under the head of 'Dramatic Pieces'; being, though for the most part lyric in expression, always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine." 65 It was doubtless also in accord with Moxon's advice that Number 7, issued after three pamphlets of dramas in November, 1845, was composed of "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 62

Edmund Gosse, Robert Browning, Personalia, pp. 52-53. Griffin and Minchin, op. cit., pp. 57, 124. • 0 4 Several writers on Browning repeat the assertion that "the elder Browning" bore the cost of publication. See Gosse, Browning Personalia, p. 52. See F. M. Sim, Robert Browning: The Poet and Man; 1833-1846, pp. 127, 198. The elder Browning probably stood ready in the beginning to meet any deficit. 65 Prefatory to No. 3, Dramatic Lyrics. 63

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Gosse also relates how the Pied Piper of Hamelin, "which has probably introduced its author's name into hundreds of thousands of homes where otherwise it never would have penetrated," came to be printed. It had been a jeu d'esprit which he had written to amuse little Willie Macready. The collection of poems of which it became a part Moxon found too short to fill the sixteen pages necessary for the issue; as he had done with Elizabeth Barrett under like circumstance, he sent "the printer's devil" to ask for more copy. This poem was given him, apparently without much thought or much sense of its value.66 Theatrical production of Browning's plays either before or after their appearance in print would give desirable publicity for their sale. On the first day of May, 1837, Strafford was produced at Covent Garden, and in spite of handicaps it proved a success.67 The Morning Herald, on May 4, praised the play as the "best that has been produced for many years." 68 Moxon had reason to expect much from this commendation. But publication of Sordello alienated the "pit audience" which Strafford had given Browning and which he hoped to win back with the dramas of the "Bells and Pomegranates" series. However, he could not persuade Macready to accept either King Victor and King Charles or The Return oj the Druses. The actor found the latter a "mystical, strange and heavy play." From May, 1837, then, to the production of A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, in February, 1843, no play of Browning's appeared on the stage, and that play endured for only three performances. His next play, Colombe's Birthday, was put before Charles Kean a year later, but although it was then printed, it was not acted until 18S3.69 Luria and A Soul's Tragedy were not written for the stage. Clearly, the "Bells and Pomegranates" series won back no "pit audience" or any large audience of readers; and Browning's career in the theater, disappointingly, was of little benefit to either publisher or author. John Forster, critic of drama, thought Browning to have the power of a great dramatic poet. 70 In the difficulties over The Blot in the 'Scutcheon Moxon was 66 68 70

67 Personalia, op. tit., p. 57. See Griffin and Minchin, op. cit., pp. 108-9. 69 Diaries of William Charles Macready, I, 392. Wise, op. cit., p. 139. New Monthly Magazine, N.S., Vol. X I (March, 1836).

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involved. He had come to know Macready as early as January, 1834, 71 but at this time, 1843, when the actor was quarreling with Browning over the production, was himself at variance with the irascible actor. 72 When Browning appealed to Moxon for a speedy publication of the play before its production at the Drury Lane theater, Moxon turned it off the press in twenty-four hours, on February 11, 1843, thus preventing Macready's "mutilation" of it. A copy was in the actors' hands on the evening of the play's production. Gosse states that Moxon "was only too pleased" to cooperate in Macready's confusion. The two conspirators against the actor's comfort, the author and the publisher, went to the performance of the play together and sat in the stage box, which was the author's "not by favor, but by right." Both expected failure. When the applause grew "vociferous" and the author was called for by the audience and coaxed to appear by an actor, the two sat silent and Browning remained unrecognized. The poet "went home very sore with Macready, and what he considered his purposeless and vexatious scheming." 73 In 1849 Macready could not think that anyone would read Browning's poetry twice, except Paracelsus, "who had choice of any other poet." 74 Although a few months later Forster brought him "a sort of regretful message from Browning" and his book Christmas Eve, he still could not "relish" the poetry. 75 Moxon's breach with Macready was of course not so important; it healed quickly. Both men were also expecting publicity through reviews, 76 since little money could be spent for advertisement on a pamphlet that sold so cheaply. But notice came only gradually and sparsely. In May, 1843, after both Number 4 and Number 5 of "Bells and Pomegranates" had appeared, Browning reported to Domett: "They take to criticizing me a little more, in the Reviews—and 71

Diaries of Macready, II, 92, January 9, 1834. 73 Gosse, Robert Browning: Personalia, p. 64. Ibid., pp. 61-69. 74 Diaries of Macready, II, 432, September 11, 1849. 75 Ibid., p. 464, April 13, 18S0. 76 A list of "the principal reviews and criticisms of Robert Browning and his writings contained in books and magazines" is to be found in Nicoll and Wise, Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century, I, S78 ff. 72

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God send I be not too proud of their abuse! For there is no hiding the fact that it is of the proper old drivelling virulence with which God's elect have in all ages been regaled." 77 Moxon, too, knew the publicity value of abuse. Not only Moxon's establishment was open to Browning but his home as well. On May 13, 1846, at Moxon's home Tennyson asked Browning "in so many words" what he thought of Shelley. It was then, too, that Browning found Tennyson to be a "long, hazy kind of a man, at least just after dinner," yet with something "naif" about him. 78 The friendship thus begun between Browning and Tennyson lasted during the lifetime of the two poets, "without a trace of jealousy," so the latter's son thought. 79 Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett enjoyed a flurry of interest when the former was asked to respond to "The Dramatists" ("Where are they?" queried Miss Barrett) at a Literary Fund dinner in 1846. Moxon had been on the committee of arrangements and probably had pushed the right of his author, Browning, to respond to the toast. 80 He had not done so well for Tennyson, probably under orders from the latter never to involve him in speaking in public. Dinners were held frequently. Thackeray gave a speech at one in 1850 and thought he had made a fool of himself, but his mother, who had listened from behind a pillar, said to him, "No, you didn't, old boy." She thought the talk very beautiful. 8 1 In spite of Browning's discontent with Moxon he trusted his publisher and in general commended his business ways. His letter written from Pisa in February, 1847, reveals the nature of the relationship between the two men: I and my wife think your account a very satisfactory one, and we have commissioned Mr. Kenyon to receive what you promised us, that is to say, so much of the £75 and odd, as shall remain when you have deducted the proper sums for those advertisements you advise. . . . All your advertisements are in such good taste, that one needs say noth77

Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, May IS, 1843. 79 Ibid., II, 151. Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., II, 230. 80 Letters of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, II, 150. 81 A Collection of Letters of Thackeray, p. 121.

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ing about dropping "Esqs." and "Mrs." and "Mrs.'s" and putting simply R.B.'s and E.B.B.'s . . . They [people] will have it that the form, the cheap way of publication, the double columns, etc., do me harm, keep reviewers from noticing what I write—retard the sale— and so on. For myself, I always liked the packed-up completeness and succinctness, and I am not much disposed to care for the criticism that is refused because my books are not thick as well as heavy. But the point which decided me to wish to get printed over again was the real good I thought I could do to Paracelsus, Pippa, and some others; good, not obtained by cutting them up and reconstructing them, but by affording just the proper revision they ought to have had before they were printed at all. This, and no more, I fancy, is due to them. But you know infinitely best what our policy is; "ours" for if we keep together, there is not such a thing as your losing while I gain. . . . By Christmas, Providence helping, my wife and I want to print a book as well as our betters, after what we think a new and good plan—all which it would be premature to allude to, at present. To return to the matter in hand, therefore, thank you heartily for your kind wishes, and prompt attention to my note. Surely, after all, the account is not unfavorable. If all these "devices" can sell, without a single notice from the Examiner, things will mend some day, we may hope.82 This friendly letter was written less than six months after his complaining one of August, 1846, to Elizabeth Barrett. It shows that by 1847, at least, Moxon was earning some money on Browning's publications for the author and casts doubt upon Mrs. Orr's implied reason for his leaving Moxon and publishing his next book with Chapman and Hall, namely, that Moxon published only at Browning's expense. 8 3 Less than half a year after writing the letter, however, Browning was busy bringing out another edition of his poems (except Sordello), with Chapman and Hall, Moxon having declined the commission. The book did not appear until late in 1849. Just why Moxon declined to publish it is perhaps not too difficult to understand when one considers that of Christmas Eve and Easter Day 200 copies sold in the first fortnight, "after which the demand flagged." 8 4 The reading public, in spite of Browning's four earlier 82

Letters of Robert Browning to Various Correspondents, Vol. I, entry for February 24, 1847. 83 84 Orr, op. cit., p. 177. Ibid., p. 172.

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publications, the "Bells and Pomegranates" series, and the public production of A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, was still in regard to his poetry in the mood of Crabb Robinson, who wrote, in 1844, that he had breakfasted with Kenyon, who "had with him Browning, one of the young half-crazy poets whose prose conversation is much more agreeable than their wild verses." 83 H a d Browning "lived in the hearts" of the British people as years later Mrs. Browning rejoiced that he lived in the hearts of the American people—"In America he is a power, a writer, a poet—he is read" 8 8 —he might not have shifted from publisher to publisher. In reminiscence with Edmund Gosse in the summer of 1889 Browning described the long-drawn desolateness of his early and middle life as a literary man; how, after certain spirits had seemed to rejoice in his first sprightly runnings, and especially in Paracelsus, a blight had fallen upon his very admirers. He touched, with a slight irony, on the "entirely unintelligible Sordello," and the forlorn hope of Bells and Pomegranates,87 These two publications were those which Moxon was handling; the publisher was slow, but the public was slower. T h a t there was no breach between Moxon and Browning is evidenced by the latter's willingness to provide an introduction to the supposed Shelley letters which Moxon published in 1852 and hastily withdrew. The essay—"a solid well-wrought, massive, manful bit of discourse," Carlyle called i t 8 8 — w a s reprinted in 1888. For years it was supposed that Browning had returned to Moxon for two privately printed publications in 1855, Cleon and The Statue and the Bust; but these pamphlets have now been proved by Carter and Pollard to be forgeries. 89 Moxon probably never cared for the poetry of Browning as he loved that of Wordsworth and of Tennyson. Only the business side of his nature was engaged in the publication of it. 85 A notation of Robinson's in "Bundle 5" of "Miscellaneous" in Dr. Williams's Library, London, under date of March 29, 1844. 86 87 Quoted in Gould, op. cit., p. 34. Gosse, op. tit., p. 85. 88 Carlyle to Browning, March 8, 18S2, Letters of Thomas Carlyle to J. S. Mill, John Sterling, and Robert Browning, edited by Alexander Carlyle, p. 291. 89 An Enquiry . . . , pp. 79, 88-90, 177-80.

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W H E N , in 1835, Wordsworth's name was added to the list of Moxon authors, his principal poems had been composed and, save The Prelude, published. Moxon's task therefore was to find ways of profitably reissuing them. The methods adopted included variations in form and in price of the books and frequent additions of new poems or, less often, new volumes. There was no problem concerning the poet's meeting the public; readers, if there were to be any, must be self-attracted and must adjust themselves to the poet. When Browning added his name to the Moxon list, a different problem confronted the publisher. Browning did not compose poems on simple themes pleasing to the young lady readers of the 'forties or express them in readily intelligible language. What could be done to draw readers to him? Moxon suggested, as has been noted, frequent publication and low prices and encouraged the poet, who was himself eager, to try the theater. With the old poet Moxon was successful, partly because the audience had been prepared; with the younger one he was not successful, partly because the audience had not been prepared. When Alfred Tennyson enrolled among Moxon authors, the publisher was delighted. Poems, Chiefly Lyrical had pleased him. He understood them; readers, he knew, would understand them. They charmed him with their fancy and with their rhetoric. The themes were simple and "poetic," as he understood the term. The next, 1832, volume he therefore undertook with high hope. In it were descriptive poems, many with fine appreciation of nature, which he, too, was celebrating in verse; poems with classical themes and English settings, and these he approved; poems highly romantic in idea with touches of pleasant mystery, like The Lady of Shalott; and poems of domestic themes. The book could not fail. Had the matter of popularity been left to the readers of the day, the volume probably would have stirred the public; but it fell into [

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M O X O N AND T E N N Y S O N the hands of critics who had scarcely finished their destructive work with Shelley and Keats. To their attack the book laid itself wide open with sentimentalities like "O Darling Room," and the stupidity of its lines on Christopher North. One marvels what could have been in Moxon's mind when he left in the book such an obvious bid as those childish lines for at least one unfavorable review in a powerful journal. T h e only answer is that he was inexperienced, that Tennyson was young and stubborn, and that both were overconfident. Then followed the ten bruised years of Tennysonian silence. If they were profitable to the poet, as his son has maintained, certainly they were unprofitable to the publisher. The difficulty which confronted Moxon was new to him. Here was a writer with themes and treatment that were right for the time and easily intelligible; yet the poems did not sell. It is possible that if the poet had not withdrawn into silence Moxon would have found for him earlier popularity, for it is certain that he was persistent in the face of trouble and that he genuinely loved Tennyson's young lyricism. It is to be expected that he would disapprove the poet's withdrawal when confronted by critical censure and would urge him to put out a new volume or to reprint. 1 The latter course he early pressed upon Tennyson, but the poet had been deeply injured in spirit and would not be "dragged forward again in any shape before the reading public at present," particularly on the score of old poems. 2 Many of them had already undergone much painful revision, yet even in their new form he would not risk them. In 1837 Moxon again proposed a reprint, but the poet's mind had not changed—nor had it in 1840. During Tennyson's ten silent years the publisher could do little but hold fast to his faith in the young writer's genius and wait. It is to his credit that he waited. Moxon became a trusted, helpful friend, one judges from passing references, and, on the whole, something of a healing influence. The two men saw one another 1 Fitzgerald to Barton, November, 1839: "Moxon . . . has been calling on him [Tennyson] for the last two years for a new edition of his old volume." Some New Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, p. 13. 2 Tennyson to Spedding, undated, Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 145. The italics are Tennyson's.

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occasionally and exchanged letters. I t was not, however, until Tennyson began frequenting London in 1837 that he spent much time with any friend. In 1833, immediately preceding Arthur Hallam's fateful departure to the Continent, he came to London to say goodbye. There was a supper in his rooms at which Moxon, Hallam, and Tennant listened to a reading of "glorious fragments" 3 of " T h e Gardener's Daughter." The friends held together until half-past four in the morning. 4 By the spring of 1842, under the persuasion of publisher and of friends and the potent threat of publication in "the land of freemen"—he knew what that would bring forth 5 —Tennyson had brought together rewritten and new poems and stood ready to publish them. This time, however, not hostile critics, but believing friends, Milnes and Spedding, were to review the volumes in the Westminster and the Edinburgh,6 The publisher, in his own interests, arranged that precaution and also saw to it that if possible no savage critic should laugh this book out of popularity. The poet was as anxious about arrangements as the publisher; he wrote his friend Lushington, Spedding's going to America has a little disheartened me, for some fop will get the start of him in the Ed. Review where he promised to put an article and I have had enough abuse. Moreover Spedding was just the man to do it, knowing me, and writing from a clear conviction.7 In March he had manuscripts with Moxon, for Fitzgerald at that date gossiped with Barton about poor Tennyson getting home some of his proof sheets and finding them, now that they were in cold print, "detestable." Yet Fitzgerald thought that with all his faults he would put out such a volume as had "not been published since the time of Keats." 8 The two volumes, the first consisting of reprinted poems and the second of new ones, came off the press early in July. The sale must have been immediately promising, otherwise Moxon would 3 4 5 7

The phrase is Tennant's. Hugh l'Anson Fausset, Tennyson, a Modern Portrait, p. 62. e Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 178. Ibid., p. 188. 8 Ibid., 180. Barton, op. cit., pp. SS-S7.

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not have gone off to the Pyrenees with Wordsworth's two sons in late August or early September. Moxon's brother, in the shop on Dover Street, assured Tennyson, when he called during the first week in September, that 500 of the books had already sold—about 250 a month—and that he had really this time made a sensation.9 Rogers, Carlyle, and Sara Coleridge were delighted with the poems; Carlyle felt "the pulse of a real man's heart" in them; and Sara Coleridge, who could hardly get to the new poems for joy in the rewritten ones, found that they would "sustain the author's reputation." 10 John Stuart Mill held that Tennyson, misunderstanding the theory whereby an age can be romantic to itself, had thought that "because mechanical things may generate grand results . . . there is grandeur in the naked statement of their most mechanical details." He instanced the three lines introductory to "Godiva" as the type to which he objected. 11 Browning showed his good judgment by preferring the "noble" Locksley Hall and St. Simeon Stylites, which he considered "perfect," but, perversely it would seem, thought every revision made in the old poems a mistake: "there is some woeful mental infirmity in the man," he wrote to Domett. 12 These were private opinions; the unfavorable ones neither came to Tennyson's ears nor injured him publicly. Although Hallam Tennyson stated that the literary world of London accepted the poems at once, little evidence of real popularity showed until 1844.13 However, Moxon issued a reprint in 1843, and between that date and ten years later six other twovolume editions were issued. Returns in hard cash began to come both to Tennyson and to Moxon. As early as March, 1843, Miss Mitford reported Moxon as saying that publication of Tennyson's poems paid. 14 Tennyson was still, in 1842, sufficiently distressed to forbid Moxon showing him notices containing "the least possible depre9

Tennyson to Lushington, Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 212. Ibid,., I, 213, 215. 11 T o James Spedding, November, 1842, Letters oj John Stuart Mill, edited by H u g h S. R. Elliott, I, 21-22. 12 July 13, 1842, Browning and Domett, p. 40. 13 14 Nicolson, op. cit., p. 119. Chorley, ed., op. cit., I, 213. 10

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ciatory expressions." There were not many that could be shown, for here was an altogether different reception from that accorded the 1832 volume. In a few years the Quarterly itself recanted. Moxon need no longer f e d baffled, and Tennyson was on his way to becoming the principal poet of the Victorian age. T h e friendship between poet and publisher grew strong. In January of 1843 Tennyson wrote drolly to him from lonely Mablethorpe, where were only two starfish and himself, to send him any stray papers as they would be "manna in the wilderness." A few evenings before, he had been in the Moxon drawing-room in Dover Street, and with the publisher had sat late convivially. 16 Relations became even friendlier when reviews of the poems were bearable and the sale of books fair. The late spring of 1845 saw Tennyson frequently in Moxon's home. He dined at the Brookfields' on April 18, and "Moxon came at Alfred's invitation and staid till six." The next day Brookfield went to Moxon's where was Tennyson and no one else: "We smoked till nearly two. A most agreeable evening. Moxon told of Rogers's kindness to him in lending him £500 to set him up." On M a y 6 he dined at Moxon's where were also Wordsworth, Tennyson, Lushington, Harness, and Dyce. Wordsworth told of his attendance at the Queen's Ball. Writing to his mother of this evening, Brookfield commended the "exceedingly pleasant, homely dinner." 17 It was during this spring, probably, that a meeting of Wordsworth and Tennyson took place at a dinner at Moxon's which Aubrey de Vere recounts: the ladies had withdrawn, and Wordsworth soon followed them. Several times Tennyson said to me in a low voice, "I must go: I cannot wait any longer." At last the cause of his disquiet revealed itself. It was painful to him to leave the house without expressing to the old Bard 15 Browning to Domett, July 13, 1842, "I have been with Moxon this morning, who tells me that he [Tennyson] is miserably thin-skinned, sensitive to criticism (foolish criticism), wishes to see no notices that contain the least possible depreciatory expressions—poor fellow!" Browning and Domett, p. 40. 16 Letter in manuscript in the Fitzwilliam Museum Library, Cambridge, dated January 23, 1843. 17 C. and F. Brookfield, of. cit., I, 148 ff.

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his sense of obligation which all Englishmen owed to him, and yet he was averse to speak his thanks before a large company. Moxon was informed of the situation; he went out and brought Wordsworth back to the dining-room and Tennyson "moved up to him. He spoke in a low voice, and with a perceptible emotion. . . . The old man looked very much pleased . . . shook hands with him heartily, and thanked him affectionately." 18 By this time Moxon was caring not only for Wordsworth's comforts and interests but also for Tennyson's. A year later Browning, having first met Tennyson in the publisher's drawing-room, found Moxon's care of the poet "the charmingest thing imaginable." He added that Tennyson seemed to need it. 19 Tennyson was indolent and dilatory and probably paid small attention to details of living. Moxon may have scheduled his days and got him to his appointments on time; in general he acted the thoughtful friend and certainly the admiring one. When Tennyson was out of town he employed Moxon's interested services, as Lamb, Southey, and Wordsworth had done for years, on errands small and large. Naturally, he asked him to send books. At one time he requested the borrowing "out of the London Library or from Rogers the first volume of Modern Painters." 20 Like other authors, also, Tennyson used Moxon as a sort of banker: "I got . . . a letter from a man who seems deserving and in difficulties," he wrote in 1846 to Moxon; "he has asked me to lend him four pounds, which I have promised to give him, and referred to you. So let him have that sum if he calls with my name: his name is R. C. W." 21 When the poet laureate leased Farringford, in November, 1853, with the option of buying it, he asked Moxon to advance one thousand pounds—four hundred were owed him and the other six were to be paid in March when Tennyson got his moneys.22 Moxon's aid at the time of the poet's marriage is well known. He advanced three hundred pounds 23 18

Quoted in Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 210. T o Elizabeth Barrett, M a y 13, 1846, Letters of Browning rett, II, 151. 20 21 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 223. Ibid., p. 240. 22 23 Ibid., I, 365. Ibid., p. 328. 19

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and according to Fausset assured Tennyson of a settled allowance from royalties. 24 Edward Moxon was not only a useful acquaintance all in all but also a good companion for the sensitive, slow-moving poet, so sprightly among friends, so disdainful of formality, so hurt by unfavorable criticism, so hesitating, and so dilatory. Moxon had energy and good humor; he gave Tennyson his own way when he found him moody or rallied him gaily. " M r . Moxon has just cheerily bounced into the room with hearty shakes of the hand, 'Sir,' and Alfred being in Town is coming to dine with him today —would William come and meet him." 23 This sort of spirit was good for Tennyson. T h e friendship between the two men is seen in the trip to Switzerland which they made together in August, 1846. Tennyson had been for six weeks intending to start every day for Switzerland or for Cornwall. T h a t was in 1845. T h e following year he strove for two weeks "to spread his ways to Italy or Switzerland." 26 On July 15 Browning informed Elizabeth Barrett that Tennyson was going to Switzerland presently with Moxon. T h e two companions left about the first of August; the lively Brookfield wrote to his lively wife on August 11, I met "Musses Muxen" [a reference to their Yorkshire pronunciation] . . . Master Moxon and Alfred are this day at Geneva, and as the latter, indeed both, are among your seven hundred and ninety-nine lovers, I should think they would be trying to meet you. Mrs. Brookfield was traveling on the Continent with her uncle, Henry Hallam, his daughter Julia, his son Harry, a maid, a valet, and a courier. 27 T h e two men were absent two weeks. The only record is a few notes which the poet kept as a sort of journal. It is little more than a catalogue of sights and a record of bad nights. They journeyed and tramped together, of course, but when the mood struck them, separated. 2 8 They returned about the middle of August. 24 26 27

Fausset, op. cit., p. 164. Fitzgerald is writing. A. Lyall, Tennyson, C. and F. Brookfield, op. cit., I, 188.

25

C. and F. Brookfield, op. cit., I, 199. p. 54. 28 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 230-33.

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Moxon reported to Kenyon, who gave the news to Elizabeth Barrett, who sent it to Browning, that Tennyson was "disappointed" with the mountains: Is it not strange? Is it a good or bad sign when people are disappointed with the miracles of nature? I am accustomed to think it a bad sign. Because a man's imagination ought to aggrandize, glorify, consecrate. A man sees with his mind, and mind is at fault when he does not see greatly, I think.29 T h e Brownings seldom read Tennyson's actions with generosity, in spite of their "profound admiration of Alfred." On November 12 Tennyson reported to Fitzgerald, not too graciously, Well, Moxon went to Switzerland; saw Blanc, he was very sulky, kept his nightcap on, doff'd it one morning when I was knocked up out of bed to look at him at four o'clock. The glance I gave did not by any means repay me for the toil of travelling to see him. Two other things I did see in Switzerland, the stateliest bits of landskip I ever saw, one was a look down on the valley of Lauterbrunnen while we went descending the Wengern Alps, the other a view of the Bernese Alps; Don't think that I am going to describe them. Let it suffice that I was so satisfied with the size of crags that (Moxon being gone on before in vertigo and leaning on the arm of the guide) I laughed by myself. I was satisfied with the size of crags but mountains, great mountains disappointed me.30 Soon after the tour Moxon sent Tennyson some pressed flowers, presumably gathered in Switzerland—"I got your parcel and bluebell this morning." 3 1 On this trip Tennyson wrote some verse—for instance, "Come down, O Maid, from yonder mountain height," later included in The Princess, which he considered for simple music and vowel rhythm his most successful work. 3 2 For five years following the publication of the 1842 volumes Moxon issued nothing of Tennyson's save new editions. Then The Princess was in preparation. At this time Tennyson was undergoing the water cure at Dr. Gully's near Birmingham and was seeing 29 30 31

Letters of Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, II, 509. Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 233-34. 32 Ibid.., p. 240. Ibid., p. 252.

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no friends and working little; but he invited Moxon to come down on Saturday—"here is a Hall in a pleasant park, and you would be all the better for a Sunday's mouthful of fresh air. . . . I want to talk with you. I find it very difficult to correct proof under the treatment, but you shall have them all back with you on Monday." There followed the typical Tennysonian dubitation: "Don't show them [the proofs] to people. I have not at all settled whether to publish them now or in the Autumn." 3 3 Moxon always found Tennyson a trial when proof sheets were to be corrected, not because the poet was particular as to accuracy, as of course he should have been, but because he was indecisive and wavered as to the words and phrases. Like many authors when disappointed with their writing, he blamed the printers. In working on The Princess he thought them "awful zanies, they print erasures and corrections too, and other sins they commit of the utmost inhumanity." Two undated letters to Moxon, now in the Morgan Library, indicate Tennyson's care in seeing the poems through the press: I left a corrected sheet with Greening which he does not seem to have acted upon. However I have put down in these the two lines I intended to insert, 'sdeath it should be printed, not 'S death. I have written one or two passages twice over for the greater clearness: don't let them print these twice over in their stupidity. Surely I may depend on you and your brother without having the sheets resent to me. I see the old misprint of marbled stairs is retained. Yet I feel quite sure I corrected it. You shall have the Poems in a day or two. T h e letter has a crosswise note: " P r a y make haste. I am not going to stay here. Send the remainder of the Princess." "If there is time in the 3rd. edition of In Memoriam," according to the second letter, written from Tent Lodges, Coniston Water, Ambleside, whither he and his bride had gone on a honeymoon visit to the lake region, "alter the 2nd. stanza of the poem thus," And dare we to this fancy give That had the wild oat not been sown, The soil, left barren, scarce had grown The grain by which a man may live? 33

Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 240-41.

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" 'fancy' instead of 'doctrine' and 'scarce had' for 'had not.' " 34 This care that the poems should be just right when they appeared in book form is also seen in the trial editions which he had Moxon print for him. By the late forties he could afford these private printings. A note to De Vere in 1848 states, in respect to the "Elegies" {In Memoriam]. . . I believe I am going to print them, and then I need not tell you that you will be perfectly welcome to a copy, on the condition that when the book is published, this avant-courier of it shall be either sent back to me, or die the death by fire in Curragh Chase. I shall print about twenty-five copies, and let them out among friends under the same condition of either return or cremation.35 Tennyson followed a similar procedure with Maud in 1855 and with Enid and Nimue in 1857. 36 There was also a trial book, entitled The True and the False, Four Idylls of the King, published in 1859; "twelve or so" copies were printed. 3 7 This trial volume of In Memoriam was printed in April. 38 Coventry Patmore wrote to Allingham, "His elegies are printed. I have one of the only half dozen copies in existence." The Princess was published probably in September, 1847; by 1853 it had reached its fifth and final Moxon edition. Aubrey de Vere reviewed it, in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1849, 39 so much to Tennyson's liking that in the second edition he adopted many of De Vere's suggestions. Fitzgerald disapproved and was hailed as a "great heretic" for not joining the universal acclaim. 40 Tennyson had thought, not too seriously, that he might hate it. Charles Kingsley wrote a review that Tennyson liked. The publisher, too, was well pleased. But the time when Moxon need pay 34

These letters are used with the permission of the Morgan Library, N e w York

City. 35

Undated, but probably belonging to 1848. See Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 282. Nicoll and Wise, op. cit., II, 219 ff. "The Building of the Idylls." These p a m phlets are not questioned by Carter and Pollard ( A n Enquiry into the Nature of Certain XlXth Pamphlets, loc. cit.), but Morte D'Arthur, Dora and Other Idyls has been definitely shown by them to be a forgery. 37 Ibid., pp. 239-40, where the story is told. 38 Hallam Tennyson (op. cit., I, 297) states, "in May," but this letter of Patmore's dated April 17 (Champneys, op. cit., II, 173) shows him to be mistaken. 30 40 Vol. C L X X X I I . Nicolson, op. cit., p. 15S. 36

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much attention to reviews of Tennyson had passed: from now on copies of whatever the poet wrote sold by the thousands. When In Memoriam appeared in June, three years later, 5,000 strong, "in deep purple cloth boards with gilt lettering," its anonymity did not check the sale—"Moxon took good care to see that the real authorship was very generally known." 4 1 A second and a third edition were issued in the same year; a fourth and a fifth, this last also "5,000 strong," in 1851. Sir Henry Taylor thought Tennyson, except for Wordsworth during some ten years of his life, the only really popular poet since Byron. 4 2 Ten years later In Memoriam was in its tenth edition. The poem won the Prince Consort's decision to secure its author appointment as poet laureate. 4 3 Soon after Tennyson's marriage, June 13, 1850, Moxon asked for a fresh volume of new poems, but received the reply, "We are correcting all the volumes for new editions." 44 The seventh edition of Poems, 1842, appeared in 1851. Tennyson had been made poet laureate in 1850. The effect of this appointment upon the sale of his poems Mr. Nicolson has noted well: It was nice to feel, when everybody was becoming so very variable and perplexing, that here at least one could be sure; to feel, without anxiety, that what was sanctioned at Osborne could be read at home; to know that, without appearing either paradoxical or affected, one could even quote the poems now and then; that, however distressing might be the universal growth of unbelief, however disturbing all this talk of science, of evolution, and of historical criticism, the Laureate had, in In Memoriam, solved these problems for one courageously and, for all time.45

T h e Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, a poem by a new laureate on a highly political theme, was delicate matter to handle. The poet, however, held his independence and nobly celebrated the great duke. Moxon made him an offer on November 6, 1852: "For an edition of 10,000 copies of your Ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington I beg to offer you two hundred pounds, 41 42 43 44

Nicolson, op. cit., pp. 162-63. Autobiography, November 16, 1851, to Sir Edmund Head. Nicolson, op. cit., p. 166. 45 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 337. Nicolson, op. cit., p. 168.

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the amount to be paid at Christmas, or, should you wish it, on the day of publication . . . the selling price to be 1/." This letter has a note added to it in Tennyson's writing, "I have written to accept tell P [?] I tell M. that I shall want the same for an other 10,000." 46 The pamphlet appeared on the morning of the funeral. At a shilling a copy Moxon would have to sell 4,000 copies before he had met this payment to the author, and then, probably, another 2,000 before he had met his printer's bill. The publisher was liberal, and the poet knew a good business deal. On all sides the Ode met abuse. At this time Tennyson assured Moxon: "If you lose by the Ode, I will not consent to accept the whole sum of £200, which you offered me." 47 A revised text of the poem appeared in 1853. Nothing new, despite Moxon's requests, came from Tennyson between the Ode and Maud, and Other Poems, 1855, which Moxon put into a second edition the following year. When Aubrey de Vere visited the Tennysons in the early autumn of 1854, Alfred was engaged on the new poem. By January 10 of the next year he had finished it and omitted several of its lyrics. On April 25 he copied the poem for the press. On June 7 he put the last touch to it before giving it to Moxon.48 Its appearance, thought Patmore, was "a hideous mistake"; 49 so did the press, almost unanimously; but a few friends of discrimination—Jowett, for instance—rallied to its defense, and the controversy that followed at least sold hundreds of copies. In this same year Tennyson, hearing that the soldiers in the Crimea found his "Charge at Balaclava" their greatest favorite, commissioned John Forster to see the poem through Moxon's press, 1,000 copies to be sent to the soldiers with a short complimentary Preface: "I have sent it by this post likewise to Moxon, but you are closer to your printer. Concoct with him how it is all to be managed . . . see that there are no mistakes." 50 46 47 48 49

In manuscript in the Morgan Library, N e w York City. Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 362. Ibid.., I, 379, 382-85, 393-411. 50 Champneys, op. cit., II, 181. Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 385-87.

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When it was reprinted in Maud, and Other Poems, the line "Someone had blundered" had been deleted. Up to this date, 1855, Moxon had issued seven different volumes for Tennyson which ran in his lifetime into nearly thirty editions. Every volume, except possibly the first, had been a money-maker. Tennyson had become one of the principal supports of his business; no other poet except Wordsworth and the dramatist Knowles had really made money for him, and he had no popular prose writer steadily on his list. An indication of the extent of Tennyson's money-earning power is seen in Tinsley's recollection of a talk with Strahan, who took over the publishing of Tennyson when the firm of Moxon and Co. was deserted. In 1869 Strahan rushed into Tinsley's office "all excitement because he had signed an agreement with Tennyson to publish his books for a certain number of years, and boasted he had gained the blue ribbon of the publishing trade." But he had to pay Tennyson £4,500 a year for the right to publish old volumes, "and on each new volume," Tinsley continues, an astonishingly large royalty; in fact, if any future relation or descendent of Lord Alfred Tennyson ever imagines that his poet relation was not well paid for his work, and could not guard his own monetary interest in his books, let him beg of more than one publisher to show him how shrewd the poet was.51 The proceeds from the sale of Maud alone enabled the poet to purchase Farringford. T h e same earnings encouraged Moxon to do something handsome by Tennyson—to issue a de luxe edition of his poems, one to compare with Rogers's Italy and Poems. At the end of 1857 it appeared, "a stout volume in blue cloth with a gilt urn upon the cover and enriched by over fifty engravings." 52 His experience with Rogers's illustrated and beautifully printed volumes gave 51 J. Shaylor, Sixty Years a Bookman, p. 88. William Tinsley, Random Recollections of an Old Publisher, I, 237: Tennyson, "I feel sure, received more money for his poetry than all the other Poets Laureate, from Dryden to Wordsworth . . . [He] knew his words were golden and charged much of the real metal for them." 52 Nicolson, op. cit., p. 175.

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him knowledge of the outlay of money that would be necessary; his dealings with Bradbury and Evans informed him of what he could expect of the printers; he knew the best engravers from experience with their work. How long the idea was in Moxon's mind before he broached the subject to Tennyson is not known; but as early as May, 1854, Tennyson called on Moxon "to arrange the 'illustrated Edition of Poems.'" They discussed, among other matters, the number of artists and which ones were to be employed. The two of them called on Creswick, "a capital broad genial fellow"; upon Mulready, an old man who "was full of vivacity"; then on Horsley, who was amiable and said that Tennyson was the painter's poet. 53 Horsley later gave Layard this account: I well remember that, at the end of 1855, or early in 1856 [was this a later visit or was Horsley's memory at fault?], I had a long visit from Tennyson, who was accompanied by his publisher, Moxon, when I undertook to make the illustrations which ultimately appeared in the edition of 1857.54 From Horsley's, the publisher and the poet went to see Millais, who agreed to journey to Farringford and take little Hallam as an illustration of "Dora." Six months later he did so. He and Tennyson talked "as to the limits in realism in painting." 55 One imagines that neither extended the limits far. Holman Hunt was in the Holy Land, but when reached by letter he too agreed to furnish illustrations. Layard reports that in the choice of collaborators Moxon was mainly the moving spirit, "although it is more than probable that, in pitching upon the pre-Raphaelites Millais, Hunt, and Rossetti, Tennyson himself may have taken the initiative," 56 and Hunt told him that probably Tennyson suggested Maclise. Tennyson's recently formed friendship with Ruskin may have influenced this selection.57 In 1857, too, a slim public exhibition, 53

Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 375-76. Layard, Tennyson and His Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators, p. 6. 55 56 Hallam Tennyson, op, cit., I, 380. Layard, op. cit. p. 4. 57 Ruskin wrote his first letter to Tennyson at just this time, March 21, 185S (Cook, op. cit., I, 466). In it he offered to show him his Turners, in which the poet had expressed an interest to the sculptor, Woolner. One recalls, too, that Turner's 51

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which came to be known at the "Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition," was held in some rooms in Russel Place, Fitzroy Square, the contributors being "Hunt 5 8 and Millais, Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, Collins and Brown, and a dozen others" working on Pre-Raphaelite lines.59 Layard thought that the selection of subjects for plates in the Tennyson volume was settled between the artists and Moxon. D. G. Rossetti was visited on January 23, 1855. The artists already engaged he listed in a letter to William Allingham as Millais, Hunt, Landseer, Stanfield, Maclise, Creswick, Mulready, and Horsley.60 Whether Arthur Hughes was approached is uncertain; Allingham wrote him in October, 1854, "I can't compete with Tennyson [Allingham was, of course, a poet of that day]—but you and Rossetti can easily with Millais, who is to draw for Moxon's forthcoming edition." 61 The artists were to work independently of any counsel from Tennyson and were to present "their own interpretation of the poems," William Rossetti later asserted, "for the inspiration they were to draw therefrom." 62 They were given choice of the poems they wished to illustrate. The engravers were to be the best in England at that time, notably the Dalziels, W. J. Linton, T. Williams, and John Thompson. Once the arrangements were made, the work progressed slowly and often vexatiously. Rossetti, in particular, annoyed Moxon by delaying his work and then complaining that he found the choice of subjects limited. In 1856 Moxon visited Holman Hunt "with many repinings that the book was so long delayed" and with "a drawings had appeared in Rogers's illustrated editions, which Tennyson would surely have known, among other Turner products. Ruskin sent the poet a second letter when Maud was being criticized (1855) to say that he agreed with him "in all things about war," and urged the restoration of "someone had blundered" to the current version of the "Charge of the Light Brigade." Tennyson regarded Ruskin as among the six stateliest writers of prose (Cook, supra, I, 353). In the 'fifties Ruskin was particularly interested in the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. 58 Holman Hunt ( P r e - R a p h a e l i t i s m and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, II, 170) asserts that he contributed no pictures to this exhibit. 59 Bickley, The Pre-Raphaelite Comedy, p. 193. 60 The Letters oj D. G. Rossetti to William Allingham, 1854-1870, edited by G. B. Hill, p. 97. 61 Letters to Wm. Allingham, edited by H . Allingham and E. B. Williams, p. 56. 62 Quoted in Layard, op. cit., p. 7.

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sore heart about Rossetti, who having promised, had not sent any drawing, and now, when Moxon called, was 'not at home.' " Hunt undertook to speed Rossetti up. 63 Layard heard it said—although he supposed it must be construed as a grim joke—that "Rossetti killed Moxon," 64 and Hunt recorded that the publisher "got so often disappointed in the delivery of each block that it was said, when, soon after, Moxon quitted this world of worry and vexation, the book had been the death of him!" 83 When the pages came off the press, the result was a beautiful book but not a financial success. The artists were of too diverse schools of art to lie comfortably in the same volume. The Art Journal of July, 1857, remarked that as the Pre-Raphaelite painters had many admirers and Tennyson more, the volume would without doubt find a home in many households. Holman Hunt noted later that people who liked the work of the artists long established in favor felt that the pages of Pre-Raphaelite designs destroyed the attractiveness of the volume and the few who liked the latter "would not give the price for the publication because there was so large a proportion of the contributions of a kind which they did not value." 68 Thomas Woolner, the sculptor, found Rossetti's St. Cecilia exquisite—"the angel's expression was remarkable for the vivid spiritual light that shone thru' his face," but he doubted whether the engraver could render it. 67 Many contemporaries also found the design beautiful, but many, too, would have agreed with Mr. Nicolson's judgment had it been offered in that day: "The angel is not an angel at all, but something far more sinister, and he is represented as biting St. Cecily very hard upon the forehead." 08 Tennyson failed to note that particular variation from his idea, although this design puzzled him not a little, "and he had to give up the problem of what it had to do with his verse." But then, as William Rossetti recorded, the poet had little insight into matters of art as such.69 However, Layard, archaeolo63 65 67 68 69

64 Hunt, op. cit., II, 99. Layard, op. cit., p. SO. 66 Hunt, op. cit., II, 102. Ibid., II, 103. Amy Woolner, Thomas Woolner, R. A., His Life in Letters, p. 128. Nicolson, op. cit., p. 176. W. M . Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, His Family Letters, I, 190.

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gist and writer on art, thought the book one of the most enchanting volumes; the Art Journal found it very beautiful; and Ruskin valued highly the Pre-Raphaelite designs in it, although they were "terribly spoiled in the cutting." 70 Whether Moxon was satisfied we do not know. T h e cost of the volume had been great. Procter stated in a letter to John Forster on October 16, 1856, that Moxon had paid 2,000 pounds for it. 7 1 According to Holman H u n t the price to be paid for each drawing was £25, but Rossetti exacted the stipulation that "he should be paid five pounds more than any other designer was receiving." 72 With fifty designs, the expense of drawings alone was more than twelve hundred pounds. There was then the expense of engraving, possibly at an average price of five pounds a plate. T h e paper, binding, and printing, which were excellent, ran rapidly into money. What Tennyson was paid is not known, but doubtless it was a substantial sum. The remainder stock was some years later transferred to Routledge, who issued the book in a cheaper form. 7 3 Thomas Woolner, in making a bust of Tennyson, "a duty which I owe myself and my country," hoped to lure the poet "into complacency" by producing such a likeness of Mrs. Tennyson as would please him. Moxon promised that if business went satisfactorily during the spring of 1856 he would commission Woolner to do the bust in marble. 74 It was never made. T h e plate for the frontispiece of the 1857 illustrated edition, an engraving of Tennyson, was done from the medallion which Woolner had made in March, 1855. 73 T h e extant records of the last ten years or so of the TennysonMoxon relationship show falling off in companionship and increase in business. The business extended to the Moxon establishment 70

"Elements of Drawing," in Complete Works of Ruskin, Appendix II, p. 194. In manuscript in the Forster collection, South Kensington Museum, London. 72 Holman Hunt, op. cit., II, 99, 102. 73 Chronological List of the Works of Tennyson, with Tennysoniana, p. 9. 74 A m y Woolner, op. cit., pp. 109-10. 75 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., I, 383. In II, 431, he mentions three medallions made by Woolner, one in 18S0, "the second a profile in 1856, the third a three-quarters head in 1867. We have always thought that the finest work of art and the best likeness was the bust done in 1857." 71

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a f t e r its founder's death in 1858. T h e Idylls of the King were printed a year later, t h e Idylls of the Hearth eight years later. I n 1867 Tennyson, hearing of the uncertain financial condition of the house of Moxon and Co., addressed a member of it indignantly: I did not choose to bother you, but when it came to a rumour that your house had actually failed I considered that my best and handsomest course was to apply directly to yourself—seeing that I had stuck to the house of Moxon from the beginning thro' evil report and good report, and really have been and am the main pillar of it, it seems to me—that I should be fully informed of the state of affairs. 76 W h e n the Moxon firm actually failed, the break-up is said to h a v e cost T e n n y s o n a good deal of money. When, in J a n u a r y , 1869, he terminated relations with the company, M r s . T e n n y s o n recorded in her journal, " T o d a y t h e Moxon connection of 37 years ceased. A. however anonymously still allows the widow and her daughters a considerable sum a year. W e would t h a t the necessity for leaving h a d not arisen." 7 7 Moxon had well earned t h a t allowance to his family. After E d w a r d Moxon's death Tennyson's books continued to be profitable. Shaylor relates t h a t "50,000 copies of Enoch Arden were sold during the first year of its publication." 78 Tennyson received one year royalties amounting to £5,000. 7 9 T h e sale of Wordsworth's volumes commanded Moxon's energy and his shrewdest business skill. T h e old poet's writings were never popular in the sense t h a t T e n n y s o n ' s were. T h e sale of the younger poet's books, although still requiring business acumen, so nearly sold themselves t h a t the principal matters for the exercise of judgment were the number of copies to be printed and the effective timing of new volumes and of reprints. T h e story of the relationship between Moxon and T e n n y s o n is therefore even more 76 Literary Autographs and Manuscripts, both English and American, Forming Part III of the Collection of Louis J. Huber of New York City, p. 67. 77 Hallam Tennyson, op. cit., II, 63. 78 Joseph Shaylor, op. cit., p. 27. 79 According to De V. Payen-Payne, son of Bertrand Payne, who conducted the business after Moxon's death.

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largely than that between the publisher and Wordsworth one of friendship. Yet in the latter, one feels greater solidity and in spite of the disparity of age between the two a meeting of kindred spirits; the former, although the two men were more nearly of an age, seems to have diminished in later years. One surmises that Moxon became in Tennyson's mind, when he had risen in worldly position, less the friend and more the able tradesman who had done well by him.

Chapter

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T o K E E P the business of printing and marketing poetry solvent and increasing during the prolonged financial panic, the political unrest, and the turbulence of social thought and action of the eighteen-thirties, the 'forties, and the 'fifties, required acumen and enterprise. Besides these difficulties Edward Moxon faced the burden of the support of two families—of parents, of brothers and sisters, and of wife and children. The parental family came to London from Yorkshire before Edward became a publisher. At least some of them had arrived by that time. As early as 1830 Lamb sent "kindest remembrances" to Moxon's sister, and in 1833 he invited Moxon and his brother for a Sunday visit. How the family maintained itself and whether the father, who had been a working man, set up in some sort of business—it is not clear. When one of the brothers, William, was called to the bar in 1843, he was described as the "third son of Michael Moxon, of London, merchant"; 1 when he was entered at the Middle Temple in 1840, according to its records he was the "third son of Michael Moxon of Ebury Street, Eaton Square, Middlesex, Gent." He was then thirty-two years of age. Henry Moxon, the fourth son, when articled in the Queen's Bench was listed as "Gentleman," living at 105 Ebury Street, Eaton Square.2 These appellations indicate a distinct social rise for the Moxons, from a wool cropper's family to a gentleman's. London directories of those years list several merchants by the name of Moxon, but none by the name of Michaeji Moxon. That Edward Moxon, the eldest son and in business, contributed substantially to the family expenses is more than likely. That he helped his brothers train themselves for professional careers we know from Crabb Robinson's entry in his Diary of 1851: 1 2

Foster, Men-at-the-Bar, under "Moxon, William." Public Records Office, London.

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I called on Moxon—he gave me an interesting account of his brothers all of whom he appears to have pushed forward—He has one a barrister [William], and one a solicitor [Henry] 3 who are both succeeding and his younger brother in the shop, is clever, the other he keeps on charity.4 It is certain that by 1850 three of the five brothers were fairly prosperous in London and that Edward was the source of income for the other two. The four sisters one finds infrequently mentioned ; but until marriage they were charges on the family budget. William Moxon throve so well that he built a large house, Tudor Lodge, in Wimbledon before 1850 and later occupied Tidington House, Shipston-on-Stowe. 5 He was described as a barrister of standing. He married well, late in life. Lupton, in Wakefield Worthies, states that one of the brothers went to London from the Wakefield postoffice. Since William was not entered at the Middle Temple until 1840 and in 1844 Henry was a clerk serving George Dunn, No. 2 Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn, there may have been ten or more difficult years for the family. Edward Moxon had tender and strong family feeling, if one may judge from his writings: he wrote a sonnet portraying his gentle feeling for an infant sister, whom, presumably, he saw only in death; another poem was on his emotions at the sight of a child asleep; the sonnets to his bride-to-be show genuine tenderness; the 1830 sonnets are "affectionately inscribed," in the 1837 edition, to his brother William. In The Prospect and Other Poems his sisters are addressed, one in particular being his beloved companion. Early mention of him in the Robinson diaries notes his warmheartedness. 6 It is therefore probable that at the very time when Edward needed money to develop his business he was being called upon to aid the large family of brothers and sisters. One brother, at least, he employed steadily in his establishment, and probably two 3

Sworn before J. Patterson, Rolls Gardens, Chancery Lane, November 17, 1849. Public Records Office, London. 4 Unpublished diaries, Vol. XXII, April 11, 1851, in Dr. Williams's Library, London. 5 Foster, Men-at-the-Bar, op. cit. 6 Unpublished diaries, Vol. XIV, February 18, 1832, in Dr. Williams's Library, London.

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brothers—Alfred, who is said to have been fond of poetry, and John. He himself never gave his full energy to the retail side of his business. That he left probably to Alfred. Not only brothers and sisters, however, depended upon him; he also became the head of a family in which there were eight children, seven of whom lived to maturity. There were three sons —Edward Isola, Charles Isola, and Arthur Henry—and five daughters—Emma, Gertrude, Catherine, Maria Wordsworth, and Louisa. The eldest son, Edward, died in March, 1841. Mrs. Moxon, until her family became large, was decidedly a helpmate in the business, keeping up social calls,7 superintending breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners in the Moxon dining-room for her husband and his literary friends and clients, holding open house whenever Wordsworth or Tennyson happened to be in town. As a member of the Lamb household for years, she was accustomed to open hospitality. However, her family absorbed more and more of her attention until finally she lost interest in social matters. In October, 1852, Crabb Robinson noted that he saw little of Moxon's wife—"Being naturally languid only a mother's love can call her into action." 8 The Moxon family lived at the bookselling establishment at 44 Dover Street, in the upper stories. When a steady financial income had been established and Moxon's health failed, the family moved to Tudor Lodge, on Putney Heath, which William Moxon had built. This was about 1850. It was a large house set in spacious grounds. In 1852 Crabb Robinson took a pleasant railway trip to Putney and thence to Wimbledon. There he dined with Kenyon, Browning, and Moxon—"Moxon has succeeded so well that he has fixed himself in a house on Wimbledon Cottage so beautiful that I missed it, not thinking it probable that a Dover St. dispenser of books could occupy so aristocratic a mansion." 9 The most difficult years for his business were the early forties. 7 Letter from Sarah Rogers, sister of the banker poet, to Moxon, dated only "9th. July," is in the possession of Miss M a u d Moxon, of Brighton: "I was very glad to see Mrs. Moxon looking so well when she was so good as to call on me." 8 Unpublished letters, 1852, No. 59 ab. In Dr. Williams's Library, London. 9 Ibid. In spite of his long association with Moxon, Robinson seems to have valued him for his acquaintances rather than for himself.

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At that time, we have seen, he experimented with the publication of fiction and of travel. He made connection with the journalistic Miss Martineau, who knew how to make herself and her ideas interesting to a wide reading public, even though shocking it with the intimacy of her revelations and the directness of her attacks. He seized upon Haydn's Dictionary of Dates as a money-maker. The gossipy Letters from Abroad, by the American lady, Catharine Sedgwick, possessed of no literary merit whatever, he published after John Kenyon had toned down the references to living persons. He had 250 copies of H. W. Longfellow's Ballads and a like number of his Spanish Student printed for him in America for British trade. 10 When Tennyson's poetry began to be profitable and Wordsworth's poetry brought a steady income, he experimented less. His last eight or ten years of publishing, which were financially comfortable, show Moxon adding only three or four new names to his list of authors and devoting his energy, which was on the wane from ill health, to reprints of his favorite writers and to new volumes by those who were still living. By the mid-fifties his closest friends had died—Lamb, Rogers, Wordsworth, and Talfourd. Leigh Hunt was in his seventy-seventh year. Sheridan Knowles, who had become almost fanatically religious, had dropped his earlier friendships. Sir Henry Taylor, Monckton Milnes, and Tennyson were almost the only survivors of the friends whom Moxon had made through publishing. He had neither the heart nor the energy during his last years to expand the business. It had risen to its height; he would merely maintain it there with the wellknown Moxon names. From 1850 to 1858 he put out ten books by Coleridge; six by or about Shelley; by Keats, four volumes; by Wordsworth, six; by Talfourd, four; by Rogers and Samuel Sharpe, three each; by Shakespeare and Lamb, two each; by Tennyson, many, of course; and by Isaac Disraeli, R. H. Dana, John Kenyon, Monckton Milnes, Henry Taylor, all old names, one each. There were fewer than a dozen other books in eight years by a half-dozen other authors. This failure to add new 10 Longfellow to his father, March 26, 1843, Samuel Longfellow, Henry worth Longfellow, II, 13.

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names partly accounts for the instability of the firm after its founder's death. The first serious reference to Moxon's poor health is found in a letter to him from Wordsworth in 1846. As early as 1839 we find a reference to Moxon as being at Broadstairs, a small coast village and water resort in the Isle of Thanet, a favorite resort at that time of Charles Dickens. When Moxon was returning from a six-weeks trip to Florence, Hartley Coleridge wrote, hoping he had been "both pleased and benefitted." 11 Moxon was at Broadstairs several times; for instance, in 1846 with Rogers and Maltby, where Wordsworth would have liked to join them. 12 In January, 1853, Mrs. Wordsworth wrote Crabb Robinson that Moxon had been subject of late to frequent returns of indisposition, "of no dangerous tendency," she hoped.13 But the illness was dangerous, being lung trouble. Three years later, when visiting Mrs. Wordsworth in August, he had a fall at an awkward railroad station, owing to lameness caused by a boil on his foot. The shock, aggravating his previous illness, led him to relinquish his projected tour into Scotland and return home.14 In March, 1857, Mrs. Wordsworth feared from what she had heard from time to time that he had "not been quite well for months." 15 Possibly handwriting indicates the condition of health and spirits; one finds rather decided changes in Moxon's signatures after 1843. Before that time his pen strokes are firm, and under his signature is an exuberant zigzag of lines. By 1849 the signature is irregular and the lines are unsteady. In 1855 it is quite infirm and the long strokes of the letters waver. Some of Moxon's frequent journeys, certainly those later than the early eighteen-forties, may have been occasioned by his failing health. Of his early travels it is known that he visited many parts of England, usually in the business interests of his publishing employers, but at other times for a holiday, and that before 1830 he had been to France, 16 had spent his honeymoon there in 11 Preiace to Poems of Hartley Coleridge, 4, 1839. 12 H. L. 2188, October 12, 1846. 14 Ibid,., p. 812. 16 See Sonnet IV of the 1830 edition.

edited by his brother, op. cit., October 13 15

Morley, op. cit., II, 791. Ibid., pp. 812, 817.

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1833, possibly was there in 1835,17 and certainly in 1837 with Robinson and Wordsworth. In 1838 he visited the southern lakes of Switzerland; in the following year for six weeks he was in Italy, principally in Florence; and in 1842 he traveled to the Pyrenees with Wordsworth's two sons. In later years we find him frequently at Rydal Mount, visiting Wordsworth; in 1844 he was in Boulogne; in 1846 he made a two-month visit to Switzerland with Tennyson. Records of still later travels have not been found; but doubtless because of his increase in financial ease he made frequent trips, and without doubt, too, his visits to Broadstairs became of longer duration and greater frequency. There is no mention of wife or child accompanying him on these journeys, although it is to be presumed that the family did visit Broadstairs. His illness bore heavily upon him during the preparation of the 1857 Tennyson volume. In the Rossetti family correspondence concerning Moxon's "pestering" Rossetti and Rossetti by his delays exasperating Moxon there is strong indication of the publisher's illness. On April 2, 1858, in the presence of William Moxon and Sarah Evans, 18 Edward Moxon made and signed his will, making the former and Thomas Spalding executors and Emma Moxon guardian of the children, the eldest of whom was in her early twenties. On June second, a codicil was added. On the same day he died, at his home on Putney Heath. His estate was less than £16,000. The will was proved in September by the oath of William Moxon, of Ebury Street, Eaton Square, the family home. He was buried in Wimbledon churchyard. Among the obituary notices the most elaborate was written by Peter Cunningham, son of Allan Cunningham, whose poems Moxon had published: Edward Moxon, the poets' publisher—the Dodsley of his day . . . was a clever man, and wrote good verses, better than other poetic publishers, such as Sir Humphrey Mosely of King Charles the First's time, and Robert Dodsley of the Augustan Age of George the Second. " See Sonnets XVI, XVII, XVIII, XLX, X X . 18 Possibly the sister of his printer, Evans, of Bradbury and Evans.

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The notice reviews his life, asserting that when he opened business as a publisher and issued Rogers's illustrated Italy "authors flocked about him—better still at such a time, lords and ladies drew up at the door and bought and paid." When he removed to Dover Street "authors of name sought his acquaintance . . . and ere long Dover Street was looked upon as a rival to the adjoining Albemarle Street" [Murray's business]. 19 From 1858 to 1864 the business was managed by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans for Mrs. Moxon and her son, Arthur, who was then not of age. In 1864 Mrs. Moxon appointed as manager of the business at a salary of £400 J. Bertrand Payne, who, for several years, had been a clerk in the employment of the firm. Soon she and her son Arthur, who had taken a share in the business, made Payne a partner and assigned to him a share in many of the company's copyrights. In April, 1869, Payne surrendered all his interests in the business for £11,000. 20 Under Payne's management Swinburne came to the firm, and William Michael Rossetti edited the much-used series of poets—Milton, Pope, Thomson, Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott, Mrs. Hemans, Hood, Coleridge, Campbell, and Moore. When Edward Moxon and Co. were threatened with a suit for publication of Poems and Ballads, in the spring of 1866, Payne determined to withdraw the book from circulation. In the autumn Swinburne, indignant, left the firm. Tennyson, too, transferred his business to another company. From 1869 to 1871 the firm's name was Edward Moxon, Son, and Co., still under the general management of Payne. In 1871 Ward, Lock, and Tyler purchased the stock and copyrights, offering to pay creditors fifteen shillings on the pound and giving Mrs. Moxon "a large sum" and an annuity of 250 pounds and an additional sum to the family after her death. 21 After using the Moxon title for six years, the purchasers abandoned it, and the name of Edward Moxon disappeared from the list of London publishers. Arthur Moxon, the son, in the year 1878, set up in Paternoster Row as a publisher. 19 20 21

Illustrated. London News, June 12, 1858. Law Reports, Chancery Appeal Cases, 36 and 37 Victoriae, Illustrated London News, February 14, 1891.

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In 1873 the gentle-hearted Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, addressed to William Gladstone a letter petitioning for a pension for "Mrs. Moxon, the adopted daughter Isola of Charles and Mary Lamb, who has been ruined." At Christmas time of the same year he was taking up a subscription for her and requested a donation from the Civil Fund. 22 Emma Moxon died in 1891 at Brighton, leaving a personal estate of 665 pounds. One son and a daughter survived her. 22 Reid, ed., Life, Letters and Friendships of Richard Monckton Houghton, II, 248.

Milnes, First Lord

Chapter

14 * E V A L U A T I O N

E D W A R D M O X O N was a representative early Victorian. He came into young manhood with social sympathies and personal ambition. He was not without desire to do something fine in his lifetime. He possessed more than a trace of Charles Lamb's unaffected interest in people. As he became a responsible business man and associated with men of financial means, he compromised with his sympathies. In private life he may have remained socially sympathetic with workingmen and denunciatory of bad conditions in society, but in his business life he swung over to the middle-class view. He wished, probably as yearningly as did his friend Tennyson, to take account of actual developments in contemporary life and thought, for his moral earnestness was strong and serious. He admired in poetry the characteristics which the p e o p l e — the right people, of course—of his time thought excellent. He would not otherwise have been a successful publisher. He responded to refined sentiment somewhat rhetorically expressed, to ideals, to a confused mysticism, as readily as any reader or critic of his day. He looked upon nature in a Wordsworthian mood, aware of its goodness and beauty and taking to heart the moral lessons to be read in it. Lyric melody excited him. Yet, too, like the better readers of that time, he recognized the note of greatness in poetry—the high mood, the penetrating vision, the imaginative sweep of ideas, the illuminating phrase. In studying his life one recognizes sincerity in his love of poetry and in his admiration of genius. T o him as a widely reputed publisher of poetry came scores of manuscripts. Poets of all degrees of worth coveted the name of his firm for their books. It would have been easy for Moxon and most natural, had he possessed low standards of judgment and a completely commercial outlook upon his business, to issue many volumes of mere verse. M a n y writers were ready to meet expenses [196]

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out of their own purses. Moxon published enough minor verse, certainly, as the record shows, and yet probably a mere bagatelle to what he might have published profitably. Only a few little-known names appear on his list of authors—Mrs. C. G. Phillipson, Mrs. F. Butler, Miss Frances Browne. The other minor names—Lord Hanmer, Patmore, Sterling, Trench, Cunningham, Barry Cornwall, Hartley Coleridge—have to their credit something commendable in the eyes of readers of today. His taste and judgment in poetry during nearly thirty years of publishing kept low the percentage of popular and minor poems compared with the quantity of enduring poetry that he accepted and put before the public. Moxon was his own reader of manuscripts. No record has been found of consultation with any of his friends about the quality of the poetry or of any other manuscript that was submitted to him, although without doubt he did seek advice on occasion. He saw Wordsworth always once a year and in some years several times and corresponded with him freely, and yet no letters and no talk reveal that Moxon sought his judgment. Rogers he met frequently, and yet Rogers was not consulted. John Forster was reputedly his lifelong friend and a critic, but his opinion of manuscripts seems not to have been asked. Many authors wrote to Moxon commending writers or writings to his consideration, but no record shows Moxon asking their counsel. He made up his own mind. Tennyson, Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett came to him as comparatively unknown writers; their poetry was unlike in nature and appeal; he published the poems of all three. He early knew the value of the poetry of Shelley and of Keats. There was something attractive about a publisher who himself wrote verse. Moxon's poetry seems to us today imitative and uninspired; but to the readers and some of the writers of his day it was both pleasant and commendable. The phrases he used were current coin, but he played with them lovingly. The sonnet occupied his most constant attention. He wrote several sonnets that have beauty and a sense of form. The poetic inversions, the harsh endings of the second person singular, the poeticized forms of prepositions and exclamatory words were in fashion in those days, one must remember. So were allusions to earlier writers and in[ 197 ]

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vocations to them and to the Muse. The sentiment of the poems was usually familiar: "Better it is to win the heart than mind"; "Ah, what is life, a dream within a dream"; "My love I can compare with nought on earth"—these represent the type. Occasionally he turned to contemporary affairs and wrote out his sentiments, as in the sonnet occasioned by the debate in Parliament on the motion for a revision of the Pension List: The times are full of change; and restless men, Who live by agitation, would devour The widow's mite—her all, the orphan's dower,— If upright minds do not, by speech and pen, Their fury check. . .

The poem appeared in the 1835 volume, but was not—and rightly so—reprinted in the 1837 edition. The London Evening Standard as late as November 7,1871, pronounced sonnets of Edward Moxon "far above the average of the verse published in the name of poetry in these days." There is no question but that the sonnets played a not-unimportant part in establishing Edward Moxon as the poet's publisher. In 1825 John Murray reminded Walter Scott that the business of a publishing bookseller was not in his shop or even in his connections, but in his brains. 1 Moxon knew that it was not in his shop, for he spent comparatively little of his time there, but he did believe that it lay in his connections. He therefore built it about them. In the process his own personality came to be so essential to his affairs that when he was ill his business declined and when he died it tottered for a few years and then collapsed. It was Moxon himself that people trusted and whose affairs they patronized, not the business firm. The tenor of Sheridan Knowles's comment, "You and I, old fellow, have not been together like ordinary Publishers and Authors," indicates that Moxon succeeded in acting toward the writers whose works he published, not like a tradesman bent only on the making of money, but like a literary friend who, knowing the bookmaking and bookselling business, advised with them. 1

Smiles, Memoirs

of John Murray,

II, 199.

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Tennyson was a sensitive, exacting, and to a publisher often an exasperating man, yet Moxon and he were in friendly and business relations for twenty-six years. Wordsworth had never been an easy person for publishers to get along with, nor was Harriet Martineau, yet Moxon gave them satisfaction over a period of several years. All three of these writers would promptly and militantly have resented unfair, ungenerous, or dishonest treatment. The Moxon letters to Wordsworth show both directness and tact under trying circumstances, as well as much liberality. The play of Moxon's personality in his business one sees in the very successes and failures which came to him. He did not bring to the point of profitable publishing writings for which he had little affection. Of the work of living writers he admired extravagantly the poetry of Wordsworth and that of Tennyson: he pushed their books to success. For Browning's verse there is no record of his having had esteem: the poet himself thought that Moxon did nothing for him. He loved the theater and, like a true Victorian, Talfourd's and Knowles's verse dramas: he made the writings of both men financially remunerative. Examination of his twentyeight years of business shows that not a year passed in which he did not publish at least one book by one of the three men whose writing he most deeply valued, Lamb, Wordsworth, Tennyson; and in certain years he published something by each of them. Moxon was independent in conduct. He was not drawn from his purposes by publishing fads or by the successes of other publishers. The "trade" held him in esteem. When one recalls that he entered business in debt and remained in it only about a quarter of a century, yet left a sizable estate, one sees that his business ability was for early Victorian days of the right kind. The sixteen thousand pounds that he left represent, if distributed equally over his business years, an annual profit of nearly six hundred pounds. In the eighteen-thirties the quality of poetry was at low ebb; it was distressingly sentimental and rhetorically moral. Shelley and Keats, having recently died, had not yet received general recognition; Rogers, Campbell, and Southey, even in the judgment of cultivated readers, were their superiors. Recognition of Wordsworth's genius had hardly more than arrived—certainly popular [ 199 ]

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repute had not come to him. Several minor poets were endeavoring to make verse serve social and revolutionary purposes. But by the time of the eighteen-fifties Shelley and Keats were coming into their own; Wordsworth was widely read; Tennyson, Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, D. G. Rossetti, William Morris, and Christina Rossetti were writing poetry of quality. It would be abr surd to think of Moxon as having made possible this public appreciation of better poetry, and yet his dignified conduct of his publishing business, his taste and judgment, his recognition of genius and devotion to it, his reputation and record as a publisher of excellent poetry certainly contributed to the flow of the tide. Doubtless his success in publishing encouraged poets, as the good poetry they wrote helped him. Edward Moxon fairly well fulfilled Robert Southey's wishes for him made on the occasion of his marriage to Emma Isola— that he might enjoy all happiness in his new state of life, that all things might prosper for him to his heart's content, that his love of letters might not make him neglect his business as a bookseller nor his business wean him from his love of letters, and that he might unite them as successfully as Dodsley did before him, live longer (a wish that was not granted to him) and leave behind him as estimable a name.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Blunden, Edmund, Charles Lamb and His Contemporaries. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1933. Brookfield, Charles and Frances, Mrs. Brookfield and Her Circle. London, Isaac Pitman and Sons, 190S. Broughton, L. N., Wordsworth and Reed. Ithaca, N. Y., Cornell University Press, 1933. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Letters to R. H. Home, edited by S. R. T. Mayer. London, R. Bentley and Son, 1877. Browning, Robert, Letters from . . . to Various Correspondents. London, Privately Printed, 1895. Byron, Lord, Works, with His Letters and Journals, and His Life, by Thomas Moore. London, John Murray, 1832. Carlyle, Thomas, Letters to John Stuart Mill, John Sterling and Robert Browning, edited by Alexander Carlyle. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1923. Carter, John, and Graham Pollard, An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain X l X t h Century Pamphlets. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934. Cary, Henry, Memoir of the Rev. H. F. Cary. London, Edward Moxon, 1847. Champneys, Basil, Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore. London, G. Bell and Sons, 1900. Chorley, H. F., Autobiography and Letters, edited by H. G. Hewlett. R. Bentley and Son, 1873. Chronological List of the Works of Tennyson, with Tennysoniana. New York, The Grolier Club, 1897. Clarke, Charles and Mary, Recollections of Writers. London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1878. Clarkson, Henry, Memories of Merry Wakefield, an Octogenarian's Recollections. Wakefield, W. H. Milnes, 1887. Clayden, P. W., Rogers and His Contemporaries. London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1889. Samuel Sharpe, Egyptologist and Translator of the Bible. London, Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1883. Coleridge, Hartley, Poems, edited by Derwent Coleridge. London, Edward Moxon, 1851. Coleridge, S. T., Biographia Literaria. London, George Bell and Sons, 1898. Coleridge, Sara, Memoir and Letters, edited by her daughter. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1874. Collier, J. P., An Old Man's Diary. London, Printed for Private Circulation, 1872. Collins, A. S., The Profession of Letters. New York, E. P. Dutton and Co., 1929. Constable, T., Archibald Constable and His Literary Correspondents. Edinburgh, Hamilton, 1873. Cook, E. T., The Life of John Ruskin. London, George Allen and Co., 1912.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Griggs, Grace E., and Earl L., Letters of Hartley Coleridge. London, Oxford University Press, 1936. Griswold, R. W., Poets and Poetry of England in the 19th Century. 2d ed., Philadelphia, Carey and Hart, 1845. Hall, S. C., A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women. London, Virtue and Co., 1877. Haney, J. L., A Bibliography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Philadelphia, Printed for Private Circulation, 1903. Hauhart, W. F., Goethe's Faust in England in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, New York, Columbia University Press, 1909. Hayward, Abraham, Select Correspondence, edited by H. E. Carlisle. London, John Murray, 1886. Hazlitt, William, The Spirit of the Age. London, Dent and Co., 1902. Herbert, George, The English Works of, edited by George Herbert Palmer. Boston, Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1907. Hewitt, J., History and Topography of the Parish of Wakefield. In the Skidmore Collection, Library, Wakefield, Yorkshire, England. Hoe, Robert, A Short History of the Printing Press. New York, Robert Hoe, 1902. Holland, James, and James Everett, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery. London, Longmans, Brown, Green and Longmans, 18SS-S6. Holyoake, G. J., The Life and Character of Henry Hetherington. 2d ed., London, J. Watson, 1849. House of Longman, The, 1724-1924, re-edited by B[rander] M[atthews,]. Longmans, Green and Co., 1924. Hunt, Leigh, Autobiography, with an Introduction by Edmund Blunden. World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 1928. Hunt, W. Holman, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. London, Macmillan and Co., 1905. Ince, R. B., Calverley and Some Cambridge Wits of the Nineteenth Century. London, Richards and Toulmin, [1929], Ingpen, Roger, Shelley in England. London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1917. Ireland, Alexander, A List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt . . . with a chronological list of the works of Charles Lamb. London, J. R. Smith, 1868. Jerdan, William, Autobiography . . . with his literary, political, and social reminiscences and correspondence during the last fifty years. London, Hall, Virtue and Co., 1852-53. Karslake, Frank, Notes from Sotheby's. London, Karslake and Co., 1909. Keats, John, Poetical Works, edited by H. B. Forman. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1906. [ 204 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY Kenyon, F. G., ed., Robert Browning and Alfred Domett. London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1906. Keynes, Geoffrey, William Pickering, a Memoir and a Handlist of His Editions. London, At the Office of The Fleuron, 1924. King, R. W., The Translator of Dante, The Life, Work and Friendships of Henry Francis Cary. London, Martin Seeker, 192S. Knight, Charles, London. London, H. Bohn, 1841-44. The Old Printer and the Modern Press. London, John Murray, 1854. Passages of a Working Life. London, Bradbury and Evans, 1864. Knight, William, ed., Letters of the Wordsworth Family. Boston, Ginn and Co., 1907. Knowles, R. B., Memoir of J. S. Knowles. London, Privately Printed for James McHenry, 1872. Lamb, Charles, Letters, edited by Alfred Ainger. London, Macmillan and Co., 1904. Complete Correspondence and Works, with an essay on his life and genius, by T. Purnell. London, E. Moxon, Son and Co., 1870. Letters, edited by T. N. Talfourd, revised edition by W. C. Hazlitt. London, George Bell and Sons, 1886. Lamb, Charles and Mary, Letters, 1796-1842, edited by E. V. Lucas. Sth ed., London, Methuen and Co., 1912. Layard, G. S., Tennyson and His Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators. London, Elliott Stock, 1894. Leslie, C. R., Autobiographical Recollections, edited by Tom Taylor. Boston, Ticknor and Fields. 1860. L'Estrange, A. G., The Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness. London, Hurst and Blackett, 1871. Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, The, 1845-46. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899. Lockhart, John Gibson, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott. Boston, Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1901. Longfellow, Samuel, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston, Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1886. Lounsbury, T. R., Life and Times of Tennyson, from 1809-50, edited by W. L. Cross. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1915. Lucas, E. V., The Life of Charles Lamb. 5th ed., London, Methuen and Co. [1921], Lupton, J. H., Wakefield Worthies. London, Hamilton and Co., 1864. Lyall, A., Tennyson. New York, Macmillan Co., 1910. Lytton, E. Bulwer, The New Timon. London, Henry Colburn, 1847. Lytton, Robert, First Earl of (Owen Meredith), The Life of Edward Bulwer, First Lord Lytton. London, Macmillan and Co., 1913. [ 2°5 1

BIBLIOGRAPHY Marshall, Mrs. Julian, Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. London, R. Bentley and Son, 1889. Marston, E., After Work: Fragments from the Workshop of an Old Publisher. London, Wm. Heinemann, 1904. Martineau, Harriet, Autobiography, with Memorials by Maria Weston Chapman. London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1877. Biographical Sketches. New York, Leypoldt and Holt, 1869. Massingham, H. S., The Friend of Shelley, a Memoir of Edward John Trelawny. New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1930. Merivale, Dean, Autobiography and Letters, edited by Judith Merivale. London, Edward Arnold, 1898. Meynell, W., Benjamin Disraeli. New York, D. Appleton and Co., 1903. Mill, John Stuart, Letters, edited by Hugh S. R. Elliott. London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1910. Milnes, Richard Monckton, First Lord Houghton, Life, Letters and Friendships, edited by T. W. Reid. New York, Cassell, 1891. Mitford, Mary Russell, Life and Letters, edited by R. Chorley. London, Richard Bentley and Son, 1872. Monypenny, W. F., and G. E. Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli. New York, Macmillan Co., 1910-16. Moore, Helen, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1886.

Moore, Thomas, Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence, edited by the Rt. Hon. John Russell. London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1853. Moxon, Edward, Christmas, a Poem. London, Hurst, Chance and Co., 1829. The Prospect and Other Poems. London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826. Sonnets, editions of 1830, 1833, 1835, 1837, 1843. London, Moxon. Mumby, F. A., The Romance of Bookselling. Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 1911. Nicolson, Harold, Tennyson. London, Constable and Co., 1923. Nicoli, H. J., Great Movements and Those Who Achieved Them. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1882. Nicoli, W. R., and T. J. Wise, Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1895. Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, Life and Letters of Robert Browning, edited by F. G. Kenyon. Boston, Houghton Mifflin and Co. [1908]. Palgrave, G. F., Francis Turner Palgrave. London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1899. Parsons, Edward, The Civil, Ecclesiastical, Literary, Commercial, and Miscellaneous History of Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Dewsbury, Atley. London, Simpkin and Marshall, 1834.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Paston, George [Symonds, Emily Morse], At John Murray's, 1834-92, London, Murray, 1932. Patmore, Derek, Portrait of My Family. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1935. Patmore, P. G., My Friends and Acquaintances. London, Saunders and Otley, 1854. Peacock, M. H., History of the Free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth at Wakefield. Wakefield, W. H. Milnes, 1892. Perkins, Jane Gray, The Life of the Honorable Mrs. Norton. New York, Holt and Co., 1909. Personal Reminiscences of Chorley, Planché, and Young. New York, Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1874. Plomer, H. R., A Short History of English Printing. 1476-1900, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1915. Procter, P. W. (Barry Cornwall), Charles Lamb, a Memoir. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1866. Redding, Cyrus, Fifty Years' Recollections, Literary and Personal. London, Skeet, 1858. Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell. London, Skeet, 1860. Renton, Richard, John Forster and His Friendships. London, Chapman and Hall, 1912. Robinson, Henry Crabb, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb . . . Selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson. London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1922. Correspondence with the Wordsworth Circle, edited by Edith J. Morley. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1927. Rossetti, D. G., Letters to William Allingham, 1854-1870, edited by G. B. Hill. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1897. Rossetti, W. M., Dante Gabriel Rossetti, His Family Letters, with a Memoir by William Michael Rossetti. London, Ellis and Elvey, 1895. Ruskin, John, Complete Works, Vol. I I , "Elements of Drawing." New York, Fred DeFau, n.d. Sedgwick, Catherine Maria, Letters from a Friend to Kindred at Home. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1841. Shaylor, Joseph, Sixty Years a Bookman. London, Selwyn and Blount, 1923. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters, edited by H. H. Harper. Boston, Printed for the Bibliophile Society, 1918= Sim, F. M., Robert Browning: the Poet and Man, 1833-1846. London, T. Fisher Unwin [1923], Smiles, Samuel, A Publisher and His Friends; memoir and correspondence of the late John Murray, London, John Murray, 1891. [ 207 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY Smith, Elsie, An Estimate of William Wordsworth by His Contemporaries, 1793-1822. Oxford, Blackwell, 1932. Sotheby, S. L., Principia Typographica. London, By the Author, 1858. Sotheran, Henry, Piccadilly Notes. No. 13. Southey, Robert, The Life and Correspondence, edited by his son, C. C. Southey. London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1849-50. Selections. London, Edward Moxon, 1831. Selections from the Letters, edited by his Son-in-Law, John Wood Wärter. London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longman and Roberts, 1856. Talfourd, Thomas Noon, Final Memorials of Charles Lamb. London, Edward Moxon, 1849. • Memoirs of Charles Lamb, edited and annotated by Percy Fitzgerald. London, W. W. Gibbings, 1891. Taylor, Henry, Autobiography. London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1885. Tennyson, Hallam, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1898. Thackeray, W. M., A Collection of Letters. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1889. Tinsley, William, Random Recollections of an Old Publisher. London, Simpkins, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., 1900. Toynbee, William, ed., The Diaries of William Charles Macready, 1833-1851. New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912. Trelawny, Edward John, Letters, edited by H. B. Forman. London, Oxford University Press, 1910. tValker, Hugh, The Literature of the Victorian Era. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1913. Ward, Wilfrid, Aubrey De Vere; a Memoir. London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1904. Warren, Arthur, The Charles Whittinghams, Printers. New York, The Grolier Club, 1896. Wheatley, H. B., Prices of Books. London, George Allen, 1898. Wise, T. J., A Bibliography of the Writings in Prose and Verse of Browning. London, Privately printed, 1918. A Shelley Library. London, Privately printed, 1925. Bibliography of the Writings of Alfred Tennyson. London, Printed for private circulation by R. Clay, 1908. Woolner, Amy, Thomas Woolner, R. A., His Life in Letters. London, Chapman and Hall, 1917. Wordsworth, William, Selections from the Poems, edited by Mr. Hine. London, Edward Moxon, 1831. Wordsworth Society, Transactions, No. 6. London, Privately printed, 1884. Zeydell, E. H., Ludwig Tieck. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1931.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY PAMPHLETS Autographs and Manuscripts, both English and American, forming Part I I I of the Collection of Louis J. Huber of New York City. New York, Anderson Auction Co., 1909. Commerce of Literature, The, and Letters to The Times and the Athenaeum. London, John Chapman, 1852. Descriptive Catalogue of the Library of Charles Lamb, A. New York, Dibdin Club, 1897. Forman, H. B., The Vicissitudes of Queen Mab, a Chapter in the History of Reform. London, Printed for private circulation, 1887. Lackington, James, Lackington, Allen and Co.'s General Catalogue. London, 1811.

Letter to the Rt. Hon. Lord Campbell respecting the Late Enquiry into the Regulations of the Booksellers' Association . . . London, Biggs and Sons, 1852. Makers, Sellers, and Buyers of Books, The. Reprinted from Fraser's Magazine for June, 1852, London, J. W. Parker and Sons, 1852. Member of the Oxford Circuit, a Memoir of Mr. Justice Talfourd. London, Butterworths, 1854. M[oxon], E[dward], Charles Lamb. London, Printed by Bradbury and Evans, 1835. Mudie, Robert, The Copyright Question and Mr. Serjeaunt Talford's Bill. London, William Smith, 1838. Opinions of Certain Authors on the Bookselling Question, The. London, J. W. Parker and Sons, 1852. Publishers and Bookselling: the Chartered Booksellers. In New York Public Library. Publishers and the Public. Reprinted from the Times of 1852, London, G. E. Wright at the Times office, 1906. Report of the Anniversary of 1842 (Literary Fund). London, J. J. Metcalfe, 1864. Report of the Anniversary of 1844 (Literary Fund). London, J. J. Metcalfe, 1864. Talfourd, T. N., Speech in Defence of Edward Moxon. London, Edward Moxon, 1841. Tercentenary Handlist of English and Welsh Newspapers, Magazines, and Reviews, The. London, The Times, Hodder and Stoughton, 1920. MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS Commerce of Literature, The, Westminster Review, LVII (April, 1852), 51155. Cunningham, Peter, Edward Moxon, Illustrated London News, June 12, 1858. [ 209 ]

BIBLIOGRAPHY Englishman's Magazine, The, Vols. I and II, 1831. Hunt, Leigh, Reviewing Allsop, Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Journal, December, 1841. Hunt, Leigh, On Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, The Tatler, February 24, 1831. Lamb, Charles, Album Verses, The Gentleman's Magazine, C (June, 1830), 543. [An announcement of the volume being in preparation.] Lamb, Charles, The Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in Art, London Athenaeum, January and February, 1833. Moxon, Edward, Sonnets, Quarterly Review, L I X (July, 1837), 209-17. North, Christopher, Tennyson's Poems, Blackwoods, X X X I (May, 1832), 724. [Notice concerning the Forgery of Shelley Letters Published by Moxon], London Athenaeum, No. 1271 (March 6, 1852). [Notice of the Death of Emma Isola Moxon], Illustrated London News, February 14, 1891. Talfourd, T. N., An Attempt to Estimate the Poetical Talent of the Present Age, The Pamphleteer, 1815. Talfourd, T. N., Speech for the Publisher of Shelley, Monthly Review, CLV, 545. Taxes on Knowledge, Westminster Review, X I I , 416; also XV, 238.

MANUSCRIPTS Bodleian Library, Oxford, Edward Moxon to W. Wilson, August 26, 1836, 25445 f 213. British Museum Robert Browning to T. N. Talfourd, December 17, 1851, 36878. H. F. Cary to John Clare, April 13, 1830, E.G. 2248 F 225. P. G. Patmore to Leigh Hunt, January 2, 184S, 38524 f 1. Thomas Pringle to John Clare, October 29, 1831, E.G. 2248 397, and February 8, 1832, E.G. 2249 F 14. Publishing agreement between Leigh Hunt and Edward Moxon, February 1, 1844, 38110 f 67. Samuel Rogers to Edward Moxon, 1832, a letter inserted in Broden, James, A Rainy Day, or Poetical Impressions during a Stay at Brightelmstone in the Month of July, 1801, London, Printed for T. Egerton, Military Library, Whitehall, 1801. W. White to Sir Henry Ellis, March 4, 1853, 19377 f 3 W. Fitzwilliam Museum Library, Cambridge University, Alfred Tennyson to Edward Moxon, postmarked January 23, 1843. Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California, 136 letters from W. Wordsworth "mostly to Moxon." [

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Morgan Library, New York, N. Y. Charles Lamb to Serjeant T. N. Talfourd [May ?, 1833]. Harriet Martineau to Edward Moxon, dated "Novbr. 14th." Ibid., dated, "March 16th [1842]." J. S. Knowles to Edward Moxon, "21 May, 1846." Ibid., "19th Oct., 1846." Alfred Tennyson to Edward Moxon [n.d.; perhaps 1847], Alfred Tennyson to Edward Moxon [n.d.; perhaps 1850?]. Written from "Tent Lodge, Coniston Water, Ambleside." Edward Moxon to Alfred Tennyson, "Nov. 6th 1852." Written from Putney Heath. B. W. Procter to Edward Moxon, January 15, 1835. Royal College of Surgeons, Library, London, The Baillie Family Papers. South Kensington Museum, Forster Collection, B. W. Procter to John Forster, October 16, 1836. Dr. Williams's Library, London, unpublished materials by H. C. Robinson: Diaries; Reminiscences; Letters; "Journey to Italy with Wordsworth"; "Miscellaneous." Wordsworth, Gordon, 26 letters from Edward Moxon to William Wordsworth, in the possession of Gordon Wordsworth, Esq.

INDEX Advertising, 77-80 "Ah, what is life, a dream within a dream" (Moxon), 198 Ainger, Alfred, 15 Ainsworths, 155, 158 Album Verses (Lamb), 25, 26, 29, 39, 48, 80, 121 Allibone, Dictionary of Authors, 77 Allingham, William, 183 Allsop, Thomas, edits Coleridge, 111 Allston, Washington, Monaldi, 83n; plot, 84 Annuals, 37 Argyll, Duke of, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, 55, 86 Art Journal, 184, 185 Artists' illustrations, Turner, 28, 45, 53, 128; Cruikshank, 30; pre-Raphaelites, 182 ff. Athenaeum, 29, 34, 42, 49, 51, 57, 65, 93, 119; Moxon's advertising medium, 77 Atlas, review of Cabinet Album, 37 Authors, see Literary men Babbage, Charles, 107 Baillie, Joanna, 75, 89 Baldwin, Craddock & Joy, 131» Barrett, Elizabeth, 45, 75, 162, 197; on Patmore's poetry, 155; relations with Moxon, 156-59; other publishers, 157, 159; works, 157«, 159; attitude toward Tennyson, 176 Bartlett and Welford, 73 Beattie, William, Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell, 129 Bell, J. S., Journal of a Residence in Circassia, 83 "Bells and Pomegranates" (Browning), 80, 159-68 passim Bentley, publisher, 89, 105 "Better it is to win the heart than mind" (Moxon), 198 Bibliophile Society, 118 Bickers and Bush, 105 Black, bookseller, 105

Blackburn, J., 103 Blackwood, publisher, 31; quoted, 19 Blackwood's, 31, 81, 158, 159 Blasphemy, prosecutions for, 102, 117 Blot in the 'Scutcheon (Browning), 164, 168 Blunden, Edmund, 60, 123 Bohn, H., 125 Book prices, 19, 22, 27, 45, 92; controversy over, 105-8 Booksellers, accounts, 6; attempts to band together, 105; controversy with publishers, 106-8; see also Publishers: Publishing Booksellers' Association, attempt to regulate prices, 105-8; dissolves, 108 Bradbury and Evans, 11, 114, 137», 182, 193n; do all of Moxon's printing, 48; manage his business, 1858-1864, 194 Breakfasts among literary men, 55 British Almanac, 21 British Museum, forged Shelley-Byron letters, 120 Brookfield, Charles, 173, 175 Brookfield, Frances, 160, 175 Brooks, Mrs., "Zophiel," 95 Brougham, Henry, Lord, 21, 84 Brown, Charles Armitage, 114 Brown, Ford Madox, 183 Browne, Miss Frances, 197 Browning, Robert, 45, 57, 58, 150, 175, 197; relations with Moxon, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 89, 159-68, 169; "Bells and Pomegranates," 80, 159-68 passim; introduction to forged Shelley letters, 119, 168; on Patmore's poetry, 155; other publishers, 161, 162; works, 161-68 passim; A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, 164, 168; other plays, 164; letters to Moxon, text, 166; attitude toward Tennyson, 166, 172, 174, 176; poems of, estimated, 167, 199 Browning, Mrs. Robert, see Barrett, Elizabeth Buchbein, C. A., 37

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INDEX Bulwer-Lytton, Edward George Earle Lytton, first Baron, quoted, 123, 125 Burney, Charles, 43 Burns, publishes Wordsworth reprint, 104, 139 Butler, Mrs. F., 197 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 19, 23; forged letters of, 118-21 Byron, Icodad George Gordon, the forged Shelley-Byron letters, 118-21 Cabinet Album (Moxon), 37 Cabinet Encyclopedia, The, 22 Cadell, T., publisher, 27, 29n Calcott, Lady (Maria Graham), 85 Campbell, Lord, 106, 107, 108 Campbell, Thomas, 19, 23, 44, 58, 75, 90, 199; relations with Moxon, 18, 76, 128; works, 128 Campbell, Thomas, Life and Letters of, 129 Carlyle, Thomas, 36, 123, 168, 172 Carter, John, 147, 148 Carter and Pollard, 159, 168 Cary, H. F., 24, 44, 146; Pindar 49; lines for Lamb tombstones, 70 Cattermole, Richard, 58, 96; "Becket," 38 Chapman, John, 105, 126; on Moxon's close dealing, 104; opposes booktrade restrictions and prices, 106, 107 Chapman and Hall, 159, 161, 167 Charity school, Wakefield, 4 Chorley, Henry, 150, 152 Circulating libraries, 22 City Press, 88 Civil War in Portugal . . . , 85 Champneys, Basil, 155 Cholera, 30, 32, 33 Christian Reformer, 92 Christmas (Moxon), 2, 6; publication, 11; analysis of, 11-14 Christmas festivities, 12 Clarke, Charles Cowden, 114 Clarkson, Henry, 1 Clayden, P. W., 28, 53 Cleveland, F. J., Narrative of Voyages . . . , 83 Colburn, Henry, 11, 31, 77, 89; advertising policy, 79 Coleridge, Derwent, 113 Coleridge, Hartley, 58, 70, 111, 192, 197;

[2

and Moxon, 113; Essays and Marginalia, 113; quoted, 123» Coleridge, Henry, 111, 112 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 36, 44, 50, 191; on reading public, 22, 23; relations with Moxon, 75, 110-13; books reviewed, 80; Moxon publications, 86, 111, 112, 114; difficulty of writing about, 111; pension, 112 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Letters, Conversations and Recollections of, 111, 114 Coleridge, S. T., The Literary Remains in Prose and Verse of, 111 Coleridge, Sara, 112, 113, 172 Coleridge family, 111, 112, 113 Collins, A. S., 24 Collins, Charles Allston, 183 Colloquies on Religion . . . , 86 Constable, publisher, 19, 22, 31; advertising policy, 79 Constable's Miscellany, 22 Cookson, Mr., 146 Copyright, 55; Talfourd's speech on, 150, 153, 154 Cornwall, Barry, 43, 61, 75, 155, 197 Cottle, Joseph, 68; Early Recollections, Chiefly relating to S. T. Coleridge . . . , 111 Court Magazine, 65 Creswick, Thomas, 182 Critics, badly paid, 81 Croker, John Wilson, 42, 77 "Cropper," term, 1 Cross Chambers Charity, 4 Cruikshank, George, 30 Cunningham, Allan, 44, 193, 197; The Maid of Elvar, 43 Cunningham, Peter, 193 Curwen, Henry, 31, 75, 77; quoted, 16« Dalziel Brothers, engravers, 183 Dana, R. H., 83, 191 D'Arblay, Madame, 43 Darley, George, 58; Thomas á Becket, 58 Deerbrook (Martineau), 90, 92 Defoe, Daniel, 32 Denman, Lord, 101, 103 De Pourget, publisher, 125 De Quincey, Thomas, 61 De Vere, Aubrey Thomas, 58, 138, 178, 180; quoted, 173 + ]

INDEX De Vere, Sir Aubrey, Mary Tudor, 59 Dibdin, Thomas Frognall, 65, 79 Dibdin Club pamphlet, excerpt, 73 Dickens, Charles, 17, 152; attitude toward book trade, 107, 108 Dictionary of Dates (Haydn), 87-88, 191; pirated, 104 Dilke, Charles W., 78, 114 Disraeli, Benjamin, 44 Disraeli, Isaac, 44, 86, 191 Dramatists, Moxon's reprints, 58, 80 Duncan, James, 157» Dyce, Alexander, 14, 58, 80 Dyer, George, 14 Eastern Life (Martineau), 92, 93 Edinburgh Review, 5, 57, 77, 123, 125, 171, 178 Elia, see Lamb, Charles Ellis, Henry, 83 Elton, C. A., 65 Englishman's Magazine, The, 24, 30-35, 39, 40, 45, 63, 85, 122, 133; contents, contributors, 32-34; suspension of publication, 34; excerpt, 112 English Review, 84 Evans, Frederick M., friendship with Moxon, 11, 48 Evans, Sarah, 193 Evans, William, 150 Evening Standard, London, 198 Everyday Book (Hone), 62 Examiner, 26, 38, 124, 159 "Farmer's Library," 21 Fausset, Hugh l'Anson, 175 Faust (Goethe), Hay ward's translation, 36, 49, 58 Fenwick, Isabella, 149 Feuillet, M., 145 Fiction, popularity of, 22; Moxon's publications, 83; taste for high life in, 90 Field, Barron, 65, 67, 71; quoted, 66; critical memoir of Wordsworth, 148 Final Memorials of Charles Lamb (Talfourd), 72, 74 Financial depression, 157 Fitzgerald, Edward, 57, 171, 178 Fitzgerald, Percy, on selling of Lamb's library, 74 Forman, H. Buxton, 114; quoted, 102 Forster, John, 38, 58, 65, 81, 122, 124, 162, 165, 180; articles in Englishman's

Magazine, 33,35n; Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth, 33; relations with Moxon, 35, 197; editorship of The Reflector, 35; on Lamb, 62; estimate of Browning's plays, 164 Fox, W. J., 42, 161 Franklin, Parry and, Voyages, 22 Fraser and Otley, 101 "Free traders," and book prices, 106-8 Fullerton, Georgiana, novels, 84 Garnett, Richard, 102 "Gentle Armour, The," (Hunt) 124 George IV, 19 German literature, 36 Gifford, William, 58 Gladstone, William Ewart, 59, 84; on book trade, 108 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 37 Gore, Catherine G. F., Agathonia, 83n Gosse, Edmund, 168; on Moxon and Browning, 162, 164 Gower, Francis, 36 Graham, Maria (Lady Calcott), 85 Green Coat, Charity school, 4 Greville, Charles, 84, 86 "Half profits" arrangement, 100 Hall, Basil, 44, 82 Hallam, Arthur, 43, 171; "On the Genius of Alfred Tennyson," 39; relations with Moxon, 39 f. Hallam, Henry, 39, 55, 175 Hamilton, J . A., 103 Hampden in the Nineteenth Century (Morgan), 49, 85 Hanmer, Lord, 197 Hare, Julius, 36 Harness, William, 57, 86 Harpers, publisher, 82 Haslam, Letters to the Clergy of All Denominations, 102 Haslam, William, 114 Haydn, Joseph, Dictionary of Dates, 87-88, 191; pirated, 104 Hayward, Abraham, translation of Faust, 36, 49, 58 Hemans, Felicia, 19 Hetherington, Henry, 20, 102 Hogg, Thomas, 116; Life of Shelley, 121

Holcroft, Fanny, 65 Holmes, Edward, 114

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INDEX Holt, Thomas, 102 Holyoake, G. J., 102, 103 Hone, William, 62, 66 Hood, Thomas, 14, 33, 65, 71 Horsley, John Callcott, quoted, 182 Hour and the Man, The (Martineau), 91, 93 Howitt, William, 160 Hunt, Holman, 182, 184, 185 Hunt, Leigh, 14, 18, 26, 33, 36, 39, 40, 44, 48, 58, 65, 76, 78, 111, 115, 116, 118, 142, 155, 191; quoted, 29, 39; relations with Moxon, 38, 100, 121-24; Moxon publications, 122, 123, 124; financial difficulty, 122; editing projects for Moxon, 123 Hunt and Clarke, 23 Huntington, Henry E., Library and Art Gallery, 132n, 147 Hurst and Robinson, 23, 131 Hurst, Chance and Co., 15, 131; employs Moxon, 11; The Englishman's Magazine, 31, 34 Indian cholera, 30, 32, 33 Ion . . . (Talfourd), 75, 150, 152 Isola, Charles, 14 Isola, Emma, see Moxon, Emma Isola Italy (Rogers), 27-29, 45, 53, 78 "Janus Weathercock" (T. G. Wainewright), 72 Jeffrey, Mr., 114 Jerdan, William, 26, 42 Johnson, Samuel, 17 Journal of Education, 21 Kean, Charles, 2, 58 Kean, Edmund, 43, 58, 75 Keats, John, 44, 45, 75, 191, 197; Moxon publications, 114; Life, Letters and Remains; Poetical Works, 114 Kelly, Fanny, 14, 58, 62, 71 Kennedy, Dr. James, "History of Indian Cholera, 30; articles in The Englishman's Magazine, 3 In, 32 Kennedy, William, 33; The Siege of Antwerp, 58 Kenney, James, 71; Masaniello, 30, 63 Kenyon, John, 49, 134, 146, 157, 191 Kingsley, Charles, 178 Knight, Charles, 21, 22, 23, 105, 107, 142 Knowles, James Sheridan, 58, 152, 191; relations with Moxon, 38, 124-28, 181,

198, 125, 125; text, sion,

199; Moxon publications, 38, 126, 128; as a playwright, 38, Virginius, 38», 125; letters from, 126; financial affairs, 127; pen128

Lackington, James, "remainder" business, 20 Lamb, Charles, 33, 46, 47, 75, 84, 133, 188, 191, 196, 199; opinion of Moxon's poems, 7; persons introduced to Moxon by, 8, 10, 11, 14, 38, 110, 125, 151, 154; friendship with Moxon, 8, 14, 48, 61, 73; Emma Isola in home of, 14; opinion of contemporary verse, 24; Album Verses, 25, 26, 29, 39, 48, 80, 121; interest in, and aids to, Moxon's business, 25, 26, 30, 43, 62-65; contributions to Moxon's magazines, 34, 36, 63; "Peter's Net," 34, 63; advice on Moxon's magazine ventures, 35; interest in theater, 38, 125; reviews Moxon's sonnets, 48; Last Essays of Elia, 49, 63, 64, 78, 101; on Emma Isola, 50, 51; poem on Moxon's marriage, 51; home atmosphere, 54, 62; Specimens of Dramatic Poets, 58; death, 59, 65; Moxon's indebtedness to, 60, 74, 76; choice of friends, 60; Moxon's Memoir of, 61, 62, 65, 66; after retirement from India House, 62; "Popular Fallacies," 62; intimate with friends, 62; life and works issued by Moxon, 65-70; friends whose books Moxon published, 65; estate, 65; Rosamund Gray . . . , 66; Prose Works, 66; Talfourd's Letters, with Life, of Charles Lamb, 67-69, 150, 153; search for letters of, 67-69; lines on tombstone, 69; Moxon's poem upon death of, 72; Talfourd's Final Memorials of . . . , 72; library sold, 73; attitude toward Shelley, 121; Talfourd's estimate of, 150 f.; on his namesake, 151 Lamb, Charles, Final Memorials of (Talfourd), 72, 74 Lamb, Charles, Letters, with Life, of (Talfourd), 67-69, 150, 153 Lamb, John, 47 Lamb, Mary, friendship with Moxon, 8, 10, 48, 61; on Moxon's marriage, 52; brother's estate left to, illness, 65;

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INDEX Lamb, Mary (Continued) last years, attention of Moxons to, 70-72; lines on tombstone, 70; death, 71; affection for brother, 72 Lamont, Martha MacDonald, Letters from France and Switzerland, 83 Landor, Walter Savage, 24, 44, 49, 152; Gebir, 30 Landseer, Sir Edwin Henry, 183 Last Essays of Elia (Lamb), 49, 63, 64, 78, 101 Layard, G. S., 182, 184 Lee, Sarah, 75 Lee, Sidney, 77, 103 Lee and Hurst, 66 Legend of Florence, The (Hunt),, 58, 123 Leigh, Hon. Augusta, Mrs., 119 Leslie, C. R., 53 Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley story of, 118-21; excerpt, 119 Lewes, G. H., 124 Libraries, circulating, 22 Library of Entertaining Knowledge, 21 Library of Useful Knowledge, 21 Life in the Sickroom (Martineau), 93 Linton, W. J., 102, 183 Literary Fund, 18; dinner, 166 Literary Gazette, 26, 42 Literary men, position in eighteentwenties, 17-20; breakfasts, 55; pensions, 55, 112, 127, 142; works pirated, 103; protest against traderestrictions and prices, 107 Literary patronage and aid, 17-19 Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (Forster), 33 Lloyd, Charles, 69 Lloyd, Owen, 69 Lockhart, John Gibson, quoted, 115 London Journal, 65, 78 London Magazine, 62, 64, 101 London Review, 42 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 75, 191 Longman, W., 106 Longmans and Co., 6, 9, 10«, 11, 15, 19, 44, 66, 79, 111, 130, 140, 162; The Cabinet Encyclopedia, 22; publishes life and correspondence of Southey, 98; joint publication of Wordsworth works, 135 Lonsdale, Lord, 18 Low, Sampson, 106

Lucas, E. V., 8, 36, 63; on selling of Lamb's library, 73 Lupton, J. H., 189 Luttrell, Henry, 14 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, article on Leigh Hunt, 123 Maclise, Daniel, 182 Macready, William Charles, 38, 58, 59, 123, 124, 152, 162, 164; quoted, 57; and Moxon, 165; opinion of Browning's poetry, 165 Maddox, J. M., lessee of the Princess's Theatre, disapproves Philip van Artevelde, 57 "Maga," 154, 156 Magazines and quarterlies of publishers, 30, 31 Manning, Cardinal, 59 Marshall, Mrs. Julian, 117 Marston, publisher, 100 Martineau, Harriet, 18, 20, 45, 81, 138, 147, 191; quoted, 17, 19, 23; relations with Moxon, 75, 80, 83, 90-94, 191, 199; competitive bidding for book of, 89; works, 90, 91, 92, 93; interest in lowering prices, 92; effect upon public, 191 Masque of Anarchy, The (Shelley), 38, 115, 122 Matthew, George Felton, 114 Matthews, Cornelius, 159 Methodism, extends reading public, 20 Metropolitan, The, 158 Middle-class life in fiction, 91 Middleton and Melmoth, Life and Letters of Cicero, 50 Mill, John Stuart, 42; on Tennyson's poetry, 172 Millais, Sir John Everett, 182 Miller, George, 22, 23 Milman, Rev. Dean, 106 Milman, Murray's adviser, 57 Milnes, Richard Monckton, 45, 54, 171, 191, 195; relations with Moxon, 54-56; literary breakfasts and luncheons, 55; works published by Moxon, 56, 83; edits Keats, 114 Milton, John, portrait, 47 Mitford, Mary Russell, 33, 155, 172 Monaldi (Allston), 83; plot, 84 Monthly publication, 91 n Monthly Repository, 42, 161

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INDEX Monthly Review, 26 More, Hannah, 2 Morgan, John Minter, Hampden in the Nineteenth Century . . . , 49, 85 Morgan Library, 125, 177 Morning Herald, 164 Moxon, Alfred, In, 190 Moxon, Ann Watson (Mrs. Michael), marriage, 1 Moxon, Arthur Henry, 190; becomes a publisher, 194 Moxon, Catherine, 190 Moxon, Charles Isola, 190 Moxon, Edward the man; parental family, 1, 188-90; birth, 1; apprenticed to a bookseller, 1, S; boyhood, 2; feeling for nature, 2, 143, 196; education, 4; sets off for London, loneliness, 6; his life there, before publishing, 6-16; childhood home, 8; self-pity, traits revealed in early works, 9, 13, IS; social sympathies, 10, 32n, 45, 49, 56, 85, 196; meets Emma Isola, 14; growing affection for Emma, 15, 16, 48, 50; support of relatives, 16, 188; capacity for taking responsibility, 35; mental development, 45; marriage, 51; children, 52, 190; genial traits, 69, 76, 94; death of son, 117, 190; love of travel, 130; later years, 188-95; strong family feeling, 189; residences, 190; closest friends, 191; frequent journeys, 192 ; poor health, 192; will, death, obituaries, 193; evaluation of, 196-200 the poet; early poems, 2, 7, 12-14; Christmas, 2, 6, 11-14; The Prospect, and Other Poems, 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, 189; titles of poems in The Prospect, 6; references to family in poems, 8, 189; poems to Rogers, 9, 60; sonnets to Lamb, 60; sonnets, 15, 26, 48, 52, 60, 110, 189, 197, 198; distributes copies of his poems, 48; poetry evaluated, 197 the publisher; enters service of Longmans, 6; friendship with the Lambs, 8, 14, 48, 60, 61, 70-72 , 73; contacts through Lambs, 8, 10, 11, 14, 38, 65, 110, 125, 151, 154; friendship with Rogers, 8, 18, 25, [ 2 1 8 ]

30, 53, 197; meeting with Wordsworth, 10, 130; friendship with Evans, 11, 48; leaves Longmans for Hurst, Chance and Co., 11; contacts through Rogers, 14, 75, 128; early literary acquaintances, 14; considers becoming a publisher, 15; conditions of publishing at outset of business career, 17-24; relations with Campbell, 18, 76, 128; business aided by Rogers, 18, 25, 47, 60; opens business in New Bond Street, 24, 25; early business years, 25-46; first books published, 25 ff., 30; Lamb publications, 25, 30, 58, 65, 73, 75, 115; magazine notoriety, 26, 29; publishes own sonnets, 26, 48; price of books, 27, 45, 92; Rogers publications, 27-29; reprints, 27, 45, 80; periodical publication, 30-35, 36 (see also Englishman's Magazine: Reflector) ; relations with Forster, 33, 35, 197; publishes selections from annuals in Cabinet Album, 37; relations with Knowles, 38, 124-28, 181, 198; with Hunt, 38, 100, 121-24; 1832 books, 38 ff. ; association with dramatists and actors, 38; relations with Tennyson, 39, 40-43, 78, 16987, 199; with Arthur Hallam, 39 f.; taste in poetry, 42, 196, 197, 199; general tendencies as a publisher, 43 , 45; his authors, 44, 58, 65, 75, 86, 110, 191, 194, 197; books on social subjects, 45, 85; own reader of manuscripts, did not ask counsel, 46, 197; business expansion, 47-59; establishment at Dover Street, 47; his printers, 48; 1833 books, 49; abandons translation field, 50; social circles, 53-56, 57; relations with Milnes, 54-56; wealthy authors minimize financial problems, 56; interest in theater, 57, 58, 75; relations with Henry Taylor, 57 ; series of English dramatists, 58, 80; results of friendship with Lamb, 60, 74, 75, 76; Memoir of Lamb, 61, 62, 65, 66; Lamb's interest in ventures of, 62-65; trouble with John Taylor, 64, 101; issues life and works of Lamb, 65-70;

INDEX Moxon, Edward (Continued) business traits, 69, 76, 94; lines on death of Lamb, 72; eager to keep Lamb's writings before public, 73; sells Lamb's library, 73; as publisher of poetry, 75, 76, 87, 156, 169, 196, 200; business policies, 75-88, 89, 104, 124; relations with Browning, 75, 76, 77, 80, 81, 89, 159-68, 169; with Harriet Martineau, 75, 80, 83, 90-94, 191, 199; tone of business set by Rogers and Lamb, 75; care and taste in book-making, 76; distinction gained through friendships, and through poems of, 76; advertising policy, 77-80; reviews and other types of publicity, 78, 79, 81, 141; reviews of books published by, 80; travel books, 82; attitude toward fiction, 83; books on history, 85; on religion, 86; Queen Mab lawsuit, 86, 101-3, 117, 150, 153; business prospers, 86, 191; success of Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, 87, 104, 191; typical relations with authors, 89-100, 198; relationship with Southey, 94-98; arrangements vary with author, 98; relations with Wordsworth, 99, 130-49, 169, 186, 197, 199; trade relations, 101-9; business difficulties and lawsuits, 101; protection of authors against piracy, 104; attitude of fellow dealers toward, 105; his established writers, 110-29; and S. T. Coleridge, 110-13; Coleridge publications, 111, 112, 114, 115; publication of recollections of literary friends, 111; activity on behalf of pensions, 112, 127, 142; Coleridge family's appreciation of, 112; Hartley Coleridge, 113; Shelley publications, 114-21; Keats publications, 114; Wordsworth publications, 115, 132, 148; the forged Shelley letters, 118-21; Mary Shelley's works, 118; Hunt publications, 123, 124; Knowles publications, 125, 128, 199; love for Wordsworth's poetry, 132; commissions for Wordsworth, 133, 142; depressed state of business, 137, 142, 157, 191; printing bill, 137»;

Wordsworth relationship strained, 140; visits to Wordsworth, 143, 193; from Wordsworth, 144, 146; trip with Robinson and Wordsworth, 144; affectionate relations with Wordsworth family, 147; sonnet in praise of Wordsworth, 149; new writers, 150-68; relations with Talfourd, 150-54, 199; relations with Macready, 152, 165; with Coventry Patmore, 15456; with Elizabeth Barrett, 15659; Browning publications, 159, 161, 162, 163; role in romance of Brownings, 159; estimate of Browning's poetry, 168, 199; opinion of Tennyson's poetry, 169; methods of handling works of the great poets, 169; success of Tennyson publications, 172, 179, 181, 186; services for Tennyson and other authors, 174; trip to Switzerland, 175; de luxe edition of Tennyson's works, 181-85; poets whose works made money, 181 ; last years of Tennyson relationship, 185; relations with Tennyson and Wordsworth compared, 186; Tennyson's allowance to family of, 186; failure of firm, 186; business after death of, 194; evaluation of, 196200; personality a factor in business, 198, 199; independent conduct, 199 Moxon, Edward Isola, 52, 190; death, 117, 190 Moxon, Edward and Co., managers of, after Moxon's death, 194; name changed to Edward Moxon, Son, and Co., 194 Moxon, Elizabeth, In Moxon, Emma, 190 Moxon, Emma Isola (Mrs. Edward Moxon), 47; childhood in the Lamb household, 14; growing affection between Moxon and, 15, 16, 48, 50; becomes a governess, 50; marriage, 51; sonnets to, 52; inherits Lamb's estate, 65; attentions to Mary Lamb, 70-72; helpmate in business, 190; made guardian of children, 193; interest in business after Moxon's death, 194; death, 195

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INDEX Moxon, Gertrude, 190 Moxon, Henry, In, ISO, 188, 189 Moxon, John, In, 190 Moxon, Louisa, 190 Moxon, Maria, In Moxon, Maria Wordsworth, 190 Moxon, Mary, In Moxon, Maud, In, 43n Moxon, Michael, marriage, 1; family, 1, 188-90 Moxon, Rev. R. S., In Moxon, William, In, 26, ISO, 188, 189, 190, 193 Moxon's Series of Popular Poets, 87, 194 Mudie, Robert, 19 Mulready, William, 182 Murray, John, 19, 22, 31, 47, 57, 66, 95, US, 131, 194, 198; loss on The Representative, 23; advertising policy, 79; travel books, 82; and Harriet Martineau, 90, 91, 92; the forged Byron letters, 119 "My love I can compare with nought on earth" (Moxon), 198 Nattali, publisher, 128 Newman, Professor, 107 New Monthly, The, 30, 62, 6S, 128 Newspapers, increase, 20 Nicolson, Harold, 184; quoted, 179 North, Christopher, 31, 40 Norton, Caroline, S4 Notes and Queries, publishers' advertisements in, 78 Novels, see Fiction Oilier, Hessey, and Taylor, 114 "On Being Presented with a Rose by a Young Lady" (Moxon), 6 "On Being Visited by an Old Friend after Long Absence" (Moxon), 6 "On the Death of a Friend" (Moxon), 6 Opinions of Certain Authors on the Bookselling Question, The, 107 Palgrave, F. T., questions genuineness of Shelley-Byron letters, 120 Palgrave, Sir Francis, on the forged Shelley-Byron letters, 120 Parker and Sons, 107, 156 Parry and Franklin, Voyages, 22 Parsons, Edward, 4

Partnership publication, 27n Patmore, Coventry, 45, 65, 75, 178, 180, 197; and Moxon, 154-56; estimates of his poetry, 154; compared with Tennyson, 154, 15S; anxious to meet Tennyson, 155; blames Moxon for rushing him into print, 155 Patmore, P. G., 11, 155, 156 Patronage, literary, 17-19 Payne, J . Bertrand, management of Moxon business, 194 Peel, Sir Robert, 55 Penny Cyclopedia, 21 Penny Magazine, 21 Pension List, 18 Pensions, authors', 55, 112, 127, 142 Periodicals, effect upon book sales, 138 "Peter's Net" feature, 34, 63 Philip van Artevelde (Taylor), 57 Phillipson, Mrs. C. G., 197 Pickering, William, 59, 111, 115, 156; Coleridge's writings, 113 Pickersgill portrait of Wordsworth, 134, 13S Piecemeal publication, 91 Piracy, 103 Place, Francis, 102 Poems (Rogers), 28, 45, 53, 75 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (Tennyson), 39, 40, 122, 169, 179 Poetry, publication of, 23, 156; by Moxon, 75, 76, 87; quality of, in eighteen-thirties, 199 Poets, conventional patriotism, 13; covet Moxon firm name, 196 Political patronage, 18 Pre-Raphaelites, 182 ff. Prices, see Book prices Pringle, Thomas, 33, 44, 75, 83; quoted, 23 Procter, B. W., 64, 65, 15S, 185 "Pronouncing Dictionary," 125 Prospect, The, and Other Poems (Moxon), 189; excerpts, 3, 6, 7; the poems and their critics, 7-9, 10; publication, purpose, 9; presentation copies, 10 Publishers, patrons of literature, 17; influence and control, 19; prosecution, 102; controversy with booksellers, 106-8 Publishing, conditions of bookselling and, before 1830, 17-24; "remainder"

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INDEX Publishing (Continued) business, 20; extension of reading public, 20-23; poetry, 23, 156; partnership method, 27; by subscription, 27n; reprints, 27; advertising, 77-80; reviews, 81; competitive bidding, 89; piecemeal (monthly) publication, 91; typical agreement with author, 100; piracy, 103; sales hurt by periodicals, 138 Purnell, Thomas, 60 Quarterlies and magazines of publishers, 30, 31 Quarterly Journal, 21 Quarterly Review, 5, 18, 34, 42, 57, 142, 173; Moxon's early poems, 7; exposes Shelley-Byron letter forgery, 120 Queen Mab (Shelley), 115; lawsuit, 86, 101-3, 117, 153 Quillinan, Dora Wordsworth, Journals of a Residence in Portugal, 83 Quillinan, Edward, 131, 148, 149; "Mischief," 30 Reading public, limited to upper classes, 19; extension of, 20-23 Redding, Cyrus, 128, 150 Rees, bookseller, 19 Reflector, The, 35, 122 Religious book sales, 20, 86 "Remainder" business, 20 Representative, The, 23 Reprints, 27, 94 Reviews, how obtained, 81 Reynolds, John Hamilton, 114 Reynor, James, quoted, 4 Robinson, Crabb, 14, 49, 53, 54, 55, 60, 71, 72, 91, 92, 131, 132, 135, 143, 147, 148, 190; quoted, 34, 52, 84, 142, 188; German translations, 36; diary, excerpts, 67, 68, 72; diary information about Mary Lamb, 70-72; on book about Coleridge, 111; on the younger Coleridges, 113; on Wordsworth's portrait, 134M; trip with Wordsworth and Moxon, 144; on Talfourd, 150, 151, 152, 154; relationship with Moxon, 190« Rogers, Samuel, 46, 75, 76, 131, 133, 146, 172, 191, 192, 199; meets Moxon, 8; poems dedicated to, 9; aid to literary men, 17; friendship with Moxon, 18,

25, 30, 53, 197; interest in Moxon's business, 18, 25, 47; sale of books by, 23; house at St. James's Place, 25, 53n, 54; importance to Moxon, of publications for, 27, 28; Italy, 27-29, 45, 53; Poems, 28, 45, 53, 75; letter from, excerpt, 28n; influence in literary world, 29, 54; approves Moxon's engagement, 51; Moxon's indebtedness to, 60; his poem on, 60 Rosamund Gray . . . (Lamb), 66 Rossetti, D. G., 40, 185; Tennyson's de luxe edition, 182, 183, 184; trials with, a cause of Moxon's illness, 184, 193 Rossetti, William, 183, 184; edits "Moxon's Popular Poets," 87, 194 Routledge, publisher, 185 Royal Society of Literature, 19 Ruskin, John, effect of Rogers's Italy upon, 28; on Patmore's poetry, 155; friendship with Tennyson, 182; interest in pre-Raphaelites, 183«, 185 Russell, Lord John, 127 Saint James's Place, Rogers' home at, 25, 53«, 54 Saunders and Otley, 81, 90, 157« Scott, Sir Walter, 19, 23, 36 Scott and Ballantyne, 23 Sedgwick, Catharine, Letters from Abroad . . . , 82, 191 Shakespeare, 58, 191 Sharpe, Samuel, 55, 191; books published by Moxon, 84 Shaylor, Joseph, 186 Shelley, Mary (Mrs. P. B.), 54; Queen Mab lawsuit, 86, 117; quoted, 103; preparation of husband's works for publication, 115, 116, 118; attitude toward atheism, 116; Rambles in Germany and Italy, 83, 118 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 36, 44, 75, 191, 197; The Masque of Anarchy, 38, 115, 122; Queen Mab lawsuit, 86, 101-3, 117,153; Moxon publications, 114-21; Poetical Works, 115; Queen Mab, 116; forged letters of, 118-21, 168; Lamb's opinion of, 121; Hunt's, 121 Shelley, Sir Timothy, 116 Siddal, Elizabeth, 183 Siddons, Sarah Kemble, 58 Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 138 Sinsell, W., publisher, 157«

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INDEX Sisson, Joseph Lawson, 5 Six Letters on Mesmerism (Martineau), 93 Smiles, Samuel, quoted, 24 Smith, Edward, 5 Smith, Horatio, 155 Smith, Elder and Co., 23, 161 Smith, publisher, edition of Keats, 114 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 21, 91« Society for the Suppression of Vice, 116 Songs of Shakespeare and Milton, 27 Sonnets, Moxon's, IS, 26, 48, 52, 60, 189, 197; excerpts, 110, 149, 198 Sonnets of Shakespeare and Milton, The, 30 Southey, Robert, 14, 18, 19, 26, 43, 44, 57, 76, 84, 111, 122, 199, 200; quoted, 20, 67; relationship with Moxon, 9498; proposes outline of "Christian Philosophy," 95-97; life and correspondence published, 98; death, 98 Southey, Selections from, 30 Spalding, Thomas, 193 Specimens of Dramatic Poets (Lamb), 58, 66 Spectator, 42 Spedding, James, 40, 171 Stanfield, William Clarkson, 183 Stebbing, Henry, 96 Stephens, Henry, 114 Sterling, John, Strafford, 58, 197 Stothard, Thomas, 14, 45, 53 Strahan, publisher, 181 Subscription publication, 27», 122 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 87, 194 Sydney Morcum, 83 Table Book (Hone's), 62, 66 Tait, 158 Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 8, 45, 58, 59, 65, 66, 125, 191; Letters, with Life, of Charles Lamb, 67-69, 150, 153 ; Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, 72, 74; Ion . . . , 75, 150, 152; speeches, 103, 150, 153, 154; Queen Mab suit, 103, 150, 153; relations with Moxon, 15054, 199; estimate of Lamb, 150 f.; estimates of, 150; as a poet, 151; works, 152, 154; copyright question, 153, 154 Tatler, 29, 39 Taylor, Sir Henry, 45, 58, 179, 191; rela-

tions with Moxon, 57; Philip van Arlevelde, 57; Edwin the Fair, 58 Taylor, John, 64, 101 Tegg, Thomas, 27 Telford, Henry, 28 Tennant, R. J., 171 Tennyson, Alfred, 18, 33, 39, 53, 59, 76, 191, 197; relations with Moxon, 39, 40-43, 169-87, 199; Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 39, 40, 122, 169, 179; letter, text, 41; pension, 55; reviews of works of, 80, 171, 178; on book trade, 108; Wordsworth's estimate of, 146; Patmore compared with, 154, 155; Browning's attitude toward, 166, 172, 174, 176; works, 169, 171, 172, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181, 186; effect of criticism upon, 170, 172; estimates of his poetry, 172; money-earning power, 172, 179, 181, 186; frequently in Moxon home, 173; meeting with Wordsworth, 173; on way to become principal poet of Victorian age, 173; characteristics, 174, 175; Moxon's services for, 174; trip to Switzerland with Moxon, 175; handling of proof sheets, 177; Maud, and Other Poems, 178, 180, 181; made poet laureate, 179; de luxe edition of works, 181-85; friendship with Ruskin, 182; last years of Moxon relationship, 185; allowance to Moxon's family, 186 "Tennyson, Alfred, On the Genius of" (Hallam), 39 Tennyson, Charles, Fugitive Pieces, 39 Tennyson, Emily, 40 Tennyson, Hallam, 41, 42, 172 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 166 Thompson, John, 183 Tieck, Ludwig, 30, 36 Times, London, 26, 78, 106; review of Dictionary of Dates, 87 Tinsley, William, publisher, 181 "To Maria" (Moxon), 6 "To Mary" (Moxon), 6 "To Some Friends" (Moxon), 6 "To the Muse" (Moxon), 27 "To the Rev. J.L.S." (Moxon), 6 Travel books, 82 Trelawny, John, relations with Moxon, 115, 117; Recollections of the Last Days of Byron and Shelley, 117 Trench, Richard C., 45, 75, 197

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INDEX Tudor Lodge, Moxon home, 189,190 Turner, J . M. W., illustrations, 28, 45, 53, 128 Valpy, publisher, 157« Vestris, Mme. Lucia Elizabeth, 123 Victorian hypocrisy, 124 Vincent, Benjamin, 87 Virginius (Knowles), 38«, 125 Wainewright, T. G. ("Janus Weathercock"), 72 Wakefield, Moxon's boyhood in, 1-6; customs, 2, 12; schools, 4, S Ward, Lock, and Tyler, purchase Moxon business, 194 Watson, Ann, marriage to Michael Moxon, 1 Watts, Alaric, 131 Weekly newspapers, 20 Westminster Review, 20, 104, 171; excerpt, 106 Westwood, Thomas, 61, 73; quoted, 14 White, W„ 119; quoted, 121 Williams, T., engraver, 183 Wilson, Effingham, 162 Wilson, Walter, 69 Wise, T. J., 120, 159 Woolner, Thomas, 184, 185 Wordsworth, Christopher, 148 Wordsworth, Dora, on Pickersgill portrait, 134» Wordsworth, Gordon, 148 Wordsworth, Mary H. (Mrs. William), 148, 149, 192 Wordsworth, William, 18, 30, 36, 44, 46, 75, 76, 86, 152, 191; Moxon's visits to,

10, 193; attitude toward The Englishman's Magazine, 31 n, 34; on death of Lamb, 67; attitude toward publication of Lamb's letters, 68, 72; asked for Lamb epitaph, 69; advertising expense, 78; attitude toward reviews, 79, 141; relations with Moxon, 99, 13049, 169, 186, 197, 199; piracy of his works, 104; Select Pieces, 104, 137, 139; on Hartley Coleridge, 113; other publishers, 130, 131; distrust of periodicals, 133, 138; Pickersgill portrait of, 134, 135; Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems, 135, 140; Moxon publications and sales, 136 ff.; The Excursion, 137, 138, 139; Poems . . . , 137, 138, 139; wishes large reading public, 138; and low selling price, 139; Sonnets, 139; corrections on proof, 140; relations with Moxon strained, 140; given pension, made poet laureate, 142; seventy-fourth birthday, 143; trip to Paris, 144; visits Moxon home, 144, 146; presentation to queen, 146; estimate of Tennyson, 146; death, 147; "Affair in France," 149; The Prelude, 169; meeting with Tennyson, 173 Wordsworth: Selections from the Poems, 30 Workingmen become readers, 20 World's Progress, The, pirated edition, 104 Writers, see Literary men Yorkshire, Christmas festivities, 12 Young Englanders, 56 Zeydel, E. H., 36