The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion 1707–1800 9780748628964

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The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland Volume 2 Enlightenment and Expansion 1707–1800

e d i t e d by s t e p he n w . b r o w n a nd wa r r e n m cdo u ga l l

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

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THE EDINBURGH HISTORY OF THE BOOK IN SCOTLAND General Editor: Bill Bell University of Edinburgh WHETHER in the creation of early manuscripts, in the formation of libraries, through fine printing, or the development of mass media, Scotland’s contributions to the history of the book, both within the nation and beyond its boundaries, have been remarkable. Published in four volumes, The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland brings together the work of leading scholars in the field in order to investigate the history of the Scottish book from earliest times to the present. Volume 1: From the Earliest Times to 1707 Editors: Alastair Mann and Sally Mapstone Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion 1707–1800 Editors: Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall Volume 3: Ambition and Industry 1800–1880 Editor: Bill Bell Volume 4: Professionalism and Diversity Editors: David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery

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ADVISORY BOARD

John Barnard, University of Leeds Jonquil Bevan, University of Edinburgh Iain Gordon Brown, National Library of Scotland Patricia Fleming, University of Toronto Douglas Gifford, University of Glasgow Christopher Harvie, University of Tübingen Lotte Hellinga, British Library John Hench, American Antiquarian Society Brian Hillyard, National Library of Scotland Wallace Kirsop, Monash University Alasdair MacDonald, University of Groningen Bertrum MacDonald, Dalhousie University Keith Maslen, University of Otago Jane Millgate, University of Toronto Michael Moss, Glasgow University Library John Sutherland, University College, London I. R. Willison, University of London

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© in this edition, Edinburgh University Press, 2012. © in the individual contributions is retained by the authors. Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 11/13 Miller Text by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 1912 2

The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published with the support of the Edinburgh University Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

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CONTENTS

Plates Figures Tables Abbreviations Acknowledgements Chronology

ix x xii xiii xiv xvi

Introduction Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall Chapter One

1

The Emergence of the Modern Trade

Copyright and Scottishness Inside the Printing House William Smellie: a Printer’s Life Paper Manufacture Bindings The Glasgow Homer Richard Cooper Sr and Scottish Book Illustration Atlases, Map-makers and Map-engravers Map Engraving and Printing Caricature: the Individual Contribution of John Kay The Spread of Printing

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Warren McDougall John Morris

23 40

Stephen W. Brown Stephen W. Brown William Zachs Brian Hillyard

52 61 65 70

Joe Rock

81

Chris Fleet Chris Fleet

91 103

Iain Gordon Brown Anette Hagan

107 112

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Chapter Two

Developing a Marketplace for Books

Edinburgh Selling Books in Early Eighteenth-century Edinburgh: a Case Study The Business Papers of Bell and Bradfute Glasgow Aberdeen and the North-east The Gaelic Book Scottish Publishers in London Ireland Chapter Three

Richard Ovenden

132

William Zachs Michael Moss Iain Beavan Ronald Black Richard B. Sher Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall

143 156 166 177 188 198

Esther Mijers Thomas Ahnert

203 210

Stephen W. Brown

214

Gilles Robel

221

Iain Gordon Brown Howard Gaskill Beatrice Teissier Beatrice Teissier Warren McDougall

233 246 254 258 268

Terrence O. Moore Fiona A. Black

275 283

The Popular Press and the Public Reader

Literacy Natural History, Natural Philosophy and Readers Textbooks Reading in Universities

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118

Intellectual Exchanges and Scottish Authors Abroad

The Scottish–Dutch Trade Scottish Authors in Germany Making a Scottish Market for French Books Hume’s Political Discourses in France Scotland and Italy: Books and the Grand Tour Ossian in Europe Russia Asia America The American Founders and Scottish Books Canada Chapter Four

Warren McDougall

Alexander Murdoch

287

Matthew D. Eddy Terrence O. Moore Roger L. Emerson

297 310 315

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contents Institutional Libraries Private Libraries Subscription and Circulating Libraries Newspapers and Magazines Edinburgh v. the Advertiser: a Case Study Cheap Print on Scottish Streets The Pamphlet Pamphlet Wars in the 1790s Agricultural Pamphlets Cookery Books Children’s Books Chapter Five

vii

Murray C. T. Simpson Murray C. T. Simpson

323 331

K. A. Manley Stephen W. Brown

337 353

Martin Moonie

369

John Scally Iain Beavan Gordon Pentland Heather Holmes Catherine Brown Brian Alderson

372 382 390 399 407 412

Publishing the Enlightenment

Reading the Scottish Enlightenment The ‘Age of Criticism’ and the Critical Reader: George Ridpath Women’s Reading A Woman’s Library in 1729: Grisel Erskine Religion Hugh Blair’s Sermons The Novel Adam Smith and Scottish Books on Political Economy Medicine Agricultural Publishing Archaeological Publication in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century The Journalistic Life: Thomas Blacklock The Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Mark Towsey

421

Mark Towsey Mark Towsey

435 438

Murray C. T. Simpson Ann Matheson Ann Matheson Peter Garside

447 459 471 475

Richard B. Sher Fiona Macdonald Heather Holmes

486 494 503

Iain Gordon Brown

510

David Shuttleton

528

Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall

538

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Chapter Six

Scottishness and the Book Trade

Print and Scotticisms The Revival of Scotland’s Older Literature Volusenus, 1751 Scots Poetry before Burns Robert Burns The Merry Muses Music Gaelic Secular Publishing Contributors Bibliography Index

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Marina Dossena

545

Alasdair A. MacDonald Alasdair A. MacDonald Christopher MacLachlan G. Ross Roy G. Ross Roy David Johnson Ronald Black

551 559 561 570 583 585 595 613 617 650

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PLATES Plates 1 to 29 can be found between pages 74 and 75. Plates 30 to 41 can be found between pages 202 and 203.

1

Rules and Directions to be Observed in Printing-Houses, 1721. NLS. 2 The Kilmarnock Press, Dick Institute, Kilmarnock. 3 Interior of Smellie’s printing house, 1807. Walter Dunn, Sketches, Drawings etc. (1826). NLS. 4 Smellie’s printing office, foot of Anchor Close, by Henry Duguid. The National Gallery of Scotland. 5–29 Scottish bindings. William Zachs. Photographs by Warren McDougall. 30 Thomas Ruddiman. NLS. 31 Walter Ruddiman. NLS. 32 Parliament Close. The National Gallery of Scotland. 33 Ossian by Alexander Runciman, c. 1772. The National Gallery of Scotland. 34 Robert Burns in James Sibbald’s circulating library. The Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society Ltd. 35 Lord Alva and his family, by David Allan, 1780. The National Gallery of Scotland. 36 Thomas Blacklock. Engraved by W. and F. Holl, from J. Wilson, The Land of Burns (Glasgow, 1846). 37 Robert Burns, by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Photograph by Antonia Reeve. 38 William Creech as a young man. William Zachs. 39 Burns’s figures. G. Ross Roy. 40 The Merry Muses of Caledonia with publication date. G. Ross Roy. 41 Chapbook edition of Burns’s The Whistle. G. Ross Roy. ix

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FIGURES

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

1.5a 1.5b 1.6 1.7a 1.7b 1.8 1.9 1.10

Alexander Donaldson. Portrait by R. Harvie, photograph by F. C. Inglis, detail. R. Skinner, Notable Family of Scots Printers (Edinburgh, 1927). Robert Foulis. Medallion by James Tassie, c. 1765, detail. Andrew Betchley. Gavin Hamilton. Portrait by William Mossman, detail. B. Balfour Melville, The Balfours of Pilrig (Edinburgh, 1907). Symson the printer’s house in the Cowgate. By Daniel Wilson. D. Wilson, Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time (Edinburgh, 1848). Edinburgh University Collections. John Baine Small Pica type in Specimen of Printing Types belonging to John Reid. Edinburgh, 1766. NLS. Dr Alexander Wilson and Sons English type from broadside A Specimen of Printing Types. Glasgow, 1783. NLS. William Smellie, 1740–95, printer naturalist and antiquary. Drawing by John Brown, c. 1781. National Museums of Scotland. Alexander Wilson’s new Greek type in the Glasgow Homer, 1756. NLS. Comparison with the type in the Homer edited by S. Clarke, London, 1729. NLS. Glasgow Homer – William Pitt presentation inscription. NLS. Frontispiece and title page of Alexander Stuart’s Musick for Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scots Songs, c. 1726. NLS. Allan Ramsay Jr’s portrait of his father, 1729. NLS.

24 24 31

42 44 44 53 72 72 74 87 87

x

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figures Title-page with vignette for The Gentle Shepherd, 1729. NLS. 1.12 Richard Cooper’s engraved portrait of Allan Ramsay Sr. NLS. 1.13 William Roy’s Military Antiquities. NLS. 1.14 County map of Perthshire and Clackmannanshire. NLS. 1.15 James Craig’s plan for Edinburgh’s New Town. NLS. 1.16 An engraver’s workshop. NLS. 1.17 Illustrations of the burin. NLS. 1.18 Operating a rolling press. NLS. 1.19 John Kay: Miss Burns. NLS. 1.20 John Kay: Auction room, with William Martin presiding. NLS. 1.21 John Kay: The Connoisseurs. NLS. 1.22 John Kay: Adam Smith. NLS. 1.23 Printing sites in Scotland to 1800. NLS. 2.1 Title-page of Hamilton and Balfour’s Virgil, 1743. Warren McDougall. 4.1 Old Library, Edinburgh University: site of University Printers and Hamilton, Balfour and Neill printing house 1754–62. Edinburgh University Collections. 4.2 Peter Williamson’s Scots Spy. Stephen W. Brown 4.3 Walter Ruddiman Jr’s Edinburgh Weekly Magazine with cover advertisements on blue-paper cover. Stephen W. Brown. 4.4 Broadside. NLS. 4.5 Christmas Tales. NLS. 4.6 Adventures of Captain Gulliver. NLS. 5.1 Clerk’s ‘writing implements’ illustrated in Polenus’s thesaurus. NLS. 6.1 Hamilton, Balfour and Neill’s Volusenus, 1751. NLS. 6.2 Robert Fergusson’s Auld Reikie, original chapbook title-page. Stephen W. Brown.

xi

1.11

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87 90 95 97 98 104 105 106 108 109 109 110 112 119 324 358 366 373 415 415 525 559 568

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TABLES

I.1 I.2 I.3 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 6.1

Edinburgh imprints. Edinburgh official printing from 1708 (ten-year cycles). Glasgow’s share of Scottish printing by decade from 1708. Scottish booksellers named in Andrew Millar’s first prosecution at the Court of Session, December 1738–9. London booksellers supporting Andrew Millar’s second prosecution at the Court of Session, 1743–9. London booksellers named in House of Lords appeal, Donaldson v. Becket, 1774. Confirmed printing sites to 1800 with date of first imprint. Prosecutions at the Court of Session for Irish and Scottish piracies, 1772–87. Charles Elliot’s letters to the London trade, 1774–90, arranged by volume of correspondence. Real Estate as a share of the advertising in Edinburgh newspapers, 1707–90. Major owners of periodicals in proportion to the total of such publications, 1707–1800. Edinburgh’s share of Scotland’s eighteenth-century periodical trade. Chronology of Scottish cookery books. Catalogue of books belonging to Grisel Grierson, Mrs Charles Erskine, 1729. Scottish music books, printed 1725–45.

15 17 18 26 27 35 113 125 128 363 367 368 410 452 588

xii

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ABBREVIATIONS

AUL ECA ECL EUL ESTC GCA GUA GUL NA NAS NLS NMS NRAS NSA ODNB OSA RPC SAL SAS SBTI SSPCK

Aberdeen University Library and Historic Collections Edinburgh City Archives Edinburgh Central Library Edinburgh University Library English Short Title Catalogue Glasgow City Archives Glasgow University Archive Glasgow University Library National Archives National Archives of Scotland (from 2011 the National Records of Scotland) National Library of Scotland National Museums of Scotland National Register of Archives for Scotland New Statistical Account Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Old Statistical Account Register of the Privy Council Society of Antiquaries of London Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Scottish Book Trade Index Society in Scotland for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge

xiii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume would not have been possible without the help and generosity of a number of people and organisations. We are particularly grateful to the members of the project’s Advisory Board who provided advice in the early stages of the book’s planning. Without the sponsorship of the National Library of Scotland and Edinburgh University Library, and the support of the National Galleries of Scotland, many of the illustrations in this volume would not have been possible. The Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto also provided crucial assistance during the editorial process. We are indebted to the University of Edinburgh, the Carnegie Trust, Trent University and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding at various stages of the project. Individuals who have given their support in a variety of ways include John Barnard, Bill Bauermeister, Iain Beavan, Iain Gordon Brown, Kathryn Chittick, Tristram Clarke, Shona Corner, David Finkelstein, Chris Fleet, Alan Grant, Anette Hagan, John Herdman, Brian Hillyard, Graham Hogg, Heather Holmes, Trevor Howard-Hill, James N. Green, Nye Hughes, Richard Hunter, Alasdair MacDonald, Barry Mackay, Alison McQueen, Alastair Mann, Joe Marshall, John and Virginia Murray, Sheila Noble, Richard Ovenden, Alan Rankin, David Purdie, John Scally, Patrick Scott, Murray Simpson, Geoffrey Waterston, William Zachs. We thank the staff of Edinburgh University Press for their support, in particular Jackie Jones, James Dale and Ian Davidson. Also copy editor Nicola Wood and indexer Philip Hillyer. Stephen W. Brown thanks Philip, Edith and Madeleine for their patience during the many summers in Edinburgh and winters in Peterborough when they shared their father’s time with this volume; and especially his wife, Kate, whose intellectual companionship, love xiv

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acknowledgements

xv

of books and greater intimacy with the advances of a digital world have been and continue to be essential to his success and happiness. Warren McDougall thanks his wife, Joanne, for her support, and the family, John and Christine and grandsons Chris and Mark, for their interest. This volume is the work of forty-two authors. The editors thank them for the light they have shed on the history of the book in Scotland. In Memoriam David Johnson John Morris Copyright Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reproduce illustrations and to quote sources. Aberdeen University, Library and Historical Collections. Earl of Fife, AU MS 3175 Anderson Strathern, WS, Blair Oliphant family of Ardblair. Creech Correspondence. NAS: RH4/26A/3 Andrew Betchley (Fig. 1.2) Stephen W. Brown (Figs 4.2, 4.3, 6.2) The Dick Institute, East Ayrshire Council (Plate 2) The Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society Ltd (Plate 34) Edinburgh University Collections (Figs 1.4, 4.1) Warren McDougall (Fig. 2.1) G. Ross Roy Collection (Plates 39, 40, 41) David Shuttleton (Plate 36) Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland (Cover image. Plates 4, 32, 33, 35, 37) Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland (Fig. 1.6) Trustees of the National Library of Scotland (Plates 1, 3, 30, 31. Figs 1.1, 1.3, 1.5a-b, 17a-b, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14, 1.15, 1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 6.1) William Zachs (Plates 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 38)

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CHRONOLOGY

1706–11 James Watson issues his Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Verse 1706–14 James Watson and his rivals, the John Reids Sr and Jr, produce some fifteen newspaper titles between them as they battle to establish a sustainable periodical press in Edinburgh 1707 Act of Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England 1710 Copyright Act (8 Anne c.21). The Advocates’ Library and Scotland’s four universities become deposit libraries 1712 Stamp tax imposed on British newspapers 1713 James Watson publishes his History of the Art of Printing 1714 Robert Freebairn prints the first edition of Thomas Ruddiman’s Rudiments of the Latin Tongue 1715 Jacobite rebellion 1718 James McEuen establishes the Edinburgh Evening Courant xvi

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chronology

xvii

1719 Alexander Monro primus lectures on anatomy and surgery in Edinburgh 1723 Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany appears at Edinburgh 1725 William Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius, the first printed book of Scottish music, appears in London 1725 William Ged, a goldsmith, begins to experiment with stereotyping 1725–37 General Wade constructs some 250 miles of roads and bridges in the Highlands c. 1726 Alexander Stuart prints his Musick for Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scots Songs, for vol. 1 of Tea-Table Miscellany 1727 Royal Bank of Scotland founded, joining the Bank of Scotland (1695) 1729 The Academy of St Luke’s established by Edinburgh’s arts community 1733–44 Medical Essays and Observations first published at Edinburgh 1735 Scotland’s first engraver, Richard Cooper, purchases his original premises in Edinburgh’s Canongate 1736 Mrs McLintock’s Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-work published in Glasgow 1738–9 Andrew Millar’s first copyright prosecution at the Court of Session 1739 Act (12 George II c.36) to stop the importing and selling of books published in Britain in the previous twenty years 1739 Scots Magazine appears

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1739 William Ged’s Edinburgh edition of Sallust in stereotype 1741 Robert Foulis acquires the lease for Glasgow University’s bookshop, and hires Robert Urie as his printer 1741 Glasgow Journal established 1743–9 Second copyright prosecution at the Court of Session by Andrew Millar and others 1743 Hamilton and Balfour’s edition of Virgil 1744 Robert and Andrew Foulis begin printing partnership 1744 Wilson and Baine move their type foundry from St Andrews to Camlachie outside Glasgow 1745–6 Jacobite rebellion under Charles Edward Stuart 1745 The Spectator printed in Glasgow 1745–8 London underselling of Scottish reprints does not succeed 1747 Wilson parts with Baine and establishes his own type foundry within Glasgow University’s precincts 1748 Aberdeen Journal established 1748 Alexander Kincaid and Andrew Millar begin collaborative publishing 1750 Scottish reprint industry well under way 1751 Millar and others lose Scottish copyright appeal in the House of Lords

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chronology

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1752 Provost George Drummond proposes draining the Nor’ Loch, making Georgian Edinburgh possible 1753 Robert Foulis sets up his Academy at Glasgow, fifteen years before the opening of the Royal Academy in London 1754 David Hume’s History of Great Britain, volume one, published by Hamilton, Balfour and Neill 1754 Select Society established by Allan Ramsay the painter 1755 Francis Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy published posthumously by the Foulis Press (Glasgow) 1755 Robert Bremner commences publishing music in Edinburgh 1755–6 Edinburgh Review 1756 John Home’s tragedy Douglas is performed in Edinburgh 1756–8 Robert and Andrew Foulis print the Glasgow Homer 1759 Benjamin Franklin’s first visit to Edinburgh 1759–60 Scotland’s first regular theatre reviews, by James Boswell, are published in the Edinburgh Chronicle 1759 London monopolists conspire to seize Scottish reprints in English provinces 1760 Hamilton, Balfour and Neill publish Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and Translated from the Galic or Erse Language

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1761 Six Overtures by Thomas Erskine, sixth Earl of Kelly, first printed 1763 Alexander and John Donaldson open shop for cheap reprints in The Strand 1763 William Smellie devises en-rate wage scale for Edinburgh compositors that is the basis for the next forty years 1764 Cape Club formally established. Robert Fergusson joins in 1772 1765–74 Foulis print fifty volumes of The English Poets 1767 James Craig’s Plan for Edinburgh’s New Town 1768 At Perth, James Gillespie completes his manuscript of Scottish fiddle music 1768–71 Encyclopaedia Britannica, first edition in 100 numbers, three volumes 1769 William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine first published in Edinburgh 1769 William Robertson’s Charles V published by the Edinburgh–London consortium of Balfour, Strahan and Cadell 1769 Steam engine patented by James Watt 1771 Benjamin Franklin returns to Edinburgh and stays with David Hume 1771 Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling appears in Edinburgh 1772–87 Series of London prosecutions at the Court of Session for the importation of Irish piracies and for illegal reprinting

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chronology

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1773–76 Edinburgh Magazine and Review appears 1773 Court of Session upholds the statutory limitations of the 1710 Copyright Act 1773–6 John Balfour and William Creech print The British Poets in forty-four volumes 1774 First Highland printing press at Inverness 1774 House of Lords decision limiting copyright 1774 House of Lords throws out the London Booksellers’ Relief Bill 1775–83 American War of Independence 1776 Adam Smith’s Inquiry into . . . the Wealth of Nations published in London by Strahan and Cadell 1776–89 Charles Elliot pays copy money to Scottish authors for books in medicine and science 1777–8 Medical and Philosophical Commentaries (1773–95) begins to be published in Edinburgh 1778–84 Second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica 1783 John Mennons publishes first number of the Glasgow Advertiser (the Glasgow Herald, after 1803) 1786 Robert Burns’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, first published at Kilmarnock 1788–97 Third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica

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1789–99 French Revolution 1791–9 William Creech prints the twenty-one volume Statistical Account of Scotland 1793 First state trials for seditious libel in Scotland commence in January at Edinburgh 1793 James Tytler, editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, among the first printers cited for seditious libel, flees Scotland for America by way of Ireland 1793 In August, Lord Braxfield sentences Thomas Muir to transportation for fourteen years 1799 Alexander Smellie prints The Merry Muses of Caledonia at Edinburgh

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INTRODUCTION Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall

This volume begins in 1707 when Scotland’s parliament was united with that of England and Scots became ‘Britons’. The Union brought opportunity to a nation whose economy had been wrecked upon the shores of the Darien venture. Scots were granted tariff-free access to English colonies and domestic markets as well as the protection of the newly British Royal Navy. The Copyright Act of 1710 would be transforming. The first challenge for Scotland, still an agrarian nation with only a modest if steady export industry (Smout 1963: 194–236; Saville 1996: 59–65), was to fashion a commercial culture out of a population of just over 1 million, of whom the majority were subsistence farmers or fishermen. At the time of the Union, the nation’s three principal urban centres, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, had populations of roughly 30,000, 15,000 and 10,000 respectively (Devine 2005: 15). If at the beginning of the century Scotland was among the least urbanised countries in Europe, by 1800 it had the fourth highest percentage of people living in towns with populations of more than 10,000. Its rate of urban expansion exceeded that of England: at the same time that English cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants increased from 13.3 per cent of the overall population to 20.3 per cent, Scottish cities of comparable size more than tripled their share of their nation’s populace, rising from 5.3 per cent to 17.3 per cent in 1800 (Whyte 1999: 179–81). At mid-century, Edinburgh had increased its numbers to 57,000 and Glasgow to 32,000; but by 1801 the capital was relegated to second place with 82,000 behind Glasgow’s 84,000. Perhaps more remarkable was the growth of Greenock’s population to 17,000 and Perth’s to 15,000 (Allan 2002c: 81–4). New manufactures – especially the textile industry – shaped the emerging urban economy, and the tobacco trade significantly helped to bring Scotland from its essential bankruptcy 1

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2

edinburgh history of the book in scotland

just before the Union to a national wealth of £120 million by 1798 (Lee 2005: 135). However, despite these dramatic changes over the course of the century, modern Scotland evolved slowly in the decades immediately after the Union, suffering through food shortages in 1709, 1724–5 and 1740–1 (Devine 2005: 18) and coping with the severe limitations of poor infrastructure, especially roads. General Wade built over 250 miles of military roads in the North from 1724 to 1740, and his successors extended this network to more than 1,000 miles by 1767, but the roads were often poorly executed and there was little provision for maintenance. In 1740, it might take eleven days to travel from Inverness to Edinburgh using military roads (Haldane 1971: 76–7; Devine 1999: 46). The Union was again a crucial factor in bringing about eventual improvements in ground travel: Midlothian’s first Turnpike Trust in 1714 established the means by which Scotland’s roads would be built and maintained, but the real work would not begin until after 1750. The first regular vehicle service between Edinburgh and Glasgow started in 1749, twice a week and taking two days each way, and not until the early 1760s was there a reliable monthly coach between Britain’s two capitals; in 1767 there was a coach from Edinburgh to Stirling two times a week and to Perth three times (Haldane 1971: 75–7). Ground transportation between Scottish towns and overland access to London became more serviceable for the movement of goods and people by the mid-1770s, a development acknowledged by the publication of Taylor and Skinner’s pocket-sized Survey and Maps of the Roads of North Britain or Scotland (1776), which had sixty-one plates showing 3,000 miles of road across the country. Sea routes remained the more efficient way to go, and ports such as Leith and Greenock were among the chief beneficiaries of the century’s increasing commercial trade. Opportunities to carry goods including books by water increased when the Forth and Clyde canal opened its branch to Glasgow in 1777 (Graham 2002: 329). By 1780 Edinburgh’s and Glasgow’s newspapers carried sometimes daily advertisements from competing coach firms that promised ever faster and more reliable access between those two centres and to England’s northern cities, as well as to London. One such advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant (1 January 1780) guaranteed ‘Expeditious Travelling from London to Glasgow and Portpatrick, in four days, by way of Carlisle and Dumfries [in] a New Post-Coach . . . every evening (Saturdays excepted)’. Accommodations were available for ‘passengers travelling northward, and to Ireland . . . from the King’s Arms, Carlisle, every Tuesday and Thursday’. Still, the logistics of faster

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introduction

3

land travel were not simple: the London-to-Edinburgh mail coach might involve as many as forty changes of horse (Haldane 1971: 83). By 1799 a commonly advertised time for travel from Newcastle to London was forty-seven hours, with coaches leaving Glasgow for Edinburgh daily at 4 p.m. and arriving at 10 p.m., in anticipation of an eighteen-hour journey to Newcastle the following day (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 19 January 1799). Better coach travel went together with advances in the postal service, all of which assisted the circulation of newspapers and other periodicals. The book trade would use coaches for light consignments such as proof sheets or small parcels and bulkier loads on a wagon network that by the 1780s covered Scotland and England – it took sixteen days for the Edinburgh wagon to reach London – but books went mostly by ship on the coastal and river routes. Britain thus became smaller as the eighteenth century unfolded and Scotland’s isolation receded accordingly: Court of Session papers filed in 1804 remark that ‘the smacks lately established . . . sail daily, make their voyage in the course of three or four days [and] are insured for a trifle’.1 Scotland’s postal system also improved at a slow but steady rate throughout the century, much to the benefit of the book trade. Newspapers and magazines especially depended upon the mail to develop and sustain their circulations. By mid-century bookdealers were also employing the national postal system, however rudimentary, to build a national market for Glasgow’s expanding reprint trade; thus the publishers of the 1745 Glasgow duodecimo Spectator were able to reach their edition’s subscribers in Irvine, Inverkip, Dunkeld, Alloa, Stirling, Perth, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and even Belfast through the mail. Advancements in the postal system were often as much a hindrance as an aid to the trade. Thus Walter Ruddiman Sr writes to the Earl of Fife in 1759, responding to his lordship’s complaint about interruptions to his receipt of the Caledonian Mercury: ‘by a late regulation, the Edinburgh news-papers are not allowed to be sealed, as formerly, they are by that means, liable to Accidents. As they are dispatched loose, some of the county post-masters not only read them, but lend them to their friends, by which they are both suddled and irregularly delivered’.2 In the 1770s Peter Williamson launched his own penny post to serve Edinburgh and its suburbs, initially with the intention of using the service to deliver his own periodicals (the Scots Spy and the New Scots Spy) at no cost to himself or his subscribers. Williamson’s periodical ventures failed but his postal business was a 1 2

Compositors 1804–5, A-F, Signet Library, Edinburgh. AUL MS 3175/1845/2.

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success. He published Edinburgh’s first city directories to support his penny post and continually renewed them through the 1790s. When the Postmasters General of Great Britain absorbed his operation in 1792, Williamson filed legal documents claiming compensation for the £50 in annual profits that his postal business had brought him.3 A proposal submitted in October 1790 by the office of the Postmasters General outlined in considerable detail a delivery strategy for Edinburgh and suburbs that involved mail coaches, riders and runners with annual operating costs estimated at £392. Mail would arrive by coach in Edinburgh and be distributed to receiving houses at four locations: Bristo on Nicholson Street, Castlehill on the Grassmarket, the Canongate and Charlotte Square in the New Town. Local mail could be dropped off at any of these locations. The post was then dispatched twice a day: general carriers would deliver all sorts of mail across Edinburgh in the morning, while junior letter carriers would follow up in the afternoon, delivering local mail that had been brought to the receiving houses that day. Riders would travel from Edinburgh to locales such as Musselburgh and Prestonpans in the morning, and from there runners would continue on to sites such as Dalkeith. An afternoon delivery in the suburbs was to be made possible by having the Edinburgh–London mail coach, which departed Edinburgh at 3.30 p.m., stop at Musselburgh en route to London, with runners then sent out a second time. The proposal goes on to project a similar system for ‘the northern parts of Scotland’.4 The movement of the nation’s people, however, proved as significant as the movement of its goods: Scots migrated internally and abroad in burgeoning numbers throughout the century, creating urban workforces and overseas markets. Although the national population grew to over 1.6 million in 1801, with the bulk of that growth located in the manufacturing Lowlands (Whyte 1999: 181–4), Scotland’s people had become one of its chief exports: by 1775 over 75,000 Scots (15,000 Gaelic speaking) had settled along the American eastern seaboard between Boston and the Carolinas alone (Devine 2005: 32).

A Marketplace for Knowledge Between 1740 and 1760 almost 57 per cent of Edinburgh’s and 78 per cent of Glasgow’s labourers were employed in some form of manufacture, but during the same period bookselling and printing accounted 3 4

NAS PO 1/13 (19 October 1792). NAS PO 1/13 (8 October 1792).

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for less than 3 per cent and 1 per cent of the workforce in each city respectively (Whyte 1999: 192). These percentages would increase significantly late in the century, and many of this volume’s contributors demonstrate that the book trade in its various aspects was a fundamental part of Scotland’s commercial coming of age. During the final decades of the eighteenth century, the momentum of the trade’s growing share of the urban workforce in Scotland was such that by the midnineteenth century the Edinburgh trade’s portion of the labour pool exceeded London’s by 68 per cent, and Scotland’s surpassed England’s by 26 per cent (Bell 2007: 2). Scottish publishers made knowledge a highly prized market commodity by anticipating the economic opportunities to be derived from the exponentially increasing significance of literacy to the new capitalist and imperial cultures. In the process they essentially defined two product lines: quality reprints of both enduring classical and emerging modern titles; and original works in the new genres of the Enlightenment, especially medicine and the natural sciences. Whether by design or accident Glasgow tended to specialise in the former and Edinburgh in the latter. There were exceptions: Alexander Donaldson, London’s chief reprint antagonist, was Edinburgh-based, but he also maintained London premises, managed by his brother John, where he defiantly sold his literary reprints. In the 1740s, the Foulis Press raised reprinting to the status of a fine art in Glasgow while the 1750s saw Gavin Hamilton and John Balfour in Edinburgh take the first steps towards making the capital the major site for intellectual titles. Their interest in medicine demonstrated an intuitive recognition that modern scientific knowledge as a consumer product was essentially ‘renewable’: if classical learning was defined by its endurance, modern learning was ever-changing, contradicting and replenishing itself. Medicine presented the particular instance of a discipline that required constant additions to – and subtractions from – its canon. The law was similar. Indeed the annual output of theses in both these disciplines from Edinburgh University testified to the growth potential of the knowledge market. Over 1,500 theses had been published in Edinburgh by 1800, with medicine outdistancing law after the 1730s (ESTC lists fifty-eight for Glasgow during the same period). The conventional print run for a thesis was 200, and copies regularly found their way to America and the Continent. John Balfour had the foresight to make a deal in 1754 with Walter and Thomas Ruddiman to assume their monopoly on thesis printing in Edinburgh in exchange for abstaining from thrice-weekly newspaper publishing. He kept that lucrative sinecure until 1794, the year before his death.

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The example of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, however, may best embody the Scottish understanding of the marketplace economics of what was becoming an information revolution in the second half of the eighteenth century. The term ‘Britannica’ itself attested to the publisher’s long-term ambitions. However modest, even inadequate, the threevolume first edition (1769–71), it was conceived from the outset as a renewable venture, unlike any other encyclopaedia at the time, including Diderot’s. In this sense the Britannica was fundamentally serial. That concept went far beyond simple publication in parts, a common enough trade practice with the genre. Rather it was the constant replenishment of the Britannica from its first appearance in 1769 through to its fourth edition in the early nineteenth century that distinguished it as a publishing innovation. The Britannica embodied a particularly Scottish notion of purveying knowledge. It did not undertake at its establishment, as did the French Encyclopédie, to be a monument to modern learning; rather, it was an exercise in taking capital advantage of the marketplace for knowledge. The Encyclopédie only became the Enlightenment’s golden goose when it passed into the hands of Duplain and Panckoucke (Darnton 1979: 131–76), but the Britannica was conceived exclusively as an engine of capitalism. Philosophes devised France’s encyclopaedia, but Scotland’s was compiled and written by a succession of journalists. The Britannica was also never a self-consciously political venture and from the outset, unlike its French predecessor, its format was designed to be affordable. It was, in fact, originally proposed as an octavo publication: the folio magnificence of the first editions of the Encyclopédie was never an option in Edinburgh. As each Britannica edition was completed, a new one became necessary, and despite continual improvement each was rendered obsolete in some fashion and required replacement or supplementation. If Diderot’s objectives were both political and intellectual (Blom 2004: 303–26), those of the Britannica’s editors were simply pragmatic. Their encyclopaedia’s pedigree lay exclusively in its profitability, and they would have perceived no insult in being called ‘booty capitalists’ (Darnton 1979: 531). The Scottish book trade was a net importer in the first forty years or so of the century, especially from London. In the continental trade, port records at Leith from 1742 show Alexander Kincaid, Hamilton and Balfour, Alexander Symmer, Richard Watkins, and John Yair of Edinburgh bringing in paper and books from the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Germany, France, Portugal and Spain, and Robert and Andrew Foulis of Glasgow landing books from Oporto, Portugal. Scottish exporting to America became significant in the 1740s (Chapter 3: America), and in the 1750s there was a noticeable trade in reprints,

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new titles and classical texts to Europe. Glasgow and Edinburgh became hubs of publishing during the second half of the century, with a commercial reach throughout Scotland and England, in Ireland, across the Atlantic, and in continental Europe. In the 1770s and 80s, for example, as well as having more than seventy bookselling correspondents in London, Charles Elliot had ninety in Scotland, around sixty in the English provinces, and fourteen in Ireland; he sent books to Grenada, Jamaica, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston and Virginia, to a Scots doctor in Russia, and exchanged books with agents at Gothenburg in Sweden, The Hague, Rotterdam and Leiden, Göttingen, Berlin and Leipzig, Dunkirk, Lyons and Versailles. He corresponded with several booksellers in Paris where he had a working relationship with Barrois the younger that saw him sending proofs and receiving new French editions on the Paris-London-Edinburgh coach network (McDougall 1988: 20–2; 2002: 214–37; Beavan and McDougall 2009: 358). Owning copyrights, paying to secure Scottish authors at Scottish presses, gaining London partners and selling quality, competitive reprints at home and abroad were activities that brought some publishers wealth on a London scale. At the outset of the eighteenth century, when the Scottish trade was essentially confined to Edinburgh, its leading printers Agnes Campbell and James Watson left significant assets that were the equivalent of £6,500 and £2,700 sterling, yet Jacob Tonson, London’s top-ranked publisher, had a personal worth approaching £40,000 (Mann 2000a: 193–6; 262–9; Raven 2007: 218). Later in the century, however, Alexander Donaldson’s estate, in excess of £100,000 sterling – derived largely from reprints and a newspaper, the Edinburgh Advertiser – compared quite favourably with those of his London rivals, Thomas Cadell (£150,000) and Charles Dilly (£80,000) (Raven 2007: 217–18). When Charles Elliot died suddenly in mid-career, his net worth of over £34,000 – much of it from his investments in medical titles – was more than two-and-a-half times that of his London-based sometime partner John Murray (Zachs 1998: 242). Even bankruptcy, once the terror of the industry, became a natural part of doing business by the late century. A middling trader such as Cornelius Elliot could survive insolvency as a bookseller in 1793 when he owed twenty-three Edinburgh colleagues over £3,500 with another £1,500 promised to London publishers. After his discharge in 1795, Elliot resumed trading without prejudice, and subsequently amassed thousands of pounds in assets as a book auctioneer in the capital.5 5

NAS CS 116/10. Also Edinburgh Gazette, 3–7 July 1795.

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Nationalism and the Refinement of the Book Trade At the time of the Union, Scottish printing was not a source of national pride. In 1713 James Watson lamented that Scotland’s printers were ‘scarcely class’d or esteemed above the lower Forms of Mechanicks’ (1913: 4). In fact, despite the spread of bookselling to over twenty sites in Scotland by 1720, much of what was for sale was printed in London and Dublin, and the most popular stock tended to be chapbooks and religious works (Mann: 208–9, 223–7). Still, Watson’s ambitions for improvement were as much an expression of nationalistic pride as a commercial strategy. Certainly the trade was in a poor way and if anything the Union had initially hurt the book business. An open border and ever-increasing stamp duties meant more English paper coming into Scotland, where production of all kinds of paper consequently fell. Between 1712 and 1722, the decline was particularly precipitous, collapsing from a high of over 150,000 lbs to a low of some 43,000 (Thomson 1974: 74–5). The industry did not begin to recover in any serious way until the late 1740s; by the 1790s, however, the Statistical Account records paper mills and paper manufacture as a crucial element in the industrial growth of many provincial centres. There were also no type foundries in Scotland at the Union, a considerable disability for indigenous printing. Not until 1742 and the partnership of Alexander Wilson and John Baine at St Andrews did Scotland begin the domestic manufacture of fine type. While the elegance of Baine’s and Wilson’s efforts established Scotland’s reputation for type design (Figure 1.5a–b), the goldsmith William Ged’s experimentation with stereotyping (1725) was perhaps the most significant Scottish contribution to the evolution of printing. He used plates for an Edinburgh edition of Sallust in duodecimo in 1739, reissuing it in 1744. Stereotype, however, was not immediately embraced and had little impact on Scotland’s trade until the nineteenth century. Watson also complained in frank terms in 1713 that the printing practice among Scots ‘of saving Money . . . by correcting . . . our own Presses, is entirely wrong’ (1713: 20). The thrift with which the Scottish trade was managed meant among other things that Scotland had no native engravers in 1707. That art first arrived in Edinburgh in the 1730s with Richard Cooper, who was one of several self-financing innovators, Robert Bremner the music publisher being another, who filled obvious gaps in the Edinburgh trade and took advantage of Scotland’s more accommodating attitude towards entrepreneurship. In the decades after the Union, Scotland did not have sufficient local capital to invest in something like engraving, and bankruptcies in the trade

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ran high (Mann 2000a: 193–9). Money for such uncertain ventures needed to come from outside investors. Only later in the century did Scotland’s banking community provide support to the small business components of the book trade (Lee 2005: 107–10). William Smellie, for example, Edinburgh’s most successful printer, established his own printing house in the late 1760s through traditional private patronage, but by the end of his career in the 1790s, his operations depended upon an official line of credit from the banker William Forbes. The nation had only one bank until 1727 when the Royal Bank of Scotland joined the Bank of Scotland (founded in 1695), to be followed by a third viable institution, the British Linen Company, in 1746 (Saville, 75–92). But only after 1772 did the Bank of Scotland undertake a branch system that would eventually be capable of treating regional business interests in a national way (Checkland 1975: 140–4; Saville, appendix 8). The slow evolution of a modern banking network may have contributed as much as any other factor to the independent and regional character of Scotland’s eighteenth-century book trade. Scottish printing was something of a frontier culture in the first half of the century, although lucrative opportunities existed for those willing to take risks, in part because the book business was not regulated to the degree that it was in London. There had never been a Stationers’ Company in Scotland, and the once rigorous control exercised over the press through licensing by the burgh, church and government was steadily eroding (Mann 2000a: 19–21, 42–6, 139–48). James Watson first undertook to raise the standards of the trade in his ‘Publisher’s Preface to the Printers in Scotland’ (1713) and through devising in 1721 with his Edinburgh colleagues William Adam, Robert Brown, John Moncur, John Mosman and Walter Ruddiman an agreed set of expectations for compositors and pressman, Rules and Directions to be Observed in Printing-Houses (Plate 1). However, it was Watson’s commitment to making print a site for sustaining Scottish identity against the subsuming threat of Britishness that set the tone for the history of the book in eighteenth-century Scotland. One of his lasting initiatives was to adapt to Scottish needs Henry Playford’s model anthology, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1698–1706): Watson’s resulting A Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems (1706–11) was a political statement that asserted Scotland’s authentic indigenous voice against the faux Scots of the London publishers (Johnson 1972: 130–3; S. W. Brown 2011). In 1713, when a second edition of the Choice Collection appeared, Watson urged his fellow printers to follow his example and ‘make it our Ambition, as well as it is our Interest and Honour, to furnish them [Scottish authors] with Printers that can

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serve them well’ (Preface). In 1739, the preface to volume one of the Scots Magazine would reiterate Watson in observing that ‘Scotland is little more than nominally consider’d’ within Great Britain, which ‘should prompt her sons to compensate that misfortune . . . and, by an earnest exertion of their talents, revive that universal esteem which SCOTLAND so justly acquir’d amongst her neighbours by the valour and learning of our ancestors’ (ii). The mandate to promote Scottish learning and the ‘Caledonian Muse’ (ii) was later recalled by Gavin Hamilton and John Balfour in their Edinburgh Review (1755–6) and Edinburgh Chronicle (1759–60), by Walter Ruddiman Jr in the Weekly Magazine or Edinburgh Amusement (1768–84), by Gilbert Stuart and William Smellie in the Edinburgh Magazine and Review (1773–6) and in the resurgence of vernacular poetry periodically throughout the century, especially with Robert Fergusson in the 1770s and Robert Burns in the 1780s. Perhaps most remarkable because of its regional origins was the Morisons’ series, Scotish [sic] Poets, proposed at Perth in 1785 as ‘a complete Sett of the Works of the celebrated Scottish Poets, worthy of preservation, from King James I to Ferguson and Bruce, which will probably require seven volumes . . . [with] at least two elegant Prints to every volume’ (Carnie 1960: 17). Such literary nationalism often marched side by side with Jacobitism – conspicuously so with newspapers and magazines such as the Caledonian Mercury in the 1740s, the Edinburgh Weekly Journal during the 1760s and the Historical Review in the early 1790s – and it would always align itself with whatever passed for Whiggishness. ‘Liberty’ became a sort of synonym for Scottishness in much of the later eighteenth-century trade, something acknowledged and celebrated by Hugo Arnot in his astutely reliable account of Scotland’s publishing traditions: Within these few years, a great change has taken place in the liberty of the press . . . This important change can only be ascribed to an increasing liberality of sentiment in the country, joined to certain persons having started up, who, convinced of the importance of the liberty of the press to the freedom of the constitution, were resolved to exercise it. (Arnot, History of Edinburgh, 1779: 272) To Arnot, as to many Scots, the attempt by London to enforce copyright on Scottish publishers was an essential affront to personal liberty, defined in this case as free enterprise. Arnot saw the English insistence upon their rights to literary property as a jealous act of protectionism, tacitly intended to crush the profitable Scottish trade. Had they succeeded in this strategy, Arnot argued, ‘any extensiveness

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or improvement in the art of printing would, in Scotland, have been finished for ever’ (Arnot 1779: 265). By the 1770s, the health of the nation’s publishing industry, its success and its reputation, had become co-equal with Scotland’s very honour. The House of Lords 1774 literary property decision in favour of the Scottish trade thus became a moment of national triumph (Chapter 1: Copyright and Scottishness). In their determination to fulfill Watson’s mandate and provide Scotland with a book trade worthy of the nation’s intellectual achievements, certain printer-publishers took up another of Watson’s challenges, to ‘give a Crown [5s.] a day to a good Press-man, who brings Reputation to my Work and preserves my Letter, than Eighteen pence to one who must certainly destroy it by careless and base Working’ (Watson 1713: 21–2). Watson’s figures were exaggerated to make his point, but after 1750 leaders in the book business such as Edinburgh’s John Balfour and Charles Elliot and Glasgow’s Foulis Press and John Mennons would pay what was necessary and accommodate in other ways their best workers, including provisions for their further education. In fact, for several decades the trade in general acknowledged Watson’s advice: printers were as a whole consistently better compensated than any other Scottish tradesmen from the 1740s until the 1780s (Fraser 1988: 30). This, however, did not mean that compositors and pressmen always felt that they were fairly paid. Despite his proclamation about just wages, the final years of James Watson’s life (1720–2) were made uneasy by a vicious ongoing disagreement with a number of journeymen printers (Thomas Lumisden, William Semple, John Gilfillan, James Grant, John Evans, William Coke, Tobias Love, William Bruce and John Robertson) who contracted with one another in a rudimentary union to demand what amounted to piecework compensation in place of what they felt were depressed salaries. They claimed that Edinburgh’s master printers were in agreement to keep down wages, while Watson replied that the journeymen in fact wanted ‘most high and extravagant prices . . . such as had never been given before here’ (Evans 1982: 26). Watson further cited a series of acts of violence and intimidation including being shot at, cursed in public and having letters sent to London and Glasgow reporting him dead ‘to the great damage of the complainer’s credit’ (Evans 1982: 27). Gilfillan, Love and Dick were imprisoned and fined and the journeymen’s combination failed. Throughout the eighteenth century, Scottish printers’ salaries lagged behind those of their London counterparts, making Scotland an outsourcing alternative for English publishers in search of first-rate print work at competitive prices,

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although the paper was often shipped from England, where it was much more cheaply produced until quite late in the century (Zachs 1998: 97–8). Scotland as a ‘brand’ in publishing came to represent reliability, quality and a democratic impulse in the dissemination of classical and modern learning but at the cost of suppressing trade salaries in the century’s final two decades. Evidence of the extent of this suppression is recorded in detailed Memorials submitted to the Session Courts in 1804–5 by Edinburgh’s compositors.6 While their masters insisted that the situation enjoyed by the compositors compared favourably with that of the other trades, especially carpenters and masons, the compositors themselves pointed to the 50 per cent increase in the cost of living in Edinburgh since the early 1780s as justification for their request to have their wages, which had continued unchanged, raised by onethird. At the time compositors might earn as little as 2s 6d to 5s a week at quiet periods with an occasional high of 30s achievable through ‘extraordinary exertion’ (Compositors B: 15); the court would calculate that the average weekly wages at book houses, balanced over the year, was 16s 10d in 1802 (C: 18). The compositors said many other workmen were in the range of 17s to 20s a week and 30s was ‘easily gained’ by carpenters, boot makers and tailors (B: 15–16; Chapter 2: Edinburgh). They also insisted that ‘a printer’s occupation requires greater skill and knowledge, and more unremitting attention and mental exertion, than almost any other species of mechanical labour whatever. A printer requires a considerable share of literature . . . [and] a knowledge, not only of English, but of other languages . . . to read manuscripts . . . to spell very correctly . . . [and] the slightest relaxation of attention leads to errors, which . . . must be corrected by the compositor . . . the whole time and labor of the correction forming a deduction from his daily gain’ (B: 11). The masters predictably denigrated the compositors’ skills and justified their compensation. Nevertheless, there emerges from these papers the portrait of a trade that was highly literate by necessity and one in which employees had remained remarkably loyal to their employers through some twenty-five years of depressed income, when Scotland’s printing industry was establishing the foundations for its international domination in the nineteenth century. By the 1790s, the compositors observe that ‘London booksellers have come of late years to employ Scotch printers to print for their market. The Edinburgh work daily improving in elegance and correctness’ (B: 3). Some in the Scottish trade were determined to make Edinburgh 6

Compositors 1804–5, A-F, Signet Library, Edinburgh.

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acknowledge its Britishness. The bookseller William Creech was perhaps the most prominent of these. His attitude both as citizen and businessman emulated that of the London-based expatriates. He wrote regularly under various pseudonyms in the Edinburgh papers, arguing for greater co-operation with London in all aspects of Scotland’s life. His often-quoted but unreliable ‘Comparable View of Edinburgh in the Years 1763, 1783, and 1793’ – published in various states but most prominently as part of Sir John Sinclair’s Statistical Account for Edinburgh, 1799 – deliberately downgraded Scotland’s achievements during the crucial decade of the 1760s, emphasising instead the apparent prosperity of the 1780s and 1790s as good reason for Scots to avoid dissent and embrace their identity as Britons. His association with William Strahan and Thomas Cadell was often part of a strategy to bring the independent Scottish trade into line with English interests. Among those in Scotland willing to act as spies on behalf of the London publishers, Creech was one of the most prominent and virulent, although this did not forestall his own occasional adventures in piracy (Chapter 2: Edinburgh; Sher 2006: 354–7). Creech’s unsuccessful bid to give Scotland some equivalent of the Stationers’ Company, through his formation of the Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society and his preference for cartel-like partnerships, anticipated the direction the Scottish trade would take in the truly corporate nineteenth century. Creech once advised that printers ‘who had broken the tranquility of the country might be carried by the devils to hell’ (Fugitive Pieces 1815: 350), and cautioned that ‘every member of the state should be jealous of innovation’ (357). But for most of the eighteenth century, the Scottish way in the book business rewarded individualism and risk-taking while demonstrating the nation’s capacity for manipulating Britishness. That culture ended, however, with the political crises of the 1790s, when Edinburgh’s publishers would take far greater risks than Glasgow’s. At least thirty-eight overtly political works were printed in Edinburgh in 1792, the year of Fox’s Act which introduced jury trial for libel cases; Glasgow by contrast had only nine titles of that sort, but twenty-five religious reprints. Curiously, song collections were also popular with Edinburgh’s publishers in 1792. Ten were printed, including the pointed re-issue at a time of national war of a 1746 work entitled The Loyal Songster, containing a choice collectign [sic] of loyal songs. Although radical politics seems not to have slowed the promotion of science – Edinburgh published twenty-one medical and agricultural texts in 1792 – it did result in charges of sedition being brought against several Edinburgh printers, and the trade quickly lost what

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Arnot had identified in the 1770s as its ‘liberality of sentiment’. The transition from Scottish to British at the end of the century was accelerated by the political anxieties brought on by events in France, a sea change succinctly articulated by David Brewster, who became editor of the Edinburgh Magazine in 1802. In his History of Masonry, he turned away from the intellectual and political independence of Hume and Burns to another vision of Scottish citizenry as loyal Britons: ‘no more traitors . . . or indifferent to their country. I see them in the hour of danger rallying around the throne of our king, and proffering for his safety, their hearts and their arms’ (Brewster 1804: 146). Creech’s vision had come to pass.

Trading Volumes: A Bibliometric Account If ‘country’ for Brewster in 1804 meant Britain, ‘Scotland’ for much of the eighteenth-century trade was represented through regional interests. An examination of the ESTC for the years from 1707 through for 1800 helps to understand this regionalism and especially puts into context Edinburgh’s apparent domination of Scottish printing. Of course, one must be cautious when using the ESTC and the examination that follows heeds Michael Suarez’s advice in avoiding problematic or what he terms ‘cohort’ years (Suarez 2009: 41–2). Because of its status as capital, Edinburgh dominated publishing from the time of the Union: of the 243 imprints listed for Scotland in 1707 (ESTC), only six were published outside Edinburgh, all at Glasgow and representing a miniscule 0.25 per cent of the trade that year.7 By 1800, however, Glasgow was producing 23 per cent of the national total, with Edinburgh’s share declining to a still robust 60 per cent; and the two printing sites named in the 1707 imprints had grown to nineteen locations on the imprints for 1800. Nevertheless, most publishing operations, despite Scotland’s developing international reach, continued to be regionally defined and, although the practice of taking shares in publications meant that imprints increasingly reflected co-operation between Edinburgh and Glasgow as well as partners across Scotland, each printing business remained a discrete entity. Over 700 imprints in ESTC indicate joint Edinburgh and Glasgow publication, with annual numbers rising steadily from the 1740s: approximately twenty shared imprints survive from the period 1727–36, rising to eighty-five for 1737–47. The practice increased dramatically in the later decades of the century. After the mid-century, when Edinburgh’s more adventurous publishers began to 7

All figures that follow are from the ESTC, accessed between September 2009 and April 2010.

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introduction Table I.1 Edinburgh imprints. Edinburgh imprints

4000 3000

Total imprints Legal, gov., theses

2000 1000 0 1708–17

1718–27

1728–37

1738–47

1748–57

1758–67

1768–77

1778–87

1788–97

pay major copy money for the rights to the best Scottish works, some such as John Balfour and William Creech sought London partnerships, while others, especially Gavin Hamilton and Charles Elliot, held their own copyrights, although Elliot would bring in a London distributing partner. Networks of co-operation thus came about in the second half of the century, but the trade never abandoned regional control or individual proprietorship for a national corporate structure. That would begin only after 1800. Edinburgh’s advantage throughout the 1700s essentially derived from its monopoly on legal and official printing, as well as the steady, even extraordinary, production generated by its university. Up to 75 per cent of Edinburgh’s total annual output regularly came from Court of Session and other legal work, official government and church publications, and theses, although the percentage could be much higher. In 1748, for example, those sources accounted for 87 per cent of Edinburgh’s production: ESTC lists 510 imprints for Edinburgh that year of which 396 are legal, thirty-seven government and church, and twelve theses. When those 445 titles are subtracted, Edinburgh’s then remaining sixty-five imprints barely surpassed Glasgow’s fifty-nine for the same year. These reliable sources of income from official activities exclusive to the capital provided the economic base for Edinburgh’s rather stable printing community throughout the century and ensured work for the apprentices needed to expand the trade (Table I.1). Indeed, Edinburgh-trained journeymen provided a regular work pool for London’s printing houses. Glasgow and Aberdeen, however, were required to work much harder to build an economic foundation for their book trades and came to define themselves quite differently. For Glasgow that meant reprints, and for Aberdeen a regional emphasis, with one family, the Chalmers, dominating the trade. Glasgow alone was able to foster a

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healthy and diverse printing-publishing community and thus compete with Edinburgh. But only after 1780 did publishing develop much outside the centres of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, at which point, in fact, the combined volume for ‘other locations’ often exceeded Aberdeen’s. Perth began to thrive from 1770, exclusively through the efforts of the Morison family who enriched their reprint operations with ambitious original ventures such as their Encyclopaedia Perthensis (1796–1806). In 1800, Stirling alone had eighty-two publications. Between 1707 and 1754, sites other than Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen appeared in just over 1 per cent of Scotland’s imprints but from 1755 through to 1800 that figure rose to 10 per cent. When figures are adjusted, however, to account for the large amount of Edinburgh’s printing that derived from the Court of Session, the Church of Scotland, the government and theses, Edinburgh and Glasgow have a more competitive relationship. In some years, as we have seen, Glasgow’s output actually matched or surpassed Edinburgh’s, once legal and official printing have been deducted from the latter’s total. In 1752, for example, ESTC lists 248 titles for Scotland of which 159 are cited for Edinburgh, eighty-five for Glasgow and three for Aberdeen. Of Edinburgh’s total, sixty-eight are legal (43), government and church (16) or theses (9). Glasgow has no publications in these categories that year according to ESTC. When Edinburgh’s total is adjusted to reflect that imbalance, the capital shows ninety-one publications, only six more than Glasgow’s output. Both cities were engaged in reprinting in 1752, but Glasgow far outdistanced Edinburgh in that regard. Robert Urie and the Foulis Press between them reissued nearly thirty standard authors that year, including Addison, Bacon, Bolingbroke, Congreve, Denham, Dryden, Gay, Jonson, Locke, Milton, Montesquieu, Parnell, Philips, Pope, Ramsay, Sidney, Voltaire, Waller and Young. These could not all have been published for local consumption, and many must have found their way over the border and across the Atlantic. Edinburgh’s list is impressive but pales by comparison: Bishop Burnet, Franklin, Johnson and Locke, with the leading firm of Hamilton, Balfour and Neill adding a prestigious fourth edition, dated 1751–2, of Buchanan’s History of Scotland in weekly numbers, and a reprint of the Dublin Works of Jonathan Swift in nine volumes. The influential partnership of Alexander Kincaid and Alexander Donaldson contributed two titles by David Hume: Political Essays and Political Discourses. Glasgow and Edinburgh each also published some two dozen religious works that year, many of them reprints, with Thomas Boston and John Willison popular in Glasgow and the Erskines in the capital. Three works were printed in Gaelic that year in

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introduction Table I.2 Edinburgh official printing from 1708 (ten-year cycles). Edinburgh

1708 1718 1728 1738 1748 1758 1768 1778 1788 1798

All imprints 159 by year Legal 10 Gov./ 45 Church Theses 6 Sub-total 61 Adjusted 98 imprints

192

171

166

510

194

465

332

316

324

51 23

40 33

64 16

396 37

94 22

233 20

89 24

136 19

19 21

8 82 110

3 76 95

8 88 78

12 445 65

15 131 63

26 279 186

37 150 187

28 183 133

55 95 229

Glasgow. Notably, however, the distinguishing feature of Edinburgh’s output in 1752 consisted in its medical texts, eight in all (not including theses), mostly from Hamilton, Balfour and Neill. None is recorded that year for Glasgow in ESTC. Glasgow’s rise to the status of Edinburgh’s rival in the book trade is one of the hidden chapters in the history of eighteenth-century Scottish publishing. As we have seen, Edinburgh’s almost exclusive access to a wealth of legal, official and university printing inflated the capital’s overall production and misleadingly obscured Glasgow’s achievements as a publication centre. Simply looking at the eighth year of each decade shows the extent to which Edinburgh benefited (Table I.2). As these figures indicate, the foundation for Edinburgh’s trade provided by legal printing alone was substantial. When combined with official and academic publishing, it boosted the capital’s output as much as seven-fold in 1748 and never represented much less than 30 per cent in each of these ten annual totals. Glasgow had no such advantage. Thus, when the playing field is levelled and Edinburgh’s found printing removed from its annual totals, Glasgow’s development is evident. The following table displays ESTC data by decade, commencing in 1708, the year after the Union, and ending in 1797. It illustrates Glasgow’s percentage share of Scotland’s total imprints in ten-year cycles from 1708, first without acknowledging Edinburgh’s advantage, and then with the capital’s official printing deducted (Table I.3). When the Edinburgh figures are thus adjusted, a truer picture emerges of Glasgow’s activity. Glasgow’s share of the national production essentially doubled from the decade of 1708–17 through to that of 1718–27. A decline of over 20 per cent occurred in the subsequent ten-year period. However, a dramatic and sustained maturation of

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Table I.3 Glasgow’s share of Scottish printing by decade from 1708. 1708– 17

1718– 27

1728– 37

1738– 47

1748– 57

1758– 67

1768– 77

1778– 87

1788– 97

Scotland 2090 2154 1768 2439 3435 4550 4504 3810 5201 Glasgow 100 149 103 394 750 664 667 658 1037 Glasgow 4.79% 6.92% 5.83% 16.15% 21.83% 14.07% 14.80% 17.27% 19.94% share Scottish 1503 1094 949 1328 1759 1983 2547 2716 3770 legal Glasgow 6.65% 13.60% 10.85% 29.67% 42.63% 33.48% 26.19% 24.23% 27.50% share

Glasgow’s trade took place from the late 1730s through to 1757. After a modest decline in 1728–7, 1738–47 saw Glasgow almost triple its share, while 1748–57 witnessed a nearly four-fold increase in market percentage over 1728–37. This peak share of the national activity fell somewhat between 1758 and 1767, but remained at approximately one-third of the national output, before finally holding stable at about 25 per cent of Scotland’s production or slightly higher through 1797. Even the unadjusted numbers are impressive and continue to show an almost four-fold increase in Glasgow’s share of Scotland’s publications from the first decade after the Union through to 1788–97.

Literacy This escalation in Scotland’s book trade, especially in Glasgow and Edinburgh, was necessarily connected with the expansion of the marketplace for books and the nurturing of new communities of readers. Literacy became a commercial imperative for publishing and the definition of literacy – as much as the issue of national identity – is a primary concern of this volume. In some respects the history of the book in eighteenth-century Scotland is an exercise in recognising the range of what it meant to be a literate nation, in cultural, social and especially economic terms. Discussions of Scottish literacy in this period have been conservative since R. A. Houston’s work in the 1980s, with most commentators still accepting an ability to sign one’s name as the most reliable determinant (Suarez 2009: 9). They have cautiously avoided over-estimating the nation’s literate population, which probably rose from something over 200,000 in 1707 to just short of half-a-million in 1800 (Suarez 2009: 13). However, a community’s application of literacy – how it takes advantage of literacy to improve itself – goes far beyond an accumulation of signatures (Towsey 2010). If Scotland’s general

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literacy levels were not remarkable, the social concentrations of highly literate individuals were. At the end of the eighteenth century one in every 800 Scots was trained in the law, including about 200 advocates and 1,600 Writers to the Signet, and one in 700 was a clergyman. Academics, physicians and teachers comprised other growing professions, and all four groups – lawyers, ministers, doctors and educators – were reliable purchasers of books who saw their disposable incomes rise steadily during the period (Allan 2002c: 110–13). This volume’s study of the reading habits of the Presbysterian minister George Ridpath provides one such instance. Scotland’s mercantile class grew even more dramatically, and its members became significant consumers of education and books, often encouraging their sons to pursue a year or two of university studies before taking them into their businesses (Devine 2004: 90–3). The Glasgow tobacco baron Alexander Speirs was only one of many merchants who spent lavishly on books, as Brian Hillyard’s discussion of the Foulis Homer demonstrates in Chapter 1. Scotland’s new wealth went hand-in-hand with a new secularism that nurtured readerships in history, natural sciences and medicine in particular. The 1769 Edinburgh edition of William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine sold 5,000 copies in Scotland within months, for example, before two-thirds of its lucrative copyright went south to Strahan and Cadell (Sher 1999: 45, 62). Intellectual curiosity expressed itself in the proliferation of literary societies and learned clubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow (McElroy 1969). The capital’s Fair Intellectual Club was a singular phenomenon. A gathering of young women, its objective was to record ‘all the Speeches, Poems, Pictures, &c. done by any member’ (An Account of the Fair Intellectual Club, 1719: 25), with all the ‘harangues’ of its members ‘written’ down (8). While the fair intellectuals drew their members from privileged backgrounds, other organisations were more egalitarian. Modern freemasonry, a society whose origins are peculiarly Scottish, is essentially defined by its historic commitment to literacy: James VI had required Scotland’s largely illiterate stone masons to open their guild to lawyers in the 1590s so that their knowledge and practices might be recorded (Stevenson 1988). By the eighteenth century, Scottish freemasonry was a socially representative fraternity that had kept careful archives of its proceedings since 1599 with its various lodges valuing literacy and self-improvement, something confirmed by the considerable number of masonic handbooks and songbooks printed and sold at locations all across Scotland. Perhaps as great a proportion as 75 per cent of those engaged in Scotland’s booktrade were freemasons (Brown 2006b, 2011a). Other organisations with a more official standing, such as the Select Society of Edinburgh, were also founded

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throughout the century to promote knowledge and encourage social and cultural improvement. ‘Improvement’ was the buzz word for all these clubs and institutions, and ‘improvement’ brought along literacy as its primary ally. By mid-century, wholly new areas of literacy were emerging as publishers developed marketplaces that had never before existed in the country. Music publishing became a thriving enterprise in Edinburgh, with the sale of musical scores increasingly common. Cookery books and children’s literature found their places during the second half of the century. Street literature grew exponentially and represented a significant portion of Glasgow’s and Edinburgh’s production by 1800, a year in which John Morren alone published 158 chapbooks in the capital. And the ever-present pamphlet industry – usually the site for political and religious debates – addressed agricultural workers of all sorts throughout much of the period. As we have already noted, agricultural and medical publishing held their own even during the politically dramatic years of the 1790s. Institutional and subscription libraries grew at a rate surpassing that in England, while Scottish workers banded together in library associations without equal in the South. All of these matters are treated at length in this volume and together they suggest that if literacy can be measured by the proliferation of print artefacts and their environments, then Scotland became a literate nation during the eighteenth century. It is here that Edinburgh’s legal publications and Glasgow’s reprint industry become especially significant. They testify to the applications to which Scotland put literacy and thus highlight a fundamental aspect of Scotland’s national character in the eighteenth century: this was a literate nation in ways that went far beyond any measurable achievement of its educational system. Literacy provided Scotland with economic opportunities of a sophisticated kind in which the English language itself became a product. What Scotland mostly read in the eighteenth century was not printed in the language of daily life. Scots was spoken, English read and something of what it meant to be British in Scotland was expressed by that duality. Thus, although Scotland’s courts were unlike England’s in their requirement that pleas, charges, defences and decisions be not only written down but printed and published (Ross 1972: 121–31), those texts were in English, not the Scots of actual courtroom discourse. A respect for the bureaucratic importance of literacy among Scotland’s legal community consequently became the financial bedrock of Edinburgh’s printers. The reprint business was equally lucrative but more entrepreneurial. It arose when Scotland’s trade turned the authority newly bestowed

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upon the English language by the Union into a product for consumption at home and overseas. Scottish literacy after 1707 increasingly meant being at ease with spoken and written English. To this end belles-lettres became something of an industry and the reprinters gave their countrymen cheaper editions of Milton, Addison, Swift, Pope, Johnson and, of course, Shakespeare. In fact, the English theatre was the single greatest source of material for Scottish literary reprints throughout the period, from Hamilton and Balfour’s Select Collection of English Plays in 1755, to the extensive printing by Gilbert Martin and John Wotherspoon in the 1760s and the series by the Martins’ Apollo Press for John Bell of London in the 1770s-80s. All the successful dramatists of the Restoration and eighteenth-century stage reappeared with Scottish imprints. Curiously, perhaps, Addison’s Cato was one of the most commonly reissued titles. The brevity of a play when contrasted with the length of a novel made it cheaper to print and thus a less risky venture, which perhaps explains this phenomenon. At any rate, most Scots (and especially women), who had little access to live theatre, would come to have a thorough knowledge of the English stage without having seen any plays performed. This would have been especially true of those readers in America for whom many of these reprints were intended. The reprinters thus turned the experience of going to the theatre into an act of staying home and reading a play, an instance of ‘literacy’ of a unique sort. Although plays were the most popular genre for reprinting, the names of Addison, Pope and Thomson appear more often on Scottish eighteenth-century imprints than those of any other contemporary authors. The Spectator and The Seasons became the exemplars of prose and poetry for Scots acquiring modern tastes in ‘English’ literature. But the numbers of reprints (over eighty for Addison, including nearly two dozen Spectators in various states) indicate that export was the main source for profiting from literacy.

Stepping up for Scotland However, it is an iconic Scottish author whose print history perhaps encapsulates the intricate evolution of Scotland’s trade: David Hume was a name that stirred the booksellers. Two of those were the patriots Gavin Hamilton, who in 1754 boldly published the first volume of Hume’s History (Chapter 2: Edinburgh), and Charles Elliot, who stepped up in 1779 to publish Dialogues concerning Natural Religion posthumously after Hume’s friends Adam Smith and William Strahan were too timid to do so (Zachs 2011: 55–8; Sher 2006: 56 n.2). As Elliot describes in his letter books (NLS) Hume’s nephew and heir presented

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the manuscript of the Dialogues to him and John Balfour junior, vested in the name of Robert Walker although Elliot would acquire the property. Elliot printed the book in Edinburgh and, concerned over a Dutch piracy, translated into French by Hume’s friend Baron Holbach (Zachs 2011: 58), asked his cousin James Sibbald to enter the title in the Stationers’ Register. Sending copies of the Dialogues to Sibbald, Elliot hoped John Nourse would take the sale in London: I am confident no bad Consequences can arrive to any body concerned either in a moral or a worldly way. I defy all the Bishops of England to find fault with them so as to found an action upon . . . I should have no objection to putting my name but we wished to have it appear from London, but before this I dare say [Nourse’s] scruples are removed by Perusal of the Book. (21 June 1778) The controversial book was sold without place or publisher, as ‘Printed in 1779’, and was followed this year by a second edition with just ‘London’ and the date. In 1787, when the heat was off, Elliot offered Thomas Cadell of London a half share in an edition of 1,250 copies of Hume’s Essays and Treatises with the Dialogues added. Since 1753 Essays and Treatises had gone through many London-Edinburgh editions, first as an Andrew Millar then as a Cadell collaboration with Kincaid and Donaldson; the latest was London 1784 for Cadell, Alexander Donaldson and William Creech, but it was out of copyright. Cadell had fallen out with Elliot for selling Irish piracies of his titles, and over recent illegal reprinting in Edinburgh, but he could not resist this deal, and paid £45 for half the cost of printing by Colin Macfarquhar, and £73 for half the cost of paper from John Balfour and Son (7 March 1788). Elliot put him at the front of this Edinburgh production, along with his own London shop, as ‘London: printed for T. Cadell; C. Elliot, T. Kay, and Co.; and C. Elliot, Edinburgh, 1788.’ Bookselling psychology had moved on since Hume’s History, when the Edinburgh-only imprint of Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill (Zachs 2011: 29) reflected Gavin Hamilton’s nationalistic ambitions. Now a similarly pro-Scottish Elliot, owner of many Scottish copyrights and user of Edinburgh printers, would often put ‘London’ first in imprints simply as a business tactic to encourage or reward participation.

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Chapter One

THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN TRADE Copyright and Scottishness Warren McDougall

T

he 1710 copyright act (8 Anne c.21) was a statute for Britain, but Scotland reaped the first benefits. London book monopolists were obliged under the Act to take claims of Scottish piracy to the Court of Session, where they encountered the Scottish trade’s patriotic resistance and judges who administered a Scots legal system differing from the English in matters of common law, property and witness evidence. The Lords of Session ruled in 1747 and 1748 that literary property was limited to the time and terms of the statute: this meant copyright was not the Londoners’ perpetual right under common law as far as Scotland was concerned. London titles not entered at Stationers’ Hall or whose time had lapsed after fourteen or twentyeight years were open to reprinting within Scotland. A Scottish reprint industry thus began in the 1740s in the context of the defending booksellers’ assertion that Scotland would derive cultural and economic improvements from the production and reading of cheaper literature. The Edinburgh bookseller Alexander Donaldson (Figure 1.1) would pursue the copyright question to its conclusion. After the London monopolists entered into a combination to stop Scottish reprints reaching English markets, Donaldson and his brother John opened a shop for cheap reprints in the Strand in 1763. Donaldson’s now continual litigation saw an influential decision by the Court of Session in 1773, upholding statutory rights and denying commonlaw rights in Scotland, and culminated in success in 1774, when the House of Lords ruled decisively for the statutory limitation of literary property. This permitted reprinting of out-of-copyright books throughout Britain, and legitimised a Scottish trade that had grown to five thousand workers. The resulting joy on the streets of Edinburgh celebrated a victory for Scotland. A few days later London booksellers 23

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Figure 1.1 Alexander Donaldson. Portrait by R. Harvie, detail.

Figure 1.2 Robert Foulis. Medallion by James Tassie, c. 1765, detail.

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presented a petition of relief to parliament asking for a further term of monopoly. The booksellers and printers of Edinburgh and those of the city and university of Glasgow led by Robert Foulis (Figure 1.2) and Alexander Donaldson sent in petitions, which along with the debates in the Commons and the Lords illuminated the reprint trade’s importance to Scotland’s economy. A bill completed its process through the Commons, only to be thrown out by the Lords, where there was little sympathy for the monopolists. Cheap unauthorised versions of London books had been available in Scotland from the passage of the 1710 Copyright Act. They came from Ireland through the western Port of Irvine, and the Edinburgh trade were supplied through Leith with piracies by Thomas Johnson of Holland, including James Thomson, Pope, Swift, Prior, Addison, Bishop Burnet and A Collection of the Best English Plays (McDougall 1988: 3). David Foxon (1975) has traced a number of small anonymous piracies printed at Edinburgh by comparing their ornaments with those regularly used by known printers. Thomas Ruddiman reprinted poems by Edward Young (1725–8), by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope (1738), Robert Fleming the poetry of James Thomson several times (1730–7) and William Cheyne openly reprinted Thomson’s Liberty in 1735. But reprinting was not yet an industrial activity. The first prosecution, by Andrew Millar alone, cited twenty-nine Edinburgh and Glasgow booksellers for printing, importing or selling The Seasons and other poetry by James Thomson (Table 1.1). Summonses were handed to each bookseller in December 1738 and the case began in Edinburgh in January 1739. At the time Thomson accounted for a quarter of Millar’s imprints and three-fifths of his copyrights (ODNB). The court was given Millar’s receipts, agreements, a record of the prices paid for the work and a certificate from Stationers’ Hall showing everything had been entered. His lawyers wanted each defendant to testify, deliver up all copies, pay Millar £100 damages and pledge not to pirate his property in future; the lawyers for the Scots said none of them had printed, imported or sold any of the books without Millar’s permission, and that the Act did not provide for any damages. Millar abruptly dropped the case; the Scots would later assert that his intention in the prosecution had been to stop them reprinting any London title. Still, some in the Scottish trade decided to reprint openly work they believed was not protected by the 1710 Act, or whose protection had expired. In 1742 the Foulis Press published Bishop Burnet’s Select Sermons and Sir Matthew Hale’s Some Thoughts on the Nature of True Religion, while Hamilton and Balfour published a new edition

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Table 1.1 Scottish booksellers named in Andrew Millar’s first prosecution at the Court of Session, 1738–9. Edinburgh Booksellers John Paton Alexander Brymer Alexander Symmer Gideon Crawfurd Gavin Hamilton Alexander Dunning Alexander Kincaid William Millar James Davidson Janet Brown (widow of John Traill William Brown) William Sands William Hamilton Glasgow Booksellers Andrew Stalker John Barrie James Brown James Duncan John Duncan William Duncan Alexander Millar Alexander Hutchieson Margaret Purves (widow of James McClean)

Allan Ramsay Andrew Martin John Aitkin Gavin Drummond William Munro William Drummond Samuel Clerk

of Benjamin Whichcot’s Select Sermons, from the Shaftesbury edition of 1698. Foulis put to the press Burnet’s A Treatise Concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion in 1743. When Foulis announced the impending publication of John Locke’s A Discourse on Miracles for February of that year, Millar was spurred into action once again. On 6 April 1743 Millar, acting for himself and sixteen other members of the Chambers’ Cylcopaedia conger, initiated a piracy prosecution at the Court of Session against twenty Edinburgh booksellers and four from Glasgow (Table 1.2). John Balfour and Robert Foulis were among the new names. The case was brought under the 1710 Act and the 1739 Act of George II, which made it illegal for anyone to import from overseas reprints of books published in Britain in the previous twenty years. When proceedings began in June 1743 the prosecutors reduced the complaint from seven books to the Stationers’-registered ones: Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, second edition, for which Millar had paid £183 11s, Dr John Armstrong’s Oeconomy of Love, third edition (£52 10s) and Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, valued at £6,400, with Millar holding three £100 shares. Henry Home, a defence counsel and later Lord Kames, argued that Millar had already settled with the Edinburgh bookseller who had taken the Fielding piracy, that few defenders would have Armstrong’s obscene poem in their shops, and

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Table 1.2 London booksellers supporting Andrew Millar’s second prosecution at the Court of Session, 1743–9. Daniel Midwinter Thomas Longman William Innys Richard Hett John Knapton Charles Hitch Paul Knapton John Shuckburgh Samuel Birt Mary Senex Daniel Brown John Rivington Edinburgh booksellers named Alexander Kincaid Lauchlan Hunter Janet Brown (widow of Gavin Hamilton William Brown) John Balfour Alexander Symmer the John Paton younger William Drummond Andrew Symmer John Traill Alexander Brymer William Sands William Hamilton Gideon Crawfurd Glasgow booksellers named John Barry Andrew Stalker Alexander Carlisle Robert Foulis

Francis Gosling Isaac Clarke John Pemberton Aaron Ward

William Millar Alexander Dunning John Yare Andrew Beveridge Gavin Drummond John Aitken

that the modest Scottish demand for the expensive Cyclopaedia could not have hurt the proprietors (McDougall 1974: 97–8; 1988: 1–9). Lawyers for Millar and the other Pursuers waived the Acts’ penalties, asked for damages and introduced the argument that their rights lay in common law. They produced a signed opinion from William Murray, later Lord Mansfield, that literary proprietors in England could go to a court of equity, obtain injunctions against piracies and require suspects to give an account of their profits under oath; in these cases it did not matter that a book was entered at Stationers’ Hall (McDougall 1974: 91). Mansfield championed common-law right. He was a counsel in literary property cases in Chancery, represented the London booksellers’ appeal in the Lords (1751) and was chief justice in the Court of King’s Bench ruling in favour of common-law right in Millar v. Taylor (1769) (Rose 1993: 67–9). A lawyer for the Pursuers was not so sure about the tactic in the Court of Session. According to Robert Foulis, William Grant ‘pled in court for the common-law right, yet owned in private, that he expected to lose that part of the cause; probably because he was sensible, that if such a right had ever existed, it was taken away by a very accurate and plain statute’ (Memorial, 1774: 5). The lawyers for

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the Scottish booksellers held that the 1710 Act put a limit on monopolies. Anyone was free to publish a title from fourteen to twenty-eight years after registration in Stationers’ Hall. Court action was possible only if the book had been properly registered, and only within three months of an offence. Damages were not available, just the penalties of the Acts. Under Scots law, the booksellers should not be required to testify against themselves under oath. The defence appealed to Scottish national sentiment. The Londoners, Andrew Millar in particular, were said to be jealous of Scotland’s improvements: at Glasgow, Wilson and Baine were manufacturing type, the Foulis Press were printing fine editions of Greek and Roman classics, and there was a growing book-export trade to America. A new reprint trade would benefit Scotland, as well as Britain. The increase in paper manufacture would multiply the duty given to the government. The export of reprints would help the balance of trade. Scotland’s booksellers could afford to publish Scottish authors who might otherwise never appear in print. Learning would be encouraged. Home said of Philip Millar’s Gardener’s Dictionary, whose two-volume folio was beyond the reach of working people: ‘If a printer shall undertake an impression of this book on a very small type and a very coarse paper, which will be purchased only by common Gardeners, Philip Millar and his assigns will not lose a shilling by this edition: yet, by this lowpriced book, knowledge in gardening is spread much to the benefit of the public’ (McDougall 1988: 7). The Court of Session judges were very aware of the patriotic element. Early in the case Lord Elchies wrote that ‘the Defenders in their whole Papers . . . complain that this proceeds from malice and Envy to disparage & suppress printing in Scotland, since it begins to flourish in their Towns’ (McDougall 1988: 8). Lord Kilkerran observed that ‘the booksellers of London, it would appear, jealous of the progress of the art of printing in Scotland, which of late has been brought to much greater perfection than ever before, brought a process . . . against certain booksellers of Edinburgh and Glasgow’ (Kilkerran 1775: 96). At first the Lords of Session swung towards the Murray opinion and decided that damages were allowed, and that the defenders had to testify about their profits. But after further submissions they were unanimous that Scottish law did not require defendants to testify against themselves when facing penalties. They also believed that before the Copyright Act an author in Scotland had no property in a book composed and published by him other than the copies remaining in his hand: Scottish law did not recognise the concept of immaterial property as part of their common law (Rose 1993: 84). In 1747 the Court of Session ruled

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unanimously that an action could be brought under the 1710 Act only within three months of an offence; the action was dependent on the books being entered properly at Stationers’ Hall; and damages could not be awarded. In 1748 the court added that a plaintiff was only entitled to the penalties of the Act. The London booksellers tried unsuccessfully until 1749 to get the rulings altered, and then made an appeal to the House of Lords. On 11 February 1751 the Lords found the action before the Court of Session improper and inconsistent. The Londoners had erred by having, in one suit, a number of persons claiming rights in different books, and by asking the defenders to give evidence while the penalties of the 1710 Act were still on the table. The appeal did not succeed. During the copyright prosecution the Glasgow trade openly reissued London publications. In 1744 Robert Urie printed for Gilmour of Glasgow A Select Collection of Modern Poems – Milton, Prior, Hughes, Addison, Dryden, Congreve, Gay, Pope, Parnell and Landsdowne – as well as John Philips’s Poems, sixth edition. In the same year Robert Foulis published Steele’s The Conscious Lovers and an abridgement of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The defenders in the Court of Session described the furious London reaction when, also in 1744, Urie began preparing an eight-volume duodecimo edition of the Spectator for Andrew Stalker and John Barry (Glasgow, 1745). Jacob Tonson wrote ‘thundering letters’ claiming copyright and warning of prosecution, then sent an edition of 1,000 to Scotland (priced 10s 6d in sheets), 6d under the Glasgow Spectator. The Scots observed that the cheapest ever London edition had been 14s. They said it was no wonder Tonson was jealous of the new competition since he had been making between £600 and £800 a year in Scotland (McDougall 1988: 9–10). The Glasgow publishers advertised that ‘Persons of all Ranks’ were supporting the book and Edinburgh’s major booksellers would not sell the London edition: ‘The more Opposition they meet with in an Undertaking of this Kind from the London Booksellers or their Agents, the more Encouragement they expect to find from all those who wish to see Printing succeed in this Country’ (Caledonian Mercury, 3 December 1744). The Glasgow Spectator was dedicated to Duncan Forbes of Culloden, current president of the Court of Session. The patriotic appeal brought in Forbes and a list (in volume one) of 608 other named ‘Encouragers’, who asked for 849 copies. They included the political establishment, the Duke of Argyle (five sets) and the Lord Justice Clerk, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, aristocrats, gentlemen, 103 merchants, forty-five parish ministers and ten preachers of the gospel, forty-three lawyers, six university professors, thirty-three students,

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eighteen surgeons, five physicians, sixteeen customs and excise officials, Glasgow baker George Allason and tobacconist George Sangster, Dumfries brewer William McMurdo, Edinburgh saddler Malcolm Brown, Perth vintner James Beveridge, Dunkeld slater Thomas Clark and twenty women. The Spectator was bought by masters at schools in Dunkeld, St Ninian’s, Glasgow, Gorbals, Steuarton, Cumnock, Alloa and Inverkip, and at grammar schools in Perth (three sets), Glasgow (two sets), Irvine, Stirling and Hamilton. A fifth of the edition was taken by booksellers in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Perth, Dumfries, Kilmarnock, Greenock and Belfast; at tiny Williamsburgh, a suburb of Paisley, bookseller Will. Park put down for six sets. London under-pricing continued when eighteen bookselling firms from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dumfries published Bishop Burnet’s Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (sixth edition, Edinburgh, 1745), saying the thick octavo’s price (7s bound or 6s 6d to subscribers) was half that of the London edition (Caledonian Mercury, 18 July 1745). The response from Midwinter, the Knaptons, Ward, Longman, Shewell, Hitch, Millar and Bathurst was the London fifth edition selling in Edinburgh for 5s (Caledonian Mercury, 30 March 1746). Hamilton and Balfour headed booksellers from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee in publishing a ten-volume duodecimo of John Tillotson’s Works (Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1748), saying that given the size and quality it was one of the cheapest books yet produced in Britain, a guinea in sheets to subscribers and £1 5s thereafter (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 17 May 1748). The Tonsons and eleven London dealers immediately announced a twelve-volume duodecimo at 15s in sheets (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 14 July 1748). Once more Scottish publishers advertised for public support in a voice epitomising Gavin Hamilton (Figure 1.3): The Publishers of the Edinburgh Edition beg leave to observe, that for some Years past, there has been a strong Spirit in Edinburgh and Glasgow, for the Improvement of printing in this Country, in which they have succeeded beyond expectation, as is manifest by the many beautiful Editions of Greek and Latin Classicks, and other books in different Languages which they have given; from whence also there is a Prospect, that the Publick will, in a short Time, be served with elegant, accurate and cheap Editions, of all those Books, that can be taken off by Scots Sale, and where private Property does not interf[ere]. But this it seems has given the Alarm to some Booksellers of London, who being long in the Possession of a Monopoly, and of fixing the Prices of their Goods

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Figure 1.3 Gavin Hamilton. Portrait by William Mossman, detail.

at Pleasure, cannot bear the Thoughts of a Rival in their Trade; one of the Engines made use of to bear down the Scots Booksellers and crush them in the Infancy of their Trade, was to harass them with Processes at Law . . . the next Contrivance fallen upon us is to take up the Ground, that they have already occupied, and to put them out of the Profits of any projected Edition, by advertising a new Edition of the same Book at a cheaper Rate . . . the Publishers of the Edinburgh edition trust that their Country-men will take their Part. (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 26 July 1748) The reprint trade spread English literature throughout Scotland, and competition brought prices down. Foulis began reprinting the Pope edition of Shakespeare with The Tempest in 1752, finishing the

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eight-volume octavo and duodecimo series in 1766 (Gaskell 1986). The first full Scottish edition of Shakespeare’s Works, from the Pope and Warburton version, was printed at Edinburgh in 1753 by Sands, Murray and Cochran, for W. Sands, Hamilton & Balfour, Kincaid & Donaldson, L. Hunter, J. Yair, W. Gordon and J. Brown, in eight volumes duodecimo, costing £1 4s in calf and titled. Single plays were also printed: in 1753 at Edinburgh, Cheyne printed Macbeth, Yair sold Much Ado About Nothing for 6d and in 1755 James Knox of Glasgow printed Hamlet. The availability of Shakespeare was such that when in 1755 Hamilton and Balfour published their Select Collection of English Plays, they advertised: ‘The Publishers have been careful to give a place to all good Plays that are in use to be represented in any of the British Theatres, Shakespeare’s excepted, none of which are included as the Works of this Author are presumed to be in every Body’s Hands’ (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 29 May 1755). The Hamilton and Balfour Collection comprised twenty-four plays printed separately but designed to be collected in six volumes octavo. The edition was 12s bound, with individual copies on common paper at 6d, and cheaper still on coarse-paper (McDougall 1974: 321–8). When Hamilton and Balfour, along with Hunter of Edinburgh and Stalker of Glasgow, published the first Scottish edition of Swift’s Works in a nine-volume duodecimo (1752), they boasted that at 18s in sheets, £1 2s 6d bound, it was the cheapest ever marketed. Yet when they and Hunter were preparing a new eight-volume edition of Swift’s Works in 1756 (published 1757), they advertised it at 12s in sheets to subscribers to compete with the Edinburgh–Glasgow edition of the Works published by Kincaid and Donaldson, Yair and Fleming, Gordon, and Urie, Gilmour and Baxter that same year (McDougall 1988: 13). In the 1750s Hamilton and Balfour’s good friend in London, William Strahan, not yet a great copyright holder, was relaxed about reprints. He suggested they export them to his Philadelphia customer David Hall and this they did, along with nearly three tons of their original titles (McDougall 1990a: 36). Strahan took reprints for himself in a book exchange with Hamilton and Balfour in 1755: six sets of a Scottish edition of the Spectator and four of Shakespeare’s Works (McDougall 1974: 157–8). Scottish reprints were exported unhindered to English regions until 1759. In that year Donaldson was told by the Cambridge bookseller John Merrill Sr of a London conspiracy to seize Scottish books found in England. Merrill handed over incriminating documents, which Donaldson reproduced in his pamphlet Some Thoughts on the State of Literary Property (1764), and which ten years later were entered as

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evidence by Scottish counsel speaking against the London booksellers’ relief bill (Caledonian Mercury, 16 May 1774; Petitions and Papers 1774: 21–4). Threatening letters to Merrill from John Whiston of Fleet Street, and a printed circular to all the booksellers of England from the Londoners’ agent, John Wilkie of St Paul’s Church-Yard, described a scheme to prevent the sale of all Scottish and Irish books first printed in England. Up to seventy Londoners, including Tonson, Millar, Hitch, the Rivingtons, John Ward and William Johnston, pledged a £3,150 subscription to buy back from country booksellers Scottish editions and exchange them for English ones. Whiston described twentyfour typical Scottish reprints at risk: ‘Spectators, Tatlers, Guardians, Shakespear, Prior, Gay’s poems and fables, Swift’s works, Temple’s works, Prideaux’s connection, Barrow’s works, Rollin’s ancient history, &c. Gil Blas, Whiston’s Josephus, Burnet’s theory, 2 vols, Young’s works, Thomson’s seasons, &c. Milton’s poetical works, Parnell’s poems, Hudibras, Waller’s poems, Fable of the bees, 2 vols, Young’s night-thoughts, Turkish spy, Travels of Cyrus’ (Some Thoughts: 12). Fear was the main tactic: riders would inspect every book shop; there would be informers; booksellers still selling the Scottish editions would be prosecuted in the Court of Chancery. The London action outraged Donaldson and gave him his great cause: All books (from the origin of printing) that ever were at any time published in England, are here adjudged their property, and all who print any books without their approbation, are denominated pirates and invaders; in short, these London booksellers (if their own words can bear sufficient testimony) are the sole proprietors and monopolizers of all books whatever, classics only excepted. It was ‘the most tyrannical and barefaced combination that ever was set foot in any country’ (Some Thoughts: 17, 19). Because the London combination had prevented English booksellers from dealing with him, Donaldson said, he had opened his ‘shop for cheap books’ near Norfolk Street in the Strand, selling at 30–50 per cent under the usual London prices (24). The huge scope and discounted prices of the 1764 Catalogue of Books Printed for Alexander Donaldson would have been painful reading for the monopolists. His reprints would be sold not only by him in London but by booksellers throughout Great Britain, Ireland and America, and gentlemen could get £20 worth of books for £10. Donaldson pledged to reprint a cheap edition of any highpriced London book the public desired, if its Act-of-Anne copyright

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had expired. He became very rich. But from 1763 to the House of Lords decision in February 1774, more than 100 of the wealthiest London and Westminster booksellers were plaintiffs in eleven Chancery suits against Donaldson (Petitions and Papers 1774: 10). A series of prosecutions brought by the London cartel against English booksellers led to Millar v. Taylor 1769, again over reprints of Thomson’s Seasons, when Mansfield’s Court of King’s Bench decided there was a perpetual right to literary property under English common law (Rose 1993: 72–8). Donaldson’s reprinting of The Seasons, whose copyright had been acquired by a London conger after Millar’s death (1768), resulted in the Chancery hearing Becket v. Donaldson, and an injunction against the edition’s sale (1772) (Feather 1994: 87–9). At the Court of Session in 1773, John Hinton of London prosecuted Donaldson (and John Wood of Edinburgh and James Meurose of Kilmarnock) for reprinting Stackhouse’s History of the Holy Bible. The Scottish judges ruled that Scotland’s laws did not provide common-law rights, but limited literary property to the 1710 statute. For Lord Coalston, affirming such rights would set up the London booksellers against the whole population and all other booksellers. If the pursuer were to prevail, it would give the Londoners a perpetual monopoly over the most valuable books previously published and all those yet to be published (Rose 1993: 83–5). Donaldson printed James Boswell’s pamphlet, The Decision of the Court of Session upon the Question of Literary Property (1774), bound it finely in marbled paper and had it distributed to members of the House of Lords in time for the Donaldson brothers’ appeal over The Seasons injunction (Scots Magazine, February 1774: 93). In Donaldson v. Becket Alexander and John faced fifteen London traders (Table 1.3; Donaldson 1774). Interest was intense and the Caledonian Mercury ran continual updates from London newspapers and ‘letters from London’, putting the participating peers and the debates at Edinburgh’s fingertips. On 22 February 1774 the Lords reversed the Chancery decree against the Donaldsons. The Statute of Anne was thus upheld, and perpetual copyright under common law ruled out. This allowed reprinting throughout Britain (Feather 1994: 89–92; Rose 1993: 95–103). When word reached Edinburgh there was jubilation on the streets: bonfires and illuminations were lit, and members of the book trade formed a procession with music and flags, as an excited mob pressed them in (Ross 1972: 143; Skinner 1928: 16). A few days later the Caledonian Mercury (2 March 1774) reported a more organised celebration in a tavern on the President’s Stairs at Parliament Close:

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Table 1.3 London booksellers named in House of Lords appeal, Donaldson v. Becket, 1774. Thomas Becket Peter Abraham de Hondt John Rivington William Johnson William Strahan Thomas Longman William Richardson John Richardson

Thomas Lowndes Thomas Caslon George Kearsley Henry Baldwin William Owen Thomas Davies Thomas Cadell

Last night, the Printers, Booksellers, Papermakers, Bookbinders, Engravers, &c of this city, who had subscribed to defend one another against the Perpetual Monopoly of books claimed by the London booksellers, met in the house of Thomas Purves vintner, in order to congratulate each other on the late decision of the House of Peers in their favour. The first toast, a full glass, was to Alexander and John Donaldson ‘for having the courage to stand forth in the cause of liberty, against a most powerful combination’. Many toasts followed to the Court of Session and its judges, the Scottish spokesmen in the House of Lords, James Boswell and supportive Scots and English lawyers back to Lord Hardwicke, who had rejected the London appeal in 1751. Others were to ‘The Liberty of the Press; and, No Monopoly’, and ‘The Consumption of Paper’. They drank in good humour to Lord Mansfield, who had mysteriously not spoken in the House, as ‘The Judge who held his Peace’, and to ‘Enemies’, ‘False Friends’ and ‘Informers, Liars, and Parasites’, with a final health to ‘All Mankind’. A few days later news came that the London booksellers were striking back. On 28 February 1774 the booksellers of London and Westminster had presented a petition of relief to the Commons, signed by eightyseven persons, for the many thousands of pounds of copyrights they had thought protected by common law (Petitions and Papers 1774: 2–3). The Scots were warned that Londoners wanted a Bill to give them an additional twenty-five years of copyright (Caledonian Mercury, 9 March 1774, letter of 5 March), although this became fourteen in proceeding through the Commons (Rose 1993: 103). In April Scottish counter-petitions were delivered by the booksellers, printers and others depending on that trade in Edinburgh, and by Alexander Donaldson, from his new address at St Paul’s Churchyard, London; the petition of the printers and booksellers of the city and University of Glasgow was

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followed by a Memorial from Robert Foulis on their behalf. Further petitions against the Bill came from London and Westminster booksellers on behalf of themselves and country booksellers, the trade in York and New Malton, Bawtry, Leeds and Knareborough (Commons Journals 1772–4: Index, ‘Booksellers’). The Edinburgh petition indicated the size of the capital’s trade and its dependency on reprinting: ‘In the paper-mills alone, belonging to this city, there are many hundreds of persons employed; and the booksellers, bookbinders, and printers here are still more numerous, who will all be most materially affected, and some of them ruined by the consequences of the bill, should it pass into law’ (Petitions and Papers 1774: 7). A more precise figure was provided by the Scottish MP Keith Stewart, when he moved to add a Scottish clause to the Bill: ‘There were in Scotland at least 5000 persons properly brought up to the printing trade, those persons and their families must be inevitably ruined, if nothing but the classics were left for them to print.’ The clause would have allowed the Scottish trade to continue printing and selling the books they were legally entitled to publish before 1 March 1774, but it was stopped because there were not enough members in the House: ‘This is the second manoeuvre practised by the opponents to the bill, and was affected by Mr Charles Fox’s staying in the lobby and persuading his friends not to go in’ (Caledonian Mercury, 23 May 1774). Donaldson claimed to have spent £50,000 publishing reprints. He reviewed the ‘illegal conspiracy’ of the principal London booksellers in 1759 and the menacing attempts to suppress throughout England all books printed in Scotland, and the many Chancery prosecutions against him. It was mortifying to see his victory in the House of Lords ready to be snatched out of his hands by the very people guilty of oppression. Donaldson said it was due to him that the London booksellers had lowered their prices recently. He said they had not originally considered common-law right, although they later pretended otherwise. By combining with each other they hoped to turn all old titles into what they called Honorary Copyright – where no one should print a book they had published earlier – just as they had appropriated the old series of Delphin Classics (Petitions and Papers 1774: 9–12) Robert Foulis, in turn, succinctly summed up the effect of the new trade in the last thirty years: ‘the taste for books in Scotland hath been spread by printing’ (Memorial, 1774: 21). Thomas Bonnell has described how Foulis, in his long, thoughtful Memorial, extended the economic arguments of Home in the copyright case of the 1740s. The

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price of books depended on the laws of supply and demand – if there were no competition among sellers, books became dear. If books were more universally printed, they would be more universally bought and read. Reprinting elsewhere in Britain did not hurt the London booksellers: free and independent booksellers would be able to trade with London more extensively. There were implications for the balance of trade: a country without a reprint industry lost the profits of manufacture and depended on foreign presses for affordable books; a reprint trade created more paper mills, which increased the revenue and the national wealth (2008: 53–4). The counsel for London’s booksellers, Mr Mansfield (not to be confused with Lord Mansfield) dripped sarcasm and condescension, but in replying to the case of the Scottish lawyers usefully reiterated remarks and evidence relating to Scotland. He claimed the London booksellers of 1759 had been portrayed as ‘oppressors of their poor brethren, as members of an illegal combination’ but were merely helping the country booksellers who had ‘ignorantly taken from the piratical printer’ and were raising money to indemnify them: ‘this, Sir, was their oppression, this was their cruelty’ (Hansard: 1095). Of the lucrative trade in reprints to America, it was said the Americans could get eighteen to twenty months’ credit from Glasgow, compared with six months from London (1092). This was from the sole witness from Scotland, the bookseller and printer William Smith of Glasgow, who also testified that Glasgow’s trade earned £10,000 a year exporting books to America (1096; Caledonian Mercury, 16 May 1774). Among the editions, Mansfield said, were some piracies of London books with the names of the London booksellers fixed to the titles. He dismissed Scottish accusations of persecution: ‘An attempt has been made to insinuate that the petitioners are nationally prejudiced against the Scotch booksellers; Sir, I will not think so degradingly of this House as to suppose that the members of it can be so influenced by any prejudice’ (1096). Missing the point that cheap Scottish literature benefited the public, he spoke of an edition of Thomson’s Seasons that sold for 3d in Scotland: ‘considering the price of paper, of types, and the manual labour, you, Sir, will judge what sort of an edition this must have been. Sir, authors, must shudder what may happen to their works, if the printing trade continues open’ (1099). Mansfield moved on to Scots who supported the London booksellers. He said he had letters from David Hume, William Robertson and others lamenting the Lords decision as harmful to literature (1097). Indeed, the demise of the trade’s necessary standards was already evident, Mansfield asserted, citing William Creech:

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I have information here, that there are now in the press in Scotland no less than five or six different editions of Young’s Works; this, Sir, is the copy of a letter from Mr Creech, bookseller in Edinburgh; he says that in every little town there is now a printing press. Cobblers have thrown away their awl, weavers have dismissed their shuttle, to commence printers. The country is over-run with a kind of literary packmen, who ramble from town to town selling books . . . an unrestrained trade will be of infinite mischief. (1099) The Caledonian Mercury received Creech’s anti-Scottish jibe in a letter from London, and quoted its derisive references to cobblers and weavers turned printers, and its claim that the market was being flooded by as many as ‘twelve editions of one book . . . at the same time’. The newspaper identified Creech’s motive for insulting his countrymen in Mansfield’s observation that ‘Mr Creech was the most capital bookseller in Scotland.’ Thus the newspaper remarked: ‘Vanity has a surprising effect upon youthful minds, and sometimes leads them into absurdities.’ Odd too, that Creech would make the criticism while printing a 44-volume edition of the English poets, which would have infringed copyright but for the Lords decision (21 May 1774). Still, Creech was not exaggerating the number of editions of Edward Young: Hansard said five or six, the newspaper twelve. There were, in fact, at least ten Scottish editions in 1774, four of the Works and six of individual poems and plays, with one printed at Paisley and the rest at Edinburgh, all by well-established firms (ESTC). The Bill of the Booksellers reached its third reading on 26 May. Fox spoke vehemently, saying Donaldson and the other booksellers were in the right, and that the Bill was barefaced robbery, hurried through all its stages by supporters of the London booksellers. It passed, forty votes to twenty-two (Hansard: 1109–10), but was stopped by the Lords on 2 June. Lord Denbigh said it violated the rights of individuals and affronted the House. The Lord Chancellor said he was satisfied a common-law right never existed and that the monopoly of the London booksellers was supported by oppression and combination; none of their allegations, nor any part of the Bill, required further enquiry. Lord Camden said the monopolists had robbed others of their property. It was they who were the thieves and pirates. The peers used the procedure of voting to put the Bill off for two months (1400–2). The Caledonian Mercury noted: ‘The bill therefore is thrown out, after all the trouble that the booksellers have been at’ (8 June 1774).

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Nevertheless, the major London booksellers maintained the notion of Honorary Copyright. While this was not something the Scottish trade acknowledged at home, they were discreet when doing business with particular Londoners. In 1779 when James Sibbald was learning the trade by going around the bookshops of the Strand, Fleet Street and St Paul’s Churchyard, his cousin Charles Elliot of Edinburgh wrote to him: ‘Dear Jamie, take great care when in company of great London booksellers and offer no books from me that have first been printed in London. You may not be properly acquainted with their fine ideas of Literary Property’ (ODNB).

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Inside the Printing House John Morris Scotland’s eighteenth-century printing houses were modest affairs yet highly efficient, and the apprenticeship system produced skilled journeymen in far greater numbers than the nation could itself employ. Thus Scottish-trained printers were prominent in the London trade. The correspondence between William Tod and William Smellie after the former left his Edinburgh apprenticeship with Hamilton, Balfour and Neill to seek employment in London provides an intimate account of the connection between the trade in the two capitals; Tod refers to a fraternity of expatriate journeymen, all gainfully employed.1 Others emigrated throughout the colonies where they played significant roles in establishing print businesses, as other chapters in this volume ably illustrate. This study examines the printing house as a working environment, detailing its furnishings and exploring its culture. Among the primary sources used, two from the collections of the NLS feature prominently: the Patrick Neill ledger of 1764–7, from the first Fleming and Neill partnership; and Rules and Directions to be Observed in Printing-Houses, compiled by Edinburgh’s master printers, John Moncur, Robert Brown, Walter Ruddiman, John Mosman, William Adam and James Watson in 1721, printed on Watson’s premises, ‘composed by Samuel Forbes and cast off by Walter Pearson and William Grant, Apprentices to James Watson’ (Plate 1). Fleming and Neill’s ledger provides considerable information about the typical furnishings of two exemplary mid-century printing houses as they merged into a single business. They comprise a series of numbered pages, each recording all the items printed for a particular client, which typifies best practice for the period. At the front there 1

NMS William Smellie Manuscript Papers, Personal Correspondence (1752–60), William Tod.

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is an alphabetised client index, with page numbers for each client’s account. This ledger is especially valuable for its inventories and valuations of Fleming’s and Neill’s individual stock when their joint company was formed. The inventory of the printing office of the two Robert Flemings, father and son, is generalised, but the contents of Neill’s printing house are listed in significant detail, providing a clear picture of how eighteenth-century printers equipped themselves. The ledger, on the other hand, relates more to the history of bookselling. Fleming and Neill’s business, apart from their newspaper (Edinburgh Evening Courant), some commissions for Edinburgh booksellers and printers and a good deal of jobbing work, was largely concerned with printing session papers for Writers to the Signet, an essential source of income for most eighteenth-century Edinburgh printers. In fact, the concentration of Scotland’s legal profession in Edinburgh contributed more than anything else to the capital’s absolute dominance of eighteenth-century Scottish printing, by providing a base-line income for the trade. Most misconceptions about the organisation of printing offices are caused by historians who draw inferences from later practice. The cast iron hand presses that replaced common or wooden presses in the nineteenth century were heavy, especially the later cylinder and rotary ones. It therefore became the nineteenth-century convention to have the pressroom on the ground floor or even in the cellar, leading to the assumption that the presses were always on the ground floor. The old eighteenth-century common press, however, was made largely of wood with a handful of metal fittings, the screw, the rounce handle and a few other pieces (Plate 2). The joints were packed with thin strips of wood to make the press tight. When the bar was pulled, the press made a groaning noise and tried to twist, and if the bar was released, it would spring back. To prevent the press twisting, it was braced to the floor and ceiling with stays. Eighteenth-century presses were seldom on the ground floor, which could be more profitably used for shops, but rather shared an ample, first-floor space with the compositors, whose principal requirement was light. An eighteenthcentury Edinburgh printing house that displayed all these aspects well into the next century was situated at the foot of the Horsewynd, on the south side of the Cowgate and from 1699 belonged successively to Andrew Symson (1697–1712), Margaret Reid (1712–20), various printers up to Alexander Robertson (1785–95) and after his death, to John Morren. A surviving image of that facility shows the windows of the large room on the first floor housing the compositors and printers (Figure 1.4). The ground floor was a shop, and the second floor

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Figure 1.4 Symson the printer’s house in the Cowgate. By Daniel Wilson.

probably contained the warehouse where the completed sheets of books were kept, pending sale. A watercolour of the interior of Alexander Smellie’s printing office (assumed after his father William’s death in 1795) survives from an album made up for his foreman (Plate 3), Walter Dunn in 1807; Smellie’s premises had been at the foot of Anchor Close since 1770 (Plate 4). The primitive but evocative painting shows the compositors standing at their frames on the left-hand side, setting type from cases in front of them, and when a page is finished, placing it on a board on the ledge at the end of their frames. In the foreground and at the far end of the room are imposing stones where the pages are arranged in formes and locked up in chases ready to be printed on the presses. Opposite the composing stone at the far end, a forme of type, locked up in its chase, is leaning against the end of a frame. The printers are on the right. Each press has two printers, one of whom holds the ink balls, made of leather padded with tow, rather like boxing gloves on sticks. With them he picks up ink from the ink stone and transfers it evenly to the type, which lies on the bed of the press locked up in a chase. The other lays a piece of dampened paper on the tympan and then folds, first the frisket, which keeps the margins of the paper clean, onto the tympan, and then both onto the type in the forme. The whole is then

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run under the platen of the press by turning the rounce handle. Now the bar is pulled, and the platen comes down to make the impression. The bed is then run back, the paper removed from the tympan and placed to dry on the rails in the ceiling of the printing house, using a wooden tool called a peel. The Rules and Directions, though by its own account composed by a single apprentice, was ‘cast off’ (or printed) by two, because it required two men to run a printing press efficiently in the eighteenth century. They were capable of casting off 240 sheets in an hour. The paper before it is printed, and the sheets after they have been printed on both sides, are stored in the warehouse, usually reached by the stair at the back of the room. William Smellie’s printing office had three presses, sufficient for him to have been the Scottish Enlightenment’s most esteemed (and often busiest) printer. The Fleming and Neill inventories provide a detailed account of the amount and variety of type necessary for the operation of a successful printing firm in eighteenth-century Edinburgh. For Fleming, only the weight of the type is recorded. Of Neill’s identified founts, two are described as Dutch, and one of these is marked as having been sold to ‘Mr Baine’ – John Baine, Scotland’s premier manufacturer of type – as waste metal. Four founts had been bought from the famous English typefounder William Caslon, of which two were sold as waste metal, and a Long Primer was Wilson’s from the Glasgow type-foundry of Alexander Wilson. Three, Baine’s English, Roman and Italic, Baine’s Small Pica Roman and Italic and Baine’s Minion Roman and Italic (Figure 1.5a) came from the type-foundry that John Baine had recently erected on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Of these the Long Primer is marked as having been returned to him as waste metal. Long Primer was much used for newspapers and the smaller format books, so it tended to wear out quite quickly and was replaced regularly. Owning and printing a newspaper with the substantial circulation of the Edinburgh Evening Courant would have used up significant quantities of Long Primer. Baine’s English is a large book size and Minion a very small size, and therefore less often used. Patrick Neill had two Caslon founts, three Wilson founts, including English, (Figure 1.5b) and five Baine founts, which would have been typical for a successful firm at the time. The larger printing firms often sold on their worn type to smaller operations. Peter Williamson and James Tytler, two of the century’s more intriguing independent operators, got started this way, and the Edinburgh Evening Courant’s subsequent owner, David Ramsay, often advertised worn print for sale in the pages of the Courant as on 18 November 1790: ‘To Printers. To be Sold Cheap, A fount of Long Primer, and another of Brevier. Enquire at the printing house’.

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Figure 1.5a John Baine Small Pica type in Specimen of Printing Types belonging to John Reid. Edinburgh, 1766.

Figure 1.5b Dr Alexander Wilson and Sons English type from broadside A Specimen of Printing Types. Glasgow, 1783.

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Of the learned founts, Fleming had Pica Saxon, Greek Long Primer and Hebrew Brevier; Neill had Great Primer Black Letter, New Brevier Black and Teutonic, New Pica Hebrew, Long Primer Hebrew with Points, Arabic Ligables and Illigables, Brevier Greek and Mathematical Marks in Pica and Long Primer. The presence of exotic founts in the office of Patrick Neill is explained by his printing office’s previous location in Edinburgh University buildings, where he would have been expected to print syllabuses and material for the professors. The Flemings’ premises, located in the turnpike opposite the foot of Fishmongers Close, were afterwards Fleming and Neill’s, and then simply Neill’s, until the beginning of the twentieth century. Their inventory shows that they had ‘1011 pounds 8 ounces of News Long Primer Roman and Italic’. They also published almanacks (a reliable source of income for Fleming over many years) and had 208 pounds of Almanack Brevier Roman and Italic. Both firms had significant quantities of English, the large size of which was used to print the session papers, a crucial part of the output of most Edinburgh printing offices. The Ledger itself bears witness to this fact in its entries for various Writers to the Signet, showing Petitions, Answers, Duplies, Triples and the like, in numbers ranging from fifty to 100 copies a time. The Flemings brought to the new firm 1,790 lbs of Baine’s English and 663 of Caslon’s, while Neill had 738 lbs of Wilson’s English and 516 of Baine’s. In addition both firms had jobs, that is pieces of jobbing printing, that would be wanted again and had been kept as standing type, as Rules and Directions have it, ‘tied up and paper’d in handsom parcels, and put in the Letter-press’. ‘Standing type’, or type left in place for texts that were to be reprinted often, was common with newspaper printing where advertisements and lengthy official announcements might be run through several issues. Flyers and broadsides were also left standing. Any firm dealing in such repeat business required abundant extra type of the appropriate sort. ‘Press’ is the Scottish word for cupboard, and ‘Letter Press’ here means the cupboard for storing standing type. Of these jobs, the Flemings had Assembly Bills (for the Assembly Rooms where Edinburgh’s citizens met to dance), Proverbs and Catechisms (common first textbooks in primary schools), Toll Tickets, and Comely Garden Bills (referring to Edinburgh’s pleasure garden which operated two days a week during the summer). The Assembly Rooms and Comely Garden bills would have been printed at regular intervals in all of Edinburgh’s newspapers. Patrick Neill lists ‘specimen of Types’ (illustrating for customers the range of founts available, though none survives), Bible Proposals and ‘Jobs’ which took up 146 lbs of type. The inventories thus indicate

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the massive amounts of type required by Edinburgh’s busier printing firms. Compositors’ equipment would have made up another substantial part of the furnishings of a printing house, and the Fleming/Neill inventories list this in full. Cases are the shallow trays that hold the type (each letter is kept in a separate box according to the lay), and from which the compositors take the type to put into the composing stick. The Flemings had 272 cases of letters, twelve empty and one double case. Patrick Neill had 100 good cases and fifty-six old ones. The cases were kept in case racks of which the Flemings had ‘2 Double and 4 Single’; Neill had three, but kept some type in type boxes, perhaps the exotic ones. By the time of the painting of Smellie’s printing office (Plate 3), the frames had been adapted to act as case racks, but in the earlier period, certainly at the time of Rules and Directions, the racks and the frames were separate. Rule VI for Compositors reads: ‘If any kind of Cases be placed under Frames, or any where than in the Racks, the person who so misplaces these Cases, is to pay Twopence every time.’ Each compositor had his own composing stick: ‘Every Compositor is to furnish himself with one good Composing-stick at least, and Two Gallies’. These composing sticks were adjustable, as Rule VII says: ‘If a Compositor let his Composing-stick fall to the Ground, and if it should happen to alter from the true Measure [that is line width] by such Fall, without taking Care to adjust it, he shall pay Twopence, and be obliged to run over his Matter to the just standard’ (that is, take each line again into the stick and justify it to the right width). Although compositors certainly always had their own composing sticks, Flemings still maintained fourteen iron ones and twenty-seven wood among the firm’s furniture; Neill had twelve. These would have been used principally by apprentices, and for other occasional needs. Once type had been set and made into pages, the pages were arranged into formes on the imposing stone; the Fleming inventory calls it a ‘composing stone’. Neill’s is described as ‘Large imposing Stone and Frame’, and the Flemings had no fewer than six, four of marble and two of common stone. Neill lists, immediately after his entry for the imposing stone, ‘1 Press Stone from the Black Rocks’, meaning basalt, perhaps from Arthur’s Seat just outside Edinburgh, and ‘1 d[itt]o plated with Iron’. A press stone should form the bed of the press, but it seems possible from their position in the inventory that they were also used for imposing. It was very important to lock up the pages in the right sequence. If the compositor failed to do so, and this was not picked up immediately from the proof sheet, the pages could be printed on the paper in the wrong order. This could mean that the

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whole printing would have to be scrapped, and the loss of paper to the master (the chief cost of any job), and of time to the pressman, would be very severe. The imposition was the responsibility of the compositor, and accordingly in Rules and Directions: whoever transposes a Form, or turns a Chase in imposing, shall pay Twopence. And, those who impose any Form, shall look to a Sheet of the white Paper before it goes to the Press, and examine whether the Pages be transposed: For every such Neglect they shall pay a Fine of Sixpence: and if after such Examination, the Pages are found to be cast off at the Press transposed, to make good the Damages the Master shall sustain. When the forme had been imposed and locked into its chase using quoins and a shooting stick, and levelled with a plainer, it was locked into the bed of the press ready for printing. The Fleming inventory mentions shooting sticks and plainers; neither mentions quoins, which are wedges of hard wood used to tighten the furniture in the chase. The furniture consists of lengths of wood used to keep the type in position. The furniture was commonly kept in sets for particular impositions and sizes of book. Rules and Directions are very firm that this must be done properly: That no Compositor shall take any Kind of Furniture, other than a Shooting-stick, to lock up and unlock any Form, or plain down a Form with anything but The Plaining-board. Likewise, the Furniture of all regular work when finished, shall be carefully tied up, and laid in a proper Place. In the latter part of the hot-metal period, type that had been set was often temporarily stored in galleys and these kept in galley racks, but in 1760 planks and plank racks were more often used. The Flemings had forty-one galleys, twenty-three of which were Common, one with three slips, no doubt for newspaper columns, fourteen without and three for notes. They do not seem to have had a galley rack. They had six plank racks and seventy-three planks of different sizes. Neill had two plank racks, thirty-six letter planks and twelve press planks, but only twentythree galleys and no galley rack. Neil also had two large letter presses to store type. In addition, to supply artificial light when daylight failed (especially during winter), Neill lists five iron press candlesticks and ten white iron. The Flemings do not mention candle holders, though they must have had them, but both inventories do mention a candle chest. It must have often been necessary to work by artificial light, particularly as session papers were usually needed with great urgency

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and might well have been printed on overnight shifts. The risk of fire from candles in an eighteenth-century printing house was constant, and thus under ‘General Directions’ the Rules and Directions states: ‘No workman or Apprentice shall leave their Candles burning in any Work-house, without audibly giving Charge of it to some of the other Servants, which, if he neglect to do, and go without the Door of the House, he is to be fined what the Chapel shall think fit.’ The Chapel comprised all the printing house’s workmen, excluding the master, who met together ‘in Chapel’ for trade matters or jollifications. Under Printing Presses, the Flemings list one for proofs and three, altered to four, for working. Patrick Neill indicates the manufacturer of each press: one made by Gray and Brunton, another by Bell and Hay and a third from Holland. The double names for each of the first two are not partnerships, but in each case a hammerman or smith, who made the iron fittings, and a wright or carpenter, who made and fitted up the rest. Indeed Brunton may be James Brunton, wright, who was made an Edinburgh Burgess, 7 May 1760; Bell may be Edward Bell, smith and Burgess from 22 February 1740; Hay may be Alexander Hay, wright and Burgess, 20 August 1755. Gray remains unidentified, but was no doubt a smith. If these identifications are correct, both these presses must have been of comparatively recent manufacture. The Gray and Brunton press was valued at £9, the Bell and Hay at £8 and the Holland-made at £3, suggesting it was old but still serviceable. The Fleming inventory, unfortunately, does not give values for comparison. As previously stated, each press was normally worked by two printers. The one laid the paper on the tympan, while the other folded down the frisket, which was a frame covered in paper from which the area to be printed had been cut out, and which held the paper on the tympan while it was printed, and also kept the margins clean. The paper was dampened before printing; both inventories include water troughs for that purpose. The ink seems to have come from London. Patrick Neill had ‘50 lib. Wt. London Ink @ 1/-the lb’. The Flemings had ‘3 Barrels printing Ink weight 216 Lib at ½ per Lib’; the three barrels were worth 9s, with ‘Freight & Portage’ a further 6/1. The ink balls that were used to pick up ink from the stone and spread it evenly during printing were made from sheepskin stretched over tow and fastened to the stock below the handle. The sheepskin was steeped in lye to soften it, and the Flemings list ‘18 sheepskins for Balls’. Neill records ‘A new Ball Trough, A Ley Brush and a Ley Jar and Urine Pig’, urine being a fundamental ingredient of lye. When the pages had been printed they were dried in the office on ceiling poles. Neill’s inventory records ‘140 Poles with Bearers’; the

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sheets were put over the poles with a long-handled wooden implement called a peel. Neill had two. When they were dry, the sheets were taken to the warehouse, ready to go to the customer, or to be bound and sold. After the job, the type was washed down with lye and a lye brush to remove the remaining ink. ‘Directions to the Pressmen’ in Rules and Directions advises ‘that all Formes be washt after they are wrought off, within an Hour and Session-work within half an Hour . . . And all Forms working shall be washt every Night; and when wrought off, washt again’. The type for session papers might well be required again almost immediately, as session papers were commonly wanted in a great hurry, and if the ink were left on a job overnight, it would harden and not print properly the next morning. After the type had been washed, the compositors unlocked the chase on the imposing stone, and the apprentices distributed it, putting the individual type into the right boxes in the right cases. The master would have considered this good practice since it improved their familiarity with the position of each letter-box. The printing offices in Edinburgh had glass windows unlike those in London where paper rendered translucent with oil was often glued to the frames in place of glass. Rules and Directions contains a provision ‘that whatever Journeyman or Apprentice breaks a Lozen in any Window of the Printing-house, for each Lozen so broken shall pay Two-pence, and sufficiently repair the same; And in case the Chapel do not fix the breaking on some Person, they are to repair the Windows in common’. When customers wanted a job done in a hurry, they offered drink money to be held in common by the Chapel; this and all the fines that had been incurred were shared out twice a year: All Drink-money and fines be immediately paid to the Person whom the Master or Chapel shall appoint for that end and put in the proper Box of the Printing-house; which Box is to have Two different Locks and Keys, one of which Keys shall be kept by the Master, and the other by such Person as the Chapel shall ordain . . . Which Box is to be opened twice in the Year, viz. the First Saturday of the Months of March and August, and the Money therein equally divided to Journeymen and Apprentices, at the sight of the Master. Scotland in 1760 was still relatively isolated (Treble 1988: 194–200). The journey to London by chaise or ship was slow: in 1754 ten days was the usual travel time by stage coach between London and Edinburgh during the summer, and twelve days in the winter months (Haldane 1971: 75). Horseback was faster, while a ship, though quicker still,

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might be delayed by adverse winds. In general most ships managed a round trip in a month or so, with waits of a fortnight while they took on cargo. Sometimes, if they were lucky, they sailed a couple of days early, as attested by the departures advertised in the newspapers. It was therefore important that manufactures available within Scotland, or better still within Edinburgh, should be bought there. In the Fleming/ Neill inventories there were types by Caslon, whose types were very good, but had to be obtained from London. Alexander Wilson and John Baine after seeing Caslon’s workshop, set up a type-foundry in St Andrews, then moved to Camlachie near Glasgow in 1743 and separated in 1749. Baine went to London perhaps via Dublin; Wilson at some date unknown moved into premises in Glasgow College. Before 1764, John Baine came to Edinburgh and set up his type-foundry on the Calton Hill. Both the inventories contain Baine type, Fleming’s three founts and Patrick Neill’s four. They also contain founts of Wilson type. New type they acquired is described in this ledger and in the 1767–73 ledger kept by Patrick’s brother Adam when he succeeded to partnership with the Flemings. They bought no type from outside Scotland. Patrick bought from Alexander Wilson of Glasgow a few pounds of nonpareil and a fount of Pica and Small Pica, and from John Baine founts of English, New English, and Minion for the Flemings’ Edinburgh Almanack, and some Long Primer hyphens and points for their Edinburgh Evening Courant. Adam bought from Baine founts of Long Primer, English, Minion, Brevier, Cannon, Small Pica and some Double Pica.2 Buying local was an imperative best practice for Scottish printing houses. Along with the type there were other major differences between eighteenth-century Scottish and English printing offices. Scottish cases were several inches wider than English ones, and the lay of the case was different, with square boxes instead of narrow oblong ones for some of the less used sorts. The differences derived from relative isolation. Ingenuity and a willingness to innovate were characteristic of Scottish workmen, that and the agreeable capacity to work very long hours. As observed, session printing could mean labouring all night, rather like parliamentary printing from Hansard’s time, and thus compositors probably slept under their racks, as Hansard describes (Myers 1991: 45–69). Unlike English offices, there was a dearth of holidays: no Christmas, no Easter. Even the Fine and Drink Money that was distributed on the first Saturdays of March and August was distributed at the end of the working week: if printers wanted to drink together, 2

NLS P. Neill Ledger 1764–7, Wilson, 9, 77; Baine, 9, 68. A. Neill Ledger 1767–73, Baine, 55.

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as their counterparts in England and France did, they employed their own time. Warren McDougall offers a more detailed account of the working conditions for compositors and pressmen in his discussion of Edinburgh’s trade in Chapter 2 of this volume. Still, however arduous the printer’s trade could be in eighteenth-century Scotland, from the 1740s printing firms like those of Fleming and Neill were crucial to the nation’s emerging modern economy and culture.

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William Smellie: A Printer’s Life Stephen W. Brown I have been half an hour with Dr Playfair, during which time he has retaild above 150 lies – We want you for another half hour, and you will then between you be able to make the even number 500. We are in Midcalfs, and mean to eat a stake. No excuse but death will be accepted.3 Thus, on 24 June 1785, William Smellie (Figure 1.6), Edinburgh’s then leading printer, wrote to James Cummyng, secretary of the Scottish Antiquaries, inviting him to Francis Midcalf’s tavern in Brown’s Close. Smellie’s career was just peaking, and the 1780s would prove a decade mirabilis for him: he had already edited the Scots Magazine (1759–65/6), the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1768– 71), William Buchan’s bestselling Domestic Medicine (1769) and the Thesaurus Medicus (1778–85). His nine-volume translation of Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle (1780–5) would soon bring Smellie, in partnership with its engraver Andrew Bell and its publisher William Creech, ‘£800 sterling for the whole property’, with a further ‘£100 for improving the Translation and plates’,4 from the London publishers Strahan and Cadell. This would have been a lifetime’s production for any eighteenth-century man of learning, but for the master printer Smellie it was only a beginning. In the next five years he secured a long-term contract to print Gaelic Bibles and a one-thousand-guinea pledge from Charles Elliot for the first volume of his Philosophy of Natural History (1790); he also befriended Burns and printed his Poems for William Creech. Smellie would become Creech’s partner and the ‘go 3 4

EUL LA II 82/4.6, William Smellie, Letters to James Cummyng. NAS RH9/17/195 Letter from Bell, Creech and Smellie to Strahan and Cadell, 25 December 1783.

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Figure 1.6 William Smellie, 1740–95, printer, naturalist and antiquary. Drawing by John Brown, c. 1781.

to’ Edinburgh printer for John Balfour, John Murray and Charles Elliot. He was aggressively courted in the 1780s by William Strahan to join him as printing partner in London (Kerr 1811: I: 326–4).5 In its varied trade activity and especially its entrepreneurial independence, Smellie’s life was typical of an eighteenth-century master printer, but it transcended all expectations. The casual familiarity of Smellie’s invitation to Cummyng to attend what was in fact a business meeting (Smellie was wooing Playfair, hoping to print his academic work, and planning the first volume 5

NMS William Smellie Manuscripts, Book Trade Correspondence.

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of the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland with Cummyng) is indicative of the way the Scottish trade conducted itself for much of the eighteenth century. The community was a small one. Printing houses like Smellie’s seldom employed more than six men, while Edinburgh’s largest such as Murray and Cochran’s or Neill’s might have ten. Much was accomplished informally, often over claret in the city’s vintners or after a round of bawdy songs in masonic lodges (Smellie, like most of Edinburgh’s printers and many booksellers, was an active freemason). Apprentices were usually well-treated, if underpaid: Smellie was encouraged by Hamilton, Balfour and Neill to attend classes at Edinburgh University throughout his apprenticeship with the firm (1752–9). He acquired an extensive background in medicine, law, science and ancient languages and succeeded Thomas Ruddiman as Scotland’s chief learned printer in the second half of the century (Duncan 1965). When he set up his own operations at the foot of the Anchor Close in 1769 (Plate 4), after almost a decade with Murray and Cochran at an annual salary of £41, Smellie emulated Patrick Neill in the benevolence he showed his apprentices; James Pillans, who would establish his own firm in 1775 (which would survive in various partnerships into the late twentieth century), recalled fondly his time as a ‘reading boy’ in Smellie’s printing house, where he was an apprentice and journeyman for over fifteen years (A Printing House of Old and New Edinburgh 1925: 36–8). Samuel Kinnear, eventually the King’s Printer in Edinburgh, was apprenticed to Smellie in the early 1780s and ‘saw the poet Burns . . . enter Smellie’s caseroom with the ‘copy’ of . . . his Poems in his pocket’, which Kinnear himself helped set (Kinnear 1890: 10). Apprentices with grievances against their masters could sue for the return of their indenture fees and seek placement with other firms. In 1773, Smellie’s sometime partner William Auld (who had also been an apprentice of Hamilton, Balfour and Neill) was served with a ‘Bill of Suspension and Let’ by his apprentice Andrew Murray. Auld had pursued Murray with a writ compelling him ‘to implement and perform . . . the haill Obligations contained in an Indenture dated 13th January 1773’ after Murray had fled Auld’s premises. The apprentice defended himself by claiming with two colleagues as sworn witnesses (‘my fellow Servants in Mr Auld’s printing house’) that Auld had ‘maltreated and abused [him] to Such a degree insomuch that different parts of [his] Body were Swelled’.6 The Court of Session decided in Murray’s favour and required Auld to repay Murray’s father ‘the haill obligations’ or cost 6

NAS CS 271/41914.

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of his son’s indenture ‘in the sum of one hundred merks scots’, along with a penalty for liquidating the indenture and all costs relating to the whole proceedings. The Edinburgh printer Robert Mundell was appointed ‘Cautioner and surety’ by the court to guarantee Auld’s fulfilment of the decree and to find Murray a position in another Edinburgh printing house.7 The intimate conditions of Edinburgh’s eighteenth-century trade contrast strikingly with those in London. With no equivalent to the Stationers’ Company to regulate printing and only the oligarchical (and largely ineffective until the late 1790s) Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society to organise publishing, Scotland’s trade was mostly conducted through friendships and personal alliances. These conditions paradoxically both provided opportunities and constructed barriers for printers. William Smellie, who as an apprentice had won the coveted Edinburgh Society Silver Medal for his part as the compositor of an edition of Terence (Hillyard 1984: 296, 310–11), could rely upon his reputation for printing the most correct texts in any academic discipline to secure contracts from Edinburgh’s best publishers throughout his career. He enjoyed a lucrative partnership with John Balfour, but an eventually problematic one with William Creech, who brought Smellie close to financial ruin in retribution for Smellie’s refusal to confine himself exclusively to their partnership, something John Murray had predicted in a 1780 letter to John Balfour: ‘if a partnership takes place between Smellie & Creech the parliament house will have news of it before 3 years are at an end’.8 But when the Smellie-Creech union met its fated demise in 1792, Edinburgh’s trade was steadily assuming a more corporate character, and a printer such as Smellie, who still held to the position that his side of the trade was equal to that of the bookseller, found himself confounded in Edinburgh by the increasingly dominant role of the publisher, a change set in motion by Charles Elliot, coveted by William Creech, and completed by Archibald Constable in the early nineteenth century (Bell 2007: 3). Eighteenth-century Scottish printers who aspired to more than mere jobbing work usually tried to find a niche in the competitive periodical market. Robert Fleming, Walter Ruddiman and Alexander Donaldson all thrived in this way, while other Edinburgh printers such as John Reid, William Auld and Peter Williamson made valiant efforts but without enduring success; the printer John Mennons left Edinburgh after no fewer than six failed attempts at magazine 7 8

NAS CS 8554. NLS John Murray Archives.

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publishing to establish a successful newspaper and almanack in Glasgow. Smellie had shares in a newspaper (Edinburgh Weekly Journal, 1765–9) and a magazine (Edinburgh Magazine and Review, 1773–6) and proposed a second newspaper in partnership with Charles Elliot, The Scottish Chronicle (1788), which would have featured Robert Burns among its regular contributors. None brought him financial security. While the Edinburgh trade’s openness allowed him to venture his capital, however small, its casual approach to business contracts also meant that Smellie never really got the commercial return he deserved from his various – often innovative – activities. Editing the Scots Magazine earned him only 16s weekly, although like most printer/ editors at the time he was responsible for compiling and proofreading all copy as well as turning his hand to the composing stick when deadlines called for it (Kerr 1811: I: 33–4). As editor of the Britannica he took home £200 for a commitment exceeding three years, while William Buchan paid him £100 for a heavy edit – essentially a rewrite – of the 1769 Domestic Medicine (Kerr 1811: I: 222–4, 362).9 Modest as his remunerations were, Smellie still earned much more than his sometime printing partner William Auld did for similar efforts on The Chearful Companion (1765) and The Rudiments of Architecture (1773). It was not unusual for printers to take one-time fees for performing editorial functions on texts they printed for self-publishing authors whose works might subsequently be sold at high prices to bookseller/ publishers. Printers such as Smellie and Auld might also publish their own compilations and miscellanies, then either selling them on to bookseller/publishers (should the venture find a market) or becoming partners in a new edition. Auld made a fair amount of profit for himself by bringing out Scotland’s first and for several decades most popular masonic handbook (Free Masons Pocket Companion, 1761, 1765, 1772; S. W. Brown 2006b), and Smellie often took risks with texts produced by the academic community in Edinburgh with whom he was well acquainted both through his membership in the Philosophical, Antiquaries and Royal Societies and as the printer of the university’s theses, commencing with his 1771 partnership with John Balfour and continuing to his death in 1795. Smellie produced the first two volumes 9

NMS William Smellie Manuscripts, Book Trade Correspondence: William Buchan. The manuscripts contain significant material not reprinted in Kerr. See also the unique proposals for the Domestic Medicine printed by Smellie in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal (20 August 1766, 21 January 1767, 3 June 1767). These adapt Buchan’s own original proposal printed at Sheffield.

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of the Thesaurus Medicus (1778) at his own expense, before Charles Elliot took over the project from him, eventually issuing the work in four volumes in 1785 – with Smellie as printer. Smellie also encouraged or underwrote financially projects by a young Dr James Gregory (Conspectus Medicinae Theoreticae, 1780), the groundbreaking veterinarian James Clark (A Treatise on the Prevention of Disease Incidental to Horses, 1788), the Botanical Gardens’ head gardener Malcolm McCoig (Flora Edinburgensis, 1788) and the novice natural historian Maria Riddell (Voyages to the Madeira and Leeward Caribbean Isles, 1792). Such entrepreneurship was not uncommon among Edinburgh’s eighteenth-century printers. Some, however, could prove rather eccentric: the hack writer, experimental balloonist and editor of the Britannica’s second edition (1778–84), James Tytler, published work from a home-made press throughout the 1770s, including a history of the world in parts, his own translations of Virgil, a magazine, the Weekly Review (1779–80) and – possibly – a chapbook edition of Robert Fergusson’s Auld Reikie, A Poem in 1773 (Figure 6.2). In the same decade Peter Williamson, a successful printer who established Edinburgh’s first penny post (1776) and owned several profitable titles independently of a bookseller-partner, notably Edinburgh’s first Directory (1773–4), was taken to court by Walter Ruddiman Jr who, Williamson claimed in his official defence, was motivated ‘to proceed with Such vigour against me’ by ‘my having lately brought a portable Machine from London which perhaps he apprehends may be prejudicial to his Employment of printing’.10 Williamson, it should be pointed out, had threatened in the 1769 preface to his reprint of Mob Contra Mob to sell his portable presses to Edinburgh’s lawyers and teach them to print their own session papers, a proposition the city’s trade would not have relished (S. W. Brown 2008: 115–34). The younger Ruddiman was one printer who made a fortune from various periodical properties and never hesitated to litigate to his own financial advantage. Indeed, Ruddiman’s printing firm with its ownership of two of Edinburgh’s most successful periodical publications, the Caledonian Mercury and the Weekly Magazine relied heavily on the legal community (as did all Edinburgh’s newspaper publishers) for income from the advertisements of roups and bankruptcies, as much as the Court of Session work that annually provided the city’s trade with income from ‘some 90,000 quarto pages, equal to 150 quarto 10

Peter Williamson v. Walter Ruddiman and Co., 1769. NAS CS 271/66302.

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volumes of average size’ (Printing House of Old and New Edinburgh: 39). This obligation Ruddiman acknowledged in the 1772 dedication to his Universal Scots Almanack: ‘with Greatest Submission . . . To the Honourable Alexander Lockhart, esq: of Craighouse, Dean and To the Members of the Faculty of Advocates In testimony of the High Esteem and veneration which the Publishers have for that Learned and Respectable Body’. Lawyers and printers comprised a sort of fraternity in eighteenthcentury Edinburgh, and Smellie certainly did his share of legal printing (such work sustained the firm when it passed to his son Alexander in 1795). His most crucial surviving correspondence is often written in the margins of manuscripts delivered to his office for printing by Edinburgh’s solicitors (S. W. Brown 2007: 131–8).11 Like other printers, he found himself before the courts answering libel charges, notably while editing the Magazine and Review, and pursuing – or fending off pursuers of – business debts. But he also challenged the conduct of Scottish jury trials as the author and printer of a notorious pamphlet criticising the practice of Scottish judges since Lord Kames’s precedent in the 1765 Nairn and Ogilvie murder/incest trial of explicitly directing juries. In An Address to the People of Scotland on the Nature, Powers, and Privileges of Juries by a Juryman (1784), Smellie asserted that ‘the law of Scotland . . . declares in positive terms, that jurymen are equally judges of the law, as well as of the fact’ (12). Smellie served on juries more than once; in fact, the names of Edinburgh’s printers and booksellers often appear on eighteenthcentury jury lists, disproportionately to their numbers among the eligible community. Smellie’s Whig inclinations made him a champion of reform from his first published writing (An Oration on Charity, 1760) to his leadership in resolving disputes between Edinburgh’s journeymen printers and their employers, including his campaign in the 1760s for new rates and working conditions in the trade. Raised by a Covenanting father and with a grandfather who challenged the organisation of Scotland’s freemasons from within, Smellie came by his distaste for authority naturally, and while it often served him well in an enlightened Edinburgh keen on secular innovation, it also contributed to the isolation he experienced in the 1790s when former allies such as Lord Buchan, William Creech and William Forbes distanced themselves from him. After the death of Charles Elliot, Smellie could not find a publisher for the second volume of his Philosophy of Natural History and he missed the 11

NMS William Smellie Manuscript Papers, Personal Correspondence.

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opportunity to translate Buffon’s Birds, although its publisher reissued Smellie’s highly regarded translation of the Histoire.12 His correspondence with Maria Riddell in his final years (1792–5) found him enthusiastic about Godwin’s politics, and Smellie disagreed with Thomas Paine only on the issue of atheism.13 Such views invited prosecution in the turbulent 1790s. Smellie became increasingly dependent upon Edinburgh publisher Peter Hill, a close friend of Burns and former apprentice of Creech during the troubled Smellie partnership, who shared his radical sympathies. Smellie’s name also turns up in the ledgers of Bell and Bradfute.14 Creech broke with him entirely in 1792 and Smellie left Edinburgh that October for the only time in his life to seek solace with Maria Riddell at Friar’s Carse outside Dumfries where he could also see Burns. (It was Smellie who probably collected the material for the most notorious text associated with Burns, The Merry Muses of Caledonia, which Smellie’s son Alexander published anonymously in 1799.) In a letter to his banker William Forbes about ‘hav[ing] overdrawn the Accompt in your house’ (1 February 1795), Smellie berates Creech for causing his distress and speculates on the financial promise held out by the second volume of his Philosophy of Natural History and his intention (‘I cannot endure idleness’) to write a ‘genral [sic] Biography’, confined ‘to such authors as I had known of personal acquaintance’. There is something almost tragic in the letter’s mixture of shame, pleading and unrealistic expectation. Smellie was terminally ill as he wrote and would die in June. At his death, his affairs were in disarray, in large part because William Creech had put a lien on the substantial balance of the thousandguinea copyright money owed to Smellie from Elliot’s estate. Smellie’s career illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the eighteenth-century Scottish trade. His education and professional advancement attest to the socially inclusive and even liberal nature of that world. But that very flexibility and accommodation, however admirable, were increasingly viewed as its primary weaknesses by men like William Creech in the 1790s who wanted a more hierarchical business model with the publisher indisputably established at its head. The casual familiarity of claret, wine and tall stories that was central to his convivial book trade was passing, even as Smellie wrote to James Cummyng late on that June day in 1785, to be replaced by 12 13

14

NLS John Murray Archives. Murray to Grueber, 4 October 1790. NMS William Smellie Manuscript Papers, Personal Correspondence. Some of the Maria Riddell correspondence is in Kerr (1811), but with key controversial passages suppressed. ECA Bell and Bradfute Papers.

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the publishing houses of nineteenth-century Scotland with their international reach. The opportunities for a young apprentice not long released from his indentures to launch an international bestseller as Smellie had done in 1769 with Buchan’s Domestic Medicine were gone. The remarkable printing career of William Smellie is as much a testimony to the entrepreneurial empowerment of the individual in the eighteenth-century Scottish trade as it is to the extraordinary gifts of a particular man.

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Paper Manufacture Stephen W. Brown Throughout the Statistical Account the steady rise of regional paper production across Scotland testifies to the substantial impact of the print industry on local economies. At least forty-three mills commenced operations in Scotland between 1707 and 1800, at thirty-eight different sites. After the government required all mills to be licensed in 1784, annual records show a fluctuating increase in licence applications for paper manufacture, rising to a high of forty-one in 1801 after a low of twenty-four in 1787 (Thomson 1974: 72, 116). In his contribution to the OSA, William Creech notes a corresponding growth in paper manufacture from 6,400 reams in 1763 to ‘upwards of 100,000 reams’ by 1790, with ‘a vast quantity of Printing Paper . . . sent to London, from whence it used formerly to be brought, some of these Mills [being] upon a more extensive scale than any in Britain’ (I: 34). While Creech’s observations can be unreliable (he says there were only three paper mills in the Edinburgh vicinity in 1763, when there were, in fact, eight), his figures here are confirmed by those of the Excise which show a nine-fold increase in tax revenue from paper produced in Scotland in the 1780s; revenue from English production rose only five-fold for the same period (Thomson 1974: 79). Successful mills brought reliable employment to their communities because the range of unskilled and skilled labour involved in papermaking provided work for women and children as well as men; whole families might thus be employed by one owner. Women were usually engaged in gathering rags for pulping, with premiums paid for the best quality materials by such institutions as the Edinburgh Society. In 1757, these incentives brought in some twenty-five tons of rags; Janet Mitchell of Tranent won a guinea for collecting over 8400 lbs of material, while the warehouse founded at Edinburgh in 1793 paid 61

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out £40,000 for rags over the subsequent five years (Thomson 1974: 34). Women and children were engaged to sort rags, which involved first separating whites from colours, and then dusting and cutting the materials so that they were partially cleaned and reduced to manageable sizes. This dry process was followed by the wet process in which rags were pounded in a machine with as many as ten mechanical mortars or hammers, operated by water wheels. Boys laboured as often as men at this stage of the process. It took upwards of ten hours to produce a pulp that was ready to go to the stuff chest, a holding vessel which fed the pulp to the vats. Here the pulp was warmed by a brazier, while the vatmen dipped in wire frames which they would shake to mould a fibrous sheet called a ‘felt’, while excess water dripped away. Pressmen in turn passed the felts through first a wet and then a dry press. The resulting sheets were hung above the workroom on racks to dry thoroughly. A small mill like the one at Salton employed eight men full time, besides the women and children who collected and sorted (OSA 1792: II: 605), while the considerably larger Kate’s Mill owned by the Balfours of Pilrig provided livings for over ninety men in 1797 (Waterston 1949: 52). The hand-manufacture of paper remained essentially unchanged throughout the eighteenth century, while the holy grail of the industry became the pursuit of a method for bleaching rags to make possible the production of high quality white paper – essential to the print industry – from the cheaper grey and brown rags. Balloonist, printer and Encyclopaedia Britannica editor James Tytler and Edinburgh University Professor Joseph Black were among the Scots who contributed to refining the bleaching method through the development of chlorine compounds; in 1790, William Creech published Robert Kerr’s Essay on the New Method of Bleaching . . . from the French of Mr Berthollet, thus making the process accessible to any mill owner. Chlorine was subsequently produced on site at the mills, and the 1792 Statistical Account for Lasswade records William Simpson as the first Scottish mill owner to ‘erect an apparatus for preparing this liquor . . . and use it in the common paper engine’ (II: 343). The author of this Account joins those for Perth and Crieff in congratulating paper mill proprietors for their leadership in bringing industry to local Scottish communities (XI: 150; XII: 288), with Crieff, in 1763, the location of the first paper manufacturer north of the Forth (XII: 289). The Scottish trade was unlike its English counterpart in the eighteenth century, in that paper mill owners often partnered with printers and booksellers, usually to considerable financial advantage. Gavin Hamilton, as proprietor of Bogsmill at Colinton after 1756, brought

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paper manufacture into his partnership with the printer Patrick Neill and the bookseller John Balfour (whose family at Pilrig were paper makers from 1770, for three generations), and all three names appeared on their imprint (Waterston 1945: 70; 1949: 50–3). In 1714 John Reid, the publisher of the Edinburgh Gazette, established the first paper mill on the Water of Leith, and became his own supplier (Waterston 1949: 48–9). The later publishers of the Edinburgh Evening Courant and the Caledonian Mercury, Robert Fleming and Walter Ruddiman, would fortify their newspaper cartel by adding the operation of paper mills at Springfield, Polton and Redhall, Colinton to their book trade empires (Waterston 1945: 70; 1949: 55–6). The Morrisons of Perth, whose family established the most successful eighteenth-century publishing firm outside Edinburgh, were partners in at least two paper mills at Methven, perhaps from as early as 1776 (Thomson 1974: 121), and their continued operation of mills in partnership with the Lindsays, to whom they were related by marriage, is described in the OSA (XI: 499–500). Perhaps the most lucrative combination of paper maker and printer occurred when a young Colin Macfarquhar enlisted John Hutton, who established Melville Mill at Lasswade in the early 1760s, to join him and the engraver John Bell as partners in the launch of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Thus the three most prohibitive costs in undertaking a highly illustrated encyclopaedia – quality paper, fine engraving and expert printing – were essentially ‘ventured’ by the founders, whose return on that ‘bartered capital’ was monumental. However, any alliance between paper maker and printer was a canny move since the market price of paper was the deciding factor in most negotiations for book publications in the eighteenth century. That burden alone often determined the profitability of a proposed title and was one of the chief reasons why a publisher would encourage subscriptions when in doubt. The cost of paper, for example, fuelled the correspondence between the young Dr William Buchan and his printer/editor William Smellie over the publication of the former’s Domestic Medicine. Buchan casually allowed (even encouraged) Smellie to rewrite his text, but he haggled with him punctiliously over the amounts charged for the paper on which the century’s bestselling medical book would be printed (Sher 1999: 45–64). Without paper, there would have been no book trade, and without the expansion of paper manufacture, Scotland’s eighteenth-century trade would not have thrived as it did. Between 1707 and 1800, Scotland progressed from importing most of its paper to actually exporting significant amounts. Throughout his career as Glasgow University’s printer, Robert Foulis imported nearly all his fine paper

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(1743–66); by the 1790s, however, Scotland was not only sending significant quantities of fine paper to England, but also exporting more than 400,000 pounds overseas annually (Thomson 1974: 75–9). This remarkable growth underscores the extent to which the book trade in Scotland had become a leading commercial enterprise, and thus eighteenth-century paper manufacturing provides one of the clearest indicators of the book trade’s centrality to the nation’s economy.

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Bindings William Zachs At the close of the seventeenth century, growing book production and book buying stimulated local Scottish bookbinding. The twenty-five plates accompanying this essay indicate the range of bindings available to booksellers and private individuals alike during the period under consideration. The discussion later in this volume of Bell and Bradfute’s Book Binding Account Book provides a more detailed list of the styles supplied to that firm towards the end of the century. The type of skin covering and the amount of tooling (not to mention the size of the book) were the main factors determining binding prices, whether wholesale or retail. Regarding leather covers in the eighteenth century, calf and sheep were the most common skins used to bind books – either ‘full’ (Plates 5 and 6) or less often (until the end of the century) ‘half’ (Plate 7). Sheep was more likely on less expensive books, such as school texts. Towards the later third of the eighteenth century, ‘boards’, typically with paper spines, became more frequent. The boards might be covered in marbled (Plate 8) or plain paper (Plate 9). Boards might also be removed and the book recovered in skin. At the most expensive end of the market was goatskin, highly durable and sometimes called ‘morocco’ or ‘turkey’, usually stained red, green, black or dark blue, and often decorated with gold tooling (Plates 10–15). Encyclopaedias and volumes such as account ledgers would often be bound in ‘reversed calf’, that is the flesh side of the skin outwards (Plate 16). Theses printed for Scotland’s university students might be found finely bound in goatskin and elaborately decorated for presentation to a patron or parent (Plate 14) or covered in coloured floral ‘Dutch’ gilt papers (Plate 17), usually imported from Germany but also made more locally (in London, for example). These and other decorated papers, some signed by their makers (Plate 18), could be found on a variety of 65

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Scottish publications. Less expensive were pamphlets and magazines, usually stitched and covered in either marbled (Plate 19), drab, or blue paper wrappers (Plate 20); the last might include printing (Plate 21). Often these wrappings were removed and sets of pamphlets or a magazine’s numbers bound together, which makes the originals comparatively rare today. Other more ephemeral works might simply be stitched without wrappers at all (Plate 22). Occasionally printers and publishers themselves covered significant numbers of their books in a distinctive manner; the Foulis Press is a notable instance (Plate 23; P. Gaskell 1986: 54–5). When considering the range of bindings to be found in Scotland it is crucial to remember that the same work might be bound in various styles. In Scotland, as elsewhere, the bookbinding trade was generally characterised by gradual change, at least until the mid-nineteenth century, when machine binding provided an alternative to handcrafting (Morris 1989: 65–7). Techniques for forwarding (the construction and covering of the text block) and styles for finishing (the tooling and labelling) evolved slowly; the organisation of the trade itself, including its relation to other elements of the book business, was likewise measured in its development. Despite the generally conservative nature of the trade, the covers of Scottish books, upon close inspection, subtly evolve over the course of the century, both in relation to earlier Scottish styles and to craft practices in England, Ireland and the Continent. Most common, and most frequently identified as ‘Scottish’ among the more highly decorated class of bindings are the ‘wheel’ and ‘herring-bone’ patterns which typically covered bibles, psalm books and university theses (Plates 24, 25 and 12). Occasionally innovators, such as James and (his son) William Scott of Edinburgh (Plates 11 and 26) and the as yet unnamed ‘Edinburgh Floral Binder’ (Plate 27) emerge from the mass of traditional Scottish styles. Regional differences within Scotland are also identifiable through close analysis of a binding’s components: the tools, the leather, the endpapers, the sewing and such. Binders are found working in most major Scottish cities and towns, as well as in more out-of-the-way places. Provincial work was by no means inferior to that found in Scotland’s two principal book centres, Edinburgh and Glasgow. See, for example, the binding most likely from a workshop in Perth (Plate 13). During the eighteenth century bindings were rarely signed by the binder, either in the form of a label, ticket or identifying tooling (such as initials) on the book itself. James Scott, the best-known binder from the period, and the subject of a full-length study by J. H. Loudon, is one

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of a handful of exceptions.15 While the vast majority of Scott’s bindings do not bear an engraved label (Plate 28), the distinctive set of tools the firm used at the higher end of the decorative spectrum makes attribution relatively straightforward (Plates 11 and 26). The bookbinding historian G. D. Hobson remarked that ‘Scott was a revolutionary who did for bindings something of what Robert Adam did for buildings. He launched new-fangled ornaments and designs in Edinburgh, where the traditional styles . . . were still flourishing’ (1940: 135). The Scott bindery did, however, produce myriads more run-of-the-mill bindings, which are more difficult if not impossible to identify. While classical at heart, Scott and his son had a flair for unexpected design combinations, using many tools unique to their bindery. Since Loudon’s book (1980) drew attention to the Scotts, significant numbers of additional bindings have been located. Inevitably, scholars, curators, dealers and collectors have focused on elaborately decorated, ‘higher-end’ books like those of Scott or the ‘wheel’ and ‘herring-bone’ styles. Nicholas Pickwoad, however, observes that the decorative end comprises ‘only a very small part of the trade’, while ordinary bindings, in their many styles, comprise the bulk of the output (2009: 268). Pickwoad’s wide-angle approach would be crucial to producing a comprehensive account of Scottish bookbinding and would be enhanced when combined with the methodology of such detailed studies as David Pearson’s English Bookbinding Styles 1450–1800 (2005) and Jan Storm van Leeuwen’s Dutch Decorated Bookbinding in the Eighteenth Century (2006). Archival evidence from firms such as Bell and Bradfute and Charles Elliot, or from long-established Scottish book-buying families, has not yet been systematically examined for information about eighteenth-century bookbinding. While no records of any binder from the period appears to survive, it is still possible to reconstruct an accurate picture of this world from extant pieces of information relating to the over 100 wellestablished eighteenth-century binders listed in SBTI. Advertisements for books and bindings in periodicals and newspapers, trade cards and related ephemera, and records from legal disputes involving binders provide further information. Evidence from such rare publications as the Articles of Agreement by the Society of Bookbinders in Edinburgh (1775), and from an extended legal dispute in the Court of Session (1809–11) between master and journeymen bookbinders

15

The Edinburgh binder Charles Cleland had a label similar to James Scott’s. A rare engraved oval label on a copy of the 1784 Foulis Virgil, states: ‘Bound by Scott & Gillies, Glasgow’.

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in Edinburgh over pay and working conditions16 are two among a number of information-rich resources that will help to create a context in which the tens if not hundreds of thousands of surviving books from the period and their bindings themselves – the primary materials for a proper study – can be better understood. What did the bindings on books in an eighteenth-century Scottish library or bookshop look like as a grouping? Clearly not all bindings would be of Scottish origin, or for that matter on eighteenth-century books. Older books were rebound, or restored in some manner in the eighteenth century to create a uniform appearance, to replace a worn binding, or for other reasons. A consideration of the bindings in situ would add to our understanding since a fair number of collections remain intact in Scotland’s stately homes and in institutional settings. Relevant records in the extant archives of Scottish families may very well tell us something of the ways in which their books came to be bound, although eighteenth-century manuscript or printed catalogues of private libraries rarely say anything about bindings. Period sale catalogues (by auction or by a bookseller) are likewise usually silent, unless to highlight a particularly fine binding or to note the overall condition of a library. The absence of an awareness of the covering of a book may say something in itself about the status of binding in the period. Nevertheless, a finely bound book, whether taken to church or read in a private study, reflected social status and wealth. Many of Scotland’s private libraries have been dispersed with only a bookplate or label, owner inscription, shelf mark, motto, or some other indicator of possession (such as the house name in Plate 5) or a tooled armorial crest (Plate 6) to connect a book to its former location or owner. But others survive. The library of the Colquhoun family at Luss on Loch Lomond (until its sale in 1986) provided a remarkably well-preserved collection of late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish-bound books. It is not only the fine condition but also the distinctive style – generally plain tan polished calf (Plate 29) – that makes Colquhoun of Luss books physically stand out on a shelf, even from a considerable distance. Elsewhere in this volume, Murray Simpson discusses other private and institutional collections in some detail. 16

Session Papers 262/34 [1809–11], second division. Signet Library, Edinburgh. These papers report the bookbinding process in considerable detail, from the different steps involved in making a binding to the effects of the chemicals used in the various processes, and from the prices charged wholesale and retail to the wages and profits of binders in Edinburgh and elsewhere.

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Defining the parameters for a study of eighteenth-century Scottish binding is not necessarily straightforward. Many factors must be taken into consideration and questions raised. For example, should the decorated bindings on Robert Adam’s Spalatro – a book printed and bound in England to the designs of Adam – be part of the story? Should English or Irish imitation ‘Scottish’ ‘wheel’ and ‘herring-bone’ bindings be considered? Should Scots binders practising their craft in other places be included (for example, Richard Weir in France; Charles Cleland in America)? These are a few questions, among many, to keep in mind for a larger study.

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The Glasgow Homer Brian Hillyard ‘The Glasgow Homer’ – so described by James Beattie in 1769 (cited below) – refers to the Greek folios of Homer printed in Glasgow by Robert and Andrew Foulis in 1756 (Iliad, vols I–II) and 1758 (Odyssey and Homeric Hymns, vols III–IV), with a rare general title page dated 1758. There were two editions with the same pages differently imposed, a large-paper (writing demy) with a gutter margin of approximately 4 cm and a small-paper (foolscap) with one of approximately 2.5 cm. While some modern library catalogues record plates in the collation, there is no evidence that either edition was issued with illustrations, though, as we shall see, some owners added plates. The Foulis text marked no textual advance in the history of editing Homer but is an important artefact of Scottish printing. The edition won the annual prize of the Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures and Agriculture for printing in Greek in successive years: 1756 for the Iliad, 1757 for the Odyssey and 1758 for the Homeric Hymns (Hillyard 1984: 308– 15). The 1756 citation described ‘a work remarkable for correctness, and elegance of the types’, while the October 1757 Monthly Review observed that ‘in the beauty of the paper and the type, and in the correctness of the work, they have surpassed all which have hitherto appeared’. Edward Harwood (A View of the various Editions of the Greek and Roman Classics, 1775: 25) called it ‘one of the most splendid editions of Homer ever delivered to the world, and I am informed that its accuracy is equal to its magnificence’. Edward Topham (Letters from Edinburgh, 1776: 180) lamented that Robert and Andrew Foulis, distracted by their Academy of Fine Arts, had ‘forgot their former business, and neglected an art which, from their editions of Homer and Milton, might have made them immortal’. In 1793 Edward Gibbon 70

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(Miscellaneous Works, 1814: V: 583) noted in turn that ‘as the eye is the organ of fancy, I read Homer with more pleasure in the Glasgow folio’. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1818 that ‘the perfection of accuracy is to be found in the folio edition of Homer by the Foulis of Glasgow. I have understood they offered 1000 guineas for the discovery of any error in it, even of an accent, and that the reward was never claimed’ (1984: 1413–14). Otherwise unsupported, his report recalls the similar story about the 1744 ‘immaculate’ Foulis Horace (Harwood 1775: 173). The Glasgow Homer differs from previous Foulis classical texts in being printed at the expense of Glasgow University’s professors: All the professors of this University have formed themselves into a Society for Printing at their own expence & intirely under their own direction, a compleat sett of the best Greek & Latin Classicks – Their design is that their Editions shall be correct, splendid, elegant & sizeable – We have begun with Homer, & have sent you enclosed a specimen of both the large & small paper, having already advanced a good way in the 2d volume, & propose immediately to go on with the Odyssey, & then Caesar &c & always on the same paper, & same size – the types are all founded by our typefounder Mr. Wilson, & all the books to be printed by Messrs Foulis the College Printers, but after each sheet has been thrice compar’d & corrected at the expence of the Printers, then each sheet is thrice examin’d & revis’d by two Professors, as Homer is now done by Messrs Moor & Muirhead, so that we shall be able to defy all Europe to produce more elegant & more correct books. The above letter from William Rouet, Glasgow’s Professor of Ecclesiastical and Civil History, to London bookseller John Nourse,17 also describes a run of 168 large-paper and 480 small-paper copies. Rouet indicates that the large-paper edition would cost ‘something under two Guineas, & the small paper under 25 shs’. He anticipated moderate profits, ‘having more in view to advance our character & reputation than to fill our pockets’. In fact the Iliad and the Odyssey each sold unbound at one and a half guineas for the large-paper and one guinea for the small-paper. In 1777 the stock still comprised 160 smallpaper sets and some copies of the small-paper (16) and large-paper (21) Odyssey; no large-paper Iliads remained (Gaskell 1986: no. 319). It is difficult to know if this was ‘a financial disaster’ (Burnett 1984–5), and if so, whether the professors or the Foulis brothers suffered most. 17

EUL MS La.II.511.

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Figure 1.7a Alexander Wilson’s new Greek type in the Glasgow Homer, 1756.

Figure 1.7b Comparison with the type in the Homer edited by S. Clarke, London, 1729.

The Homer volumes were in fact the only ones published thus by the professors’ society, but it is not clear why. The Iliad preface draws attention to Alexander Wilson’s Double Pica Greek type as a key feature. Harwood (1775: xiv) calls it ‘the most beautiful that modern times have produced’, while Talbot Baines Reed (1887: 261–2; 1952: 260) insists that ‘it alone would give [Wilson] a lasting title to the distinction accorded to him in the preface’. The type has fewer ligatures and contractions than others of this period (Figures 1.7a, 1.7b), although Wilson himself favoured giving more ‘embellishment’ by using a greater number of ‘flowing contractions and ligatures’ than the editors wished (Maclehose 1931: 172–3; Gaskell 1952b: 106). Nonetheless this first overt break with the cursive style provided a practical benefit since ‘the size of the case must certainly be less than half that of the founts of a generation earlier’ (Scholderer 1927: 12–13).

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But the elegance lay not only in the type-face. Gaskell (1952a: 101) quotes Patrick Wilson: the late Dr. Wilson as well as his sons have, in justice to Messrs Foulis, wished it to be fully understood that every other printer who applied for Types at their Foundry was served with Founts, when so required, cast in the very same Matrixes with those used for Messrs Foulis orders. The superior elegance therefore of Messrs Foulis editions must have been owing chiefly to their ardor and skill in pursuing many experiments and contrivances connected with some improved construction of the Letter Press, the quality and due preparation of their paper, and of their ink, and of the Balls; all of which particulars are of great consequence to the uniformity and elegance of the impressions. Nor should the contribution of good layout be forgotten. Percy Simpson (1935: 155–6) points to the editorial procedures outlined by James Moor and George Muirhead in their preface, the like of which he describes nowhere else in his study of proofreading, excepting an advertisement for Andrew Duncan’s 1813 Glasgow Lucretius which claims its proofs had been checked three times for correctness: this was the influence of the Glasgow Homer. Rouet’s letter states that the Homer proofs were read and compared against the copy text, Samuel Clarke’s 1729 edition, three times at the printers, twice by the ‘preli corrector’ or proof-reader James Tweedie, and once by Andrew Foulis. Only then were the sheets sent to the editors who first checked carefully against Clarke’s edition. Then one editor read the text aloud (in full detail, including accents, breathings, iotas subscript, and diaereses) while the other noted discrepancies against Estienne’s edition to avoid perpetuating Clarke’s errors. With corrections implemented, the edition was printed – then followed a remarkable sixth checking process. After all the copies of a sheet had been printed, the last off the press was read again while the type was standing; if an error had crept in, all copies of the sheet were reprinted. Single cancel leaves were not used. Two sets of Iliad proofs survive but they are not easy to interpret since NLS MSS.3290–1, in which every sheet is signed off ‘Corrected and revised. Jas. Tweedie’, are the earlier set while MSS.3292–3 do not incorporate all the corrections. The proofs show the editors’ obsession with appearance in their single reference to Alexander Wilson: ‘N.B. A. Duncan may observe to Mr Wilson that the iota subscript would look better if it sloped as all the letters do, thus [sloping iota subscript written here]’ (MS.3290 2H1 recto). And again, on MS.3290 C1 recto an iota is crossed through and a marginal note made, ‘a very small iota’. But the correction in MS.3292 is too small: ‘this iota is

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Figure 1.8 Glasgow Homer – William Pitt presentation inscription.

scarce visible[.] put in one of the same size with the ones in the last sheet’. This appears duly amended in publication. The ambition of the professors to ‘defy all Europe to produce more elegant & more correct books’ (Rouet) is further reflected in the choice of dedicatee, the future George III, and not surprisingly the University found a celebrated book with a royal dedication useful for gifts (Murray 1913: 26–7). A university account ‘to the Company engadged in printing Homers works’ for May 1759,18 records charges for sheets, binding and delivery of the Iliad and Odyssey, ‘given in presents’, to John Carteret, second Earl Granville; William Pitt the Elder, the Secretary of State; and Charles Pratt, the first Earl Camden, who had been appointed Attorney General in 1757. Pitt’s copy survives,19 with a calligraphic inscription in Iliad, vol. I ‘To The Right Honourable William Pitt From The University of Glasgow’ (Figure 1.8). The Huntington Library has a large-paper copy in four volumes,20 with a similar calligraphic inscription ‘To The Right Honourable The Earl of Bute Groom of the Stole to His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, From The University of Glasgow’. This dates it to before 25 October 1760, and it may be relevant that Lord Bute accompanied the Prince of Wales on a visit to Glasgow in 1759. The same May 1759 account also records an Iliad (including binding and delivery) – but not the Odyssey – for George Stone, Archbishop of Armagh, though an earlier March 1757 account to ‘Robert Foulis & Company’21 records a large-paper copy in quires (not bound) to be 18 19 20 21

GUA 58242. NLS F.6.d.21–4, 19th-century binding. 290342. GUA 58260.

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Plate 1 Rules and Directions to be Observed in Printing-Houses, 1721.

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Plate 2 Replica of the Kilmarnock Press used to print Burns’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 1786.

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Plate 3 Interior of Smellie’s Printing House, 1807.

Plate 4 Smellie’s Printing Office, foot of Anchor Close, by Henry Duguid.

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Plate 5 Speckled calf, gilt tooled. Robert Burns, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Edinburgh: Creech, 1787.

Plate 7 Marbled boards, sheepskin spine, vellum corners. The Aberdeen Magazine, vol. 1. Aberdeen: Burnett and Rettie, 1796.

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Plate 6 Stained sheep, gilt tooled, paper label. Robert Bremner, The Rudiments of Music. Edinburgh: the Author, 1762.

Plate 8 Marbled boards, paper spine, printed label. William Creech, Edinburgh Fugitive Pieces. Edinburgh: Creech, 1791.

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Plate 9 Blue boards, paper spine, printed label. John Sinclair, The Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. 6. Edinburgh: Creech, 1793.

Plate 11 Green goatskin, gilt tooled, by James Scott. Scotland’s Opposition to the Popish Bill. Edinburgh: Paterson, 1780.

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Plate 10 Dark blue goatskin, gilt tooled. Horace. Opera. Edinburgh: Freebairn, 1731.

Plate 12 Green goatskin, gilt-tooled in a ‘herring-bone’ pattern. The Holy Bible, vol. 1. Edinburgh: Kincaid, 1770.

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Plate 13 Red goatskin, gilt tooled; binder probably from Perth. John Gillies, editor, Sean Dain. Perth: Gillies, 1786.

Plate 14 Red goatskin, gilt tooled. John Gordon, Disputatio juridica. Edinburgh: Balfour & Smellie, 1789.

Plate 16 Reversed calf, blind tooled. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2nd ed., vol. 1. Edinburgh: 1778. Plate 15 Red goatskin, gilt tooled. Virgil, Bucolica, Georgica, et Aeneis. Edinburgh: Hamilton & Balfour, 1743.

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Plate 17 ‘Dutch’ gilt wrappers, stitched. Patrick Murray Threipland, Disputatio juridica. Edinburgh: Balfour & Smellie, 1784.

Plate 19 Marbled wrappers, stitched. The Rules . . . for . . . the Maiden Hospital. Edinburgh: Fleming, 1731.

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Plate 18 Embossed coloured paper wrappers made in Augsburg by Johan Michaell Schwidbecker, active 1710–40. The Rules . . . for . . . the Maiden-Hospital. Edinburgh: Fleming, 1731.

Plate 20 Blue paper wrappers, stitched. An Effort towards Promoting Contentment. Banff, 1785.

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Plate 21 Printed blue paper wrapper, stitched. Perth Magazine, no. 2, vol. 4 (9 April 1773). Perth: Morison, 1773.

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Plate 22 Printed drab wrappers, stitched. A Catalogue of Curious and Valuable Books, being the Library of Mr. John Spotiswood. Edinburgh: 1728.

Plate 23 Red goatskin, ‘wheel’ pattern. The Guardian, 2 vols. Glasgow: Foulis, 1746.

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Plate 24 Red goatskin, ‘wheel’ pattern. The Book of Common Prayer. Edinburgh: Blair and Nairne, 1737.

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Plate 25 Red goatskin, ‘herring-bone’ pattern. The Holy Bible, vol. 1. Cambridge: Archdeacon, 1769.

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Plate 26 Full calf, gilt tooled, by James Scott. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3 vols. London: J. Donaldson, 1775.

Plate 27 Stained calf, gilt tooled by the unidentified ‘Edinburgh Floral Binder’. James Thomson, The Seasons. Edinburgh: Donaldson and Reid for A. Donaldson, 1761.

Plate 28 James Scott label on Plate 11 (Scotland’s Opposition). Enlarged.

Plate 29 Polished calf, from the Colquhoun of Luss library. Catalogue of the Library of the Faculty of Advocates, 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1742–76.

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delivered to Stone by William Rouet. In later 1757 and early 1758, Stone’s ‘star was in the ascendant’ (ODNB), and so possibly his present was enhanced, though he was not to receive the Odyssey. Something similar happened to Lord Granville’s present: in March 1757 he received the same as Stone, but in May 1759 he was given the Odyssey as well as the Iliad, both bound. The March 1757 account records three other Iliads ordered by the University, all large-paper and bound ‘in red Turkey, gilt on ye leaves, Back, edges & border . . . interleaved wt paper & pressed so as to prevent ye setting of ye print’, £1 11s 6d for the sheets and £1 8s for the binding, per set – the care taken with the interleaving is worthy of note – for Archibald Campbell, third Duke of Argyll, and uncle of the influential Lord Bute; for Philip Yorke, the first Earl of Hardwicke, former Lord Chancellor, described as inscribed ‘To the Rt. Hon. Philip, Earl of Hardwicke from the University of Glasgow’ when sold from John Ferguson’s library in 1920;22 and for William Murray, created Lord Mansfield when appointed Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench in November 1756, described as inscribed ‘To The Right Honourable William Lord Mansfield Lord Chief Justice of England from the University of Glasgow’ when offered by Blackwell Rare Books in 2010.23 While stocks of the Glasgow Homer lasted, the University would continue to use it for gifts and, it is interesting to note, whereas Glasgow sent copies of Homer to both Charles III of Spain and his son Ferdinand in return for their presents of Catalogo degli antichi monumenti di Ercolano (Naples, 1755) and Le pitture antiche d’Ercolano (vols I–III, Naples, 1757–62) (Murray 1913: 26–7; letter of Sir James Gray to Principal of Glasgow, 17 June 1765: GUA27033), the University of St Andrews (‘Library Annals’ 1906: 266–9) and the Faculty of Advocates (Stewart 1999: 149) responded by sending an address or letter of thanks alone; they had no grand books to present in return. Given its status and value, the Glasgow Homer was almost entirely restricted to being an institutional gift, although the National Library of Wales’s copy mentioned below provides an exception in being a prize book. But copies did change hands as personal gifts, whether to institutions or individuals. The Library Company of Philadelphia has an Iliad inscribed ‘The Gift of Mr. Small, of London, Surgeon, to the Library’.24 The inscription is in Benjamin Franklin’s hand, 22 23 24

Sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, beginning 15 November 1920, lot 617. Catalogue B164 [2010], item 49. *O Greek Homer.208F.

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and Alexander Small, a Scottish army surgeon living in London, was one of his frequent correspondents, suggesting that Franklin himself was the recipient. The Philadelphia bookseller N .G. Dufief wrote to Thomas Jefferson, 4 March 1802 (Sowerby 1952–9: no. 4267, note), that he had a copy of the folio Foulis Odyssey from Franklin’s library, and it is tempting to conclude that Small sent Franklin both the Iliad and the Odyssey and that Franklin passed on the Iliad and kept the Odyssey for himself. Franklin knew his Homer and, as a printer himself, had visited both Alexander Wilson and the Foulis brothers in September 1759 (Nolan 1938: 69–75), making this a suitable gift, although he is as likely to have acquired a set himself. Another eminent recipient was the Corsican general Pasquale Paoli. Describing a library at Berne, the traveller John Moore wrote (1779: I: 331), ‘I happened to open the Glasgow edition of Homer, which I saw here, on a blank page of which was an address in Latin to the Corsican General, Paoli, signed James Boswell. This very elegant book had been sent, I suppose, as a present from Mr. Boswell to his friend the General . . .’ The Glasgow Homer was a fitting gift since in his An Account of Corsica (1768), which was published by Robert and Andrew Foulis, Boswell likened Paoli to some Homeric heroes and Corsica to Ithaca (27, 53, 344), and his father, Lord Auchinleck, was one of the judges who awarded the Odyssey an Edinburgh Society premium (Hillyard 1984: 312). Another traveller, Richard Twiss, visiting the library of the Royal Convent at Alcobaca near Lisbon, saw ‘Baskerville’s Virgil, and Foulis’s Homer, both which books were presented by George Pitt, esq.’ (Travels through Spain and Portugal, 1775: 41). This gift must date from between February 1770 and January 1771 when Pitt had been a British representative in Madrid. Finally, there is a curious smallpaper set (private collection) with the bookplate of Alexander Speirs of Eldersley (a Glasgow merchant, 1714–1782) with a printed leaf, bound in at the beginnings of both the Iliad and Odyssey, addressed to one of his sons: ‘Glasgow, July 3d, 1771. To John Speirs, Esq; student of Greek, in the University at Glasgow; who is, by the testimony of the Greek-Professor, an excellent Greek-scholar, and a most amiable youth; this copy of Homer, which he can so well enjoy, is respectfully presented, by Daniel Baxter, bookseller’. Daniel Baxter, a Glasgow bookseller and bookbinder associated with several Foulis publications in the late 1760s, may have been attempting to gain the patronage of Speirs, who had a large library. A consequence of the Glasgow Homer’s splendour and size was its embellishment. Illustrated Foulis books include the 1755 Callimachus with three plates showing Greek statues and the 1788 edition of

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The Gentle Shepherd, with plates engraved after David Allan, but whatever the explanation, the Homer was issued unillustrated. Volume one of the British Library’s large-paper Cracherode copy25 has engravings of a bronze head by George Vertue, and of a bust by Francesco Bartolozzi, while volume two has a different engraving of the bust by Bartolozzi’s pupil, Mariano Bovi. The large-paper copy sold from the Syston Park Library was similarly embellished.26 Illustrations originally done by Wenceslaus Hollar and others for John Ogilby’s translations of the Iliad (1660) and Odyssey (1665) were added to the copy of the Glasgow Homer in Brian Mackenna’s library.27 However, these illustrations are not commonly found, unlike those by John Flaxman, first published in 1793 but better known from their expanded 1805 editions. At least five Glasgow Homers are interleaved with plates from the 1805 Flaxman: one at the National Library of Wales,28 a Trinity College Dublin prize book presented to Pierce Somerset Butler in 1819 for progress in Greek verse composition; Glasgow University Library,29 from the collection of the Edinburgh professor, Sir William Hamilton; Stanford University Libraries;30 Birmingham University Library;31 and New York Public Library.32 While in Rome (1787–94), Flaxman was commissioned by Mrs Hare-Taylor to produce illustrations for both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Thomas Dibdin (1827: II: 58–9) remarks about the Foulis folio Homer: There are copies on large paper: of which one of great splendour and beauty is in the Althorp library. Mr. Flaxman, whose abilities have been before noticed, has composed designs for this work, which are executed with the usual classical taste and correct judgment of this artist. In Mr. Evans’s Catalogue, 1802, no. 5451, there was a large paper copy of this work, with the original designs of Flaxman for the Odyssey inserted: no price was affixed to this treasure, which has long ago been disposed of to some one of the numerous classical connoisseurs with which this country abounds. 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

678.i.1–2. Sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, beginning 12 December 1884; day 4, lot 954. Sale, Christie’s, 23 November 1998, lot 219. PA 4018 A2 d56. BC22–y.1–4. Gunst Collection, Z239.2.F76 H6 F CB. Foulis f PA 4018 A2–1756. Rare Books Division NRLK++ (Iliad) and NRM++ (Odyssey).

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If Dibdin means that Flaxman composed his designs for the Glasgow Homer (so Talbot Baines Reed 1887: 261 n.2; 1952: 260 n.3), then given the time lag, this would be compelling evidence of the influence exerted by the Glasgow Homer: but ‘work’ may refer simply to Homer’s epics, and the fact that copies of the Glasgow Homer have Flaxman’s designs from the 1805 rather than their first 1793 publication would support this. Perhaps we can only safely conclude that the Glasgow Homer was thought worthy of Flaxman. Other kinds of embellishment are also found. Murray (1913: 26) mentions copies ruled in red: the Syston Park copy already cited and the British Library’s large-paper Grenville copy.33 Glasgow Homers have yet to be surveyed for their bindings. While some mention the Foulis red turkey, in contrast to the 1770 Milton (below), there are few Homers in elaborate eighteenth-century British bindings. Examples include one James Scott of Edinburgh – fairly routine work for the Advocates’ Library34 – and the Mackenna copy (above), described as ‘late 18th-century English red morocco gilt, covers with fillet and roll tool border, including Greek-key roll, spine in seven compartments with raised bands, lettered in the second, the others with repeat decoration made up from foliage sprays and various small tools, gilt turnins’. A copy with uncertain provenance is described by Quaritch35 as ‘splendid . . . in contemporary red morocco, sides with a gilt roll border of strawberries and strawberry flowers, gilt panelled spines in compartments with floral and other ornaments, black leather labels, edges dyed green’. For such a widely-collected book we would expect early Continental bindings: one such was a ‘beautiful copy in old French red morocco extra, gilt edges, bound by Derôme le jeune’, and therefore no later than 1788.36 Some owners – Cracherode, Grenville, George IV, Gibbon,37 Jefferson,38 Earl Spencer (Althorp), John Ferguson, Sir William Hamilton, Thorold (Syston Park) – have been mentioned. Others include the Dukes of Devonshire;39 Maffeo Pinelli, in Venice;40

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

2 vols, 8859–60. NLS Bdg.l.22. catalogue 1039 [1984], item 43. Quaritch catalogue 200 [1900], item 383. Keynes 1980: 152. Sowerby 1952–9: nos 4267, 4270. Chatsworth Library 1879: II: 289, two copies. Sale, Robson and Clarke, London, beginning 2 March 1789, lot 9141.

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Mac-Carthy Reagh;41 William Hunter;42 David Murray;43 William Euing;44 and the Dukes of Buccleuch, a large-paper copy supplied for the 13-year-old third Duke in 1759 (Mossner and Ross 1987: 57–8). William Pitt’s previously cited copy provides an interesting history of ownership, passing through the libraries of several other prime ministers (Sir Robert Peel, the fifth Earl of Rosebery and Ramsay MacDonald) before its acquisition by the NLS in 1938. The Glasgow Homer’s influence is apparent in later Foulis books, its Greek type possibly prompting the Double Pica Roman of which the preface to Thomas Gray’s Poems, 1768, says: ‘This is the first work in the Roman character which they have printed with so large a type; and they are obliged to Doctor Wilson for preparing so expeditiously and with so much attention, characters of so beautiful a form.’ Further echoes of the Homer’s publicity are heard in Gray’s letter to James Beattie, who supervised the Poems: ‘I rejoice to be in the hands of Mr Foulis, who has the laudable ambition of surpassing his predecessors, the Etiennes and the Elzeviers as well in literature, as in the proper art of his profession.’45 Robert Foulis wrote to Beattie that they ‘had more at heart, doing justice to the merit of the poems, than procuring profit’ (Forbes 1904: 36–7), and of Foulis’s proffered gift to Gray, Beattie reported in late 1769: ‘I wrote to Mr Foulis, telling him that you had made choice of the Glasgow Homer, and desired to subscribe for two copies of the large paper of his Milton. That work is now begun; and is said by those who have seen a specimen to be one of the most magnificent books ever published in this country.’46 Thus Gray became yet another famous owner of the Glasgow Homer.47 The advertisement leaf of the 1770 Paradise Lost claimed the publication ‘as a companion to a late edition of Homer’, and we find the University of Glasgow paying for a gift copy.48 Perhaps more significantly, James Scott in Edinburgh bound at least nine Miltons (Ovenden 2000) including two presented in 1781 to the Society of Antiquaries and to George III as ‘a specimen of the printing and binding of North Britain’. Following the deaths of Robert and Andrew Foulis (1775 and 1776 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Catalogue (Paris 1815): no. 2391. GUL Dx.1.9–12. GUL Mu19–y.12–15 and Mu18–x.12–13, two copies. GUL BD12.b.18–19. Toynbee and Whibley 1971: III: 1002. Toynbee and Whibley 1971: III: 1082. Last recorded in the library of Sir Ronald Syme, Toynbee and Whibley: III: 1071–2 n.8. GUA 58285, 1773–6; the recipient, Mr Nair, has not been identified.

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respectively), Andrew Foulis the Younger published several folio editions of poets. While all are probably influenced by the Glasgow Homer, two display particular points of similarity – the 1778 Latin edition of Virgil dedicated to the Prince of Wales, in large- and small-paper editions, and one of Andrew Foulis’s last books, the 1795 folio Aeschylus. This edition, found with drawings by Flaxman, is significantly the only other folio in Glasgow Homer Greek.

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Richard Cooper Sr and Scottish Book Illustration Joe Rock There is no doubt that the engraver’s art languished in Scotland before Richard Cooper, as Sir Robert Strange testifies in his memoir of his master: The arrival of such a stranger was no small acquisition to Edinburgh, where the arts had languished, or where, more properly speaking, they never had been introduced . . . in a short time, he enlarged the circle of his acquaintances amongst many of the nobility and principal gentry of that country. All, as if by one consent, solicited his remaining, and many had already tendered to him their friendships and good offices . . . The line which Mr. Cooper pursued was engraving, this art having been almost totally unknown. (Dennistoun 1855: I: 24–5) Cooper was born in London on 26 October 1701, the son of William Cooper, bricklayer and citizen of London and his wife, Elizabeth Smith.49 One of four children, Cooper probably attended Merchant Taylors’ school, leaving in 1711–12. In 1717 he was bound apprentice stationer to John Clarke ‘citizen [of London] and stationer’, for seven years.50 William Cooper died, perhaps unexpectedly, in 1708 and his wife in the following year, possibly in childbirth. Richard was brought up by his grandmother and two individuals named by his parents: his uncle, the carpenter Henry Sell and a famous London brewer, Felix Feast. Under the terms of his mother’s testament the 49 50

International Genealogical Index, from the parish records. NA IR/1/06/021. Guildhall Library, Calendar of Freemen: A John Clarke became a freeman of the Company of Bricklayers and Tylers (April 1681).

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family inheritance was invested until each child reached the age of twenty-six.51 This confirms Strange’s statement that: ‘A considerable succession having reverted to him upon the death of his father, he quitted his profession as an engraver, and went to Italy in order to study painting and passed several years at Rome’ (Dennistoun 1855: I: 23). Strange was incorrect in suggesting Cooper ‘was bred under Pine [the engraver]’ but it will be seen that John Pine had a close relationship with John Clarke. As the son of a London bricklayer, Cooper’s inheritance is indeed likely to have been ‘considerable’ and affluence defines his life in Scotland. John Clarke was probably the son of the engraver James Clark of Edinburgh but he trained in London and spent many years there. John Clark (the ‘e’ likely dropped after his father’s death) collaborated with the engraver John Pine on a number of plates (Prescott 2004), the most popular being the frontispiece to The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (London, 1719). Pine’s Scottish links appear strong, and he engraved the frontispiece (1720) to Malcolm Alexander’s Treatise of Music, published in Edinburgh (1721). Cooper and Clark are both associated with the first Scottish edition of George Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia (Edinburgh, 1727), with Cooper engraving the frontispiece and Clark the map of Scotland after John Adair. Richard Cooper began work as an engraver and stationer in London where he had Scottish clients. In 1724 he engraved a bookplate for a Lord of the Treasury, George Baillie of Mellerstain, in the Scottish Borders. Cooper supplied 400 prints and the Mellerstain account book (NLS) also lists a hall book for visitors, account books, a case for papers and ‘a book to teach distilling’. The last is probably George Smiths’ A Compleat Body of Distilling, published in London (1725), which coincides with Cooper’s design for the frontispiece to The Vineyard (Blanche 1975: Fig. 132) issued in London (1727) and with his ownership of a brewery in the Canongate after 1735. There is also evidence that Cooper was associated with London art societies and academies favoured by Scottish artists and patrons (Bignamini 1991). He may be the ‘Cooper’ mentioned in George Vertue’s retrospective (1742/3) list of Rose and Crown Club members, and there is evidence that he was associated with the first St Martin’s Lane 51

NA Prob 11/499 Testament of William Cooper, bricklayer, dated 21 July 1705, probate 15 January 1708. Prob 11/506 Testament of Elizabeth Cooper, widow dated 25/6 May 1708, probate 20 January 1709. Widow Cooper, Bainbridge Street, St Giles-in-the-Fields, offered ‘A new one horse shase [chaise] never used . . . the owner being lately dead’ for sale in Post Man and the Historical Account, 2 March 1708.

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Academy (Bignamini 1991: 53, 91). The drawing master there was Louis Cheron, a student of Charles le Brun at the Académie Royale in Paris, who won the Prix de Rome in 1676 and 1678. In a Rose and Crown Club tradition, Richard Cooper sat for his portrait to George Englehart Schröder, a leading member of both the club and the first St Martin’s Lane Academy (Bignamini 1991: 47–8). The timing of the portrait, which Cooper published in mezzotint, could not be more significant. Louis Cheron died in 1725, at which point Schröder returned permanently to his native Sweden and two years later Cooper came into his inheritance, set off for the Continent and as a result of meeting the Scottish limner Alexander Guthrie there, settled in Edinburgh. Richard Cooper purchased his first property in the Canongate of Edinburgh in 1735. He almost immediately built another imposing house beside it, with five large windows facing south towards Salisbury Crags, across a small brewery yard and a long garden that stretched over 150 yards to the Cowgate (Rock 2005a: 11–23). His marriage to Ann Lind (1738) brought kinship with several noble families, including the Earls of Morton, Eglinton and Findlater (Paton 1908). They had three children; the eldest, Richard Jr, became drawing master at Eton College and to Queen Charlotte and her daughters. In 1747 Cooper built a theatre in his back garden, leasing it to the Edinburgh Company of Comedians for twenty-five years. Opened by Lacy Ryan from London, this was the first purpose-built theatre in Scotland and it operated, strictly speaking, outside the law until the opening of the Theatre Royal in 1765 (Rock 2005a). The theatre became a focus for radical ideas and John Home’s The Douglas had its first performance there in 1756, with scenery by the Huguenot painter William Delacour. Jacobite unrest at the theatre resulted in a riot in 1749, encouraging Cooper to sell his house and purchase an extensive property opposite the Canongate Kirk where he leased one of the houses to the dowager Countess of Traquair (Rock 2002). The Cooper family lived in a house behind the street-front where an engraving workshop occupied one entire floor; window tax records suggest that the painter John Alexander lived in this Jacobite enclave until his death in 1762.52 Cooper was buried in the village of Restalrig, close to another family residence, when he died in January 1764.53 On 18 October 1729, Cooper signed a charter establishing the Edinburgh School of St Luke, the earliest academy of artists in 52 53

NAS E326/1/78 and 79. NAS B22/8/128, 28 January 1764.

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Scotland. They met in the University of Edinburgh from 1731, and as Cooper was the drawing master, the academy probably grew out of his collaboration from 1728 with the anatomist Alexander Monro primus in the groundbreaking anatomical illustrations he made for the Medical Essays and Observations (1733–45). From 1742 they also published reduced copies of the anatomical plates of Albinus (Rock 2000). In collaborations that may have begun in London, Cooper made engravings for two leading members of the academy, the architect William Adam and the poet Allan Ramsay. Cooper engraved the plates for William Adam’s Vitruvius Scoticus around 1730, although subscriptions had been solicited for the book in 1727. The printing was not done until 1746 or later and the book was only published by Adam’s grandson in 1812 (J. Simpson 1980: 6). At the invitation of the second Earl of Stair, Adam took copies of his drawings to London in 1727 to have them engraved. It is not known if Richard Cooper was the intended engraver but it seems likely, since he shared a family interest with Adam whose earliest venture was a brick and tilework at Abbotshall in Fife from 1714. Adam’s stated aim in the 1727 prospectus was to produce a book of ‘My Designs for Buildings &c. in 150 Plates’ (E. Harris 1991: 95). When the antiquary James West visited Cooper in Edinburgh in 1733, he noted that Cooper and Adam were ‘about publishing and engraving all the fine buildings in Scotland to make a “Vitruvius Scoticus”’ (E. Harris 1991: 96). This is the first mention of the eventual title and it is significant that West’s perception of the project was formed in Cooper’s house. The Earl of Stair was probably responsible for broadening the scope to include other ‘fine buildings’ and the influence here may have been Erik Dahlberg’s Suecia antiqua et hodierna, published in Stockholm in 1716.54 A field marshal, Dahlberg had been Director of Fortifications to Charles X of Sweden and worked for a time with the architect, Nicodemus Tessin the elder. As a decorated soldier who had fought on the Continent, Stair would have known Dahlberg’s book, if not the man himself; Cooper’s early London association with the Swedish court painter, George Englehart Schröder may also be relevant. The parallels between the Vitruvius Scoticus and the Suecia are marked. The aim of the Suecia was to record all of the important buildings around Stockholm and this included many of the works of the architect Tessin. Dahlberg’s drawings had to be taken to Paris to be engraved and the plates were very similar in size to those in the 54

National Library of Sweden, http://www.kb.se/suecia/eng/default.asp

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Vitruvius, which complicated the printing history. For one thing, no press in Sweden could handle the large copper plates and one had to be imported. A text was planned but never published, and it was not until after Dahlberg’s death in 1703 that 600 complete sets of the prints were bound and sold. A similar lack of a press capable of handling large sheets and skilled printmakers may have delayed the printing of the Vitruvius plates until at least 1746. It is likely that a text for the Vitruvius was also intended and Cooper was working on a mezzotint portrait of William Adam in 1738, possibly for inclusion in the proposed volume although no such print is known to survive. In August 1738, Samuel Taylor formalised an unusual one-year apprenticeship with Cooper ‘in the art and calling of Metzotinto Scraping’, his master allowing him ‘a month . . . for finishing the head of William Adams, architect in Edinburgh, which I have already begun’.55 The generally spacious arrangement of the plates, with the engraved plan or elevation centrally placed in a large sheet and inscribed in a flowing copperplate hand, reflected the best French style. When it finally appeared around 1812, the book had little influence on architectural taste but a seminal influence on nineteenth-century Scottish architectural draughtsmanship. The frontispiece engraved by John Pine for Malcolm Alexander’s Treatise of Music, published in Edinburgh in 1721, pointed the way for Cooper’s earliest known publication in the north: Alexander Stuart’s Musick for Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scots Songs. Set by A. Stuart & engrav’d by R. Cooper. There is disagreement about the precise publication date of this small, fully engraved book; if as suggested, it was in 1726, when Cooper may have first met Ramsay in London (Kidson 1900: 182). The elegant frontispiece etching by Cooper shows a gentleman and his lady with their loyal dog in an interior setting (plate mark c.6.5 x 11.0 cm; Figure 1.9). The keyboard instrument is inscribed ‘Fenton’ and this is possibly an advertisement for the instrument maker Thomas Fenton who was paid for tuning instruments by the Edinburgh Musical Society in 1730–1.56 Engraving, printing and publishing music was a very lucrative employment, and Cooper and his pupils cornered the market in Scotland for almost fifty years. The 1729 publication of William McGibbon’s Six Sonatas for Two German Flutes was the first to use a large plate (plate mark 17.5 x 24.0 cm) and this became the standard size for Cooper’s musical publications (Glen 1900; Kidson 1900). 55 56

NAS SC39/76/78. ECL Minutes of the Edinburgh Musical Society, March 1729–30.

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As a theatrical entrepreneur and artist, an association with Ramsay was a natural one for Cooper, and their friendship was instrumental in guiding the poet’s son into a career as a painter. The earliest known drawing by the future portrait painter Allan Ramsay Jr was engraved by Cooper and appeared as the frontispiece to the first volume of his father’s 1727 Poems (plate mark 13.8 x 8.1 cm; Figure 1.10). As the drawing is dated 1729 and is inscribed with the information that it was made before Ramsay Jr’s sixteenth birthday (2 October 1729), then it may be assumed that it was bound with the first volume when the second appeared in 1729 (Smart 1992: 94–5). Nevertheless, the engraving testifies to the efforts of the School of St Luke and to the young artist’s training under Cooper. Cooper also engraved a vignette for the title page of Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, published in 1729 (Figure 1.11). It shows the poet leaning on a crook before Apollo and probably echoes the theme of Ramsay’s The Poet’s Wish: An Ode (I. G. Brown 1984). Ramsay Jr had a copy of the engraving tipped into his earliest surviving sketchbook, now in the National Galleries of Scotland, and it may be that once again he executed the original drawing, presently untraced. Cooper also etched a portrait of the poet, said in the inscription to be ‘ad Vivum’, from life (Figure 1.12). It appears in some volumes of the 1728 quarto edition of Ramsay’s Poems but its rarity suggests that it may not have been so intended and was simply bound in later. Either way, it is almost always poorly printed with an excessive use of ink, making the shadows and the skin tone unnecessarily dark. This may be evidence of the difficulty in finding printers who could handle large plates sensitively at this early date, especially those incorporating stipple and elaborate cross-hatching (plate mark 17.5 x 23.0 cm). Perhaps the finest illustrations for Milton’s Paradise Lost were designed by Sir John Baptist Medina and engraved by M. Burgesse for the fourth London edition (1688). These were often copied and one might assume that Medina’s arrival in Edinburgh in 1694 would have led to an illustrated Scottish edition. But that was not the case, until Robert Urie published an edition in Glasgow in 1746, which Richard Cooper illustrated with engravings after Medina, greatly reduced in scale and, it must be said, in quality. Cooper’s method is fascinating and suggests that he was seeking ways to hold printing costs down. The plates do not appear to have a plate mark on two sides and in one case, on B. VII, there is surface scratching clearly visible beyond the point where the plate mark would normally appear. This evidence indicates that Cooper engraved four images on one plate which were then printed and cut up into individual sheets. The occurrence of the watermark at top right and top left on some plates would appear to

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Figure 1.9 Frontispiece and title page of Alexander Stuart’s Musick for Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scots Songs, c. 1726.

Figure 1.10 Allan Ramsay Jr’s portrait of his father, 1729.

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Figure 1.11 Title page with vignette for The Gentle Shepherd, 1729.

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confirm this. In 1752, Urie published another edition with identical plates, but this time with plate marks all-round (typically 13.0 x 7.0 cm), suggesting the larger copper plate had been cut up into individual plates. By now greatly worn, these produced much lighter impressions. The frontispiece was copied from George Vertue’s engraving for Jacob Tonson’s 1727 London edition of Paradise Lost In 1750 Cooper provided the illustrations for Robert Urie’s Glasgow edition of François Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus. The plates, signed ‘R. Cooper’ appear to be straight copies of earlier illustrations but closer examination reveals that Continental plates were used, the lower edge of the image modified and three lines of French text rather crudely covered by a re-etched extension of the image (plate marks typically 11.5 x 6.6 cm). There is also an indication of erased page references at the top right of the plates, perhaps for yet another reuse. The French edition of Telemachus for which these plates were intended is unknown; in fact, they may never have been published in France, but were rejected plates that found their way to Britain. The use of Continental plates was rare in Scotland; examples occur in engravings by Sebastian le Clerc for Bonarelli della Rovere’s Fili di Sciro (1772), Torquato Tasso’s Aminta (1753) and Gierusalemme Liberata (1763), all published by Robert Foulis. Other than a few single engravings (frontispiece for Ruddiman’s Novum Testamentum, 175057 and the plates for Sir John Clerk’s Dissertatio de Monumentis Quibusdam Romanis, 1750 from plates engraved in 1745),58 the Telemachus was to be Cooper’s last known foray into book illustration. Around 1755 the teaching of medical draughtsmanship temporarily moved away from the University to the Royal Infirmary, after Alexander Monro’s semi-retirement when his son became Professor of Anatomy in 1754. Monro had been a manager of the Royal Infirmary from its completion in 1741, a member of the Select Society from its inception in 1754 and a director of the Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences and Manufactures, first brought to public attention in the Scots Magazine (March 1755: 126–30). The Edinburgh Society met in the Infirmary and offered premiums for a broad range of manufacturing and artistic endeavour, including book production, the premium winners having their work placed on display in the Infirmary. Many of the young artists who won annual prizes were Cooper’s pupils and John Donaldson, 57

58

Victoria and Albert Museum Library, CLE.Q.15. Binding has the arms of James Douglas, fifteenth Earl of Morton, Cooper’s kinsman. NAS GD18/1729/4, 331.

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the porcelain and miniature painter, was one of these (Tapp 1942–3). Peter and Thomas Donaldson, perhaps related, drew and engraved anatomical illustrations published by Alexander Monro secundus and Andrew Fyfe, and may have trained with Cooper as well. Thomas and Andrew also collaborated with Professor John Hope in the production of botanical illustrations, now in the collection of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Along with Richard Cooper Jr, all three of the Donaldsons received prizes for drawings in the years between 1755 and 1758, but never for book illustrations or engravings, an omission that highlights the lack of academic interest in book illustration even by mid-century. In their published resolutions (Scots Magazine, March 1755: 127) the Edinburgh Society pointed out that ‘the art of printing in this country requires no encouragement’, and yet the only book-trade processes they sought to reward were ‘the best printed and most correct book’ and the manufacture of printing paper. The first and only illustrated book to win a premium was the Foulis Press folio edition of Callimachus’s Hymns and Epigrams (Glasgow, 1755), a volume with three full-page engravings of classical sculpture. The plates are copied from Antonio Francisco Gori’s Museum Florentium (Florence, 1734) and although unsigned, probably represent the work of three students of the Foulis academy, James Maxwell (Apollo), James Mitchell (Jupiter) and John Lawson (Diana).59 There is, however, no attempt to relate them to the text and for all their virtuosity and austere neo-classicism they look awkward (Scots Magazine, January 1756: 49). Richard Cooper’s contribution to the arts in Scotland both personally and through his pupils, was enormous. His personal influence on book illustration was most apparent in medical publication, where he was a pioneer in Scotland and contributed significantly to the international dissemination of Scottish medical research. Although a gifted entrepreneur, Cooper was not a thrusting man who forced his skill or ideas on others and this is evident in the way he approached the work of his pupils. With minimal alteration, he published the young Allan Ramsay’s pencil portrait of his father in 1729 (Figure 1.10), and adopted the same approach to the work of his collaborator, Alexander Monro primus. Rather than redraw the illustration Monro provided so apologetically to accompany his first contribution to the Medical Essays, Cooper simply engraved the drawing. This was the mark of the man; he encouraged all of his students to publish their work, sometimes with less than brilliant results. The early work of Thomas Phin in the fourth edition of George Buchanan’s Rerum Scoticarum Historia 59

GUL http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/foulis/books1.htm

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(1751–2) is a case in point. Within a few years Phin would engrave a beautiful Map of the British and French Settlements in North America for the Scots Magazine (May 1755) with an asymmetric cartouche in the most elegant rococo style. Andrew Bell began engraving silver in Cooper’s atelier and went on to be an exponent of a brilliant reproductive style (Rock 2005b). His plates for the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1771) further expanded the international reach of Cooper’s school of engraving. Robert Strange published a delicate engraving of Justice in two works by Thomas Ruddiman (1747–8) before becoming a reproductive engraver of international repute, making copies after Old Master pictures. Peter and Thomas Donaldson used a softer technique to good effect, occasionally accompanied by aquatint, in their medical illustrations. They clearly had the benefit of a press capable of handling enormous copper plates, and the resulting fold-out sheets grace The structure and physiology of fishes explained, and compared with those of man and other animals (1785), the pioneering work of comparative anatomy by Alexander Monro secundus. Regrettably Cooper could not push and cajole authors and publishers to commission new illustrations. In his defence, even the Foulis brothers, who also established an academy specifically to train book illustrators, had very limited success in this part of their venture. As it turned out, Robert Foulis’s son, Andrew, and an Academy pupil, David Allan, published the first genuinely imaginative Scottish book illustrations, but not until 1788. Poignantly and ironically, these were for Allan Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, where David Allan engraved nine leaves of music and a frontispiece, from the 1729 portrait of the poet by his son. Figure 1.12 Richard Cooper’s engraved portrait of Allan Ramsay Sr.

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Atlases, Map-makers and Map-engravers Chris Fleet Scottish cartographic publishing was transformed during the eighteenth century. There was a huge growth in volume, in numbers of map-makers, maps themselves, and map users, particularly after 1745. Driven by changes in society, maps were produced for different and new purposes; the predominance of military mapping in the early eighteenth century gave way to a range of new maps, such as those for estate management, enclosure, for planning new roads and canals, or charting the rapid changes in the countryside and the larger burghs. Of greater importance still, the form and content of these maps reflected a new set of cultural values. As the world assumed new geographical patterns of land and sea through discoveries, the way this world was presented on the printed page was also changing. Historians of cartography have highlighted the importance of accuracy of measurement in the Enlightenment ‘as the sine qua non of cartographic progress’, as well as ‘an increasing emphasis in mapping on original survey, on more precise instruments, especially at sea, and on more detailed cartographic representation as an end in itself’ (Harley 1987:10). The Enlightenment – with its close ties to Scotland – was never a coherent single entity, but it was based upon certain shared ideas about knowledge and the world. As educated society gradually accepted the sun-centred Copernican solar system and Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity, which postulated the shape of the earth as an oblate spheroid, geographical texts and maps were revised and rewritten. Proof of the shape of the earth required more accurate timekeeping and measurement, and a growing movement to determine longitude accurately culminated in John Harrison’s fourth marine chronometer of 1759 (Pedley 2005). Under this ‘esprit geometrique’, maps supposedly became plainer, stripped of their artistic ornamentation, and able 91

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to assemble a steadily expanding range of geographical ‘facts’ within a precise and coherent graticule, a neat geometrical grid of lines of latitude and longitude. One must, however, look beyond this rhetoric of cartographic progress to the content. The claims of contemporary map-makers for greater accuracy, progress and improvement over their predecessors were largely disproved by the maps themselves. William Roy’s Military Survey of Scotland (1747–55), the most detailed map of the whole of mainland Scotland during the eighteenth-century, was in the words of Roy ‘rather to be considered as a magnificent military sketch, than a very accurate map of a country’ (Roy 1785: 386). The only eighteenth century county atlases of Scotland, such as those by Herman Moll (1725, 1745), Thomas Kitchin (1749, 1756) or Andrew and Mostyn Armstrong (1777, 1787 and 1794), had little fresh material to offer and were damned by contemporaries. According to Richard Gough in his British Topography Armstrong’s ‘Scots Atlas’ is little valued: his pretension to actual survey is entirely chimerical: he copied others, ingrafting mistakes of his own, and run [sic] over the counties in a strange cursory manner . . . Armstrong has attended to his own and the engraver’s profit more than that of public or their information. (Gough 1780: II: 588) The Enlightenment gave rise to the idea, still common today, that map-making progressively shed error and steadily improved in the way it represented the world. The belief in the map as an ‘objective’ or ‘truthful’ representation of reality can also be traced to this time. In practice, neither of these claims can be generally supported, and a focus on the context of the maps, their makers and users can allow a fuller understanding of the maps themselves in this century, and the social and political purposes behind them. When the period’s significant maps are grouped accordingly, several questions arise. Who drafted these maps and why? Who funded them? What new instruments and techniques were used? And for whom were the maps made? Following the Union of 1707, the strength of the Jacobite cause and rebellions in 1715, 1719 and 1745–6 determined the direction of cartography. However, this was also the century of the private surveyor, financed by networks of patronage, landed society and latterly burgh councils, mapping both land and sea. There was a growing demand for atlases, geographical texts, grammars and printed maps, particularly by an increasingly learned polite society in the later decades of the century. One must also consider the social networks

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behind map-making, the institutions and societies that supported map-makers and the importance of apprenticeship for surveying, engraving and publishing. Internationally, there was a steady ‘militarisation of cartography’ during the eighteenth century, with new state-funded military academies in several European states, and a growing military appreciation of the value of maps (Edney 1994a). In Scotland, the concern over Jacobite rebellion led to a large number of maps and plans being drafted, particularly of forts, castles, roads, clan territories and battles. These new military map-makers were engineers and draftsmen in the employ of the British Board of Ordnance, a body with responsibilities for munitions and military infrastructure that had added Scotland to its growing responsibilities after 1707. Over 800 military plans survive, the vast majority in manuscript, dating primarily from the 1715 and 1745 rebellions, and depicting the chief Hanoverian castles and forts. Many of the engineers were from the Continent, and brought with them cartographic practices in colour, style and scale that are distinctive (Fleet 2007). Although these maps, including Roy’s Military Survey of Scotland, remained away from public scrutiny, they had a subtle but growing influence on later printed mapping, particularly in the Ordnance Survey. The military engineer John Elphinstone, who drafted the earliest surviving map of Burntisland, compiled a map of Scotland in 1745, engraved by Thomas Kitchin, with new information particularly from military reconnaissance. In 1745–6, three very similar ‘new’ maps of Scotland were published, highlighting the military or ‘King’s Roads’ through the Highlands, by Andrew Rutherford, Thomas Willdey and Richard Cooper. Rutherford’s map shows the position occupied by General Cope each day on his way to Inverness. Battle plans were more obvious expressions of propaganda, especially those of Prestonpans, Falkirk and Culloden. Some were published as broadsides, others within The Gentleman’s Magazine and The London Magazine. John Finlayson acted as Prince Charles’s military engineer and commissar, and drafted both a battle plan of Culloden, as well as a map of Great Britain showing the routes of the armies in 1745–6. Among a large quantity of surviving Hanoverian mapping, Finlayson’s are special in depicting a Jacobite view and particularly poignant symbols of crushed Jacobite aspirations. William Edgar, who accompanied the Duke of Cumberland’s army north for survey work in 1746, was responsible for a county map of Peebles-shire in 1741, engraved by Richard Cooper. He was also responsible for the only detailed mideighteenth century printed map of Edinburgh, subsequently published

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in William Maitland’s History of Edinburgh (1753). 60 This map is also significant as the earliest ichnographic or overhead map of the burgh, replacing the earlier scenographic or bird’s-eye perspective by James Gordon. William Roy, who was born and brought up at Miltonhead in Lanarkshire, had a life-long interest in antiquities, and his Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain (London, 1793), including fifty-one engraved plates, is a wonderful illustration of military cartography (Figure 1.13). The half-century after 1750 witnessed a revolution in British topographical mapping (Laxton 1976; Delano-Smith and Kain, 1999). This heyday of the Scottish land surveyor (c. 1760–1840) saw maps prepared to assist with agricultural improvement, including enclosure, drainage, the division of commonty, planned villages, the consolidation of farming and clearance, and the planning of new roads and bridges (Adams 1975, 1980; Gibson 2007). These estate maps were almost wholly drafted in manuscript, but land surveyors often diversified into other activities, including other types of mapping. They drafted printed maps to resolve disputes over boundaries, such as the Mamlorn hunting forest in Perthshire in the 1730s, surveyed by Colin Foster.61 The Aberdeenshire surveyors, George Taylor and Andrew Skinner, were responsible for Scotland’s first road atlas in 1776, including sixty-one plates of roads shown in strips, adopting a style similar to that of Ogilby’s Britannia published a century earlier (1675). John McArthur, who had surveyed the estates of the Earl of Breadalbane, published two fine maps of Glasgow in 1778 and 1779, engraved by Alexander Baillie, and financed primarily by subscription and the Town Council (John Moore 1996). From 1759, the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (from 1847, the Society of Arts) encouraged county mapping by offering awards of up to £105 for those based on original surveys, triangulation and accurate measurements for latitude and longitude, and at a scale of one inch to the mile or larger. Although the Glasgow estate surveyor Stephen McDougall remarked to the Society in 1760 that the premium was ‘too little for a man to execute the survey’, many other surveyors were encouraged to publish excellent new county maps.62 Andrew and Mostyn Armstrong were awarded 60 61

62

NLS Sl.: sn., 1742, The Plan of the City and Castle of Edinburgh / by William Edgar Architect. See Colin Foster, ‘An Exact Map of Mamlorn Forest’ 1732, NLS, Acc.4743. The printed map relating to the Act resolving the dispute is by David Dowie, A map of the Forrest Mamlorne, faithfully survey’d to conform to an act & warrant of the Rt. Hon. The Lords of the Council & Session, dated the thirty first day of July 1735, NLS, EMS.s.292 and EMS.b.6.5(16). Royal Society of Arts, G.B. IV, 105.

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Figure 1.13 William Roy’s Military Antiquities.

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fifty guineas for their map of Northumberland in 1768 and encouraged by this they went on to produce county maps of Berwickshire (1771), the Lothians (1773) and Ayrshire (1775). County mapping in Scotland was also assisted by the Society for the Forfeited Annexed Estates, who from 1755 to 1784 administered thirteen of the largest pro-Jacobite estates in Scotland (Wills 1973). In 1784, they purchased twenty-five copies of each of John Ainslie’s county maps of Selkirk (1773), Fife (1775), Wigtown (1782) and Edinburgh environs (1779).63 Several British county maps were accompanied by geographical memoirs, printed texts describing the history and construction of the map, which often made claims to their accuracy and validity. The Armstrongs published a Companion to their Map of the Three Lothians (1773), with lists of towns, villages and landowner’s residences. It also included a list of subscribers, who financed the expense of many county surveys in Scotland. James Stobie used the influence and connections of the fourth Duke of Atholl (his employer) and the Duke’s brother-in-law, Thomas Graham of Balgowan, to finance his magnificent county map of Perthshire and Clackmannanshire in 1783 (Figure 1.14; Fleet 2004). By the close of the century all the Scottish counties had been surveyed in detail, several more than once, for the first time properly improving upon the Blaeu Atlas county maps (1654). During the eighteenth century there were huge advances in the design and construction of surveying instruments. The manufacture of precise theodolites, capable of recording bearings over long distances correct to one minute of arc or better, allowed counties to be accurately surveyed for the first time (Harley and Laxton 1977). Triangulation had been used in Europe since the sixteenth century, but not until the eighteenth was the technique applied by map-makers in Scotland. Colin Maclaurin, Professor of Mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1725, is credited with instructing several surveyors in the principles behind land surveying and measurement, including Alexander Bryce (surveyor of the north coast of Scotland in 1740) and the hydrographer Murdoch Mackenzie. As an Orcadian, Mackenzie benefited from local assistance in his survey of Orkney from 1744 to 1747, the first survey of the islands based on a rigid triangulation framework. Maclaurin gave Mackenzie a testimonial that spoke highly of his qualifications to take a geometrical survey, and the Navy Board assisted by loaning him a theodolite, plain table and chain (Robinson 1972). Following the publication of his Orcades (1750), the Admiralty 63

Ainslie’s petition and the Commissioners’ response are in NAS, E728/54/3

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Figure 1.14 County map of Perthshire and Clackmannanshire.

commissioned him to survey the west coast of Scotland and Ireland; thirteen charts of Scotland appear in his A Maritime Survey of Ireland and the West of Great Britain (1776). In 1774, Mackenzie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in the same year he published A Treatise of Maritime Surveying, which remained a standard work on hydrographic surveying for over half a century (Webster 1989). When Mackenzie was subjected to a detailed attack on the accuracy of his charts in the 1780s by the Enlightenment philosophe James Anderson, he defended himself, assisted by another Enlightenment figure, John Clerk of Elgin, in a 1785 pamphlet (Webster 1989; Withers 2002).64 While the earliest town plans in eighteenth-century Scotland were made for military purposes, the growing prosperity and expansion of the larger burghs after 1760 led to several new plans. Glasgow Burgh Council funded James Barrie, and later his assistant John Gardiner as town surveyor, as well as financing other survey work. From 1764 64

Justification of Mr Murdoch McKenzie’s nautical survey of the Orkney Islands and Hebrides in answer to the accusation of Doctor Anderson, cited in Withers 2002.

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Figure 1.15 James Craig’s plan for Edinburgh’s New Town.

to 1797, twelve new plans of Glasgow were drafted, ten of them printed, with four accompanying history books, almanacks or directories (Moore 1996). For Edinburgh in the years 1759 to 1800 over fifteen new plans survive, along with a greater number of variants. These include James Craig’s famous plan of the Edinburgh New Town (1767), with its neat geometry, symmetry, rationality and order, an impressive cartographic embodiment of Enlightenment principles (Figure 1.15; Philo 1999). His Majesty’s Printer and Stationer, Alexander Kincaid, commissioned the detailed Plan of the City and Suburbs of Edinburgh (1784) to be engraved by John Beugo for his History of Edinburgh (1787). Some of the later Edinburgh plans included detailed cadastral information on property owners, as well as projected new works, such as roads, canals and docks, in the rapidly expanding town. The geography of map printing and publication shifted, from the dominance of the Low Countries in the seventeenth century, to France and Germany in the early eighteenth century, and then to England and particularly London by the later eighteenth century. Numerous maps of Scotland appeared in world atlases by great cartographic publishers, including the Homann family in Nuremburg (1710), Johannes Covens and Pieter Mortier in Amsterdam (1740), Matthaus Seutter in Augsburg (1735), Robert de Vaugondy (1751) and Jacques Bellin

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(1757, 1764) in Paris. In an age where the costs of surveying greatly outweighed the costs of engraving, printing and publishing, and also where it was difficult to control copyright and prevent plagiarism, many maps were copied from others, often with very dated or dubious results. Most of these maps in Continental atlases were largely based on the geography of the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland of 1654, with its distinctive bend in the Great Glen, shape of the north coast, and flat top to Lewis (Moir 1973). Despite the claims in their titles (‘new and accurate / new and complete / new and exact’), the great London map publishers were content to rely on the work of others, and new geographical discoveries often took several decades to appear in print. Herman Moll’s county atlases of 1725 and 1745 were largely based on Blaeu’s county maps, albeit with a smattering of additions such as roads. Moll settled in London from Germany, and had by far the largest share of the English cartographic market in the first quarter of the eighteenth century (Reinhartz 1997). Thomas Kitchin was another engraver and publisher in London, as well as Hydrographer to the King, and engraved more than a dozen maps of Scotland. However, the thirtytwo county maps published in his Geographiae Scotiae of 1749 and 1754 are all clearly based on John Elphinstone’s map of 1745 that he had engraved, with a few names added from Moll’s county maps. Kitchin also collaborated with Emmanuel Bowen, who engraved six maps of Scotland between 1747 and 1763 within various atlases, largely based on Elphinstone, although proclaiming a greater accuracy based on new observations (Moir 1973; Hodson 1984, 1997; Withers 2002). Several important Enlightenment themes, including a desire to order geographical knowledge, and an interest in empire, commerce and new empirical learning gained through reconnaissance, can be seen in geographical grammars, which proliferated in this period (Withers 1996). These works fell within an encyclopaedic tradition, with the map acting both as a conceptual unifier of geographical knowledge and as a means to and metaphor for global ordering (Edney 1999). Patrick Gordon’s Geography Anatomiz’d or the Geographical Grammar, first issued in 1693, had over twenty editions, with maps of Scotland by Robert Morden, John Senex and Emmanuel Bowen. Bowen himself published A Complete System of Geography in 1747, with two maps of Scotland, while Thomas Salmon’s A New Geographical and Historical Grammar, first published in 1749 in London, had thirteen editions, five published in Edinburgh between 1767 and 1782. The most successful of these works was by William Guthrie, born in Brechin, who

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published twenty-four editions of his A New Geographical Historical and Commercial Grammar between 1770 and 1843. The earliest of these had maps engraved by Thomas Kitchin; later ones had maps by J. Russell, who also engraved maps for The Atlas to Guthrie’s System of Geography published from 1785 onwards. The accelerating pace of book publication in the closing decades of the century is also reflected quantitatively in recorded maps of Scotland. In the seventeenth century, only forty maps of Scotland are recorded, rising to fifty-eight in the fifty years to 1750. However, from 1750 to 1800, 127 separate maps of Scotland are known to have been created, nearly all of them published within books (Moir 1973). With limited royal patronage compared to other European countries, eighteenth-century map-making relied primarily on private individuals. In such circumstances, support through patronage or subscription was crucial, and successful map-makers could achieve social advancement and promotion if their maps were well received by the gentry or learned societies. At the top of the cartographic social hierarchy were men such as Nevil Maskeleyne, the Astronomer Royal, who surveyed Schiehallion in 1774–5 for gravitational measurements, or James Stewart Mackenzie, Lord Privy Seal of Scotland, who supported John Ainslie’s town plan of Edinburgh (1779) and James Stobie’s county map of Perthshire (1783). Many improving landlords had a wide influence beyond their estates through societies, commissions and political bodies. James Douglas, the fourteenth Earl of Morton, was a member of the Honourable Society for Improvement in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland, the Longitude Commission, the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris, and the Royal Society in London, as well as being a commissioner for the Forfeited Annexed Estates. He encouraged the foundation of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in the 1730s, and supported the surveys of Alexander Bryce and Murdoch Mackenzie, as well as of his own estates in Orkney in the 1740s. Those at the pinnacle operated in the service of the state or its proxies, and this determined what maps were produced, and what features these maps included and excluded. British landed interests represented in parliament and government were deeply hostile to national surveys at this time, and Britain lagged behind several European countries in these developments (Barber 1997). Many commercial map-makers occupied a lower tier of the professional hierarchy, unable to gain genteel status, while mathematical instrument makers and engravers were usually lower still, and unable to cross social barriers. Learned societies, such as the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (as well as their counterparts in London), were

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also important in securing trust, authority and support for geographic and cartographic work. John Ainslie, Scotland’s greatest cartographer at this time, and ‘virtually the Master-General of Scotland’s national survey’ for fiftyseven years (Adams 1973: 4), was a founder member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and used the Society as a setting to negotiate and secure patronage (Withers 2002). Ainslie was born in Jedburgh in 1745 and trained as a surveyor under Thomas Jefferys, Geographer to the King in the 1760s. Ainslie was unusual in drafting not only a very broad range of maps in his lifetime – marine charts, county maps, estate plans, maps of Scotland, as well as canal, road and legal plans – but also in engraving many of the maps he had surveyed and drafted. His map of Scotland drawn and engraved from a series of angles and astronomical observations (1789) became the standard for two decades. Robert Burns wrote to the bookseller Peter Hill on 2 April 1789: ‘I’ll expect along with the trunk my Ainslie’s Map of Scotland’ (Roy 1785: I: 392). Ainslie trained the land surveyor William Bald, and his manual, the Comprehensive Treatise on Land Surveying (1812), is one of the best guides to surveying practices in the eighteenth century. While most surveying in Scotland at this time was rarely lucrative, even during the boom years of the Napoleonic Wars with higher agricultural prices and rents, Ainslie had accumulated £8,976 7s 6d. at his death in 1828 (ODNB). With very few exceptions, maps in the eighteenth century were printed from engraved copper plates, a process outlined in this volume. Many Scottish surveyors sent their work elsewhere to be engraved, especially to London, but several significant maps were engraved in Edinburgh, a trend which grew from the 1780s. The links between certain surveyors and engravers of their maps, as well as the system of apprenticeships, were fundamental to cartographic output in the city. Richard Cooper engraved several of John Adair’s county maps in the 1730s, Alexander Bryce’s map of the north coast of Scotland (1744), several county maps, marine charts and a map of the Superiorities of Edinburgh and Heriot’s Hospital (1759). Andrew Bell trained under Cooper, and in turn trained Daniel Lizars and Hector Gavin. Gavin engraved many maps, including a plan of Edinburgh in 1763, a map of Berwickshire in 1772, and maps for Salmon’s and Guthrie’s grammars. Just as some surveyors were also able to use their skills as teachers of mathematics and geography, several engravers were also instrument makers. In Glasgow, Alexander Baillie, who advertised as a Teacher of Drawing (Glasgow Mercury, 26 December 1782, cited in Moore 1996), engraved John Laurie’s maps of the Lothians (1763) and Edinburgh

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environs (1766), Charles Ross’s map of Lanarkshire (1775) and maps of Glasgow by John McArthur (1778) and James Barrie (1782). James Kirkwood, originally a clock and watchmaker in Perth, who moved to Edinburgh in the 1780s, engraved plans of Perth by Archibald Rutherford in 1774 and William Macfarlane in 1792 (T. McLaren 1938–42). He also was responsible for the first substantial Scottish globe (Withers 2001). During the eighteenth century, the shape and detail of Scotland’s geography was transformed through the publications of map-makers, and maps were used and understood by a growing, cartographically literate society. Many of the increasing number of books about Scotland, whether historical, geographical, antiquarian, philosophical, or economic, included a map as an essential accompaniment. Most of these maps were created by networks of private individuals, and during the eighteenth century the only significant state-funded map-making of Scotland was William Roy’s Military Survey. However, Roy’s promotion of the need for a state-funded, national survey of Great Britain in the succeeding decades brought about the Trigonometrical or Ordnance Survey in the 1790s, which, along with the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty founded in the same decade, led to a different pattern of cartographic publication in the following century.

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Map Engraving and Printing Chris Fleet From the late fifteenth century in Europe, engraving on metal plates supplanted the use of wooden blocks for printing maps. For the next three centuries, until overtaken by lithography in various forms, copper plate engraving was the usual means of map publication. The practice was part of a group of ‘intaglio’ printing techniques, in which the image is incised onto a surface, usually called the plate. The engraving process became quite specialised by the eighteenth century, with a greater variety of techniques, greater geographical diffusion across the world and greater outputs. The essential process, however, employed common elements which can be summarised quite simply. Copper plates were first incised with a graver or burin, as well as stamping tools, the plates were then inked, wiped clean to remove all ink other than in the engraved lines, and then rolled through a press under high pressure to transfer the ink onto dampened paper (Wallis and Robinson 1987: 296). While other soft metals, including pewter, gold, iron, silver and zinc were occasionally used, copper was the preferred medium for map engraving. Good copper plates were relatively soft and free from impurities; they were first planished with a hammer to ensure their quality and integrity. The smoothest side of the plate was then polished by grinding stones, pumice and often charcoal to create a glass-like surface. The plate was then heated and gently rubbed with a white ‘virgin-wax’, spread over the surface with a feather, and then left to cool and harden. The next stage involved transferring the drawing as a reverse image onto this wax, which could be done in several ways. One method described by Bosse (1645) involved using a form of carbon paper to transfer the design onto the wax. An alternative method, described by Faithorne (1702), involved laying the drawing face down on the plate and rubbing the back with a burnisher or pencil to transfer the design 103

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Figure 1.16 An engraver’s workshop from ‘Recueil de Planches sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques’. Supplement to the Encylopédie. Paris, 1762–72, vol. 4.

onto the wax coating. Whatever the method, it was also important to preserve the original drawing or a good copy of it, to compare with successive proofs and the final print for accuracy. Etching, by which the wax was removed, and then acid applied to create the ink-holding grooves in the copper, was infrequently employed in cartography. It tended to be used sparingly for ornamentation or pictorial aspects of maps, as well as for obtaining flat tones. Far more common was line engraving, by which the point of a sharp implement or burin would remove the metal, and various forms of punch were used for creating depressions for lettering, standard symbols and shapes. By the eighteenth century, and especially in larger engraving premises, these different elements were usually performed by different workmen, with some specialising only in lettering, others in geographical material, or decorative cartouches (Figures 1.16, 1.17). Compared to etching, line engraving created clearer results, with plates lasting longer during successive compression within the press. At various stages, proofs would usually be taken of the incomplete plate to send to the original cartographer or publisher for their comments and corrections. Sometimes too, counterproofs were taken, as a second copy of the freshly printed proof matching the reversed form on the plate, so that corrections would be easier to make. Corrections to the original plate could be made in various ways. Smaller lines could be erased by rubbing the area with a burnisher, spreading the adjacent copper to fill in the lines. Larger areas or deeper lines could be corrected by hammering the copper from behind. Both methods, however,

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Figure 1.17 Illustrations of the burin from ‘Recueil de Planches sur les Sciences, les Arts Libéraux, et les Arts Méchaniques’. Supplement to the Encylopédie. Paris, 1762–72, vol. 4.

created weaknesses in the plate, and following many printings, these original lines could reappear to form a ghost print. Although letterpress was usually printed on a flatbed press with static pressure applied to paper laid on top of the block of type, metal plates were usually printed on a roller press which applied moving pressure through two cylinders or rollers to the plate and paper (Figure 1.18). For best results, it was important properly to prepare the paper, ink and plate. Good quality paper needed to be dampened, often by immersing a few times in water, and then compressed overnight as a stack of paper to ensure even dampening and removal of excess water. Although dampening resulted in some variable shrinkage, and therefore altered the scale of the map, it also resulted in much better absorption of ink. The best ink was based on the carbon of lampblack, produced from the combustion of a variety of materials, including pinewood, vine twigs and sesame oil. The lampblack pigment was ground and heated in a suspension of nut oil, such as linseed, with stronger inks obtained by burning off more of the oil. The plate was warmed before working the ink into the grooves using a linen ball

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Figure 1.18 Operating a rolling press. Plate 18 from Abraham Bosse, Traicte de la manière de graver à l’eau forte et au burin, et de la gravure en manière noire; avec la façon de construire les presses modernes, & d’imprimer en taille-douce. Paris, 1745.

covered with ink, and then carefully wiped clean. The plate was then reheated before being laid on the horizontal plank of the press, with the moistened paper on top, and then the plate and paper were carried gently and steadily through the rollers. After printing, the printed copy was then hung to dry (sometimes taking several weeks) and the plate cleaned and reinked for the next impression. Cleaning the plate with a rag soaked in urine (au chiffon) was faster, allowing more prints per day, but the acid was hard on the copperplate, permitting fewer impressions. Cleaning the plate by hand (à la main) was slower, but gentler on the plate, often allowing two or three times as many maps to be printed. Although a few maps were printed in different colours with separate plates for different coloured elements, most colouring was applied by hand after printing, using watercolour paint. It was not until the nineteenth century that mechanical colouring replaced hand colouring through techniques such as chromolithography.

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Caricature: The Individual Contribution of John Kay Iain Gordon Brown The eighteenth-century Scottish caricature tradition is not notable, save for the extraordinary work of one man: John Kay. Kay’s personal vision of Edinburgh society is remarkable; his output is not merely a contribution to the art of caricature but the sole significant work in the field by any Scot of the century. Certainly Kay (1742–1826) had at least one contemporary imitator in the genre: the obscure John Jenkin, who, like Kay, produced a series of portraits of Edinburgh notables, and his output (however stiff and unimaginative by comparison) was in fact brought together as a collection of numbered plates rather earlier than Kay’s. Jenkin worked in a style very close to Kay’s, but feebly, and he was clearly greatly influenced by the latter’s much more subtle approach. Earlier also were the even more shadowy artists Callender and the anonymous and still-unknown begetter of the wonderfully evocative (and in their own day unpublished) series of caricatures of participants on both Jacobite and Government sides of the ’45. But eighteenthcentury Scotland gave birth to no W. H. Bunbury or Robert Dighton. John Kay held the field effectively alone, and he left behind him a body of work with its record of a time and a society without parallel. Kay’s purpose was different from that of most caricaturists. Malice and venom were wholly absent from his innocent art: his achievement was to record in a gentle, direct and personal way the foibles and oddities of real people, as individuals – some widely famous, some eminent in their time and place, some enjoying a purely local or ephemeral celebrity, some merely ordinary and undistinguished, yet displaying certain characteristics that appealed to the caricaturist – who were not customary butts of wit such as royalty or politicians. 107

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Verisimilitude was paramount, and faithful likenesses resulted. Minute observation underpinned Kay’s art: for instance, the undone buttons on the gaiters and breeches of Robert Craig of Riccarton, or the coat-cuffs and the gloves with thumb and two fingers exposed as worn by the Rev. Dr James Peebles in his pulpit. Kay portrayed the man and woman of the Edinburgh street – from the claret-enriched Lord of Session to Miss Burns, the high-class whore (Figure 1.19) – simply for the delight in varied physique or physiognomy that his subjects afforded him (and equally those who bought his prints), or on account of their eccentricity of manner, dress, way of living, notability or notoriety. His subjects were the kenspeckle figures of the city whom he spied about him on his walks or through his showroom window, and whom others saw on this same daily basis. Universal truths are revealed behind the individual portraits or ‘freaks of fancy’; and what seems at first parochially ‘Edinburgh’, and an utterly personal vision of a little world, is in fact an idiosyncratic view of humanity at large in all its infinite variety (Figures 1.20, 1.21). Kay’s achievement is unique in history. To this core of subjects others Figure 1.19 John Kay: Miss Burns. were added on a basis that it is harder to fathom: Thomas Jefferson, the Tsar of Russia, Toussaint l’Ouverture, Tom Paine. Men of the day were captured on account of their national celebrity, sometimes as British heroes: thus General Sir Ralph Abercromby rides his charger beside the Pyramids, and the burly Admiral Lord Duncan paces his quarterdeck at Camperdown. Kay did not draw for the entertainment of one class alone, but for all who could appreciate the humour of the human body and the human

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Figure 1.20 John Kay: Auction Room, with William Martin presiding.

Figure 1.21 John Kay: The Connoisseurs.

condition: many an otherwise unknown Scottish officer of volunteers or rank-and-file soldier was made the subject of one of Kay’s engravings on account of his unmilitary bearing, huge or tiny physique, or pompous uniform. The world of Kay’s satires was that of North Britons largely united against the threat of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the social and cultural milieu they sought to defend.

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About 1792, Kay is thought to have considered publication of a collection of his plates: his output came to about 900. Some letterpress was assembled by way of description of the caricature portraits; but it would be left for Hugh Paton in 1837–8 to bring to fruition the earlier project to assemble Kay’s ‘Original Portraits’ in the form that we know them, with anecdotal yet informative text (by the antiquarian advocate James Maidment) balancing the charming and quaintly naive images. Monthly parts were issued, and Paton’s collection was republished in three later nineteenth-century editions, though the plates had by the end become very worn, and the final Figure 1.22 John Kay: Adam Smith. printing was in a much reduced format. A complete facsimile edition was reissued in 2007. The words of the caption of one of Kay’s patriotic plates can be applied to his art and vision in general: ‘the great and the small are there’. Lord Monboddo appears writing at a table with a picture on the wall beside him of tailed men dancing in a ring, an amusing allusion to Monboddo’s well-known and much derided theories of human evolution. James Hutton chips with his hammer at a cliff composed of faces, perhaps those of opponents of his revolutionary geological theories. Sir William Forbes stands in his opulent banking house while a vignette in the background shows the same financier going about his eleemosynary activity in the streets. Hugo Arnot, the great historian of Edinburgh’s past, is captured by Kay, the great graphic recorder of the city’s present, as slender and bending as a blade of grass. Walter Scott is included in a group of profile ‘cameo’ heads of youngish men at the Bar: thus he appears in his earliest ‘public’ portrait. Scott is included with eleven other advocates ‘who plead without wigs’, and the image and its fellows were presumably sketched in Parliament House (just opposite Kay’s caricature showroom at 10 Parliament Close), but it

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bears a date by which Scott, a Clerk of Session, had abandoned the practice of courtroom advocacy. Kay doubtless marked Scott as a man to whom he would return when either the bench, or more likely his subject’s increasing literary fame, claimed him, thus rendering him an even more worthy subject for the artist’s burin. The great and the small are treated with equal attention to detail, a characteristic of Kay’s art that gives his plates their vital ‘documentary’ quality as social record. Kay’s two images of Adam Smith, one labelled simply ‘The Author of the Wealth of Nations’ (Figure 1.22), are, with the Tassie vitreous paste medallion, the only lifetime images of the philosopher and economist. The parallel is significant, for James Tassie’s oeuvre is indeed to be closely compared with John Kay’s: both present in miniature a brilliantly observed portrait-gallery of the Scottish people in the Age of Enlightenment.

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The Spread of Printing Anette Hagan

Figure 1.23 Printing sites in Scotland to 1800.

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Table 1.4 Confirmed printing sites to 1800 with date of first imprint. (Numbers Refer to Map. Figure 1.23) (Disputed dates for some sites appear in parentheses) 1 Edinburgh: 1508 21 Crieff: 1774? 2 St Andrews: 1552 22 Inverness: 1774 (1746) 3 Stirling: 1571 23 Restalrig: 1774 4 Aberdeen: 1622 24 Greenock: 1778 5 Glasgow: 1638 25 Kilmarnock: 1780 (1765) 6 Leith: 1651 26 Kelso: 1782 (1715) 7 Campbeltown: 1685 27 Hawick: 1783 8 Tarbert: 1685 28 Montrose: 1784 (1745) 9 Kirkintilloch: 1693 29 Carron: 1785 10 Maybole: 1694 30 Ayr: 1790 11 Kirkbride: 1711 31 Banff: 1790? (1784) 12 Dumfries: 1715 32 Duns: 1793 (1780) 13 Perth: 1715 33 Kirkcaldy: 1794 14 Bannockburn: 1746 34 Dunbar: 1795? (1751) 15 Berwick-upon-Tweed: 1753 35 Whitburn: 1797 16 Dundee: 1757 (1547) 36 Arbroath: 1799 17 Falkirk: 1766 37 Sanquhar: 1799 18 Dreghorn: 1769 38 Dalry: 1800 19 Paisley: 1769 (1765) 39 Dunfermline: 1800 (1733) 20 Peebles: 1770?

An early number of the Publications of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society calls the introduction of the first printing press, ‘not merely the commencement of a new skilled trade, but a new source and kind of intelligence’ (MacKay 1895–8: 34). By 1800 that ‘intelligence’ had come to some thirty-nine Scottish towns, all mentioned in imprints, including a probably spurious naming of Bannockburn. One location, Tarbert on Loch Fyne, definitely had a press, although no publications survive, and there is conjectural evidence for a home-made press in Kirkintilloch before the end of the seventeenth century (Table 1.4). Occasionally other towns may be named in publications, but it is best to assume that such items are from a press in a larger, nearby town. Indirect evidence indicates as many as nine other printing locales, but this cannot be verified. After the first printing press was introduced in Edinburgh in 1508, and before 1700, Scotland had only ten printing sites, including St Andrews, Stirling and Aberdeen. Printing did not come to Glasgow for another 130 years, perhaps because of the challenges of transporting the heavy equipment along the rugged roads. Socio-economic factors, including the unavailability of paper, type and skilled pressmen, also delayed the spread of printing in Scotland, although the aftermath of the Civil Wars brought increased

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activity, especially in Edinburgh and Leith, and then at Campbeltown in Kintyre, where the Earl of Argyll brought a press when returning from exile in Amsterdam. His printer subsequently relocated to Tarbert on Loch Fyne. There may have been a press at Kirkintilloch if one accepts a reference in the Scottish Mercury (1693); and Maybole in Ayrshire is named as the printing place of a poorly produced single-sheet item of 1694. After this tentative beginning, the eighteenth century saw presses come to twenty-nine more towns, with another nine cited but not verifiable as actual printing locations: Haddington (1719), Dunkeld (1728?), Selkirk (1751), Elie (1777), Irvine (1784), Musselburgh (1785), Cupar, Fife (1789), Elgin (1789) and Peterhead (1798). Still, the first half of the eighteenth century witnessed only modest progress, with just four additional printing towns recorded between 1700 and 1750; however, Scottish printing sites more than doubled after 1750. In 1711 Peter Rae, minister at Kirkbride near Dumfries, built its first press at his manse (Shirley 1934: 3). His inaugural publication, John Hunter’s New Method of Teaching the Latin Tongue, cites Kirkbride in Latin (Cellae S. Brigidae) in its imprint. But in 1713 Rae’s parishioners accused him of neglecting his pastoral duties through preoccupation with his press, and printing ‘the obscene ballad of Maggie Lauder’ (Shirley 1934: 4). By 1715 Rae had transferred operations to Dumfries. Curiously, his own name never appears in either the Kirkbride or Dumfries imprints, only that of his son Robert who may simply have fronted for his father. However, Peter Rae’s own work, the History of the Late Rebellion (1718), was indisputably printed by his son at Dumfries. The establishment of the first printing operation in Perth was something of a historical coincidence. During the 1715 Rebellion, the Earl of Mar requisitioned an Aberdeen press with types, and the Minutes of the Town Council of Aberdeen (20 October 1715) record orders to deliver them ‘to Perth, or where the army shall be’. Robert Freebairn, then the King’s Printer at Edinburgh, joined Mar, but fled the country after the Rebellion’s failure, only to return to printing in Edinburgh by the 1720s. The finest surviving example of Freebairn’s Perth efforts is a twelve-page quarto pamphlet, Scotland’s Lament, Confabulation and Prayer (1715). The printer of the first text produced in Bannockburn (an account of the January 1746 victory of the Jacobites over the Hanoverians at the Battle of Falkirk) remains unknown presumably because he had Jacobite leanings. The disastrous defeat of the rebels at Culloden only three months later may explain the printer’s anonymity or the imprint itself could be false. Because of its historical and geographical connections with Scotland,

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Berwick-upon-Tweed is commonly counted among Scottish printing towns. Robert Taylor established the first press there in 1753; by 1764 he was also a bookseller, promoting a cookbook by his wife Elizabeth, which he printed. Dundee’s first extant imprint (1757) names Henry Galbraith, who had launched the town’s first newspaper, the Dundee Weekly Intelligencer, two years previously, although no copies survive. However, the beginning of printing in Dundee may go back another two centuries. In 1546 when the Edinburgh printer John Scot took refuge in Dundee from the persecution of the Privy Council, Dundee’s Provost refused to apprehend him, perhaps because Scot now printed in Dundee. No example of his work there survives, however. In 1661, a number of theses written at St Andrews University were recorded as printed in Dundee (Scottish Printing Archival Trust 1996: 1), but this is unconfirmed. Then in 1703, Daniel Gaines was funded by the Presbytery of Dundee to establish a press there, according to the Parochial Records for Foulis Easter (April 18, 1703): ‘Given out to Daniel Gaines to help him setting up the art of printing in Dundee, by the Presbytery’s recommendation £1.4/-1’ (Carnie and Doig 1958: 145). But nothing printed by Gaines is extant. Daniel Reid, one of Scotland’s most important chapbook printers, was the first to set up a press in Falkirk; the earliest item bearing his name dates from 1766 and the latest from 1784, when Reid removed his business to Carron. The ESTC previously noted a 1752 Falkirk imprint held at the Royal Artillery Institution Library Archives bearing the printer’s name T. Johnston, but this has been discredited. The item, a ninth edition of Graham’s Impartial History of the Rise, Progress, and Extinction of the Late Rebellion in Britain in the Years 1745 & 1746, has a title page with a handwritten imprint date of 1752, but the original printed date has obviously been altered. Other evidence confirms 1812 as the actual year of printing. In 1769, John Maclaurin, Lord Dreghorn, printed a volume of poems on his private press in Dreghorn near Edinburgh. Paisley’s first press arrived in 1769 when Archibald McLean, originally a Glasgow printer, went into partnership with the bookseller Alexander Weir to produce the second edition of George Muir’s Essay on Christ’s Cross and Crown. The poem Janus a Character was issued by the first press in Peebles (c. 1770), with the undated colophon confirming the printing site, although the printer is unnamed. The next Peebles imprint did not appear until 1820 from Alexander Elder, likely the brother of Hawick bookseller Walter Elder. Three more Scottish printing towns arose in 1774, when the trade crossed the Highland Line with the first press at Inverness. Its inaugural production was a Gaelic translation of the

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Psalms, printed by Alexander Davidson, printer and bookseller there (1774–94). In Restalrig, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, James Tytler wrote A Letter to John Barclay or the Doctrine of Assurance Considered and printed it himself on a home-made press (1774). Tytler was the editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and an active journalist in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Salem, Massachusetts (S. W. Brown 2005). Crieff possibly had its first press by 1774, when The Life . . . of Sir William Wallace was ‘Printed for J. Taylor and Co. Booksellers in Crieff’. But no details are provided for the printer or the place of printing. Two other publishers brought out the same text that year: one was ‘Printed for John Gillies bookbinder, High-Street, Perth’ (again there is no printer information); the other was printed and sold in Aberdeen by John Boyle. It is possible that Perth, with a press since 1715, was the printing place for both Crieff and Perth, especially considering that Gillies was also a bookseller. Alternately, Taylor may not only have sold but also printed the volume at Crieff. The decade’s last press was William McAlpine’s at Greenock (1778). The 1780s saw five more printing towns: Kilmarnock (1780) with Peter M’Arthur as printer; Kelso (1782) with James Palmer and George Caw, although Caw moved a year later and brought the first press to Hawick (1783); Montrose (1784) with George Johnstone, who had started printing in Aberdeen (1769), then Perth (1770–5), ultimately relocating to Kirkcaldy (1794) as its first printer; and finally Broomedgehall near Carron (1785) with chapbook printer Daniel Reid. But the real growth came in the 1790s with eight new towns. Ayr’s first printer John Wilson (1790) relocated from his hometown of Kilmarnock where he had printed the first edition of Burns’s poems. Banff (1790) became a printing centre when Peter Davidson, a bookseller and binder, issued some undated chapbooks roughly covering the period 1790–1810; he continued printing until 1837. By 1793, James Brown, a printer, bookseller and stationer, had brought the first press to Duns, although the Catalogue of Books, in the Public Library, at Dunse (dated 1780) may be his work. The imprint offers no other information, unlike that of the 1793 Catalogue of Books in the Subscription Library at Dunse which identifies Brown as printer. George Johnston, who had printed at both Aberdeen and Perth, and established Montrose’s first press, brought printing to Kirkcaldy (1794). Dunbar’s probable first printer (1795) was George Miller, a bookseller, bookbinder and grocer who did jobbing work and chapbooks between 1795 and 1804. The first Whitburn imprint (1797) provides no printer; J. Findlay is the first named there (1798), although probably not John Findlay, who began the Arbroath Magazine on Arbroath’s first press

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(1799). Sanquhar’s first press (1799) issued New Year’s Day, a Poem, printed by T. Brown. And, finally, John Gemmill brought printing to Dalry (1800), while bookseller and printer D. Richardson introduced it to Dunfermline (1800). Of thirty-nine printing sites established since 1508,65 three were established in the sixteenth century, seven in the seventeenth and twenty-nine in the eighteenth. Until the end of the seventeenth century, royal patents confined printing to a few select tradesmen, although restrictions in Scotland were less severe than in England where printing was for a long time limited to London, Oxford and Cambridge. The first presses established outside the main urban centres were in Dumfriesshire, and from the 1750s printing spread throughout Scotland’s mainland, south and east of the Great Glen. The absence of a press from the Highlands (apart from Inverness) until the nineteenth century is curious: the infrastructure for transporting presses and tradesmen was in place by the 1760s, and as Ronald Black illustrates elsewhere in this volume, a significant number of Gaelic texts was published. The lack of a press may indicate a desire on the part of the authorities to confine Gaelic printing to politically safe and observable sites, or it may simply indicate the dominance of the Gaelic oral tradition. Presses multiplied following Scotland’s successful copyright litigation at the Court of Session in the 1740s, and the spread of printing was encouraged by improvements to Scotland’s transport system after 1750. Better economic conditions and the increased availability and affordability of printing technology and paper also contributed. The remarkable expansion of printing across Scotland in the late 1700s indicates both the geographical extent of Scottish literacy and the importance of print to agendas for improvement.

65

This figure includes thirty-seven towns verified through imprint information, one lacking any extant product, and one merely conjectural.

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Chapter Two

DEVELOPING A MARKETPLACE FOR BOOKS Edinburgh Warren McDougall

T

he edinburgh book trade after the Union saw the final years of Agnes Campbell, Presbyterian printer and successful business woman, who represented the old way of doing business and held tenaciously to the monopolies of the King’s Printer patent. Meanwhile her principal rival James Watson was reorienting Scottish publishing, no less so than with his Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Songs (1706–11), which would revive vernacular poetry. In his revisionist introduction to the History of the Art of Printing, Watson argued that the quality of printing in Scotland would improve if correctors were well-paid, pressmen valued, sturdy Dutch presses used and type kept cleaner; his 1721 Rules and Directions to be Observ’d in Printing Houses, jointly created with other forward-thinking members of his generation (Plate 1), established a code for good behaviour and working practices in the trade (Evans 1982: 30–9). Watson’s connecting of print, improvement and the Scottish identity set the tone for the century. In 1706 the scholar Thomas Ruddiman (Plate 30) was a proofreader and editor at the press of Robert Freebairn, his brother Walter (Plate 31) a printing apprentice there. Thomas gave Freebairn a series of scholarly books, including Gavin Douglas’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid (1710), Ruddiman’s own Rudiments of the Latin Tongue (1714) and the works of George Buchanan (1715). The Ruddimans established their own press (1712) and in 1721 were the first to print Allan Ramsay (Figures 1.10, 1.11, 1.12); they took ownership of the Caledonian Mercury (1729), which remained in their family for forty-three years. The Ruddimans printed the first editions of two medical books that had the support of London booksellers and gained international reputations, Prof. Alexander Monro’s The Anatomy of the Humane Bones (1726) and the Edinburgh Philosophical Society’s Medical Essays and Observations (1733–45). 118

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A striking early instance of Edinburgh–London cooperation occurred in 1739 when Thomas Ruddiman completed and printed James Anderson’s large folio on antiquarian coins and medals, Selectus Diplomatum & Numismatam Scotiae Thesaurus, with Andrew Millar preparing the 180 John Sturt copper plates in London (Duncan 1965: 132–3). James McEuen, both a printer and bookseller, had shops in Edinburgh, Glasgow and The Strand in London, and was apprentice master to Andrew Millar, Alexander Kincaid and, likely, William Strahan (Sher 2006: 295–6). Millar took over McEuen’s bookshop in The Strand in 1728 and Strahan had Figure 2.1 Title-page of Hamilton and Balfour’s Virgil, 1743. his own printing business there by 1738. Kincaid and two other good friends of Strahan’s, Gavin Hamilton and John Balfour, became the principal Edinburgh booksellers of their generation. Kincaid was selling books from 1734; he later entered into partnerships with Alexander Donaldson, John Bell and William Creech, and was the King’s Printer and Stationer. Hamilton began as a bookseller in 1729, travelling to the Netherlands to buy books for the Advocates’ Library. He was public-spirited and viewed printing and publishing nationalistically, as part of Scotland’s improvement. The Virgil he and Balfour published (1743; Figure 2.1) has been credited with initiating the great age of Scottish printing (Gaskell 1952b: 102). Hamilton, Kincaid and then Balfour were prominent in the Scottish patriotic defence aroused when the London monopolists prosecuted the booksellers of Edinburgh and Glasgow for piracy at the Court of Session in 1739–48. When the new Scottish reprint trade began, they continued to sell London books in Edinburgh, and Kincaid began a publishing connection with Andrew Millar in 1748. Hamilton and Balfour, Kincaid and Donaldson and others in Edinburgh were now acquiring copyrights and registering them at Stationers’ Hall. From

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mid-century these new Edinburgh books were distributed in London through a number of booksellers, including those who had been protagonists at the Court of Session. In 1754, for example, Hamilton and Balfour bought the copyright, made an entry in the Stationers’ Register, and sent to London bookshops the Edinburgh Philosophical Society’s Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary (Stationers’ Company 1985: entries of copies 1746–73, 43). It was advertised for sale in London on 20 May (Public Advertiser) and was well received (Monthly Review 1754: XI: 169–90). In 1754, in the context of London co-operation and in his desire to promote Scottish authors, the nationalistic Hamilton offered David Hume £1,200 in copy money to publish 2,000 sets of the projected three quarto volumes of The History of Great Britain. Hamilton took London premises temporarily and advertised the book at various shops, including Millar’s and those of his friend David Wilson, under the uncompromisingly Scottish imprint of ‘Edinburgh: printed for Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill’: he was not sharing the copyright with London booksellers. In the event Hamilton paid the author £400 for volume one because sales failed in London and he had to sell the remainder to Millar, who became Hume’s publisher. The author thought the volume was the victim of political and religious antagonism but also of a combination of the London booksellers (McDougall 1988: 27–8). The Edinburgh trade would come around to the latter opinion. In the 1773 case of Hinton v. Donaldson and others, a Scots defence lawyer reviewing past and present nefarious actions in London said that ‘when new works are produced, especially in Scotland, they combine together to put a negative on the sale of them, if they are not placed under their immediate protection. One instance of this was Mr. Hume’s History, Vol. I’ (Islay Campbell, Information for Alexander Donaldson and John Wood Booksellers in Edinburgh 1773: 17). Hamilton still wanted to promote new work and found he had created a competitive market, with Scots authors playing Millar off against him. In 1757 in a co-operative venture with Wilson and Durham of London, Hamilton and Balfour published Francis Home’s Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation. Home cannily wrote to Millar that as Hamilton wanted to reprint it in Edinburgh, ‘let me know what you can give me for this Edition or for the property of the book’; Millar duly picked it up for the second edition, and also paid the author for Medical Facts and Experiments (1759). In 1758 Hamilton and Balfour offered William Robertson £500 to print 2,000 copies of A History of Scotland: the author reported that Millar ‘has agreed to give me £600, which is more than any Author except D. Hume ever got for

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Copy-Money’ (McDougall 1988: 29). Hamilton, the first Scottish publisher to offer independently such sums for literary property, had not succeeded. The lesson for the trade was simple: London connections had to be secured to sell big editions. Alexander Kincaid had a different vision, publishing Scottish authors in collaboration with Millar. They co-published the third edition of Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political in 1748 and continued their co-operation over Hume, Lord Kames, Adam Smith and others in Kincaid’s partnerships with Donaldson, John Bell and William Creech. In large ventures involving a Scottish author, John Balfour also preferred an Edinburgh–London axis. In 1769, with both Hamilton and Millar dead, Balfour joined William Strahan and Thomas Cadell in publishing William Robertson’s Charles V, paying the author £4,000. Edinburgh booksellers outside the London circle still bought Scottish copyrights. John Bell combined with George Robinson of London to pay Thomas Reid £300 for Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, 1785, beating a Cadell offer by £100.1 In the 1780s Charles Elliot brought payment of copy money back to a single Edinburgh publisher, this time for original medical and scientific work by Scottish authors. He kept the copyright but solved the London distribution problem by co-operating with a single London bookseller, often Cadell, Robinson or John Murray, who bought copies at a special rate or shared the printing. Among many payments of copy money was £600 to Benjamin Bell for A System of Surgery, with Robinson taking copies of the various editions (1783–8), and £300 to James Gregory for the third edition of an Edinburgh University textbook, Conspectus Medicinae Theoreticae (1788). Elliot won the copyright of the fourth edition of First Lines in the Practice of Physic by paying £1,200 to the author, William Cullen, the most copy money paid in Britain for an octavo edition. Elliot maintained an ironic attitude towards London, remarking to one author, ‘the London gentlemen thought it strange that a Country Bookseller (so they are pleased to call the vendors of books in the Metropolis of Scotland), should outbid them in the purchase of Dr. Cullen’s Practice of Physic’ (ODNB). Within the confines of the Old Town at mid-century several generations of printers overlapped, co-operating and competing. Thomas and Walter Ruddiman produced a fine edition of Livy in 1751, which was sold at home and internationally by Hamilton and Balfour. With Walter continuing as a master printer and manager of the Caledonian Mercury at their premises in Parliament Close, the 1

NLS Acc.10662/9, Robinson to John Bell, 6 Sept. 1784.

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Ruddimans in 1754 gave up to Hamilton and Balfour their privilege as Printer to Edinburgh University. The ramifications of the ‘noncompete’ clause are discussed in detail in Chapter 4 by Stephen Brown. The University post caused Hamilton and Balfour and their printing partner, Patrick Neill, to move production from a third floor at the Royal Infirmary to the College, where the firm rented the Low Library and the printing house below (Figure 4.1). From 1750 to 1762 Neill managed the firm’s printing and ran the Edinburgh Chronicle (1759–61). In 1751, with his printing of Volusenus (Figure 6.1), Neill reproduced the look Hamilton and Balfour had achieved with their 1743 Virgil (Figure 2.1). His tiny (32mo) Anacreon in Greek and Latin, with the Greek reissued in silk, edited by Prof. Robert Hunter, was a showpiece in the application for University Printer, and the ‘Academiae Typographos’ logo was used subsequently on a series of finely printed classics: Sallust and Virgil (1755), Phaedrus (1757) and the 1758 Terence, composed and corrected by the apprentice William Smellie, which won an Edinburgh Society silver medal (McDougall 1990b). Neill’s corrector for a few months in 1759 was Ossian’s creator, James Macpherson, whose Fragments of Ancient Poetry Neill printed the following year. In 1759 Hamilton, Balfour and Neill began the Edinburgh Chronicle, bringing in John Reid as a partner to manage the newspaper. Reid had previously been corrector for Sands, Murray and Cochran. There he edited and wrote the preface to the 1753 Edinburgh edition of Shakespeare, a printing-house accomplishment that posterity would assign wrongly to Hugh Blair (McDougall 1988: 44; Donaldson v. Reid 1769: B. 30 [Court of Session Papers]). Reid was among the first of sixty-eight print workers who joined a mutual aid group between 1750 and 1758, the Company and Society of Journeymen Printers of Edinburgh. He wrote their Articles of Agreement by the Journeymen Printers of Edinburgh for the Supply of Indigent Members, Widows, and Children (printed at Edinburgh, 1758). The subscription of 5s for entry, and 1s 6d for compulsory quarterly meetings, provided subsistence and emergency funds: 4s a week for unemployed members if indigent and sober, £2 for a funeral, £2 a year to widows and children, 30s for the funeral of an indigent widow, and a sum for the funeral of children under the age of fourteen. However, Reid did not provide the capital he promised for his partnership with Hamilton, Balfour and Neill and left to become the printing partner of Alexander Donaldson in 1760. Before going, he was an intermediary for Donaldson in breaking uniform printing charges in the city, getting an unprecedented 10 per cent discount with a year’s free credit on Donaldson reprint work

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sent to Hamilton, Balfour and Neill. Balfour acquiesced when he was given the impression that Walter Ruddiman had agreed to the terms. When he was told in September 1761 Walter had not, the fiery Balfour said he had been cheated and took Ruddiman and other Donaldson reprinters, Ebenezer and John Robertson, to confront Donaldson at John’s Coffee House. Ruddiman repeated his denial but Donaldson replied that Walter (aged seventy-four) was losing his memory – they had agreed to the discount over a bottle of wine at Mary MacKenzie’s tavern. The next day Balfour, Ruddiman and the Robertsons wrote to Donaldson offering a discount but requiring interest from the time the work was completed. Donaldson settled terms with the others but not with Balfour. The prosecution for fraud Balfour consequently pursued was, according to Donaldson, motivated by jealousy of a new rival; it ended merely in a ruling that Donaldson was entitled to the discount but had to pay interest on the credit (McDougall 1974: 168–71). Balfour’s great anger over the Reid–Donaldson discount likely exacerbated his uncivil relations with Hamilton and contributed to the breakup of the partnership in 1762; Donaldson and Balfour remained enemies. Patrick Neill took on printing ventures with William Strahan in London towards the end of his partnership with Hamilton and Balfour, issuing the ‘Sister Peg’ pamphlet of 1761 as ‘London: printed for W. Owen’, and Noble’s A Voyage to the East Indies (1762), under the London imprint of Becket and De Hondt, and T. Durham (McDougall: 1990b, nos 305, 306, 333). Neill formed a partnership with the Robert Flemings Sr and Jr 1764–7, to be succeeded by his younger brother Adam 1767–73. Patrick’s type and procedures are described by John Morris in Chapter 1. The Neill ledgers show session and job work, the type they bought from John Baine, charges for printing and distributing the Flemings’ Edinburgh Evening Courant and their work for booksellers. This included Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense (750 copies octavo, 1764) and Alexander Gerard’s Dissertations on Subjects relating to the Genius and Evidences of Christianity (1,000 copies octavo), printed for the combination of Millar at London and Kincaid and Bell at Edinburgh.2 Adam did £262 worth of printing work for the Dillys of London over a three-year period, including 8,000 copies duodecimo of a copyright they treasured, John Entick’s New Spelling Dictionary, published in 1769 under their London imprint.3 2 3

NLS Ms.Dep.196, P. Neill Printing Ledger 1764–7, Kincaid and Bell, 17–18. NLS Ms.Dep.196, A. Neill Printing Ledger 1767–73, Edward Dilly, 29.

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Even before the resolution of the literary property question in the House of Lords in 1774, a number of London booksellers were looking into related matters: Irish piracies being sold in Edinburgh and the illegal reprinting there of new London books genuinely in statutory copyright. They recruited spies, one of whom, the printer Adam Neill, proved so useful to Edward and Charles Dilly that they passed his name on to Thomas Cadell, who in 1772 asked him to look out for illegal printers and sellers, as well as Irish editions, of his literary property, including Blackstone’s Commentaries, Robertson’s Charles V and Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling. Cadell reassured Neill: ‘Your name shall be an entire secret if you choose it, and you shall have no reason to complain of my generosity . . . I declare you shall always find me capable of rewarding your services.’4 William Creech, whose entry into partnership with Alexander Kincaid was supported by his mentor William Strahan, was approached by the Dillys earlier in 1772 in a letter asking the firm to inform on any bookseller taking Irish editions of Entick’s Spelling Dictionary, Langhorne’s Plutarch or any of their property; the Dillys would prosecute immediately.5 They said Cadell also wanted to be told about Irish editions. Apart from what he saw and heard around the bookshops, Creech in the 1780s had information on Irish imports directly from the Board of Customs, where he provided expert advice on piracies. Creech encouraged and organised the resulting copyright prosecutions and wanted secrecy – ‘Your Name, to be sure, has no business to be mentioned,’ Strahan told him (McDougall 1997: 175–6). Charles Elliot, however, knew that Creech was frequently informing Cadell about his Irish editions. ‘I do believe,’ Elliot wrote to Cadell on one occasion, ‘the Person that has given you much wrong information, as well as some true, whatever he says or writes, deals more in such books than I do.’6 Between 1772 and 1787 there were fifteen prosecutions at the Court of Session under the 1739 Importation Act and the 1710 Copyright Act; the Dillys, Strahan and Cadell, Creech, James Dodsley, Thomas Becket and William Johnston were among the protagonists (McDougall 1997: 172–83). Of the many defending booksellers and printers some came up just once, like Balfour and Creech, who were included in Dodsley’s sweep of the trade, but others appeared frequently, as Table 2.1 illustrates. One of the Edinburgh reprints – Fanny Burney’s Cecilia – was a fraudulent copy of the London edition. But Colin Macfarquhar 4 5 6

NAS RH9/17/195 no. 6, Cadell to Neill, 22 Dec. 1772. NAS RH4/26A, reel 2, C. and E. Dilly to Kincaid and Creech, 2 March 1772. NLS Elliot Letters to Cadell, 23 Dec. 1786.

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Table 2.1 Prosecutions at the Court of Session for Irish and Scottish piracies 1772–87. 1772 C. and E. Dilly v. William Anderson, Stirling and v. William Gordon for importing Thomas Nugent’s A New Pocket Dictionary of the French and English Languages. 1773 William Johnston v. John Reid, printer, William Darling, Robert Clark, Alexander McCaslan, John Wood, James McCleish and William Anderson for printing Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality. William Johnston and Benjamin Collins of Salisbury v. Robert Mundell, printer, William Darling, Charles Elliot, Robert Clark, John Wood, James Dickson, Alexander McCaslan and William Anderson for printing Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Thomas Becket v. Martin and Wotherspoon and others, John Barrie and others in Glasgow for printing and importing Sterne’s Works. 1774 James Dodsley v. Colin Macfarquhar, printer, Charles Elliot and George Douglas principally, and John Balfour, William Creech, William Millar, William Gordon, John Bell, William Gray, James Brown, James McCleish, William Darling, James Dickson, William Drummond, John Wood and the printers Robert Fleming, John Robertson, Gavin Alston, Murray and Cochran, and Martin and Wotherspoon. interdict to halt printing and importing of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son. 1775 Dodsley v. Macfarquhar, Elliot and Douglas principally, and William Millar, William Gordon, John Bell, William Gray, James Brown, James McCleish, William Darling, James Dickson, John Wood and Gavin Alston, and in Glasgow James Knox, John Smith, Peter Tait and Dunlop and Wilson for printing and importing Chesterfield’s Letters. Becket, Thomas Cadell and William Strahan v. David Willison, printer, principally, and Charles Elliot, William Gordon, John Bell, William Gray, James Brown, James McCleish, William Darling, James Dickson, John Wood and Lachlan Forsyth for printing and importing Sterne’s Works and A Sentimental Journey. 1781 Strahan, Cadell and William Creech v. John Bell, James Dickson, Alexander Brown and Patrick Anderson for printing Gregory’s A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters.

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Table 2.1 continued 1782 Strahan and Cadell v. Dunlop and Wilson, Glasgow, for importing Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. Strahan and Cadell v. John Liddell, Glasgow for importing Hume’s History and Moore’s A View of Society and Manners in Italy and A View of Society in France, Switzerland and Germany. Strahan, Cadell and Dodsley v. William Anderson, Stirling, for importing Johnson’s Dictionary. 1782–3 Strahan and Cadell v. Robert Morison and Son, Perth, for importing Robertson’s History of Scotland, History of Charles V and History of America. Strahan, Cadell and Dodsley v. Robert Morison and Son for importing Johnson’s Dictionary. 1787 Cadell and Thomas Payne v. Anderson of Stirling and John Robertson, printer, for printing Burney’s Cecilia. 1787 Andrew Strahan, Cadell and Daniel Prince of Oxford v. Anderson and Robertson for printing Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.

reprinted openly: in the mistaken belief that Dodsley did not have the entire copyright of Lord Chesterfield’s Letters, he published it in a cheap edition in 1775 in collaboration with the paper-maker George Douglas and Charles Elliot. The three lost financially, as did the printer David Willison, whose attempt to stay out of court by offering the profits on his editions of Laurence Sterne’s Works and A Sentimental Journey was rejected by Strahan on the private advice of Creech (McDougall 1997: 172–8). Despite conflicts over copyright, the Edinburgh and London trades were co-operating extensively from the 1770s, buying or exchanging books as well as collaborating in publishing ventures. The scale of this can be judged by the Edinburgh booksellers and printers with whom the London Scot John Murray engaged 1768–93, and the London traders utilised by Charles Elliot. Murray traded on a large scale with Alexander Kincaid, William Creech, John Balfour, William Smellie,

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Elliot and John Bell, and also corresponded with Robert Allan, Charles Cowan, James Dickson, William Drummond and his widow, John Elder, John Fairbairn, Robert Fleming, Robert Gordon, William Gordon, Alexander Guthrie, Peter Hill, James Hunter, Alexander Kincaid junior, Laurie and Symington, George Mudie, Robert Murray, Adam Neill, John Oliphant, John and James Robertson, Walter Ruddiman, James Sibbald and James Watson (Zachs 1998: 91–103, 97 n.33). Charles Elliot’s letter books (1774–90),7 include his correspondence with more than seventy London booksellers. While his main agents and collaborators were George Robinson, Thomas Cadell, John Murray, his partner Thomas Kay, Thomas Longman, John Bell, C. and E. Dilly and Joseph Johnson, his trading with others was extensive. Elliot engaged with just one London printer, William Strahan, as a supplier of books. He used London engravers at times and several paper suppliers (Table 2.2). Among the notable Scottish printing and publishing ventures during the last forty years of the century were Balfour, Auld and Smellie’s first Gaelic New Testament (1767) and the first edition of William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine (1769). Another was the Encyclopaedia Britannica, whose print history is discussed in Chapter 5. In the 1770s Charles Elliot began a series of medical publications that led to Benjamin Bell’s A System of Surgery (1783–8), the fourth edition onwards of William Cullen’s First Lines in the Practice of Physic (1784) and work of the prolific Andrew Duncan. A number of Edinburgh engravers contributed to Elliot’s medical books. Thomas Donaldson, George Cameron and John Buego engraved, and the dissector Andrew Fyfe drew the forty-eight plates in the second Alexander Monro’s work on comparative anatomy, Structure and Physiology of Fishes Explained (1785) and produced the fold-out life-size plates in A Description of all the Bursae Mucosae in the Human Body (1788). Medicine was a speciality but accounted for only a quarter of Elliot’s publishing. Among his Scottish authors were the agricultural economist James Anderson, the mathematicians Alexander Ewing and Robert Simson, the Gaelic writer John Smith and the poet Miss Christie Edwards. He also published novelists, printed mostly in Edinburgh but under a London imprint and examined in detail by Peter Garside in Chapter 5. William Smellie’s translation of Buffon’s Natural History, with engravings by Andrew Bell, was published by William Creech in 1780. Robert Burns’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, printed for the author and published by Creech, appeared in Edinburgh in 1787. In these years 7

NLS John Murray Archive.

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Table 2.2 Charles Elliot’s letters to the London trade 1774–90, arranged by volume of correspondence. Booksellers (number of letters) George Robinson (161), Thomas Cadell (157), John Murray (99), Thomas Kay/Elliot and Kay (90), Thomas Longman (74), John Bell (60), C. and E. Dilly (50), Joseph Johnson (50), Rivington and Sons (35), Richardson and Urquhart (33), James Dodsley (31), Hawes, Clark and Collins (21), Robert Faulder (20), William Lane (20), James Mathews (21), Thomas and William Lowndes (15), John and Charles Nourse (15), Francis and Elizabeth Newbery (15), John Knox (14), Thomas Bell (13), John Cuthell (13), Thomas Becket (12), Peter MacQueen (12), William Dawson (10), Ben White (10), Francis Wingrave (9), James Lackington (9), Robert Baldwin (9), James Buckland (8), Stanley Crowder (8), Sayer and Bennet (8), Thomas Evans (7), Carnan and Newbery (7), Henry Chapman (6), John Bew (5), William Fox (5), George Nichol (5), David Ogilvy/Ogilvy and Speare (5), Robert Horsfield (5), William Otridge (5), Samuel Hooper (4), James Nunn (4). John Sewell (4), John Walter (4), George Keith (4), John Strachan (4), William Watts (3), George Kearsley (3), Mrs Mary Smith (3), John Deighton (3), John Wilkie (3), Thomas Vernor (2), Robert Parsley (2), Thomas King (2), Samuel Hayes (2), E. Smerdon (2), David Walker (2), John Debrett (1), John Anderson (1), Mileson Hingeston (1), John Speare (1), David Steele (1), William Bent (1), David Ogilvy (1), John Stockdale (1), John Wingrave (1) Printer William Strahan (26) Copperplate printer John Smith (3) Engravers C. Knight (4), Thomas Trotter (2), Francesco Bartolozzi (2), John Miller (1) Stationers Bloxham and Fourdrinier (53), Bayles and Staples (23), James Woodmason/ Page (23), Wright and Gill (8), James and Thomas Bowles (3), Moses Staples (1)

Creech published some of the most important Scottish agricultural books, such as the first edition of Lord Kames’s The Gentleman Farmer (1776), Andrew Wight’s Present State of Husbandry in Scotland (1778– 84) (H. Holmes 2007: 124, 127), and with Cadell Jr and Davies, Prize Essays and Transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland (1799). In 1791–9, motivated by a spirit of Scottish patriotic improvement, Creech issued the monumental twenty-one volume Statistical Account

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of Scotland, prepared under the direction of Sir John Sinclair (Sher 2006: 425). Legitimate reprinting by Edinburgh houses, for themselves and for London publishers, continued. This included two extensive series of poetry, Balfour and Creech’s forty-four-volume British Poets (1773–6) and Works of the British Poets, edited by Robert Anderson and printed by Mundell and Son (fourteen volumes; 1792–1807). Strahan disapproved of the British Poets and Creech was fearful of advertising them in London, causing John Murray to call his concern ‘dastardly & pusillanimous’ (Bonnell 2006a:705–8; Zachs 1998: 58–9). Hamilton and Balfour had produced A Select Collection of English Plays in six volumes (1755) and Martin and Wotherspoon The Theatre: or Select Works of the British Dramatic Poets (1768), twelve volumes duodecimo. Martin’s Apollo Press printed for John Bell, London, 109 volumes of the Poets of Great Britain (1777–83) and parts of Bell’s British Theatre from 1776. The Mundell family were prolific reprinters. Charles Dilly told John Bell of Edinburgh in 1794 that Mundell’s last edition of Entick’s Dictionary had a printing run of 12,000 copies; he was compelled to publish an edition of Langhorne’s Plutarch sooner than intended because he had been informed Mundell had begun one in duodecimo. Dilly knew that Bell had taken a share in the Mundell Entick. He hoped Bell would not sell it while there was a Chancery injunction against it in London, but more practically sought to achieve this by sharing his copyright: Bell could buy a sixteenth part of Dilly’s Entick on the same terms as Londoners, or exchange copies of the dictionary and the Plutarch for valuable Edinburgh books, Mair’s Book-keeping and Latin Syntax, and Bell’s Surgery.8 The selling point of Scottish printing was that it remained cheaper than London’s. Edinburgh costs in the second half of the century, and the practices and conditions in the city’s printing houses, were described at the Court of Session in 1804–5 when 106 of the 150 journeymen compositors working in the city successfully prosecuted their masters for higher piece-rates (Compositors 1804–5, A-F Signet Library). At an earlier period, according to the masters, wages were determined by the dimension of a page or a calculation of the sheets printed, then by inches, and that the most that could be earned by journeymen printers was 10s or 12s a week (A: 5). James Watson’s cry in 1713 that it would be worth paying 5s a day to a ‘good Press-man’ would have brought 30s a week, a figure not attained in the century, 8

NLS MS. Dep. 317 box 2, C. Dilly to J. Bell, 16 July 1794.

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although his comparison of paying 18d a day for a useless worker, if not another exaggeration, amounted to 9s. In 1720 nine Edinburgh journeymen drew up a list of set prices: for example, 7s 4d for each sheet of a folio Bible. But in a context of workers’ threats and violent protests, their illegal contract was thwarted by Watson’s prosecutions (Evans 1982: 26–7). There is evidence of some rates in the 1750s. The printer Patrick Neill took £25 then £30 annually, equivalent to 9s 7d and 11s 11d a week, in his partnership with Hamilton and Balfour, although he was also due two-fifths of the house’s profits. William Smellie joined the firm as an apprentice at 3s a week in 1754 and was soon promoted to corrector at 10s. Smellie considered this a good wage that enabled him to maintain himself and his two sisters. In 1759 he was earning 16s at Murray and Cochran’s as corrector, printer and editor of the Scots Magazine (Kerr 1811: I: 20, 42–3). There was a fixed rate for pressmen: 17s weekly at the House of Neill in 1802–3 (Compositors A: appendix, 22). In 1763 Smellie devised a scale of prices for Edinburgh journeymen, using letters or n’s, that set the standard for the next forty years. The rate for compositors at most houses was 3d per 1,000 ens for ordinary book work until 1792, then 3½d until 1805. This was a penny below the London rate at first but the gap widened to 1¾d. Over the period Edinburgh’s extensive trade of Session work – the printing of submissions to the court – was at the rate of 4½d per 1,000 or a quarter-penny a line (B: 5, 20; appendix for London scales). To find out what the printers earned from these rates, and how fast or slowly they set type in a working week of six ten-hour days, a court accountant examined the wages at various times of individuals at twelve print shops: the Session houses of Murray and Cochran, Neill, Mundell and Son, Willison, Smellie, and Chapman and Company, and the book houses of Macfarquhar and Elliot, Caw, the King’s Printers, Brown, Bell, and Pillans and Son (C: 1–30). In practice, each house did session and book work to varying degrees. Session work paid a higher rate because it was more onerous. Calculated over a year, average weekly wages in Session and book houses were 15s 1d and 12s 7d respectively in 1773–9; 19s 11d and 17s 11d in 1791; 18s 2d and 16s 10d in 1802. The wages of particular compositors varied week by week according to the availability and flow of work; Session printing was also affected by the court being on vacation for periods totalling twenty-six weeks. Health, skill and determination were other factors. The highest earning session compositor, James Pillans at Murray and Cochran’s, made £67 13s 9d in 1791. His weekly wage was over £2 a number of times and once was £3 14s 10d but at other times went as low as 3s 5d.

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To earn £2 Pillans had to set 106,666 letters a week, and he occasionally went much higher than this, yet his average over the year was 66,000. The masters claimed all workmen could achieve the latter figure each week, but the accountant found that a more realistic estimate was provided by the journeymen, that a medium hand on medium work would compose 48,000 ens in Session work, and 51,000 in book work over sixty hours. This took into account the setting of head lines and directions, for which they were not paid in this period, and the cleaning and distribution of type. A quarto page of Session work at forty-one lines had 2,296 letters, and at the rate of 4½d per thousand or a farthing a line would produce 10¼d in wages (A: 10). An octavo pamphlet with English type on a sheet of sixteen pages contained 15,000 letters, for which the compositors were paid 5s 6d, and an extra allowance of either 1s a sheet or 1d per thousand for the furniture (E: 8; F: 10). The compositors claimed that the difference in rates between Edinburgh and London was such that ‘if the Edinburgh workmen be as expert, and skilful, and correct, the Edinburgh masters will always be able to undersell the London market with a very handsome profit’ (E: 4). They also said their work was unhealthy, and that few lived beyond the age of fifty. Referring to the cleaning chemical lye, which was mixed with urine, they said a compositor was ‘continually bending over a frame filled with poisonous materials which he is constantly handling. The place in which he works is close, with many workmen along with him vitiating the air, and the whole roof of the apartment is filled with spars, and hung with wet printed sheets’ (B: 11–12). Six months of the year at Session houses, when the court was sitting, sixteen- to eighteenhour days were common: lawyers might send in a paper in the evening to be printed for the court boxes the next morning, requiring work until midnight or through the night (B: 23; D: 4). The Court of Session gave the compositors everything they had requested, including a 1d rise in book and Session work and a 5s increase in weekly wages (C: 28–30), which was still below the rising London rate. This victory of a combined labour force against their employers signalled a change in Edinburgh’s trade that would increasingly distinguish eighteenth- from nineteenth-century practices. Books became an industry in which corporate strategies would replace entrepreneurship. In the world of Chambers and Nelson, there would be no canny Alexander Donaldsons to deceive old printers such as Walter Ruddiman over drinks in local taverns.

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Selling Books in Early Eighteenth-century Edinburgh: a Case Study Richard Ovenden This study draws on the daybook of an unidentified bookseller working in Edinburgh (1715–17), as well as other archival sources, such as the bills and receipts of David Dalrymple, first Lord Hailes, in order to provide a broader picture of the Edinburgh book trade at the time. Much of the understanding of that period’s Scottish trade (and perhaps this is true of the English trade as well) focuses on the supply side: the printing presses active in Edinburgh and elsewhere, whereas the focus of this chapter is firmly rooted in the demand side. What books were actually being sold? Who was buying them? The eighteenth century’s first two decades are historiographically the Cinderella years of an age that would witness the ‘Enlightenment’ glories only during its second half. The Edinburgh of that era may have been awaiting enlightenment, but it was nonetheless a city atop Scotland’s urban hierarchy in terms of society, politics, economics and culture. Helen Dingwall’s account of Edinburgh’s late seventeenthcentury population, derived from an analysis of the 1694 Hearth and Poll Tax returns, places the total somewhere between 40,000 and 47,000 (for greater Edinburgh), out of Scotland’s 1 million as a whole (Dingwall 1994: 13–21). Edinburgh’s population was rising, however, and by the mid-eighteenth century would reach somewhere between 55,000 and 60,000. The city was also undergoing important civic, cultural and intellectual developments. Institutional libraries were being established, the university was growing in size and sophistication, and a system of banking and mercantile organisations was evolving. Schools in Edinburgh varied greatly in size, range of subjects offered and quality of teaching. The presence of noble families, whether as permanent or temporary city residents, encouraged the growth of private schools and 132

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private tutors; the law courts and university demanded tutors in languages, mathematics and sciences; and the Church supported charity schools of various kinds. Edinburgh was also a major centre for the production and distribution of books within Scotland. As a capital city with a number of educational establishments, and with an increasingly literate and educated population, it was a strong candidate for a vibrant print culture. The city produced roughly 10 per cent of London’s publication output, but compared to Oxford, and more surprisingly, Dublin, Edinburgh was an active production centre. Books came to the shelves of their eventual owners from a multitude of printing sites within Europe, and did so mostly through the agency of stationers and booksellers working alongside the capital’s printers to supply the city and its many visitors from across Scotland with books.

The Daybook This bookseller’s daybook survives as a manuscript in the NLS and comprises twenty-five folio leaves, gathered together in four quires, unbound and unstitched. The pages, annotated in several inks and several hands, are almost totally covered with entries. The format is similar to that used by the trade to this day. For each trading day, the titles of works sold (or other items of sale) are entered, together with the price (in sterling). Where the bookseller has offered the title on credit, the purchaser’s name is recorded, sometimes with further identifying details: where the purchaser lived or worked (‘in ye high school’, for example); perhaps a title like ‘Captain Seaton’; or more often the profession of the individual, ‘Mr Adam Printer’, or ‘William Brown Wigmaker’. Entries with credit granted are closed by being crossed in the normal way or by having the word ‘returned’ or ‘payd’ added in a later hand, indicating the return of the volume or cash payment. At each day’s end, the entries are crossed through to indicate the close of business. Thus we have a detailed account of books and other goods sold by one particular bookseller in Edinburgh between 26 May 1715 and 3 June 1717. The daybook details approximately 1,300 transactions involving books, and 130 involving stationery of various kinds, such as paper, parchment, quills, ink and skins. Twenty-nine books were bound to order through this bookseller’s agency, and a few transactions pertain to the lending of money. Sir William Bennet of Grubit, Commissioner for Scottish Excise, employed the bookseller as agent at an unrecorded auction in Edinburgh (April 1716), and in one case the bookseller provided postal services for a client.

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Such documents are not extant in any great numbers for the early modern period, and as such there is little to offer by way of comparison. Those of John Dorne (Oxford) and Garret Godfrey (Cambridge) survive from the sixteenth century, but the daybook of Dublin stationer Samuel Helsham, a 1685 fragment of which was discussed and published by Paul Pollard (1989), offers the closest comparison. Unfortunately only fifteen dates survive in the Helsham fragments, but even so, some sixty-three titles are listed. This compares somewhat with the figures for the Edinburgh daybook, but much of Helsham’s trade was in the London reprints he was publishing, a retail aspect absent from the Edinburgh case. Common features between the two include the recording of both cash and credit sales, the large-scale sale of stationery and the trade of many books similar in subject matter. An analysis of the daybook’s book-related transactions provides additional evidence about Edinburgh’s early eighteenth-century print culture. It is hard to be sure of exact figures, because some entries are very vague, but for the second six months of 1715, the daybook records the sale of 235 different titles (over a period of 111 days of recorded transactions) and presumably the bookseller had more stock on offer. This compares very favourably with the figures for the number of Edinburgh imprints for all of 1715, which the ESTC gives as 207. This wide range of titles confirms other, on the whole less detailed evidence about the range of works on offer in the city at this time. The will and inventory of Agnes Campbell, printer and bookseller, lists, in addition to a range of stationery, seventy-six different book titles. At the end of an edition of Cicero printed for William Brown in Edinburgh in 1720, is a list of school-books which were printed for, and sold by him from his shop in the Parliament Close. The list contains eighty-six titles, and includes the grammars of Wat and Kirkwood, the Rudiments of Dispauter, Wedderburn and Ruddiman, Watt’s Vocabula and numerous classical authors, all available in the editions of Jan Minnell or the Delphin classics. The majority of the books identified in the daybook were printed and published in London. The relative proportions are, however, surprising. Given the importance of Edinburgh printers, one might expect a greater representation from the native trade. Given also the connections to France and Holland, and the increasing interest in Continental ideas, one might, moreover, expect a higher proportion of Continental books for sale. There are a number of possible explanations. Firstly, the growing importance of English as a scholarly language and the decline of Latin,

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a trend that dates back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, suggest to Alastair Mann that ‘Scotland chose English two hundred years before it chose England’ (2001: 199). Secondly, there is the overemphasis of earlier scholars on Scotland’s cultural and intellectual ties with Europe with its flip side, the under-emphasis of earlier scholars on Anglo-Scottish cultural ties, an explanation favoured by Roger Emerson (1995: 121–3). Robert Wodrow, churchman and academic, developed links with the London booksellers Andrew Bell and the partners Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford. Books acquired from them came north by sea to Leith; by land he dealt with Glasgow merchants such as John Good or Archibald Edmistoun. Among the bills surviving in the Newhailes papers are a series of settled accounts for Sir David Dalrymple, first Lord Hailes, with several Edinburgh booksellers.9 One, covering 1711– 12, details some thirty-three books bought from James Ogstoun of the great Edinburgh family of booksellers and bookbinders, but about whom relatively little is known. Of these books some twenty-six were London printings with only three showing Edinburgh. The London publishers James Morphew and Andrew Baldwin feature prominently in these books’ imprints, suggesting ties between Ogstoun and the London trade. The daybook also lists many Continental publications. Robert Wodrow also obtained books in Holland, which had had very strong links with Scotland for many years (Swift 1992). He used Scots pupils at the Dutch universities as agents for obtaining books, a technique also employed by Andrew Fletcher, and had them shipped north by one of the numerous Scots skippers who sailed regularly between Amsterdam or Rotterdam, and Leith or Prestonpans. Edinburgh booksellers also cultivated links with the Low Countries; some, like Robert Freebairn, made personal visits, including one to Leiden, from where he records departing in 1702 ‘with a parcel of books’. The Advocates’ Library used several Edinburgh booksellers, including Thomas Carruthers and William Brown, and also Scots students, to act as agents for the acquisition of large numbers of essential Continental texts (Hillyard 1989a: 51–7). An Edinburgh bookseller’s daybook accounts of various Continental editions are therefore no surprise for this period. Classical texts, especially those intended for school and university students, like those of Jan Minnell, and editions of the Delphin classics were probably acquired abroad, and more highbrow texts, such as Pierre Danet’s 9

NLS MS 25818 Newhailes Papers, Miscellaneous Bills of Sir David Dalrymple, first Lord Hailes.

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Dictionarium antiquitatum romanarum et graecarum, the Epitome Grammaticae Hebraicae of Johannes Buxtorff, Thomas Erpenius’s Rudimenta Linguae Arabicae, Anthony van Leeuwenhoeck’s Arcana naturae and Marcello Malphigi’s Observationes anatomicae were all printed in Amsterdam and acquired either directly from the Continent or possibly via a London importer.

Purchasers Although the vast majority of transactions were cash, and therefore required no name to be recorded, the daybook gives us a good idea of the sorts of people buying books from this vendor. The professions form by far the largest portion of the 263 named purchasers. They were as a whole the emerging ‘significant facet of Edinburgh’s complex social and economic configuration’ in the words of Helen Dingwall (1994: 240), although the real wealth of the city still lay in the hands of the merchants, goldsmiths, pewterers, glovers and tailors who controlled the Town Council. Such merchants do appear in the daybook, but the professions, the natural market for booksellers, appear in more substantial numbers: twenty advocates, eight writers, nine clerics, nineteen teachers, four academics and two medics. Nineteen members of the book trade dominate the trading and merchant categories among purchasers, as opposed to one limner, two wrights, one wigmaker, one vintner and a sole tailor. These figures must be accepted cautiously, as there is still much to be done on identification, and many of the names will likely never be nailed down – entries such as ‘Mr Crawfurd’ are particularly problematic, as there are simply too many possibilities – but the general pattern holds true. The patrons were by no means exclusively men. A Mrs Carruthers bought on seven occasions, a Mrs Kay in the Luckenbooths was evidently a trader and several other women such as Mistress Huiston, Miss Kier, Madam Wedderburn and Mrs Tennent remain unidentified at present. The Countess of Moray who bought three books in 1717 was Anne, wife of Charles Stewart, the sixth Earl. An interesting aspect of the customer analysis is the amount of business with fellow bookmen. Anyone familiar with the secondhand and antiquarian trade today will not be surprised to hear that among the most regular and the biggest spending customers were those engaged in the trade themselves, including many named in early eighteenth-century Edinburgh imprints. William Adam, for example, held several professions after graduating MA at Edinburgh, including that of schoolmaster at Prestonpans. He was then called to the

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ministry and ordained to the charge of Humbie in East Lothian in 1701. By 1714 he had been demitted and turned almost immediately to printing, and it is as a printer that he is referred to, buying on credit and later returning a copy of Henry Gellibrand’s Epitome of the Art of Navigation on 25 September 1716. Charles Cosh, a bookbinder who bound books for the University Library in 1717, bought four books during 1715, including two eighteenmo bibles in sheets, for which he paid 5s. Was Cosh a mediary for a customer, or buying books to sell ready-bound? David Freebairn, another cleric-bookseller, is in the daybook, as does his son Robert, one of the most important figures in Edinburgh’s trade in the first half of the eighteenth century, who appears in the daybook calmly carrying out business on the very day he is generally thought to have fled the city to join the Pretender’s Army at Perth. Other booksellers turn up frequently in the daybook. James McEuen, a recurrent name in early eighteenth-century imprints, appears eleven times, John Paton, thirteen, Herbert Wilson twenty-seven and George Stewart no fewer than fifty-five. Among the more well-known booksellers recorded is the poet Allan Ramsay, who, according to the ODNB ‘abandoned wigmaking in favour of bookselling between 1716 and 1718’. The daybook focuses those dates more precisely, recording Ramsay purchasing Hill’s Arithmetick on 25 August 1715, then Jean Daillé’s De Usu Patrum (presumably the Geneva 1656 edition) on 26 November that year. As the titles are probably not for his own reading, were these his first book-trade forays? Other well known bookmen listed are Hugh Ogstoun of the bookselling dynasty, James Watson, who arranges several pieces of binding and Thomas Ruddiman who, in addition to his several purchases, was sufficiently well known to our bookseller to have arranged credit for a Mr Bruce ‘at Mr Ruddiman’s desire’. Close co-operation within the trade is further evident from the fact that all five copies sold by this bookseller of the apothecary John Moncreif’s Tippermalloch’s Receipts, being a collection of many useful and easy remedies for most distempers, printed in Edinburgh in 1712, were from Edinburgh bookseller George Stewart. Although most of our bookseller’s customers were, not surprisingly, Edinburgh residents, the daybook shows he (or she) trading with individuals living elsewhere in Scotland. Merchants, schoolteachers and several others in Leith appear, as do James and Robert Finlay, ‘In Glasgow’. John Gordon, the minister at Eculston (in Peeblesshire) bought books, as did Mr Hadden, the Collector of Customs in Prestonpans referred to by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun as bookish, and found in the marked-up Sale Catalogue of Sir Alexander Seaton

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of Pitmedden’s library (NLS). Mr Kennedy of Halbeath, Mr Monro of Kilrenny in the East Neuk of Fife, James Watson of Ormistoun, twelve miles south-east of Edinburgh, and Mr Rutherford of Tremelie remain unidentified. Some are better known, such as James Morice at St Andrew’s, the tutor of the sons of John Mackenzie of Delvine. Several names from afar illustrate this bookseller’s extended market: Mr Shiels in Peebles, who was sent his books by the Peebles Carrier, and Mr Wallace at Kilmarnock. What of the books themselves? Not surprisingly bibles, psalters and prayerbooks were the best sellers according to the daybook. Bibles were sold as New Testaments, or Apocryphas on their own, or both parts together, in Latin, English, French and Greek, with ‘cuts’ or illustrations, sold in sheets and in various editions: Edinburgh, London, and Continental were on offer, and copies were sold in one or two volumes. Various bindings were available (Turkey or calf, both red and blue), with either their sides or back gilt, or gilt all over. In fact, the daybook reveals that this particular shop, in addition to offering bespoke services, had a number of attractive bindings on high selling titles ready to be sold. Thus a bible with cuts, ‘finely bound’, was sold to a cash paying customer for £1 15s on 28 June 1715. On 19 April 1716 Mr Robert Grant bought a ‘Psalm Book gilt’ on credit, later paying 1s for it. On 18 May 1716 an octavo and an eighteenmo bible, both described as ‘calf gilt’, were sold to cash-paying customers. Both were likely printed by James Watson. Numerous other examples could be offered. But given the importance of religion in eighteenthcentury society, it is odd that other religious books do not dominate the remainder of the sales. School-books, mainly classical texts for the classroom, as well as dictionaries and grammars, sold particularly well. Among the better sellers was current political controversy. A Short History of the Late Rebellion and of the Conduct of Divine Providence; together with the consequences if it had succeeded was printed in Edinburgh by Robert Brown, sometime after 22 February 1716. It appears in the daybook first on 10 July 1716, when three copies were sold, followed by six on the 11th, presumably as word got around that it was out, and then a further twenty-eight, one and two at a time, until the daybook ends, 3 June 1717. A fair share of lighter reading also sold: Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, first published separately in 1714, sold four copies during October and November 1715 alone. Aphra Behn’s novels, the Guardian and Spectator, an English translation of Boccaccio and Congreve’s Plays found buyers. The 1712 sale by James Ogstoun to David Dalrymple of a Ben Jonson edition and a set of bound volumes

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of plays confirms the daybook’s indications about Edinburgh’s literary taste at the time. The daybook also supports Alastair Mann’s assertion that ‘a new secular livre universel’ (2001: 195) was proliferating in Scotland from the 1670s. Evidently some of these books were intended for merchants and seafarers: a reflection of Scotland’s increasing interest in mercantile trade. Nathaniel Colson’s the Mariner’s New Kalendar, Samuel Sturmy’s Mariner’s Magazine and his Use of the Quadrant, and Henry Gellibrand’s Epitome of the Art of Navigation, all reflect Edinburgh’s proximity with the ports of Leith, Prestonpans and Bo’ness. Richard Dafforne’s English Merchant’s Companion and Edward Hatton’s Merchant’s Magazine or Trade’s Man’s Treasury were aimed at the sizable merchant community who are otherwise not present in great numbers among the named purchasers. Medical books were fairly high among the regular sellers, especially basic texts like Tippermalloch’s Receipts, but the medics themselves, a rising group in Edinburgh’s early eighteenth-century professional classes, were also among the purchasers. Thus Francis Russell, a surgeon-apothecary who would become a Fellow of the College of Surgeons in 1721, bought Fuller’s Pharmacopoiea (although we cannot be sure precisely which edition), Richard Boulton’s System of Rational and Practical Chirurgery, George Wilson’s Complete Course of Chymistry and George Bates’s Pharmacopoea Bateana on 13 December 1716. John Nisbet, another surgeon-apothecary, was a customer, and John Paton the bookseller presumably bought Richard Wiseman’s Severall Chirurgical Treatises for one of his own customers. The daybook also shows this bookseller charged with obtaining several medical works for an otherwise unidentifiable ‘Mr Young’, possibly the one who studied medicine at Leiden and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1707; the texts were William Cowper’s Anatomy of Humane Bodies, Marcello Malphigi’s Observationes Anatomicae and Anthony van Leeuwenhoeck’s Arcana naturae. The legal profession, both advocates and writers, was well represented in the daybook, suggesting the shop was probably in a close off the High Street, near the legal community. The advocate Walter Stewart, son of Sir Archibald Stewart of Blackhall, for example, bought a copy of Alexander Bruce’s Principia Juris Feudalis (secondhand) and Mackenzie’s Institutions of the Law of Scotland, printed by James Watson in 1706. An edition of Cicero bought by Andrew Hume, Lord Kimmerghame, a Senator of the College of Justice, is identifiable in the 1731 sale catalogue of his library. Among the Writers to the Signet who were purchasers are Alexander Glass, treasurer of the Society from

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1714 to 1722, and George Kennedy of Romanno, Warden of the Mint. Various Continental law books were acquired through this bookseller: a secondhand Elzevir edition of the Corpus Juris Civilis, the Manuale Juris of Jacques Godefroy, probably the 1710 Geneva edition and Agostinho Barbosa’s Thesaurus locorum communium jurisprudentiae, in Andreas Rosener’s 1707 Leipzig edition. Durie’s Decisions was one of the more popular works of Scots law, together with Alexander Bruce’s Principia, and his Tutor’s Guide, or the Principles of Civil and Municipal Laws, the latter printed by Richard Freebairn in 1714. The Poll Tax returns of 1694 record twenty-five school teachers together with five College Regents and nine students, although there were many more students enrolled in the College, which itself was exempt from taxation. The daybook lists copies sold of all of the works that appear in the 1710 High School syllabus and a great many others besides. Aelian, in Latin, in the version of James Upton for the College of Eton, in the 1701 London edition is there for example, as is Monsieur Bossu’s treatise of the epick poem: containing many curious reflexions . . . necessary for the right understanding and judging of Homer and Virgil, which was highly rated for teaching purposes by the St Andrew’s tutor James Morice. Cicero, that stalwart of the classroom over many centuries, is naturally present in several different editions, both Latin and English. By far the best selling school text in the daybook, is a grammar: William Turner, the Master of the Free School in Stamford, Lincolnshire’s Exercises to the Accidence: or, an exemplification of the several moods and tenses, and of the principal rules of construction, consisting chiefly of moral sentences, collected out of the best Roman authors, probably in the 1713 enlarged and improved second edition, printed in London for J. Heptinstall, and now a very rare book. This is somewhat surprising, as twenty-nine copies were sold through the daybook, including twelve to William Charles, the Janitor of the High School, a position akin to that of Usher or Junior Master, which involved undertaking menial duties in return for free education. The book was still being sold in 1720, when William Brown included the title in the list of school-books sold at his shop. Thomas Ruddiman bought no fewer than seventy-two copies for Alexander Davidson in 1709 and six copies for Robert Freebairn that same year, according to the accounts in his pocket-book. Mathematics and science were also taught in schools and universities, and important textbooks in these disciplines appear in the daybook. Cocker’s Arithmetick: being a plain and familiar method, probably in the thirty-third London edition of 1715, sold well, as did John Hill’s Arithmetick both in the theory and practice, made plain and

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easie (London, 1713). Several textbooks written by disciples of Newton are present in the list, no doubt intended for University students: John Harris’s Description and Uses of the Celestial and Terrestrial Globes, Isaac Barrow’s edition of Euclid and John Keill’s enormously influential Introductio ad veram physicam, a text recommended for students at Magdalen College, Cambridge in 1710. One of the few Scottish books of mathematics and science present is John Wilson’s Trigonometry: with an introduction to the use of both globes and projection of the sphere in plano, printed by James Watson (Edinburgh, 1714), which first appears in the daybook, already secondhand, and sold to an unnamed cash-paying customer. Details in the daybook about purchases by identifiable teachers reveal more of what was being supplied to school pupils, and also something of what teachers themselves read. Thomas Kirkwood, a teacher or Doctor at the South Leith Grammar School, purchased four Colloquies of Corderius and one of Erasmus. William Charles, Janitor at the High School in Edinburgh, made a number of bulk purchases beyond the twelve copies of Turner’s Exercises to the Accidence: five copies of Caesar’s Commentaries, eight Colloquies of Erasmus and twelve Fables of Phaedrus, all Latin editions. Alexander Laing, formerly Master of the South Leith Grammar School, and by 1715 Schoolmaster at the Canongate School, purchased a secondhand copy of Dryden’s Juvenal, as well as a stitched paper book and a loose quire of paper. Stationery, much needed in schools, was also among the purchases made by James Hume, Teacher of Writing in Morrison’s Close, who also bought Ovid’s Epistles in English, Caesar’s Commentaries, Virgil in Latin without notes, Buchanan’s Psalms (often used for teaching purposes and on the High School’s 1710 recommended list) and an English edition of Florus. James Innes, identified in the daybook as ‘schoolmaster’, but before his appointment at Heriot’s Hospital in 1719, made a number of textbook purchases: Horace, in an edition by Jan Minnell, Isocrates, two secondhand octavo and two new twelvemo copies of the Poetae Minores Graeci, two of Geroge Mosman’s 1700 Edinburgh edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, two ever-popular Colloquies of Erasmus and two of James Kirkwood’s influential Grammar. John Wilson, noted in the daybook as ‘Schoolmaster’ (school unidentified), bought six of Arthur Johnstone’s Cantici Salomonis Paraphrasis Poetica, with notes by Thomas Ruddiman, probably Freebairn’s 1709 edition. He also bought books at the Seton of Pitmedden sale. William Skein, Master of the High School, and a very wealthy man to judge from his 1690s Poll Tax return, has only one purchase in the daybook, not long before his death in 1717: the Abridgement of Bale’s Dictionary.

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The daybook’s purchase records show Scottish universities also providing considerable demand for books in Edinburgh. Thus James Morice at St Andrew’s, the tutor to the children of John Mackenzie of Delvine, a wealthy advocate, purchased copies of Forbes’s Instructiones Historiae Theologiae, Scott’s Sermons, the Presbyterian William Bates’s Harmony of the Divine Attributes, James Keill’s Anatomy and Kettlewell’s Measures of Christian Obedience. Likewise the purchases of ‘Mr Seaton, Janitor in the Colledge’, were of texts prescribed for study both in school (in the higher classes) and in the University: three of Jan Minnell’s Virgil, three of an unspecified edition of Justinus and four of Sallust without notes (probably a foreign edition). The daybook portrays a vibrant trade in new and secondhand books, bound and unbound, books printed in Scotland (mostly in Edinburgh itself) and a smaller but still significant body of current European titles. The most striking feature of the daybook is, however, the great number of London books which this Scottish bookseller sold to his predominantly local clients. The evidence supports Roger Emerson’s assertion that ‘the convergence of outlook among Scots and Englishmen may have been a pre-condition of Union of 1707: certainly it helped make Union a success’ (Emerson 1995: 144).

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The Business Papers of Bell and Bradfute William Zachs In November 1788 John Bell, a long-established and quite successful Edinburgh bookseller and publisher, took his nephew and former apprentice, John Bradfute, into his business. Like many tradesman of the day, Bell kept detailed transaction records and trained his employees in this practice. The chance discovery by builders in August 1996, initially of twelve and subsequently sixty-two further volumes of Bell and Bradfute’s business ledgers in a derelict room under the Edinburgh City Chambers (now in the City Archive) allows researchers to examine the minutiae of day-in/day-out book production and distribution, as the division of labour between the bookseller and publisher evolved in late-eighteenthcentury Edinburgh.10 The City Chambers discovery, taken together with other extant papers of Bell and Bradfute in the NLS, to a great degree completes the firm’s business record. Although, strictly speaking, the partnership ended with Bell’s death in 1806, the business continued into the 1820s, ultimately becoming Messrs W. Green and Son Ltd, and trading well into the twentieth century (SBTI; Sher 2006: 388). This survey of Bell and Bradfute’s surviving business records discusses their functions, and offers specific examples of the firm’s trade. The eight series of ledgers begin in 1788 or 1789 and in most cases continue into the nineteenth century, though not beyond 1822. In 1810 a new numbering system was initiated in the ledgers, which corresponds with a move by the firm from 23 to 6 Parliament Square.11 (Plate 32) The particular names given to the eight extant kinds of ledgers kept by Bell and 10 11

For an account of the initial discovery see the Edinburgh Evening News, 31 Aug. 1996, 4–5. SBTI locates Bell and Bradfute in Parliament Close 1789–92; 32 Parliament Square 1793–1804; 23 Parliament Square 1800–10; 6 Parliament Square 1811–25; 6 Bank St, 1826–30; 12 Bank St. 1831–1906; 2 and 4 St Giles St 1908–10.

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Bradfute – though not transparent in every instance – suggest the scope of the material available and the variety of their business practice:12 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Bookseller’s Book, (21 volumes, 1788–1818); Journal (13 volumes, 1788–1822); Day Book (15 volumes, 1788–1817); Cash Book (5 volumes, vols 1–2 missing, 1792–1804); Sheet Book (7 volumes, 1789–1813); Invoice and Exchange Book (4 volumes, 1788–1813); Order Books (3 volumes, 1789–1809); Binders’ Book (5 volumes, 1788–1818).

Despite all this material, one key component is missing: the letter books into which they would have copied all outgoing correspondence. Fortunately, many letters sent to the firm survive in the NLS, including those to John Bell before the partnership with his nephew.13 What follows is a summary of the extant material and each component’s role in operating and recording the business. This survey examines only the first volume in each series and consequently confines itself to the period before 1800, and addresses four topics: books Bell and Bradfute published and their distribution; Bell and Bradfute’s stock in addition to their own publications, including new and secondhand books (extant printed catalogues, listed below, are an essential source); deals struck with fellow traders in Edinburgh, other Scottish towns, London and the English provinces, Ireland, America, India and other parts of the world; arrangements made with authors and other originators of texts. The Bell and Bradfute papers, together with the books they published and sold, their business records located in the archives of other tradesmen (such as Charles Elliot), their miscellaneous legal proceedings and supplementary evidence like newspaper advertisements provide a detailed picture of book-trade economics and the wider role of the printed word in society. 12

13

ECA SL138/1–9/vol. no. One other Bell and Bradfute item in the City Archive should be noted, a volume of miscellaneous letters, mainly sent to Bell and Bradfute, brought together at a later date with mid-twentieth-century annotations in an unidentified hand with the initials R. W. (possibly Robert Waterstone). This volume was transferred from the Central Edinburgh Public Library (formerly shelf mark Y/Z/325/B43) after the 1996 discovery of the ledgers. Apart from a few end-of-the-century letters concerning book orders, the only other eighteenth-century material is an original apprenticeship indenture for Robert Walker to Robert Fleming and Adam Neill, ‘to teach and instruct the said Robert Walker their apprentice in their foresaid art and Trade of Printing, called Composing or Case work’ (6 October 1767). John Bell’s 1770s letter book is in the Bodleian Library.

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The City Archive Ledgers Bookseller’s Book Bookseller’s Book No. 1 begins with an index, not alphabetical but in the order in which names were entered. Thirty-one booksellers appear, all Edinburgh or Leith traders: Charles Elliot, William Creech, Elphingston Balfour, James Dickson, William Gordon, Peter Hill, James and John Ainslie, Cleland (Charles) and Smith (Alexander), the Ruddimans, James Sibbald (separate account for the Edinburgh Circulating Library Company), James McKleish, James Donaldson, William Laing, George Mudie, Guthrie and Robertson, Ninian Cheyne, John Elder, William Coke, Robert Galloway, William Gibb of the Advocates’ Library (a brief entry), James Simpson, Alexander Brown, Thomas Brown (printseller), James Hunter, Alexander Kincaid (King’s Warehouse), the Fairbairns, John Guthrie, Thomas Duncan, Cornelius Elliot, Mr Fuller, Stationer (not identified in SBTI), and Mr George Peatie. A few dealers not listed in the index turn up in the ledger itself, like Laurie, Symington and Co. (237) and James Fowler, Stationer (545). The first entry is Charles Elliot, beginning 1 November 1788 and listing books he bought (and in some instances subsequently returned). Elliot’s account is carried over from year to year for thirty-eight pages until the end of 1790 (two years) when Bookseller’s Book No. 2 takes it up. Bell and Bradfute’s local wholesale trade was substantial and the listed tradesmen illustrate its extent. Journal Each Journal entry has a number in the left margin, indicating a Bookseller’s Book page. The entries in Journal No. 1, containing accounts paid and received, begin on 1 November 1788 and continue until February 1791, parallel to the Day Book, with Thomas Burns and Henry Lindesay starting things off. The Journal’s function appears to back up the Day Book, with relatively little additional information entered. Day Book The heart of Bell and Bradfute’s over-the-counter trade is recorded in the fifteen Day Books, covering November 1788 through to August 1817. Also recorded here are transactions relating to correspondence received, such as other traders’ purchase orders. The entries from No.

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1 are in John Bell’s own hand, the first dated ‘Edinburgh 1st November 1788’: David Forbes Esq. of Lauriston paid 2s 6d for a Book of Psalms bound in ‘Turkey gilt’. Thomas Burns follows: the ‘writer’ (lawyer) engaged Bell and Bradfute’s bookbinding services for Robert Burns’s Poems in calf for 1s 2d and sent four volumes of manuscripts for ‘boarding’ at a cost of 1s. Next is Henry Lindesay of ‘Georges Square’ who purchased a bound Horace for 8s and a copy of Alexander Adam’s Latin Grammar for 2s. Alongside each of these entries is the notation ‘Dr’ for Debtor. An entry two days later (3 November) employs the Creditor (‘Cr’) notation for Bell and Bradfute’s cash payment for the 1786 Court of Session Decisions (6s) to Mr Lundie, Writer to the Signet. Supplying legal books to practitioners at the nearby courts was important business. A note in the margin by this transaction states, ‘entered in old Day Book’, referring to John Bell’s ledgers before his partnership with Bradfute, which are lost. The Day Book indicates who came into the shop to purchase books and such items as stationery; the eighth transaction (4 November), an entry for London bookseller George Nicol, is ‘for sundries as per his invoice No. 1’. The amount is not entered, but the sales list for Nicol is in the NLS (Acc. 10662/44). Miss Gray, an‘upstairs’ neighbour, purchased half a quire of ‘thin post plain’ (1 November). All varieties of stationery sold regularly. Walter Scott’s father (‘WS, George Square’) bought a ledger of ’5 quires of the best Foolscap, half bound’ titled ‘Letter Book’ for which he paid 6s 10d (17 December 1788). An order then came in from Samuel Campbell, a bookseller in New York, for copies of the latest periodicals (Political Magazine and European Magazine, four each) and Monthly Review (two) for October (6 November). Campbell received a 20 per cent discount, with the note ‘sent to your Father’s House Edin[burgh] to be enclosed in a Box of your Brother’, who was Robert Campbell, a bookseller in Philadelphia, whose own order for twenty copies of the new edition of Salmon’s Grammar in quires at 4s 6d each is recorded in the Day Book. Mr Watson, a Glasgow chemist, bought Benjamin Bell’s Surgery, Francis Home’s Clinical Experiments and Elliot’s Medical Pocket Book. Some early entries indicate who had recommended the customer. The Day Book also records catalogue sales, from private, institutional and trade customers. On 18 November, for example, the Rev. Hugh Blair ordered two books from a catalogue (not extant), including Edward Ives’s Voyage from England to India (1773), returning one subsequently. Other prominent academic and religious figures patronised Bell and Bradfute. Adam Ferguson followed Blair on 19 November

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with a substantial catalogue order of nine books. The College Library’s order, ‘paid by the Principal’ (William Robertson) ‘next day’ (20 November), included Cardonne’s Miscellany of Eastern Learning (presumably research for Robertson’s Disquisition on Ancient India). Other institutional customers were the Advocates’ Library, which acquired (5 January) Bernard Picart’s monumental Cérémonies et coûtumes religeuses du monde in nine folio volumes for twelve guineas, among other substantial orders (26 May 1790, for example). Nor were all Bell and Bradfute’s customers local: ‘The Proprietors of Dunse Library’, frequent customers, bought catalogued books on 26 November. Deals were not all cash. One entry (20 November) records a ‘promissory note at six months’ to James Simpson of £10 1s for six copies of John Erskine’s Institutes of the Law of Scotland, a two-volume folio (presumably the 1785 second edition rather than the 1773 first). In unusual circumstances, the Day Book entry is not a customer but a book itself. Thus on 22 November, Bell and Bradfute record the sale to eight individuals of Part One of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, volume two, a work with a well-documented publishing history in the Day Book and other ledgers. At the end of November, the Day Book records a cash-out, ‘Credit’ entry for John Bell himself, totalling £39 15s 3d. Bradfute receives a little less. That Bell kept the books himself is clear from the first December entry: ‘Brought over’ ‘To yourself: £5.14’. Moreover, that he continued with a separate record in a ledger started prior to the partnership is evident from a marginal notation for 4 December: ‘entered in Mr Bell’s Day Book’ (not extant), under an account headed ‘Bills Receivable D[ebto]rs to Mr Jas. Dickson’s acceptance at 3 months due 4th/7th March 1789’ for £10’. At the end of December 1788, the Day Book lists long accounts for Bell and separately for Bradfute, suggesting that, at least for a time, Bell retained certain customers to himself. Surprisingly, perhaps, the senior partner’s account totalled £100 4s 3d, while Bradfute’s was £183 13s 4d. In the last fifty pages of Day Book No. 1, there are two intermixed sections bearing little relation to this ledger’s primary function. One lists books returned, beginning in May 1790, with the entries scored out as they were processed and accounts adjusted. The second lists periodical sales for 1789 to 1790, with customer names and magazines for which they had monthly standing orders. Among periodicals that Bell and Bradfute regularly supplied at the time were the Analytical Review, the Edinburgh Magazine, the European Magazine, the Monthly Review, the Gentleman’s Magazine, the Critical Review and the Scots Magazine.

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Cash Book The Cash Book’s first two ledgers are missing and the third begins on 2 July 1792, continuing month by month until October 1794. On the verso of the first monthly opening for July is a list of incoming cash, designated by the preposition ‘To’ as in ‘To The Bruce [ 3 v[ols] b[oun]d 12/[shillings] Paper 1d’. The occasional notation, ‘To wha wants me’, shows where (in this case) Bradfute has raided the cash drawer. The recto of the July opening lists outgoings, designated ‘By’, as in ‘By Postage 1s.2d.’ or ‘By paid over acceptance to the Trustees of the Late Charles Elliot in Mess[ers]. Allan & Co. £163.19.8’. Entries range from the smallest transactions to ones for several hundred pounds. At the end of each month the money paid out to Bell and Bradfute themselves is recorded. In July 1792, for example, when more than £900 was withdrawn in some form (£400 in an extraordinary unidentified receipt of payment), Bell took home £16 4d and Bradfute £10 1s. Two guineas were lent to a relation and £2 10s remained in the cash drawer for August. Sheet Book The unpaginated ledger labelled ‘Sheet Book No. 1’ begins with an alphabetical index, each letter divided into Folio, Quarto, Octavo and Duodecimo. Accounting for the popularity of certain letters, on average there are one to four folio titles, three to seven quartos and an equal or near-equal number of octavos and duodecimos (typically fifteen to twenty titles). The ledger’s main part follows this format, beginning with Folio (mostly law books generated by the Scottish court system). In 1785 Bell had gambled considerably in purchasing the copyright of Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. The Sheet Book reveals what remained four years later: Quarto 38: 335 Dr. Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, in 42 bundles, 40 bundles contain 8 copies each, one bundle contains 5 and one contains 10 copies No 38 to 79 inclusive. N.B. 32 bundles lye in the Inner light Garret upstairs & 10 bundles in the Dark Room Backwards. The copies that lye backwards are to be given out first. The first sale of Reid’s book was 12 August 1789: four copies to Dunlop & Wilson in Glasgow. On 1 October six copies sold to each of four Edinburgh booksellers. From that first sale until 16 October 1792, just seventy copies were moved. This entry also demonstrates

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that the numbering of listed works is not by title but location on storage shelves. In some cases more than one title is included in a single number. The entries have two parts: books ‘sold’ outright and books ‘given out’ (or offered on sale or exchange, or some similar arrangement with a fellow dealer). Some books in these sheets are identified as stored ‘in the dark room upstairs’. The heading Duodecimo, no. 214 reads: ’1172 [copies in sheets of] Watt’s Latin Grammar in 5 bundles. 4 [bundles] contain 240 copies each & one contains 212 copies. No. 214 to 218 Inclusive’. We then learn what happened to these copies: on 6 July 1789 Bell and Bradfute sold 100 copies to William Coke at Leith; on 10 July, twelve copies to Charles Elliot; on 27 August a dozen to John Gillies at Perth. After a few further small sales, Anderson of Stirling bought 500 on 14 December. Copies (usually multiples of a dozen) sold ‘out of Shop’ do not include the name of the buyer. Apportioning space from the outset for each section of the Sheet Book was a guessing game and not surprisingly, a ‘carried over’ section for ‘octavos’ was added near the end of the volume. Also at the end is a section headed ‘Pamphlets &c’ with a new numbering series. Some of these pamphlet titles were by no means recent publications: ’3 copies of Edmund Burke’s Speech, London 1775, and 30 copies of John Dalrymple on Entails, Edin: 1765’. As might be expected, there are very few notes of sales or ‘given out’ on sale or exchange. Also in this section are periodicals like the Scots Magazine and the Critical Review, again with no sales record. At the very end appears a six-page list of ‘Imperfect Books’, arranged by format and indicating what was missing: an entire volume, a gathering, or illustrations. A final, three-page section headed ‘Imperfections’ lists sixty-two books but does not give the nature of the ‘imperfections’. This ledger suggests stock massively accumulating over time. Invoice and Exchange Book, 1788–179414 Most of the entries in this ledger (indexed at the start, A-Z by customer and citing entry numbers rather than pages in the ledger) are for old and new books bought from the trade, mainly in Scotland and London, by direct order from dealers, catalogues, or private individuals. Auctions were another important mode of acquisition, both private libraries and trade sales. Such purchases frequently 14

The first of this series, damaged by fire, has been rebound and restored, as has the second volume, with some loss to the preliminary index.

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figure in this ledger and many of these auctions would otherwise be unrecorded, because there was no catalogue (such as the sale of ‘Mr Saunder’s Books’ on 25 February 1789) or because none survives. Entries 306 and 309, for example, detail items bought ‘at sale of Balcarres’s Books’ in May 1792, and include a 1496 Basel edition of Petrarch (item 477 in the ‘Catalogue’, which does not apparently survive) for which Bell and Bradfute paid nine shillings. The entry for the purchase of £7 of mainly late-seventeenth/earlyeighteenth-century books at a Mr Spottiswood’s auction (2 March 1789) includes a two-volume folio Josephus, printed at Oxford, with the note, ‘Paid 26th March’, indicating the credit extended to Bell and Bradfute. The Invoice and Exchange Book permits (among other things) the reconstruction of Bell and Bradfute’s stock at a given time. In some instances, particularly with frequent trading partners, there are separate invoices (often found in NLS Acc.10662). Other times, ledger references correspond to Booksellers’ Book entries (for example, the item numbered ‘A 27’ for George Mudie, Edinburgh bookseller, refers to a Booksellers’ Book credit on 13 May 1789). Taken together, the Invoice and Exchange Book entries reveal a side of the trade hidden from customers until the books arrived in the shop. Whether the often substantial monthly purchases from George Nichol, the Robinsons (first three entries) and Cadell (entry 7) in London, the purchase of books from ‘Charles Elliot’s Heirs’ on 30 March 1790, paid in ‘ready money’ with a 5 per cent discount (entry 87), or a smaller purchase of ’9 old books 1723 to 1785’ from Bell and Bradfute’s first recorded customer, Thomas Burns (entry 6), these accounts piece together the puzzle of the trade’s supply side. A simple ‘tick’ beside each entry indicates books received. But this ledger records more than book suppliers. An account (entry 10) from Fourdrinier, Bloxam and Walker shows these London papermakers shipping twenty-eight reams of paper to Scotland at a cost of £23. Other paper orders came from such firms as ‘Mark & Charles Kerr, King’s Printer’ (entry 38), the Auchindiny [sic] Paper Warehouse (entry 49) and the Springfield Paper Warehouse, a £111 shipment for printing Bell and Bradfute’s edition of John Mair’s Sallust (entry 58). One further entry (310) records large quantities of paper (costing £180 8s 6d) bought from John Balfour and Sons for the four-volume edition of the Arabian Tales, with a note indicating one share was to be paid by each of Bell and Bradfute’s four other partners (George Robinson, James Dickson, Peter Hill and John Balfour).

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Order Book Books requested by Bell and Bradfute’s individual and trade customers appear in the Order Book, the entries of which ledger partially correspond with the Day Book’s. However, only those books Bell and Bradfute actually obtained appear in the Day Book. Comparing entries for a single order in the two ledgers reveals the bookseller’s challenges in meeting customer demands. However this was only one function of the Order Book. Not all entries are customer-based and many have the later notation ‘Recd’ (received) in the margin. Other explanations include: ‘out of print’; ‘see Exchange Book’; ’received but wrong’; ‘reprinting’; ‘can’t be got’. ‘Received’ is by far the commonest and many were probably for the shop itself. About four-fifths through the Order Book, its function changes to record multiple copies of titles, illustrating both the nature and extent of Bell and Bradfute’s wholesale trade. Near the end of November 1796, for example, Bell and Bradfute received from the printer Alexander Smellie 100 copies of volume five of Monboddo’s Ancient Metaphysics. Details of the distribution follow: one ‘bound to pattern’; five put in boards for the shop; not long after, a further dozen were put in boards for the shop, and one sent to the author. On 19 April, Monboddo took two more and one further was bound for the shop. When this initial phase of the sale slowed, the remaining seventy-eight copies were entered in the Sheet Book, which records the volume’s further history. Taken together, these entries indicate Bell and Bradfute’s substantial wholesale trade, the sales period for copies of a single title, purchasers and in some cases who printed the work (including instances where more than one printer was involved in a single title). More generally, the stock flow within different parts of their premises is recorded here. The Order Book’s final section indicates price ranges and payment terms available to the trade. For the first edition of Lord Kames’s Loose Hints upon Education, for example, the retail price is noted as 5s bound. If a dealer purchased a single copy he paid 3s 3d.; for twentyfive copies on three months’ credit, 3s a copy; and for fifty copies at six months, 2s 11d. Kames’s Gentleman Farmer, 2nd edition, retailed for 7s 6d bound. If a dealer bought six copies for ‘ready money’ (cash), he paid 4s 6d each; twelve copies on three months’ credit would be 4s 4d each, also the price for twenty-five copies on six months’ credit, fifty copies on nine months’ credit and 100 copies on a year’s credit. Similarly, for Reid’s Essay on the Intellectual Powers (one volume quarto retailing at 25s in boards or £1 7s 6d bound), a dealer received single copies for

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ready money at 20s (£1), six copies at three months’ credit for 19s 6d, twelve copies at six months’, and twenty-five copies at nine months’ for the same price of 19s 6d. The notation suggests further permutations were available if more copies were desired or longer credit terms required. Undoubtedly, other equivalent or near equivalent arrangements could be made depending on Bell and Bradfute’s relationship with the fellow trader. Other notable titles with detailed sales and production information in the Order Book include the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in parts over a number of years, the Faculty Decisions and other periodically published legal works, and the latter volumes of Robert Henry’s History of Great Britain (six volumes, 1773–93). Binder’s Book Binder’s Book No. 1 begins with an index listing fourteen binders for the period from November 1788 until the end of 1793. There are some thirty entries and eighty books per page (often with multiple copies of a title being bound). No prices are given, but to some extent these can be found in the Account Book ledgers. Most individual titles in the Binder’s Book are scored through, presumably because books were entered in the ledger when sent to the binder and scored out when returned. The number of copies is noted, the format and the style in varying degrees of detail, with many options: ‘calf’, ‘calf lettered’, ‘plain calf’, ‘black calf’, ‘calf gilt’, ‘calf gilt to pattern’, ‘gilt back rolled’, ‘marbled’, ‘sheep’, ‘coarse red sheep’, ‘fine green sheep’, ‘fine blue sheep’, ‘lettered sheep’, ‘sheep filleted’, ‘blue turkey’, ‘red turkey’, ‘green turkey’, ‘gilt leaves’ (i.e. edges), ‘turkey gilt’, ‘boards’, ‘boards stitched’, ‘stitched and stiffed’ (presumably still boards) and various combinations. At this period Bell and Bradfute frequently employed the binder William Chrystie, whose account covers some eighty pages, with all varieties of work represented. Mrs Smiton (later trading as Smiton and Millar) and James Taylor each bound about half Chrystie’s allotment. John Hunter, whose account occupies eleven pages, mainly supplied ledgers, blank books and the like, with ruling and lining instructions and the various paper sizes noted. The binders James Whyte and William Cleghorn did only stitching and boarding. The account of James and William Scott (James’s name was scored out, presumably upon his death) gives no hint that this firm produced some of the most beautiful and sophisticated decorated bindings in

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the period; their two pages merely record bindings either in calf or boards. Other binders – Charles Cleland, Peter Sangster and Robert Alison – produced run-of-the-mill work for Bell and Bradfute, while a binder like Alexander Greive specialised in putting maps and plates (such as plans of Edinburgh and Albinus’s anatomical tables) onto canvas. These ledgers indicate not only how many ready-bound books were available in Bell and Bradfute’s shop, but also, volume by volume, the kinds of bindings put on these books. Certain classes of texts (schoolbooks, for example), were usually cheaper sheep; larger and more expensive books would command another form of cover; while bibles typically found themselves in elegantly tooled, expensive goatskin (‘Turkey’) bindings.

Papers in NLS The NLS houses much further material, not only of Bell and Bradfute but of John Bell himself when trading independently before 1788. The main sources are Deposit 317: nine boxes (each divided into bundles), mainly thousands of letters received in various forms from 1771 to as late as 1854. The first box (1771–88) relates solely to Bell. His trading relationships at this time continued rather seamlessly when Bradfute joined the partnership (1788). Boxes two and three (Deposit 317) cover the remaining eighteenth-century period. Many of these letters, as one would expect, deal with straightforward orders for books and other commodities, like stationery, sold in the shop. In some instances, these supplement entries in such ledgers as the Order Books. Returns of books found incomplete occur more frequently than might be anticipated. There are also quantities of letters relating to payment disputes, complications and explanations. Bell and Bradfute’s primary correspondents among provincial dealers included: Dunlop and Wilson and Brash and Reid (Glasgow), Ebenezer Wilson (Dumfries), Mr White (Leith), William Alexander (Stirling), John Boyle (Aberdeen), John Gillies and Morison and Son (Perth), John Tod (Arbroath), William Christie Jr (Montrose) and Alexander Elder (Peebles). Bell and afterwards Bell and Bradfute had extensive dealings with such London traders as the Robinsons, whose letters with invoices and books bought and sold were received regularly. Private customers and the authors whom the firm published (or attempted to publish) are also represented. Some of the more notable letters and documents come from prominent traders. William Strahan’s letter to Bell (20 March 1781), for

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example, discusses the difficulties of dealing with the talented binder James Scott; another, from Charles Dilly (27 January 1781), probes the challenges of paying authors for copyrights. The matter of literary property preoccupied Bell and Bradfute and their correspondents. They mostly co-operated with the London trade, unlike the few renegade dealers. Thomas Cadell’s letter (23 March 1792) illustrates the tension that could exist across the border, even when matters were resolved amicably: I thank you for your liberal conduct with regard to Hume & Ossian. I trust the time will arrive when the Booksellers in Scotland as well as England will see it their mutual interest not to invade each others property whether protected by the Statute or not – on my part I engage to trade upon such terms as will allow them encouragement not to print my books, and I will also oppose to the utmost of my power every invasion. Bell (and by implication Bradfute) had not been as deeply connected as Edinburgh dealers like William Creech, but on several occasions they cooperated. Evidence of this is found among the correspondence for May 1790: a ‘memorandum of an agreement between Sir John Dalrymple, Baronet Baron of Exchequer in Scotland on the one part and Thomas Cadell, Andrew Strahan of London Booksellers and William Creech and John Bell of Edinburgh Booksellers on the other part’ to publish a new three-volume edition (750 copies) of Dalrymple’s Memoirs of Great Britain. According to the agreement, the four dealers would advance all the production costs, and once repaid by the sale (one guinea in sheets), the author would get all profits less £100 for the dealers. As in the ledgers, institutional customers represent a small but steady portion of the firm’s business. The letters of Dr J. Hall of the Dunse Library complement the library’s orders and accounts in different ledgers, including one (2 May 1787) ordering copies of such recent books as Baron Munchausen’s Travels and the second edition of Burns’s Poems. Private customers also figure in this collection and information can be gleaned about the terms for purchases of all kinds. John Goodsir of Largo wrote a positive response (31 March 1788) to a solicitation to purchase the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, provided the dealers would ‘take (upon your valuation) a copy of the first Edition of that Book neatly bound in Calf’. Because of their proximity, there is little correspondence among Edinburgh dealers, except in unusual circumstances, such as a request from the printer William Smellie’s son Alexander for cash to pay his workmen their wages, as his father was out of town (October 1792).

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There are a few letters and notes from John Balfour and from Mundell, the printer, on his inability to take on a job because all the type in the required font was in use (20 Oct. 1792). Authors’ letters naturally figure in the surviving correspondence. A related and more substantial Bell and Bradfute archive (NLS, accession 10662, inventory available online) comprises forty-five folders in ten boxes, including correspondence. Further letters both to and from Bell and Bradfute are scattered throughout the NLS collection and are identified in printed catalogues of manuscript holdings.

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Glasgow Michael Moss Early eighteenth-century Glasgow was a small mercantile city serving the west of Scotland, with a university that was beginning to find its feet after the turbulence of the civil wars. By the end of the century Glasgow had become one of the United Kingdom’s most powerful merchant and manufacturing cities with extensive international markets and a university equal to Edinburgh’s, which attracted international scholars and students. The community was tight-knit with overlapping interests and involvements that often extended to Edinburgh and south to London. But the city’s cultural life was dominated by a populist evangelical Presbyterianism that both formed the context for its commercial and intellectual success, and sustained its book trade. Although its developing printing and publishing industry eventually ranked sixth in the eighteenth century behind London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Philadelphia and Boston, Glasgow’s experienced the fastest growth from 1740 (Sher 1995: 326–7; Sher 2006: 268). Still, it lagged far behind Edinburgh. The ESTC lists almost 25,000 eighteenth-century imprints for Edinburgh and only 5,000 for Glasgow; however, as the introduction to this volume cautions, Edinburgh’s total is significantly inflated by Court of Session imprints and medical theses. This apparent disparity reflects neither a lack of demand for reading material nor of authors seeking publishers. There was a healthy appetite for books among pious citizens, including increasingly wealthy merchants caught up in religious debate and controversy and for a wider range of literature by professors and students at Glasgow University, as well as artisans. The correspondence of Charles Elliot, the Edinburgh-based bookseller, reveals an extensive Glasgow trade with Edinburgh that increasingly served an international market by the mid-eighteenth century, 156

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particularly among American colonists who shared the religious outlook of western Scotland. Books along with other household necessities were regularly shipped from Clyde ports (McDougall 1990a: 21–46) and John Bryce, who published more evangelical tracts between 1741 and 1790 than any other Glasgow printer, had a large trade with the American colonies (Sher and Hook 1995: 13). As in the previous century only a few distinguished Glasgow authors, such as Francis Hutcheson, Professor of Moral Philosophy, dealt with Glasgow firms. John Millar, the Professor of Law, published his Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society with John Murray in London (1771) and Adam Smith, also Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, brought out An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations there (1776). The reasons are complex, particularly as the Glasgow booksellers, with whom Elliot was dealing for what were clearly quality books, were themselves often printers of the religious tracts that dominated the west coast trade (Sher 2006: 269). The only printer in Glasgow to span the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was Robert Sanders, younger, whose products have been dismissed by William Duncan as ‘extremely paltry and inaccurate’ (Duncan 1831: 3), a statement reflecting the Glasgow bibliophile’s snobbishness towards popular print and echoing a 1791 comment that ‘there was no good printing in Glasgow until around the year 1735’ (Murray 1914: 69). Although evidence in his own hand suggests Sanders’s publications were slipshod, his business was successful, issuing mostly short religious tracts with a strong anti-Catholic bias for the west of Scotland market. In 1700 he produced at least ten works with such titles as Hidden things brought to light, for the increase of knowledge, in reading the Bible: being an explanation of the coyns, money, weights measures, mentioned in the Bible, and The new wife of Beath much better reformed, enlarged, and corrected. Over the next thirty years he had almost 100 imprints of a similar nature, often reprints of his or his father’s publications and those of others. His authors were mostly long-dead heroes of the last century’s religious upheavals. He did, however, print the philosophical theses for Gershom Carmichael’s graduation class at the University in 1707 and did jobbing work for the Town Council. In the 1710s Sanders was joined fleetingly by several other printers. Hugh Brown, who began about 1712, was a bookseller whose religious imprints were contemporary authors extolling the virtues of Presbyterian Church government and condemning Jacobitism, such as Reverend John Anderson. He produced two editions in 1714/15 of an account of the ill-fated Darien Scheme by Reverend Francis Borland, the only minister who came home to give a firsthand account of the

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disaster. Although Brown printed just one thesis, it identifies him as printer to the University (as do at least three other publications), but there is no evidence that he was ever formally appointed. In 1714 James Hart calls himself printer ‘in the university’ on a tract by John Steel, minister of Old Carmunock, the only work he ever seems to have issued (Maclehose 1931: 107–13). Brown ceased printing in 1720 when the brothers (or cousins) James and William Duncan, whose bookselling business commenced in 1717, began to compete directly with Sanders in printing popular religious titles (Gillespie 1990: 57). These included in 1720 A memorial to the youth of the present age, or, the death-bed words and sayings of a young gentle-woman who sweetly, and triumphantly ended her days at Glasgow May, 3. 1706 by Margaret Car and Reverend Daniel Campbell’s Meditations on Eternity (1721). The Duncan family would be Glasgow’s most important booksellers, papermakers and printers through the rest of the century, accounting for almost a quarter of its imprints. James, a coppersmith by trade, began work as a type maker in 1718 with letters ‘rudely cut and badly proportioned’ (Duncan 1831: 5);15 as a coppersmith, he would have known how to cast small brass components. He was appointed ‘the touns printer’ in 1719 when he was described as a printer and typesetter (Marwick 1876–1916: 5, 69). The brothers divided their bookselling and printing businesses in 1721, probably to protect their assets as they were about to take joint lease of the Balgray paper and snuff mill on the River Kelvin.16 William may also have had ambitions to become Printer to the University, as in 1721 he issued Professor Morthland’s edition of Brevis introductio ad grammaticam hebraicam et Chaldaicam in usum academicorum glasgoviensium, possibly using Hebrew and Chaldee type purchased by the University for Donald Govan, briefly its Printer from 1715 to 1719. No appointment followed and the University remained without a printer for more than a decade. The Duncan brothers’ publications were dominated by religious tracts. In 1724 James ventured into Gaelic, reprinting a psalter for the Synod of Argyll, followed five years later by the shorter catechism. His proposal to print a Highland New Testament and Psalm Book in 1752 was roundly condemned by the Synod because of the inaccuracies of his previous publications. James Duncan responded by engaging a proofreader, ‘whose skill in the language had been approved by the best judges’. But this did not suffice and after the 1750s John Orr became 15 16

GCA B10/15/3697. There is some confusion about the Balgray mills in Thomson 1974.

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the principal Gaelic publisher in the city (Gillespie 1990: 57). The Duncan brothers only occasionally departed from religious staples, with such titles as The history of the kings of Scotland, from Fergus I. to the end of Q. Ann’s reign (1722), The ladies help to spelling by James Robertson, school-master in Glasgow (1722), Louis Crommelin’s Essay towards the improving of the hempen and flaxen manufactures in the kingdom of Ireland (1725), The expert sword-man’s companion of 1728, Defoe’s Further adventure of Robinson Crusoe (1735), John McUre’s A view of the city of Glasgow (1736) and Aristotle’s compleat and experienced midwife (1751). The publication of a book on flax is explained by William Duncan’s partnership in Murdoch, McCallum and Company, lint seed merchants.17 A diversity of interconnected partnerships in differing trades, often with familial links, distinguished the Glasgow merchant community, and printing and bookselling were no exceptions. Sanders died in 1730 leaving a stock of 2,174 books worth £381, chiefly in sheets and representing some 180 titles. Most were one or two copies, with a few exceptions such as 534 copies of the second part of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress printed in 1720, and 500 of John Durham’s The blessedness of the death of these that die in the Lord, which Sanders first published fifteen years before. His printing works had two presses and a variety of type, including a set of Greek letters.18 The stock was purchased for 12,000 merks by a consortium of bookbinders comprising James Broun, William Duncan, Alexander Miller, John Broun, Janet Hunter relict of James Broun, Mistress McLane and John Robertson, in whose name the bid was placed.19 All would leave their mark on Glasgow’s trade. William Duncan soon began reprinting some Sanders titles he had presumably acquired, such as Andrew Gray’s Directions and instigations to the duty of prayer. Successive generations of Duncans continued in the trade until the end of the century. Although their publications remained essentially evangelical, including the writing of evangelical Calvinist William Thom, they were not intolerant, printing for the English Episcopal Chapel in Glasgow and the Baptist congregation in Edinburgh. They also worked for the Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1783 to promote trade and industry in the wake of the American War of Independence, and regularly for the Town Council, 17

18 19

GCA B10/15/6122. (R. F. Dell, ‘Glasgow Copartneries, Joint Stock Companies and Venture to 1775’, 1971). GCA TMH 24/17/2. List of Sanders’ books, 1730. GCA TMH 24/17/2. Money received from bookbinders, 1730.

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and turned their hand to practical books for commercial customers, such as James Scrutton’s The practical counting house; or, calculation and accountantship illustrated, in all the cases that can occur in trade (James Duncan, 1777). In common with the rest of the late-eighteenthcentury merchant community, their connections extended east to Edinburgh, south to London and across the Atlantic. Robert Duncan was in Philadelphia in 1772–3 and his nephew and partner Thomas the following year, according to the account book of Philadelphia’s Scottish-born printer Robert Aitken.20 By this time three other relatives were settled along America’s eastern seaboard: ‘William Duncan, merchant, late in Glasgow, now in Northfolk, Virginia, Andrew Duncan, late merchant in Glasgow, now in New England, North America, and John Duncan, late brush manufacturer in Glasgow, now in Maryland’.21 Such connections among Glasgow’s merchant community were common and partly explain the export trade’s success. Meanwhile nearer to home the Duncans were in dispute with a Manchester bookseller in 1775,22 although by the 1780s James Duncan was looking to place another Thomas as a supernumerary in the Edinburgh shop of Charles Elliott.23 The Duncans worked closely, through formal partnership or informal joint ventures, with the Robertson and Chapman families. The bookbinder John Robertson began printing pietistic literature in 1717 and was part of the consortium that bought Sanders’ stock in 1730. Nine years later he was in partnership with Mrs McLean, another party to the sale. From 1776 his grandsons James and Matthew Robertson enjoyed a close relationship with James Duncan, apparently jointly contracting out to jobbing printers titles that anticipated large sales. The Robertson family’s 495 imprints ranked them just behind the Duncans. They were the city’s leading printer of chapbooks, as well as the main reprinter of children’s books which James Duncan sold at home and shipped to America, as both John Scally and Brian Alderson observe in this volume. James Duncan was joined by his son Andrew in 1792 in a business that did a considerable American trade in their own reprints, bibles and testaments. Robert Chapman became Alexander Duncan’s partner in 1775, probably to help launch a newspaper, The Glasgow Mercury (January 1778), directed at the commercial community. Andrew Stalker, another pietistic bookseller, 20 21 22 23

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Robert Aitken ms. account book 1771–1802 NAS Court of Session indexes, 30 November 1774, 254–5. NAS CS228 D/3/39. NLS Elliot letter to James Duncan, 20 February 1786.

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had already established a wide circulation for his Glasgow Journal (1741),24 printed by Urie and likely the town’s first newspaper (Craig 1931: 42–4). Perhaps the most important business to spring out of the Sanders’ sale was the firm of Alexander Carmichael and Company that included James Broun, John Broun, Alexander Miller and Mrs Janet Broun. Carmichael was the son of Gerschom Carmichael, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University until his death in 1729. He was briefly in business with Andrew Stalker before fronting the partnership that bore his name. Although his father was an academic, he had deep family connections in the merchant community and the Atlantic trades. In 1730 he published under the University’s imprint his grandfather the Reverend Alexander Carmichael’s Believers mortification of sin by the spirit, and the inaugural lecture of his father’s successor, Francis Hutcheson, De naturali hominum socialitate oratio inauguralis. Although he printed for the University, Carmichael was never its Printer in any formal sense. Mrs Broun died in 1735, leaving a stock of almost 16,000 volumes representing 439 titles; of these the place of publication of ninety can be identified, only five of which were Glasgow, forty-one London and eight the Low Countries (Mann 2000a: 205, 227) Most were the pietistic titles characteristic of Glasgow’s trade, but classical texts, mathematical and navigational treaties, medical works, French, English and classical dictionaries, maps and two copies of the Catholic theologian François Fénelon’s Adentures of Tellemachus were among the rest.25 Such books would only have interested university professors, their students and local schoolmasters. Mrs Broun’s partner in Carmichael and Company, Alexander Miller, began printing in 1736 with The Doctrine of Regeneration in three parts by Isaac Ambrose, the English Presbyterian divine, for, among others, two of the city’s most powerful tobacco barons, Archibald Ingram and John Glassford. The last two parts bear the imprint ‘Glasgow College’, meaning the University; some of Miller’s other titles have the same attribution. By 1738 his print and book shops must have occupied University buildings since he was given notice to quit (Maclehose 1931: 119–27). Miller continued in the trade and at his death in 1742, along with binding and printing equipment, he left a stock exceeding 23,000 volumes and 205 titles (Mann 2000a: 205). The contents were similar

24 25

GCA TD89/924/1–29. NAS CC9/7/55, 15 November 1738.

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to Mrs Broun’s, but without the science.26 One of his apprentices, Robert Urie, set up his own print shop in 1740 and plunged into the pietistic market at first (M’Lean 1913–14: 3, 89–108). His editions of the Spectator (1745) and Buchanan’s Psalms and Greek New Testament were exemplary (M’Lean 1913–14: 94), and in the 1750s he started printing and later publishing mostly secular works and modern classics, particularly French literature such as Voltaire’s Temple of Taste and the works of Molière (both 1751), then Montesquieu’s Reflections on the causes of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire (1752). He often acted for booksellers outside Glasgow and found markets in North America and the West Indies.27 Meanwhile, Alexander Miller’s widow, Mary Cameron, married Daniel Baxter, twenty-two years her junior, and carried on her husband’s bookshop with considerable success (Gillespie 1990: 61). Robert Foulis acquired the University book shop’s lease in 1741, some months before Miller’s death, and began publishing fine editions with Urie as printer. With a maltman and innkeeper for a father, Robert was a barber by trade and enrolled in Francis Hutcheson’s first university class in 1730; his brother Andrew received a more formal university education and became a teacher. Hutcheson’s influence on both brothers was profound, encouraging moderation, religious tolerance and a cosmopolitan outlook in a city notorious for its religious conservatism and parochialism (Sher 1995: 325–30). During the 1730s they actively pursued the city’s intellectual life and built up an impressive library. They must have been familiar with the shops of both Mrs Broun and Alexander Miller. They toured England and the Continent in 1738 and, armed with letters of introduction to the Jacobite Chevalier Ramsay, they copied for Glasgow University important documents about the institution that Archbishop Beaton had removed to the Scots College in Paris during the Reformation. In Paris they purchased books to sell on their return to Glasgow. Their first venture into publication in 1738 was a defence of the teaching of Francis Hutcheson in response to an attack by religious zealots, possibly printed by Miller. They returned to the Continent in 1739 and, apart from buying books, gained knowledge of fine printing. They also seem to have struck up a friendship in London with Andrew Millar, who had recently opened his book shop in the Strand and would provide a vital outlet for their work. Like Urie, Robert Foulis could not ignore the market for pietistic literature, but chose to publish moderate works 26 27

NAS CC9/7/57, 3 September 1742; CC9/7/59, 10 September 1745. NAS CC9/7/68, 6 December 1771.

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(Sher 1995: 328). From the outset the brothers developed a broad base to their list. Among 1741’s publications were Chevalier Ramsay’s Plan of Education, Cicero’s De natura deorum and Aesop’s Fables in two sizes, duodecimo for the discerning and octodecimo for the popular market, establishing a standard practice. During 1742 the two began printing themselves, using the beautiful types cut by Alexander Wilson and John Baine at their St Andrews Foundry (Murray 1931: 18–19). That year two works by their mentor Francis Hutcheson and editions of Juvenal, Nepos and Terence were published, some printed by Urie and others by themselves. Thereafter they were to produce ‘edition after edition’ of Hutcheson’s works, making his at times controversial ideas known to a wider audience in Europe and America (Sher 1995: 329). In 1743 they issued Demetrius’s De Elocutione, reputedly the first book printed in Greek in Glasgow. The work deserved the accolade ‘Printer to the University’, awarded at the end of March, particularly as the appointment noted that the brothers possessed Greek and Latin type. It may not be coincidental that a year earlier Robert had married Elizabeth Moor, sister of the University librarian and later Professor of Greek, James Moor. From the outset, Foulis books were celebrated for scrupulous editing as much as fine typography, something that had previously eluded the Glasgow press. James Moor, George Muirhead, Professor of Oriental Languages and then Humanity, and William Richardson, his successor as Professor of Humanity, who read ‘cum exemplari Clarkii’, all held editorships with Foulis (Maclehose 1931: 176). Testimony to the Press’s diligence was the so-called ‘immaculate’ Horace of 1744. Allegedly the proofs were displayed on the College gates and a reward offered to anyone who could detect any errors. The brothers’ quickly secured reputation for fine printing, not just in Glasgow but throughout the United Kingdom, was no doubt helped by Gavin Hamilton selling their publications in Edinburgh and Andrew Millar in London. The Foulis brothers also became a major reprinter of English work; it was their editions of Bishop Burnet and John Locke in 1743 that caused Millar and other London booksellers to raise a prosecution in the Court of Session to claim a monopoly of certain titles. Wilson and Baine moved their type foundry from St Andrews to Camlachie just to the east of Glasgow in 1744, and when Baine left three years later, Wilson shifted into the University precincts to be close to the Press (Murray 1913: 18). Fame made it possible to attract subscribers and the catalogue of imported books for sale in the Foulis shop (1744) declared: ‘Several Gentlemen, Promoters of the Greek Learning, have had the Generosity to order a Copy, on the finest paper, of all

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the Greek Authors we print’ (Maclehose 1913: 168). The setting of classical authors was often a massive commitment: the 1749 Cicero was twenty-four volumes. Word passed around literary circles and Lord Hardwicke wrote of their 1750 Tully: ‘it does honour to ye Scotch press where they now print the most beautifully in Europe’ (Murray 1913: 23). In January 1751 the brothers announced their proposal to print by subscription the works of Plato (Murray 1913: 169), and the subscribers to their publications included English and Scottish peers, lawyers, doctors, academics and, perhaps most strikingly, prominent members of Glasgow’s merchant community who were equally enthusiastic promoters of pietistic literature. Such support meant that they could be discriminating in their choice of titles and abandon the local market for pietistic works in favour of modern classics, like Milton or the economist John Law. In 1750 Robert’s wife died, followed not long after by his eldest daughter. Overcome with grief, he travelled on the Continent where he conceived the idea of an academy of the arts for Glasgow. He engaged his well-to-do friends from the business community in the project which began in 1752 with the purchase of Old Masters. It opened the following year. As Robert admitted to Sir William Murray, later Lord Mansfield, in 1754, the Academy had overstretched him: ‘Private profit is what I have too much undervalued in my other undertakings to regard it in the present circumstances’ (Murray 1913: 90). Although distracted by this project, the Foulis output in the early 1750s was prodigious with as many as forty titles yearly. Rather than assisting the finances, this tide of activity stretched them further, forcing the brothers to mortgage their print shop and equipment to the University to finance the academy. But adversity did not diminish their passion for fine printing: this period saw their editions of Homer (1756 and 1758), discussed in detail by Brian Hillyard in this volume. Editions of Thucydides (1759) and Herodotus (1761) were published before they turned to Italian authors. The high quality of these works earned the Press public recognition in the form of medals from the Edinburgh Society for encouraging arts, sciences, manufacturing and agriculture in Scotland. But during the 1760s the financial strain caused an annual decline in new titles. Nevertheless they were still innovators, publishing a forty-four volume set of English poets, beginning with Thomas Gray and George Lyttleton in 1773, and concluding with John Gay and William Richardson in 1776. Altogether Robert and Andrew Foulis published over 700 titles, more than any other eighteenth-century Glasgow firm, but their runs would have been much shorter than the popular productions of printers like the Duncans (Gaskell 1986).

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A contributing factor to the Foulis financial failure must have been their alignment with the moderate party in a city still dominated by evangelicals. The surviving evidence suggests that the eighteenth-century Glasgow book trade was relatively profitable for its leading members. The household inventories of Janet Broun and Alexander Millar, however early in the century, suggest comfortable living. William Duncan Jr left £4,500 and Andrew Stalker owned a well furnished farm to the east of the city when he died in 1771.28 Lists of creditors and debtors in estate inventories indicate a high degree of integration between every branch of the trade, again a common feature of Glasgow’s commercial community. By the end of the century, although the Glasgow press was still dominated by pietistic works that appealed to customers in Scotland and North America, there was a growing body of secular literature, particularly volumes of vernacular verse and songs, notably by Robert Burns. These often appeared in cheap pamphlets or chapbooks that mixed poetry, political polemic and the inevitable religious tracts. Reflecting the maturity and size of the trade, the Society of Booksellers in Glasgow was formed to safeguard its interests and to provide relief for members and their families.29 Thus, by 1800, Glasgow had come of age as a publishing centre.

28 29

NAS CC9/7/65, 20 September 1765; NAS CC9/7/67, 2 May 1771. NAS CC9/7/73, 16 May 1786. Legacy in will of John Tait, Glasgow bookseller.

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Aberdeen and the North-east Iain Beavan Aberdeen, with the largest urban population in northern Scotland, was the centre for an expansive but sparsely inhabited rural area (Blanchard et al. 2002: 148). Throughout the eighteenth century, the city remained significantly smaller than Edinburgh and Glasgow, and by 1801 was only marginally larger than Dundee. Aberdeen was, however, the natural centre for many educated groups including teachers at its two colleges and grammar school (and their students), the clergy, lawyers, medical practitioners and established county families and landowners; in 1790 it was home to the Musical Society, the Club (later, the County Club) and five masonic lodges, most including members of the leading families of the north-east. But the ready market in professors and students at King’s and Marischal Colleges was modest, with the 1795–96 combined undergraduate population approximately 210 (C. A. McLaren 2005: 86). Aberdeen’s printing trade began in 1622, with the arrival of Edward Raban from St Andrews, but the number of local and regional firms did not markedly increase until the nineteenth century – though individually they expanded, as did their levels of business. In 1750, with the combined population of Aberdeen and Old Aberdeen around 15,000 (H. Mackenzie 1953: 43), there were five established booksellers: Alexander Angus, Alexander Thomson, Francis Douglas, Robert Farquhar and Robert Chalmers, with James Chalmers the only printer (his monopoly unchallenged for a further two years). Forty years later, in the 1790s, when the combined population of St Nicholas (Aberdeen) and Old Machar (containing Old Aberdeen) parishes had risen to 24,500, the number of large booksellers had actually fallen to four – Alexander Angus and Son, Alexander Brown, John Boyle and Agnes Thomson (widow of Alexander Thomson) – with printing in the hands 166

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of the still dominant Chalmers and Co., though now challenged by John Boyle and Andrew Shirrefs (Beavan 1990: 73; Withrington 1982: xxxv). Notably, although some local firms undertook multiple trade functions – Francis Douglas and John Boyle were, for example, both booksellers and printers – most specialised, sustaining a commercial and functional balance between printers and booksellers. Alexander Angus (and Son), Alexander Thomson and Alexander Brown, did not own presses and turned to local printers, while Chalmers and Co. undertook little bookselling of titles produced outside Aberdeen, primarily merchandising what the firm itself printed. During the first half of the eighteenth century, Aberdeen had only one firm of printer/stationers at any particular time. John Forbes Jr succeeded his father and died in 1704, and was followed in the business by his widow and daughter, identified in imprints as ‘the successors of John Forbes’. James Nicol, who married John Forbes Jr’s daughter, became town’s printer in 1710, and continued until he retired in 1736. The Forbes family and Nicol relied upon the annual Aberdeen Almanack (produced locally with variant titles since at least the earliest extant date, 1623) for regular income, but endured annoying counterfeits emanating from Edinburgh. Forbes Jr successfully sought an injunction against Agnes Campbell of Edinburgh and Robert Sanders of Glasgow in 1684, claiming some 50,000 almanacks were annually printed off in Aberdeen, but the fraudulent practices continued well into the eighteenth century (McDonald 1966: 257–322; Johnstone 1914: 42–3). Nicol also struggled with the exigencies of the 1715 Rebellion. Presses and printers were then found in only a few Scottish towns, which explains the request of the Jacobite Earl of Mar to Nicol (via Aberdeen Town Council) to deliver to ‘Robert Drummond, servant to Mr Robert Freebairne, the best printing press, with . . . typs . . . and to see them paiked up . . . for transporting them to Perth, or where the army should be at the tyme’, as the equipment was undoubtedly wanted for notices and various proclamations (Mann 2000a: 277–8; Aberdeen Burgh Council 1872: 355). In 1736, James Chalmers II (son of James Chalmers I, Marischal College Professor of Divinity), who probably trained with the London printer John Watts and was subsequently apprenticed to Aberdeen’s James Nicol, applied to the Council to succeed as Official Printer, after which he was similarly appointed by Marischal College, and for sixteen years held the city’s and county’s printing monopoly. In 1752 he faced local competition from Francis Douglas (in business 1748–69; partnership with William Murray, c.1752–9); the monopoly ended, but Chalmers went unchallenged as printer to the Town Council. Chalmers’

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firm undertook a great deal of civic work, including announcements and notices for the Council, local clubs and societies, the two Colleges, and various ad hoc bodies set up in the town or county. Typical of their output are the Report . . . for Procuring a More Ample Supply of Spring Water (1792), the Regulations for the High-Ways, &c. of the County of Elgin (1776) prepared by the Justices of the Peace of Elginshire, and the Regulations of the Northern Shooting Club (1782) (McDonald 1976: 31; Beavan 1987: 320; Carnie 1987: 305–6). Chalmers printed Professor Alexander Gerard’s influential Plan of Education in the Marischal College, obviously not a commercial enterprise, on the authorisation of Principal Thomas Blackwell and ‘by Order of the Faculty’. These sorts of semi-jobbing work sustained the firm, but its chief resource was the weekly Aberdeen Journal. Launched in January 1748, this first newspaper north of Edinburgh became the region’s primary advertising medium. Throughout the eighteenth century the Journal remained ostensibly impartial, although sometimes described as ‘Whig-aligned’ (Nichol 1987: 312), and it faced no real competition until 1806 when the (relatively) radical Aberdeen Chronicle arrived. James Chalmers II was also printer to the Commissioners of Supply for Aberdeenshire, which proved advantageous when Douglas and Murray’s Aberdeen Intelligencer threatened his newspaper monopoly. The weekly Intelligencer was launched in 1752 and a competition for advertising revenue began within a year, with first the Intelligencer, then the Journal, lowering rates. The Commissioners of Supply entered the fray by objecting to paying for notices in two papers. When the Intelligencer collapsed in February 1757, Douglas and Murray received a share in the Journal, as compensation. Shortly afterwards, and without competition, Chalmers reverted to his earlier advertising rates (McDonald 1967–70: 204–6). When Douglas left the trade in 1769 to farm near Paisley, John Boyle quickly expanded to include printing, having been a bookseller and bookbinder in Aberdeen since at least 1763. But, despite points of similarity between the printing and publishing outputs of Douglas and Boyle – both at various times (in relative contrast to Chalmers) aimed at an educated, aspiring readership – all three printers adopted a necessarily conservative approach to book production. Overall, the Aberdeen trade was not financially secure enough nor did it have reliable lines of distribution to produce texts for a wider Scottish or British market, although this was occasionally undertaken. Books and pamphlets were therefore produced predominately for Scotland’s north-east, with some material reaching Edinburgh through exchange agreements with the capital’s booksellers and publishers.

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Calculations for the output of eighteenth-century Aberdeen’s printing trade – excluding jobbing work and serials – indicate a little over 500 separate titles, but significantly, edition sizes are unknown (Beavan 1990: 55, 58; Nichol 1987: 313). However, Aberdeen’s eighteenthcentury production of commercial titles was far below Edinburgh’s and Glasgow’s, and at periods its output may have been less than Perth’s, where the Morisons operated a thriving business (OSA 1796: 521). Aberdeen’s printers often relied on subscription publication simply because they were not financially able to advance money on speculation. At this period much printed material, even from major metropolitan publishers, was produced through various forms of subscription. Publishing in parts (each paid for separately until the work was complete) or offering preferential rates for payment in advance gave the trade some financial security since resources were laid out only incrementally; this guarded against loss, as printing would not start until enough money was submitted or promised to cover production. In short, the retail market, levels of capitalisation and the practicalities of distribution created an approach to publishing in Aberdeen differing from that in metropolitan centres. Christian Milne, ‘wife of a journeyman ship-carpenter’ posed the inevitable question in her 1805 Simple Poems on Simple Subjects (Chalmers and Co.): I wonder, said a friend of mine, How many names of taste will shine On your Subscription List? Two hundred, Sir, perhaps, or so; There can’t be more, as few can know, My Songs or I exist. (154) In fact, Mrs Milne’s book attracted 530 subscribers, from aristocrats and the landed, to military officers and merchants. The subscribers’ motives are unknown, although simple charity is likely. Lists of subscribers were conventionally – but not invariably – printed at the front or back of books, sometimes validating the text. But subscribers might not be named in the work itself, with its publication by subscription only apparent from surviving newspaper advertisements. Douglas and Murray were the first eighteenth-century Aberdeen printers to attempt challenging works for an educated, progressively-minded market (McDonald 1976: 31). Subscriptions in 1753 made possible their edition of Alexander Gordon’s two-volume History of Peter the Great, which appeared in1755. Once his reputation was established, James Beattie, poet and Marischal College Professor

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of Moral Philosophy, was readily published in Edinburgh and London, but an Aberdeen reissue of his earliest work, Original Poems (1761), required subscriptions, taken by the Aberdeen booksellers Alexander Angus, Alexander Thomson, Francis Douglas and Robert Farquhar (Beavan 1987: 317). Douglas’s printing of a small format Delectus ex Aeliano, Polyaeno, aliisque, in usum juventutis academiae literarum Graecarum studiosae (probably the first use of Greek types in Aberdeen), while not financed by subscription, was almost certainly undertaken at the instigation of Willam Kennedy, appointed Marischal College Professor of Greek in 1758.30 John Boyle’s Collection of the English Poets, launched in 1776, took advantage of the 1774 House of Lords pronouncement on perpetual copyright to avoid those costs and the prospects of legal challenge (Feather 1988: 80–3, 116–25; 1994: 89–96); nevertheless, Boyle, unsure of his market, sought subscribers. The proposed twentyvolume series was scheduled at the exacting rate of one volume a fortnight, priced 1s each. A further twenty were proposed in 1777 on similar terms, but that series failed to appear, although some of its authors were subsequently published by Boyle, including Edmund Waller (Works, 1779). The Reverend John Willison, minister in Brechin, then Dundee, and well known for his devotional writings, was favoured by Aberdeen’s printers. Boyle (with John Bruce, briefly his partner) published Willison’s Whole Works in eleven numbers (1769), altogether printing this author five times by subscription before the end of 1782. Moreover, Boyle’s editions of Butler’s Analogy of Religion (1775) and Voltaire’s History of the Russian Empire (1777) were probably subscription publications. Aberdeen’s retail bookshops carried only a small proportion of the titles available and needed to maintain good working and credit relationships with London and Edinburgh suppliers. Alexander Angus and Son, John Boyle, Alexander Thomson and, from the late 1780s, (William) Paterson and (Alexander) Brown were Aberdeen booksellers who had regular commercial dealings with Edinburgh’s Charles Elliot, himself assiduous in making the Aberdeen and Inverness trade an integral part of his business. He sent William Sharp of Inverness a set of proposals for van Swieten’s Commentaries upon Boerhaave’s Aphorisms, asking, ‘Please do your best for Subscribers

30

AUL Diaries and notebooks of William Knight, Professor of Natural Philosophy, Marischal College. ‘Classified Catalogue of the Most Important Books in the Library of Marischal College, Aberdeen MDCCCXXIII – MDCCCXL’. MS M117. See ‘Books Printed in Aberdeen’.

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among your . . . Medical Acquaintances’ (McDougall 2002: 217, 238).31 Both William Paterson and Agnes Thomson (widow of Alexander) had standing orders with Elliot for individual parts of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, while Angus’s purchases from Elliot included two dozen copies, in quires, of A Short System of Arithmetic and Book-keeping by Robert Hamilton, Marischal College’s Professor of Natural Philosophy.32 Edinburgh’s Bell and Bradfute acted as a clearing house for booksellers outside the capital. Some in Aberdeen and further north, such as Isaac Forsyth in Elgin, William Sharp and Young and Imray in Inverness, corresponded regularly with the Edinburgh firm. Over 1794, Forsyth’s orders to Bell and Bradfute included the didactic (100 copies of ‘Watt’s Latin Grammar’), the religious (‘Logan’s Sermons’) and the political (‘Reports of the Secret Committee [of the House of Commons]’).33 Not that the Moray coast exactly seethed with sedition and subversion. As noted at the time, ‘A few copies of Paine’s Age of Reason found their way this length; but many more copies of the learned Bishop of Llandaff’s admirable Apology soon followed’ (OSA 1797: 378). The OSA observes of James Imlach’s circulating library at Banff that, ‘from our constant intercourse with London by sea, we have early access to the periodical and other publications of the day. The Reviews we generally receive from the bookseller here, in the course of the month succeeding their publication in London’ (OSA 1797: 369). This observation is especially important because it confirms how the trade moved books to distant localities – in this case, through small but direct orders. The distribution pattern that sent large quantities of material from London or Edinburgh to regional wholesalers in Aberdeen, and thence further north, would not evolve until the nineteenth century. Books in parts were not just printed and published in Aberdeen: advertisements suggest they were a steady source of a bookseller’s income. In 1761 Angus, Thomson, Douglas and Farquhar were all collecting subscriptions for a Glasgow edition of Matthew Poole’s Annotations upon the Holy Bible. A year later Angus was enlisting subscribers to Fifty Favourite Scotch Airs by Francis Peacock, dancing 31

32

33

NLS John Murray Archive, Charles Elliot letter books, copy letter, ?18 May 1775, Charles Elliot, Edinburgh, to William Sharp, Inverness. NLS John Murray Archive, Charles Elliot ledgers. Account with Paterson, 1789–91: L4/118; with Thomson, 1786–90: L4/59; with Angus, 1786–90: L4/81. ECA Records of Bell and Bradfute, booksellers, Edinburgh. Sheet book (books sold): 1792–5. SL138/4/2.

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master in Aberdeen. Thomas Stackhouse’s New History of the Holy Bible was announced in the Aberdeen Journal by James Meuros, printer and bookseller in Kilmarnock on 27 June 1763, to be completed in ‘220 sheets or 3224 pages’, ‘The whole to subscribers will be one Guinea, sewed up in blue paper, being only the third part of the price the same book is sold for at London’. Further conditions added that, ‘When 500 copies are subscribed for, the book will be put directly to the press, and carried on with all expedition till the whole is completed’. Alexander Angus, Alexander Thomson and William Sharp of Inverness were three of many listed as having copies of the prospectus. Similarly an edition of Bunyan’s Works in thirty-six numbers (to constitute six volumes) was announced in the same newspaper on 14 September 1767 by Dundee bookseller David Ogilvie. Again, Angus and Thomson collected subscriptions from the north-east. Printed by Sands, Murray and Cochran of Edinburgh for Ogilvie, the enterprise was completed in 1769. As elsewhere in the country, editions of Flavius Josephus seem to have sold steadily (Wiles 1957: 118–19). In October 1749, the Aberdeen booksellers Thomson and Farquhar collected subscriptions for the 1751 six-volume Edinburgh edition; John Boyle printed two editions (1768, 1786), both by subscription, the latter in twenty parts at 6d each. James Chalmers III sought subscribers for editions of two seventeenth-century divines: the Complete Works of Isaac Ambrose, published in parts (1769) and the Memoirs of James Fraser of Brea, announced in 1774 and published in 1776. At the turn of the century, Chalmers and Co. started to include subscribers’ names in such publications. The lists show a considerable variation. The subscribers listed in John Ogilvie’s daunting Britannia: a National Epic Poem (1801) could be described as ‘genteel’, while those in the Select Works of Christopher Love (yet another seventeenth-century minister) include some 480 names (excluding booksellers) from the more modest ranks in society: farmers, flaxdressers, weavers, millers, bakers, slaters, blacksmiths and wheelwrights, all from the landward communities of the north-east. Edinburgh bookseller John Ogle had also subscribed for 100 copies; and Edward Leslie, bookseller, Dundee, a further ninety-eight. Book auctions and book sales were regular occurrences in Aberdeen, often organised by Angus and Son, the ‘Leigh & Southeby of that part of the country’ in the eighteenth century’s second half (Timperley 1842: 776). Advertisements for no fewer than 191 book auctions and sixteen book sales appeared in the Aberdeen Journal from 1749 to 1800. The collections, sometimes fully listed in published sales catalogues, belonged (predictably) to members of the professional classes and landed families: ‘professors, lawyers, ministers,

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schoolmasters, doctors, gentlemen, country lairds and city merchants’ (McDonald 1967–8: 114). Clearly, the alumni of Aberdeen’s two centres of higher learning contributed to this steady trade in second hand and antiquarian books. Yet Aberdeen’s second hand and antiquarian trade was not always local. Alexander Angus seems habitually to have sent to Charles Elliot lists of the items coming up in the Aberdeen firm’s auctions. From Angus’s 1779 auction – possibly the library of Dr Alexander Rose among others – Elliot expressed interest in about sixty items, though he had to rely on Angus’s judgement about condition (McDonald 1967–8: 130). For a run of the Scots Magazine, Elliot offered five guineas ‘if in good Case[;] if in Leather binding I dont mind a little more’.34 By the end of the eighteenth century, the trade was firmly established north of Aberdeen and had reached Inverness, Elgin and Banff along the Moray Firth. Inverness itself, though described as ‘centrical to the Northern Counties; the Place where the Circuit Court . . . meets . . . and having a good Market’ (Committee for Considering the Present State of Education in the Northern Countries 1787: [1]), did not have an established bookshop before the 1760s, nor a printer before the mid-1770s (Simpson 1931: 3). Quite how its inhabitants acquired their books is not entirely clear, but Alexander Angus is known to have gone on a sales trip to the Moray Firth and Inverness in 1753 (McDonald 1967–8: 116–17). Caithness saw only itinerant booksellers until well into the nineteenth century, and the NSA notes, in relation to Wick: ‘About fifteen years ago, the parish was supplied by a flying-stationer who paid periodical visits’ (NSA 1845: 171; Mowat 1920: 86–7). Booksellers became established in the smaller towns of Elgin, Banff, Fraserburgh and Macduff. In Banff, James Imlach benefited from consignments of binding work sent by James Duff, Earl of Fife, for the Duff House library.35 Although Peterhead was a fashionable spa resort and frequently visited by James Beattie, the trade there was tenuous, perhaps not surprisingly, with a resident population of about 2,550 in 1790 (NSA 1794: 564). For a few years (1791–3/4) William Farquhar worked as a bookseller and ran a circulating library in Peterhead, but failed and was consigned to obscurity by 1794. Most Scottish chapbooks emanated from the Central Belt because of its relatively dense population, and the position of Glasgow, Edinburgh, 34

35

NLS Charles Elliot Letters. Copy letter, 8 February 1779, Charles Elliot, Edinburgh, to Alexander Angus, Aberdeen. AUL Papers of the Earls of Fife. List of books given to James Imlach to be bound, January 1777. MS 3175/F/79/2

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Stirling and Falkirk on major lines of transportation and communication (Morris 1997: 109). But chapbooks were also produced in northeast Scotland. A handful are identified as Banff issues from the 1790s, but the major producer from c. 1770 to c. 1800 was the Aberdeen printer James Chalmers III (trading as James Chalmers and Co.), who used his county connections for the initial distribution before sales on street corners, at urban and rural gatherings, markets and fairs. A few chapbooks had emanated from Aberdeen’s James Nicol earlier in the century, but they derived from a prior era, as with the medieval Most Famous History of the Valiant and Renowned Champion, Beuis of Hampton, c. 1711. Printing chapbooks caused Aberdeen’s firms no cultural discomfort. Chalmers and Co. evidently feared no obloquy, and sensed no contravention of manners and taste between producing religious texts, like the Reverend Robert Foote’s Sermon from Psalm lxxiv, 10 (1775) or the Northern Gazette (1787), which became the monthly Aberdeen Magazine (1788–91) and was clearly intended for polite and genteel society, and printing chapbook songs, ballads and humorous verse (Crawford 1987: 123). Detailed circumstantial evidence (relating either to the text, or else to the woodcut blocks) suggests that many broadsheet ballads, dated 1775–6, but lacking imprints, were in fact printed in Aberdeen, probably by Chalmers (Crawford 1963: 53). At least one version of the Garioch Garland, perhaps printed in Aberdeen and dating to c. 1782, celebrated the life and death of the Jacobite ballad singer and chapman, Charles Leslie, and acknowledged the role of Chalmers and Co. in printing his songs – and the obvious profit the firm derived from them: Those Songs in the long Nights of Winter, Bonny Laddie, Highland Laddie; He made, and Chalmers was the Printer, My bonny Highland Laddie. O mourn, good Master Chalmers, mourn, My bonny Laddie . . . For Charlie will no more return, My bonny Highland Laddie. Some chapbook printing continued in Aberdeen in the first few decades of the nineteenth century (and in Peterhead by Peter Buchan) but the number of titles is limited. Language itself was not the issue, as both Andrew Shirrefs’ Caledonian Magazine (1788–90) and Chalmers and Co.’s Aberdeen Magazine had regularly included poems and songs

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in Scots (a practice evident in Edinburgh from the 1770s), but the contents of some chapbooks exercised the Aberdeen Religious Tract Society which, as part of a larger British evangelical movement, was assiduous in its mission to provide uplifting substitutes for the ‘profane and immoral songs that they [hawkers and chapmen] formerly vended’ (Aberdeen Religious Tract Society 1811: 4). By the late 1820s, the sale of chapbooks – at least through booksellers’ shops – had reduced significantly. Thus Peter Buchan, the Peterhead printer, ballad collector and editor wrote to Robert Motherwell in 1827 (Buchan 1997: 219): It is now sent you, a collection of about two hundred half-penny ballads, the gleanings of all the Bookshops in Aberdeen and Peterhead, as all of them have been searched painfully . . . and there are none printed now in Abdn unless on broadsides, or single leafs for the street singers. But this disapproval of chapbooks (the contents of which were extremely variable) is not apparent during the later eighteenth century when chapbooks were displayed in the window of Mrs Thomson’s Aberdeen bookshop: ‘Occasionally the lower panes were filled with those wellknown coarse, yet attractive prints of their day, such as The Farm-yard on fire, The Mad Bull . . . printed and sold by Carrington and Bowles . . . St Paul’s Churchyard’. Moreover, ‘when these prints were not in the window, their place was occupied by . . . the History of the Holy Bible; King Pipin; The Death of Cock Robin . . . The History of Lothian Tom; Wise Willie and Witty Eppy; The Sayings, Doings and Witty Jests of George Buchanan’ (Bannerman 1840: 90–1). Earlier, both Robert Farquhar (1761) and John Boyle (1765) advertised ‘chapman books’ as available from their shops. Farquhar’s list included chapbooks of ‘Aristotle’s midwifery’, his ‘Masterpiece’ and his ‘Problems’, which were given over to a mixture of scientific and obstetric facts, fallacies and beliefs. Aberdeen also provided income for street vendors of ballads, almanacs and execution confessions. William Knight, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College (whose father was a bookseller), had a collection of chapbooks within his larger library, though whether they were gathered together as a conscious act of preserving cultural artefacts that were passing into history, or as spontaneous purchases, is unknowable.36 Eighteenth-century chapbook production and distribution in the north-east provides no evidence of any 36

AUL Catalogue of William Knight’s [personal] Library, 1842. MS M167A. See under ‘Penny histories’.

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division between ‘polite and popular cultures’ in that region at the time. Chalmers’s chapbooks were mostly song collections, often displaying conservatism and British patriotism, as with the Sailor Bold, no doubt a deliberate attempt to avoid association with the radicalism of the 1790s, when they were produced: While I can stand or draw my breath, I will oppose the pride of France Great Britain’s glory to advance. However, the Old Man Kill’d with the Cough was uncompromising in its description of the effects of advancing years and ill-health: You girls that are willing in country and city I pray now come pity a sorrowful maid That is daily vexed and nightly perplexed All with an old husband – I wish he was dead . . . His breath it doth stink like an old house of office His slobbering and bobbing I cannot well bear, And evry night when he comes to bed me, He must have a spitting box plac’d at the chair. By 1819, Robert Southey called Robert Brown ‘the chief bookseller in the place’. Later a pre-Reform Tory provost of Aberdeen, Brown had begun a short-lived partnership with William Paterson in 1785 and ten years later married the daughter of James Chalmers III. In 1803 Chalmers and his son-in-law unsuccessfully attempted to establish a paper mill, but its failure had no lasting effect on either partner’s business. Brown ran the local Stamp Office and developed an unmatched circulating library, with the firm itself (Brown and Co.) continuing into the twentieth century. Aberdeen’s growth as a printing, regional publishing and book distribution centre accelerated markedly at the turn of the century and by 1821, with the population reaching 45,000, at least twenty-five firms or individuals sold or printed books. Class consciousness, political activism, questions on educational provision, social and civic issues and surfacing denominational disputes all made work for the local presses and led to increasing specialisation. But only with the mid-nineteenthcentury arrival of the railways did Aberdeen become a major regional distributor for the trade (Beavan 1996: 94–114), a role that the city had spent most of the eighteenth century preparing to fulfil.

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The Gaelic Book Ronald Black Later in this volume, Gaelic books are analysed from a literary point of view. Here the Gaelic book is considered as an artefact in its own right – an act of communication between author and reader, mediated by publisher, printer and bookseller. Mediation was not, however, always present. Thanks to the subscription system, authors had little choice but to go out and meet their potential readers. In particular, stories of the peregrinations of Donnchadh Bàn in search of subscribers to his second edition in 1786– 8, when he was in his early sixties, have become the stuff of Gaelic literary history (J. Mackenzie 1841: 217–18; MacLeod 1952: xxxiii): The Rev. Mr McCallum, of Arisaig, saw him travelling slowly with his wife. He was dressed in the Highland garb, with a checked bonnet, over which a large bushy tail of a wild animal hang; a badger’s skin fastened by a belt in front, a hanger by his side, and a soldier’s wallet was strapped to his shoulders. He was not seen by any present before then, but was immediately recognised. A forward young man asked him ‘if it was he that made Ben-dourain?’ ‘No,’ replied the venerable old man, ‘Ben-dourain was made before you or I was born, but I made a poem in praise of Ben-dourain.’ He then enquired if any would buy a copy of his book. I told him to call upon me, paid him three shillings, and had some conversation with him. He spoke slowly; he seemed to have no high opinion of his own works; and said little of Gaelic poetry; but said, that officers in the army used to tell him about the Greek poets; and Pindar was chiefly admired by him. Things did not always go quite so well with Kenneth Mackenzie (Mackenzie 1841: 270–1): 177

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McKenzie returned from sea in the year 1789, and commenced going about taking in subscriptions . . . The itinerant subscriptionhunting bard, has always been the object of the little ridicule of little men. At him the men of mere clay hurl their battering-ram; and our author appears to have experienced his own share of the evil. Having called upon Alexander McIntosh, of Cantray Down, he not only refused him his subscription, but gruffly ordered him to be gone from his door! . . . Our bard, thus unworthily insulted, retaliates in a satire of great merit. In this cynic production he pours forth periods of fire; it is an impetuous torrent of bitter irony and withering declamation, rich in the essential ingredients of its kind; and McIntosh, who does not appear to have been impenetrable to the arrows of remorse, died, three days after the published satire was in his possession. Distressed at this mournful occurrence, which he well knew the superstition and gossip of his country would father upon him, McKenzie went again among his subscribers, recalled the books from such as could be prevailed upon to give them up, and consigned them to the flames . . . This accounts for the scarcity of his books. The satire is indeed vicious, but the books are not particularly scarce (R. Black 2001: 318–27, 509). The last item by Allan MacDougall in his 1798 collection describes his own anxieties as an ‘itinerant subscription-hunting bard’. It is in seven sixteen-line verses to the tune ‘Cabar Féidh’, entitled ‘Comhradh an Ughdair ’s a Charaid mu thimchioll an Leabhair so’ (‘The Author’s Conversation with his Friend about this Book’). We may guess that the friend is Ewen MacLachlan, then a student of King’s College, Aberdeen. Each stanza is divided equally between the author’s worries and his friend’s responses. Here is a sample of the responses (my translation): You’ll live long if all you harp on is complaints and moans about it, when so much gold’s gone in your pocket since you started it in spring; having a big book scratched out, you’re foolish if you don’t keep going, since many men have put their paws in from the hope of receiving it . . . And with him who comes both brisk and lively, won’t you move fast to do business? He’ll say: ‘Get me pen and ink, and I will take a book from you.’ He’ll then quickly write his name with a feather when he gets it; one after another will go at it whose confidence is heroic . . . Stop your girning, don’t be lazy, don’t be put off by mere trifles, travel a while with your ready Gaelic, for no excuse will bring you business; stay firm in your task, and bring

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from the press each book of them, so your fame will be confirmed with no faults heard flung after you. Among the ‘trifles’ was the fact that MacDougall was blind! On six occasions the subscription list was published as part of the book: 1. The deluxe edition of Shaw’s Analysis (1778) contains 182 names, representing the aristocracy, gentry and literati of England and Scotland, along with a few of Shaw’s relatives and friends from Arran and Kintyre. 2. The list in Shaw’s 1780 Dictionary is similar but has 205 names. 3. The list in Patrick Macdonald’s Highland Vocal Airs (1784) contains 837 names, principally of the gentry and literati of Scotland and England, with some deeper penetration into the merchant and farming classes of Argyll and adjacent parts of the west of Scotland. 4. The list in the second edition of Macintyre’s poems (1790) contains 1,480 names, mostly of the ordinary people of the West Highlands and Islands, giving place of residence (‘Mr John Campbell, Fidden’), adding trade or profession if any (‘Mr John Campbell, ship-master, Oban’), distinguishing gentlemen from the rest (‘John Campbell, Esq. of Otter’), and stating the number of copies taken, if more than one. Curiously, the list does not include the Reverend Duncan MacCallum of Arisaig. 5. The list in Mackenzie’s collection (1792) uses the same system. It contains 993 names, again mostly of ordinary people, but is centred in Inverness and restricted almost entirely to the eastern half of the Highlands. 6. The list in Duncan Campbell’s collection (1798) contains 501 names, but seems to have been taken up entirely in Cork, and is organised principally by regiment, name, rank and number of copies taken, as follows: 2nd Battalion Rothesay and Caithness Fencibles, 150 names; Elgin Fencibles, 58; Duke of York’s Royal Highlanders, 52; Fraser’s Fencibles, 77; Argyll Fencibles, 80; 3rd Battalion Breadalbane Fencibles, 36; Reay Fencibles, 31; ‘Gentlemen Sailors from Scotland’, 13; ‘The Gentlemen of Cork’, 4. The soldiers’ surnames are a rough reflection of their regiments’ catchment areas, while the sailors’ show them to be from the Firth of Clyde. Detailed analysis of the 2,473 entries in Macintyre’s and Mackenzie’s lists, which between them cover the entire Gaelic-speaking area of Scotland, would suggest where each of these two poets went on

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his travels, and who exactly was buying Gaelic books in the years around 1790. It would also help map the lost communities of the pre-Clearance Highlands. Where for example are Ardcheanrochdan and Ardchoyline, Derculich and Ederlackhie, Ishaig and Lagancha, Shanochyle and Shierglass, Tartness and Tullachgrebin? Particularly intriguing is ‘Mr John Campbell, North Poll’. There are also questions relating to trades and professions. What are we to make of Mrs Anna Nic-Thaush, Maighdean-chiuil an Duin-eidean, the only person of the 2,473 who put herself down in Gaelic? Maighdean-chiuil suggests a ‘music-girl’. Was Mrs MacTavish a professional singer on the Edinburgh stage? For example, the seventy-one individuals listed by Donnchadh Bàn for Glasgow or Anderston can be divided into three groups. The largest, thirty-six people, comprises those whose trades are cited: thirteen merchants, five grocers, five drovers, two shoemakers, two gardeners, one writer, one surgeon, one farmer, one vintner, one cotton-spinner, one sawyer, one tailor, one candlemaker, one gardener’s wife. Next come twenty people for whom no trade or profession is given. The third group consists of those about whom it has proved possible (thanks to their social status) to find information from other sources. Finally the surnames themselves must be analysed. In the case of Glasgow and Tradeston, those which occur more than once are Macintyre (10), Wright (6), Campbell (5), Kennedy (5), Buchanan (2), MacMillan (2), Robertson (2) and Stewart (2). Three conclusions may tentatively be drawn: Duncan was making good use of family networks (both he and his wife were Macintyres, of which ‘Wright’ is a common anglicisation); with one exception, the other names derive from parts of Argyll and Perthshire close to Glasgow and were therefore common in the town; the name of the poet’s mother is unknown, and this analysis suggests that she may have been a Kennedy. It can provisionally be calculated that 184 or 185 Gaelic books were published between 1567 and 1800; the uncertainty is caused by Dewars’ disputed songs. The figure may be broken down by place of publication and date (assigning MacDonald’s Ais-Eiridh of 1751 to Glasgow and Anna Orr’s Leabhar-Ceist na Mathair of 1782 to Edinburgh): Edinburgh and Leith 77 (1567–1800), Glasgow 63 (1651–1799), Perth 19 (1778–1800), London 6 (1688–1781), Inverness 4 (1774–80), Stirling 3 (1796–8), Greenock 2 (1779–1800), Aberdeen 1 (1799), Cork 1 (1798), Fayetteville, NC 1 (1791), place unknown 7 or 8 (1775–97). The leading centres of Gaelic book production are thus shown to be Edinburgh and Glasgow, in that order, with Perth performing strongly from 1778, thanks to one enterprising publisher, John Gillies.

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A further breakdown of the figures for Edinburgh and Glasgow reveals varying periods of dominance. Between 1567 and 1727 eighteen Gaelic books were published in Edinburgh, five in Glasgow. Between 1729 and 1765 only two Gaelic books were published in Edinburgh, twenty-three in Glasgow. And between 1767 and 1800, fifty-seven Gaelic books were published in Edinburgh, thirty-five in Glasgow. This fluctuation reflects the vagaries of the publishing industry, not the demography of the Gaelic language. By 1739, probably thanks in part to the monopolistic aggression of Andrew Anderson’s widow, Agnes Campbell, there were only four printers in Edinburgh (Fairley 1925). The 1740s saw the beginning of Glasgow’s rise to European fame as a centre of the industry, but after mid-century the number of printers in Edinburgh increased rapidly, and the dominance of the capital was restored after 1767 (Four Hundred and Fifty Years 1958: 10). This is not, however, the whole story. After Agnes Campbell’s death, Gaelic publishing in Edinburgh became a free-for-all, never dominated by any one printer, publisher or bookseller. By contrast, in Glasgow two families dominated the sector to such an extent that of the sixty-three Gaelic books published in Glasgow between 1651 and 1799, all but nine bear the name Duncan or Orr. If we look for Edinburgh names that occur more than twice, we find first of all that ten Gaelic books are known to have been printed by the Heirs of Andrew Anderson between 1694 and 1725. Thomas Lumisden and John Robertson produced three in 1725–7, and Robertson’s name appears on two more in 1767. John Balfour appears once in 1758 as a partner in Hamilton, Balfour and Neill, and twice in 1767 as a partner in Balfour, Auld and Smellie, working for the Society in Scotland for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge. This lucrative contract was inherited by William Smellie (1783, 1787 and 1793) and passed on to his son Alexander, whose name appears in 1800. We find Walter Ruddiman printing for Ronald MacDonald of Eigg in 1776 and Robert Jamieson in 1778, then sharing liability in 1782 with John Gillies of Perth, James Gillies of Glasgow and Alexander Davidson of Inverness. David Paterson printed books in 1779, 1785 (twice) and 1786, John Paterson in 1795 and (for the SSPCK) in 1796. The name of Charles Elliot appears, with or without partners, in Edinburgh or London, in five works published in 1785 or 1787. John Moir appears as a printer in 1794 and 1795, as a publisher in 1797 and 1798. Finally, George Peattie’s name appears on seven books published in Edinburgh or Leith in 1796–7, once in partnership with John Galbraith. When we turn to Glasgow we experience a sense of calm continuity. Andrew Anderson, who later became the King’s Printer in

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Edinburgh, printed the Psalms and catechism in 1659. The two James Duncans, father and son, printed ten works between 1724 and 1760; Robert Duncan printed one in 1770, and Andrew Duncan and Robert Chapman (the Foulis brothers’ executors) another in 1785. Only in 1750–2 is there any excitement, the Foulis brothers’ one and only Gaelic venture being quickly followed by the arrival of John Orr, his astonishing, albeit surreptitious, choice of the Ais-Eiridh to launch a career as a publisher of dogged pietism, and his very public trouncing of the Duncans in obtaining the favour of the Synod of Argyle. Orr had sensed an opportunity, and in his Mother’s Catechism of 1752 he placed an unusual bilingual notice: advertisement. THAT John Orr Book-seller in the Salt-mercat, GLASGOW, designs to print several practical Books in the Highland Language if he meets with due Encouragement. rabhadh. GU bheill Join Orr fear chreic Leabhairin ann an Margadh an tsallain ann a GLASSACHA toilleach air cuidd do Leabhraibh maith a chlo-bualadh ann san Channoin-Ghaidhealach mu bheirrir deagh-mhisneach dho. He published altogether fourteen Gaelic books between 1751 and 1765. Only one of these (in 1752) was done in partnership, and the copartners are unnamed. After his death in 1766 the business was carried on by his wife Agnes (Anna) Reid, whom he had married in 1753, and between 1770 and 1799 no fewer than twenty-nine books appeared under the name Anna Orr, Ann Orr or A. Orr. Most of these were printed by Anna or her son Andrew in Glasgow, but by the late 1790s it is clear that a good deal of the Orrs’ printing was being done by others, especially Charles Stewart in Edinburgh. The only other Glasgow publishers known to have ventured into Gaelic work in this period were James Gillies (1795) and William Bell (1796, 1798). The relationship between James Gillies of Glasgow and John Gillies of Perth is uncertain. Like the young John Orr, the latter adopted an entrepreneurial approach to Gaelic, and advertisements for his stock are bound in at the end of many of his books. These advertisements richly repay study. I have seen four: one bound with the Gaelic translation of Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted (1782), which I will call ‘A’; one with the Shorter Catechism, 1782 ‘B’; one with Buchanan’s hymns, 1784 ‘C’; and one with Buchanan’s hymns, 1786 ‘D’. A is as follows: Gaelic Books, &c. sold at the Shop of / john gillies. / Stewart’s Testaments / Psalm Books with Paraphrases and Assembly’s Catechisms. / Ditto with Church Tunes. / Mac Donald’s Songs. /

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Stewart’s ditto. / Mac Pherson’s ditto. / Mac Farlan’s ditto. / Smith’s Gaelic Antiquities. / Clark’s Works of the Caledonian Bards. / – Defence of Ossian’s Poems. / Mac Pherson’s Poems of Ossian with Blair’s Dissertations, 2 vols 8vo. / History of the Feuds and Conflicts among the Clans, with a collection of Songs. / Buchanan’s Inquiry into the Genealogy of Ancient Highland Surnames. / Mac Donald’s Gaelic Vocabulary. / Mother’s Catechisms Gaelic and English. / Ditto in Gaelic. / Willison’s assembly’s Catechisms explained. / Confession of Faith. / Watt’s Catechisms, Gaelic and English. / Buchanan’s Poems. / Proverbs. / Shorter Catechisms. / N. B. At said Shop may be had Writing Paper of all Sorts, Paper Hangings for Rooms, Wax and Waffers, English, Irish and Dutch Quills, Slater and Slate Pens, Violin Strings and Music Books, &c. &c. with every other article in the Stationary Branch, and good allowance to Retailers. It will be noticed that this refers to ‘Stewart’s’ songs (presumably Peter Stuart’s, 1783, Robert Stewart’s, 1802, or Alexander and Donald Stewart’s, 1804), to ‘Mac Pherson’s’ songs (Alexander Macpherson’s, 1796?) and, stranger still, to ‘Mac Farlan’s’ songs. The earliest known collection of Gaelic songs by a Macfarlane is Peter Macfarlane’s (1813). The question therefore has to be asked: could this advertisement have been printed as late as 1813, or is ‘Mac Farlan’s’ songs a hitherto unknown collection, perhaps by Robert Macfarlane, the ‘professor’? The answer to this is that John Gillies is otherwise on record as a bookseller and publisher only from 1774 to 1791 (Carnie 1960: 8),37 and that this is underpinned by a study of B, C and D. Every book advertised in B can be accounted for from existing knowledge; there are several from the period around 1780, the latest being ‘Stewart’s Songs’. This is also true of C, except that the period of concentration is pushed forward to 1780–5, the latest now being ‘Gaelic Proverbs’; Stuart’s book is referred to explicitly as ‘Stewart’s Gaelic Songs’. In D the concentration moves forward by another year, the latest being from 1786 (‘Brown’s Poem on the restoration of the forfeited estates, and ancient Highland dress’). It thus appears that B, C and D were printed either in the same year as the book with which they were bound, or in the year following, so the likelihood of A having been printed even as late as 1796, never mind 1813, is low. In A there appears to be a concentration of 37

The latter date is indicated by NLS Adv. MS 82.3.9, f. 49 John Gillies’s invoice and receipt to Miss A. Oliphant of Gask, 14/17 June 1791, for books, book-binding, and violin strings.

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works published in 1778–85 (Caledonian Bards 1778 and 1783, Galic Antiquities 1780, Feuds and Conflicts 1780, Defence of Ossian’s Poems 1781, ‘Mother’s Catechism’ in Gaelic 1782, Peter Stuart’s songs 1783, James Stewart’s Pentateuch 1783, Proverbs 1785); a leap from these to 1796 is highly unlikely, and one is forced to conclude that individuals called Macpherson and Macfarlane produced collections in or around the years 1778–85. It is hard to be sure by how much this conclusion alters our total of 184 or 185 Gaelic books. Certainly ‘Mac Pherson’s Songs’ sounds like a collection otherwise unknown; perhaps its author or editor was the Hugh MacPherson alleged by Leyden to be responsible for the poems in Feuds and Conflicts (1780). However, we know that Robert Macfarlane was active as a teacher and translator in Edinburgh from 1773 to 1799, and he may be the anonymous editor of Forrest’s collection of 1777. He subscribed to Shaw’s Analysis (1778) as ‘Mr. Macfarlane, Walthamstow’, to Shaw’s Dictionary (1780) as ‘Mr. Robert Macfarlane, Walthamstow’, and to Macintyre’s and Mackenzie’s songs (1790, 1792) as ‘Mr Robert Macfarlane, teacher, Edinburgh’. Identifying the publishers of Gaelic books is complicated slightly by the varying forms of their names. In most cases only the forename shows any appreciable difference: Andrew Anderson usually appears as Aindra Ainderson, James Duncan as Séumus Duncan, Alexander Smellie as Alastoir Smellie. From 1768 onwards, however, some surnames appear in forms that may challenge non-Gaelic readers: Alexander Donaldson (Skinner 1928) becomes A. Mac-Dhónuil (1768), Robert Duncan Rob: MacDhonnachuidh (1770), David Paterson Daibhidh Mac-Phatric or Mac-Phatraic (1779, 1785, 1786), William Bell Uilleam Mac’ ille Mhaoil (1796). There is much inconsistency. In 1799 only Charles Stewart’s surname appeared in Gaelic (C. Stiubhart), in 1800 only his forename (Tearlach Stewart). Naturally such practices extend to place of publication, and in so doing provide Gaelic forms of interest to the onomastician. Leidhe for Leith, Cuirt a Phaitersnich for Paterson’s Court in Edinburgh and Sràid an t-Salainn for Glasgow’s Saltmarket presumably all reflect the speech habits of the urban Highlanders of the period. In some cases surnames are given in a form, such as Mac Anliosa for Gillies, which their owners are not known ever to have professed. Kennedy’s hymnary of 1786 was Clo’ bhuailt’ le. D. Mac Cnuidhein, Agus r’an Reic le. J. Mac Anliosa, Leabhar-reiceadoir ann Peairt; agus J. Mac Anliosa, Leabhar-reiceadoir, oscionn na Crois ann, Glas-gho: ‘Printed by D[avid] Niven, and sold by J[ohn] Gillies, bookseller in

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Perth, and J[ames] Gillies, bookseller, above the Cross in Glasgow.’ The following, from the Shorter Catechism of 1800, is a challenge from start to finish: Air an Scriobha’ on bheurla anns a’ Ghailic albanaich, / Le Seumas Mac Iullamhoirre, / Maisdeir Scoil, ann an Droghaid Mhic Eoin. / paslic: / Clo bhuailt le eoin macneal, / Arson Ghabriel Tighearna, Leabhar Reic-adair, aig / imtheachd a Chluig air an t’ sraid îosail, ann ’n Grianaig. It cannot be translated without recourse to research. Mac Iain or Mac Eoin, genitive Mhic Eoin, was the Gaelic for the surname Johns(t)on(e) (R. Black 2007a: 572). The Renfrewshire burgh of this name consisted merely of a few houses ‘at the Brig o’ Johnston’ until a plan for a new town was made in 1782; by 1792 the population was 1,500, enough to warrant a schoolmaster (C. A. Scott 1972; Farmer 1999). Fortunately the printer put his name in English at the end of the book: ‘Paisley, printed by J. Neilson, 1800.’ Gabriel Laird was a bookseller in Laigh Street, Greenock, 1783–1817. The Ordnance Survey’s Greenock Town Plan of 1857–8 shows Bell Entry leading north into the docks from Dalrymple St, but no Laigh St. Armed with these facts, the intrepid scholar may finally render the colophon: Translated from English into Scottish Gaelic by James Morrison, schoolmaster in Johnstone. Paisley: printed by John Neilson for Gabriel Laird, bookseller, at Bell Entry on Laigh Street, in Greenock. Finally, when a volume has been in existence for some time, a glance at its physical character can help us enter the world of its readers. NLS ABS.1.79.212 brings together the Gaelic psalms, paraphrases and catechism, all published by John Gillies in 1786. The catechism includes alphabets, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. The whole is bound in a thick wraparound leather cover with a buttontype leather fastening. Between its pages are a newspaper cutting from 1804 and a lock of light brown hair. If the tendency of evidence based on physical character is to ask questions, evidence based on annotations can sometimes contain answers, as the following random examples indicate. Lord Lyon’s office CFC B2 contains the Psalms and Shorter Catechism of 1702. On a flyleaf is ‘John Steuart / my mother dayed on the / fifth of february 1704 / and my father dayed / on the 27 of aprill / and on the year 1706’. In a later hand is ‘David Steuart / my Mother died 13 Novr 1774 / my Father died 25 Sept. 1776’. David makes various other

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scribbles: what looks like ‘loman’ in Gaelic script; ‘Dhaibhidh Steuart / 1758 blian Do Dhia’; ‘Dhaibhidh Steuart / Dhaibhidh Steuart / 1759 blian do Dhia’. On the inside front cover his or another hand adds ‘G Psalms 1st ed. 1694 / – second 1702 / – third 1715’. Loman could mean ‘bald man’; blian do Dhia is bad Gaelic for ‘year of God’. New College tCB 59.126 1715, the 1715 Psalms, contains (among others) the following notes: ‘James mcdonald his / Sallm Book 1760 / James mcdonald aught this Book called the Sallm Book 1759 years’; ‘James mcdonald his Book or ather wies his father give to him James mcdonald . . . 20 Days 1760 years 56795187023700 . . .’; ‘Peter and / Aught this Book / Macfarlan in Innerchochull’; ‘Peter Mcfarlan Aught this Book 1797’; ‘Peter Macfarlan Innerchohill’. Clearly it had passed from James MacDonald to Peter MacFarlane. Innercochill is a mile north of Amulree in Perthshire. Intriguingly, the most south-easterly Gaelic dialect ever recorded on tape was that of a Miss Macfarlane, born in the next farm, Milton, in 1871; her father, a carpenter, was born in Innercochill itself (Ó Murchú 1989: 35). EUL *C.32.66 consists of the Psalms and Shorter Catechism (1738). It contains an account in an eighteenth-century hand of a Hector Mackenzie, Gairloch, and his family. Hector, a great-great-grandson of the chief, was reduced to beggary, but, with help, his family prospered. EUL C.R. 4.6.24 contains Solomon’s Proverbs (1753), Watts’s Children’s Catechism (1774) and Lothian’s Reformed Catechism (1779). The last page of the Children’s Catechism bears this note: ‘John McLaren fielar / Galloch from Crieff and / Comrie therfor this / Book Blongs to him / November 27 1775 / John McLaren his hand / of write, pride and / holiness is never Alike / to the Lord for thy have / Different Collours and / Different Countenance / so you my look on this &cee’. The words ‘fielar Galloch’ can only represent fìdhlear Gallach – hardly a ‘Caithness fiddler’ in this case, and a ‘Lowland fiddler’ would be fìdhlear Gallda, so Maclaren must be claiming to be ‘a fiddler in the Lowland style’. EUL C.R. 5.7.16 consists of Solomon’s Proverbs (1753), Willison’s Mother’s Catechism (1758) and the Shorter Catechism (1767). These seem to have been bound together at an early date, as the following notes appear in a late eighteenth-century hand on the inside front and back covers and on a flyleaf: ‘John McLaren his / Catechism in Both the / Languages Musician’; ‘John McLaren / Bought this Catechism’; ‘John MacLaren musician’. It is our fiddler again. Why does he need so many catechisms? Why has he a particular interest in the Book of Proverbs? One can only guess that he made a living by going around Highland Perthshire playing for weddings, teaching the latest dances,

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catechising the young, and informing the endless debate about proverbial wisdom in ceilidh-houses on winter nights. Dr Johnson remarked that no one in his time could read or write Gaelic who could not also read or write English. Education in the Highlands consisted mainly of teaching Gaelic speakers to read and write English. At best English was a second language, at worst incomprehensible. These books were almost entirely in Gaelic, yet their annotations are in basic – sometimes bad – English; when Gaelic words appear, as they inevitably do, they, too, are ill-written.

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Scottish Publishers in London Richard B. Sher During the course of the eighteenth century, more books were published in London than in the rest of Great Britain and the British Empire combined, and London also dominated in numbers of booksellers, printers, binders, engravers, and other book-trade employments. The relationship between the trade in London and the rest of Great Britain may therefore appear to conform to the model of centre and periphery, or capital and provinces, which has sometimes been applied to the book business in London and the rest of England. According to this approach, London initiated, produced and distributed books that were received and sold everywhere, with the provinces playing a decidedly secondary role (Feather 1985). With regard to Scotland, however, the capital-and-provinces model requires modification in at least two respects. First, as other chapters in this book illustrate, certain aspects of the Scottish book trade developed with genuine autonomy, despite London’s obvious pre-eminence. Secondly, whereas nearly all members of Scotland’s trade were Scots, the demographic of the London book trade represented much of Britain and Ireland, and outsiders – including many Scots – were among its most innovative and prominent figures. Thus the capital itself was the creature of the ‘provinces’ over which it reigned. Scotland’s role in transforming the London book trade derived from a process of Scottish metropolitan migration and settlement that is just beginning to receive its due (Langford 2005; Nenadic 2010). All sorts of eighteenth-century Scottish book-trade workers migrated to London. Some went to conduct short-term business with no intention of remaining. The Scottish bookseller Gavin Hamilton, for example, set up shop in London in autumn 1754 to market the first volume of David Hume’s History of England (then called The History of Great 188

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Britain) and other titles that he had recently published in Edinburgh with his principal partner John Balfour (McDougall 1978: 18). A personal record of Hamilton’s London sojourn survives in letters to his family.38 Arriving late in October, he gives a tourist’s account of London while awaiting the ship carrying his books and clothes. Over subsequent months, he describes coffeehouses, the opera, the Royal Exchange, Latin plays performed at Westminster School, the synagogue and various Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. ‘As to my setting up a shop in London,’ he writes to his son Jack on 3 December, ‘that is only to last a very short time & the shorter the better, I shal[l] only stay to sell of[f] my books but I can not tell when that will be.’ Six days later he describes his shop (which was ‘up a stair’ in Charing Cross and rented for a guinea a week) to another son, Robert, noting that there are no shelves because ‘I do not intend to hold it long’. Itinerancy, presumably, kept him from changing the shop sign: a golden head of Cleopatra. By February 1755 Hamilton was back in Edinburgh. Other Scottish migrant booksellers established London premises intended as permanent branches of their Edinburgh businesses. One example is James McEuen, a leading bookseller and publisher in early eighteenth-century Scotland. By 1722 some of McEuen’s Edinburgh imprints referred to ‘his shops in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow’. The titles that McEuen advertised in the London newspapers, and his shop sign showing the sixteenth-century Scottish humanist George Buchanan, suggest that his London shop in the Strand was principally a metropolitan outpost for books by Scottish authors. Alexander Donaldson and Charles Elliot set up similar satellite London shops during the second half of the eighteenth century. Donaldson’s first London premises, the ‘shop for cheap books’ to which James Boswell brought David Garrick in May 1763 (Pottle 1950: 257), sold inexpensive editions of English classics and other books that Donaldson printed (or more often, reprinted) in Edinburgh. Dividing the sites of production and sales was crucial to Donaldson’s success, but the London profits returned to Scotland, where Donaldson eventually retired to Broughton Hall outside Edinburgh. Although the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Elliot made his name for publishing new books, particularly medical ones, he too established a London outlet in the late 1780s, managed by his brother-in-law, Thomas Kay. A third class of Scots who penetrated the London trade were neither temporary sojourners nor owners of satellite firms: they were printers, 38

Thomson of Banchory Papers, New College Library, Edinburgh.

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booksellers, binders and allied tradesmen who made their careers in London, assimilating as best they could. This process of migration and anglicisation began well before the eighteenth century, but only after the 1707 Union, and especially after the 1720s, did this Scottish invasion indelibly mark the London trade. Although Scottish bookmen who established themselves in London were all driven by the search for economic opportunity, the circumstances of migration took different forms. Andrew Millar went to London in the 1720s as an apprentice to James McEuen and later took over McEuen’s bookshop in the Strand. William Strahan made the move a few years later, after serving his apprenticeship in Edinburgh. Strahan worked as a journeyman compositor in London and established his own printing business there in 1738. After attaining enormous wealth and status, Strahan told Boswell in 1775 that ‘if he had had £100 a year, he never would have left Scotland’ (Ryskamp and Pottle 1963: 100). The Strahan printing ledgers in the British Library show that Millar’s commissions were vital to Strahan who, in turn, attracted Scottish printers to his firm. Archibald Hamilton, for example, left Edinburgh as a teenager in 1736, eventually becoming Strahan’s shop manager at more than £200 per year. In 1756 Hamilton established his own London printing business and started the Critical Review with Smollett (Basker 1988). A classic pattern emerges: Scottish bookmen open businesses in London and establish career opportunities there for their countrymen. Yet Scots could also enter London publishing without such connections. John Murray, for instance, used an inheritance to purchase the shop and stock of William Sandby of Fleet Street in 1768 (Zachs 1998). He paid for this abrupt incursion through exclusion from the London guild (the Worshipful Company of Stationers) and the London booksellers’ closed-auction copyright sales. Murray complained bitterly, testified in parliament against the exclusionary practices in 1774 and eventually won an equal competitive footing. When he moved from Edinburgh, Murray changed his name from McMurray to mitigate London’s prejudice, as William Strahan had done when he changed his name from Strachan. No matter what their names, Scots were still betrayed by their tongue. The aspiring Edinburgh bookseller William Creech learned this harsh lesson on his first trip to London in 1766, aged twenty-one, when a member of his party was mocked for his speech ‘as if he had been a foreigner’ (Sher 2006: 405). Nor was language the only source of anti-Scottish sentiments. A 1766 poem ridiculed ‘Scotchman’ Andrew Millar for his ‘meanness’ as well as his burr (‘he’s always snarling er’), and Strahan once observed to David Hume that ‘John Bull’ took notice if ‘two

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Scotchmen’ were praised in the same issue of his London Chronicle (Belanger 1977: 10; Birkbeck Hill 1888: 244). Nevertheless, free market practices opened the London trade to outsiders from the English provinces and Scotland. We know that Murray’s initial exclusion was not caused simply by antipathy towards Scots, since other Scottish book-trade emigrants participated prominently in London trade auctions and became members in good standing (even officers) in the Stationers’ Company. Within this paradoxical culture of ethnic antipathy and institutional accessibility, the interlocking printing, bookselling and especially publishing activities of Andrew Millar and William Strahan set the standard for success by talented and ambitious Scots in London. Millar was the second son of Robert Millar, a Scottish Presbyterian clergyman known for his evangelical writings on the conversion of pagans and Jews to Christianity. After a stint as a minister in Port Glasgow, where Andrew was born in 1705, the Reverend Millar settled in the growing textile town of Paisley. Unlike his two brothers and two brothers-in-law, Andrew avoided a career in the clergy and in 1720 became James McEuen’s apprentice in Edinburgh. This secular apprenticeship was perhaps religiously motivated since McEuen was heavily involved in publishing Scottish Presbyterian works. McEuen, however, also published secular titles by Allan Ramsay and the antiquarian James Anderson. After serving as McEuen’s apprentice in London, Millar took over his master’s shop, with its largely Scottish stock, in January 1728. Just twenty-two years old, he immediately made his mark with the works of James Thomson, a young Scottish poet first published in McEuen’s Edinburgh Miscellany (1720). Thomson’s book-length poem The Seasons and his collected works became the backbone of Millar’s publishing business, and in turn Millar’s efforts made Thomson one of the century’s most popular poets. Millar and Thomson were also closely associated with a tightknit circle of ‘Anglo–Scots’ in London who were among the architects of a national ‘British’ identity. Their success is expressed in Thomson’s ‘Rule, Britannia’ and Millar’s monument to Thomson in Westminster Abbey, right next to that of Shakespeare. As Millar continued to expand his business – moving his shop at the sign of Buchanan’s Head to larger and more fashionable quarters along the Strand in 1742 – he emerged as the prototype of the modern publisher in two respects. First, Millar relied heavily on expert readers’ advice about the marketability of the manuscripts he received. Although contemporaries often attributed the dependence on these ‘literary counsellors’ to Millar’s own lack of learning (Nichols, Literary

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Anecdotes 1812–16: III: 386–9), their use professionalised publishing. Secondly, Millar, in Samuel Johnson’s words, ‘raised the price of literature’, becoming ‘the Maecenas of the age’ (Boswell 1964: I: 288, 287 n.3). Not only did he pay authors hundreds of pounds for copyrights to promising works, but he provided additional compensation when titles proved more lucrative than anticipated. In one case, popularised in an article in The Bee in June 1791, Millar heeded his expert on legal works and offered Richard Burn £200 for the copyright to his unpublished The Justice of the Peace, and Parish Officer, which he undoubtedly could have obtained for less. He then paid the author an additional hundred guineas for each new edition, despite having no legal obligation to do so. The article illustrates Millar’s honest and broad-minded entrepreneurship; his risk-taking and large capital outlays attracted the best authors, produced the most profitable works and accrued the highest earnings for Millar, who was said to have cleared £11,000 from Burn’s book. This entrepreneurial approach to publishing meant Millar was not averse to controversial projects like Fielding’s ribald novels or unusually ambitious works of learning. In 1747–8 Millar and two London colleagues published The Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time in twenty volumes (a twenty-first appeared in 1754), financed in part by over 1,000 subscribers (Abbattista 1985). More famously, Millar joined the Knaptons, Longmans, Dodsleys and two other London booksellers in putting up several thousand pounds to publish Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) in two large folio volumes. Thus Millar transcended his roots as a Scottish bookseller of mainly Scottish authors. His identification with London was enhanced by his leadership in the ultimately unsuccessful struggle of its most prominent publishers to maintain the legal status of copyrights as perpetual property, in opposition to Scotland’s booksellers who wished to reprint whatever was no longer protected by the Statute of Anne (1709–10). Here, his loyalty to the London trade – along with his own self-interest – trumped any native sentiments. Yet despite his associations with English authors and London booksellers, Millar remained a Scottish publisher in many ways. He was partial to his countrymen, often assuming the role of ‘generous patron of Scotch authors’ (Carlyle 1910: 456). Millar’s relations with his Scottish writers were not problem-free; David Hume, for example, sometimes criticised his ‘rapacious’ attitude and deceptive publishing practices. But Hume understood that Millar promoted his books aggressively and paid him generously – sufficiently to make him a wealthy man, as Hume observed in his brief autobiographical memoir.

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Similarly, when William Robertson was preparing his first book for the press, The History of Scotland (1759), Millar outbid an Edinburgh rival, Gavin Hamilton, by offering Robertson £600, ‘more than was ever given for any book except David Hume’s’. ‘You cannot imagine how much it has astonished all the London authors’, Robertson commented proudly (Brougham 1845: I: 278–9). Millar published the works of several notable Scots in collaboration with Edinburgh booksellers, especially Alexander Kincaid, a near contemporary and another McEuen apprentice. In 1748 Millar and Kincaid co-published the third edition of Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political, and five years later Millar continued the association with Kincaid and his first junior partner, Alexander Donaldson, by producing Hume’s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. These collaborations became more frequent during the late 1750s and early 1760s, when Millar, Kincaid and Kincaid’s second junior partner, John Bell, co-published titles by Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, Adam Smith, Francis Home and Thomas Reid, among others. The Scottish Enlightenment benefited greatly from such collaborations, which opened up the advantageous London markets to Scottish authors. By the mid-1760s, management of the business fell increasingly to Millar’s former apprentice and disciple, Thomas Cadell. Cadell ran the firm for a quarter of a century after Millar’s death in June 1768, and upon his own retirement in 1793 passed it on to his son Thomas and his manager William Davies, who formed Cadell and Davies. Cadell wisely turned to his master’s printer, William Strahan, to forge an informal publishing partnership. As in Millar’s day, there was a basic division of labour between printing and bookselling, but whereas Millar rarely allowed Strahan to take a significant part in the ownership of literary properties, Strahan and Cadell normally took equal shares in the books they published. Rather than build up their business gradually, they immediately entered into an undertaking so bold and daring that it astonished literary London: William Robertson’s three-volume quarto History of the Reign of Charles V (1769), which became one of the bestsellers of the age. During the 1770s the house of Strahan and Cadell grew into London’s premier publishing firm, emulating and yet far exceeding the enterprise of their mentor Andrew Millar. ‘We have the Ball at our Feet’, Strahan wrote confidently to his partner in 1776. As long as they were not greedy about their profits, he added, ‘all the rest of the Trade can but little interfere with us’.39 39

William Strahan to Thomas Cadell, 19 September 1776, Houghton Library, MS Hyde 77, 7.116.1.

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To an even greater degree than Millar, Strahan and Cadell attracted the best books by Scottish as well as English authors by paying handsomely and taking risks with expensive projects. Their payment schemes varied: they sometimes purchased copyrights for a fixed sum (as with Robertson, who received £4,000 for Charles V) and sometimes shared profits with authors, as instanced by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776 (Sher 2004). Moreover, they marketed their books aggressively, issuing catalogues of their publications and advertising them widely in newspapers, including Strahan’s own London Chronicle. Strahan also printed and was a partner in one of the century’s most influential periodicals, the Monthly Review, which he occasionally manipulated to benefit his authors. For example, he helped to arrange for his friend William Rose, another transplanted Scotsman who was a co-founder and part-owner of the Monthly Review, to provide complimentary reviews of two books by Hugh Blair that became bestsellers for Strahan and Cadell: the first of his five volumes of Sermons (1777) and Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783). Strahan embodied Millar’s complex and sometimes paradoxical attitudes towards England and Scotland. In a letter to Cadell (July 1777), he proclaimed London the ‘most desirable’ place in the world (Cochrane 1964: 139) and three years later contributed an anonymous letter to The Mirror describing himself as an ‘utter stranger’ to Scotland after years in the south. Besides anglicising his name, he worked hard to anglicise his language by purging dreaded ‘Scotticisms’. He rose to Master of the Stationers’ Company in 1774 and the same year entered parliament as Member for Malmesbury (and later Wootton Bassett) in Wiltshire. He continued Millar’s efforts to champion the London booksellers’ cause of perpetual copyright against the Scottish advocacy of limited (statutory) copyright; once that issue was finally decided against the Londoners by the House of Lords in 1774, Strahan and Cadell led a campaign by the London booksellers to implement perpetual copyright in practice if not in law, by means of a contrivance that James Boswell termed ‘honorary copyright’ (Boswell 1964: III: 370; Sher 1998). Yet for Strahan, as for Millar, assimilation and anglicisation had their limits. Strahan went out of his way to patronise fellow-Scots in London, often encouraging them to make their way in the metropolis. Although he and Cadell published many outstanding English authors, including Samuel Johnson, Edward Gibbon and Sir Edward Blackstone, Scottish authors were favoured, and they constituted the foundation of Strahan and Cadell’s publishing endeavours. Hugh Blair, Robert

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Burns, William Buchan, George Campbell, Adam Ferguson, James Ferguson, John Gillies, David Hume, Lord Kames, Henry Mackenzie, John Moore, William Robertson and Adam Smith make up a roll call of the Scottish Enlightenment’s innovators in history, fiction, poetry, literary criticism, philosophy, political economy, science, medicine and travel literature. Several were inherited from Millar, but many were new recruits. Strahan conducted a vast correspondence with his Scottish authors, whom he entertained in London and sometimes visited during his many excursions home. Lasting friendships were formed, particularly with David Hume, whose works he had printed for so many years before becoming their publisher. Yet, as the copy money paid to his Scottish authors soared, Strahan sometimes expressed resentment about their haughtiness, clannishness and greed. The ‘Demands of Modern Authors’ are extravagant and ‘beyond all Credibility’, he wrote to a colleague in July 1776, referring mainly to Kames and others from Scotland.40 Finally, Strahan and Cadell went beyond Millar in collaborating with bookselling associates in Edinburgh to publish Scottish authors. These co-publications took different forms and involved a variety of individuals, but their most important Edinburgh associates were two old friends from Strahan’s youth, John Balfour and Alexander Kincaid, and Kincaid’s last junior partner and eventual successor, William Creech, who was about the same age as Cadell. With Balfour, Strahan and Cadell co-published two of Robertson’s major works: Charles V and the History of America (1777). With Kincaid – whom Strahan considered ‘the oldest Friend I had in the World’, as he told Creech shortly after Kincaid’s death (30 January 1777) – conditions were less suitable for co-publication, because Kincaid was drawing back from publishing around the time that Strahan and Cadell were expanding their business. Furthermore, Cadell did not get on well with Kincaid’s junior partner, John Bell, with whom he had serious differences over the timing and formats of the second and third editions of Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society (Sher 2006: 318–26). Strahan used his influence with his old friend to have Bell replaced as Kincaid’s partner by Strahan’s protégé William Creech in 1771, and two years later Creech assumed sole proprietorship of Kincaid’s business at the east end of the Luckenbooths, with its commanding view of the Edinburgh High Street. 40

NAS Strahan to William Creech, 23 July 1776, William Creech Letterbooks, (microfilms), cited by permission of the Blair Oliphant of Ardblair family. Subsequent letters from the Strahans to Creech are also cited from this source.

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Once Creech was settled in Edinburgh, Strahan immediately began scheming to join his two Edinburgh publishing associates, Balfour and Creech, into a ‘Coalition between you in regard to the Purchase of Copies’, as he wrote to Creech (21–22 February 1774). In other letters around this time, Strahan indicates that once a ‘compleat Coalition’ was in place (including William Smellie’s printing house and the Balfour paper mill near Edinburgh), it would have no serious competition for works by Scottish authors. Strahan and Cadell pledged to collaborate with Balfour and Creech and undertake no publications with any other Edinburgh booksellers. The prototype for the scheme was the second edition of William Buchan’s popular self-help medical book, Domestic Medicine, which was brought out in 1772 by Strahan and Cadell in London, together with Kincaid and Creech and Balfour in Edinburgh, following its 1769 Edinburgh first issue by Balfour, William Smellie and William Auld. However, Balfour and Creech remained bitter rivals, and the grand coalition that Strahan envisaged could not be sustained. Strahan and Cadell subsequently opted to co-publish Scottish authors with either Balfour or Creech, but never both together. Creech became their principal Edinburgh collaborator, co-publishing titles as varied as John Gregory’s posthumous A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (1774); Lord Kames’s Sketches of the History of Man (1774); Hugh Blair’s Sermons (1777–1801) and Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783); and Adam Ferguson’s Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783). After Strahan’s death on 9 July 1785, the coalition continued; Strahan’s youngest son, Andrew (named for his godfather, Andrew Millar), assumed control and retained the firm’s partnership with Cadell and their Edinburgh co-publishers. Just three days after his father’s death, Andrew Strahan wrote separately to Creech and to Strahan and Cadell’s most eminent and influential Scottish authors, including Robertson and Blair, to assure them that matters would continue as before. ‘I hope you will find the House what it was wont to be,’ he told Creech on 12 July 1785, ‘as far as may be considering our Loss.’ And so it was. In association with its Edinburgh partners, the Strahan–Cadell syndicate continued to occupy a place at the top of the British publishing industry, with books by Scottish authors constituting their prime properties. John Murray adopted a similar pattern of collaborative publishing on a smaller scale (Zachs 1998: 91–121). So did a number of provincial English booksellers who also made their way to London and co-published Scottish titles, often partnering with Edinburgh booksellers. Edward and Charles Dilly, from

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Bedfordshire, published works by James Beattie, usually in association with Alexander Kincaid and his junior partners, and after Edward’s death, Charles alone put his name in the imprint of James Boswell’s most famous books. The most important provincial English migrant in the London trade, George Robinson, came from northern Cumbria, near the Scottish border, and may have been apprenticed or worked in Glasgow before moving to London during the 1750s. From the mid1780s, Robinson’s London firm co-published Scottish authors with Kincaid’s former Edinburgh partner John Bell (Bell and Bradfute from 1788), including large quarto editions of Thomas Reid’s two volumes of Essays (1785 and 1788) and Archibald Alison’s Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790), and was collaborating extensively with Charles Elliot in Edinburgh medical publications and the sale of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Like the Dillys and the Unitarian Joseph Johnson, a migrant from Liverpool who was an active publisher of books by Scots during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Robinson was a religious nonconformist and political radical. This was truly an invasion of outsiders. The eighteenth-century migration of booksellers to London was transformative in at least two respects. First, the London trade itself was transformed through growing domination by Scots and English provincials who remade its institutions and conventions. Publishing became more professional and more ‘British’, as London firms founded by Scots and English provincials looked beyond the closed world of the metropolitan bookselling congers to forge ties with Edinburgh booksellers for publishing Scottish titles collaboratively. Thus the periphery transformed the centre. Secondly, the Scottish Enlightenment as a print-driven phenomenon was greatly influenced – perhaps even shaped – by these developments in the London and Edinburgh trade. The opportunities provided to Scottish authors by English provincial and especially Scottish publishers in London, including collaborative publishing arrangements with Edinburgh, were crucial in getting Scottish books profitably published and internationally distributed. Many Scottish and English booksellers were involved in this process, but none did more than Andrew Millar, the Strahans, the Cadells and their Edinburgh associates to encourage the success of Hume, Robertson, Smith, Blair, Mackenzie, Ferguson, Kames, Burns and many other Scottish authors whose works continue to account for the high esteem accorded to eighteenth-century Scottish intellectual life.

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Ireland Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall On 9 September 1776 the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Elliot wrote to John Magee, who had recently set up a bookshop in Dublin. Elliot had done considerable business with John’s father James, a prominent Belfast bookseller who dealt widely with the Scottish trade, and ‘[had] been for some time wishing much to have a proper Correspondent in Dublin’. John’s relocation fulfilled that wish. Elliot enclosed his recent catalogue which he described as ‘perhaps the fines[t] . . . you ever saw from this Country’ and went on to remark to James about the Irish–Scottish book market: ‘you Can with freedom & honour Dispose of the articles of this Country [Scotland] but we here Ly under the Risque of Confiscation and Damages besides the Infamy of pirates by Interfering with Irish Copies’.41 Elliot did not exaggerate. Ireland had no legislation to match the British Copyright Act of 1710 (8 Anne c.21) and as a result the Irish had developed a lucrative trade in reprints. However, the Importation Act of 1739 (12 George II c.36) had attempted to address that issue by making it illegal to import piracies. Consequently, Dublin reprints joined the list of items smuggled into Scotland’s west coast. Irvine was a favoured entry point for smuggled books throughout the century, joined in the latter years by Saltcoats, where school-master and bookseller Daniel Dow was a smuggler, and by Ayr, where the bookseller and shipper Alexander Forsyth was a trusted man; much went through Greenock and Port Glasgow until the late 1770s, when Customs vigilance increased. Elliot knew well both the dangers and the profits associated with such a trade for he had often dealt in smuggled Irish reprints and had suffered losses 41

NLS Elliot Letters.

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when some of his consignments were seized by Excise officers. In a letter to the Dublin bookseller James Sleater, Elliot reported that he paid the Stirling bookseller William Anderson, a handling fee of 10 per cent of the value of a shipment of books, to avoid ‘tak[ing] the risque upon myself’.42 By 1776 there was also a strong legitimate market in both Belfast and Dublin for Scottish books, especially the new works in medicine and science for which Edinburgh’s publishers held the copyrights. Thus Elliot also asks Magee about the opportunities to promote his catalogue in Dublin’s newspapers: ‘how many Capital papers have you and their Charge how much it general Takes to Advertise a Book &c’. John Magee came to own a newspaper himself, the Dublin Evening Post, and he purchased his type from Alexander Wilson and Sons of Glasgow; while Elliot would eventually do business with fourteen Irish booksellers including James Williams, William Hallhead, James Sleater, William Wilson and Luke White. William Gilbert, a Scotsman who had served a book binding apprenticeship with Smeiton of Edinburgh,43 was his biggest Irish customer: Elliot sold him over £1,000 worth of medical and other Edinburgh books in the years 1783–9.44 Reprinting, whether legitimate or in contravention of copyright, was the primary connection between the Irish and Scottish book trades in the eighteenth century. Dublin equalled Edinburgh in its publication output after 1750 (Sher 2006: 443–4) and developed an international market by reissuing the best London titles at half the cost to consumers (Johns 2009: 145–6). As Richard Sher has demonstrated Dublin booksellers had a particular interest in Scottish Enlightenment books, with twenty-five of the city’s firms publishing at least ten such titles each, in various consortiums: John Byrne led with thirty-five including first Dublin editions of works by John Moore, Lord Kames, Henry Mackenzie, Gilbert Stuart, James Anderson, Sir John Sinclair, James Beattie, Thomas Reid, John Gillies, James Bruce, James Boswell, William Robertson and Adam Smith (Sher 2006: 656–87, 704). Many of these books went to America, especially after the revolutionary war. And there was definitely a significant domestic market (Benson 2009: 369–70). However, a good portion of what was reprinted found its way to Britain through Scottish ports. The Scottish Customs annual summary, taken from quarterly 42 43 44

NLS Elliot Letters, to James Sleater, Dublin, 8 June 1778. NLS Elliot Letters, to Alexander Forsyth, Ayr, 28 Oct. 1783. NLS Elliot Ledger 3, p. 362, 396; Ledger 4, p. 62. See 60 Elliot Letters to Gilbert 10 Sept. 1783 to 24 Dec. 1789

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returns of individual ports, shows suspiciously low amounts for unbound books legitimately entering Scotland from Ireland in the period 1755–90 and irregular volumes of trade: there was no activity at all for thirteen different years, including periods in the 1770s and 1780s; in ten other years the total value for imported Irish imprints amounted to less than £50 per annum. In 1782, when no Irish books were imported into Scotland according to official Customs records, one smuggled shipment alone, seized in March and bound for the Glasgow bookseller John Liddell, was evaluated at three hundredweight or £36. The Morisons of Perth had already had books seized on 2 January that year, comprising seven bales and including Irish reprints of William Robertson’s History of Scotland, History of Charles V and History of America, as well as Johnson’s Dictionary, among other piracies. In other years (1767, 1769, 1770, 1774), Irish books were registered as passing through Scottish Customs at the considerable values of between £207 and £309. These must have been reprinted London titles, since that was the chief product of the Irish trade (McDougall 1997:153–4, 158–9). For the same period (1755–90) Scottish exports of unbound books to Ireland ran as high as £579 in 1764. Glasgow’s growth as a publication centre emulated Dublin’s strategies in many respects. The relationship between Glasgow’s trade and Dublin’s was strong from the 1740s, with Robert Urie and later Peter Tait, Joseph Galbraith and James Duncan, among other prominent Glasgow printers, accepting and distributing smuggled consignments of Irish imprints. The copyright holders of Blackstone’s Commentaries and William Robertson’s History of America asked the Scottish Customs Commissioners to pre-empt the importation of Irish editions. On 12 January 1768, the Commissioners advised Scottish ports that there has lately been printed in Ireland a pirated edition in Octavo of a book printed and published in England, entitled ‘Commentaries on the Laws of England’ in Quarto . . . We direct you to take notice that all such books as are brought into Great Britain, are forfeited by the Acts of 8 Anne . . . and you are to give the strongest injunctions to all officers in your precinct, to use their utmost endeavours for seizing the same, or any other pirated edition printed abroad. This spurred the Collector at Port Glasgow to inspect a ship from Dublin, where he found Blackstone in quires, along with thirtyone other pirated titles, but Blackstone kept coming in, as the Commissioners admitted in further circulars of 1769 and 1772. In 1777

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John Balfour on behalf of himself and the other Robertson proprietors, William Strahan and Thomas Cadell, had the Commissioners warn nine western ports that a smuggled Irish edition was expected.45 They did not find it. The increased Customs activity, however, especially around Greenock and Port Glasgow, did make the smuggling more covert. One of the primary economic strategies of the Irish reprinters was to issue octavo editions of expensive English quartos as soon as possible after the London publications. In some instances Irish printers acquired sheets in advance and their octavo editions appeared before the London quartos (Sher 2006: 451–3). Still, the action by the copyright holders had little effect in this case or in other instances. Those caught paid their fines, accepted the seizure of their goods and most resumed illicit trading with Ireland. Excise officers were just an inconvenient part of transacting business across the waters. As late as 1787 Anderson at Stirling admitted to handling 360 Irishprinted Commentaries, when pursued for damages. Anderson was the most significant trafficker in Irish piracies. When one of his shipments was seized from the cart of the Saltcoats carrier John Barclay in 1781, the value was such that he was willing to offer a bribe of £25 for its release in a year in which Customs recorded only £12 of books in total coming from Ireland legally (McDougall 1997: 151–2). The Edinburgh publisher William Creech, whose copyrights were mostly shared with William Strahan and Thomas Cadell in London, wrote Strahan several letters in October 1781 describing Anderson as ‘a very large Importer of Irish Editions of new books, by which he has got a great deal of Money, and is therefore the most proper Person of any to make an example of’.46 Creech, with Strahan’s approval, secretly organised the prosecution of Anderson at the Court of Session, and there was a series of other cases brought by Strahan and Cadell and London copyright holders against booksellers whose names were found by the Excise in seizures in 1781–82 (Chapter 2: Edinburgh; McDougall 1997: 151–83). Anderson did not suffer much from such pursuits: in 1781 Charles Elliot continued to deal with the Stirling bookseller on a large scale and two-thirds of that trade was in Irish contraband titles, with one such exchange valued at £249 (166–7). Creech said it was ‘a fraud frequently practised’ that the Dublin trade reprinted British property without title pages, and that these were faked with the names of the original London or Edinburgh proprietors 45 46

NAS CE14/3 Scottish Customs, General Orders Scotland, 1753–85. NAS RH4/26A/3, Dalguise Muniments, Creech Correspondence.

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when they arrived in Scotland (171). They were also printed in Ireland. When William Gray of Edinburgh ordered 1,040 copies of Hervey’s Meditations from the Belfast bookseller Robert Johnston in 1757 he directed that for security the false titles be delivered on separately to his agent, James Mueros, bookseller in Kilmarnock.47 Meuros, evidently a smuggling middle-man, appears in the Customs record in 1766 when he disowned then claimed ten bibles and fifty-seven quires of Poor Robin’s Almanack landed at Port Irvine from Belfast (161). Trade between Scotland and Ireland of all sorts grew steadily throughout the eighteenth century at an average annual rate of 3.5 per cent, with that rate of growth especially rapid after 1750 (Cochran 1985: 4, 92). And almost all of the sea traffic was in the hands of Scottish captains at the head of Scottish-owned ships. Combined with the movements of the fishing fleets, activities off the coast of Scotland were considerable and the opportunities for smuggling vast. In the herring season alone over 400 additional vessels added to the congestion. Tobacco and alcohol were foremost among the contraband cargoes but Irish reprints also contributed their fair share to this alternative economy. The value of books sent legally to Ireland by Glasgow and Edinburgh publishers could amount to hundreds of pounds sterling annually; however, the value of those contraband titles coming into Scotland for sale there and distribution to the South was untold.

47

ECA Bailie bundles, box 134, no. 341, Johnston v. Gray (1758).

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Plate 30 Thomas Ruddiman.

Plate 31 Walter Ruddiman.

Plate 32 Parliament Close. ‘Old Parliament House and St Giles. The Public Characters of Edinburgh 50 years since’. John Le Conte and Thomas Dobbie, after John Kay, 1844. The Bell and Bradfute book shop, formerly Charles Elliot’s, is on the extreme right, next to John’s Coffee House.

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Plate 33 ‘The Blind Ossian Singing and Accompanying himself on the Harp’, by Alexander Runciman, c.1772.

Plate 34 Robert Burns in James Sibbald’s Circulating Library, Parliament Close, with young Walter Scott at right. William Borthwick Johnstone, 1856.

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Plate 35 James Erskine, Lord Alva, and his family, by David Allan, 1780.

Plate 36 Thomas Blacklock. Engraved by W. & F. Holl.

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Plate 37 Robert Burns, by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787.

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Plate 38 William Creech, early 1770s. From a miniature by John Plott.

Plate 40 Title page of The Merry Muses of Caledonia with publication date.

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Plate 39 Burns’s figures for the print run of the first Edinburgh edition of his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect.

Plate 41 Chapbook edition of Burns’s The Whistle.

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Chapter Three

INTELLECTUAL EXCHANGES AND SCOTTISH AUTHORS ABROAD The Scottish–Dutch Trade Esther Mijers

S

cotland and the Netherlands had close intellectual ties, which largely centred on educational exchange during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Dutch universities, among the most successful in Protestant Europe, were particularly attractive to Scottish students, which in turn created a dynamic trade in academic books. To some extent this is well-documented (Gibbs 1971): favourable economic conditions, a relative lack of censorship and the absence of enforcing institutions such as a company of stationers or a national society made the seventeenth-century Dutch provinces a centre for European intellectual activity and the Continent’s clearing house. Scotland ‘was very much a part of [this] European republic of letters’ (Moore 1988: 21). Roger Emerson’s index of Scottish academic readership during the period illustrates Scotland’s close relationship with the Dutch (Emerson 2000). The history of the early eighteenth-century book trade between Scotland and the Netherlands is inextricably linked with these countries’ longstanding economic, religious and intellectual connections dating from the Middle Ages, formalised in the sixteenth century by the establishment of a permanent Scottish Staple at Veere, and characterised by a shared Presbyterianism. Throughout the seventeenth century books and other printed works written, edited or printed in the Netherlands were common in Scotland (Mann 2000a). But the period 1680–1730 witnessed a transition in the Dutch industry with some of the biggest names, including Elsevier and Blaeu, left without adequate successors. At the same time, the arrival of French Huguenot refugees familiar with French scholarship brought a new type of publication: 203

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the French learned journal (Bots 1992). The Netherlands also began a specialisation in Dutch editions of the classics after 1700 (Mijnhardt 1996). Thus, by the eighteenth century, the Netherlands had a virtual monopoly on the Latin trade, as well as producing and distributing French books and journals throughout Europe. The Scottish–Dutch trade reflected all these changes, as the majority of imported texts in Latin were gradually supplemented by works in French. Books in the Netherlands were sold by booksellers in their shops, at auctions and by subscription (Lankhorst 1992: 200–10). Scottish visitors usually bought from the large international printing houses whose editions were considered best, but also patronised the many smaller bookshops in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and the university towns of Leiden and Utrecht. Dutch booksellers were in direct contact with their clients (including dealers and authors) both at home and abroad. Often booksellers acted as agents by keeping their regulars informed of the latest arrivals, and as merchants by taking care of packing and shipping (Keblusek 2006). They gave advice to new arrivals about university courses and professors, and supplied textbooks (I. J. Murray 1965).1 They also arranged frequent auctions and organised subscriptions.2 The most popular books were compendia and other textbooks by Leiden and Utrecht professors, the classics and books on languages and applied mathematics, including fortification and music. Where theology was bought, it was often remarkably conservative with an emphasis on scripture, exegesis and doctrinal matters; the distinctively Dutch theological debates were generally ignored by Scottish book buyers (Catalogue of Books belonging to William Mure, Leiden, 1854; Smout 1994; van Strien and Ahsmann 1992, 1993). Institutions also bought Dutch academic texts. For example, the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh imported Dutch books from its foundation and throughout the whole of the eighteenth century (Cain 1989; Hillyard 1989a; W. A. Kelly 2007, 2008, 2009). Robert Wodrow bought Dutch books for Glasgow University, where he was librarian from 1698 until 1703 (Sharp 1937). During the early eighteenth century, Scottish buying patterns of Dutch books began to show a clear shift away from the largely theological and devotional works of the seventeenth century to academic books and texts on modern history, politics and current affairs; and after the Union, French learned journals and English reprints. 1

2

EUL La.II.91/76 Thomas Calderwood to Charles Mackie; EUL La.II.91 Letters to Charles Mackie; George Bogle Letterbook (1725–27), Mitchell Library. NAS GD 18/2302, GD 18/5197/17 David Forbes to John Clerk; John Clerk to David Forbes.

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Although the late seventeenth century had been a problematic time for Scotland, the Netherlands could always count on substantial numbers of Scottish exiles, students, merchants and soldiers. The bulk of the Scottish–Dutch trade thus relied more on private contacts than on commercial exchange. Scottish students and visitors bought books and other printed works for family members, friends and business contacts, often relaying requests for specific titles. These were shipped to Scotland by Scottish merchants based in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, who would take orders but did not specialise in books. A number of Scottish merchant houses had Dutch partners, including the firm of Drummond and van der Heyden and that of Dalrymple and van Vreede. Some booksellers also specifically, but not exclusively, catered to a Scottish clientele: a handful of names appear time and again in the surviving correspondence of the Scottish visitors to the Netherlands (Mijers 2002), such as the Rotterdam merchant Andrew Russel; the book collector Alexander Cunningham, who resided in The Hague; the Utrecht university printer Willem van de Water; and the ‘Libraire Anglois’, at The Hague and later at Rotterdam, Thomas Johnson. Andrew Russel was an ex-Covenanter and pillar of the Scottish exile community in Rotterdam, whose extensive network stretched from the North Sea to the Atlantic. Although he did not specialise in books, they were often found among his other cargo. Alexander Cunningham was a famous legalist, book collector, chess player and tutor to the Scottish aristocracy. He had been responsible for the library of his tutee, Lord George Douglas, the Duke of Queensberry’s youngest son, and had advised many others. Willem van de Water was Utrecht’s university printer from 1699 until his death in 1728, as well as a bookseller located at ’t Oude Kerkhof in Utrecht. In March 1716, Willem van de Water Sr handed over his business to his son, Willem Jr, but returned after his son’s death in November 1717. As university printer Willem van de Water mainly printed theses, disputations and works by the Utrecht professors. His archive no longer exists, but his book sale catalogues, mainly auctions of professorial and private libraries, do survive, alongside fragments of his correspondence (Gruys and de Kooker nd; Sharp 1937). He was, however, well known to Scots in Scotland and the Netherlands alike and also familiar with the Amsterdam merchants Drummond and van der Heyden and their Scottish clients.3 Other booksellers with a Scottish clientele were the Leiden university printers 3

NAS GD 124/15/222/1 Archibald Campbell to James Erskine; EUL La.II.90/18,19 John Mitchell to Charles Mackie; NAS GD 24/1/464A/162 Hans Hamilton to John Drummond.

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Elsevier and their successor in 1715, Pieter van der Aa; Johannes van der Linden Jr, the Leiden bookseller who printed the sales inventory of Alexander Cunningham’s library after his death; Johannes Langerak, who co-operated on a new edition of George Buchanan’s Opera Omnia with Charles Mackie; and the Rotterdam bookseller Reinier Leers, whose network included numerous Huguenot contacts (Davies 1954; Hoftijzer 1992, 1999; Lankhorst 1983; Sharp 1937).

Thomas Johnson and Charles Mackie Among the Scottish–Dutch book trade’s more interesting figures in the early eighteenth century was Thomas Johnson. While participating in the Dutch Republic’s international network of English freethinkers, French journalists, Dutch printers and authors and various radicals, Johnson was remarkable for his significant Scottish clientele, notably Charles Mackie, Professor of Universal History at Edinburgh, who shared Johnson’s interests and boasted close ties with the Dutch Republic. Their friendship and reciprocity illustrate the intellectual ties between Scotland and the United Provinces on the eve of the Scottish Enlightenment. Thomas Johnson is still a rather obscure figure, noted chiefly for his printing and apparent sympathy for the more radical side of the early Enlightenment, although much hard evidence, especially biographical, is lacking (Israel 2001, 2006; Champion 2003). Born around 1677 in Edinburgh, he arrived in the Netherlands about 1700. His motives in relocating are unknown, and there is no indication that he intended to become a bookseller. He was probably attracted by Dutch tolerance and the economic success of the significant Scottish presence in the Netherlands. After a brief co-operation with the French publisher Jonas l’Honoré, Johnson established himself as a bookseller among The Hague’s Scottish community which included the classical scholar and book collector Alexander Cunningham of Block, a number of whose works would be published by Johnson. Aside from Cunningham, Johnson had many other Scottish contacts. His rise as a bookseller coincided with the Union and its aftermath and he seems to have benefited greatly from an increase in Scottish Grand Tourists and visitors who began to arrive in the Netherlands after 1707 when his shop became a meeting place for both Scottish and English travellers and students. Johnson not only sold books, but was also a publisher and a printer whose name is often associated with the French learned serial, the Journal littéraire and English piracies. He certainly made his name as a libraire Anglois or English-language bookdealer. In

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1728, he moved from The Hague to Rotterdam, where he died in 1735 and was succeeded by his Scottish widow Jane Wemyss and their son Alexander, until 1745; eventually his remaining stock was bought by a Dutch bookseller, Hendrik Scheurleer. Johnson began his career as a publisher-printer of French works. His first publications, co-operatively with l’Honoré in 1705 and alone from 1706, were all in French, including translations of English texts by contemporary authors such as John Toland and Sir Paul Rycaut and political pamphlets. After the Copyright Act came into effect in Britain in 1710, Johnson specialised in English texts: Pope, Dryden, Addison, Shaftesbury, Burnet and, most famously, Shakespeare were reissued, ‘Neatly & correctly printed, in small Volumes fit for the pocket’ (McMullin 1993: 100). Since these editions were illegal in Britain, they were landed surreptitiously – to get them past Customs at Leith, Johnson hid the sheets between those of his Latin and French books (McDougall 1988: 3). His complete list of publications is estimated at some 200 titles (Lankhorst 1986: 145). Aside from books and pamphlets, Johnson also published three French journals: the political Le Mercure galant, the spectatorial Le Misantrope, and the learned Le Journal littéraire (Lankhorst 1986: 145). He played a significant role in establishing the Journal and determining its subject matter, although not part of its illustrious editorial board. Emulating the famous journals of Bayle and Leclerc, Le Journal littéraire aimed to inform its readers of ‘l’etat des Sciences & des occupations des Savans’ (‘the state of learning and the activities of scholars’; Lankhorst 1986: 147). Its success was immediate and it was read widely, including in Britain; Isaac Newton received his copies directly from Johnson. The Journal littéraire initially contained a rather high proportion of British articles, although this soon decreased. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s son, and Pierre Des Maizeaux, a London correspondent and close friend of Johnson, were among the permanent contributors. Many of the English publications mentioned in the Journal were available in Johnson’s shop; his 1731 Guide for English Travelers through Holland included a list of his own English publications. Johnson’s involvement with the Journal littéraire lasted from 1713 to 1728, possibly ceasing because of its diminished British focus and his own increasing engagement with pirated publications. Johnson’s Scottish network derived largely from his role as agent for Scottish students and visitors. While he was by no means the only Scottish agent, his access to the Republic of Letters was unique. Central to this network was Professor of Universal History at Edinburgh, Charles Mackie, who knew the Netherlands intimately, having lived there twice himself, first as a law student at Groningen (1707–8) and

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then as tutor at Leiden to Alexander Leslie, son of the Earl of Leven and Johnson’s relation (1715–18). Sometime during his stay at Leiden, Mackie struck up a close friendship with Johnson, which lasted until the bookseller’s death in 1735. Mackie was a keen collector of books and learned journals. Throughout his life, he kept inventories of his own library, newly published books and journals and ‘wish lists’. He also collected books for other people. He had been responsible for building up Alexander Leslie’s library in the Netherlands, and continued to advise him and others, long after they had ceased to be students. Moreover, he acted as Thomas Johnson’s agent in Edinburgh, selling his books by subscription to his friends and colleagues. He imported most of his own books directly from the Netherlands, usually through Johnson, who provided him with twenty-nine identifiable titles, and probably many tens, if not hundreds more, including Cunningham’s Horace and the accompanying Animadversiones, several dissertations by Barbeyrac as well as his Défense du droit de la Compagnie Hollandoise, Bayle’s Oeuvres in four volumes and his Dictionaire historique et critique, Le Clerc’s Histoire des Provinces Unies, Furetiere’s Dictionaire universel, Wicquefort’s Histoire d’Hollande, several volumes of Fabricius’ Bibliotheca Graeca, Heineccius’ Antiquitates Romanae, Burnet’s History of his Times, Lenglet du Fresnoy’s chronological tables, several maps and a copy of Ptolemy’s Geography, as well as numerous new editions of the classics and the English authors Johnson specialised in such as Pope, Swift and Shaftesbury.4 Johnson regularly sent copies of his Journal littéraire, and was probably responsible for the many French learned journals in Mackie’s library.5 Among the other books he obtained from the Netherlands were his beloved Thesaurus by Graevius which he received, upon request, from his friend and student in the Netherlands, Robert Duncan, in 1724, and several of Burman’s publications from Alexander Boswell and Thomas Calderwood. In a 1724 letter to Mackie, the Leiden professor Petrus Burman referred to the sale of the libraries of Gronovius, Graevius, Brockhuizen, Perizonius and Cuper.6 In 1730, the Scottish student Andrew Mitchell sent him the inventory of the Bibliotheca Uilenbroukiana ‘marked with their prices’.7 The high point of the friendship between Thomas Johnson and Charles Mackie came in 1722, when the two friends joined forces 4 5 6 7

EUL Dc.8.51 Charles Mackie Library Catalogue. EUL La.II 91 Letters to Charles Mackie. EUL La.II 91/41 Petrus Burman to Mackie (1724). EUL La.II 91/69 John Mitchell to Mackie (1730).

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in a combined effort to print the complete works of Pierre Bayle for the Scottish market. Johnson was the instigator, as he explained to Mackie: ‘I don’t know if you have very many in Scotland acquainted with Bayle’s writings . . . but I shall be better able to judge by the number of Subscribers.’8 He asked Mackie to look after the subscription list on his behalf – he managed to collect eleven names – and was involved in the shipping and distribution of the works. Mackie also sent Scottish aristocratic sons to the Dutch universities, who used Johnson as their bookdealer. The two men shared a number of interests and ideals (Johnson’s Journal littéraire was one of Mackie’s favourite publications) and were familiar with both the Scottish as well as the Dutch academic and publishing worlds. In addition, Charles had a cousin, John Mackie, who was a bookseller, facilitating his professional co-operation with Johnson. The market for Dutch-printed books in early eighteenth-century Scotland was particularly fertile: the Latin trade was booming and Johnson’s English piracies were in high demand, being much cheaper than the London originals. Aside from John Mackie, Johnson had several outlets in Scotland. He co-operated with Edinburgh University’s printer, George Stewart, and shipped books to Gavin Hamilton and David Randie, who was conveniently both postmaster and bookseller (McDougall 1974: 38–41). He sold his own publications in Scotland by subscription, as with his Bayle, and delivered books to Edinburgh’s lawyers and university professors other than Charles Mackie, including William Anderson, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Glasgow University. As Johnson’s Scottish network on both sides of the North Sea grew substantially, especially during the 1720s, he developed contacts with numerous French, Dutch and English scholars, authors and publishers. Aside from Newton, he could also count Benjamin Furly, John Toland and their circle and Joseph Addison among his clients. Johnson’s market, derived from a combination of friendship, family ties and patronage that was usual at the time, made him a pivotal figure in negotiating Scotland’s role within the Enlightenment’s early international book trade.

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EUL La.II 91/34 Thomas Johnson to Mackie (1722).

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Scottish Authors in Germany Thomas Ahnert The most distinguished eighteenth-century German to acknowledge indebtedness to a Scottish author was probably the Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant, who in his Prolegomena to a Future Metaphysics (1783) describes being awakened from his ‘dogmatic slumber’ by Hume’s sceptical philosophy, which led him to rethink his central ideas and formulate his new system of critical philosophy. Yet Kant was only one example of a widespread interest in Scottish authors among eighteenth-century Germans. From the 1750s the expanding reading public of the German territories became increasingly familiar with the writings of key Scottish Enlightenment figures like Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Sir James Steuart, William Robertson and Adam Ferguson. The difference in language was an obvious hurdle in the reception of these texts, but it was not insuperable. There is evidence that many academics, especially in northern Germany, read English. This is not surprising, considering that one of the main centres of the German Enlightenment, the University of Göttingen, was located in the Electorate of Hanover, which, through its dynastic connection with the British state, was in close touch with intellectual life across the Channel. There are also signs in other parts of Germany that demand for English-language publications could be quite strong. In Leipzig, which was the site of one of the Holy Roman Empire’s primary bookfairs, a bookseller in the second half of the eighteenth century might stock and advertise several hundred English-language titles. Those Germans who did not know English could learn about the content of Anglophone publications from reviews in learned journals such as the Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen or the Nova Acta Eruditorum. The first parts of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, for example, were 210

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the target of a hostile discussion in the Leipzig Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen as early as 1739. Translation, however, was fundamental in overcoming the language barrier, though the language of the translation was not always into German. Many Germans who read Hume, for example, did so in French (though even in French there was no version of Hume’s Treatise, a peculiar phenomenon explored elsewhere in this volume by Gilles Robel). From the 1750s, however, German translations increased. Francis Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy was translated by the dramatist and writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and published by Wendler in Leipzig (1756). Hume’s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects appeared as Vermischte Schriften (Georg Grund and Adam Holle, Hamburg and Leipzig, 1754 and 1756). The following decades witnessed a steady stream of such publications. Hume’s History of England was issued in German from 1762 by Meyer (Breslau and Leipzig). James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy (1767) had two German editions in 1769, one Cotta’s in Tübingen, the other the typographical society’s (Typographische Gesellschaft) in Hamburg. Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) became the Theorie moralischer Empfindungen (Brunswick, 1770). The 1770s witnessed translations of John Millar’s Distinction of Ranks (Bemerkungen über den Unterschied der Stände in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft [Leipzig: Schwickert, 1772]), Ferguson’s Institutes of Moral Philosophy (Grundsätze der Moralphilosophie [Leipzig: Dyck, 1772]), Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism (Grundsätze der Critik [Leipzig: Dyck, 1763–6]) and part of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (Untersuchung der Natur und Ursachen von Nationalreichthümern [Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1776–92]). In the 1780s Ferguson’s history of the Roman Republic appeared in German (Leipzig: Weidmann). In the 1790s, Hume’s Treatise was printed in German for the first time (Über die menschliche Natur [Halle: Hemmerde and Schwetschke, 1790–2]) and the philosopher Christian Garve freshly translated Smith’s Wealth of Nations (Untersuchung über die Natur und die Ursachen des Nationalreichthums [Breslau: Korn, 1794–6]). It is remarkable how quickly many of these German translations came out, in some cases appearing in the year immediately after the first English edition: Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society, for example, was printed in Edinburgh in 1767 and published in German in 1768 as Versuch über die Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft by Junius in Leipzig. Millar’s Distinction of Ranks was published in London in 1771, the German translation in 1772. William Smellie’s Philosophy

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of Natural History was printed in German within months of its 1790 publication (Berlin, 1791). The reputation of these texts in Germany could be very unlike that in Britain, and might differ significantly from their current renown in the history of the European Enlightenments. Adam Smith may now be regarded as the foremost Scottish author on economic legislation in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but in Germany he was widely ignored until the mid-1790s, even though his Wealth of Nations had been partly translated as early as the 1770s. For Germans in the 1770s and 1780s, the most respected Scottish authority on economic matters was Sir James Steuart, author of the 1767 Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, part of which he composed in Germany: Steuart had been exiled from Britain because of his complicity in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745; he then lived in France, before moving to the south German university town of Tübingen in 1757, where he drafted the Inquiry’s first two books. Although Steuart is now largely a forgotten figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, his standing in late-eighteenth-century Germany appears to have been high. When the Königsberg philosopher Johann Georg Hamann read Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society, now considered a major Scottish Enlightenment text, he thought it inferior to Steuart’s Inquiry. Hamann later changed his mind only after reading Ferguson’s Institutes of Moral Philosophy. Translations, of course, never just passively reproduce the original text, and sometimes the meanings of key expressions in the German version differ from the English. These differences usually reflect the specific social, cultural and political contexts of their German readers, translators and publishers. But there is probably no one particular, let alone characteristically ‘German’, bias that is common in all or even most instances. Scottish texts, like any others, could be and were interpreted in ways their authors had probably never intended. When the deeply religious Johann Georg Hamann first encountered Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) in 1780, he praised them, because Hume’s criticism of natural religion seemed to support Hamann’s fideism, his belief that human reason was radically insufficient for religious faith. Within weeks, Hamann had written a manuscript, which was part translation and part summary of the Dialogues, and which he circulated among his friends and colleagues in Königsberg, including Immanuel Kant. Translators might not even try to adhere particularly closely to the original text, but to ‘improve’ it. When Hume’s Treatise was finally translated into German and published in Halle between 1790 and 1792, the

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translator cut parts of the text and inserted passages from the first Inquiry instead. Scottish authors thus were an enormously important presence in the intellectual life of the eighteenth-century German territories, especially from the 1750s, but the influence of their writings was inevitably refracted by a range of particular contextual circumstances, which shaped their reception and appropriation by the German reading public.

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Making a Scottish Market for French Books Stephen W. Brown The importation and publication of French texts grew steadily in Scotland throughout the eighteenth century. This might idly be attributed to the persistence of the ‘auld alliance’, but it is better understood in the context of increasing Scottish intellectual hunger – especially in Edinburgh – for the secular philosophy of the Continental Enlightenment. The preponderance of French titles in the libraries of Adam Smith and David Hume is one obvious illustration, but the most striking example is the shift in the Advocates’ Library collection. In 1692 less than 6 per cent of its holdings were in French, and 88 per cent were Latin. But as the eighteenth century closed, more than a quarter of the history books that now made up 28 per cent of the collection dealt with France, and over half of those were French publications. In fact, some 80 per cent of the foreign titles listed in the 1807 supplemental catalogue were French (Cain 1989: 111–17). Evident here is the Enlightenment transition in learned writing from Latin to the vernacular, as science and history displaced theology, and philosophy began to reflect the influence of scientific method. To be contemporary often meant to be French, until Scots writers found their international place. One of those modern francophiles, David Hume, played a crucial role in turning about the Advocates’ Library. Brian Hillyard has demonstrated that ‘during his Keepership there was a shift in policy regarding the acquisition of foreign books’ (1989b: 104), in part a result of Hume’s notorious 1754 confrontation with the Curators over his purchase of three French works for the collection, including La Fontaine’s Les Contes, considered ‘indecent Books unworthy of a Place in a learned Library’ (1989: 104). Hume’s awareness of the new significance of French texts was shared with some of Edinburgh’s most important booksellers. 214

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In his History of Edinburgh from its Foundation to the Present Time, William Maitland credits the ‘auld alliance’ for the sixteenthcentury provision made in several Scottish burghs for teaching French (Maitland 1753: 34). Masters were actually appointed in Edinburgh (1574) and Aberdeen (1635), but the gesture seems to have been meaningless until after the Union. The first Scottish-printed French grammar appears in Edinburgh in 1718. Published by Scotland’s then most innovative printer, James Watson, A Short and Easy French Grammar was compiled by William Scott, Edinburgh University’s Professor of Greek and ‘design’d for the Use of some young Gentlemen of the University’ (iii). But French was not part of any university syllabus during the eighteenth century, so Scott taught the subject extracurricularly. Alexander Boswell, the biographer’s father, learned his French from Scott, and his signed copy of his professor’s Grammar survives in a private collection. In 1748, the Scottish educational theorist James Todd, writing in his School-Boy and Young Gentleman’s Assistant, recommends ‘Prof. Scott’s Grammar [as] best for teaching thereof’ (79–80). If French grammars were somewhat uncommon in early eighteenth-century Edinburgh, they were abundant by 1800, when the bookseller James Watson of South Bridge could list fourteen different rudiments and pronunciation guides in a single advertisement (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 11 October). The new vogue for French was at first confined to the capital: when Glasgow Town Council attempted to emulate Scott’s success in 1714 by appointing John Grandpré to establish a French school, the venture failed, and Grandpré returned to Edinburgh where the market for French masters was growing (Law 1965: 166). In fact, at least five French masters have been identified in Edinburgh before 1750, and more than a dozen in the subsequent twenty years, with no fewer than seven or eight practising at any one time after 1770 (Law 1965: 167). By mid-century they were established in all Scotland’s university towns. Following Scott’s example, teachers often published their own textbooks. Among these was William Ker’s Most Complete, Compendious, and Easy French Grammar for Ladies and Gentlemen, printed by Thomas Lumisden and John Robertson at Edinburgh in 1729. Noteworthy is Ker’s inclusion of ‘ladies’ in his title, where Scott had addressed only ‘young Gentlemen of the University’. Ker’s chief competitor, James Freebairn, brought out his own New French Grammar, wherein the Defects of Former Grammars are Supplied, and their Errors Corrected in 1734, published by his brother Robert Freebairn, the King’s Printer for Scotland. Ker’s were the ‘errors [supposedly] corrected’, and he responded immediately with a new edition

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of his rudiments, the New Methodical French and English Grammar, which was aimed at ‘the young Nobility and Gentry of both Sexes in Scotland’, and printed by Robert Fleming for Gavin Hamilton later in 1734. His preface engages at length with ‘the author’ (James Freebairn) of ‘a Treatise intitled A New French Grammar’, and asserts that his previous volume had ‘taken so well with the Publick’ that ‘it is now sold off, and a considerable Demand for more . . . has encouraged me to a farther Improvement in composing a new One’ (vii, v). Ker also published anthologies of French as teaching aids, including the 1737 Nouveau Recueil très utile. Preparation for the Grand Tour was a primary reason for learning French, although as the century progressed, the merchant classes also saw the advantage in knowing the language. James Coomans’ French and English Grammar, with Forms of Letters, and Foreign Bills of Exchange (1764) – printed in Edinburgh for the author by David Paterson – targeted this readership in particular. Arthur Masson was perhaps the most successful of Edinburgh’s French masters, with several titles to his credit, beginning in 1755 with A System of the French Language, followed in 1766 by Recueil de pièces choisies, a collection of readings for use in schools but advertised as ‘afford[ing] agreeable entertainment to young gentlemen during vacation’ (Law 1965: 212). However, by the 1760s, young ladies were as likely to study French, which was now a staple of their curriculum, and by 1783, Alexander Scot had children, not just youths, in mind for his Fables choisies à l’usage des enfants. His popular Rudiments and Practical Exercises would appear in 1794, published by William Creech. Grammars from Glasgow presses were fewer but increasing as the century proceeded, and included Daniel Reid’s edition for Morison, McAllum and McAllum of language teacher William Ross’s French Scholar’s Guide (1772) and Lockhart Muirhead’s Manual of French Grammar, printed by James Mundell for Mundell and Son in partnership with Cadell and Davis at London (1797). Not all the grammars printed for Edinburgh’s expanding French market were original: Abel Boyer’s Complete French Master for Ladies and Gentlemen (first issued at London in 1694) was reprinted throughout the century by many of Edinburgh’s leading publishers, including editions in 1762, 1767, 1778, 1782, 1787 and 1792. Advertisements for school-masters outside Edinburgh and Glasgow increasingly sought candidates capable of introducing students to French. Linlithgow’s Grammar School remarked of the new rector in the Edinburgh Evening Courant: ‘if he can teach French it will be a recommendation to him’ (26 February 1780). There were similar expectations in Stirling, where the Guildry minutes for 2 August 1755

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observed that the rector ‘taught French, geography, or literature not used in the public school’ (Hutchison 1904: 106); and in Glasgow the Council determined in minutes for 26 June 1782 that their new building would happily serve for ‘teaching French, Arithmetic and Bookkeeping’ (Cleland 1825: 13). Perth Academy offered French lessons at a half-guinea per quarter, while Hamilton Grammar listed French alongside Latin and Greek. At Edinburgh’s High School, Alexander Adam’s attempts to modernise the course of study included the introduction of French when he became rector (Steven 1849: 146–7). And as the curriculum became more modern at schools such as Edinburgh Academy, French displaced the classical languages in popularity among students (Scotland 1969: I: 220–2). Early efforts to print French works in Scotland were isolated; William Cheyne’s publication at Edinburgh in 1736 of Montesquieu’s Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains is one example. But titles were increasingly imported and translations published. Esther Mijers describes in this volume how Professor Charles Mackie of Edinburgh imported French titles from the Dutch bookseller Thomas Johnson in the 1720s, and how Mackie and Johnson combined in 1722 to print the Complete Works of Bayle for the Scottish market. John Balfour dealt more extensively in French importations than any bookseller before him and established a business precedent in the 1760s by forging direct links with French booksellers (McDougall 1974: 130), a practice continued successfully in the 1780s by another Edinburgh publisher, Charles Elliot, who imported copies of French medical works, including from Paris A. F. Fourcroy’s Leçons elémentaire histoire naturelle et de chimie, which he had translated as a university text and printed in a large edition for Edinburgh and London as Elementary Lectures on Chemistry and Natural History (1785) (McDougall 2002: 224–8). While catalogues as early as the 1720s are occasionally remarkable for their French content – James McEuen’s advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant (18 January 1726) provides one instance – by the 1760s the presence of French books in sale catalogues and auctions was common. In January 1760 Edinburgh booksellers Kincaid and Bell promoted their sale of Professor John Stuart’s library ‘with a number of French books’, including the ubiquitous Bayle’s Dictionary. Robert Gordon followed in February with a catalogue that included sixty-seven volumes of the Histoire de L’Academie Royal together with several French works on architecture. In April, Kincaid and Bell advertised six new titles from France in the Edinburgh Evening Courant. But this pales beside the promotions of John Balfour and

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Alexander Donaldson whose newspaper advertisements regularly contain scores of French titles and whose catalogues can list hundreds of French books, translated and in the original, and in every print format. Hamilton and Balfour’s catalogue (October 1760) listed two dozen French works in folio alone; Donaldson’s December catalogue was similarly rich in French titles. When Hugh Forbes’s library was advertised the following month (January 1761) more than one in five books were French. The percentage of titles originating in France only grew as the century continued, and it was usual in the 1780s for major booksellers to publish catalogues with a French content exceeding 20 per cent. Indeed by the 1790s, some firms often traded almost exclusively in French titles. William Laing’s catalogue (1791) is one instance, as is James Berry’s of 1796. William Creech – the Edinburgh trade’s dominant figure in the 1790s – responded to the interest in France after the Revolution by highlighting French titles significantly in more than half the newspaper advertisements he placed during the decade. Thomas Paine’s infamy certainly helped the sale of any work on French politics. Creech’s December advertisements were typical: he announced Calonne’s L’État de la France while promoting six other French works, and particularly a new translation and edition of Rousseau’s Confessions to be sold in parts. Creech’s former apprentice and now competitor, Peter Hill, ran similar advertisements, as did many of Scotland’s booksellers. But Creech had always appreciated the profit to be had from French books. One of his most dramatic early book auctions – it ran nightly from 6.30 p.m., starting 7 February 1780 in ‘the large, commodious room immediately above [his] shop’ (Edinburgh Evening Courant) – had included a significant number of French works. Catalogues and advertisements for subscription and circulating libraries show a similar trend, and by the mid-1780s, most newspaper announcements promoting these institutions stressed the quantity and the recent pedigree of their French holdings. James Symington introduced the publication of the Catalogue of his English and French Circulating Library in the Edinburgh Evening Courant on 20 May 1799, by remarking that ‘the value of the French Books which alone have been used as a Circulating Library for some time past, has been fully ascertained by a respectable list of Subscribers’. The ‘two libraries being now conjoined’, he hoped to use the reputation of his French books to boost interest in his English ones. One of his competitors, the Edinburgh Circulating Library, responded later that year by promoting its French holdings (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 16 November 1799).

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Edinburgh’s canniest dealers often pitched French works directly in competition with current Scottish bestsellers. Thus John Balfour vigorously advertised the Encyclopédie when the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica appeared, and Alexander Donaldson used the rage for William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine (1769) to promote sales of his 1765 piracy of the London translation of Tissot’s Advice to the People in General with Regard to their Health, which he reissued in 1768, 1769, 1772 and 1778. Building on his success with imported titles, John Balfour in partnership with Gavin Hamilton published his first French book in 1750: theirs was also the first British edition of Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des lois, a privilege due in part to David Hume’s intercession, who corresponded with Montesquieu over changes to the text. That same year saw Edinburgh publishers Sands, Murray and Cochran contribute another title to the growing body of French instructional texts: Recueil des chef-oeuvres . . . beaux-esprits François. But Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit was especially popular in Scotland, with at least eight Edinburgh editions alone in the eighteenth century. In Glasgow, the Foulis brothers printed a number of French works both translated and in French, including Voltaire’s History of Charles XII (1754), Ouevres de M. Boileau (1759), d’Alembert’s Sur la Destruction des Jesuites en France (1765), Belloy’s Le Siège de Calais (1765) and Le Sage’s Le Diable Boiteux (1768). Robert Urie, however, was more prolific. He published some nineteen separate French titles, with three by Fontenelle: Conversation on the Plurality of Worlds (1749), The History of Oracles (1753) and Dialogues of the Dead (1754). He was especially fond of Voltaire, issuing translations of Temple of Taste (1751), A Treatise upon Toleration (1765), Philosophical Dictionary (1766), History of Charles XII (1770) and six runs of the Age of Louis XIV in 1751, 1753, 1763, 1761, 1764 and 1771. Urie also printed a number of works in French, starting in 1746 with Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque, based on a 1734 Dutch printing, but offered in a new edition in 1756, which was in turn reprinted in Edinburgh in 1763 by James Bruce for Kincaid and Bell. Fénelon’s Telemachus sold well in Scotland with at least fifteen editions, including seven in French. Providing French books to Scottish readers encouraged innovation within Scotland’s printing community. Balfour, Donaldson, Elliot, Creech, Foulis, Urie: the names prominently associated with that market were those of the trade’s primary entrepreneurs. They tested international markets, challenged copyright and took the lead in educational publishing. And their successor at the end of the 1790s

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continued this trend: Manners and Miller of Edinburgh had Scotland’s most extensive French lists and promoted themselves as Scotland’s primary French booksellers. But their advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant on 3 July 1800 is notable not for its thirty-nine French titles – a previous one had over 130 – but for offering seven of them as ‘beautiful Specimens of Stereotype Printing from the Press of Didot at Paris, printed on the finest Hot-pressed velum paper, accompanied with elegant plates, all at lower prices than the same books printed in the usual way’. The authors thus available were perhaps predictable – la Fontaine, Racine, Boileau – with one exception: Oliver Goldsmith, whose Vicar of Wakefield in stereotype, hot off a Paris press, constituted the firm’s lone English title.

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Hume’s Political Discourses in France Gilles Robel The Political Discourses – with some twenty-three editions in five languages in Hume’s lifetime (ten English, six French, four Italian, two German, one Swedish) – was ‘more successful than any English work of economics prior to Adam Smith’ (Carpenter 1975: 16). Hume’s ideas were disseminated throughout Europe with the French editions of these twelve essays but the history of their translation and publication in France is quite complex. The book first reached a French reading public through the influential Bibliothèque raisonnée des ouvrages des savants de l’Europe (1752: XLVII: 231–2), which had reviewed the Treatise ten years earlier; the editors summarised ‘Of Luxury’ and ‘Of Commerce’, and listed the titles of the other ten essays. The newly launched Journal britannique then printed partial French translations of the twelve essays (February–April 1752). February’s issue salutes Hume’s ‘distinguished reputation’ and the ‘many shrewd and finely phrased observations’ in his book (225–6). March calls Hume a ‘formidable sceptic’ who has fortunately changed his tone to emulate Shaftesbury and show his countrymen the way to happiness: ‘He strives . . . to enlighten the nations on the advantages they have and the ones they could obtain’ (VII: 243–5).9 There follows a precise and fairly objective account of the first nine essays with occasional ‘clarifications’ of Hume’s thought, as in the footnote on money (257). April’s issue summarises and discusses extensively ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’, referencing Voltaire and illustrating Hume’s contradiction of Montesquieu (388–9). ‘Of the Protestant Succession’ and ‘Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth’ appear only in a footnote; apparently they did not interest French readers. 9

All translations are by the author unless otherwise indicated.

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The editor of the Journal étranger, Toussaint, in the first instalment of his periodical (April 1754), called the second edition of Hume’s Discourses, ‘the most important English book of the time’. The preface promises to acquaint French readers with Europe’s ‘excellent books’ through translations and analyses of significant passages, since the French are indebted to the Germans for mechanical arts, chemistry and mineralogy, to the Italians for architecture and to the English for philosophy, navigation and the theory of commerce (xxxiii–xxxvi). As in the Journal Britannique, Hume’s philosophical works are dismissed, his political and economic essays applauded and Hume himself praised for his impartiality and for his lack of resentment against France: ‘Being by his fortune, his reason and his principles, above base interest, false glory and party spirit, Mr Hume, who is already famous for various moral and political essays, sustains his reputation very well in these Discourses’ (46). ‘Of Commerce’ is then partly paraphrased, partly translated, sometimes too literally. While occasionally criticising him for irrelevance, the reviewer overemphasises Hume on the benefits of trade and industry, especially the possibility for equitable taxation (46–55), which reflected France’s dominant preoccupation at the time. The next issue (May 1754) examines ‘Of Luxury’ in similar detail, stressing its topicality and calling it a response to Rousseau’s Discours sur les sciences et les arts (221). The reviewer avoids Hume’s glorification of refinement, advocating instead a position between ancients and moderns (221–6). August finds ‘Of the Balance of Power’ ‘just in its principles and as solid in its reasonings as the previous [essays]’ (210). Hume is praised but his essay only partially translated; his observation that ‘our wars with France have been begun with justice, and even, perhaps, from necessity; but have always been too far pushed from obstinacy and passion’ is omitted, and only the conclusion of this paragraph is translated: ‘All our public debts, are owing more to our own imprudent vehemence, than to the ambition of our neighbours’ (Hume 1987: 339; Journal étranger: 217). Over two issues in September and November 1754, the Journal économique finally translates ‘Of the Balance of Trade’. The interest of the French reading public was therefore aroused by periodicals almost as soon as the Political Discourses were published in Edinburgh. Two complete translations of the Political Discourses were published almost simultaneously in 1754 by different publishers, a clear sign of the growing interest in Hume’s writings and of their marketability; their Amsterdam imprints were probably a tactic to avoid French requirements to submit manuscripts to Paris’s censeurs royaux. Only books published in France could be granted a privilège du roi, provided

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the authorities found their content safe. The privilège held the king personally liable should a publication provoke any religious or political institution and was therefore granted sparingly. Foreign publishers could receive the semi-legal permission tacite. Gradually permissions tacites were also granted to French books which the authorities wanted circulated without assuming full responsibility for them. Thus many French titles had false foreign imprints; London, Amsterdam, Dresden and Leipzig were favourites (Birn 2007: 16, 28). Others were disguised translations which enabled the ‘translator’ to avoid endorsing the author’s ideas. Between 1750 and 1789, two-thirds of the books circulating in France were tacitly authorised, printed abroad, or smuggled (Birn 2007: 29). Before the Discours politiques appeared, the Parisian bookseller Lambert had submitted to French censorship a manuscript translation of Essays Moral and Political, but it was refused (Bongie 1958: 234). After this, booksellers developed specific strategies to publish the Political Discourses. The first print translation was by Eleazar de Mauvillon, a historian, grammarian and philologist, and issued in Amsterdam ‘chez J. Schreuder, & Pierre Mortier le Jeune’, although some copies may have circulated as early as 1753 (Conlon 1983: VII: 87). Johann Formey carefully reviewed Mauvillon’s translation in the Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique (1754: 410–35), praising Hume’s concern with men as they are and with what is politically possible in a given nation. The reviewer in Bibliothèque des sciences et des beauxarts spoke of ‘political paradoxes’ and ‘interesting peculiarities’ and recommended it (October–December 1754: 475). However Mauvillon’s translation did not sell out. The publisher reissued it several times, significantly in 1761 and 1767, after the French edition of Hume’s History and a new volume of his economic writings, changing only the titlepage for each ‘edition’, which was a common practice (Carpenter 1975: 5). Copies are variously dated 1754, 1756 and 1759. J.-B.-R. Robinet mentions the translation in a letter to Hume ten years after its original publication (17 December 1765), which shows that despite its lack of success, it was well-known.10 Another Amsterdam bookseller, Schneider, realising that the reviews of the book had whetted the public’s appetite, attempted to get the rights to publish Mauvillon’s translation and sought Hume’s permission:

10

NLS Hume MS 23157 f.12–4. Of sixty French private catalogues, twelve list Mauvillon (one the 1767 edition) and twenty-five Le Blanc, either 1754 or 1755 (Bongie 1952: 489–513).

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One of my colleagues here has had a book translated, of which I cannot yet have the rights of copy, but I hope to acquire them soon in order to print it in the same size and type. The translation is by Mr Mauvillon from Dresden. Mr l’Abbé Le Blanc has also translated the same book, and in my opinion it seems better than the other one. (Greig 1932: II: 344) Schneider eventually published a five-volume edition of Hume (Oeuvres philosophiques de M. D. Hume, 1758–60) but without the Political Discourses. Schneider’s letter suggests that Mauvillon’s translation suffered from the publication shortly afterwards of another by Abbé le Blanc, who printed Hume’s essays together with Bolingbroke’s Réflexions politiques sur l’état présent de l’Angleterre. Jean-Bernard le Blanc had lived in England for eighteen months (1738–9) and published a successful book on the English nation, Lettres d’un François concernant le gouvernement, la politique et les moeurs des Anglois et François (1745). He was a friend of economist Jean-François Melon in the 1730s and was close to Montesquieu (Monod-Cassidy 1941: 18, 198, 207, 210, 253). Unlike Mauvillon, le Blanc sent Hume copies of his translation and asked for comment and correction. In a letter of 25 December 1754 from Dresden, le Blanc criticised Mauvillon while promoting himself: I saw here the translation of your Political Discourses printed in Holland; it cannot be read. You would suffer, Sir, to see yourself defaced in such a way. The translator, whoever he may be, has no consistent knowledge of English or French. He is probably one of those writers who work at the fair for Dutch booksellers, and whose books, good or bad, are sold at the Leipzig or Frankfurt fairs. . . . The translator is said to be a Mr Mauvillon from Leipzig whose trade is to make French books for Germany, and to teach what he does not know, i.e. your tongue and ours. (Burton 1846: I: 458) Le Blanc claims his own translation ‘sells here like a novel. . . . The bookseller has informed me that we should soon think of a second edition’. Elsewhere he quotes Maupertuis, the president of the Berlin Academy, who in praising Hume’s Philosophical Essays and Essays Moral and Political says of le Blanc: ‘What a pity that all these books have not had a translator like you!’ (Greig 1932: I: 226 n.) Hume’s subsequent letter to le Blanc (15 October 1754) reflects the level of competition between translators and booksellers seeking Hume’s blessing:

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As you thought, that the informing the Public of the Correspondence carry’d on betwixt us, wou’d prevent any other Translator from interfering with you, I have subjoind in the next Page, a Letter, such as may not be improper to insert in some of the literary Journals . . . The booksellers in London have a Custom, that when an Author enters into any Engagement with any of them for a Translation, no other Bookseller will engage any other person in the same Translation. I hope this is also the Custom at Paris. (I: 197) Le Blanc’s August 1754 translation was reviewed immediately in l’Année littéraire (V: 95) where all twelve essays are summarised and the reviewer criticises Hume for his views on the public debt and his scepticism, concluding: ‘[Hume’s] book contains profound reflections, new insights and, like all English books, many blemishes. By translating this book Abbé le Blanc did a great service to his homeland and a real honour to himself.’ Michel Groell issued a second edition at Dresden (1755) with a privilège du roi but without Bolingbroke’s text, which le Blanc removed in response to Hume’s damning appraisal of the Englishman. The progress of the book from permission tacite to privilège du roi in one year illustrates le Blanc’s skilful manipulation of the censorship system (in 1756 he created a fake translation from a supposed English MP named John Tell Truth to avoid censorship for his Patriote anglois [Monod-Cassidy 1941: 100–3]); but it also indicates the deep penetration of Hume’s thought into France’s upper circles. After Mauvillon’s rather unsuccessful translation, Schreuder emulated le Blanc with a five-volume edition, Discours politiques de Mr Hume. Hume’s Discourses, confined to volume one, served as ‘bait’ to the works of other economists. Significantly, volume two included Bolingbroke as well as Forbonnais and Pierre-André O’Heguerty, all members of le Blanc’s circle. A third translation of the seven essays on economics contained in the Discourses appeared in Amsterdam in 1766 and in Paris and Lyon in 1767 with approbation et privilège du roi, granted for six years on 31 December 1766.11 It is attributed to Mle de la Chaux, based on Barbier’s Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes (1874: II: 281), which relied on a passage from Diderot’s short story ‘Ceci n’est pas un conte’; however, Laurence Bongie has proven Mle de la Chaux an invention of Diderot probably intended to refer to Louise-Hortense de Lavau (Bongie 1989: 91–8). No evidence supports de Lavau as Hume’s translator, and 11

Recorded in Register XVII, Chambre Royale et Syndicale des Libraires et Imprimeurs de Paris no 1231, fol. 175 (12 March 1767).

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the style may well point to Turgot, who translated two essays for the Journal étranger in 1760 (‘Essai sur la jalousie du commerce’, August, 88–97; ‘Essai sur la réunion des partis’, September, 21–40). Whoever did the translation, it reappeared in 1788 as volume seven of a new French edition of Hume’s philosophical works. The lengthy ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’ was translated and published separately (1778) by Jean-Baptiste François de la Michodière and printed anonymously in the Journal de l’agriculture in six issues (April–September 1778), demonstrating the lasting interest in Hume’s contentious demographic analysis. Finally the book of requests for permission tacite suggests that Auguste-Pierre Damiens de Gomicourt, the publisher of a periodical on English affairs, l’Observateur français à Londres, translated the 1770 London-published collection, Le Génie de M. Hume, which draws heavily on Hume’s political and moral maxims as well as anecdotes from the History of England with extracts from Abbé Prévost and Mme Belot’s translation of the History and Mérian and Robinet’s of Essays Moral and Political, alongside le Blanc’s Discourses (Bongie 1958: 245). However, the compiler renders Hume incomprehensible by taking passages out of context and grouping maxims and reflections randomly. Nevertheless this compilation was translated into German in 1774 (Das Genie des Herrn Hume, Leipzig), including even obvious misprints (Meyer 1954: 164–5). Thus there were no fewer than six French editions of the Discourses in Hume’s lifetime, excluding translations in journals: Mauvillon (1754, 1761), le Blanc (1754, 1755); Mauvillon collected with various French and English political writers (1769); the anonymous translation of 1766 and 1767 (reprinted, 1788 as the seventh volume of the Oeuvres philosophiques de Hume); and the Gomicourt compilation with its extracts. The ground for the extraordinary success of the Discourses was paved by Hume’s ‘ambassadors’, those men and women who promoted him as part of a French cultural shift from ‘frivolous’ subjects to ‘serious’ political and economic matters. Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des lois (1748) first aroused public interest in political economy, and Hume in turn answered the doctrinal questions raised by Montesquieu, and by Melon and Dutot in the 1730s; Hume’s methodology also echoed Montesquieu’s (Malherbe 2005: 59). Voltaire summed this up in the Dictionnaire philosophique: ‘Towards the year 1750, the French nation, surfeited with verses, tragedies, comedies, operas, romances and romantic histories – with moral reflections still more romantic, and with theological disputes on grace and convulsionaries, finally

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began to reason about corn. Useful things were written on agriculture, and every body read them except the labourers’ (‘Corn’: II: 299). Le Blanc’s first letter to Hume (25 August 1754) expressed a similar notion (Burton 1846: I: 459). Hume’s economic essays appealed directly to recent French concerns with agriculture, luxury, commerce and the relation of sociability to individual interest Le Blanc was a crucial ‘ambassador’ for Hume, but Hume’s theory of free trade and commercial civilisation could have had no better advocate than a successful wine merchant like John Stewart of Allanbank, the son of Archibald Stewart, sometime Lord Provost of Edinburgh, whom Hume had defended against the accusation of Jacobitism after the ’45 (Greig 1932: II: 243 n.6). John Stewart frequently travelled to France on business, befriending men and women of letters, and was vital to Hume’s relationship with Montesquieu (Mertz 1929), who sent Hume through Stewart a copy of l’Esprit des lois in 1749 (Greig 1932: I: 133). We can assume that he did so because Stewart had told Montesquieu about Hume who was then untranslated in France.12 Montesquieu read the 1748 edition of Essays Moral and Political and remarked to Hume: Mr Stuart and I started to read another one of your books where you treat the ecclesiastical order with a little scorn . . . . We do not believe their members to be as you described but we felt that you gave very good reasons why they should be that way. Mr Stuart pleased me greatly by giving me the hope that I should be able to find some of those beautiful books in Paris. (19 May 1749)13 Hume first asked Adam Smith to give Montesquieu a copy of Political Discourses but it never reached him and Stewart eventually brought him the book; Montesquieu subsequently asked Hume ‘to make my most humble compliment to Mr Stewart; he should really come back and see us this autumn’ (3 September 1749).14 Ten years later, Stewart was part of the circle of both Daniel-Charles Trudaine, Intendant général des finances and his son, Jean-Charles, who would succeed his father in 1769. Many letters, some partly unpublished, show Stewart’s role alongside Abbé le Blanc in establishing and maintaining contacts between Hume and France’s important literary and philosophical circles (Greig 1932: II: 347–50). Trudaine’s 12

13 14

Hume’s first translated text was ‘Of Polygamy and Divorce’, printed in volume two of the periodical Le Petit Réservoir (Hague, 1750): 453–63, 469–76. NLS Hume MS 23156 f.46. NLS Hume MS 23156 f. 47.

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group met at Mme Dupré de St Maur’s home, and included Turgot, Morellet, Chastellux or Helvétius. The young Trudaine translated the Natural History of Religion and Mme Dupré de St Maur encouraged him to send Hume the translation, which he did through Stewart.15 That translation is unfortunately lost, but Hume wrote to Trudaine on Stewart’s advice thanking him for it and initiating a friendship which was to be reinforced during Hume’s Paris stay between 1763 and 1766. They continually exchanged books, mainly through Stewart who would ask Hume to send Trudaine: Two copies of Robinson’s [Robertson’s] History, Johnson’s Dictionary in Octavo, Shakespears Works, Popes Illiad, Tom Jones, Memoires of a woman of pleasure 2 volumes printed for G. Fenton in the Strand [by John Cleland, London 1749], Miscellaneous Tracts by Middleton, Human Nature in 3 volumes by Dav: Hume, An Introduction to Languages Literary & Philosophical by H. Bailey 2 vols 8vo, Gerard Malines on Money and ‘the Bible in the Erse and in the Welsh Languages, the best grammar in these two languages’ (Greig 1932: II: 347–50). And Trudaine also explains that Stewart discussed the books he sent: ‘We were very upset not to be able to make Mr Stewart stay here longer. Had he not been called on business to Spain, I would have been honoured to enjoy his friendship more often. I hope he will agree to give you an account of the pleasure we had on many occasions to talk about you and your books but I intend, when he comes back, to make up for the short time he has spent with us’.16 But if an Edinburgh wine merchant, keen to see trade with France grow, proved Hume’s best ambassador, the quality and cultural strategies of his translators ultimately shaped the French perception of Hume’s ideas. Hume wanted his work to appear in France and having read le Blanc’s Lettres d’un François, he felt that its author was familiar enough with Britain to translate the essays (Greig 1932: I: 191–4), which was confirmed when Hume read the second edition of the Discourses and wrote to le Blanc (6 November 1755): ‘It is some time ago, that I received and read with Pleasure the excellent Translation, with which you have honour’d my political Discourses. It gives me great Satisfaction to find my Sense so justly preservd, and at the same time embellish’d by the Propriety & Elegance of your Expressions’ 15 16

NLS Hume MS 2356 f.49. NLS Hume MS 23156 f. 49. See also letters dated 16 Aug. 1759 and 6 Oct. 1759, Hume MS 23156 ff. 50 and 51.

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(Greig 1932: I: 228). Hume wanted le Blanc to translate other work, especially his History of the Stuarts, for the French market which he called ‘the center of all the fine Arts’ (Greig 1932: I: 193, 196). The comparative success of Hume’s translators, especially le Blanc, reveals much about French readership. Eighteenth-century French translators often altered texts in anticipation of the censors or translated only select passages which they mixed with their own, as in Gomicourt’s edition of the Discourses or Butel-Dumont’s of John Cary (Essai sur l’état du commerce d’Angleterre [Londres et Paris, 1755]). Some included texts by at least one other author, as in le Blanc’s first edition of the Discourses. Translators often added substantial critical footnotes, as Formey did in the 1758 edition of Hume’s Essais philosophiques (Malherbe 2005: 76). Faithfulness to the original had no currency, a practice first challenged by Le Journal étranger’s new editor in January 1760: The texts which we shall translate will be presented as faithfully as possible. We will strive to make these versions as accurate, precise & transparent – so to speak – as possible, rather than to give them the elegance and colour of the French language. (xxxv–xxxvii) The three principal editions of Political Discourses differ strikingly, each epitomising a different style of translation, from the over-literal to the ‘belle infidèle’; disagreement about their respective merits began when le Blanc dismissed Mauvillon in letters to Hume and Grimm criticised le Blanc’s ‘insolent tone’ and over-literalness: ‘Mr Hume deserved a translator other than l’abbé le Blanc, whom you would assume to be Swiss rather than French, if you read his tasteless and unphilosophical translation, where he shows a complete ignorance of the subjects of these discourses’ (Grimm 1813: I: 210). Robinet, while contemplating his own Hume edition, thought Mauvillon’s ‘more literal’ and Le Blanc’s ‘more elegant’. He suggests fusing the two and complains about footnotes in which ‘pygmies try to hit a colossus’ and ‘children attempt to capture a giant with a single hair’.17 Le Blanc also tones down Hume where Mauvillon inflates: in ‘Of Some Remarkable Customs’, where Hume writes ‘as absurd as any vision of priest or poets’, le Blanc leaves the priests out; and in ‘Of the Protestant Succession’, le Blanc excises Hume’s denunciation of Roman Catholicism’s ‘natural attendants of inquisitors, and stakes, and gibbets’, apologising for Hume’s irreverence in a footnote. 17

NLS Hume MS 23157 f.12–4.

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Mauvillon makes Hume even more anti-Catholic by rendering ‘less tolerating’ as ‘unbearable’ (Hume 1754: 323–4). ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’ calls convents, ‘nurseries of the most abject superstition, burthensome to the public, and oppressive to the poor prisoners’; but Mauvillon offers, ‘nurseries of people who are idle and useless to the public and where men and women are oppressed by a tyrannical power’. Le Blanc simply omits the passage (Hume 1987: 398; Hume 1754: 210, 96). Mauvillon has a Protestant’s bias, while le Blanc’s selfcensorship earned his translation a privilège du roi. Still le Blanc is not necessarily Mauvillon’s superior. But the anonymous 1767 translation trumps both 1754 editions, despite its preference for abstract over concrete terms (Meyer 1954: 145). A single, but telling example is the translation of Hume’s famous metaphor on the function of money. ‘It is none of the wheels of trade: it is the oil which renders the motion of the wheels more smooth and easy’ becomes in 1767 ‘it can be compared with the sails of a ship, without which no vessel could sail across the immensity of the sea’. Here le Blanc had been literal and Mauvillon too concrete (‘It is the cart’s grease rubbed onto the wheel to make it turn with more speed and ease’). Le Blanc can be ambiguous, even mistaken. In ‘Of Interest’, he first correctly translates ‘landed interest’ as ‘intérêt des propriétaires de terre’ but renders ‘monied interest’ as ‘intérêt de l’argent’, which could mean ‘interest rate’. Mauvillon mistakenly translates this, ‘l’intérêt des Terres’ and ‘un gros intérêt monnayé’ (Hume 1987: 299; Hume 1755: 101; Hume 1754: 75). Only the 1767 edition correctly distinguishes ‘landed interest’ from ‘monied interest’ (Hume 1767: 97). In other instances, le Blanc’s translation is so literal that it becomes clumsy: where Hume writes, ‘The low profits of merchandize induce the merchants to accept more willingly of a low interest’ (Hume 1987: 302), le Blanc translates: ‘Les profits modiques de la marchandise induisent les marchands à accepter plus volontiers un modique intérêt’ (Hume 1754: 163). Mauvillon is closer: ‘La modicité des profits dans le commerce engage plusieurs marchands à s’accommoder avec moins de répugnance d’un intérêt modique’ (Hume 1754: 83–4). Mauvillon errs seriously in translating the important notion ‘stock of labour’ from ‘Of Commerce’ (Hume 1987: 262), which becomes ‘Le commerce & l’Industrie ne sont au fond que l’union de plusieurs espèces de travail’ (Hume 1754: 16), whereas both le Blanc and the 1767 edition use ‘fonds de travail’, which Hume himself probably knew from Jean-François Melon (Meyssonier 1989: 246). Le Blanc’s translation is not as fine as Hume was made to think and Grimm’s criticisms were partly justified; however his rivals erred too, and no doubt the evolving nature of

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economics led to a fluid vocabulary. But, textual differences aside, the three translations differ most in their critical apparatus. In his short introduction, Mauvillon explains modestly that his translation had been an ‘amusement’ and that the translator’s role does not include critiquing the author. The contrast could not be sharper with le Blanc’s fifty-eight-page preface which represents his translation as ‘a sacred duty’ to future generations in England and France; unlike Mauvillon, he calls Hume an Englishman (Hume 1754: xii–xiv). Referencing Melon’s Essai politique sur le commerce and his own Lettres d’un français, le Blanc introduces economics as a new science establishing new truths, with Hume’s book a cornerstone. Le Blanc adds some eighty footnotes in which he comments upon Hume’s ideas and provides historical perspective, quoting such British economists as Mun, Locke and Gee alongside French writers such as Melon, Forbonnais, Dutot and even himself (Hume 1754: 57, 105, 113). Elsewhere he sums up the controversy over population between Hume and Wallace and points his readers to Dupré de St Maur’s Essai sur les Monnoies (Hume trans. le Blanc 1745: II: 153–4n, 236n). He also quotes Hume’s yet-untranslated Essays Moral and Political and provides two bibliographical appendices to volume two. In fact, le Blanc’s main concern was to produce a paratext designed to appeal to a French and European reading public rather than faithfully render Hume (Charles 2007: 181). Le Blanc was probably motivated by his membership in an enlightened faction led by Vincent de Gournay, France’s intendant of trade (1751–8) under Trudaine de Montigny and his son. Gournay felt it essential that French nobility become interested in trade and started a campaign to promote what he called ‘la science du commerce’ (Meyssonier 1989: 175–209). Encountering bureaucratic resistance, Gournay organised a network of administrators and thinkers favourable to economic reforms, including the two Trudaines, and not coincidentally, Lamoignon de Malesherbe, director of the Librairie and in charge of book censorship. This may explain le Blanc’s privilège du roi. In 1753 the Gournay circle published some nine books on economics, including translations of Josiah Child’s A New Discourse on Trade, Josiah Tucker’s Elements of Commerce and Charles King’s British Merchant, or Commerce Preserv’d (Meyssonier 1989: 181). Of the twelve books on trade published in France from 1752 to 1754 and mentioned in le Blanc’s second appendix, he criticises the three by authors outside the Gournay faction (Charles 2007: 187). Le Blanc’s introduction and footnotes provide the Discourses with French intellectual contexts, emphasising – even overemphasising – similarities between Hume and liberal French economists; for

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example, Hume opposes the traditional mercantilist arguments in ‘Of the Balance of Trade’, which le Blanc endorses in a long footnote quoting his ‘friends’ Melon and Herbert; a 1755 edition of Herbert’s translation of the Discourses subsequently praises the ‘clever’ translator le Blanc ‘who has often clarified’ the text rather than the author of Political Discourses (Herbert 1755: 356). Le Blanc and members of the Gournay circle agreed with Hume on trade or luxury and they were eager to show it to the readers, but they dismissed Hume’s monetary theory and his serious concerns with the level of public debt in Britain and the possibility it might go bankrupt. Le Blanc was obviously uneasy with the disagreement between Hume and Forbonnais on that subject and concluded Hume’s essay by leaving in a footnote the last word to Plumard de Dangeul who was one of the main writers in the Gournay circle (Hume 1754b: I: 329–30). Thus Hume became an advertisement for French reformist economists. In the 1767 edition four essays (‘Sur l’Argent’, ‘Sur l’Intérêt de l’argent’, ‘Sur les Impôts’, ‘Sur le Crédit public’) have commentaries by the translator which support the Gournay circle’s agenda. ‘Sur l’Argent’ is followed by ten pages criticising Hume’s methodology and summing up his monetary theory in three propositions reflective of the Gournay criticisms of the physiocrats (Deleule 1979: 211–52). ‘Sur la Balance du commerce’ translates Hume’s reference to France’s absurd corn laws in full for the first time (both le Blanc and Mauvillon had stopped short of naming France). ‘Sur l’Intérêt de l’argent’ includes nine pages of ‘réflexions du traducteur’ which corroborate Hume and demonstrate the ‘irreparable mistake’ of successive French governments (Hume 1767: 122); while ‘Sur le Crédit public’ has a fourteen-page commentary reflecting the Gournay circle’s uneasiness with Hume and arguing that public debt is necessary to increased trade (Hume 1767: 173–87). Once again Hume becomes an excuse to articulate the Gournay agenda. Interestingly, this edition was revived in 1847, together with works by other members of the Gournay circle (Daire 1847: I: 12–173). Thus the success of the Discourses in France depended as much on the political and cultural context in which it appeared and the role of friends and thinkers such as John Stewart and the Gournay circle as on the compatibility of Hume’s style with French reading sensibilities. And its three principal French editions manipulated that compatibility with strategically biased versions of Hume which applied his ideas selectively to French economic concerns. In this way, the Discourses was not just translated but ‘Gallicised’, and as such it provides book historians with an exemplary case study of the politics of appropriation that lies behind the art (and business) of translation.

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Scotland and Italy: Books and the Grand Tour Iain Gordon Brown The Grand Tour is generally regarded as a phenomenon manifested in the realm of the stone, lime, marble, paint, pastel, pencil and bronze of material culture. Its influence is usually associated with the acquisition of a sophisticated taste reflected in the classicising of architectural and decorative style, and equally in the development of art collections. Nevertheless, the Grand Tour also had a literary dimension and one specific to book history. Books acquired before, on or after the Grand Tour and assembled at home in private or public libraries ‘translated’ the culture of antiquity (and equally that of the more recent past and even the present) in a way that has been described as the ‘packaging’ of material culture in ‘collectable and consumable form’. These monuments and artefacts were also ‘textualized’ through the ‘mechanics of publication’ (Coltman 2006: 44, 63; Chapter 2). To put the matter more generally, reading, writing and the making of books, as well as the two-way trade in literary cargoes, formed a significant aspect of eighteenth-century Scotland’s cultural commerce with Europe. Italy was but one of the countries visited on the Grand Tour; yet it is true to say that no Grand Tour experience could be considered complete without time spent there. As the tradition of the Tour had evolved in the seventeenth century, and as it attained its characteristic form during the eighteenth (a pattern that lasted well into the nineteenth century), Italy became and remained the fountainhead of antiquarian learning, and the primary source of architectural and artistic inspiration. Rich Scotsmen read of the art, culture and society of Classical, Renaissance and Baroque Italy in preparation for their future travels; the less fortunate made reading a substitute for actual experience. 233

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The topography and monuments of ancient and modern Rome, or of Venice, Florence and Naples, and the landscape of the peninsula made familiar in literature or painting, became almost as intimately known to Scottish travellers as the Lawnmarket or the Trongate, the Netherbow Port or the Carse of Stirling. In what was to remain a long-time standard travel guide for Grand Tourists (and which in its earliest incarnation had been compiled for the use of a Scottish nobleman) Richard Lassels made plain the connection between the printed page digested at home and the historic sites later seen abroad: ‘no man’, he wrote in his Voyage of Italy (1670), ‘understands Livy and Caesar like him who hath made exactly . . . the Giro of Italy’. One hundred and fifty years later, the second Earl of Minto would likewise point to the heightened enjoyment of classical literature read on classic ground, to the relationship between books and places and to the intensification of experience that resulted from interaction and juxtaposition: ‘Reading a little of the Georgics and Eclogues of Virgil today, I was much struck with the truth of many of the descriptions as applied to the scenery and the people of the present day. Nor can any one taste the beauty of the Georgics who does not read them in Italy any more than a Hindoo could appreciate the merit of Thomson’s Seasons.’18 Allan Ramsay the younger’s learned essay on the situation and circumstances of Horace’s Sabine villa, which occupied much of his attention in Italy on his third and fourth visits in the 1770s and 1780s, and the time that Ramsay chose to devote to the task after his retirement from active portrait-painting and his turning to the life of intellectual littérateur, stressed the veracity of comparing actual landscape with ancient poetic descriptions of scenery that might otherwise be deemed purely imaginary (Frischer and Brown 2001). Scottish Grand Tourists read about the past and present of Italy both before and after – sometimes long after – their travels in Italy in books purchased on their tours or subsequent to their return. On the ground in Italy Scottish artists and antiquaries conceived scholarly projects that were brought to fruition (or sometimes simply long pondered) on coming back to Britain. The Jacobite Andrew Lumisden looked forward to spending his later years (whether in France or his native Scotland) surrounded by his books, perfecting and perchance actually publishing the antiquarian work he had conceived in Rome. I envy no one engaged in the intrigues of courts or bustle of camps. I have had enough of both . . . I am now likely to converse more with the dead than the living. I still intend to correct and put 18

NLS MS. 11987, Lord Minto’s diary, f. 77v.

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together the remarks I have collected on the Antiquities of Rome and its environs. I dare not flatter myself that such a trifle will be worthy to be presented to the public, but it will always be an amusement to myself, and perhaps to some of my friends who are fond of that branch of learning. (Dennistoun 1855: II: 125) In Italy, too, Scottish visitors or long-term exiles read books sent out from home. Public and private libraries in Scotland were enriched by acquisitions of texts published in Italy, or by those bought there, or by works written on themes connected with the culture of the land that was the very heart and soul of the Grand Tour. There was therefore a culturally significant book trade between Scotland and Italy, as well as other literary links which reflected all that the institution meant for the development of Scottish taste and manners. Along with the other spoils of the Tour, books were bought in Italy by travellers, frequently as an adjunct to the material acquisitions made on their visits. The Grand Tour ‘time capsule’ represented by the cargo of the captured British merchant ship, the Westmorland, perfectly illustrates the point. A Scottish Grand Tourist such as John Henderson, younger of Fordell, was shipping home in 1778 not just the material spoils of his time in Italy, including painted and sculpted portraits of himself, but also the books he had acquired as a means of interpreting what he had seen in situ (Luzón Nogué 2002). Books might inform, inspire and remind; but as one of the most important of all Scottish Grand Tourists, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, observed, there was no substitute for actual objects: ‘the things themselves speak, and for the most part explain themselves; but descriptions, however accurate, present to the mind only confused or shadowy ideas’ (Clerk 1892: 238). Clerk had acquired many standard volumes on classical antiquities before or during his Grand Tour, and added them to those already in his father’s library. Through the agency of Allan Ramsay the elder, poet and bookseller, Sir John continued to buy well into his later years older works (albeit some in recent editions) on Italian antiquarian topics, mostly the general subject area of Roma subterranea or Roma vetus ac recens. Travel guides, maps and works of topography or antiquarian erudition were acquired to explain what tourists saw and wished to recall or boast of afterwards. The palaces, villas, gardens and fountains of Rome, for example, might be brought home, so to speak, in take-away versions to be drawn upon subsequently for architectural or landscape inspiration: thus the folios of engravings by Giovanni Battista Falda and Alessandro Specchi issued by the publishing house

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of Giovanni Jacomo de Rossi and his successor Domenico between 1665 and 1691 entered Scottish country-house collections, sometimes many years after first publication. De Rossi also produced plans and elevations of Roman palaces by Ferrerio, and, somewhat later, in the three-volume Archittetura Civile (1702–21), accurate plans of many Roman churches accompanied by detailed engravings of architectural features which made the vocabulary of the Roman Baroque known throughout Europe (Blunt 1982: 273). It was doubtless works of this sort that Robert Adam accumulated in quantity from local dealers after setting up his drawing office in Casa Guarnieri in 1755, when Rome became his ‘Holy See of Pleasurable Antiquity’ and he was determined to rule there as ‘King of Artists’ (Fleming 1962: 152). As the eighteenth century advanced, ever more attractive compilations of Roman topography became available to tempt the well-heeled tourist. Giuseppe Vasi’s Delle Magnificenze de Roma antica e moderna made a superb memento of a visit, perhaps together with the same artist’s large-scale elevated view-map of the city; and Vasi’s concise companion guide, Itinerario istruttivo . . . per ritrovare . . . le antiche e moderne magnificenze de Roma, was a useful vade-mecum which remained in print throughout the Grand Tour’s classic period. This was the work that Tobias Smollett recommended to others and relied upon himself to some degree, and which young John Henderson (doubtless with the additional purpose of improving his language skills) bought in a French edition published in Rome in 1773 (Smollett 1981: 240; Luzón Nogué 2002: 280). The choice of literature facing a keen and rich tourist was large: Smollett, whose pleasure in Rome was comparing the actual monuments with the descriptions he already knew in text and engraved plate, sagely observed that ‘a hundred zequins will not purchase all the books and prints which have been published in Rome on these subjects’. Here Smollett pointed to Giovanni Battista Piranesi as reigning supreme in topographical antiquarianism (Smollett 1981: 240). Piranesi’s vision of ancient grandeur and contemporary splendour was more effective and desirable to Grand Tourists than that of any of his predecessors or contemporaries, and his famous Vedute di Roma were staple acquisitions for most travellers who bought plates singly or as collections. Many who had first ‘seen’ Rome through Piranesi’s eyes must have been a little disappointed at the real thing, when they found first-hand the genuine perspectives neither so vast nor so vertiginous as his etchings had made the buildings, ruins and townscape appear. An early Scottish admirer of the Venetian Piranesi was Andrew Lumisden, secretary to the exiled Prince Charles Edward Stuart, who confided to

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his brother-in-law, the engraver Robert Strange, that Piranesi’s views of Rome were ‘much esteem’d, not so much for their exactness as for their pictoresque manner’. Explaining that the prints might be had separately as well as in sets, Lumisden offered to send Strange some specimens.19 Lumisden’s long retirement in Scotland was devoted to the preparation of his Remarks on the Antiquities of Rome and its Environs (London, 1797). It is worth observing the remarkable fact that in the text and notes of this work he contrived to refer to Piranesi and his prints more than 200 times. A cousin of the art-connoisseur Sir James Clerk, third Baronet of Penicuik, lamented his kinsman’s apparent parsimony in not buying Piranesi at source: ‘Great is my inclination to make purchases in the virtuosi way. . . I could wish Sr Jas would give me a commission to buy Piranesi works which are things of merit, I cannot attempt them. I am tired of this tragic history of an empty purse. . . I am sorry that Sr James is so poor if he cannot afford to buy Piranesi’s Works: you may easily conceive what a noble collection of Virtu I can purchase’ (I. G. Brown 2003: 33). Robert Adam knew Piranesi as a friend, and admired him both as archaeologist and as interpreter of the vision of Rome. He also saw in Piranesi’s works a chance to score a propaganda coup for himself. In return for his agreement to take between eighty and 100 copies of the plan of ancient Rome that Piranesi was then engaged in engraving (this would become the virtuoso principal multi-part series of plates illustrating Il Campo Marzio dell’ Antica Roma of 1762) Adam persuaded Piranesi to honour him with a number of subtle dedicatory ‘inscriptions’ on the vast plan itself and also on the remarkable aerial view or scenographia of the Campus Martius area of ancient Rome (I. G. Brown 2010b: 67). His publicity-seeking purpose achieved, Adam intended to resell the consignment of folios (which he would also ensure were shipped to Britain in advance of any other copies of the new work) through his acquaintance David Wilson, the Scottish bookseller who had set up in London (Fleming 1962: 170 cf. 231). But this was to be some years in the future. Meanwhile Adam was also negotiating with Piranesi to take copies of the Italian’s influential work of polemical scholarship, the four-volume Le Antichità Romane (1756), which carried (in the second frontispiece to the second volume) an even more subtle allusion to himself and his status as British architectural prodigy. Some of these sets Adam proposed to present to influential people as gifts with an ulterior motive; others were intended for resale by Wilson. One set he eventually presented to the Earl of Bute, 19

NLS Acc. 11328, Lumisden letter-book, 25 July 1752.

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in the hope of attracting patronage. Bute curtly returned it. Infuriated, Adam mused on how he would drop the four massive volumes on the Earl and his putative mistress, the Dowager Princess of Wales, as the couple passed down the Thames below a waiting and plotting Adam on Westminster Bridge: perhaps the oddest use in Scottish book history to which a work of archaeological scholarship might have been put! The discovery of the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii took European taste and learning by storm, and few educated Scots were immune to the spell of the excavations. Allan Ramsay was responsible for publicising the earliest discoveries by making news of them available in Britain, probably for the first time, in letters that the Italian painter Camillo Paderni had sent him and that Ramsay translated and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1740. This pioneering intelligence was followed by the work, still unrecognised by specialists in the field, of another Scot, William Fordyce, a man whom the NLS wrongly identifies with another of the same name. Fordyce’s Memoirs Concerning Herculaneum, the Subterranean City Lately Discovered at the Foot of Mount Vesuvius was published by David Wilson in 1750 and was inspired by Fordyce’s first-hand knowledge of the site, though the ‘author’ (really the translator) of the sixty-eight-page pamphlet admits that his text was founded upon the memoria (as that term would have been understood by contemporary classical archaeologists, who relied on such accounts of antiquarian discoveries known collectively as ‘Memorie’) compiled by an Italian secretary to the French Ambassador to Naples. Fordyce used the occasion to boast that his account improved on that by Marchese Marcello de Venuti which, as Descrizione delle Prime Scoperte dell’Antica Città d’Ercolano, had been published in Rome and Venice the season before Fordyce himself was at Herculaneum. Fordyce must have appeared as something of a Scottish opportunist, for an English translation of Venuti’s much fuller work was brought out in London in the same year, translated by Wickes Skurray. Ignoring the bonds of nationality, the Faculty of Advocates acquired the latter rather than the former. Ottavio Antonio Bayardi’s catalogue of the finds from Herculaneum, so long awaited, disappointed after the exasperation of his seemingly endless introductory volumes or Prodromi. Andrew Lumisden kept Robert Strange, Lord George Murray and others informed of the progress (or lack of it) in the publication of what he branded a ‘learned tedious work’, in which the actual subject never seemed to be reached through the mass of introduction. Nevertheless Lumisden promised to send a set to Strange. Informing Murray of

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the state of Bayardi’s laborious and turgid undertaking, Lumisden clearly betrays a preference for the work of Cochin and Bellicard in their Observations sur les antiquités de la ville d’Herculanéum which, though lacking official Neapolitan royal sanction, at least brought the ancient city and its finds alive.20 This work, in a subsequent English edition, which contained additional material by Lumisden, was one of the few books on classical antiquity owned by the Edinburgh architect James Craig, planner of the New Town: a man not fortunate enough to have made the Grand Tour himself at a formative age had to rely on such works for some faint glimmer of the light of ancient grandeur (I. G. Brown 1995: 95). Bayardi’s false start was followed by the magnificent volumes issued by Charles of Bourbon’s Accademia Ercolanese, the Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (1757–79), these not initially being produced commercially but circulated throughout Europe as diplomatic gifts. William Robertson enlisted the support of Sir William Hamilton, British Ambassador to Naples, in ensuring that the University of Edinburgh continued to receive the volumes reasonably soon after publication, in the process learning from Hamilton of ‘the dilatory and slovenly manner’ in which the excavations of the Vesuvian cities were conducted.21 The Faculty of Advocates, having expressed appreciation of the Neapolitan royal favour conveyed by the 1766 donation of the initial volumes (‘a present elegant, magnificent and truly royal’, which had been duly acknowledged by return of a fulsome Latin address delivered in a suitable box), then exercised much concern over non-receipt of subsequent volumes, especially those illustrating the bronzes – even going so far as to involve the highest echelons of a British government preoccupied by the cares of a world war (I. G. Brown 1989: 170). The exiled Lumisden confided to his father that ‘books are my principal companions’.22 Having quit Rome for Paris, his library followed him into this further stage of prolonged expatriation: ‘A passion for books has made my collection larger than is convenient for one who is not in a fixed state of life. However, they are such companions that I cannot think of parting with. They will indeed become the more necessary as I reckon to spend the remainder of my days in retirement’ (Dennistoun 1855: II: 124). Lumisden’s letters, which contain interesting information on publications sent to Britain, are equally instructive on books sent out to Italy. Lumisden asked Strange for a 20 21 22

NLS Acc. 11328, 25 July 1752; 17 October 1752; 14 January 1755. NLS MS. 3942, ff. 58–58v. NLS Acc. 11328, 17 October 1752.

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copy of Thomas Blackwell’s Memoirs of the Court of Augustus (1753–5), ‘a work that promises much, & [is] quite suited to my taste’. Lumisden could not contemplate Strange’s buying it, but any copy presented to the latter by the author might usefully be passed on to Lumisden in Rome.23 At other times Lumisden expressed a wish to have the Foulis Press Pliny the younger (‘the Glasgow edition’), a request clearly founded on Lumisden’s up-to-the-minute information on what was being published in Scotland, and in which formats. Lumisden’s letterbooks show him ordering from David Wilson new works on Scottish history such as the Ruddiman titles – which can be interpreted as David Moysie’s discourse on the Gowrie Conspiracy, or Walter Goodall on the ‘Casket Letters’ of Queen Mary – and new editions of classics such as The Staggering State of Scots Statesmen. Mention of his anticipating the receipt of the Scots Magazine and occasional disappointment at its non-arrival (as when young Roger Robertson of Ladykirk, who had been instructed to buy nine issues for him in Paris, lost some of the copies en route to Italy) feature in his correspondence.24 News of a projected new edition of the poems of William Hamilton of Bangour caused him to disinter his authorially-corrected copies of verses with the intention that these sheets might be incorporated, along with some unpublished poems in his possession. These he sent to Sir Stuart Threipland through the agency of James Edgar, an instance of the Jacobite cause within and furth of the Ancient Kingdom uniting in the aid of Scottish literature.25 Roger Robertson, who proved to be a model of grand-touring probity, preferring the bookshops of Venice to the ridotto and the masquerade, wrote an interesting letter to his father on 31 March 1752 (I. G. Brown 2006: 11): I want much that any thing of the Belles Letre that is in its infancy in our Country should flourish. I am acquainted with a bookseller in this place [Venice] who runs out much in praises of the Greek and Latin editions of the Classicks printed at Glascow and Edinburgh, and tells me he would be glad to establish a correspondence with any of our booksellers or publishers of these books who have nothing adoe but write to him a letter with a catalogue inclosed of such as have been published lately by the Fowles at Glascow or others in Edinburgh, the letter must be 23 24 25

NLS Acc. 11328, 25 July 1752. NLS Acc. 11328, 2 February 1751 and 21 December 1751. NLS Acc. 11328, 12 November 1754 and 11 November 1755.

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wrote in French or Italian and directed to Monsieur Jean Baptista Pasquali libraire à Venice au soin de Monsieur le Consul Anglois à Venice. He is a known man amongst the English booksellers and thro’ their means he is furnished with these Scots editions which would be better to take from our people themselves as they no doubt will furnish them cheaper being first. This is a noted place for books, and I can assure these late editions, for their beauty and correctness, are much esteemed at Naples, Rome, &ca. Italian admiration for the typography of Foulis and Ruddiman evinced here finds its parallel later in the century, with the emerging Scottish taste (led by David Steuart) for Giambattista Bodoni of Parma, as testified by the import of the Italian printer’s editions of Thomson’s Seasons and other fine works (Hillyard 1992a, 1993; I. G. Brown 1995: 94). Most of the celebrated Scottish ciceroni and art-dealers based in Rome, this ‘Scotch phalanx’ (as Dr Samuel Johnson’s confidante, Mrs Piozzi, called them) forming a significant presence on the Grand Tour scene, dealt in books, at any rate on occasion, even as they bought and shipped paintings, sculpture and antiquities for clients at home. Books and art all formed part of the Grand Tour cargo of spoil, and might be summed up in a term such as that used by Colin Morison when writing of his hopes that Lord Bute might commission him ‘for any Virtù from Rome’. In this letter of 1765, Morison mentions buying, packing and shipping books and prints in juxtaposition with the listing of pictures and sculpture bought (or available to buy) on commission.26 Books were purchased for the Advocates’ Library through the agency of the picture-dealer Andrew Hay in 1750, and Piranesi’s and other antiquarian works were acquired through the architect John Baxter the younger, James Byres and others prominent in the transmission of taste in more conventional ‘artistic’ channels. In 1756 Allan Ramsay the painter, then on his second visit to Italy, confided to his friend David Hume, Keeper of the Library, his unease at the imperfect informality of a notional arrangement that he should buy books in Rome for the Advocates. The lawyers concerned were chief among the Faculty’s opponents of Hume’s book-buying policy for the Library, in an episode which famously would lead to his resignation: Before I left Edinburgh I had a commission given me by Sr David Dalrymple and [James] Mr Burnet [later Lord Monboddo], 26

NLS MS. 9978, f. 95.

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curators of the Advocates’ Library, to send them some books such as I thought their Library stood in need of. I have often met with books printed in Italy, which would be very proper for them; but as the commission was only given me in the way of conversation, I did not care to lay out money in it. If those gentlemen. . . will write to me more particularly concerning that matter, I will endeavour to furnish them with some usefull books which it is probable they never saw.27 George Richardson, in Rome in 1762 as architectural draughtsman to James Adam, complained of the ‘want of Books’ that was likely to hinder his ambitions to make good as an architect and decorative designer in his own right. Yet Richardson (unlike James Craig back in Edinburgh, who managed to accumulate a small architectural library but who had not actually been to Italy) had enjoyed the matchless chance to see and read the ‘book’ of Rome in her buildings, collections and ancient ruins. Richardson would be able to draw on his direct knowledge of archaeological remains once he had indeed attained his ambition to succeed in the professional world: his own important books on the orders of architecture and on decoration and iconology, written in the 1770s and 1780s, ultimately trace their existence to that early encounter with Antiquity at the source (I. G. Brown 1991: 39, 31). Alexander Gordon published in 1730 an English translation of the Veronese Scipione Maffei’s De Amphitheatro. Gordon’s Italian interests also underlay his own work on the lives of Pope Alexander IV and his son Cesare Borgia. Allan Ramsay had met the painter and antiquary Camillo Paderni in Italy, and this friendship resulted in the latter’s being commissioned through Ramsay’s agency for plates to illustrate George Turnbull’s Treatise on Ancient Painting (1740). James Stuart, of Scottish origin and forever branded with the epithet ‘Athenian’, nevertheless made his architectural and antiquarian name in Rome, where he published in 1750 a learned work on the obelisk of Augustus. Gavin Hamilton brought out in 1773 his Schola Italica Picturae, an ideal collection of Italian paintings from Raphael and Leonardo to Caravaggio and Guido Reni, engraved in forty plates by Cunego and Volpato. Andrew Lumisden’s correspondence with Robert Strange sheds light on the latter’s projected history of engraving to which end Lumisden attempted to direct Strange, and thus away from his proposed treatise on painting in general. The former scheme, 27

NLS MS. 23156, no. 81.

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thought Lumisden, offered the greater chance to ‘transmit your name & labours to posterity’.28 Lumisden himself drew on his twenty years’ residence to produce nearly three decades later his Remarks on the Antiquities of Rome and its Environs (1797). This became a standard work, joining such useful and companionable travel literature as Dr John Moore’s celebrated View of Society and Manners in Italy (1781). James Byres’s projected book on the Etruscans as illustrated by the antiquities of Corneto or Tarquinia never appeared in that distinguished man’s lifetime, thus giving to the eminent antiquary something of the character of an Italian rogue. Byres had appeared in London in 1767 to solicit subscribers and in 1779 a notice in the Gentleman’s Magazine alluded to the work as in progress. In 1792 a correspondent of that periodical asked politely but firmly what had happened to a work for which the money had been collected but yet neither had the book been delivered nor the subscription refunded, adding tartly: ‘One of these alternatives is surely expedient.’ The plates alone finally appeared in 1842, twenty-five years after Byres’s death (Ridgway 1987, 1989). Scottish book-collectors ranged over Italy. As his cicerone, Winckelmann may have been unaccountably rude about the intellectual capabilities of John Ker, third Duke of Roxburghe, whom he derided as ‘more stupid than a young girl’; but it did not stop the pupil later becoming one of Britain’s greatest bibliophiles, whose memory is perpetuated in the club that bears his name. The third Earl of Bute, who brought the maturity (and wealth) of middle age to a Grand Tour undertaken in his early fifties, built up a notable library of Italian books and secured the entire collection of one branch of the Soranzo family en bloc, and undertook a number of publishing ventures. Allan Ramsay was a keen book-collector, and pursued his bibliographical interests in Italy. His alter ego, Colonel Freeman, protagonist in Ramsay’s own A Dialogue on Taste (1762), was said to lead ‘a solitary and bookish life’ among ‘calf-skin companions’. One of Ramsay’s rarest acquisitions, a translation of Boccaccio’s Teseide into modern Greek, published in Venice in 1529 and presumably bought by Ramsay in Italy in the 1750s, he subsequently presented to King George III in 1775 (Brown 1988: 66). Ramsay, whom death robbed of the chance to bring to publication his much laboured-over treatise on Horace’s Villa, made his last ventures in print in Florence in 1783–4. His Essay on the Right of Conquest was completed during Ramsay’s final sojourn in Italy, and printed for the author at Florence, which place of publication is added in 28

NLS Acc. 11328, 12 November 1754.

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manuscript in all copies of the pamphlet which survive, each in its original red paper covers (Brown 1988: 79). The author’s son, in Italy with him, seems to have been responsible for the work’s limited distribution: in his schoolboy journal John Ramsay refers to giving out copies in Naples and Rome to such luminaries as Sir William Hamilton. Allan Ramsay’s very last appearance as author was an unlikely collaboration with the rakish Robert Merry, in the ephemeral (and extremely rare) Arno Miscellany (1784), the organ of a Florentine club of British temporary residents called ‘The Oziosi’. Collaboration in this venture earned the elderly erstwhile painter, now become ‘a very great scribbler’, the reproach of Horace Walpole, who mocked Ramsay’s lack of judgment in showing himself, at the last, ‘an old dotard . . . sporting and playing at leap frog, with brats’ (Brown 1988: 60, 79–80). It was in the context of the popularity of Hume’s essays and historical works both with British visitors and with various Italians whom Robert Adam knew, that Adam was moved to observe that ‘the Spirit of Scribbling has got greatly in amongst our Scotch Gentlemen’.29 Adam’s own ambitions to turn author were nurtured in Rome. Several literary projects were considered in succession. All had the aim of establishing Adam as an authority on Roman archaeology, a status, which, in turn, would have the merit of strengthening his claim to be considered a potent force in the contemporary practice of architecture as founded essentially upon the understanding and interpretation of the construction, planning and ornament of Antiquity. His first scheme was for the revision of Antoine Desgodetz’s standard treatise Les Édifices antiques de Rome (1682), by then a rare work, unobtainable even through David Wilson in London, and of which a family copy eventually had to be sent from Edinburgh to Robert in Rome, wrapped in a parcel of warm winter underwear. This project would be something ‘no less conducive to raising all at once one’s name and character than it would be profitable to me and useful to everybody. . . could not fail to be of great authority, and introduce me into England with an uncommon splendour’ (Fleming 1962: 170). Here Adam surely spoke for all who wished, as he did, to write not only for the sake of scholarship but also from personal motives of fame and fortune. Why else have people ever put pen to paper? For various reasons, the Desgodetz scheme was supplanted by one centred on a putative publication devoted to the Roman baths, in which Adam would build on the pioneering work of Palladio and Lord Burlington. With this in prospect he wrote of his determination ‘in imitation of Scotch heroes, to become author. . . to attack Vitruvius, 29

NAS GD18/4792, Robert Adam to Margaret Adam, 15 November 1755.

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Palladio and those blackguards of ancient and modern architecture sword in hand’, and thus realise his dream of ‘reviving something of the Old Style in England’. This was in turn succeeded by a projected work on Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (Fleming 1962: 218–19). In the end, of course, what emerged from Adam’s Grand Tour, albeit some years later and after the most complex and prolonged series of negotiations involving many parties (artists, engravers, editorial advisers, ghost copy-writers, printers, binders) in Italy, Scotland and England, was his splendid folio on Diocletian’s Palace at Split in Dalmatia (1764). The making of this book has been the subject of extensive research, and we now know more about the conception, execution and indeed about every stage of the tortuous production of this magnificent work than we do of any other comparable enterprise in Grand Tour scholarship (I. G. Brown 1992). Behind and above all was Adam’s wish to use Antiquity for his own ends, and to make his book serve the needs of a publicity-machine for a career which would lead to his domination of the British architectural scene, and to lasting world-wide fame.

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Ossian in Europe Howard Gaskill On 14 June 1760 there appeared in Edinburgh a slim volume of sixty-nine pages entitled Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Galic or Erse Language (Macpherson 1760) (Plate 33). The name of the translator was not given, nor that of the author of the ‘Preface’ (iii–viii). The latter informs the reader that, though the poems cannot be dated exactly, they are certainly ancient, as their ‘spirit and strain’ prove (iii). There can be no doubt that these poems are to be ascribed to the Bards; a race of men well known to have continued throughout many ages in Ireland and the north of Scotland . . . By the succession of these Bards such poems were handed down from race to race; some in manuscript but more by oral tradition. (v–vi) Authorship is not attributed, but ‘Oscian’ is the ‘principal personage’ in several of the fragments. Though the poems ‘appear as detached pieces in this collection, there is ground to believe that most of them were originally episodes of a greater work which related to the wars of Fingal’, the father of ‘Oscian’, ‘the last of the heroes’ (v). The preface concludes with a brief plot summary of this ‘greater work’, which might yet be recovered and translated ‘if encouragement were given to such an undertaking’ (vii–viii). And so the ‘Ossian project’ was launched. The initial publication consisted of fifteen prose poems, but the positive public response resulted in a second edition within three months and the addition of a further poem. That the sought-for ‘encouragement’ was amply forthcoming (largely thanks to the preface’s author, Hugh Blair) is evidenced by the appearance in December 1761 (dated 1762) of the very substantial Fingal volume, containing the eponymous epic and sundry 246

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lesser poems. This was quickly followed by the even bulkier Temora (1763). The two were then brought together in The Works of Ossian (1765), to the second volume of which is appended Hugh Blair’s enormously influential ‘Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian’, first published in 1763. The poems were subsequently subjected to a major stylistic revision for The Poems of Ossian (Macpherson 1773; 1996: xxii-xxvi, 415–552). The final edition in which Macpherson may be said to have had any kind of hand is the posthumous Poems of Ossian in the Original Gaelic (Macpherson 1807). The extent to which these texts were considered to be what they purported to be was not of course irrelevant to their contemporary reception, though certainly much less so than it is today when conviction (howsoever founded) of fraudulence seems to equate to aesthetic worthlessness. Malcolm Laing, who spent a decade or more engaged in a laborious debunking exercise culminating in his two-volume edition of Ossian, or rather, The Poetical Works of James Macpherson, Esq., credited the latter with ‘a genius for poetry far superior . . . perhaps to any contemporary poet, Gray excepted’ (Laing 1805: II: 263). And Gray himself, having read some of the Fragments in manuscript, admitted to having ‘gone mad over them’, and being ‘extasié with their infinite beauty’; if they were counterfeit, then the man who produced them was ‘the very Demon of Poetry’ (20 June 1760; Gray 1935: II: 679–80). The ‘measured prose’ employed, while marking a release from the tired conventions of heroic couplets, is by no means ragged or rambling, but displays readily discernible rhythmical patterns and musical qualities which modern habits of silent reading perhaps tend to conceal (Dunn 1966: 8–9; Füger 1973: 121). And if the language innovatively hovers between verse and prose, a further proto-Romantic feature, already evident in the Fragments, and one which was immediately noted with approval by French critics, is the subversion of traditional genre distinctions, the combination of epic narrative with dramatic dialogue, elegiac lament and hymnic lyric (Gaskill 1994: 675). By giving his first Ossianic publication the title Fragments, Macpherson is of course suggesting that there was, or rather had been, a whole of which they were part. This ‘greater work’ was subsequently produced, but the fragmentary quality is still maintained, both on the stylistic level, through the insistent parataxis, the striking absence of linking conjunctions and syntactic subordination, and also in terms of the constant fragmenting of the overall narrative by episodic tales within tales. Any impression of wholeness is further undermined by the frequent editorial reminders of the dilapidated state of the tradition which the translator has tapped and of his own role in piecing together the shattered shards

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(Macpherson 1996: 37; 479, n.2; Gaskill 2008: 21–2). ‘Cath-loda’, a shorter epic in three duans, is not only notable for giving Byron a rhyme for Don Juan, but also for the breaking off of the narrative at various gripping points and the insertion of Shandyesque asterisks (Macpherson 1996: 308–9, 328; Keymer 1998). It is this ‘fragmentariness’, in all its aspects, which accounts for a good deal of the contemporary appeal of the Ossianic poetry. When in 1756 the Dunkeld school-master, Jerome Stone[s], published his translation of a heroic Gaelic ballad (of impeccable authenticity) in the Scots Magazine, among the qualities of such compositions – ‘sublimity of sentiment, nervousness of expression, and high spirited metaphor’ – he stresses that they are ‘the productions of simple and unassisted genius, in which energy is more sought after than neatness, and the strictness of connexion less adverted to than the design of moving the passions and affecting the heart’ (Stone[s] 1756: 15; R. Crawford 2001: 31–42; Ferguson 1998: 212–22). The genus abruptum (Quintilian) has a long pedigree, but that a taste for it was rapidly developing in the mid-eighteenth century is evidenced by the growing fascination with Pindar. Adam Smith comments on the ‘loose and broken manner’ of Ancient Greek poetry, with Pindar, ‘the most rapturous of all’ being ‘the most unconnected’. For ‘[t]he higher the Rapture the more broken is the expression’ (Smith 1985: 121). Thus ‘strictness of connexion’ and the ability to ‘move the passions and affect the heart’ may be seen as mutually exclusive (Manning 1998). Almost immediately after the publication of the Fragments, in September 1760, Anne-RobertJacques Turgot remarked on what he calls their ‘style oriental’, though like Hugh Blair after him he regards it as characteristic of a certain stage in human development, rather than the product of a particular region. Turgot draws attention to ‘cette marche irrégulière, ces passages rapides et sans transition d’une idée à l’autre’ [this irregular progression, these rapid leaps, without transition, from one idea to another] (Van Tieghem 1917: I: 114). Blair himself was to find in Ossian ‘a style always rapid and vehement; in narration concise even to abruptness, and leaving several circumstances to be supplied by the reader’s imagination’ (Macpherson 1996: 354). And in his seminal essay on Ossian, part of that famous manifesto of Sturm und Drang values, Von deutscher Art und Kunst, and itself derivative of Blair almost to the point of plagiarism, Johann Gottfried Herder highlights what he calls the ‘Sprünge und kühne Würfe’, the bold leaps and tosses and sudden transitions which are for him characteristic of the poetry of ancient peoples and which we moderns would do well to learn from (Herder 1773; Gaskill 1996 and 2003a). If this is what Macpherson

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himself had done, as Herder was later inclined to believe, then it by no means invalidated Ossian as a model. Significantly, though, it was always in the Fragments that he saw most authentically embodied the qualities he was looking to promote. When he wrote his influential essay in 1771 Herder had not in fact had access to the Ossianic poetry in English. It was not until the end of that year that Goethe lent him a copy of the Works of 1765, which he had apparently lifted from his father’s library. Macpherson’s text was actually quite hard to come by on the Continent. It is well known that Michael Denis – to whom the honour of producing the first complete translation of Ossian into any language properly belongs (that is less well known) – being unable to find an English edition in Vienna, was at first driven to working from Cesarotti’s Italian version of Fingal (1763), until he managed to locate a copy of the original in Prague in 1767. According to Uwe Böker (1991: 79), in 1770 24 million Germans were served by just 200 booksellers. That the international book-trade was distinctly underdeveloped and somewhat sluggish during the period is also suggested by the difficulties encountered by the Dutch scholar and professor of ancient literatures, van Goens, in procuring Cesarotti’s translation – in vain he approached booksellers in Vienna, Lyon, Paris, Leipzig and London (Daas 1961: 38; Gaskill 1994: 647). In the light of this, it is little wonder that Goethe and his friend Merck thought it a good idea to do their own pirated reprint of the English Works – after the first two volumes this was taken over by a commercial publisher in Leipzig and went into a second edition in 1783 (Macpherson 1773–7). Despite the impression occasionally given by critics, it would be a mistake to imagine that, almost as soon as it appeared, Macpherson’s Ossian was translated into the major (or many of the minor) European languages. In most countries it was twenty, thirty years, and often much longer, before even substantial, let alone complete translations appeared (Gaskill 1994: 647). The initial phase of reception is accomplished through the medium of disconnected bits and pieces (the Fragments, or perhaps some of the shorter poems accompanying the epics, for instance, ‘Carthon’), and usually in literary periodicals and reviews. The French were particularly quick off the mark, with translations of the Fragments appearing from September 1760 in successive issues of the Journal étranger (Barnaby 2004: xxi). And what is striking is the calibre and standing of the translators: besides Turgot, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard and none other than Denis Diderot (Heurtematte 1990). In 1768–9 there appeared in four volumes the Variétés litteraires, ou recueil de pièces tant originales que traduites,

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concernant la philosophie, la littérature et les arts, edited by Suard and François Arnaud, containing all the most significant French contributions on Ossian to date (Van Tieghem 1917: I: 173). This included not only the translations of the Fragments and shorter pieces such as ‘Carthon’ and ‘Dar-thula’, but also substantial excerpts from Blair’s Critical Dissertation, as translated by Suard, with – as it seems – a little help from David Hume (Raynor 1991). The Variétés littéraires were of great importance for Herder, who read them in Nantes (A. Gillies 1933: 18–19). But by this time he also had in his possession a review copy of the first two volumes of Michael Denis’s Gedichte Ossians, eines alten celtischen Dichters (1768–9). If Cesarotti harboured iconoclastic ambitions and intended his rendering of Ossian into free hendecasyllabic sciolti to provide a shot in the arm for Italian poetic diction (Gilardino 1982; Gaskill 1994: 651–3; Mattioda 2004), Denis was certainly not concerned to knock Homer off his pedestal, but rather to add another figure to the classical pantheon: hence his choice of hexameters as the appropriate form. It was this choice that attracted Herder’s famous broadside in Von deutscher Art und Kunst. Herder had in fact an extremely sound instinct for the authentic lyric note in Macpherson’s work, as is shown by his own translational efforts, both before and after he had access to the English (Gaskill 2003a). Hugh Blair had claimed extreme literalness for the Fragments as translation: ‘Even the arrangement of the words in the original has been imitated; to which must be imputed some inversions in the style, that otherwise would not have been chosen’ (Macpherson 1760: vivii). By suggesting Gaelic structures in his English and deliberately bending the target language to the language of his putative source, Macpherson becomes a pioneer in the use of what would now be called ‘foreignization’ for literary effect (Gaskill 2004: 37–8). And it is indeed effective. Admittedly, the process did not go far enough for Herder who attempted to bypass Macpherson by persuading Goethe to translate directly from the Gaelic specimen of Temora (Macpherson 1996: 329–42; O Dochartaigh 2004), and then uses the results and his own independent work to produce some extraordinary German in his Volkslieder of 1778–9 (Gaskill 2003a). Both Goethe and Herder make extensive use of inversion, something which may now seem unremarkable, but at the time it had programmatic significance in Germany as an instrument of stylistic liberation, representing a rebellion against existing norms (Gaskill 1996: 267). In Goethe’s novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) the protagonist complains of the pedantry of his superior who is a deadly enemy of all inversions. Or rather: ‘of all inversions which sometimes escape me he is a deadly enemy’ [‘von

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allen Inversionen, die mir manchmal entfahren, ist er ein Todtfeind’ (letter of 24 December)]. Werther is Goethe’s first, arguably his finest novel, and certainly the one with the greatest European impact. And it is the one in which Ossian plays a pivotal role (Lamport 1998). In fact over 7 per cent of it consists of translation from Macpherson’s Gaelic bard: almost all of the ‘Songs of Selma’ (which also incorporate Fragment X) and a poignant passage from the opening of ‘Berrathon’ (Macpherson 1996: 166–70, 193). The translation, which is of unparalleled brilliance and beauty, is superbly integrated into the novel – Werther’s reading of it to Lotte effectively precipitates the catastrophe. It also demonstrates that, at their lyrical best, Macpherson’s poems are not merely fashionable lachrymose effusions, but works of art of genuine emotive power. One has no need of learned footnotes or an extraordinary suspension of disbelief, in order to be moved by passages such as Colma’s lament: It is night; – I am alone, forlorn on the hill of storms. The wind is heard in the mountain. The torrent shrieks down the rock. No hut receives me from the rain; forlorn on the hill of winds . . . (Macpherson 1996: 166; cf. 1760: 46) Certainly, Macpherson’s work, as ‘poetry of the heart’, as Hugh Blair styled it (Macpherson 1996: 356) responded to (and of course helped to create) a demand for refined emotionalism, the opportunity to luxuriate in pleasing anguish and tender grief. It is clearly a product of an age of sentiment, Empfindsamkeit, the heyday of the man of feeling. One might be tempted to dismiss the Ossianic ‘joy of grief’ – according to Blair, ‘one of Ossian’s remarkable expressions, several times repeated’ (Macpherson 1996: 381; Gaskill 1995) – as typical of the contemporary predilection for diluted ‘mixed’ feeling and the pleasures of melancholy in which anything really painful is kept at arm’s length. But Ossian’s pathos is not groundless. When we read ‘There is a joy in grief when peace dwells in the breast of the sad. But sorrow wastes the mournful’ (Macpherson 1996: 187), may we not think of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’? It is in fact in the work of Wordsworth’s exact contemporary, Friedrich Hölderlin, and in particular his novel Hyperion (1797/99), that the joy of grief finds its finest literary celebration. In his late teens Hölderlin practically learned Ossian off by heart, in the form of a prose translation made in 1782 by Schiller’s friend Johann Wilhelm Petersen (Gaskill 1992). Nor was its impact on him confined to a juvenile phase, but endured throughout his creative life – the bard features in the stunningly beautiful Pindar-Fragmente of 1804, the last work Hölderlin

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prepared for publication before the collapse of his mind. In Goethe and Hölderlin we are dealing with two of the greatest poets in European literature, ancient or modern. But the list of writers for whom Ossian was significant reads like a roll-call of the great and the good from the period of Germany’s finest literary efflorescence. Klopstock has not been mentioned – he was already at or past his peak as a poet when he encountered Ossian who, arguably, did him little good, but there can be no doubting the enthusiasm. Other major figures would include Bürger and Lenz, both of whom made substantial translations – in Lenz’s case a complete Fingal (Gaskill 2003b). Karl Philipp Moritz uses the ‘joy of grief’ (quoted in English) as a leitmotif in his fine psychological novel Anton Reiser (1785–9; Gaskill 1995). Ludwig Tieck produced two bardic verse epics before he was twenty and the first publication to feature his work is his teacher Friedrich Rambach’s Ossianic Gothic novel Die eiserne Maske of 1792. The names of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel (though not August Wilhelm), together with Jean Paul, Achim von Arnim and Heinrich von Kleist could and should be added here. The extent of the German love-affair with Macpherson’s work, its intensity as well as its longevity, is indicated by the sheer bulk of Wolf Gerhard Schmidt’s excellent monograph which runs to four volumes and almost three thousand pages (2003–4). Franz Spunda’s Expressionist Ossians Werke of 1924 is the fourteenth complete translation into German (they are listed in Gaskill 1994: 655–6). This is quite remarkable when one considers that in other languages there is usually only one dominant translation, and often not even that – in those countries with little access to English, readers (and even occasionally translators) usually make do with the French of Le Tourneur (1776–7) or the Italian of Cesarotti. It is not as if Ossian were not virtually ubiquitous, throughout the nineteenth century and even beyond. There is obviously enough material to fill substantial monographs on Ossian in the Netherlands (Daas 1961), Russia (Levin 1980), Spain (Montiel 1974), Portugal (Buescu 2001), and even Brazil (Aguiar 1999). One doubts whether there are any countries, in which European languages are written, where such fulllength studies would be redundant. A glance at the information assembled by Barnaby (2004) should convince the most sceptical of that. Yet the focus on Germany is justified because of the calibre of the figures involved, both poets and translators. Van Tieghem’s monumental twovolume opus on Ossian in France (1917) is a remarkable achievement, but for all the massive evidence of enthusiasm, particularly during the Napoleonic period, the harvest – in terms of world literature – might seem to be relatively meagre. Admittedly, there is Chateaubriand

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(Smethurst 2004). In the early 1790s he translated much Ossianic poetry from English. However, it was not that of James Macpherson but of John Smith of Campbeltown. Smith’s Gaelic Antiquities (1780), though clearly derivative of Macpherson and markedly inferior in poetic quality, are the product of an excellent knowledge of the language and indigenous tradition. The book, intended to finance Smith’s biblical translations, was apparently a financial disaster, and the Antiquities have received scandalously little attention, either in terms of their influence or as a literary achievement in their own right. Apart from Montiel (1974), who is at least aware of Smith’s importance, the only critic to have taken him at all seriously seems to be Van Tieghem (1917: I: 416ff.). The first published translation into French appeared in 1795, and only three years later it was issued in combination with le Tourneur’s Macpherson. The practice of publishing the two Ossians together was resumed in 1810 and was continued throughout the nineteenth century. Smith’s Ossianic poetry was widely imitated in France, and concentrating only on le Tourneur’s version produces a badly skewed view of French reception (Van Tieghem 1917: I: 429). Something similar occurred in Italy, where Michele Leoni’s translation of Giovanni Smith’s Ossianic poetry was first published in 1813, then again in 1817, 1818 and in 1827 was united in a single edition with Cesarotti’s Macpherson. Leopardi knew it well (Broggi-Wüthrich 2004).

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Russia Beatrice Teissier The Scots’ presence in eighteenth-century Russia is well documented (M. S. Anderson 1958; Cross 1971, 1987, 1997; Fedosov 1992, 2001; Garrard 1973; Hughes 2001; Wills 2002), but knowledge of their Russian print record remains sporadic. Despite considerable material in Russian and British archives, these authors are better known in Russia than Scotland (Feodosov 1992: 55–6). Whether pandering to its rulers or literary genres, writing about their own varied experiences, or attempting some sort of evaluation of Russia, Scottish writers did little to dispel eighteenth-century misconceptions; absolutism, despotism, corruption, superstition, cruelty, slavery, fortitude and fatalism are their constant themes. Some observers, like William Richardson, engaged with eighteenth-century discourses about the nature of despotic governments, but mostly they struggled with the complexity and contradictions of an empire that ultimately defied classification. These Scottish publications fall into three categories: history and travel; memoirs and commentary; and journal pieces, usually on science. Alexander Gordon’s posthumous The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia (Aberdeen, 1755) capitalised on the almost mythic fascination with the emperor, which was only challenged in Europe from the 1760s onwards (Cross 2000: 40–59, 60–78, 81ff). The Jacobite Gordon was a lieutenant-colonel and major-general in Peter’s army during the wars against the Turks, the Swedes and the Austrians (Gordon: iii–xx). For him, Peter had made Russia ‘respectable’, and making over these ‘barbarous and uncivilized’ people was the positive result of ‘absolutist’ rule (Gordon: xxi–xxiv, 4). Even the forced Christianisation of Russia’s non-Slavic ethnic groups, which the engineer John Perry criticised (The State of Russia under the Present Czar, London, 1716, 1755), was welcomed by Gordon. The doctor John Bell 254

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emulated this admiration in his Travels from St Petersburg in Russia to Various Parts of Asia (Glasgow, 1763), but it is tempered by the soldier/engineer Peter Henry Bruce, who served under Peter against the Swedes in 1711 and around the Caspian in the 1720s. His Memoirs of Peter Henry Bruce Esq. (London, 1782; Dublin, 1783), published long after his 1757 death, paint a more realistic portrait of the ‘indefatigable monarch’ who drove his army remorselessly, and from whose service in a ‘state of slavery’ Bruce was determined to extricate himself (Bruce 1782: 301, 348). The memoirs were originally written in German and translated by Bruce in 1755. John Cook’s self-published Voyages and Travels through the Russian Empire, Tartary and Part of the Kingdom of Persia (Edinburgh, 1770, 1778) records the later volatile and rather xenophobic period of changing rulers in Russia. Cook was a physician there from 1736 to 1751, and despite having a patron, his efforts to obtain his salary and discharge left him uncompromising about Russian shortcomings: the lack of ‘liberty’, its exploitation of foreigners and the corruption of its governors (Cook 1770: II: 150, 160, 364, 499). The book had little recognition at the time and was ridiculed in the 1771 Monthly Review (44, 158–62), but aside from its disorganisation, digressions and occasional cantankerousness, it offers much valuable information about Russia and its frontiers (Teissier 2011). A contrasting record is found in William Richardson’s Anecdotes of the Russian Empire (London 1784). Richardson, future Professor of Humanity at Glasgow University (1773), had accompanied Lord Cathcart to St Petersburg as tutor to his sons from 1768 to 1772, during the reign of Catherine II. His miscellaneous observations are presented as letters, designed for a sophisticated readership. Although enamoured of references to the classics and German poetry, he delves deeper than his already-published compatriots into the Russian character and its institutions (Cross 1997: 347–9); but, having travelled very little in Russia, he finds it essentially oriental (375), its fatalistic people governed more by ‘sensibility’ than reason (244ff) and the nation made inhuman by the despotism at its core (375ff). He calls for freedom and rights to bring positive change to the empire (454ff). Also in epistolary form and covering Catherine’s reign is the Scot Andrew Swinton’s Travels into Norway, Denmark and Russia (Dublin, 1792). Swinton, a relative of Admiral Samuel Greig, the freemason who became commander of Kronstadt, arrived in Revel to witness the Admiral’s 1788 funeral and continued to St Petersburg at Catherine’s instigation (Swinton 1792: 179). His Travels, dedicated to Catherine, who had been Greig’s patron, focus on Greig, the Turkish wars and naval battles, and address topics from the Russian theatre and gypsies to the

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Tatar army in St Petersburg. His tone towards what he calls ‘the country of Scythia’ is highly conciliatory and almost sycophantic towards Catherine and Peter the Great. He notably castigates Abbé Chappe d’Auteroche for the ‘invidious’ accounts in his Voyage en Sibérie en 1761 (Paris, 1768), a work deplored by Catherine, and concludes that Russian civilisation was just ‘what might be expected in their present circumstances’ (Swinton 1792: 356). Both Richardson’s and Swinton’s remarks contrast with the vitriolic assessment of Russia in another Scottish account, John Sinclair’s General Observations regarding the Present State of the Russian Empire (London, 1787). Published privately and anonymously after only a few months in Russia, the pamphlet was designed to inform trade negotiations with Russia (Cross 1997: 51–61). For Sinclair the Russians were uncivilised brutes whose inflated pride derived wholly from Catherine’s success and fame (Sinclair 1787: 4). He warns of Russia’s ‘lust’ for Turkey in particular, but also China and Persia, while advocating trade agreements, as long as Britain remains independent of Russia (16–17, 43–4). Maria Guthrie’s A Tour through the Taurida, or Crimea (London, 1802) was addressed to and edited by her husband Matthew, a physician in Russia and an avid naturalist and scientist there from 1770 to his death in 1807. His major Russian publication, Dissertations sur les antiquités de la Russie (St Petersburg, 1795), dedicated to Catherine II and to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was an important contribution to Russian ethnography and argued a shared ancestry for Russians and ancient Greeks (Guthrie 1802: 3–12). Guthrie’s ‘scholarship’ derived from the contemporary Russian vogue for classicism and principally Catherine’s and Potemkin’s vision of Russia as a renewed Byzantine empire. By the late eighteenth century the Crimea was becoming an exotic part of the Grand Tour and Maria Guthrie’s letters, dedicated to Alexander I, describe the Crimea, strongly emphasising its classical Greek heritage, as well as the new cities founded there by Catherine and Potemkin, and the famous palace at Bakhshiserai. The book has illustrated appendices (added by Matthew Guthrie) on ancient ‘Tauric’ medals, intended to prove ‘beyond doubt’ the supremacy of Greek colonies there (Guthrie 1802: 343–403). Ancient ‘Scythian’ remains (actually crude Turkic steppe statuary from the seventh to the ninth century ad), although also illustrated, were minimised (405–15). Guthrie’s concentration on the area’s classical heritage opposed those British orientalist and antiquarian discourses that linked Crimea’s Tartars to ancient Scythians, who they related to Europeans (Goth and Gael alike) in their love of liberty, sustained by feudalism rather than monarchy (Kidd 1999; Teissier 2004: 513).

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The Guthries, however, saw no applicability to Russia of the discourse on the links between feudalism and liberty, which had also engaged Scottish jurists and social historians from the late 1750s (Venturi 1978: 10). These themes were not ignored by William Richardson in his Anecdotes, when ‘contemplating the manners and political constitution of a people so different from the natives of Britain’ (Richardson 1784: 239; Venturi 1978: 15–16). Matthew Guthrie also published extensively and less controversially as Arcticus in Edinburgh’s The Bee and in the Philosophical Transactions, where ‘Parts of a Letter from Mathew Guthrie, MD . . . to Dr Priestly . . . on the Antiseptic Regimen of the Natives of Russia’ appeared in 1778 (LXVIII: 622–36). The History of Kamtschatka, and the Kurilski Islands (Gloucester, 1764), translated by James Grieve from Sergei Krasheninnikov (1755) and published posthumously, is a prime instance of the Scottish transmission to Europe of an early Russian scientific investigation. In the volume’s advertisement, Grieve’s editor, Thomas Jeffereys, describes strategically abridging the author’s anthropological insights into ‘this barbarous nation’, cuts criticised by the Monthly Review (XXX: 283) and the Critical Review (XVII: 82). Gordon, Bell, Bruce, Cook, Swinton and Guthrie were all in Russia at crucial times in the development of its empire. All are significant for their so far neglected observations of the native, non-Russian populations of the empire, which are personal and often sympathetic, but which encourage ‘progress’, in tune with the times. Their publications reveal much about contemporary readerships: books tied to Russia’s famous eighteenth-century rulers, Peter and Catharine, and including exotic locations had the best prospects with publishers. Gordon’s subscribers, who range from gentry to dancing masters, indicate his project’s widespread support and popularity. Bell, who also had connections, published his work with the Foulis Press, whereas the books of Bruce and Cook show the alternatives available at the time: selfpublishing for Cook or through a relation in Bruce’s case (Zachs 1998: 300). Bruce’s book was well received, while Cook’s was not; Cook’s inability to attach his memoirs to an illustrious ruler may have contributed to his poor reception. The Memoirs of the notorious Scottish ‘Northern Impostor’, ‘Major’ Semple, who fetched up in Russia blustering and swindling until he suddenly decamped, demonstrate how easily a book could cash in on Catherine’s reign. For all of the ethnographic and naturalistic insights provided by the best eighteenth-century Scottish titles on Russia, exoticism drove the book market, and the publication history of Semple’s work, appearing under three different titles in 1786 alone, illustrates this well.

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Asia Beatrice Teissier Eighteenth-century Scottish contributions to the knowledge and perception of Asia (including Egypt) were exceptional, with two principal kinds of publication: those that were tied to the East India Company and the imperial expansion; and those occupied with science, language and even society. Throughout the eighteenth century, Asian travel accounts were considered indispensable sources of information, as well as entertainment, but were sometimes long-delayed in coming to the press. The Scottish physician John Bell visited Persia by way of Kazan and Peking by way of Siberia as part of Russian embassies from 1715 to 1722, but his Travels from St Petersburg in Russia to Various Parts of Asia was only published by Robert and Andrew Foulis at Glasgow in 1763. Bell travelled with a privileged entourage at a time when China was highly regarded in the West, and his comparison of Siberia’s conquest by Russia to that of America by Spain conformed to the Scottish literati notion of ‘progress’ in the ‘savage’ world (Bell 1763: 152). This first account in English of a Briton’s diplomatic visit to Peking was panned by the 1763 Monthly Review (478) but appreciated by Gibbon in a note to the Decline and Fall (I: 1026, n.4) and Dr Johnson (Boswell 1792: I: 470). It was translated into French (1766) and Russian (1776) and republished by William Creech (Edinburgh, 1788). An important but earlier Scottish contribution to Asian travel literature, and one linked to the East India Company, was Alexander Hamilton’s A New Account of the East Indies, first published by John Mosman in Edinburgh (1727) and reprinted twice in London (Bettesworth and Hitch 1739; Hitch and Millar 1744). A merchant captain and briefly naval commander at Bombay, Hamilton describes 258

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trading posts from Ethiopia to Japan, including the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, Cochin China, Malaysia and Indonesia between 1688 and 1723. Neither scholar nor scientist, he presents himself as a rational observer (Hamilton 1727: xxi–xxiv). Written in a climate of Jacobite resistance at home, the book has strong, anti-clerical biases, but admiration for the holiness of native practices. The Dutch were then a power in South East Asia, and Hamilton suggests locales for British factories; his observations about commerce are trustworthy, but his historical material is not (Foster 1930), since his sources are often native hearsay or what he calls ‘fraternity’ (19). Although the book could not compete with seventeenth-century travel accounts in terms of maps and illustrations, the London-based Scots publisher Andrew Millar reissued it in 1744 during a publication surge in travel anthologies (Crone and Skelton 1946: 88ff). Responding to a late-eighteenth-century reading demand for regional travel literature and especially sensationalism, James Bruce had his Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768–73 printed at Edinburgh and London (1790). Bruce ‘cleaned’ and partly illustrated the Tomb of Ramesses III in the Valley of the Kings for his pioneering description (Bruce 1813: II: 33; VIII: plates 6, 7), but his speculations on ancient Egypt are idiosyncratic, and his contempt for Mahometanism and present-day Egyptians quite open. Pandering to the same vogue, the Scottish hack writer Robert Heron translated and edited Niebuhr’s Travels through Arabia and other countries in the East (1792), for the Morisons in Perth in partnership with George Mudie (Edinburgh) and Thomas Vernon (London). Promoted as ‘a relish to read’ and the ‘latest account of Arabia’ (Heron 1792: viii–xi), it was the period’s leading source on Arabia and Egypt and a companion to Heron’s Arabian Tales, a Continuation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, rendered from a new French translation and issued by an impressive consortium: Bell and Bradfute, James Dickson, Elphinston Balfour and Peter Hill in Edinburgh with the Robinsons in London. Other noteworthy but unpublished accounts by Scots, pertinent to the East India Company’s activities, are George Bogle’s 1774 ‘Mission to Tibet’ (Markham 1971; Teissier 2004), William Kirkpatrick’s ‘An Account of the Mission to Nepaul in 1793’ and Francis Buchanan-Hamilton’s ‘Journal of a Residence in the Burman Empire, 1795’.30 Closely linked to travel and the East India or Levant Companies were specialised scientific contributions. The hydrographer and 30

EUL Dc 1. 73–4, unpublished manuscript.

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publisher Alexander Dalrymple produced innovative nautical memoirs, charts, plans of ports of the East Indies and China and a collection of tracts on the East India Company from 1769 to 1786, including controversial plans for correcting the company’s abuses (Reflections on the Present State of the East India Company, 1783) and a proposal to extend its charter to include trade with Polynesia, an emporium at Balambangam and the solicitation of Chinese co-operation (A Plan for Extending the Commerce of the Kingdom, and of the E.I.Co., 1769). Dalrymple’s publication of the Oriental Repertory (London: I: 1791–3; II: 1794–7) challenged contemporary literary and cultural accounts of Calcutta by emphasising Asian geography, commerce and contemporary affairs, especially in China. Further scientific publications sponsored by the Company through arduous lobbying were the works of the Scottish naturalists Patrick Russell and William Roxburgh, who succeeded Russell at the Madras Presidency (1789) and became superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden in Calcutta (1793). His Plants of the Coast of Coromandel (London, 1795–1820) was conscious of the commercial as much as the medical benefits of its subject. Russell’s Account of Indian Serpents Collected on the Coast of Coromandel (London, 1796) was the first of its kind for Indian zoology. Both works used native illustrators and indigenous knowledge. Roxburgh also published in the Asiatic Researches (Calcutta) and in The Philosophical Transactions (London) and the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Patrick Russell further distinguished himself by publishing the second edition of his half brother, Alexander Russell’s Natural History of Aleppo in 1794 (London); the brothers were both physicians with the English Levant Company in Aleppo. Although the impetus for Alexander Russell’s book had been an account of the plague and epidemic diseases at Aleppo, he also deliberately included a comprehensive account of the city, its mixed race population (Armenians, Arabs, Christians, Jews), their manners, the natural productions and the climate (Russell 1756: v–viii). This was the first detailed study of a Middle Eastern city and its environs, which may explain the dense narrative of its first part, ‘A Description of the City of Aleppo and Parts Adjacent’. Patrick Russell rearranged his brother’s material into themed chapters and added to the botanical catalogue. In the preface, Patrick distances himself from the misrepresentations of transient ‘travellers’ and warns against prejudice towards ‘Mahommedans’ and ‘philosophical’ travellers, whose ‘subtle theories of civil society’ influence their observations (Russell 1794: ix–xiii), in a reaction to the ‘stadial’ notions of history explored by the Scottish Enlightenment. Patrick

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Russell again followed his brother’s example by publishing a Treatise on the Plague (London, 1791). The East India Company also affected the publication of eighteenthcentury Oriental grammars and dictionaries, with Scots playing a major part in the process which moved from the study of Hebrew and Arabic to Persian, Hindustani and eventually Sanskrit. James Robertson, Edinburgh University’s Professor of Hebrew (1751–92), published several influential works: Grammatica Linguae Hebreae (Edinburgh, London, 1758); Clavis Pentateuchi (Edinburgh, London, 1770); and Dissertatio de Origine, Antiquitate, Conservatione, Indole et Utilitate, Lingue Arabice (Edinburgh, 1770), which argued that Arabic had no viability without Hebrew (Teissier 2004). This Scottish text, written in Latin, was reactionary and Bible-centred in contrast with the progressive orientalism of Warren Hastings and William Jones. A Grammar of the Arabic Language (London, 1776) written by the Scottish Whig, lawyer and orientalist John Richardson, was inspired by Jones’s famous Persian Grammar (London, 1771), for ‘gentlemen whose chief views are directed to commerce, war and political development’ (Richardson 1776: ix); its grammar is illustrated with passages from history and literature. Richardson next published A Specimen of Persian Poetry or Odes of Hafez (London, 1774), based on Baron Charles Revizcky’s Specimen Poeseos Persicae (Vienna, 1771) and A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic and English (Oxford, 1777), derived from Franciscus Meniski’s Thesaurus (Vienna, 1680–7). His innovative A Dissertation on the Languages, Literature and Manners of Eastern Nations, published first with the Dictionary, then separately (Oxford, 1778), agreed with Jones in using eastern sources, which he considered equal to those of the Greeks and the Egyptians (Richardson 1777: 85). Richardson pointed out inconsistencies in Western classical sources (78–84) and tried to show how customs originating in Asia, such as feudalism (notably from Tatary to one branch of Scandanavian Goths), influenced modern Europe. He also attacked Jacob Bryants’s A New System, or, an Analysis of Ancient Mythology (London, 1774–6) for relying on speculative etymology. As a Scot and a Whig, Richardson canvassed Gothic identity and feudalism in particular (Kidd 1999: 246–8). James Robertson expressed offence with Richardson’s peremptory treatment of Western classics in the 1777–8 Critical Review (44, 440; 46, 430) and the 1780 Monthly Review was equally uneasy (63: 114–15). The diplomat and interpreter William Kirkpatrick, member of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta and author of substantial articles in Calcutta’s orientalist journals, produced a Vocabulary, Persian, Arabic and

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English (London, 1785). Based on words incorporated in the ‘Hindui’ language, and omitted by Richardson, it was intended as part of a larger, new grammar and dictionary, which Fitzpatrick relinquished to John Borthwick-Gilchrist, a champion of the Indian vernacular, Urdu/ Hindustani. Standing outside the elitist and fashionable circle of orientalists in Calcutta (Borthwick-Gilchrist 1787: xxii–xxvii), he produced A Dictionary English and Hindoostanee (Calcutta, 1787: I; 1790: II); A Grammar of the Hindostanee Language (Calcutta, 1796) and The Oriental Linguist (Calcutta, 1798). The latter grammar used extracts from Hindustani tales, poetry and music, and parts of the Articles of War as examples. His focus on eighteenth-century Hindustani poets like Sauda, Yageen and Miskin from Delhi (Borthwick-Gilchrist 1796: 334–5) contrasted with the oriental ‘classicism’ of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta and notably William Jones. One of the best European collections of Sanskrit, Avestan, Persian and Arabic manuscripts was amassed between 1730 and 1740 by another Scot associated with the East India Company, the merchant James Fraser, who published a catalogue of his collection as an appendix to his History of Nadir Shah (London, 1742).31 The History was written at the height of Nadir’s fame when he invaded India from Persia and sacked Delhi in 1739, thus facilitating European ambitions in India, while fascinating Western readers. Volumes on Nadir Shah flooded the market but Fraser emphasised his use of genuine sources: documents translated from the Persian and an account, probably by William Cockill, another East India agent, who had personal contact with Nadir (Fraser 1742: 50). Fraser also asserts that the ‘Eastern Histories’ found in his manuscript collection, and one from the Mead collection, formed the basis for his short history of the Mughal empire before the Persian invasion, which precedes the account of Nadir Shah (Fraser 1742: iii–iv). The army officer and playwright Alexander Dow’s History of Hindostan (London, 1768: I and II; London, 1772: III,) was a loose translation from the Persian of the Indo-Muslim historian Firishta’s Tarikh-i-Firishta (Franklin 2000: v). Dow’s History included A Dissertation concerning the customs, manners, language, religion and philosophy of the Hindoos, A Dissertation on the origin and nature of despotism in Hindostan, and An Enquiry into the State of Bengal with a plan for restoring that kingdom to its former prosperity and splendour. Hindostan, according to Dow, was subject to ‘private ambition’ and ‘public tyranny’ (1768: xiii). Despite his suggestions for 31

The collection was sold by his widow to the Radcliffe Camera, Oxford, in 1758 (Craster 1952: 110–11).

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East India Company reforms, Dow believed that the climate of India and the Mahommedan faith lent themselves unavoidably to despotism, which was not as terrible as ‘free countries’ portrayed it; in India it had been tempered by ‘local custom’ and was self-regulating, with an overly despotic ruler laying the seeds for his own destruction (Dow 1772: xiii). Dow’s despotism and its justification were Montesquieulike. For Dow, it was in the British interest to protect and encourage the ‘Hindoos’, whose religion had been misrepresented in Europe (Dow 1768: lx, lxxiv). Their texts, he argues in the Dissertation, show them to be ‘not unphilosophical’ in their belief in the ‘unity, eternity, omniscience and omnipotence’ of God (Dow 1768: lii, lxxiv; Marshall 1970: 19). Here Dow reveals his deism (Marshall 1970: 26–8). Despite Dow’s liberties with translation and lack of proper Sanskrit scholarship (Franklin 2000: ix), this publication and its essays were among the earliest to resonate with Warren Hastings’s and William Jones’s desire to disseminate knowledge of India by using Asiatic texts, to find them inspirational and to foresee dangers in European rule. The books were widely read and translated and the Dissertation, together with J. Z. Holwell’s Interesting Historical Events (London, 1765), convinced Voltaire of India’s antiquity and fuelled his polemics against the established Church’s intolerance and Old Testament primacy. Dow’s free translation of The Tales of Inatullah or Garden of Knowledge (London, 1768), from the Persian but based on Sanskrit originals, aimed at showing ‘a genuine specimen of oriental composition’ (iii). His play Zingis (London, 1769) took advantage of the European wave of orientalist tales and the didactic ‘oriental manuscript’, which would include the 1776 Edinburgh/London edition of A Select Collection of Oriental Tales, issued by the consortium of William Gordon, John Bell, William Creech, Charles Elliot and Thomas Cadell. John Logan’s Dissertation on the Governments, Manners and Spirit of Asia, based on a series of lectures given in 1780 and published by William Creech (Edinburgh, 1787), could not be more removed from personal experience or original sources. The text portrays Asians as depressed and degraded, without public spirit or ambition and subject to an inevitable and immutable despotism, which was the result of their own spirit and manners and governed all aspects of life in Asia, including the arts and religion. The work unconditionally advocated the supremacy of Greece and Rome. Even though emulating aspects of Montesquieu and Ferguson, Logan offers none of the subtleties of these authors, and his tone is out of touch with the literati of the day, even though the lectures were intended to impress them

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(Sher 1995: xix). Although the book was not influential, it resonates with late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century, anti-Asiatic, colonial and evangelical discourses like Charles Grant’s pro-missionary account written in 1792–6 and published in 1831 as an appendix to Observations on the State of Society among Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, British Parliamentary Papers, volume five. William Robertson’s An Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India, published in 1791 by Cadell and Strahan (London) and Elphinston Balfour (Edinburgh) traced the history of India’s commerce from antiquity to the sixteenth century with an appendix on Hindu civil policy, arts, sciences and religion. Robertson, unlike all the authors so far mentioned, was a professional historian and used all the research sources available to him, including oral ones (Robertson 1791: iv–v). The novelty and ambivalent nature of some of his sources contribute to the appendix’s discursive and non-theoretical tone. Robertson did not see India as an alien world, but one early civilised and full of possibility and example, in part because of Hindu virtues and Mughal capabilities. The book concludes on a personal, humble and slightly pleading note about the fate of the Hindus and by implication the future character of British rule in India. By the late eighteenth century, official British attitudes to India had hardened considerably and Robertson’s voice would have resonated uneasily with politicians and missionaries who were inclining more toward positions like Grant’s. The 1791 Critical Review challenged Robertson’s historical inaccuracies and his ‘languid’ and ‘unsatisfactory’ appendix, citing his lack of patriotism, among other things (III: 121–30; 556–66). The 1791 Scots Magazine suggested that Robertson had ‘too highly embellished the picture’ of Hindu culture, but every reader of humanity would understand this amiable failing (53, 498). But Egypt surpassed India, China and Persia in discourses on the origin and diffusion of arts and sciences, and of idolatry. It was also central to arguments against the Judaic tradition. Alexander Gordon’s Essay towards Explaining the Hieroglyphical Figures on the Coffin of the Ancient Mummy belonging to Captain W. Lethieullier (London, 1737) illustrated late-period Egyptian pieces from leading collections of the day, including Dr Mead’s, Smart’s and Lethieullier’s, but his unpublished ‘An Essay towards Illustrating the History, Chronology and Mythology of the Ancient Egyptians’ (1741) shows the true nature of his thinking.32 Gordon assiduously defended the precedence of Egyptian antiquity over Jewish, and held the deist view that Egyptians 32

BM Add. Mss. 8834

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had worshipped one god before the coming of idolatry. Lord Monboddo shared many of Gordon’s views, and researched the links between India and Egypt, although by the late eighteenth century Egypt had been abandoned to the antiquaries and its art never fully accepted. For Monboddo, Egypt confirmed cultural contact between the East and West while bypassing the Jewish nation. Eighteenth-century Scottish books about Asia were almost always based upon field experience, with only a few written from home, and they were published in three phases. An early group, appearing from the 1720s, consisted mostly of travel narratives, with some scientific work, and covered Russia, China, the East Indies, India and Western Asia, with Indian civilisation positively portrayed. In the middle phase from the 1770s, Persian, as the administrative language of India, and Arabic which was essential to the learning of Persian, come to the fore and resulted in the promotion of oriental sources. The final phase from the 1780s focuses on India, with specialised scientific and linguistic publications (including Robertson’s major historical text). This last phase often combines the collecting of scientific or imperial information (Vicziany 1986; Bravo 1999) with the investigation of Asian history and civilisation, a particular interest of the Calcutta Press (Shaw 1981). But these works did not occur in a vacuum; authors engaged with contemporary British and European publications as in Dow’s response to Howell, Richardson’s encouragement by Jones and Robertson’s reaction to James Rennell’s Memoir of a Map of Hindostan (London, 1783). Publishers exploited the times with works like Fraser’s Nadir Shah and Logan’s controversial thoughts on despotism. To complement the sale of their serious books on Asia, Dow and Heron also produced lighter pieces on Asian themes, again motivated by book-trade economics. But where Dow and Heron could bend to the more superficial needs of the common reader, translators of serious oriental histories faced onerous publication challenges, as Jonathan Scott attests in the prefatory material to his Bahar-Danush or Garden of Knowledge, translated from the Persic of Einaiut Oollah, brought out by the London firm of Cadell and Davies (1799). Direct experience of Asia also resulted in seminal anthropological, scientific and linguistic texts by Scots like Dow, the Russells, Roxburgh and Gilchrist. Scientific volumes with plates such as Roxburgh’s and Russell’s, which required great effort and expense to produce, and were not perceived as profit makers, would not have appeared without the lobbying of Sir Joseph Banks in London. The unique experience of being a Scot, or of having received a Scottish education, is also evident, not only in the pragmatic and

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scientific publications of Dalrymple, the Russells and Roxburgh, but in the awareness of and resulting backlash against ‘theories of civil societies’ (P. Russell), in religious sensitivity (Hamilton, Gordon, Dow) and in the championing of feudalism (Richardson). First-hand knowledge of the East was always stressed in the works written by Scots with experience of it, and applied in revealing the disparity between notions of Asia at home and Asia’s realities. The West’s ignorance of Asia was more likely to be pointed out by Scottish authors, who also did not invariably portray the government and manners of the East as inferior to those of the West. With these authors, tolerance was generally requested, the aid and knowledge of native helpers was acknowledged, and the learning of languages and the use of original sources were demanded, as was the reform of the East India Company, by those involved in it. These points were consistently reiterated throughout the century, even though British legitimacy in India and further east was never fundamentally challenged and differences between East and West were never forgotten. At the same time, seminal Enlightenment discourses, such as the origin of civilisation, idolatry, deism, feudalism, despotism, were fuelled by real, imprecise and potential information on Asia. Texts by writers who did not go to Asia show great disparity. James Robertson demonstrates the hold of establishment, Hebrew-based oriental studies, whereas John Richardson, who only went to India long after writing his books, represents the vogue for modern oriental studies, initiated in Britain by Warren Hastings and William Jones. William Robertson’s appendix shows how benign the interpretation of India still could be in the 1790s for someone open to all sources, whereas Logan’s work was the result of the manipulation of an artificial Asia for specific ends. The printing histories of these books are almost as varied as the books themselves. The dominance of London publishers, which prominently included the Scots John Murray and Andrew Millar, is evident, although Glasgow, Perth, Gloucester, Shrewsbury, Oxford and the East India Company’s own printer/ publishers also played roles of varying significance. But the phenomenon of the Scots and the Asian book trade is perhaps best summed up by the advent of printing in Calcutta itself. Established around 1777, Calcutta’s presses became renowned from the mid-1780s for printing in dual language the Persian and Hindi (and some Sanskrit) classics of history, law, literature and language, previously known mostly from manuscripts. Grammars, dictionaries and vernacular pieces were also produced by the Calcutta Press and its mostly Scots printers, as was the renowned

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Asiatic Researches (the journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, whose patron was Warren Hastings and whose president was William Jones), the Asiatick and the New Asiatick Miscellany and various weeklies. The purpose of these publications was pragmatic: to instruct East India Company employees in Persian and the local idiom, and to draw parallels between the Mughal and British empires. Nonetheless, genuine interest in Asian literature also drove Calcutta’s production. An exceptional characteristic of the presses were their locally cast fonts in Persian, Bengali and Davanagari script, again derived from manuscripts. Despite the Scottish names among the printer-publishers, their personal history is little known (Shaw 1981: 10), with the exception of George Gordon, a nephew of William Strahan, who printed and edited the India Gazette from 1784 to 1789 (Shaw 1981: 48–9).

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America Warren McDougall Scots were exporting large quantities of books to America from the 1740s. Contemporary records for Scottish east and west coast ports, particularly Greenock and Port Glasgow on the Clyde, show numerous shipments to Boston, Philadelphia and Virginia, but also New York, Maryland and South Carolina. The Custom accounts for Greenock in 1747 report fourteen ships carrying thirty-one book cargoes to America, including one of 100 hundredweight. Scotland’s transatlantic book exports surpassed London’s total that year and nearly equalled it in 1748 and 1752. Together, Greenock and Port Glasgow shipped 1,730 hundredweight of books valued at £19,000 to America and the West Indies between 1743 and 1760 (McDougall 1990a: 22–5; 1988: 14–17). Some books going to America in the mid-century were for Glasgow tobacco company stores in Virginia and Maryland. In 1750, the Semple, Jamieson and Lawson store in Portobacco, Charles County, Maryland received Scottish reprints of the Spectator and Guardian, Hudibras, Paradise Lost, Parnell’s Poems, Young’s Night Thoughts and Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany – along with London-printed novels brought in via Glasgow: Clarissa, Pamela, Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle. The barter rate was generally 100 pounds weight of tobacco for 7s sterling in books. Eleanor Smoot paid fifty pounds of tobacco for Ramsay’s ‘Songs’, the Reverend Swift the same for Paradise Lost and Thomas Hynson Marshall 1,247 pounds of tobacco for the Spectator, Tatler, Guardian, Clarissa, Rollin’s Ancient History and a bottle of snuff. In the 1760s Semple, Jamieson and Lawson still acquired some literature from Scottish ports, but mostly received more typical store fare – bibles, New Testaments and children’s books. These Scotch bibles and New Testaments, produced by the King’s Printer in Scotland, were 268

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preferred throughout America before the war because of their cheapness. The bibles were about £1 sterling a dozen, the New Testaments 7s–8s a dozen. English publishers simply could not compete. Besides the tobacco company system, books from Scotland were imported by Scottish immigrants who set up American distribution networks: David Hall, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1747; Robert Wells, Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1750s; William Millar, John Mein and John Fleeming, Boston, in the 1760s; and Robert Bell, Philadelphia, in the 1770s. Hall received Scottish authors from William Strahan, the London-based Scot, his bibles from Adrian Watkins and then Alexander Kincaid at Edinburgh, and reprints and new Scottish books from Hamilton and Balfour, Edinburgh’s premier booksellers, who sent Hall all their output in medicine and literature, including David Hume’s History of Great Britain, volume one, John Home’s Douglas and James Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry, the first Ossian volume. Hall also asked them for chapbooks ‘in the comical, or wonderful strain’, Church of Scotland catechisms and confessions of faith, and a large amount of the popular evangelical literature that was in demand, such as John Willison’s Afflicted Man’s Companion, Richard Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, Joseph Alleine’s Alarm to Unconverted Sinners, William Dyer’s A Believer’s Golden Chain, Benjamin Keach’s Travels of True Godliness, John Bunyan’s Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ and Robert Russell’s Seven Sermons. Alexander Kincaid and his successive partners – Alexander Donaldson, John Bell and William Creech – published the Scottish Enlightenment’s philosophical works, and all were sent to America. The Kincaid and Bell partnership of 1758–71 placed Scottish books with Hall, William Millar, John Mein, Jeremy Condy and William Hyslop and Company at Boston, and James Rivington at New York, while trying to connect with Robert Wells at Charleston (McDougall 1990a: 21–46; 1988: 18–21). By the 1780s and 1790s, the reprinting was also often done in America by Scots immigrants: Robert Aitken, Robert Bell, William Young, Thomas Dobson and Robert Campbell at Philadelphia, and Sam Campbell at New York (Sher 2006: 503–94). Newcomers could succeed quickly. Sam Campbell of New York might have arrived in steerage in 1785, at the age of nineteen, but seven years later he bought his own ship, which he used to pick up passengers and books from Edinburgh in 1794.33 Thomas Dobson and William Young developed 33

Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Samuel and John Campbell business papers, 22 Sept. 1792; NLS Bell and Bradfute, Deposit 317, Box 2, letter from Samuel Campbell 5 July 1794.

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such strong positions in Philadelphia that by 1787 Benjamin Rush thought there was little room for competitors. However, he told William Creech of Edinburgh: ‘If a bookseller could employ a capital of £1000 in reprinting books, he might make his way among us. It is the most profitable method of dealing in books in our country.’34 American printers imported some of their type from Scotland’s two leading craftsmen, John Baine of Edinburgh, and Alexander Wilson and Sons of Glasgow. Baine provided Fleeming and Mein of Boston with the bold roman type known as ‘Scotch’ type they used from 1767 and the type William Dunlap used for the Declaration of Independence in 1776 (J. B. Lee 1989: 28–9). Customs and Excise records for 1787 through to 1800 record weights of Scottish type landed in America: at New York, 31,084 pounds; Pennsylvania, 18,450; New England, 4,358 (1787–1800); Virginia, 3,550; South Carolina, 2,072 (1791–3); and Maryland, 200 (1787).35 Scottish typefounders also came over. The elderly John Baine emigrated with his grandson and they established their foundry in Philadelphia (1787–90). His type had been used for the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1768–71), and in America he made the type for the first ten volumes of Dobson’s Encyclopaedia, based on the third Edinburgh edition, and for Mathew Carey’s Douay version of the Bible, which began publication in 1790. Archibald Binny and James Ronaldson, from the Edinburgh area, started America’s first permanent foundry at Philadelphia in 1796 (J. B. Lee 1989: 29–39). American readers had ready access to the distinctively voiced Edinburgh magazines and reviews. George Washington would become a patron to the Edinburgh literary magazine, The Bee (1790–4), after Lord Buchan sent him its prospectus;36 he not only advertised the proposals in Philadelphia’s newspapers, but also had the editor, Dr James Anderson, made a fellow of the American Philosophical Society (Anderson 1800: 4–5). Original editions and subsequent American reprints interested and influenced American readers. William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine (Edinburgh, 1769), described by a Philadelphia bookseller as ‘inestimable next the Bible, in a family’,37 showed ordinary people how to improve health through a simple regimen; first republished by Robert Aitken in 1772, it had more than thirty American editions by 1815. Copies of Lessons in Elocution, a collection 34 35 36 37

NAS RH4/26A, reel 2. Benjamin Rush to William Creech of Edinburgh, 30 March 1787. NAS Board of Customs and Excise: imports and exports, Scotland, RH2/4, RH20 and RH24. EUL La.II.588, Buchan to George Washington [1791?]. William Pritchard advertisement, Pennsylvania Packet, 11 May 1785.

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gathered by school-master William Scott, were sent to New York and South Carolina during the war by the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Elliot, and thereafter distributed widely; in its first American printing William Young of Philadelphia added excerpts from James Burgh’s Art of Speaking, and untold thousands of American children were to practise the gestures it recommended for speeches in some fifty American editions (1788–1830). Robert Burns had great appeal: first word about him came to America through James Sibbald’s Edinburgh Magazine (October–December 1786). Proposals for an American reprint were circulating a few months after publication of the 1787 Edinburgh edition of Burns’s Poems: it was reprinted in Philadelphia (July 1788) and New York (December 1788). Medicine and science by Scottish authors were often reprinted. Elsewhere in this volume, Terrence Moore describes the influence of works by David Hume, William Robertson and Hugh Blair on America’s youth. Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, reprinted by Robert Aitken at Philadelphia in 1784 and by others many times afterwards, appeared as a textbook at Yale in 1784 and at Harvard in 1788 (Hook 1999: 51, 171–2). The first volume of William Smellie’s Philosophy of Natural History (Edinburgh, 1790), first reprinted in Philadelphia by Robert Campbell in 1791, later had thirty-eight editions in an abridgement by Dr John Ware and featured prominently in Harvard’s curriculum (S. W. Brown 2011b). Americans returning from study at Scotland’s universities were a valuable part of the Scottish trade’s networks. These professional contacts often endured, as with Philadelphia’s Dr Benjamin Rush and the Edinburgh publisher William Creech (Sher 2006: 553–4). And, although American printing was expanding, book exports from Scotland continued to arrive after the war. Even in the last decade of the eighteenth century, some 2,046 hundredweight of books were recorded as exported to American ports from Scotland, including an estimated 932 hundredweight to New York in 1794, valued by Scottish Customs at around £22,500.38 Probably even more books printed in Scotland, although unidentified as such, arrived by way of Liverpool and London. Furthermore, figures for just after the war are not reliable, with just 173 hundredweight claimed as exported to America in 1783–9. This questionably low total may reflect duty-avoiding strategies: Charles Elliot, for example, expecting a severe American import duty, did not register his considerable book exports of 1784–5, when Pennsylvania put an additional 15 per cent duty, to 17½ per cent, on 38

NAS RH2/4, RH20, RH24; valuation of one hundredweight (112 pounds) of bound books at a median £11.

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‘Testaments, Psalters, Spelling-Books and Primers . . . [and] upon all Romances, Novels and Plays’ (McDougall 2004: 199, n.16). Bell and Bradfute, late-eighteenth-century Edinburgh’s largest wholesale house, included the booksellers Robert Campbell (Philadelphia), Thomas and Andrews (Boston) and Francis Childs and Samuel Campbell (New York) among its American customers.39 Sam Campbell had apprenticed to John Bell and came to America with a small stake of books supplied by Bell. In a 1794 order Campbell requested Bell and Bradfute’s own Poets of Great Britain, Royal Society of Edinburgh Transactions, Samuel Stanhope Smith’s Essay on the Human Species (reprinted from the Philadelphia edition) and ‘1 or 2 copies of any work of merit’, together with English, French and Classical dictionaries by Nugent, Boyer, Chambaud, Bailey, Schrevel, Young, Entick and Edinburgh’s William Scott and William Perry, Haller’s First Lines of Physiology, Cruden’s Concordance, Burkitt’s On the New Testament, John Mair’s Book-keeping Modernised, Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, Henry’s Commentaries and an Edinburgh edition of literature and history for students of French, Alexander Scot’s Nouveau Recueil.40 In 1792, Mathew Carey of Philadelphia sought out Glasgow’s James Duncan and Son as a book supplier. The Duncans had been sending books to America since the peace and had ten customers there, including Hugh Gaine and Robert Hodge in New York and William Poyntell in Philadelphia. Their terms were payment twelve months from the date of their invoice, or a 5 per cent discount with immediate payment. The firm’s dealings with America were so extensive that by 1797, concerned that late payments would bankrupt them, they shortened the credit time and asked that payment accompany orders for bibles. Carey received fall and spring shipments at first – some £5,000 worth by 1800 – and continued getting books from the Duncans until 1819. A typical order comprised ‘12 Arabian Nights, 40 Thomson’s Seasons, 11 Tristram Shandy, 10 Bailey’s Dictionary, 40 Confessions of Faith, 12 dozen pocket Bibles, gilt’ along with another eighty titles. Carey sent some of his own books to Glasgow in return. They included sets of the American Museum, which the Duncans had the ship’s captain take to a Greenock bookseller, to avoid customs duty. Carey also shipped eight sets of his edition of William Guthrie’s A New System of Geography (1795). The Scottish Customs at first set a swingeing duty of eight guineas on the maps, then ruled the book illegal because it was printed first in Britain, and the Duncans sent it back. Andrew Duncan, son and 39 40

ECA Bell and Bradfute ledgers, journal 3 (1792–4). NLS Bell and Bradfute Deposit 317, Box 2, 5 July 1794.

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partner to James, received six sets of Laws of America from Carey when he visited New York and Philadelphia in 1797.41 Charles Elliot, who established a bookselling network in Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, began his American adventures during the war, with shipments for a merchant in New York in 1778– 80, and for the Scots merchants Edward and James Penman, who set up in Charleston in 1780. Thereafter he had a string of correspondents in New York: the loyalist printers Mills and Hicks in 1780–81, and after the peace, Scottish merchants and the booksellers James Rivington, Richard Laurence and Samuel Campbell. He corresponded with John Boyle of Boston, and sent books to individuals with Scottish connections, Dr John Carson and Dr Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia, and the Reverend James Graham, Presbyterian minister in Charleston. The books were his own titles, the latest London editions of Scottish and other authors, and the occasional illegal reprint from Edinburgh or Ireland. They included school texts, books of bawdy, political pamphlets, David Hume, William Robertson, Adam Smith, Fanny Burney’s novels Evelina and Cecilia, the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the work of Edinburgh medical professors. Elliot’s problems came from people close to him. He provided his nephew William, and William’s friend George Millar, with a large supply of literature and medical books, to open a book store in Petersburg,Virginia, in 1784. Within a few months the business broke up: Millar was drinking heavily, William had a quick temper and both had debts in Edinburgh. Charles Elliot lost about £800. But his greatest loss came from the man he trusted most. Thomas Dobson had worked as an Elliot clerk for seven years, on an annual wage of £26 and Elliot was so impressed that he proposed establishing Dobson in the book business in Philadelphia. Together, they identified titles the Americans would buy, and in late 1784, Dobson set off with forty-two trunks of books worth nearly £2,000. There was no written contract. Dobson was to sell the books, take a profit and remit payment home. Elliot supplied £4 cash for Dobson’s passage and letters of credit. The next year Elliot provided the fare for Dobson’s wife and her young child, as well as a wardrobe so that Mrs Dobson would arrive in Philadelphia looking like the wife of a prosperous businessman. The prominent physician Benjamin Rush, to whom Elliot owed a favour, wrote asking him to support the new Philadelphia bookselling firm of Jackson and Dunn. Seeing Jackson and Dunn as his main 41

Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Lea and Febiger letter books, the Duncans to Carey 1792–1820.

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rival, and not wishing to show his hand, Elliot made the fateful decision to instruct Dobson to act as if he were the owner of the books from Edinburgh: ‘I wish you for your own reputation to appear as entirely upon your own. If you are understood to be fitted out by me it will hurt us both with the people that may be worth dealing with in a book way’ (McDougall 2004: 200). In 1785 Elliot sent Dobson further book shipments, and the debt reached more than £3,000. Dobson had everything available from Elliot’s publishing list and own stock as well as books ordered from London. He sold and exchanged them, began his own publishing and built an expensive stone house; he was a great financial success. However, Dobson misled Elliot, claiming the books were not selling. Elliot believed him and the effect was dire. He was struggling to pay the interest on Dobson’s advance and to pay for his own copyrights and a new shop in London. In September 1789 he had a stroke. Unable to read or write, he still had understanding and waited daily for the payment from America. When Elliot died in 1790, Dobson still owed about £3,700. Dobson, meanwhile, used his funds to take American printing forward. Elliot was heavily committed to selling the great third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, to be published in parts in Edinburgh, and had sent Dobson the proposals. Dobson appropriated them, and had the genius to reprint the Edinburgh edition, with changes and new engravings, as the first American encyclopaedia. It appeared in eighteen volumes (1790–8), the largest American printing project to date. Dobson’s audacious Britannica ploy established the pattern for what would become the usual American attitude towards British titles in the nineteenth century. Thus the days of single entrepreneurs bringing or sending Scottish books to America ended, just as Edinburgh’s trade evolved into large publishing houses operating at a British level. Now British books and magazines were reprinted by the American trade without payment, instead of being imported in numbers. For their own convenience, however, American booksellers might offer some money for stereotype plates or an early glimpse of an author such as Walter Scott. But the intimate, almost familial, relations with Scotland that had nurtured the eighteenth-century American trade were gone.

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The American Founders and Scottish Books Terrence O. Moore In autumn 1772, a young James Madison wrote William Bradford a letter that revealed the direction of the future Founder’s mind and the source of his political achievements over the next four decades. At the time, however, Madison was just out of college, complaining of poor health, and taking little interest in either politics or learning to run his father’s estate. His letters reveal that the bookish young man would have preferred to be back in Princeton or with his friend Bradford in Philadelphia, ‘the Fountain-Head of Political and Literary Intelligence’. In this particular letter, Madison commended Bradford’s self-directed reading programme: I think you made a judicious choice of History and the Science of Morals for your winter’s study. They seem to be of the most universal benefit to men of sense and taste in every post and must certainly be of great use to youth in settling the principles and refining the Judgment as well as enlarging Knowledge & correcting the imagination. (Hutchinson and Rachal 1962: I: 175) No doubt Bradford’s choice of books in ‘History and the Science of Morals’ had been influenced by the president of the College of New Jersey, John Witherspoon, who had arrived in Princeton from Scotland the year before Madison began his studies and who taught, among other things, the moral philosophy course that served as the culmination of the liberal-arts curriculum Witherspoon had imported from Scotland. As Americans would soon declare independence, and subsequently embark upon forming a government, an economy and a culture, all upon enlightened principles, they would look to Scottish authors in history and moral philosophy for more than just a winter’s reading. The American Founders would read Scottish books 275

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intensively to answer their profoundest questions about the nature of man, government and society. American colonists had always read Scottish books, of course. In their survey of American libraries, Lundberg and May (1976) found in their ‘first period’ (1700–76), plenty of Scottish titles: Hutcheson’s various works; Hume’s Essays and History, along with far fewer copies of his second Enquiry; Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society and Institutes of Moral Philosophy; Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism, though surprisingly none of his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion until after 1776; Reid’s Inquiry; Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments; and Beattie’s An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth. In 1771 when his protégé, Robert Skipwith, wrote to him requesting a list of recommended books, Thomas Jefferson responded with a library of Enlightenment literati, neatly organised by genre (Boyd 1950: I: 76–81). Scottish authors were numerous. Under ‘Fine Arts’, by far the largest category: ‘Ossian with Blair’s criticisms’, ‘Thompson’s [sic] works’, ‘Home’s plays’ and several novels by Smollett, out of seventy-seven separate listings. Under ‘Criticism on the Fine Arts’: ‘Ld. Kaim’s elements of criticism’, ‘Reid on the human mind’ and ‘Smith’s theory of moral sentiments’, out of seven total listings. Under ‘Politicks, Trade’, the only Scottish title was ‘Steuart’s Political oeconomy’, among eight total. Under ‘Religion’: ‘Hume’s essays’, an interesting placement, and ‘Ld. Kaim’s Natural religion’, among fifteen others. Under ‘Law’: ‘Ld. Kaim’s Principles of equity’, along with Blackstone and ‘Cuningham’s Law dictionary’. No Scottish works appeared under ‘History. Antient’. Under ‘History. Modern.’: ‘Robertson’s History of Charles the Vth’, ‘Hume’s history of England’ and ‘Robertson’s history of Scotland’ out of a total of eight. Under ‘Natural Philosophy. Natural History &c.’: ‘Home’s principles of agriculture’ (referring to Francis Home; Kames’s Gentleman Farmer appeared in 1776) out of a total of thirteen. No Scottish authors appeared under ‘Miscellaneous’. Perhaps the biggest surprise of Jefferson’s list is the absence of any work by Francis Hutcheson. Equally surprising is Jefferson’s unqualified approval of Hume’s History, considering his opinion four decades on: ‘Every one knows that judicious matter and charms of style have rendered Hume’s history the manual of every student. I remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured it when young, and the length of time, the research and reflection which were necessary to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind’ (Appleby and Ball 1999: 283). Writing to John Adams in 1816, Jefferson went so far as to say: ‘This single book has done more to sap

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the free principles of the English constitution than the largest standing army of which their patriots have been so jealous’ (Cappon 1959: 498). These ultra-Whiggish criticisms of Hume must have been far from Jefferson’s mind in 1771, however, since he did not protest Skipwith’s explicit praise of Hume in his original request for books: ‘Let them be improving as well as amusing and among the rest let there be Hume’s history of England, the new edition of Shakespear, the short Roman history you mentioned and all Sterne’s works’ (Boyd 1950: I: 75). Clive and Bailyn in discussing American colonial reading have contended that Scotland and America were ‘England’s cultural provinces’. According to this theory, ‘Scotsmen and Americans alike were constantly aware that they lived on the periphery of a greater world’ that was London, whose coffeehouses and culture were recreated in the Spectator and where political decisions were made affecting the provinces (Clive and Bailyn 1954: 208). This triangular relationship is evident in the printing business, various projects and encyclopaedic interests of Benjamin Franklin. In the late 1740s, for example, Franklin considered an academy for the ‘education of youth in Pensilvania’[sic]. And in devising its curriculum and pedagogy, he drew heavily on the educational writings of Milton, Locke, Rollin and two Scottish moral philosophers, George Turnbull and David Fordyce, mistaking the latter for the ‘ingenious Mr. Hutcheson’ (Labaree 1961a). Franklin’s reading of the Scots appears in his correspondence with Kames and Hume. In a 1760 letter from London to Kames, Franklin reported that he had read ‘with great Pleasure and Improvement’ Kames’s Principles of Equity and considered the work of service to judges in the colonies since ‘few of them have been bred to the Law’ (Labaree 1961b: IX: 103–6). Writing to Hume a few months later, Franklin praised Hume’s ‘excellent Essay on the Jealousy of Commerce (Labaree 1961b: IX: 227–30), hoping it might lead to ‘an Abatement of the Jealousy that reigns here [in England] of the Commerce of the Colonies, at least so far as such Abatement may be reasonable’. Franklin then thanked Hume for correcting ‘some unusual Words’ in a pamphlet he had sent him. America’s best-known man of letters hoped ‘that we shall always in America make the best English of this Island our Standard’. As we know, Hume had carefully purged his own provincialisms. Franklin’s reading of and correspondence with Scottish luminaries reveals nothing urgent or revolutionary. He naturally looked to the Scots to form or improve institutions or in hope their voice might enlighten members of parliament and the Board of Trade on colonial affairs. Things heated up considerably in the ensuing years. The colonists’ most pressing question became, to use a phrase from Hutcheson,

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‘when it is that colonies may turn independent’ (Robbins 1954). The extent of American reliance upon the Scots, particularly Hutcheson, to justify independence, rather than on John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, has concerned historians examining the intellectual origins of the Declaration of Independence. This debate, which goes back to the pioneering work of Robbins and Adair, became more contentious when Garry Wills suggested that Jefferson owed practically all his thinking to the Scots, while there is ‘no indication [he] read the Second Treatise carefully or with profit. Indeed, there is no conclusive proof he read it at all (though I assume he did at some point)’ (G. Wills 1978: 174). Critics of Wills, notably Ronald Hamowy, have proven what is obvious to any casual reader of the Declaration: that Jefferson owed a great deal to Locke. Still, Americans on the eve of Revolution were also close readers of the Scots. Indeed, common sense alone suggests that Americans, before altering or abolishing their form of government, would have read practically every notable writer in the Whig tradition, from Harrington to Locke to Addison to Trenchard and Gordon to Hutcheson to Hume (G. S. Wood 1972: 13–16). Recent scholarship on the Scottish–Jeffersonian connections, forswearing the exclusion of Locke, has been more fruitful than Wills’s ‘hyperbole’ (Eicholz 2001: 94). Whereas Jefferson’s acquaintance with Hutcheson has been hard to prove, Jefferson was quite familiar with Lord Kames. In his letter to Skipwith, listing three works of Kames, Jefferson not only recommended what to read but also why one should read, particularly works of fiction and history: Every thing is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practices of virtue. When any original act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with it’s [sic] beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with it’s deformity and conceive an abhorrence of vice. (Boyd 1950: I: 76) These lines could easily be Kames’s, or Hutcheson’s for that matter. Jefferson’s ideas of the moral sense, doubtless derived in part from his reading of Kames, added significantly to Locke’s strictures on limited government in making the case for independence. If human beings possess a moral sense; if they are prone to do acts ‘of charity or of gratitude’ of their own volition; if moral knowledge is, as one historian has put it, ‘within the easy grasp of virtually everyone’ (Jayne 1998: 72) rather than just priests, philosophers, or kings, then human

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beings are largely capable of securing their own happiness apart from intrusive interventions of unlimited government. Jefferson himself hardly claimed originality in his authorship of the Declaration. He later insisted that he had intended to offer ‘an expression of the American mind’, partly derived from ‘the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c.’ (Appleby and Ball 1999: 148). That ‘&c.’ may confound historians, particularly those of the Scottish Enlightenment, but we do know that at least one other vigorous writer helping to form that American mind was a Scots émigré named James Wilson, educated at St Andrews, who would sign both the Declaration and the Constitution. Wilson got his Scottish moral philosophy straight from the source. In 1774, he forecast the language of the Declaration by affirming that ‘the happiness of the society is the First law of every government’ (1774: 3), ending the sentence, however, with a footnote to Burlamaqui. By the middle of the 1780s, the Americans’ most pressing question was not when colonies may turn independent but how an independent nation might ‘form a more perfect Union’. The political experience under the Articles of Confederation had perhaps caused them to doubt the efficacy of a collective moral sense. As Washington said privately: ‘We have probably had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation’ (Flexner 1969: 198). In this more sceptical environment Americans were more likely to turn to Hume. Essential to America’s founding was Madison’s reading of Hume. Whereas there has been considerable historiographical controversy over the intellectual sources of the Declaration, scholarship has deferred to Douglass Adair’s classic statement on Madison’s interpretation of Hume’s Essays (1974). In Hume, Madison found a way to overcome simultaneously the two seemingly insoluble disadvantages of republican government: first, that republican governments, in one reading of Montesquieu, must be confined to small territories and, second, that majorities will oppress minorities. Leaving the first problem largely to his fellow federalist Alexander Hamilton, Madison concentrated on the second (Cooke 1961: 52–4; Cohler, Miller and Stone 1989: 131–2). Madison, who understood with Hume that factions and parties are inherent in the human condition, held that individual liberties were less secure in a small republic than in a large one because a single faction comprising the majority could easily oppress the minority. Such had been the experience of both small, classical democracies and a number of the American states. Should founders of states ‘extend the sphere’ of government into a large republic, Madison argued in Federalist 10, the resulting multiplication of factions would make it

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far less likely that any one could combine to oppress the rights of the minority: Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other. (Cooke 1961: 64; Adair 1974: 141–2) Thus Madison, with Hume’s help, gave the world America’s most original contribution to political theory and laid the foundations for the creation of what Winston Churchill would later call ‘the Great Republic’. After the adoption of America’s second constitution, the Founders turned their thoughts to building a nation. This was no easy task since the years of war and administrative torpor under the Articles of Confederation had left the nation’s credit and economy in shambles. Nothing short of economic genius would be needed to bring the fledgling nation out of virtual bankruptcy. The chief architect of the American economy was, of course, the fiery and brilliant Alexander Hamilton, ‘the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar’, in John Adams’s uncharitable rendering. Biographers have suggested plausibly that the young Hamilton looked to Washington as a surrogate father after joining his staff as aide-de-camp at the age of twenty-two. The argument could just as easily be made that Hamilton found an intellectual father in David Hume. Hamilton first read Hume at King’s College (later Columbia), probably at the recommendation of a Scottish-trained mathematics professor (Chernow 2004: 51). Increasingly over the course of the 1780s Hamilton studied Hume’s economic thought. In 1781 while composing a thirty-one page, closely argued letter to the new superintendent of finance to the Continental Congress, Robert Morris, Hamilton explicitly asked a friend for Hume’s Essays (Syrett and Cooke 1962: III: 595–6, 604–35). In 1781–2, Hamilton published a series of essays under the name ‘The Continentalist’, that ‘reek of Humean moral philosophy as well as Humean politics’ (F. McDonald 1979: 43). In Continentalist 5, Hamilton intended to set the record straight on ‘Of the Jealousy of Trade’. According to Hamilton, Hume had not argued that ‘the regulating hand of government’ should never act upon trade but rather had intended ‘to combat that excessive jealousy on this head, which has been productive of so many unnecessary wars, and with which the British nation is particularly interested’. Then Hamilton signalled his own approach to political economy:

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Trade may be said to have taken its rise in England under the auspices of Elizabeth; and its rapid progress there is in a great measure to be ascribed to the fostering care of government in that and succeeding reigns. (Syrett and Cooke 1962: III: 77) The desirability of a government’s ‘fostering’ the economy continued to dominate Hamilton’s thought and became an argument for the adoption of the stronger, federal Constitution in 1787 (Cooke 1961: 73–9). Hamilton’s synthesis of Scottish political economy coalesced in his magisterial Report on Manufactures. ‘The most Humean of all Hamilton’s papers’ (Elkins and McKitrick 1993: 258), it was also his most Smithian. Hamilton borrowed heavily from Smith in demolishing the Physiocratic argument that agricultural production is superior to ‘manufactures’ (Syrett and Cooke 1962: X: 231–49). Hamilton took great pains to show how manufactures would increase revenue, how the division of labour would increase production (249–57), and how ‘Not only the wealth; but the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures’ (291). To achieve the last and most important object, Hamilton had to modify Smithian free trade with political reality: ‘If the system of perfect liberty to industry and commerce were the prevailing system of nations’, Hamilton wrote, using some of Smith’s favourite phrases, the United States might forego ‘the zealous pursuits of manufactures’ (262). But such was not the way the world worked, as ‘the extreme embarrassments’ in the War for Independence had revealed (291). To prevent like difficulties in a future war, Hamilton wrote just over a year before the French declaration of war, the United States would have to ‘endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply’ (291) through the ‘incitement and patronage of government’ (267). Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures, considerably influenced by Scottish political economy but also tempered by the American Revolutionary experience, was nothing short of an economic Declaration of Independence. The American Founders turned to the Scots not only with questions of politics and economics but also on matters of politeness and taste. In addition to Principles of Equity, Franklin read Kames’s Elements of Criticism, in which the Philadelphian ‘found great Entertainment, much to admire, and nothing to reprove’, although he wished Kames would have ‘examined more fully the Subject of Music’, on which Franklin added his own thoughts (Labaree 1961b: XII: 158–65). Jefferson also recommended Kames’s criticism in his letter to Skipwith (Boyd 1950: I: 79). Although Kames remained popular, Hugh Blair’s

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Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres became the authoritative guide to literary taste. Lundberg and May found Blair’s Lectures in 41 per cent, 55 per cent, and 61 per cent of the American libraries for the periods they surveyed after its first publication, rivalled only by Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the histories of Rollin, Hume and Gibbon and Blair’s own sermons. Perhaps Noah Webster, the great American cultural entrepreneur, most succinctly expressed the American delight with Blair in a diary entry for 5 August 1784: ‘Finished reading Dr Blairs Lectures. Excellent Criticism!’ (Rollins 1989: 199). The American Founders were not slavish in their reading of the Scots; they were steeped in the classics and read numerous English and Continental authors as well. It is therefore too much to say that the Scots ‘invented’ America or the modern world. Still, the American debt to Scottish enlightened moral philosophers and historians was enormous. When Washington wrote that the American ‘empire’ was not founded ‘in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period’ and ‘the researches of the human mind, after social happiness’ had ‘been carried to a great extent’, he must have had, as did his fellow Founders, the Scots fully in mind (Allen 1998: 240–1).

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Canada Fiona A. Black Eighteenth-century Scottish interests in British North America and the lands to the far north-west were multifaceted and predominantly mercantile. From involvement in the fur trade to engagement with emigration and colonial settlement, Scottish authors reflected a ‘Canadian’ perspective that varied from outrageously erroneous emigration pamphlets to careful works of geographical, military and scientific observation. At the same time a Scottish element was clearly at play in the print culture of the emerging nation. Scottish networks were complex. School-masters interacted with booksellers, politicians with printers, timber merchants with wholesale stationers in a web that resulted in a pervasive Scottish element in many aspects of the early Canadian book trade, from paper mills to bookselling. Ironically, John Neilson, the most influential Scot in the Lower and Upper Canadian trade, extolled the virtues of his home country to his son while never, to judge from his extensive extant business records, importing books directly from Scotland. Neilson’s business is an example of a common eighteenth-century model: those in the trade in Canada typically imported through intermediaries (often other Scots) in London. By far the majority of the Scottish-authored books that were exported to Canada were shipped from the Thames and were the products of London publishers, sometimes though not always, jointly with Edinburgh publishers. While the nineteenth century saw the immigration to Canada of established Scottish printers and booksellers, the eighteenth witnessed fewer trade migrants and more activity by general merchants. Examination of early Canadian book-availability in six towns indicates that at least 25 per cent of those who distributed books prior to 1820 were Scottish (F. A. Black 1999a). Between 1760 and 1825, there were at least 279 283

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Scottish mercantile houses and shipowners involved in business between Scotland and Canada (Macmillan 1985: 47). A large number of these used Greenock, which was the hub of Scotland’s overseas enterprise (Macmillan 1972: 73). New Brunswick’s typically successful firm, Campbell, Stewart and Company, imported books via this route, along with rum and foodstuffs (Macmillan 1972: 85). Their book imports had a Scottish flavour, and a 1786 consignment included Scots songs and the school-books of Gordon and Hill, in addition to Allan Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, James Thomson’s Works, Robertson’s histories of Scotland and America and McPherson’s History of Great Britain (Royal Gazette and New Brunswick Advertiser, 17 October 1786). Such consignments were wholesaled to networks of Scottish and other merchants in the colonies. Printers such as John Neilson of Quebec, and James and Alexander Robertson of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, moved not directly to Canada from Scotland, but indirectly via the American colonies. Furthermore, widely held contemporary views on the superiority of English as spoken and written in England led to a wish to conceal or at least to downplay their cultural identity not only by some of the literati, but also by some who were agents of the dissemination of their ideas. They were keen to have a cosmopolitan link with London and not be perceived as ‘provincially’ Scottish. Neilson used some of the London connections preferred by his predecessors, William Brown and Thomas Gilmore, and Samuel Neilson. He stocked only a relatively small proportion of Scottish-authored works. In addition, although he was the principal book importer in the Canadas, he had no overt connection with the settlements of Gaelic Highlanders and did not import Gaelic books, which were still mostly the domain of mission agencies. Here then was a Scot who was embedded in two key vehicles of print culture: the printing trade and bookselling. He furthered local book availability in no small way, supplying a variety of books from his own presses throughout a loose geographic network in Upper and Lower Canada, and to a lesser extent, the Maritimes. The most telling evidence of his Scottishness rests in the labour history of his business and its subsequent effects: Neilson actively favoured the recruitment from Scotland of apprentices, and others in the book and allied trades. Thus he was an early and principal figure in developing what would become an ‘army of Scots’ in the nineteenth century (Parker 1985: 25). The apprentices who worked for Neilson moved on after their apprenticeships and worked for others or established their own businesses in Upper and Lower Canada. Scottish agriculturalists were already known for their experimentation and advanced views on both husbandry and arable farming. This

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therefore formed an understandable subject for Scots to promote in areas of new agricultural settlements. The very successful timber merchant Hugh Johnston of Saint John, New Brunswick, saw an opportunity for both financial profit and the spread of helpful knowledge when he imported several hundred (an enormous quantity) of a new work on agriculture by James Donaldson of Dundee (Saint John Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, 4 November 1796). One of the rare Canadian importers of Gaelic books was the merchant Archibald McColl of Halifax, who imported Gaelic bibles and New Testaments from Glasgow with the probable intention of selling them to ministers who would travel to the Gaelic speaking regions of the Maritimes, notably Antigonish and Cape Breton (Nova Scotia Royal Gazette, 21 May 1801). Far more visible in colonial towns were the imported items in vernacular Scots, including the poetry of Burns which spread across the colonies in books and songsheets. A Quebec edition, to be published by subscription, was promoted in the Quebec Gazette (18 June 1789) but came to nothing when the man behind the scheme, James Robertson, dropped it to return to Scotland. Direct Scottish connections within North America would on occasion ignore political borders. For example, Mr Dun, bookseller in West Niagara (Upper Canada), advertised, with extensive puffs, two titles in September 1797 linked to his business with the Scottish printer, John M’Donald in Albany (New York) (Upper Canada Gazette, 27 September 1797). These titles were Sermons by Edinburgh’s Reverend Walker and Burnet’s Life of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester, both of which M’Donald had printed that year at Albany. Individual contacts between and among Scots arose for a number of reasons, Scottishness being only one of them. There were, in addition, some collective contacts that affected distribution of books and information about books. Scots in several colonial towns actively organised ethnic associations employing ‘both their connections with Scotland and their Scottish ethnicity to great advantage’, and sometimes involving books (Bumsted 1999: 1131). These associations and societies deliberately fostered and strengthened networks of Scots, including those in business. The earliest example is the North British Society of Halifax. Five of the Scottish merchant family of Kidston were members between 1782 and 1815, when Richard Kidston Jr became president. Some of the members met regularly ‘to read and discuss papers on learned subjects’42 and would almost certainly have bought books locally from 42

Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. Kidston Family – Genealogy. #5d. ‘Family Tree with Notes’.

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the Kidstons’ relatively well-stocked bookshelves in their general store. By the end of the century, Richard Kidston’s business practices were following a well-entrenched pattern. His advertisement in the Halifax Journal (2 May 1799) included Scottish school-books such as Ruddiman’s Rudiments of Latin Grammar, the poems of Burns, the histories of Robertson, the sermons of Blair, the scientific lectures of Ferguson, the philosophical essays of Hume and the economic work of Adam Smith (F. A. Black 1999b). Typically, this shipment had come from London publishers by way of the Thames, whereas the Kidstons’s more frequent imports of school-books and chapbooks came from the Clyde and booksellers and wholesalers in Glasgow.

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Chapter Four

THE POPULAR PRESS AND THE PUBLIC READER Literacy Alexander Murdoch

I

n Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity 1600–1800 (1985), R. A. Houston challenged the established belief in the superiority of Scottish parochial education, arguing that the highly literate working population of early-modern Lowland Scotland was the result of economic and social change rather than the earlier practices of the national Church following the Reformation. His methodology was one widely used at the time: if someone could sign their name, they were literate. Sources where historians could differentiate between those who signed and those who merely made their mark could generate genuine economic and social science data. Houston’s rates are still cited in surveys of European literacy and cultures (J. Rose 2001: 59; Fox and Woolf 2002: 22), although they are rough estimates taken from eighteenth-century Court of Justiciary papers and reflect the biases inherent in that source, such as the relatively few references to the Highlands and the rare involvement of women and children. Houston’s estimated illiteracy rate for 1750 Lowland Scotland of 35 per cent (meaning that 65 per cent of the population were literate), is close to England’s 40 per cent. The 36 per cent rate for England’s four northern counties (Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland and Westmoreland) is even closer. Furthermore, Houston suggests a higher illiteracy rate among Scotland’s women than England’s, with Scottish female illiteracy at 85 per cent in contrast with 60 per cent in England. The Scottish Highlands had a significantly higher rate of illiteracy for men and women at 60 per cent, insofar as it can be measured for a culture which was largely oral. Given the broadly similar literacy rates for the north of England and Scotland, Houston concluded that national differences in education could not have been a factor in social literacy, since Scotland’s national parish system and 287

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the voluntary schools in northern England produced similar rates of literacy. The point was that economic demands for literate labour were more of a factor in determining literacy rates than national cultural and social values: ‘Literacy may actually have strengthened rather than diminished socio-economic inequality during the pre-industrial period . . . Education’s aim was less the broadening of the mind than the prevention of religious and moral ignorance’ (Houston 1982a: 101; 1982b). Houston provoked a passionate response from the eminent historian of Scottish education, Donald Withrington, who claimed that something like universal elementary education was available to most of the population (1987: 73; 1988), an eighteenth-century Scottish achievement denigrated by Houston’s statistics. Having just completed a new edition of the OSA in 1984, Withrington drew on statements about learning and literacy across a broad range of parish records. Despite his denunciation of Houston, however, Withrington conceded that over the course of the eighteenth century, the emphasis in Scottish primary education moved from an aspiration to identify and encourage academic talent among boys, regardless of class, to an emphasis on providing universal elementary education, including some access for girls (Withrington 1987: 74). At issue in Withrington’s reaction to Houston is whether localised parish policy on education through the Church of Scotland increasingly became subject to an agenda promoted by the Scottish landed class, who transformed the parish school system into a vehicle for the production of labour with basic skills in literacy and numeracy. Withrington, like Thomas Chalmers in the early nineteenth century, saw a national system of identifying talent and ability which was nurtured within the Church through recruitment to the ministry or the teaching profession (Withrington 1988: 185). T. C. Smout’s reaction to Houston’s work was more nuanced, and emphasised a point now widely accepted by historians of literacy: demonstrating that someone in the past had the ability to write their name tells us nothing meaningful about ‘literacy’. As Withrington had observed: ‘the once-accepted measure of literacy, ability to sign one’s name, is no longer regarded as a reliable index of reading ability, much less of full literacy; conversely, those who could not write at all were sometimes able to read’ (Fox and Woolf 2002: 7). Smout demonstrated the point through a unique source in Edinburgh’s New College Library, the record of the spiritual rebirth of 110 people caught up in the Cambuslang evangelical revival of July–August 1742 as recorded by their minister, William McCulloch (Smout 1982; Houston 1989, 1993). This evidence suggests that part of Lowland Scotland had a population

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at that time universally able to read, but with many men and almost all women unable to write, especially significant considering that in eighteenth-century Sweden 80 per cent of the population could read but only 5 per cent-20 per cent could write. In Denmark, where most of the late-eighteenth-century population could read, writing was widespread only after the Napoleonic wars. Ned Landsman subsequently used the New College source to study literacy’s relationship to the popular evangelical revivals which created a transatlantic print culture that particularly flourished in the west of Scotland in the 1740s through connections between John Pagan (a contemporary Glasgow merchant with evangelical religious sympathies) and his brother William (a merchant in New York). These connections ultimately drew John Witherspoon from the west of Scotland to Princeton College, with a subsequently steady flow of Scottish donations to the college library (Landsman 1989, 1991). McCulloch and the Cambuslang revival also suggest that eighteenthcentury literacy was a complex function of gender and culture as well as class. McCulloch recorded the spiritual accounts of some of those ‘saved’ at Cambuslang with the intention of publishing them, but in the end was persuaded by colleagues in the ministry not to proceed with his plan. This was a book written but not published at a time when the culture of print in eighteenth-century Scotland was burgeoning. Of the accounts recorded by McCulloch, seventy-five were by women and thirty-five by men, whereas the scribes, editors and critics of the compilation were all men (Smout 1982: 122). The ‘Examination of Persons under Scriptural Concern at Cambuslang during the Revival in 1741–42’ illustrates how eighteenth-century Scottish women were part of the literate world and vital to the history of the book as readers; indeed, female readers across the social spectrum partook actively in Scotland’s literary exchange, as Murray Simpson and Mark Towsey effectively demonstrate elsewhere in this volume. However, McCulloch’s women could talk about what they read, although this was recorded in a formulaic manner as part of documenting their spiritual testimony, often as a preamble to each individual account. One later reader of the completed manuscript scored through these sections, indicating that he thought it a diversion from the real business of recording spiritual concerns and religious experience. But these preambles provide significant if unintended insight into the nature of literacy in mid-eighteenth-century west-central Scotland. Smout (1982: 122) highlights the introductory remarks of one man (‘A.I.’) born in the Perthshire highlands, who told McCulloch about his early education:

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When I was about 12 year old I was put to school and was taught to read the Bible in English and the Psalm Book in Irish or Highland language, being taught from my infancy to speak Irish and afterwards by hearing some people about me speak English I came also to learn that language: but I could have read most of the English Bible before I knew anything of the sense or literal meaning of what I was rendering. The account, however, continues with a very different form of discourse which indicates that for many working people in Scotland reading was associated with religion: In my former life I was given to many vices. I scarce ever used to aim at Praying any at all, till about five years ago, that I had My Lot for some time in a Family where there was much Religion, and observing all in the Family, retiring by themselves daylie for secret Prayer, I thought it was a Strange thing that I should be singular in neglecting it: and that I might not be so, I set about it too: and went on in it, twice a day after that for ordinary, tho yet it seems to have been but a form. I read the Bible however with some delight, & read it often, because I knew my Father would have been angry at me, when I came home to see him, if I had neglected my reading after I had been taught to read. (2: 158)1 Most accounts simply record whether McCulloch’s informants could read the Bible and remember their catechism. One young woman (‘A.N.’), about sixteen years old, related that she could read her Bible from the age of six and read it (probably aloud) at her parents’ desire ‘tho I had more delight in reading Story-Books and ballads’ (1: 208). This may have been included to warn against spiritual temptation, but McCulloch seemed most interested in recording an informant’s ability to read the Bible, and the Word’s effect on their religious life. Thus the impact of hearing the ‘Word’ through sermons received more attention from McCulloch than access to it through print, perhaps to be expected since McCulloch was documenting the spiritual achievements of the Cambuslang revival as an evangelical experience. Still, McCulloch planned to make a book of the victory of the spoken word at Cambuslang, and the effectiveness of that outcome was dependent upon reliable, widespread literacy in the evangelical community. 1

‘Examinations’, New College Library, University of Edinburgh (MCC6.1–2).

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The text he left behind never reached print, although it was read by ‘Dr [Alexander] Webster and other Ministers’, as the title-page to the manuscript records. Their annotations at times betray an anxiety to make evangelical salvation safe enough for the readership who might encounter it in print in McCulloch’s projected book. ‘Ane unmarried woman about 26’ testified by way of introduction that she ‘was put to school when I was a Child and taught to read the Bible’, but her account of being driven to despair, if not atheism, by the Devil attracted several annotations advising against publication. ‘Tho there are many good things scattered up and down ys account and even in ye places scored [through], yet I apprehend, it woud be better not to publish ys womans experiences at all’, wrote the first reader, attracting subsequent agreement from others who wrote ‘I agree’, ‘I’m also of the Mind this Case should not be Publishd & thought marking for that Reason needless’ and ‘I heartily agree’ (‘A.R.’: 1: 254/80, 279–81/106–8). On the other hand, some accounts make it clear that young people were encouraged to read in this part of Scotland. ‘I got some learning to read My Catechism, but was only twenty days at a school’, a girl told McCulloch, continuing: ‘I was taught to read some in private houses where I served’ (‘B.U.’: 1: 569/269). ‘A man of 40 years’ expressed his own empirical sense that reading among serving classes was widespread when he told McCulloch that I was put to School when a child, but would not apply my self to learn to read . . . but when I came to be about twelve years of age, I took a fancy to learn to read, thinking I would not be like another man when I came to be of age, if I could not read: and those with whom I livd seeing me incline to learn to read, both gave me liberty to learn & put me to it and so I proceeded till I could read the Bible tolerably. (2: 49) Both the women and the men McCulloch interviewed were potential readers of works that appeared during the evangelical revival, such as The Glasgow Weekly-History of the Success of the Gospel, published by the printer William Duncan of Glasgow in cheap weekly parts for a literate working public from 1742 to 1743. Other evangelical printer-publishers in the west of Scotland included Robert Smith, John Greig and John Bryce (Landsman 1991: 199). In an early study of working-class habits in purchasing and reading books, Peter Laslett draws attention to similar titles while remarking on the diversity of occupations recorded in the lengthy subscription lists for evangelical volumes (although a significant proportion were weavers); he observed that the relatively few women listed among subscribers were

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never identified by occupation (Laslett 1969). Thus although in this case women got their name into print, it was not on equal terms with men. The place of women in the eighteenth-century Scottish republic of letters was changing, but at a pace that should not be exaggerated. As late as 1792, the young Maria Riddell required the intercession of her friend and mentor Robert Burns to find a publisher for her natural history, Voyages to the Madeira and Leeward Caribbean Islands (G. R. Roy 1985: I: 130–1). Peter Hill, probably Scotland’s most progressive publisher at the time, issued 500 copies at Edinburgh and London, in partnership with Thomas Cadell. In the volume’s introduction, Riddell observes that ‘marriage . . . by obtruding on me a number of domestic occupations’ had withheld the ‘time and . . . leisure’ requisite to serious authorship (1792: vi–vii). And Riddell had married into Scotland’s privileged classes. Women might be expected to publish poetry – although mostly by subscription – and novels, but not science. As the eighteenth-century expansion of Scottish print culture became more socially inclusive, those who remained outside were increasingly viewed as inferior to those within, or even, in a telling phrase used by more than one minister reporting to the OSA, as ‘aboriginal’. Alexander Downie of Lochalsh called the population of his parish ‘the Aborigines of the country’ (1793: XI: 425); David Dunoon of Illearnan in south-east Ross-shire referred to consolidation of farms as compelling ‘the poor aborigines’ to emigrate, quoting from Goldsmith’s ‘Deserted Village’ (1794: XVII: 345); and ‘a Heritor, a friend to Statistical enquiries’, writing of the parish of Boleskine and Abertarff (which included Fort Augustus) wrote admiringly of the ‘reciprocal sensibility’ enjoyed by the Fraser of Lovat family with their tenantry ‘which probably in a greater degree, is to be found among the Aborigines of this district, than in that more eligible country in which, after quitting this parish, they establish their settlement’ (1796: XX: 33–4). An early nineteenth-century petition to the Presbytery of Caithness eloquently put the case (recorded in English in the minutes of the presbytery), protesting that Sir John Sinclair, editor of the Statistical Account (1791–9), had appointed a minister who could only speak English to one of the parishes on his estate, albeit a native of the county.2 The petition was presented by Robert Mackay writer in Thurso on behalf of Donald Campbell Tenant in Murary ‘in name of himself and other Inhabitants of the Parish of Wattin’. Was the 2

NAS Caithness Presbytery Minutes 1799–1818, ff. 209–11, 1805.

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language that of the lawyer Mackay or the tenant farmer Campbell? We do not know, but it puts the case for Gaelic language strongly in its English text: That in the before named Parish there are one hundred and forty two families, of which above seventy Families understand no language so well . . . as the Gaelic, by many (tho vulgarly) called Earse. . . That now about half a century ago your Petitioners and their Ancestors and their families have been cut off from every Parochial Gospel benefit, as much as if they had been Indians . . . For this half century your Petitioners have been as aliens, and intruders into other Congregations, or driven into sectarisms, as of another nation, or not of the native language of the country. A minister offering instruction only in English, the petition continued, ‘only can be to us as a dead letter’: Is it not more reasonable for this Parish (for those even, who understand Scots only) to have as of old a minister to preach in both tongues . . . [there is] no Catechist to instruct the old, and no Schoolmaster to instruct the young in the English language or Scots, so as gradually to have made them fit to hear a preacher of Scots? Is it intended to vanish them all at once to America, or at home to compel them . . . to become, from want of instruction, mere heathens. We hope therefore that it will please the Patron, who is an admirer of Ossian and Gaelic literature, to have compassion on these ignorant men, who can only speak or understand the language of Ossian, and that only. Whether Gaelic-speakers spoke the ancient language of Scotland as rendered by James Macpherson into stanzas of impeccable, polite, romantic English was of course an assertion documenting its own romanticism, yet this was a language by some accounts excluded from public life and almost from the history of the book and the world of literacy in eighteenth-century Scotland. But, as Ronald Black demonstrates in this volume, over 180 Scottish books appeared during the century either entirely in Gaelic or containing substantial amounts of the language. The first Gaelic sermon, for example, was published in 1791 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, written by the Reverened Dougal Crawford of Arran, and printed by the firm of Sibley, Howard and Roulstone. Despite the lack of Scots resonance in the name of the firm, Donald Meek has argued that the printers must have been familiar with Gaelic, given the standard of the typesetting; the sermon appeared in North Carolina, he suggests, because

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the emigrant experience hastened the transition from orality to print, since Gaelic ministers in the new colonies were in very short supply, and the availability of printed sermons helped to distribute the Christian message more widely among emigrants . . . Literate laymen could read the printed sermons to groups assembled in homes, and the press could act to some extent as a substitute for the missing preacher. (Meek 2002: 96–8) Nothing illustrates better how the boundaries between popular and elite culture, between the oral, the written and the printed, were becoming more complex and inter-related over the course of the century rather than increasingly insulated from one another, as has often been assumed (Burke 1978: xviii, 250–81). Around this time it was reported that Tom Paine’s Rights of Man was circulating in the Highlands in Gaelic translation. Was this the case, or was it the product of the imagination of an alarmed government? The report does illustrate how reading, writing and print were increasingly colonising popular culture and oral culture in Scotland, albeit unevenly, by the end of the eighteenth century. Lord Henry Spencer wrote to William Lord Auckland from Blenheim Palace on 26 November 1792 that ‘Mackintosh who is just returned from a tour in the Highlands of Scotland, and who, by the bye, is much altered in his principles, assured several persons at Oxford that he found Paine’s books, translated into Erse, in the hands of all the common people’ (P. A. Brown 1918: 90). Was this supposed translation ‘into Erse’ a printed edition or were English editions being read aloud in translation? In contrast to Spencer’s account, the evangelist James Haldane reported that during a tour in the Highlands with an English colleague in 1796 people occasionally refused to accept the printed tracts they were distributing out of fear these were written by Paine (Meikle 1912: 207). By the end of the eighteenth century circulating and subscription libraries had brought books and print within the reach of everyone in Scotland, including the Gaelic-speakers. Thus John Crawford observes that ‘book use moved from being intensive, where men, and sometimes women, were in the habit of reading and rereading, with great care, a few, mainly devotional, books, to extensive reading, where many were read, usually only once’ (J. C. Crawford 1994: 23). Just how ‘intensive’ the eighteenth-century reading experience could be is well illustrated by Mark Towsey’s study in this volume of George Ridpath. Although in areas of the Lowlands there were working people using books as part of religious devotional study, the wider access to literature for this group only happened when ‘in the 1790s twelve working class libraries and 52

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temporary reading societies are recorded, of which 14 of the latter were in Glasgow and 12 in Paisley . . . They were founded mainly by small masters, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and skilled artisans with a strong sense of corporate identity like coal or lead miners’ (J. C. Crawford 1996: 55). But these labouring and trade classes had prized literacy throughout the century and long before libraries were within their reach. The mariner John Nicol, son of a cooper in Currie, recalling his 1760s childhood, observes that his father ‘made it his study to give his children [male and female] an education’ (Nicol 1822: 4). Nicol was captivated by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which he read many times as a boy, and when he eventually went to sea, reading his bible remained a defining habit, although he was not a religious man (12). Of course the cult of Burns became a metaphor for the literary capabilities of Scotland’s peasantry, when Burns himself wrote to Sir John Sinclair about his activity as librarian of a collection established by Robert Riddell of Glenridell in the barony of Monkland in the parish of Dunscore in Dumfries. Riddell wrote a covering letter which was also published in the OSA, proposing that ‘as its utility has been felt, particularly among the younger class of people, I think, that if a similar plan were established, in the different parishes in Scotland, it would tend greatly to the speedy improvement of the tenantry, trades people and work people’ (1793: III: 597). John Crawford sees Burns (signing himself only as ‘A Peasant’), making a case here for literacy as ‘the transforming power of book use both for the individual and society’ (1996: 55). ‘To store the minds of the lower classes with useful knowledge,’ Burns wrote, ‘is certainly of very great consequence, both to them as individuals, and to society at large. Giving them a turn for reading and reflection, is giving them a source of innocent and laudable amusement; and besides, raises them to a more dignified degree in the scale of rationality.’ Burns described the membership of this society as ‘tenants [of Riddell], and farming neighbours’, who paid a 5s admission fee and 6d a month, a not inconsiderable amount that testifies to their sense of the value of investing in literacy. So Burns would observe: ‘A peasant who can read . . . is certainly a much superior being to his neighbour, who, perhaps, stalks beside his very team, very little removed, except in shape, from the brutes he drives’ (Roy 1985: II: 106–8). At monthly meetings, members chose books in order of rotation, and decisions on acquisitions were made by majority vote. ‘It will easily be guessed,’ Burns concluded, ‘that a good deal of trash would be bought’, but he listed as exceptions works by Blair, Robertson, Hume, Henry Mackenzie, Fielding, Addison and Steele, Cervantes and others. At the end of the society’s three-year term, the books were sold to the

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membership, who either received money or books back, as they chose, at a final auction. But did reading make better farmers? Heather Holmes’s contribution to this volume suggests that it did because literate tenants could (and did) read instructive pamphlets on agricultural improvements. Here in microcosm is the debate over literacy in eighteenth-century Scotland, and the fact that Burns ended up as a literary celebrity and a tax collector rather than a minister tells its own tale about the changing uses of literacy: an apparently ever-increasing emphasis on the ability to write as well as read was no doubt a sign of the country’s burgeoning economic need for a class of men capable of keeping records for a developing commercial, governmental and imperial bureaucracy.

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Natural History, Natural Philosophy and Readers Matthew D. Eddy Of the six subject categories often employed by book historians (authors, publishers, printers, shippers, booksellers and readers [Darnton 1982: 65–83; 2007]) studies of eighteenth-century Scottish works of natural history and natural philosophy have primarily focused on publishers, booksellers and distribution (Wood 2000; Withers and Wood 2002; Sher 2006); less attention, however, has been paid to ‘readers’ and how books reached men and women in specific settings like classrooms, homes and societies. This state of affairs could perhaps be attributed to the fact that many scholars interested in the notion of readership use a canon shaped by literary historians whose vision of the Enlightenment differs from that of scholars studying those mathematical and classificatory works that provide the foundation for the modern natural sciences. Indeed, until recently, the readers of such ‘scientific’ texts were framed in relation to the notions of nature evinced in the works of David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, creating a situation that associates ‘science’ with a philosophical canon and ‘emotion’ with literary texts. Roger Chartier has argued that ‘special attention should be paid to ways of reading that have disappeared in our contemporary world’ (Chartier 1994: 8) and with others he has devised methods and questions to investigate how reading a book and reading the natural world need not conflict (Chartier 1994, 2007; Chartier and Cavallo 1999). In eighteenth-century Scotland, formative texts were often the same for both the literary and scientific reader, a situation fostered by the church and state’s firm commitment to education and the relatively high literacy rate that resulted. The pedagogical and social factors that shaped how Scots read books about the natural world thus become just as important as the texts themselves, especially when attempting 297

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to understand how the book trade transmitted scientific knowledge during the eighteenth century (Daston 2004: 443–8; Blair 2004: 420– 30). In this context, the notion of a ‘book’ includes all printed or bound forms of communication and the notion of a ‘reader’ is not restricted to those who read what later generations determined to be canonical texts. David Allan, for example, has approached both English and Scottish readers in Georgian Britain through institutions, ownership, marginalia and common place books (2003a: 91–124). Acknowledging the high rate of literacy across Scotland’s social classes in the eighteenth century, this study will examine three categories of ‘readers’ associated with science: the young, the proficient and the specialised. Publishers, printers, authors and distributors will be discussed in the context of readership and the delivery of scientific texts. Moreover, the word ‘science’ will be used to refer to all eighteenth-century attempts to systematise the facts and phenomena of the natural world: mathematics, mechanics, pneumatics, astronomy, mineralogy, botany, zoology, meteorology, hydrology and geology.

Young Readers Until recently, consideration of the child reader and eighteenthcentury British books about natural history or natural philosophy usually focused on publications for the London market or textbooks about the modern natural sciences. The works of John Newbery are prime examples – especially his The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies (1761), written under the pseudonym of ‘Tom Telescope’. Although such books did reach Scottish children, works like Newbery’s were expensive and, importantly, children were more likely to learn about the natural world through less grandiose educational sources that were often religious in tenor (Fyfe 2000a: 276–90, 2000b: 453–73; Secord 1985: 127–51). ‘Young’ readers in Scotland included children and adolescents, who were taught at home by private tutors or educated in the parish schools, hospitals, ‘private’ boarding schools or academies that abounded in the country. Whatever the institution, the term ‘scientific’ text could have a broad meaning by modern standards, and reflected the religious nature of eighteenth-century Scottish pedagogy. Most Scots started off their education at home, where literate family members, fellow householders or private tutors introduced them to the alphabet and numbers. The Bible and Shorter Catechism of the Church of Scotland were prominently used in this process. They were read to children who memorised verses and sections while learning how to

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recognise parts of the corresponding text. The Edinburgh publisher John Balfour, for example, could recite the entire Catechism as a child. Committing texts to memory was a common pedagogical practice throughout Calvinistic communities in Enlightenment Europe (Allan 1993: 29–78; Jacob and Sturkenboom 2003; Jajdelska 2004). Since the vast majority of eighteenth-century Scots spent at least part of their life in a rural setting (Plant 1952), reading about nature would have been reinforced by their natural environment. For wealthier children, reading practices were supplemented by the new market of children’s chapbooks, cards and lithographs, many of which were imported from London (Demers 2004). Whether through printed illustrations or actual specimens, acts of nature and landscape scenes were regularly used to reinforce mnemonically the subject matter of the Bible and Catechism. As the overarching aim of instruction was moral in tone, natural objects were consequently infused with teleological significance, once again in common with Continental Protestantism (Hessen 2002). Such a framing of nature instilled a notion of order, wonder and meaningfulness that children took with them into adulthood, thereby encouraging beliefs that would guide their later reading habits and their observational patterns when they turned to the systematically focused practices of natural history and natural philosophy. Although some households hired private teachers and tutors, children were usually sent to school around the age of five or six. After 1696, all burgh councils were required by law to provide a salary for teaching masters in parish schools, and eighteenth-century Scottish newspapers regularly carried advertisements seeking candidates for those positions (Houston 2002: 110–61; Davis 2003). Parish school instruction was free and in most places presbyteries and town councils joined forces by employing Church of Scotland ministers as teachers. Additionally, there were free schools and hospitals for orphans, English (lecture) schools for supplementary instruction and ‘private’ schools that housed boarders. Although there were sometimes minor variations, the church and state oversaw the curricula of schools and throughout the century arithmetic, geography and navigation were central subjects that introduced Scottish children to the fundamentals of the modern sciences, as testified to by Reverend Dr William Lang in An Account of Peterhead, its Mineral Well, Air, and Neighbourhood (1793: 57), sold by William Creech in Edinburgh and by Angus and Son in Aberdeen. Since this was the highest level of formal instruction that most literate Scots would receive, teachers placed a heavy focus upon skills that would help students take up a trade or secure an apprenticeship, which accounts for the emphasis on basic principles of natural

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history and natural philosophy. This foundation thus enabled literate Scots to build a scientific understanding of themselves, the natural world and society. On the whole, the arithmetic books used in Scotland were revised versions of works originally published between the 1690s and 1720s, and included Edward Cocker’s Arithmetick (London, 1678), Robert Colinson’s Idea Rationaria or The Perfect Acomptant (Edinburgh, 1683), and James Paterson’s Scots Arithmetician (Edinburgh, 1685). Although there were local textbook traditions for the sciences in several cities, those published in both Edinburgh and London began to coalesce into an informal canon by the 1770s. As early as 1718, at least three Edinburgh teachers had published locally successful books: Alexander Macghie, Principles of Book Keeping Explain’d; Robert Lundin, The Reason of Accompting by Debitor and Creditor; and Alexander Malcolm, A New Treatise of Arithmetick and Book-Keeping. Added to this was the work of James Watson, John Mosman and William Brown, all of whom were consistently involved in the production of these and other ‘scientific’ textbooks in Edinburgh. George Fisher’s The Instructor; or, Young Man’s Best Companion perhaps best represents the sort of publication history that English textbooks experienced in eighteenth-century Scotland. His book mirrors the curricula taught in many Scottish schools, and its subject matter demonstrates how early instruction affected students who went on to read texts that addressed the natural sciences more specifically. Although Fisher wrote as an English ‘accomptant’ at the end of the seventeenth century, his book’s popularity encouraged the publication of improved editions throughout Britain well into the nineteenth century. In Edinburgh it was printed by Gavin Alston in 1763 and reprinted by Alexander Donaldson and James Ruthven throughout the last half of the century. Like so many primary school textbooks at the time, The Instructor was divided into five sections: the three ‘Rs’ (reading, writing and arithmetic), business law, accounting, methods of measurement (metrology) and ‘gauging’ (similar to modern day interior design and landscaping). At face value, these five subjects might seem far removed from the history of science or philosophy; however, metrological tools and analytical methods were directly relevant to systematic natural history and natural philosophy as taught in university or even as discussed in newspapers and coffee houses. Methods of measurement and gauging provided a sound basis from which students could move on to Newtonian mechanics, planetary astronomy, physical geography and hydrology. Indeed, it was not uncommon for young readers’ textbooks to give instructions on how to make dials, rulers,

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quadrants and other instruments. The 1773 Ruthven edition of The Instructor included illustrations of instruments printed on inserted pages that could be cut out and glued to a piece of cardboard, thereby forming a ‘paper tool’. In addition to these metrological foundations, young readers were also introduced to analytical practices inherent in the numerical sequences and rules of arrangement employed by double-entry accounting. As several studies of Antoine Lavoisier and other chemists have shown, this method of mathematical exactitude was directly relevant to the gravimetric analysis employed by chemists, apothecaries, miners and industrialists across Western Europe (Poirier 1996; A. Donovan 1996; F. I. Holmes 1998). To help its readers track the weight of substances, The Instructor even provided a ‘Table of the parts of Apothecaries Weights’, precisely of the sort used in the trade (Fisher 1799: 76). Having acquired this sort of introduction to the subject matter, Scottish students with promise or wealth were sent to high schools to learn Latin and sometimes Greek, around the age of nine or ten, with Edinburgh High School perhaps the most prestigious and its five-year curriculum much emulated. Its students were taught to approach the natural world through a course of study set down by the Church of Scotland and interpreted by the Town Council. Latin and Greek texts were used to address geography, poetry, mythology and ancient history, reinforcing a Calvinistic appreciation of the order and, especially, the utility of nature (Steven 1849; H. M. Anderson 1935; Law 1965: 74–81; Withers 2000: 72–4). The curriculum’s Greek and Roman authors were eyewitnesses to past historical events and as such their testimony about geography and natural history was still considered a valid form of scientific evidence. Only in the nineteenth century were classical authors permanently removed from the Scottish scientific canon. These curricular authors crucially reinforced the fundamental Calvinist notion of natural order, a key assumption underlying natural knowledge in eighteenth-century Scotland. Ovid’s Metamorphosis, for example, promoted the chain of being, and Virgil’s Pastorals underscored the intricate empirical and aesthetic connections between the animate and inanimate world. Once this appreciation attracted the young reader’s eye to nature, the organisational methods of rhetorical composition advocated by Cicero and the Dutch humanist Vossius helped them to formulate analytical skills of textual arrangement and prepared them for the techniques of classification employed in systematic natural history. The methods used to order both textual and natural commonplaces into useful tables and categories proved to

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be very helpful to the students when they became adults – especially when they sought to cut through the massive burst of specimens sent to Edinburgh from the colonies and described in the rising number of Enlightenment natural history books. These methods were reinforced over the holiday periods when students lived with family members and read classical authors to each other for entertainment (Arizpe and Styles 2004). By the mid-century, books with scientific matter that had been written for the expanding adolescent market in England were beginning to reach Scotland and included John Newbery’s Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies (1761), Sarah Trimmer’s An Easy Introduction to the Knowledge of Nature and the Holy Scripture (1780) and John Aiken and Anna Barbauld’s Evenings at Home; or the Juvenile Budget Opened (1792–6) (Fyfe 2000a). The rising popularity of such books in the 1770s was duly noted by Alexander Adam, Edinburgh High School’s rector, when he expanded the curriculum to include them, as Terrence Moore observes in this volume. In general, most Scottish high schools more or less followed a similar approach, with rectors making similar additions and giving private tuition in such ‘scientific’ subjects as arithmetic and bookkeeping.

Proficient Readers Whether a person was part of the middling or landed classes, newspapers played a central role in the acquisition of scientific knowledge by proficient readers or those men and women who were literate, but whose occupations inhibited their ability to buy expensive books or perhaps did not provide enough leisure time for them to pursue a wide breadth of reading. This would include yeomen and tradesmen (with their apprentices and journeymen), farmers, farmhands, servants, engineers, grievers, midwives and apothecaries – many of whom used scientific reading in relation to their occupation (Smout 1989: 366–420). Also available in Scotland’s coffee houses, churches and lending libraries, cheap periodicals made a plethora of subjects traditionally associated with natural history and natural philosophy readily accessible. Indeed, many readers (including some among the aristocracy) saw periodicals as a viable way of promoting scientific knowledge. Newspapers carried metrological notices and tables, accounts of new technologies, advertisements for popular lectures on natural philosophy and accounts of foreign natural objects. Higher up the economic ladder, magazines and gazetteers culled from other periodicals around Britain (and sometimes Europe), as well as including articles

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by the editors and contributions from readers. The Scots Magazine, for example, emphasised content that addressed the natural world, the human body and chemical experimentation (Clow and Clow 1952; S. W. Brown 2000: 64–6). Finally, proficient readers also enjoyed manuals, almanacs and handbooks relevant to their field of expertise and public notices that explained how to calibrate or convert units of measurement. Print played a crucial role in metrological standardisation beyond academic settings. From a quantitative perspective, metrologically focused publications were of central importance to experimentation and commodification, and paved the way for a common mathematical standard by which material objects could be compared. Indeed, standard weights and measures benefited both science and commerce and helped to bring industry and academia closer together. By the middle of the century, aside from the various local and national acts, the unofficial metrological standard was David Gregory’s A Treatise of Practical Geometry (Edinburgh, 1745). In the following decades, John Swindon’s A Proposal for Uniformity of Weights and Measures in Scotland (1779) and John Anslie’s Gentleman and Farmer’s Pocket Companion and Assistant (1802) would also appear in Edinburgh (Connor and Simpson 2004). But, to the chagrin of enthusiastic Newtonians, much of the natural world could not be reduced to mathematical formulae, and most works of natural history were written in qualitative language. During the first few decades of the eighteenth century, authors of periodical articles and chorographies usually employed local names in describing plants, animals and minerals. With the proliferation of English translations and summaries of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae (1735), however, the rest of the century witnessed an increase in the descriptive terms promoted by his binomial nomenclature. Although Linnaean terminology was by no means accepted by all Scotland’s proficient readers, his books became the standard sources to which Scottish periodical articles, manuals and travel accounts referred when attempting to describe a natural object. In this respect, scientific print not only helped spread linguistic standards among proficient readers, it also promoted the classification of the natural world through commonly held categories. Like many smaller European nations, scientific publications in early eighteenth-century Scotland were often a local affair and focused on industrial, medical or natural topics relevant to readers in the Lowlands. During the 1750s and 1760s, however, after the printing lull caused by the 1745 Rebellion, Scottish publishers began to use copyright loopholes to make themselves a formidable presence throughout

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Britain and parts of continental Europe, something Warren McDougall discusses at the outset of this volume (Johns 1998; 2003: 67–90). Much of Scotland’s book trade success derived from the publication of popular natural history and natural philosophy books and periodicals for proficient readers. The prime movers in this new type of print culture were learned printers and publishers like William Smellie, William Creech and James Anderson (Sher 2000:136), who were university-educated and sought to turn academic subjects into popular texts. This transmutation, or perhaps textualisation, took place in many ways, four of which deserve attention. First, the editor could write or translate a work on his own. For example, Creech wrote statistical descriptions of Edinburgh and its environs, including theories of the earth (Letters Addressed to Sir John Sinclair, 1793); Anderson crafted chemically-oriented articles and books on agricultural technologies (Essays Relating to Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 1775); and Smellie translated Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle and wrote theoretically about natural history (The Philosophy of Natural History, 1790, 1799). Second, many publishers either owned or edited their own journal or magazine and they often commissioned local authors to write scientific articles. Throughout its run (1790–4), Anderson’s The Bee made public education a mandate, with recurring emphasis on the sciences, and Smellie dedicated much of his time to editing and printing works of popular science (S. W. Brown 2002). Editors might also print excerpts from manuscript reports relating to Scotland’s geography, population or natural history that had originally been submitted to the government’s Board of Annexed Estates, the committees of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland or the Society for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge. John Walker is a good example of a science writer who turned reports first written for all three of these organisations into articles for the Scots Magazine, including his reports to the General Assembly on the Highlands and Islands in 1766 (XXVIII: 680–9) and 1772 (XXXIV: 288–93). Some scientific articles became books or pamphlets after their success in magazines or as papers for learned societies. Walter Ross’s A Present State of Distillery in Scotland (1786), for example, began as a pamphlet. William Horseburgh’s work on the chemical composition of Hartfell mineral well started as a paper delivered to the University of Edinburgh’s Philosophical Society, was then summarised in the Scots Magazine (1754: 373), published as a pamphlet and finally appeared in volume one of Essays Physical and Literary (1754). The migration from lecture (or even conversation) to article, or from book chapters to magazine extract or book reviews, was part of the complex oral

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and print circulation of scientific knowledge. In a related vein, the third form of textualisation of scientific knowledge came about when Edinburgh’s learned printers assembled two of the largest scientifically orientated publications in eighteenth-century Britain: the three editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1768–71; 1778–83; 1788–97) and Sir John Sinclair’s Statistical Account of Scotland (1791–9). Both publications condensed numerous texts and oral testimonies into accessible articles and, although expensive, they were available to proficient readers through subscription libraries, whose membership and policies are treated elsewhere in this volume. For those who did not have access to such libraries, some of the articles were reprinted or excerpted in the local press. Finally, Edinburgh and Glasgow publishers sometimes waited until authors based in England died and then republished their scientificallyorientated texts. Such was the case with the work of James Ferguson, a Scot and member of the Royal Society, who spent most of his career in London and published popular science textbooks, often with the London-based Scots publishers Andrew Millar and William Strahan.3 Through the middle of the eighteenth century, his cardboard instruments, as well as his books on astronomy, electricity, mechanics and geometry sold widely in Edinburgh, a success that led David Brewster, then editor of the Scots Magazine, to rework the most popular of these as Ferguson’s Lectures on Select Subjects in Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Optics, Geography, Astronomy, and Dialing, for Bell and Bradfute in 1805, and Ferguson’s Astronomy, explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, for John Ballantyne and Co. in 1811. Many books were similarly adapted at the turn of the nineteenth century, suggesting genuine continuity between the Enlightenment’s and the Regency’s proficient readers of science.

Specialised Readers As the eighteenth century progressed, an implicit canon of scientific authors began to form in Scotland through repeated citations of certain texts in university lectures and, consequently, in the papers delivered in academic societies. Thus a group of ‘specialised’ readers of science emerged, who were either university educated or participants, patrons and correspondents of clubs and societies, even in smaller communities such as Perth (Emerson 1979, 1981; Emerson and Wood 2002; Allan 2003b). This group drew heavily from the professional 3

NLS Acc. 10254. James Ferguson Papers.

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class (physicians, advocates, merchants and clergy), the landed gentry, aristocrats, the aforementioned learned book trade and, later in the century, industrialists (factory owners and agricultural innovators). Although natural history and natural philosophy were taught as separate subjects in different faculties within the universities, Scottish students could attend lectures on any subject by simply paying the professor’s fee and the course reading lists were often sympathetically calibrated to afford connections between subjects and across faculties. The books set in the curriculum were then discussed in the many student and learned societies that existed during the latter part of the century (Risse 2005: 67–104). It was for this reason that specialised readers often cited the same texts when giving papers for societies and when writing their own publications. Prior to entering university, Scottish students encountered natural history in the descriptive ways already discussed or through home-grown sources such as Martin Martin’s 1703 Description of the Western Isles (Withers 2000: 69–72; 2001: 69–111). But in Scottish universities, natural history required moving from description to classification. Drawing upon techniques of analytical classification that they had learned in high school, university students familiarised themselves with systematic approaches to arrangement as evinced in Aristotle’s Categories, John Wilkins’s Essay towards a Real Character (1668) and Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae. Next came delving into specialised books, museum catalogues, medical theses, pamphlets and journal articles written about each kingdom of nature. In botanical lectures, John Ray’s Methodus planatarum nova (1682), John Hill’s The Vegetable System (1759–75) and Linnaeus’s Philosophia Botanica were usually cited by professors who included natural history topics in their lectures. For the fabric of the earth, students were referred to Theophrastus, Pliny, Emanuel Mendes da Costa’s A Natural History of Fossils (1757), Axel von Cronstedt’s An Essay towards a System of Mineralogy (1770) and Torbern Bergman’s 1783 text, Outlines of Mineralogy (Eddy 2004: 373–99). No one author served as a standard for zoology, and Edinburgh’s professors, unhappy with the classifications offered by Linnaeus, devised their own based on personal experience, testimony of Scots who had travelled abroad or natural histories of specific places (especially those that addressed European colonies). In general, the Scottish disagreements about zoological classification were profound, something strikingly evident in the contrast between James Burnett, Lord Monboddo’s Of the Origin and Progress of Language (1773) and Henry Home, Lord Kames’s Sketches of the History of Man (1774).

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Like students studying natural history, those reading natural philosophy built upon the skills taught in parish or high schools, the most helpful being their early exposure to mathematics. In university they acquired advanced geometry through recent works such as the Foulis edition of Robert Simpson’s Elements of Euclid (Glasgow, 1756). They then moved on to Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687), often guided by Colin Maclaurin’s An Account of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries (Edinburgh, 1748), which formed the textual backbone for Scottish mathematics and natural philosophy courses until joined by Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Exposition du système du monde (1796). With the exception of Maclaurin most of the core texts in the sciences were Continental, a phenomenon explained by the fact that only a handful of Scotland’s professors willingly committed their lectures to print. This reticence to publish was justified in part by the student practice of keeping meticulous notes, assisted in turn by the Scottish convention of professors selling lecture outlines that provided the heads and terms of the lectures. The resulting notes (sometimes in shorthand) were neatly copied out onto blank sheets of linen paper by the student or by a stenographer and then leather-bound into what was effectively a manuscript ‘textbook’. Once in this form, they had the same function as printed books: they were cited in Scottish learned journals, including Essays Physical and Literary and the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and sold alongside books and bound periodicals at auctions. Cornelius Elliot, for example, lists a bound copy of manuscript notes from Charles Alston’s lectures in his sale catalogue for Professor John Walker’s library in 1804. Dugald Stewart gave his bound copies of Joseph Black’s chemistry lectures to his son Matthew, while Smithson Tennant’s bound notes taken in the courses of John Walker (natural history), Joseph Black (chemistry) and Alexander Monro secundus (anatomy), all from the 1780s, were passed along until they reached the influential nineteenth-century chemist, William Wollaston (Gilbert 1952). Professors thus did not need to publish textbooks because their lectures, and their unique systematic approach to their subject, were preserved in multiple manuscript editions. This transition from oral instruction to textual representation was one of the hallmarks of Scottish university education, as well as the explanation for the scant to absent publication record of significant Scottish scientists like Joseph Black. For students, the content of a manuscript textbook could be spatially arranged to suit personal needs, a feature that was quite useful when dealing with formidable mathematical formulae or long specimen tables. For professors, this practice prevented

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the substance of academic lectures from being mass-produced, thereby ensuring high attendance and the increased fees that came along with it, as well as protecting intellectual property. Professors such as William Cullen would only agree to print in response to unauthorised publications of their lectures. As material objects, the manuscript textbooks were retained by students as reference tools throughout their adult careers, and then given to children or acquired by collectors and university libraries.4 As the catalogues of Edinburgh’s booksellers indicate, Scots wrote and read much in the areas of natural history and natural philosophy. Charles Elliot handled some 150 medical titles alone between 1772 and 1790 (McDougall 2002: 237–54). As with the reading lists given to students in university lectures, the booksellers’ catalogues include a significant number of foreign texts. And those specialised Scottish readers who could afford to travel, like the Duke of Argyll and his nephew Lord Bute, or aspiring physicians like Andrew Plummer, James Hutton and James Hall, brought back from their European tours reading interests that effectively encouraged the acquisition of foreign scientific texts within Scotland (Eyles 1962; Emerson 2002; Eddy 2002: 430–5). Scottish publishers and booksellers embraced this market when they instructed their agents on the Continent to locate and purchase science titles. Many such works were written in either French or Latin, but if a title demonstrated particular promise, publishers commissioned English translations. The entrepreneurship of Edinburgh’s trade resulted in (among others) William Smellie’s translation for William Creech of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle (1780–85), Richard Kerr’s translation of Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry (1790), again for Creech, and Thomas Beddoes’ translation for Charles Elliot of The Chemical Essays of Charles-William Scheele (1786). Such books appealed beyond university students to Scotland’s thriving specialised societies where the initial practice of reading papers created a symbiotic atmosphere in which academics and savants alike learned about new international trends in science, alerting the book trade to scientific titles that promised a profit. Perhaps not surprisingly publishers and printers figured prominently among the founding members of Lord Buchan’s Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Some editors who belonged to these societies exercised their business acumen in convincing their fellow members to write articles for their own journals and newspapers, thereby creating 4

Exemplary specimens based upon eighteenth-century Scottish university lectures in natural history and natural philosophy are preserved at the Wellcome Library (London), the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh), and in the Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow University libraries.

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a crucial link between the interests of proficient and specialised readers of science.

Conclusion Approaching scientific texts through their readership reveals the quantitative and qualitative practices that moved side by side with each other as a student progressed through Scotland’s eighteenth-century education system and social structure. Accountancy was relevant to chemistry and rhetorical compendiums laid the foundation for the kinds of classifications used in the sciences. Such connections present a more integrated picture of how Scots viewed the natural world in a century in which their country witnessed significant economic, educational and demographic growth; they also suggest that the Scottish Enlightenment engaged the literate population through a communal sense of nature that had been fostered by shared reading practices.

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Textbooks Terrence O. Moore He that opens an Academy, it is supposed, must do something to prove his fitness for the office, which he undertakes; and to attract notice and pupils. To the publication of a grammar of our own, or of one of the learned, languages; or a translation of some popular work from French or German literature, to an edition with notes of some celebrated author, or a collection of instructive essays or elegant extracts from works more voluminous or expensive; to a new system of pronunciation or of spelling; or a new guide to Arithmetick or Geography; to these publications, and such as these, recourse has frequently been had, as commodious and creditable modes of announcing to the world at once the name, the talents, and the seminary of the editor. (William Barrow, An Essay on Education, 1802: iv) The history of eighteenth-century Scottish school textbook publishing offers a window into the nature and extent of the Scottish Enlightenment. As Barrow suggests above, school and academy masters throughout Britain operated in a competitive environment during a century when education reform was on the minds of parents, schoolmasters, and well-known men of letters. School-masters hoped to show prospective parents that their institutions embraced the new ideas of John Locke’s influential and controversial Some Thoughts concerning Education, which challenged the prestigious schools of England by arguing persuasively that an English gentleman had more need for the English language than all the ‘Latin and logic’ contained in the schools. Furthermore, Locke insisted that, rather than turning young men into Latin and Greek scholars, education should prepare them ‘to have the knowledge of a man of business, a carriage suitable to his rank, and to 310

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be useful and eminent in his country suitable to his station’. The aim of Lockean education was to teach not so much Latin as virtue (Grant and Tarcov 1996: 46, 64, 69–70, 102, 112–13, 143). Two ‘celebrated’ Scottish school-masters who wrote formal treatises on education, James Barclay of Dalkeith and George Chapman of Dumfries, took pains to show how by devoting a portion of the school day to new subjects, schools could produce young gentlemen both steeped in the classics and well-versed in polite and useful learning, particularly the English language and British history. Textbook editors and authors, many of them school-masters, proved eager to meet the needs of schools determined to embrace the new learning. Latin grammar certainly did not go away. The best-selling textbook in Scotland throughout the century was the cleverly titled Ruddiman’s Rudiments, actually The Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, though popularly known by the former title: a Latin grammar written by the Scottish librarian and printer Thomas Ruddiman, first published in 1714, which reached an impressive twenty-one editions by 1793. Its influence is apparent in the ‘helps’ or supplements to Ruddiman, like James Barr’s Practical Grammar of the Latin Tongue (1770) and John Mair’s Introduction to Latin Syntax (1750), the latter published initially by Ruddiman himself. Similarly inspired, James Barclay composed a Greek Rudiments, ‘in which the Difficulties of that Language are Adapted to the Capacities of Children, after the Plan of Mr. Ruddiman’s Latin Rudiments’ (1754). An English grammar modelled after Ruddiman followed: Lister Metcalfe’s Rudiments of the English Tongue (1771). Another successful route for textbook editors was ushering the Spectator into the school as reading that would, in Addison’s words, both amuse and instruct (Bond 1965: 44). The characters exposed for vice and frivolity by Mr Spectator entertained pupils while they learned to appreciate and emulate the beauties of English prose style. Likewise, the morality of Addison and Steele, and later Johnson, Hawkesworth and even a carefully edited Chesterfield, proved irresistible for schoolmasters determined to ‘form the temper’ and teach ‘such moral precepts as are necessary in the conduct of life’ (James Barclay, A Treatise an Education, 1748: 98). Scottish students encountered the Spectator in various exercises. School-masters insisted their charges render Latin authors into ‘phrases . . . frequent in our Spectators, Guardians, or whoever write with the same spirit and delicacy’ (Barclay 1748: 98). School-master George Chapman required his pupils to translate the Spectator into Latin (George Chapman, A Treatise on Education, 1790: 28). Boswell’s experience reveals that private tutors concurred with

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school-masters since his governor ‘set me to reading The Spectator; and it was then that I acquired my first notions of taste for the fine arts and of the pleasure there is in considering the variety of human nature’ (Pottle 1966: 2). Henry Home, Lord Kames, proposed that the child’s first lesson in taste be distinguishing between the writings of good and bad authors: You cannot have a better book for that exercise than the Spectator. A pleasing vein of genteel humour runs through every one of Addison’s papers, which, like the sweet flavour of a hyacinth, constantly cheers, and never overpowers. Steele’s papers, on the contrary, are little better than trash: there is scarce a thought or sentiment that is worthy to be transferred into a common-place book. After a while, according to Kames, the child would recognise Steele’s writing on sight and declare: ‘Foh! . . . that is Steele, we’ll have no more of him’ (Henry Home, Lord Kames, Loose Hints upon Education, 1782: 108). With less obvious aversion to Steele, editors began to produce texts with selections from the Spectator and other polite authors. An early effort was A Collection of Select Pieces by John Warden, ‘Teacher of English’, first published in Edinburgh (1737), reissued by Alexander Donaldson (1765), with at least one Newcastle appearance (1761). Of its seventy unattributed selections, twenty-seven were from the Spectator and twenty from Charles Rollin’s Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres. By the end of the century, such textbooks had far more variety. William Scott, teacher of ‘English, writing, and accounts’ in Edinburgh, edited the successful Lessons in Elocution; or, A Selection of Pieces in Prose and Verse, for the Improvement of Youth in Reading and Speaking; as well as for the Perusal of Persons of Taste. First published in 1779, it had twelve editions by 1799. Alongside the standard Spectator excerpts and the verse of Shakespeare, Milton, Thomson and Pope, Scott included selections from Dodsley’s fables, Kames’s Loose Hints on Education, Hugh Blair’s sermons, Robertson’s histories (the character of Mary Queen of Scots was favoured in several collections), Hume’s histories and essays (on history and the character of King Alfred) and John Home’s Douglas. Other textbooks followed this recipe: The Edinburgh Entertainer (1750), The Edinburgh Repository (1793), William Perry’s The Orator (1776), John Wilson’s Principles of Elocution (1798) and Lessons in Reading (1780), Arthur Masson’s Collection of English Prose and Verse (1764), Alexander Barrie’s extremely successful collection of that same name

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(1800) and his Tyro’s Guide (1807) and Scott’s Beauties of Eminent Writers (1795). While English anthologies relied heavily on Addison and Steele’s Spectator in the middle of the century, towards the end of the century far more authors, who themselves had been inspired by the Spectator, made their way into the texts. This development was true not only of the Scottish but also of the English press. One important development during the century was the introduction of Scottish philosophers and men of letters into England’s school-books and, hence, the curriculum. The publisher Robert Dodsley included in his text The Preceptor (1748) – called by Boswell ‘one of the most valuable books for the improvement of young minds that has appeared in any language’ (Birkbeck Hill 1934: I: 192) – David Fordyce’s ‘Moral Philosophy’ and William Duncan’s The Elements of Logic. By far, however, the Scot most present in later English anthologies was Hugh Blair. School-masters and editors looked to Blair as both moralist and critic. Blair’s influence is abundantly clear in one of the century’s best known school texts, Elegant Extracts, compiled by the school-master and essayist Vicesimus Knox. In the second edition’s preface, Knox acknowledged that ‘this book in its improved state is under great obligations to the works of DR. BLAIR’, whom Knox considered indispensable to ‘the happiness of his young readers’ (1784: iv). The text’s introduction comprised selections ‘On Pronunciation, or Delivery’, taken ‘from Dr. Blair’s Lectures’, explicitly to connect eloquence and morality: ‘Nothing, therefore, is more necessary for those who would excel in any of the higher kinds of oratory, than to cultivate habits of the several virtues, and to refine and improve all their moral feelings’ (Knox 1784: xviii; Hugh Blair, Lecture upon Rhetoric, 1819: 340). Knox’s Extracts begins with the standard ‘Vision of Mirza’ from the Spectator and Johnson’s ‘Journey of a Day’ from the Rambler, but Spectator and Rambler selections pale in comparison to selections from both Blair’s sermons and his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: 126 total selections from Blair compared to thirty-six from the Spectator, Tatler and Guardian together out of the 1794 fourth edition’s total of 890 selections. The individual lessons from Blair’s ‘Sermon on the Duties of the Young’ show the influence of polite religion and morals on eighteenth-century school environments: ‘Necessity of forming Religious Principles at an early Age’, ‘Happiness and Dignity of Manhood depend on youthful Conduct’, ‘Religion never to be treated with Levity’, ‘Sincerity and Truth recommended’, ‘Order, Idleness to be avoided by observing’ – themes developed by Addison and other essayists earlier, but now directed explicitly to a younger

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audience. A separate edition of this sermon was published by William Creech for school use in 1799. Blair was not the only Scot occupying a fair portion of the voluminous Elegant Extracts. The selections on British history, chiefly portraits of the English kings and queens, fell mostly to the Scots: thirty-five were David Hume’s, twenty-nine Tobias Smollett’s, six William Robertson’s and three James Macpherson’s. Hume’s History was not confined to the extract-style textbooks. Oliver Goldsmith’s History of England was largely cribbed from Hume, and its abridgement became a school standard (1771, 1774). Had Hume edited his own school text, he might have become even more ‘opulent’. Abandoning Goldsmith, George Buist published a one-volume Hume History for schools (Edinburgh, 1793). That same year a history of Scotland, taken mostly from Robertson, also appeared in Edinburgh (Abridgement 1793). Hume’s ascendancy in the schools lasted for a long time, as we are reminded by Churchill’s not-altogether-happy encounter with The Student’s Hume (Churchill 1996: 110). No account of Scottish and Scottish-influenced school textbooks would be complete without mentioning Alexander Adam, rector of the Edinburgh High School and teacher of Walter Scott. His Roman Antiquities (1797) and English and Latin Grammar (1772) drew praise throughout Britain and gained the attention of leading men of letters, who often wrote to him concerning obscure grammatical points. Adam became Ruddiman’s successor. Lord Kames, in one of several letters urging Adam to write a treatise on grammar that would ‘explain the nature of speech conformable to the ideas that pass in our mind’, suggested perhaps the ultimate reason motivating the best Scottish school-masters to write textbooks. Kames claimed such a work would ‘illustrate your name, and entitle you to be classed among the first worthies’.5 The school-masters of Scotland thus wrote a small but important chapter in the history of the Scottish Enlightenment and in so doing gained a small measure of fame.

5

ECA, Alexander Adam’s papers, SL 137/4/1/6/7. Lord Kames to Alex. Adam, 24 October 1780.

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Reading in Universities Roger L. Emerson What students read in Scottish universities changed over time, and those changes delineate the progress and modernisation of Scottish society as it embraced more secular and scientific outlooks and developed university courses oriented toward professional training, especially in medicine and law. Much of this evolution can be reconstructed from the accounts of students’ academic lives, their book purchases, the content of their courses, the library catalogues at their colleges and narratives about their clubs. At St Andrews from 1711 to 1716, the sons of John Mackenzie of Delvine studied Euclid (Books 1–6 and 11 and 12) in a text that included plane and spherical trigonometry and algebra taken from William Whiston’s 1707 edition of Newton’s lectures. They (or their tutor) were familiar with Newtonian natural philosophy from the Latin lectures given at Oxford by John Keill, an Edinburgh student of the 1690s. All this would have been supplemented with Samuel Clarke’s 1697 edition of Jacques Rohault’s Physics, which provided both Cartesian physics and a running refutation of it by the Newtonian Clarke (W. C. Dickinson 1952: lv–lxv). Such instances of new learning were, however, challenged by Gerard de Vries’s late scholastic logic text and works by Aristotle. Readings in metaphysics would have had a Dutch source (Salmond 1950: 66) and, although the Regents at Glasgow were using Bugersdick’s logic, by 1714, having given up dictation, they were ‘teach[ing] from printed books on ye several parts of Philosophy, And generally, ye same books are taught by them all’,6 suggesting a series such as de Vries logic, ontology, pneumatics and 6

NAS MS GD 220\6\1746\6 Montrose Manuscripts. Provides contents of the courses without naming the texts.

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ethics ([W. J. Duncan] 1836: 126). Moral philosophy derived from several schools. Aristotle’s Ethics was studied as was Cicero’s Offices (perhaps the most ubiquitous books of their kind at that time) along with the Stoics, and the Scot Florentius Volusenus (Florence Wilson, 1500–47), whose De Anima Tranquillitate Dialogus was reprinted by Robert Freebairn in Edinburgh in 1707, the year of the Union. As well as the usual religious works, Mackenzie’s sons had a considerable amount of history, probably from the Humanist and Professor of Greek but also from their tutor: Plutarch’s Lives, Xenephon’s History of Greece, Marcus Junianus Justinus’s Historiae Philippicae, Herodian’s History in a bilingual text in Greek and Latin – an Edinburgh edition was printed by Thomas Ruddiman in 1724 – Helvicus’s Chronological Tables and no doubt more than one work in French. They had the Bible and a defence of its authenticity – Isaac Vossius’s critique of Richard Simon on the reliability of the Old Testament text. Another Vossius textbook, the Elementia Rhetorica. In usum Scholarum Hollandiae, & West-Frisiae, editia, would be published by Ruddiman at Edinburgh in 1731. Their studies largely neglected modern learning and, aside from Volusenus, anything Scottish, although they may have borrowed such books from the library (Simpson 2001: 41–56). The tutor of these genteel, episcopal boys would have exposed them to the current arbiters of taste, such as Addison and Steele (perhaps the most reprinted authors in eighteenth-century Scotland), and the previous generation’s Jacobite views. Nonetheless, the books listed in their accounts are 66 per cent Latin, 13 per cent Greek with the remainder equally divided between English, French and editions in unidentified languages. Glasgow, the period’s exemplary university, did a better job than St Andrews in providing access to modern learning. Andrew Rosse the Humanist in 1709 taught the usual Latin authors, varying them annually so that students could retake the course without repetitions. His pupils did geography, chronology and history, with mythology from works such as William King’s Account of the Heathen Gods and Heroes or his likely source, Bayle’s Dictionary. Rosse also assigned ‘fine pieces both of English prose and English verse’ and encouraged students to write papers in English as well as Latin, to which end they read translations of the classical authors. As early as 1707, Rosse offered a private ‘elective’ course on ‘grammar, Criticism, Roman Customs, &’, which continued through to 1750. In it, he lectured on various modern authors.7 Rosse’s English titles may have derived 7

GUL, MS Gen. 357. Andrew Rosse, ‘The Method in which Humanity is Taught at Glasgow University’, On the elective, GUL MS Gen. 25. Also, GUL MS Murray 410.

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from his occasional visits to the London literary scene. But no evidence confirms that Glasgow’s Humanity Library had modern books of the sort promoted by Rosse among his own students. A Glasgow catalogue of 1740–50 lists mostly Latin editions.8 The modern titles appearing in the Edinburgh and Aberdeen university libraries were principally religious, medical (Bunch 1975) or natural philosophical as in ‘The Physiological Library’ founded at Edinburgh in 1722 by Robert Steuart, Professor of Natural Philosophy.9 Alexander Dunlop, Professor of Greek and Rosse’s contemporary, taught the Bajans Greek from Verney’s grammar and introduced historical matter, perhaps from Thomas Stanley’s History of Philosophy or Bayle’s Dictionary, alongside elements of criticism. The student market for classical texts was later supplied by the Foulis Press whose publications were edited by Glasgow professors. The Lecturer and subsequently Professor of Civil and Ecclesiastical History offered both classical and theological training in a course probably based on works by Johann Alphonsus Turretini and Horatio Tursellini. Their works were popular throughout Europe – Tursellini’s had been edited in Holland to make them acceptable to Protestants. Courses available in Hebrew, Chaldean and Syriac, and Arabic, taught from Dutch texts, would eventually appear on Glasgow’s and Edinburgh’s curricula (Duncan 1836: 123f. Arnot, History of Edinburgh, 1779: 240). The Glasgow Regents relied upon late scholastic logics early in the century, but by 1712, Gershom Carmichael combined these with printed sheets of his own compendium, issued in full by 1720 (Moore and Silverthorne 2002: 379–87). Jean le Clerc’s Physica sive de Rebus corporeis and Samuel Clarke’s edition of Rohault’s physics – used in the natural philosophy courses – both discussed Newton. Carmichael, again in 1712, introduced an experimental course based on William Whiston and Francis Hauksbee’s A Course of Mechanical, Optical, Hydrostatical, and Pneumatical Experiments (London, 1713), but by 1723 this had been remodelled after ’s Gravesande’s text, later printed as the widely read Physices elementa mathematica, experimentis confirmata, sive introductio ad philosophiam Newtonianam (Leiden, 1720/21). As the century proceeded, natural philosophy slowly but steadily increased its reliance on demonstrations and experiments. Mathematics at Glasgow – taught by Robert Simson after 1711 8 9

GUL, MS Gen. 25. The subscribers to Steuart’s library are listed together with its catalogue from 1724 in EUL, MS. Dc10.127. The collection of the Aberdeen Medico-Chirurgical Society is contained in An Account of the Aberdeen Medical Society containing the law . . . also a catalogue of the library, 3rd edn (Aberdeen, 1803).

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– probably used the same books as St Andrews, and by mid-century Simson’s own geometry became the college’s preferred text, lasting into the nineteenth century as revised by the Edinburgh mathematician John Playfair (Davie 1964: 105–18). Edinburgh’s courses and assigned books from the Union until the mid-century are recorded in John Chamberlayne’s Magnae Britanniae Notitia or the Present State of Great Britain, etc. (London, numerous editions to 1756) and in Guy Miège’s The Present State of Great Britain (London, numerous editions to 1748). Dr John Boswell listed 1720s and 1730s textbooks (Pitman 1989 and 1990: 67–77, 205–12), and ‘A Short Account of the University of Edinburgh’ (Scots Magazine, 3 August 1741: 371–4) describes the courses and their books. The complete arts curriculum was 44 per cent Latin, with Greek about half that. The texts, however, were nearly as old as those studied at St Andrews thirty years earlier. Nothing like the Edinburgh list exists for Aberdeen but the curriculum and texts of both the town’s colleges have been reconstructed by Paul Wood (1993). The early modernisation of the curriculum (1700–30) came mostly in mathematics and philosophy at Aberdeen, whereas medicine would be the driving force at Edinburgh through to 1760. By 1730 the best students were sufficiently trained to read Newton and science teaching everywhere now included some demonstrations and accounts of experiments. The moralists had assimilated Grotius and Pufendorf and, emulating George Turnbull and Francis Hutcheson, were becoming empirical. The logicians had discovered Locke – or at least John Wynne’s version of him. Further change came around 1760 with the advent of student clubs. Clubs existed among divinity students by 1700, and the Edinburgh Rankenian Club originated with theologues in 1717 before turning to the philosophical and moral topics associated with Locke, Shaftesbury, Berkeley and the English deists Toland and Lord Molesworth. Generally small and often ephemeral, the clubs indicate a heightened interest in modern learning and literature. Their members read papers about and debated modern books. Edinburgh University played a prominent part in establishing these secular clubs, where during the early 1720s members like James Thomson the poet and David Mallet the playwright – both contributors while undergraduates to James McEuen’s influential Edinburgh Miscellany (1720) – displayed their poetic imitations of Horace and Virgil or emulated modern essayists in the Grotesque Club and the Athenian Society. Thomson had already read such English authors as Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Blackmore, Watts, Gay, Swift, Pope, Shaftesbury, Addison, Steele and the London periodicals, along with Scottish works by Gavin Douglas,

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George Buchanan, Sir David Lindsay, Drummond of Hawthornden, Alexander Montgomerie, Sir George Mackenzie, Alexander Pennicuik, Allan Ramsay (whom Mallet assisted in compiling his anthologies) and the Borders balladeers. Scots Latin poetry, a staple of James Watson’s Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems (Edinburgh, 1706, 1709, 1711), filled out Thomson’s reading, especially the works of David Murray of Gorthy and Archibald Pitcairne (Scott 1988: 54–62). Both Thomson and Mallet would have been steeped in Calvinist divinity and the notable late-seventeenth-century English sermon writers, especially John Tillotson and Isaac Barrow.10 The general interest in belles lettres led in 1761 to the founding of Edinburgh’s Chair of Rhetoric after a decade of extramural lectures. Scientific, botanical, medical and legal clubs appeared at Edinburgh by the 1760s, modelled on learned societies (McElroy 1969; Clark 2000). Some student groups established libraries that became quite extensive by the end of the century (Bunch 1975). Glasgow in the 1710s, Aberdeen by the 1730s and St Andrews around 1760 had similar ‘modernising’ clubs whose intellectual currency often eclipsed that of university lectures. These would have benefited enormously from changes in the policies of university libraries, which began to focus on modern books and employed less restrictive borrowing regulations. From 1697 and continuing through the eighteenth century, the Glasgow University library catalogue shows a marked shift toward English and French books, away from Latin. Around mid-century, the curriculum shifted again partly due to an increased belief in empiricism and scientific methods and partly in response to a more sentimental appraisal of human nature. By the 1750s new professors like Thomas Reid and Adam Smith opened up logic and epistemology to empirical methods and psychology, thus emphasising what these disciplines revealed about humanity in its changes and especially its progress over time. For Reid and Smith this meant engaging with the history of the ever-increasing capacity for abstract thought on the part of human society and the interdependent evolution of language, manners and morals. A contemporary account of John Bruce’s logic classes at Edinburgh nicely demonstrates this change (Arnot 1779: 406–8). The study of morals began to engage the natural history of man, which required examining the stages of human life through a comparison of primitive gatherers and hunters, shepherds and agriculturalists to the men and women 10

The typical reading of a theologue is recorded in the ‘Commonplace Book of Thomas Tullideph’, St Andrews University Library MS LF1117.R6.

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of the commercial and modern world whose institutions reflected the complexity of their social and economic conditions. How to explain this social evolution became a problem, one explored in texts like John Millar’s Historical View of the English Government (1787) and Adam Ferguson’s Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792). Both contained materials from lectures delivered for many years before they were published. Morals had always included politics; now political economy and what we might call anthropology or sociology profoundly informed the syllabus. History courses became available at Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews, while the subject was taught only after a fashion at Aberdeen’s two colleges. Glasgow and St Andrews offered the related study of belles lettres which simply appeared in some lectures at Aberdeen. Many of the professors now wrote books making explicit the recommended readings for their classes, including such works as Charles Rollin’s course on belles lettres, translated into English and published repeatedly at London after 1734 or Robert Dodsley’s Preceptor (1748). Some sense of what Adam Smith assumed his students had read can be gleaned from an account of his course taken down in 1762–3 (Smith 1983; 1985), while Hugh Blair’s expectations can be inferred from his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, first published in London by William Strahan and Thomas Cadell and in Edinburgh by William Creech in two volumes in 1783. Contemporary student notes and professors’ manuscripts provide further sources (Howell 1971: 536–691); the student record of the rhetoric lectures given by Robert Watson, Professor of Logic, Rhetoric and Metapahysics at the University of St Andrews (1756–78) is especially useful (Bator 1994). But perhaps the best guides to the readings of late-eighteenth-century students are the citations of books in the writing of such men as George Jardine, Hugh Blair, Thomas Reid, James Beattie, Dugald Stewart and John Anderson. For the theologues, the works of George Campbell and George Hill serve the same function. Hugo Arnot provides a synoptic, although general, view of the complete Edinburgh curriculum and some of its texts in his History of Edinburgh (Book 3, Chapter 3), which indicates a significant diminution in Latin content. Students who read more than textbooks in college would continue to read once they had left and some amassed special collections. Those were often the fashionable and rich young men who made the Grand Tour. As in the case of one of the earliest examples, Lord George Douglas around 1690, they might return home with a library of the ancients and the antiquarian literature needed to study it. Douglas also bought much in law and philosophy as well as 140 volumes of Italian

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literature. The content of Douglas’s library was 50 per cent English, 33 per cent Latin, 10 per cent Greek, with the rest French and Italian (Cadell and Matheson 1989: 38ff.). By the mid-century tourists came back from Europe with ancient literature and history, language books and others related to their future profession. Professor William Rouet’s purchases (described below) are illustrative in this regard. In the late 1760s and 1770s, young men on the Tour brought back works by Voltaire, Rousseau and other philosophes, French scientists and even pamphlets on the Americas. For example, among the complete record of the expenses and purchases made for the medical education of James Home, son of Professor Francis Home, are volumes of Voltaire’s Age of Louis XIV, a geography, atlases, Horace, Homer, a catechism, a bible, a Spanish dictionary and ‘Johnstones Dict.’.11 Sir Gilbert Elliot’s sons listed many of the books they read in letters to their father (1767–71). We see the percentage of belles lettres rise while the Latin titles steadily decline to less than one half the total.12 They seem to have read more French than Greek, more history than philosophy and more mathematics and science than religion or moral philosophy. By the 1790s, students’ books became increasingly French, literary and political; the classics were receding, as witnessed by the Yale-educated physician Elihu Hubbard Smith’s account of what he and his Scottish colleagues were reading in literature, medicine and politics in the century’s final decade (Cronin 1973). Most eighteenth-century students were not yet eighteen when they left university, making the range of their reading all the more remarkable. They were by necessity multilingual readers, if only because of their training in classics, although many would also have been grounded in French and some in Italian. Their reading practices would have differed from students in later periods because of the amount of repetition required of them by their tutors; if they sometimes read fewer books, they would have read them more intensively, virtually committing many to memory. The pedagogy of the early eighteenth century included much rote learning, established in the grammar-school practice of reading Latin poems and then translating, retranslating and rereading them. Knowing something meant having the ability to reproduce the argument and form, to imitate it as well as use it in other ways: studying in the eighteenth century required paying attention to the formal aspects of argument. The reading of eighteenth-century 11

12

‘Dr Francis Home’s Cash Book June 1767 to Feby. 1809’ in the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. NLS MS 11012. The Minto Papers.

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students also reflected the characteristic tensions between classical culture and Christianity, which set faith and charity at odds with Greek and Roman notions of virtue and even fortune. But the moderns would eventually triumph over the ancients, when education at the end of the century was transformed by revolution, nationalism and industry, three forces that would reshape texts as well as maps.

Professor Rouet’s Book Purchases in Holland, 1741–2 In the manuscript preface to his lecture notes, William Rouet, Glasgow University Professor of Ecclesiastical and Civil History, wrote: The following lectures I intend should comprehend whatever is remarkable both in Ecclesiastical & prophane history, being thoroughly convinced that Church-history consider’d intirely by itself, without any politicall Connections, or references to the Civil history of these times, must in itself be imperfect & unsatisfactory.13 In 1741–2, during one of his journeys through the Continent, Rouet’s book purchases clearly demonstrate the eclectic and inclusive nature of his syllabus. He acquired 112 titles, bought variously in Leiden, The Hague, Rome, Naples and Paris, and comprising twenty-one folios, eight quartos and eighty-three octavos, as well as maps of London, Milan, France, Italy and England. These included imprints from Paris, Geneva, London, Amsterdam, Lyon, Milan, Rotterdam and Glasgow; among his last purchases, Rouet records: ‘Hutchinson’s Compend: Phil: Moral. 1742’.14 His accounts list these other authors and texts: Aristotle, Plato, Sophocles, Pausanius, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Heroditus, Suetonius, Pliny, Persius, Virgil, Horace, Terrence, Seneca, Cicero, Catullus, Tacitus, Grotius, Lucretius, Juvenal, Josephus, Tasso, Petrarch, Dante, Moliére (Lyons, 1694), Addison (London, 1736), the Duke of Buckingham’s Works, Lettere de Principia Venezzia (1583), Memoires sur le commerce des Hollandais, as well as thesauruses, dictionaries, grammars, psalms and works on Roman antiquities. Rouet purchased twenty-five works of classical literature in Holland, mostly printed by Elzevir, and paid cash in local currency, amounting to ‘43.8 gils’, for that particular lot.15

13 14 15

NLS MS 4992. NLS MS 4990. NLS MSS 4990, 4991.

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Institutional Libraries Murray C. T. Simpson Scotland’s largest twenty-first century institutional libraries number their stock in the millions, to which can be added vast internet sources, a far cry from their early eighteenth-century antecedents. The oldest established university, St Andrews, probably had about 3,000 volumes by 1710 in its central library, two of the three colleges having their own libraries. Glasgow possibly had 3,500 volumes by 1700; the library at King’s College, Aberdeen, approximately 2,700 that year; although the youngest, Edinburgh had over 11,000. The library of Edinburgh’s Faculty of Advocates, initiated in the 1680s, already had 5,000 volumes. By 1800, all these libraries saw their stock increase dramatically: Edinburgh is reckoned at 50,000 volumes by 1815; Glasgow, probably over 20,000 by 1800; St Andrews, about the same. The Advocates’ Library, however, now led with some 56,000 titles by 1807. The modest size of these institutional libraries in 1700, and their rapid growth thereafter, naturally affected everything from accommodation to catalogues, staffing and general administration.16 The universities responded variously to increased holdings. Only Glasgow provided a new, custom-built library, designed by William Adam and constructed between 1732 and 1744. But it proved insufficient, and by the 1770s alterations had to be made. In the early 1750s, Edinburgh University returned its books to the original 1617 library, with an added storey. This too proved inadequate, and after 1790 new accommodation, conceived by Robert Adam to incorporate 16

On Edinburgh, see Guild and Law 1982; Aberdeen, Rait 1896, Carter and McLaren 1994, McLaren 1995; King’s, Pickard 1987, Geddes 2000; Glasgow, Dickson 1888; Advocates’, Cadell and Matheson 1989, I. G. Brown 1989, Hillyard 1990; St Andrews, Ardagh 1948–55, St Andrews University, 1955.

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Figure 4.1 Old Library, Edinburgh University, site of University Printers and Hamilton, Balfour and Neill printing house 1754–62.

a library, appeared around the University’s decaying buildings: the old library remained in use, however, until well after 1800 (Figure 4.1). In St Andrews, the Upper Hall housing the library was heightened between 1765 and 1767, and a gallery constructed; the stock of the two college libraries was incorporated into the main collections in 1783. In Aberdeen in the 1720s, King’s College Library was reconstructed within Bishop Stewart’s building, abutting the Chapel, but this accommodation was too small and not watertight. A classical, domed replacement was planned without fruition, and in 1773 the west end of King’s College Chapel was fitted with gallery cases, becoming the library for almost a century. At Marischal College, where the library occupied the main building’s top floor from 1724, increased stock similarly demanded more shelving. University library holdings continued to develop through seventeenth-century means: fees from matriculations and graduations, student fines, miscellaneous grants from civil and university authorities, donations of money and stock from individuals. However, the provision of the Copyright Act of 1710 gave these institutions and the Advocates’ Library the right to request gratis any book registered at Stationers’ Hall (at Aberdeen, King’s College appropriated this right

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to the chagrin of Marischal). Although a privilege, this was no unmixed blessing: agents were needed; acquisitions had to be shipped from London, incurring additional costs; and books usually came in sheets, requiring further funds for binding. Often, unwanted and imperfect material arrived, although sales of such items, especially music, could be effected. In 1826, an Edinburgh professor declared that legal deposit privilege ‘has loaded our shelves with a great deal of trash’ (Guild and Law 1982: 66). What is more, many books that should technically have come free had to be purchased because agents were deficient or publishers failed to register titles. Nevertheless, much was provided. A detailed study of the situation at St Andrews suggests (albeit from imperfect records) that between 1710 and 1800 around 5,000 volumes were received from Stationers’ Hall, while in the same period only around 4,600 were purchased (Ardagh 1948–55); clearly the Act significantly affected growth here, and the situation was undoubtedly similar elsewhere. Eighteenth-century university libraries received no really major donations; although Glasgow knew at William Hunter’s death in 1783 that his magnificent library would eventually come to them, this did not happen until 1807. Otherwise, apart from a gift of 1,300 items, mainly medical, to Marischal College by its Chancellor, Lord Bute, the trend was small gifts and bequests of collections comprising fewer than 1,000 volumes and single books. When acquired, books were catalogued as resources permitted. Glasgow printed a two-volume catalogue in 1791, one arranged by shelf mark, one by author; but no other university aspired to a print catalogue of its collections, instead producing manuscript lists arranged by shelf mark or author, or lists of accessions and donations. However, the Edinburgh Physiology class library printed a catalogue in 1725 a year after its foundation; and the Theological Library at Aberdeen, established in 1700 for students of both colleges but housed at Marischal, published one in 1790. These student-designated collections were often administered by professorially supervised students. Glasgow had a Humanity class library from 1725, and a Theological Library from 1744. (Edinburgh’s Theological Library had been established in 1698.) This development suggests that students were dissatisfied with the main collections, although it appears, not least from surviving graffiti, that they increasingly used the main stacks as the century progressed and teaching methods changed. Administration of the university libraries differed significantly. In Edinburgh, following the death in 1747 of Robert Henderson, Librarian since 1684, the post was held by a professor, with an underlibrarian appointed for the routine work. At King’s College, Aberdeen,

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the working librarian’s post was attached to a divinity bursary from the 1730s. At Marischal College the Regents themselves acted as librarians in rotation, after 1754. In Glasgow, the working bibliothecarius was a divinity student throughout the century, as before 1700; originally appointed for four years by the town and the University alternately, the post-holder had his term lengthened after 1774. Operating hours varied, with Edinburgh and Glasgow best provided. At King’s College, Aberdeen, student borrowing was allowed from 1720, but there was no student borrowing at Marischal, despite short opening hours. In 1700, university libraries might administer bizarre objects, such as Edinburgh’s ‘corn of considerable bigness’ acquired from James Clark in 1692 (Guild and Law 1982: 53–4). More useful were globes, telescopes and barometers held by libraries for university research. Outlandish objects declined as the century progressed, but St Andrews University Library in 1940 still had the skeleton of the university porter, who hanged himself from the library balustrade in 1707, suspended in a case above the fatal stair. The most notable non-book collections in any eighteenth-century Scottish institutional library were not, however, held by the universities but by the Advocates with its coin and medal cabinet and collection of antiquities, including a mummy, donated in 1748. Nevertheless, by 1800, the museums of specialist institutions like the Society of Antiquaries increasingly housed such material. The Society of Antiquaries, founded in 1780, also began an eclectic library which was open to the public and offered borrowing privileges to Fellows, with its catalogue continuously recorded in the minute book alongside the museum’s acquisitions (A. S. Bell 1981). The Royal Society of Edinburgh, established three years after its bitter rival the Antiquaries, did not have much of a library until after 1800. Meanwhile, the Advocates’ Library bought manuscripts and books extensively (although the funding from advocates’ entrance fees was erratic) and expanded through the Copyright Act and donations. Although university libraries acquired by gift such important manuscripts as the fifteenth-century psalter bequeathed to King’s College by Bishop Gilbert Burnet in 1715, only the Faculty of Advocates purchased whole manuscript collections, notably Sir Robert Sibbald’s in 1723 and much of Robert Wodrow’s (1759 and 1791).17 To these were added gifts like the Balcarres Papers (1712), the Bannatyne Manuscript (1772) and the Auchinleck Manuscript (1744). 17

Many printed items from Sibbald’s library were purchased at the same time.

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The most effective Advocates’ librarian was Thomas Ruddiman, who started employment as an assistant keeper in 1702, became Keeper in 1730 and retired in 1752, but the most famous was David Hume who served five years following Ruddiman (1752–7), before crossing his employers who required him in 1754 to remove three of his French purchases deemed improper. The clash was likely personal since the Advocates’ Library had a liberal collecting remit before and after Hume. This remit emphasised antiquarian as much as contemporary interests. The 1516 Complutensian Polyglot Bible was purchased in 1730, forty-two incunables came between 1728 and 1752, and in 1788, the oldest extant pieces of Scottish printing, produced by Chepman and Myllar in 1508, were donated. The earliest substantial European printed book of all, a 1455 Gutenberg Bible, entered the collection in 1806. Advocates were allowed to borrow, almost from the start, and lax loan regulations often caused problems. Opening hours were generous, and when the courts were sitting, the library operated at least six hours daily on weekdays, throughout the century. Those who were not advocates were allowed to consult, and many did as the collections grew in stature and extent. From the 1770s, non-advocates were allowed to borrow, after leaving appropriate security. An author catalogue was printed in 1742, calling the collection a ‘public library’, with supplements in 1776 and 1787. Only in accommodation did the Faculty fail. When fire destroyed the tenement housing the collections in 1700, the Library moved to the ‘Laigh Hall’, underneath where parliament met. Thereafter, expanding the collections meant annexing adjacent rooms, which were verminous and prone to damp. In 1791, Robert Adam designed a new court building incorporating sumptuous library premises, but it remained only a plan. Adam in his plan also included space for the Society of Writers to HM Signet, which had a library in Writer’s Court from 1722. A collection strictly of law books until the 1750s, it then diversified, printing a 3,000 volume catalogue in 1792. Its accommodation problem was solved spectacularly after 1800 during the library’s greatest period of growth (History, 1890; Ballantyne 1979). Edinburgh by 1800 was increasingly well endowed with institutional libraries, particularly related to medicine (Bunch 1975). The Royal College of Physicians (1681) moved its expanding collections (over 2,300 volumes by 1767) during the 1780s to premises designed by James Craig, with a pillared library hall in George Street. Catalogues printed in 1767 and 1793 show both non-medical and medically-related material (Royal, 1980). The Medical Society of Edinburgh (1727; from 1778, ‘Royal’) developed a distinguished library, introducing printed catalogues in 1766 (J. Gray

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1952). The Physico-Chirurgical Society (1771) had a library by 1780, when it changed its name to the Physical Society before receiving its royal charter (1788) and printing a catalogue (1799). On the other hand, the Royal College of Surgeons’ library, established shortly before 1700, came to an abrupt end when its 560 volumes were handed over to the University in 1763. The Royal Infirmary (1729) gave up collecting books around 1778. The Royal Botanic Garden depended for books on the personal collections of successive keepers, made available for the use of others and removed on their departure or death. However, the Regius Keeper was also Professor of Botany, and the University’s resources could be accessed; by the 1760s under John Hope books were bought specifically for the Garden (Mathew 1987). Outside Edinburgh, the situation was also buoyant. The Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (now the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow) began a library in 1698, had a dedicated librarian from 1755 and printed catalogues in 1778 and 1799 (T. Gibson 1983; Beaton 1998). Anderson’s Institution, to which Strathclyde University traces its origins, was established in Glasgow under the will of Professor John Anderson who died in 1796, and whose own books formed the library’s nucleus. From 1791, Marischal College housed the small library of the Aberdeen Medical Society (Medico-Chirurgical Society from 1811) founded in 1789, which by 1794 held 440 volumes and had printed catalogues two years earlier. Throughout Scotland by 1800 there were small library collections attached to numerous institutions, including masonic lodges, infirmaries, schools and social clubs.18 Even the inn in Laurencekirk visited by Johnson and Boswell in 1773 had some books for visitors. In Lanark, the eminent obstetrician William Smellie left his library of perhaps 500 volumes to the town’s school (Tait and Wallace 1952). The library at Innerpeffray, founded before 1700, grew to serve the local community as a lending library: 300 individuals borrowed books between 1747 and 1800, including eleven women. It acquired new premises in 1762 and comprised some 3,000 volumes by 1800 (E. W. Powell 1998). Another publicly available collection was the Gray Library at Haddington, established in 1729, under the terms of episcopal clergyman John Gray’s will, through a 1,300 title foundation collection (W. F. Gray 1929). The town subsequently augmented this; eighteenthcentury borrowing registers survive, as at Innerpeffray. The small Kirkwall Library, founded in 1684 with about 160 volumes, continued 18

For schools see J. Grant 1876.

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as a public collection, as did Dundee’s where a 1724 catalogue listed about 1,700 titles in 2,000 volumes. Many other libraries were also accessible to readers who did not belong to universities or learned societies (Kaufman 1965, 1969). The three last named libraries were distinguished by deep clerical roots, and the church in Scotland ran several libraries. In 1699, the Reverend James Kirkwood, a Scottish clergyman who had resided in England since the 1680s, had advocated in print (Kirkwood 1699) a nation-wide network of parish libraries administered by the local minister, but this came to nothing. However, there must have been relatively fluid parish collections throughout Scotland looked after, augmented or reduced, by successive ministers and available to parishioners. One well-recorded and administered example was at Saltoun, near Haddington, a foundation of 1657, which flourished during the eighteenth century. Kirkwood modified his scheme to libraries in the Highlands in a 1702 pamphlet. This time something was done: funds were raised, the blessing of the General Assembly obtained and boxes of suitable books, numbering some 5,400 volumes and pamphlets, shipped from London to the north and west of Scotland. Titles were more heterogeneous in subject and greater in number for presbyteries than for individual parishes. Most of the books unfortunately disappeared in the Jacobite troubles, or were appropriated by individuals, but the Presbytery of Inverness library survived and grew, administered by the Inverness Kirk Session (A. Mitchell 1902). Sixty books from Dumbarton Presbytery Library are preserved in Glasgow University Library. Lowland presbyteries also founded libraries: one was Dunbar (1706), another Dumfries (Howard 2002), where a collection started shortly after 1700 was stimulated by a bequest of about 200 books from John Hutton, a local who had been Physician to William III and MP for Dumfries from 1710. Further acquisitions occurred over the years, and from 1731 it became a subscription library, a natural way for smaller collections with limited resources to seek more funds through wider readership. But such public libraries are ultimately dissimilar to institutional collections, and their particular characteristics are explored in detail by Keith Manley elsewhere in this volume. The Leighton Library at Dunblane (Willis 1981), initiated before 1700 for local clergy, went the same way as Dumfries Presbytery, changing to subscription in 1734. Religious groups outside the established church, whether Secession academies or the Roman Catholic seminaries at Scalan and then Acquhorties (Watts 1999), also possessed collections that often had a precarious peripatetic existence.

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The picture of eighteenth-century Scottish institutional libraries is one of expanding diversity. The universities and professions established collections that reflected the emerging disciplines of the Enlightenment and emphasised improvement through access to knowledge. Such libraries evolved around and out of the research associated with their members and became repositories for the texts necessary to the academic pursuit of modern science, medicine, history and social studies, as collections that began with core classical and theological works were enriched by various methods with the books of modern empirical scholarship. In Scotland, institutional libraries were largely secular, despite recurring attempts by the General Assembly to assert a presence through presbyteries, and their elite ambitions were increasingly complemented by an extraordinary network of public, subscription and circulating libraries that allowed a more universal access to the new learning. Although institutional and circulating libraries sometimes shared a source, theirs were more often exclusive foundations, with institutional collections defined by their simultaneous mandates to be both eclectic and specialist, and the universities and the Advocates’ Library elevated through deposits received under the Copyright Act. The extraordinary growth of Scottish institutional libraries during the eighteenth century suggests that David Hume should not have found it ‘strange’ that Scots ‘shou’d really be the People most distinguish’d for Literature in Europe’ (Greig 1932: I: 255).

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Private Libraries Murray C. T. Simpson The creation of a library requires money and dedication, coupled with the availability of the desired books. In eighteenth-century Scotland most books were available, if you wanted them badly enough, had the time to search them out (or money to pay someone to find them for you) and the means to pay for them. Booksellers, particularly in Edinburgh, were in regular contact with their English and Continental counterparts, all prepared to seek out books old and new, gleaned from home and abroad. Throughout the century through increasing prosperity and post-1745 domestic peace, Scottish private libraries grew in number and size. In 1700, a library of 3,000 volumes was exceptional, but by 1800, it was not uncommon.19 Scotland’s most wealthy between 1700 and 1800 were usually aristocrats, who increasingly lavished money on books. Some aristocratic libraries were merely for show, but several nobles developed a passion for book collecting that exceeded oneupmanship. Pre-eminent in the century’s first half was Archibald Campbell, Earl of Ilay and from 1743 third Duke of Argyll; however, his library of some 12,000 volumes was largely kept in London (Emerson 2000). The Prime Minister and third Earl of Bute likewise kept his books mostly in the south, as did the great bibliophile John Ker, third Duke of Roxburghe, whose name now belongs to Britain’s most prestigious society of book collectors, the Roxburghe Club. At over 30,000 volumes this was the largest private library formed by a Scot in the eighteenth century. Roxburghe kept some books at his Scottish seat at Floors, supplementing those collected by the first Duke. Earlier Earls of Bute had established the Mountstuart library on that island. The Dukes 19

See Brian Hillyard’s NLS online Dictionary of Scottish Book Collectors.

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of Queensberry at Drumlanrig had a substantial library before 1700, as did the Marquesses of Lothian and Tweeddale at their respective seats. Holders of newer titles, such as Hopetoun, Rosebery and Fife, also gathered books around them. The gentry whose wealth rivalled the aristocracy often spent surplus resources in collecting libraries. The Gordon of Gordonstoun library was distinguished well before 1700, while Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun built up probably the best private library in Scotland by 1700, with 6,000 titles (Willems 1999). Later in the century Patrick Hume of Paxton amassed a library whose Continental titles reflected his foreign travels. The Dalyells of the Binns had a modest collection before 1700, and families like the Maxwells of Pollok, Gordons of Fyvie, Brodies of Brodie, Grants of Monymusk, Colquhouns of Luss and Baillies of Mellerstain used increasing wealth to collect books. Many gentry were also professional men, usually lawyers, and they had some of the finest Scottish libraries. Pre-eminent were the Dalrymples of Newhailes, Dundases of Arniston and Boswells of Auchinleck, but the Erskines of Alva, Erskines of Dun and Clerks of Penicuik, other gentry with strong legal associations, also created outstanding libraries.20 In 1720, the wide-ranging collection of the lawyer Sir Alexander Seton, Lord Pitmedden, was sold at auction in Edinburgh in over 3,000 lots. The books of Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session, went under the hammer in 1748. The landed classes were constantly being reinvigorated by the newly wealthy, many of whom began book collections: for example, the Adams were architects who built up a substantial family library at their seat of Blair Adam; while the Glasgow tobacco baron Alexander Speirs, who bought the estate of Elderslie in Renfrewshire in 1769, created a library to demonstrate his social credentials.21 It is difficult to give accurate figures for books in the libraries of eighteenth-century landed families because of dispersals and accretions. However, many aristocrats and gentry in 1700 probably had collections of between 500 and 1,000 volumes. Some exceeded that figure: the libraries of the Queensberries, Tweeddales and Lothians likely surpassed 2,000 by 1700, while the Gordonstoun library probably reached 2,000 even earlier. After 1700, books in Scottish landed libraries would have increased greatly: the Dalrymple of Newhailes’s books numbered over 7,000 by 1800, as shown by the extent of the 20

21

The Dalrymple of Newhailes library and books from the Erskine of Alva library are now in the NLS. An 1843 catalogue of the Speirs of Elderslie library is in the NLS (Acc.11037).

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collection now in the NLS. Several other landed libraries had reached 3,000–5,000 volumes by the early nineteenth century: Dundas of Arniston housed just over 4,000 in 1819 (Wigston 2001: 13). Where did these landed people put their books in their increasingly comfortable and elegant homes (Simpson 2009)? Before 1700, apart from very small collections that could be kept in chests, a few shelved presses or cupboards were adequate for libraries like that at The Binns in West Lothian. At Ferniehurst in the Borders, open shelving in a small tower room was used. These modest precedents make all the more remarkable the enormous library room set up by Sir David Dalrymple between 1718 and 1722 in a separate wing at his house at Newhailes near Edinburgh (Gow 2000). Its sheer size, with space for about 7,000 volumes on 17-foot-high open shelving, is unique at this time, and was still uncommon in 1800. Its location exemplified one favoured position for libraries in country houses: at Duff House near Banff, Yester in East Lothian and Hopetoun House in Midlothian, libraries in wings or pavilions were also planned, although never built. Another favoured location was high up in a house, as at William Adam’s Arniston, built for the Dundases, but also at Haddo House for the Earls of Aberdeen, at the House of Dun in Angus for the Erskines and at Rosehall in Lanarkshire. The Earls of Fife at Duff House also ended up with a library under the eaves. The library of the Earl of Strathmore at Glamis in Angus was lower, on the first floor, but in a relatively isolated position, while the library room at Auchinleck, although the grandest room in the house, was on the first floor along with most of the bedrooms, with the principal social rooms one floor below. Such locations ensured that the library was outside the house’s main social axis, and thus in a quiet, private, area. This did not mean strict utilitarianism: Arniston’s ‘skied’ library room had glazed cases and pillars, and busts over the cases (Wigston 2001); and while Traquair’s third-floor library did not have busts, it had painted heads along the cornice (although these, still extant, might be early nineteenth-century additions). Increasingly attractively appointed libraries with their books providing plenty of insulation to retain the heat and resist the cold became choice sites for a variety of wet weather functions. Such rooms could be enlivened by globes on stands, prints, maps and cabinets for fossils and shells, or even a billiard table, as at House of Dun. The diversification of library uses encouraged their relocation to the principal floor, incorporating them into the main rooms: the current library at Hopetoun is on the piano nobile, as is the most sumptuous of eighteenth-century library rooms, that designed by Robert Adam

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for the Baillies at Mellerstain. Here, books became décor with dazzling results. Large libraries like Newhailes and the House of Dun often had adjoining closets, which were easier to heat and more private. Smaller country houses usually did not aspire to a library room as such, merely having studies, with wall shelving or free-standing bookcases. Even grand houses might not have dedicated library rooms: Inverary is one example; and many plans given in William Adam’s Vitruvius Scoticus do not specifically denote one room as a library (Adam 1980). Professional men without land had less scope to house their books, although some had impressive collections. David Steuart, entrepreneur and Lord Provost of Edinburgh, was compelled for financial reasons to sell his book collection just after 1800; it contained a 1455 Gutenberg Bible among other monuments of early printing. One of the best known non-landed libraries in eighteenth-century Scotland belonged to the economist Adam Smith (Mizuta 2000). Intensively studied, his 3,000 volumes show wide-ranging interests, from a first edition of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus to the latest works of the philosophes, sometimes in presentation copies. Kept in his Edinburgh home, it is truly an Enlightenment library; a 1781 inventory records detailed shelving arrangements (Yanaihara 1966). Few books from the library of Smith’s friend David Hume are identified because of subsequent dispersal and lack of unambiguous ownership marks, although an attempt to document titles he may have owned was published in 1996, suggesting a collection similar to Smith’s (Norton and Norton 1996). James Boswell kept a professional legal collection of over 300 titles in Edinburgh, while the books of George Paton, antiquary and like Smith a Customs official, were sold after his death in 1807: the catalogue of the first sale contained 2,870 lots (1809). Medical doctors created several fine libraries, the best including subjects outside the material needed for professional work. After Sir Robert Sibbald’s death in 1722, his books were sold in 5,178 lots, with his fine manuscript collections purchased complete for the Advocates’ Library. The Scots-born Dr William Hunter amassed a princely library, containing the finest medieval manuscripts and early imprints, but acquired outside Scotland, and only brought to Glasgow University from London in 1807 under the terms of his will. Scottish doctors travelled widely: Robert Erskine spent his professional life in Russia as Physician to the Tsar, and his library of some 2,500 titles was acquired by Peter the Great for the future Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. Erskine was instrumental in obtaining for the same institution the 1,500 volume library of fellow Scot Dr Archibald Pitcairne.

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A typescript list of Pitcairne’s and Erskine’s books is in the NLS (Acc. 8042). Several collections formed by medical men found their way into institutional libraries in Scotland: the 1,250 item library of Dr John Drummond was given to Edinburgh’s Royal College of Physicians (1741); 200 volumes collected by Dr Thomas Kincaid went to Edinburgh’s Royal College of Surgeons (1709); and the surgeon Sir William Fordyce gave medical books to Marischal College, Aberdeen (1790). The obstetrician William Smellie retired to his birthplace, Lanark, and left his library of some 500 volumes to the town’s school. Other medical collections, like that of Drs David and John Clerk and the great William Cullen were dispersed at auction. In the related area of botany, successive Keepers of the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh acquired working libraries that were usually sold by them or their heirs, but the botanical titles in Dr John Hope’s library, retained by his descendants, returned to the Botanic Garden in the nineteenth century. These Keepers were also Professors of Botany at Edinburgh University, and, predictably, libraries were acquired by many academics. The poet James Beattie, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen, is known to have lent books from his library to students; books collected by the Monro medical teaching dynasty have ended up in New Zealand (Bunch 1975: 63–5); and some 850 volumes of the mathematician Professor Robert Simson were bequeathed to his university, Glasgow. The books of Professor Hugh Blair were sold by auction after his death in 1800, while those of the mathematician Matthew Stewart and his son the philosopher Dugald Stewart are now in Edinburgh University’s library. Similarly, books collected by members of the Gregory family, a notable dynasty of scientist-teachers, are now in Aberdeen University’s library. Hugh Blair was also a distinguished clergyman, and clerical libraries were very widespread, whether owned by Roman Catholic priests, living in shaky security, non-juring episcopalian bishops, Church of Scotland ministers, or dissenting clergy of various persuasions. Clerics had, after all, been among the foremost book collectors for centuries. In eighteenth-century Scotland there were no really outstanding clerical book collections, although the library of the episcopal Reverend John Gray, containing 1,300 titles at his death (1717), formed the basis of Haddington’s town library.22 Sale records survive for several clerical bookmen, including John Grant of Auchinleck, Alexander Campbell of Inverary, Robert Garden and William Falconar, with 22

These books are now in the NLS.

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auctions respectively in 1733, 1765, 1779, and 1784. The libraries of Archibald Campbell, Episcopalian Bishop of Aberdeen, and the Reverend Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk are also worthy of mention, along with that of Robert Wodrow (Burton 1862: 308–22). Lawyers also amassed libraries, including James Anderson, Robert Mylne and John Spottiswoode, alongside those more eminent figures already mentioned. Auctions are recorded in 1721 and 1785 for the libraries of the lawyers Adam Cunningham and Andrew Crosbie. Other professions also encouraged collecting; the 1795 inventory of Edinburgh New-Town architect James Craig includes many books (I. G. Brown 1995). The library of the architect Charles Cameron who worked and died in Russia was sold after his death in 1812. Also auctioned after death were collections formed by John Baxter, architect, and James Cumming, painter. Sir John Clerk of Penicuik was bequeathed 278 items from Robert Clerk, a merchant and probably a relation, while some 475 volumes owned by the merchant George Grindlay are now in the NLS. Volumes with the bookplate of scholarlibrarian Thomas Ruddiman continue to appear on the market; his library, containing twenty incunables, was auctioned in 1758. Surviving auction and booksellers’ catalogues testify to the number, quality and diversity of professional libraries in eighteenth-century Scotland, whether formed by clergymen, merchants, lawyers, doctors, or academics, but many small and large collections across the social and professional spectrum have no surviving documentation to record their extent or content. Fuller records of collecting by women would be particularly welcome. Where records and books themselves survive, they document an increasingly diverse and expanding book collecting clientèle in eighteenth-century Scotland. The extraordinary range of books collected, dispersed and re-collected demonstrates the respect accorded to print and learning by Scots during the Enlightenment.

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Subscription and Circulating Libraries K. A. Manley If shares could be bought in knowledge, then circulating and subscription libraries offered a share in the Scottish Enlightenment to readers who did not wish, or could not afford, to purchase all the books they wanted. The lending of books by booksellers dates from the late seventeenth century in London and the Continent (Kaufman 1969: 134–52; J. C. Crawford 1981; Manley 2003: 185–94), while the earliest record of a French bookseller lending books comes from a Scottish traveller. Future judge John Lauder was a law student in 1665 when he visited a bookseller in Poitiers and ‘payed 18 souse for the lean [loan] of Romances from Mr Courtois, as Celie and the sundry parts of Almahide, penned by [Madeleine de] Scuderie’ (D. Crawford 1900: 157–8). Whether this practice was familiar to Lauder in Scotland is regrettably unknown; his account book reveals no further examples. Although booksellers may have lent books on an ad hoc basis, organised lending from a separate stock came much later. The poet Allan Ramsay established Britain’s first known circulating library in Edinburgh in 1725, and charged an annual subscription rather than a nightly fee. An invoice sent to his patron, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, reads: ‘To Annual Reading for 1726 10[s.]’ (Kinghorn and Law 1970: IV: 183). Similar invoices are preserved for succeeding years. Ramsay’s library is notorious from its 1728 condemnation by Robert Wodrow, the ecclesiastical historian, for providing ‘all the villanous profane and obscene books and playes printed at London by Curle and others’ and lending them ‘to young boyes, servant weemen of the better sort, and gentlemen, and vice and obscenity dreadfully propagated’. He fulminated that ‘Playes and Interludes, come doun from England this winter . . . dreadfully spread all abominations, and profaness, and leudness’. Wodrow’s friend, Lord Grange, complained to the magistrates, 337

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who were shocked after examining Ramsay’s ‘book of borrouers’. But when they raided his premises, he had received warning ‘and had withdrauen a great many of the worst’ books (Wodrow 1843: 515–16). Ramsay, though no Jacobite, opposed the Union and was therefore an object of suspicion. A bookseller by 1722 in Luckenbooths, later Parliament Close, he had previously been a peruke-maker: many people who ran libraries did not belong to the book trade and were often involved in more ‘fashionable’ occupations (Manley 2000). Ramsay was clearly perceived as a provider of cheap entertainment rather than more serious fodder. James Leake, the Bath bookseller, was lending books by 1728 and organised England’s first identified circulating library (though the phrase was not used before the 1740s). He pioneered the fashionable libraries which flourished in spas and coastal towns and became the social centres of holiday resorts such as Margate and Brighton. This stratum of ‘sociable’ library development never spread to Scotland and by 1734 Ramsay was complaining to Clerk of Penicuik that trade was low. Famously thwarted by the authorities when he attempted to run a theatre, Ramsay retired in 1740 (Kinghorn and Law: IV: 194). The library passed to John Yair and by 1758 to his widow, Margaret (Caledonian Mercury, 30 September 1746, 12 August 1758) with no further circulating library recorded in Edinburgh before 1756. In the meantime institutional libraries slowly emerged for general use. Private subscription libraries provided more expensive books primarily for information and improvement rather than recreation and entertainment. Monthly journals were often provided. Members paid an annual subscription and owned a share in the collection (‘entry-money’), usually inheritable, which was expected to increase in both quantity and monetary value as in any joint-stock company: culture was to co-exist with capitalism (owning shares in theatre or opera seats is comparable and was common). In the proprietary library the profit motive was visible precisely because subscribers held shares and chose the books: freedom of choice with a commercial edge since the idea was to collect an asset of increasing value. Libraries were intended as a permanent community resource. The Rules for the Regulation of the Dalkeith Subscription Library (printed for the 1798 founding) talk of providing books ‘necessary to inform the judgment and to polish the manners’ of its members, one of whom, Peter Forbes, wrote in 1803: hae an orry hour to spare, In reeky neuks, Now, now’s ye’r time to get ye’r [shair] O’ readin’ beuks.

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Some canny lads of o’ gleg invention, Wi’ kindly, honest, guid intention, An’ that without bribe, fee, or pension, Or gapin’ greed, Got a’ kin’ kind o’ Books ye’ll mention, For folk to read. Now this same Plan, my friends, ye’ll find For noblest motives was design’d, That morals might be more refin’d, Wi’ modest looks, An’ to improve each studious mind Wi’ wale of Books. The purpose was to allow people to read ‘beuks’ in their own ‘neuks’: home reading without the constraints of an institution, but within a framework of regulations to preserve those books for posterity. The idea of permanence was important. People were subscribing to a share in knowledge, to be passed on to future generations, as well as a share in a physical property. As with circulating libraries, proprietary libraries developed differently in some respects in Scotland to the rest of the British Isles. The Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin and friends, can claim to be the first private subscription library, but in Great Britain the idea caught on slowly. The immediate origins of Scottish subscription libraries are found in other kinds of libraries, many set up by local benefactors. The Innerpeffray Library near Crieff was founded in 1680 for young students (though the building was not completed until 1751), but its loans register reveals regular use by farmers and tradesmen, despite its isolated rural location. Between 1747 and 1800, 1,483 loans were freely made of 370 works to 287 borrowers. Religion accounted for the bulk, but history became increasingly popular (Kaufman 1969: 153–62). Although R. A. Houston has questioned the significance of Innerpeffray Library, since only a small proportion of the local populace actually used it, what matters is that such a resource of information and knowledge was available to all who ventured the journey; and many did (Houston 1985: 173–8). The library bequeathed by the Reverend John Gray to the burgh of Haddington in about 1717 was available only to residents and was mainly theological, but 2,837 loans were made between 1732 and 1796 to about 400 readers, the most popular books being, in order, the Universal History, Rollin’s Ancient History, the novels of Henry Fielding and Callender’s Collection of Voyages (Kaufman 1965: 265–8;

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Aitken 1971: 5–6). On a smaller scale around 1782, a local laird in Logie, Fife, bequeathed his library for the use of the parish. Women and children were excluded, and readers had to wash their hands first; the books survived until 1949 (A. Anderson 1953: 2). The Dumfries Presbytery Library, founded in 1706, was reconstituted in 1736 as a subscription, though non-proprietary, library. Local citizens could borrow books for 5s a year, and a 1784 catalogue shows it still thriving. The books are now in New College, Edinburgh (Aitken 1971: 13). The Leadhills Miners’ Library was an influential forerunner. Founded in 1741, it opened in 1743 as a society ‘for our mutual Improvement’ (Kaufman 1969: 163–70; J. C. Crawford 1996: 49–61). Usually described as the earliest working-class Scottish subscription library, it was not proprietary, but the designation ‘working-class’ is misleading. The original members were clerks employed by the mining company and miners (many of whom were English) who leased plots of land and then employed others for the pick and shovel work: in other words, capitalist adventurers rather than manual workers, though the membership list does include several ‘pickmen’. The library was never intended to become private property but was for the community. The Earl of Hopetoun, the landowner, could sue the members and move the books to another mine if their numbers fell below seven. Admission was 2s 6d plus 4s per annum, and books were allotted to members by rote at a monthly meeting. The books bought were of higher quality than normally found in a subscription library. A catalogue of 1767 includes Herodotus, Stanhope on Thomas à Kempis, Puffendorf, Rapin, Grotius, Whiston, Cudworth, Doddridge, Shakespeare, Tillotson’s sermons and Swift. This was no library for entertainment, and encouragement for its formation is attributed to James Stirling, the Oxford-educated mathematician (and Jacobite) employed as the mine’s reforming manager; he was responsible for other social improvements such as housing and a school (Allardyce 1888: II: 311). The library still exists. A library run along identical lines was founded in neighbouring Wanlockhead in 1756 as part of a programme of social reforms after the sacking of disruptive miners. Although it grew slowly, over 2,500 books survive in situ. Members met once a month to select books, as at Leadhills, and the mine managers were not to interfere (Crawford and James 1981). Before 1786 lead miners near Tyndrum, north of Loch Lomond, also began collecting books: We are assured these subterraneous readers have now a wellassorted library of 7 or 800 volumes. Philosophy seems to have

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humanized and exalted their minds, as they are exceedingly attached to their noble Patron [the Earl of Breadalbane]; remarkably affectionate to their wives and families; and uncommonly courteous to such strangers as visit their sequestered place of abode. (The Times, 4 January 1786) In 1792 miners in Jamestown, Dumfriesshire, were given books by the mine owners and in 1793 formed themselves into a society to purchase further books which ‘will tend greatly to our Improvement’. After several moves, it still survives as the Westerkirk Library (McCracken 1965; Westerkirk 1997). Kelso Library (1750) was the first known Scottish proprietary subscription library, preceding the Liverpool Library (1758), often regarded as the first in England and a model for the Warrington (1760), Leeds (1768) and Halifax (1768) libraries. Kelso was followed by Hawick and Ayr (both 1762), then Duns (1768) and Selkirk (1772). The Gentleman’s Society of Dumfries allegedly started in mid-century, but its date is unrecorded. A subscription library did exist in Berwickupon-Tweed by 1753; whether Berwick counts as part of English or Scottish library history is problematical. And whether it existed before nearby Kelso Library is unknown. The origins of such libraries are not clear-cut. The first English libraries were associated with dissenters, but in Scotland this was reversed. The early Borders libraries were initiated by local leaders; not until the 1790s do Scottish nonconformists play a major role when dissenting Presbyterians founded the Edinburgh Subscription Library. Financial arrangements were far more stringent for Scottish libraries than for their English counterparts. The Kelso Library was founded on 5 November 1750 by twenty local citizens who signed a contract for ten years. The annual fee was 10s, and the founders paid £10 for a share. The ten-year contract was adopted at Hawick and Duns. Duns Library’s shares were £2 plus 6s a year, and dissolution required a two-thirds majority. Rules had to be observed to protect the investment from damage or dispersal. At Arbroath (1797) the library could be dissolved only by a unanimous vote. In Falkirk (1792) anyone who proposed selling the library, or ‘mutilating’ it by partial sale, was to be expelled. Selkirk Library cost two guineas entry and 7s 6d a year. Share prices tended to increase, though in some libraries new shareholders were denied holdings in books bought prior to their joining. Duns Library’s regulations stipulated that each subscriber have an equal voice in its management but ‘only in proportion to the time he has been a member,

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and to the sums he has paid in’. Despite the masculine wording of the rules, three women were members of the Duns Library by 1789; its membership included not only eight gentlemen of the cloth, but also a dissenting minister, a bleacher, butcher, schoolmaster, several writers and two soldiers. Ayr Library members paid 6s annually. The original members paid no entry-money, but new members paid 1s a year for each year of the library’s existence, replaced in 1803 by a consolidated payment of five guineas (Leach 1975: 71). At Greenock Library (1783), subscribers also paid 6s per year plus 10s for a share, and an additional 2s for every year of the library’s existence (Hamilton 1969: 39). At Hawick annual subscribers were admitted at 10s a year but had to sign an undertaking not to exercise any claim as a shareholder. By the midnineteenth century many older subscription libraries found increasing difficulty in attracting new shareholders, and annual subscribers became common. From its foundation in 1785, Montrose Library admitted schoolteachers and university students free. Most subscription libraries allowed transferable shares but the procedure was regulated. In the Cupar (Fife) Library, founded 1797, share transfers had to be approved through committee, and rules were complex: ‘The widow of a subscriber, if he has no child, or if his heir be a minor, shall succeed to the right of her husband, while the heir is under age, and she remains unmarried’ (Cupar Library catalogue 1813). Shares could be sold; the Dumfries Weekly Journal of 19 September 1797 carried an advertisement for ‘a share of the Theatre and Gentlemens Library’. Commercial circulating libraries increased slowly. In 1756 William Gray and Walter Peter operated a library in Edinburgh’s New Exchange; from 1758 Gray ran it alone before selling up to Alexander Mackay in 1794 (Caledonian Mercury, 27 November 1794). By 1764 other libraries were run by John Wood, when he had 1,400 volumes (Edinburgh Advertiser, 13 January 1764), Alexander McAslan by 176523 and James McLeish by 1778 (Ruddiman’s Weekly Mercury, 23 December 1778), which continued into the 1850s. The indefatigable William Coke, bookseller in Leith for fifty-five years, ran a library by 1764 (Timperley 1839: 870). When Robert Morison commenced his library in Perth in 1752, he was already postmaster, bookbinder, bookseller, stationer and ‘glasier’ (Caledonian Mercury, 19 May 1752; D. C. Smith 1906: 77). The last-named was an understandable sideline, since in Scottish 23

See the advertisement in Renowned History of Valentine & Orson (Edinburgh 1765).

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manses the library was one of the few glazed rooms. John Smith, founder of the bookselling dynasty, established Glasgow’s first recorded circulating library in 1753 after a visit to England. The library boasted 3,000 volumes by 1773 and 20,000 by 1816 but was discontinued in 1828 (J. Smith and Son Ltd 1925). David Home opened a Glasgow library in 1759 (Glasgow Journal, 2 July 1759) and James Knox by 1767 (Glasgow Chronicle, 13 June 1776), while Archibald Coubrough claimed 4,000 volumes in 1778 (Glasgow Mercury, 29 October 1778). A fragmentary catalogue in the British Library suggests that James Meuros’s Ayrshire Circulating Library was operating in Kilmarnock by about 1760, with a branch in Ayr from 1766 (Edinburgh Advertiser, 14/17 January 1766). William White ran a library in Irvine by 1780 with 3,000 volumes and a branch in Beith. One book at a time could be borrowed by residents, or four by country dwellers, but borrowers were asked to send a list of up to twenty requests at a time according to a surviving catalogue in Ardrossan Public Library. Libraries also appeared in Dundee (1765), Dalkeith (1768), Paisley (1769) and Banff (1770). 24 As a rule, an annual subscription was charged, but borrowing by the night persisted. According to the 1789 catalogue of George Caldwell’s Paisley Circulating Library, subscribers paid 9s per annum, or 1s 6d per month, but non-subscribers paid 1d per night for books of 3s value or less, or 2d for more expensive works. His stock of 442 titles included novels, popular histories and sermons. Although circulating libraries came to be associated with the provision of cheap fiction, non-fiction was an essential element. In the 1790s James Imlach’s library in Banff was typically described as ‘a choice circulating library, which, besides the usual light summer reading of the times, contains a select collection of the works of the eminent writers, both ancient and modern’ (OSA 1798: XX: 369). Alexander Angus established a library in Aberdeen in 1764. His 1765 catalogue lists 1,157 works, mainly novels; twenty-eight titles begin with the words Adventures of . . . yet Cicero and other classical authors feature. Competitors appear in 1765 and 1788, and John Burnett succeeded Angus in 1795. Alexander Brown began in 1789 and founded a separate music library of some 2,000 items in 1798, for an extra £1 5s per annum. A catalogue of the last appeared in the same year, when it opened from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Songs and instrumental music featured heavily (operas by Handel and others were offered, but not yet Mozart), and Brown even lent pianofortes. In 1804 Burnett and 24

NSA: I: 529. This library still existed in the 1840s.

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Brown merged their libraries to form the United Public Library, boasting 50,000 volumes and operating effectually as a proprietary library within the Athenaeum (whose members were allowed to borrow one extra book). In 1915 it merged with David Wyllie’s library (dating from the 1830s); one customer had subscribed for seventy-five years (W. R. McDonald 1968: 119–37). The real growth period started in the 1780s. Alexander Davidson was running a library in Inverness by 1782, when he produced a catalogue (which cost 3d) of 550 titles, which doubled a year later.25 Isaac Forsyth began his Elgin Circulating Library in 1789, collected 4,000 volumes by 1812 and circulated books for forty miles around, using packet boats where convenient (Aberdeen Journal, 27 October 1813). Libraries existed in Dunbar, Dumfries, Peterhead and Stirling. In Edinburgh the leader was James Sibbald, who purchased Yair’s library, formerly Ramsay’s, in 1779 and claimed an astounding stock of 20,000 volumes (probably around 4,000 titles). He expressed high aims in the Caledonian Mercury, 1 January and 2 December 1780: Libraries of this kind are seldom intended for any thing more than merely books of amusement, such as poetry, novels, &c. Valuable books in the arts and sciences, and even of history are often excluded on account of the expense and risk; and pamphlets, however interesting they may be for the day, share the same fate, from the consideration of their temporary nature. Some of the principal branches of literature are thus, in a great measure, inaccessible to any but the great and opulent; and these, from want of opportunity to examine such new publications as they incline to purchase, are frequently deceived by a promising title page, or the partial verdict of a review. To obviate these inconveniences, is the intention of this extensive Library. The selection has been made with the utmost attention, and at a great expence, and the acting partner having been in London for near a twelvemonth past, has had an opportunity of collecting a great number of such curious, scarce, and valuable books, as are never to be met with in a circulating library; and likewise of forming his plan upon that of the British, and other libraries of the greatest reputation. Sibbald’s model was John Bell’s British Library, one of the largest in London, claiming 100,000 volumes. Sibbald catered for the ‘lovers 25

Catalogue and appendix in Inverness Public Library.

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of History and Biography, of Geography and Natural History, of the Arts and Sciences, and of Divinity and Ecclesiastical History’, as well as ‘gentlemen in the Medical Line . . . And for the amusement of our gay readers, who chuse to mix the agreeable with the useful, it has been assiduously studied to collect the greatest part of the books of Poetry and Romance’. He offered French and Italian books and a separate music section: ‘No expense nor trouble will be spared to add . . . every new publication that can serve either to enliven the mind, improve the understanding, or promote the cause of virtue’ (Edinburgh Advertiser, 17 December 1779). He regarded non-fiction as an important part of his business, though in the 1829 preface to the Waverley Novels, Walter Scott describes his attraction to Sibbald’s library, which became a noted literary centre: I was plunged into this great ocean of reading without compass or pilot . . . As my taste and appetite were gratified in nothing else, I indemnified myself by becoming a glutton of books. Accordingly, I believe I read almost all the romances, old plays, and epic poetry in that formidable collection. A famous painting shows the young Scott sitting in a corner of Sibbald’s library while Burns holds court in a room full of literary giants who just happened to have called in (Plate 34). Executed seventy years after its setting (1786), this is no contemporary document, and Scott is portrayed picking out volumes himself, although in all circulating library rules only the librarian could handle books, and no one knows for certain whether privileged readers were allowed physical access. Even in proprietary subscription libraries, where the members owned the books, only the librarian could fetch them. Sibbald lent music and prints, at least until he was discovered colouring the latter himself. He leased his library, now known as the Edinburgh Circulating Library, to Alexander Lawrie and James Symington in 1790 but resumed personal control in about 1799. A catalogue lists 5,223 titles (not volumes), of which only 1,009 were novels, and 1,169 poetry and plays. There were 352 French and Italian works, while non-fiction amounted to almost 2,500. In 1805 Alexander Mackay, owner of the second-oldest library in Edinburgh, merged his library with the late Sibbald’s. This combined library lasted until 1851, latterly under William Wilson, when the books were sold off. Sibbald’s competitors were in a minor league, but increased rapidly. Alexander Brown began in North Bridge Street in 1782. His catalogue of c.1786 reveals a stock of 1,719 titles, including over 600 novels and over 600 poems, plays and essays. He charged 10s per annum for one

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book at a time, changeable once a day, and higher subscriptions for more.26 Specialised libraries emerged. Domenico Corri and James Sutherland started a music circulating library in 1783 (Caledonian Mercury, 30 June 1783) and N. Stewart by 1786 (Caledonian Mercury, 12 December 1786). Esplin and Forbes established a ‘circulating repository of prints and drawings’ in the High Street in 1790 for 1s 6d per month or 3s 6d per quarter (Caledonian Mercury, 15 July 1790) and Thomas Brown was lending prints by 1794 at £1 4s per annum (Caledonian Mercury, 27 January 1794). The practice of lending prints was for copying rather than hanging on walls. Walter Berry lent French books by 1796, when he issued a catalogue of 589 titles in his ‘cabinet littéraire’. A lending library for newspapers was advertised in 1797.27 In Glasgow, two new libraries were operating in the 1780s, while another five or six started in the 1790s, including John McFadyen’s musical circulating library. Private subscription libraries could not compete with Sibbald for size and accessibility. The Kelso Library never opened more than three days per week for three hours at a time. Members could not handle the books, presenting written requisitions to the librarian. Stock selection meetings were held quarterly, and up to six books could be borrowed at a time. George Ridpath, minister of Stitchill, was an active foundermember; his diary records his borrowings, with comments and some administrative details. In the 1750s books were acquired from the Edinburgh booksellers Kincaid and Donaldson, and Ridpath would compare prices with those advertised in the London Magazine; the library was not over-charged (Paul 1922: 39). Books were issued for a month. Ridpath began compiling a (non-extant) alphabetical catalogue in 1759 when the library was moved to another room fitted up at the expense of the Duke of Roxburghe. A printed catalogue of c. 1793 shows seventy-one subscribers, including eleven ministers, three women and four baronets; the Duke of Roxburghe; George Baillie of Jerviswood and Mellerstein (brother of the Earl of Haddington); Dr Andrew Coventry, first Professor of Agriculture at Edinburgh University; Admiral William Dickson; and Sir John Buchanan Riddell, MP: how often such people used the library is unknown. The library contained 1,292 titles, including fiction, but mostly good non-fiction. By 1857 it had hardly changed in size, with sixty-five subscribers and around 2,000 titles; but Kelso was a small town and there were other libraries. 26 27

Catalogue in NLS. Advertisement in Falkirk Archives Office.

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The Montrose Library, on the other hand, owned 20,000 volumes by 1884. Glasgow Public Library, founded 1804, had 550 members by 1818 and took over the privately-established Stirling’s Library (1791) in 1871 (T. Kelly 1966: 102–3). Many subscription libraries subsequently merged with municipal libraries, including Forfar (founded 1795), Arbroath (1797), Montrose (which ceased only in 1975), Dundee, Airdrie and Ayr (which used to have over 100 members, but only fifteen by 1876). The Greenock Library still had 682 members in 1966 (Hamilton 1969: 58). The Edinburgh Subscription Library, established in 1794 by James Hall and James Peddie, dissenting Presbyterians, became one of the largest proprietary libraries, with shares costing initially twelve guineas; founding members included solicitors, brewers, builders and merchants. The librarian had to produce a security and could not lend books on the Sabbath nor before 10 a.m. nor after 4 p.m. The Catalogue of the Edinburgh Subscription Library (1794–1833) indicates that fines for late returns were shared between library and librarian (153). With over 400 members from the 1820s until 1880 and 40,000 volumes, the library lasted until 1900. Its rival, the Edinburgh Select Subscription Library, established in 1800 by ten young men, mostly small tradesmen who objected to the expense of the older library, achieved 593 members by 1841 and 30,000 volumes at its dissolution in 1880. Subscription libraries often lacked a permanent home, and many were kept at the rear of a bookshop. Perth Library opened in 1786 as one book-press in a back room of the Academy, before moving to the Session House. Unusually the library’s property belonged to the members but was vested in the Burgh Council to preserve the books for the whole community. Some libraries kept books in schoolhouses or town halls; Kilmarnock Library (1797) was successively kept in both. Books from the Kirkcudbright Library (1777) were still in the town hall in the 1950s. Other collections were not so fortunate in their preservation; Biggar Public Library’s (1797) ended up on a Hogmanay bonfire in 1921. The largest libraries required their own buildings but legal protection became necessary when a library owned property; Edinburgh Subscription Library was incorporated in 1815 and Ayr Library in 1808, followed by several others. Most libraries did not legally become companies, though that was the normal pattern in North America. Ordering books was a formal matter and required committee assent. On arrival books were available to the member who had made the first request. There were fines for late return. In 1800 at Arbroath it was decreed that no person should have a preference in choosing a book simply by speaking to the librarian first; instead, it depended on who

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entered the room first before speaking to the librarian. This was to prevent unseemly scenes if a book in demand was returned while several people were already in the room. Books were usually supplied from Edinburgh but sometimes from London; in 1798 James Lackington offered the Arbroath Library a discount of over 10 per cent. The Jamestown miners’ library used the Edinburgh bookseller, Peter Hill and received 8 per cent discount for cash (McCrackens 1965: 147). Hill also served Wanlockhead Library and was employed by Robert Burns on behalf of the Monkland Friendly Society, a permanent subscription library in intention if not in name. In 1790 Burns requested their latest orders as soon as possible: The Mirror – The Lounger – Man of feeling – Man of the world (these for my own sake I wish to have by the first Carrier) Knox’s history of the Reformation – [Peter] Rae’s history of the Rebellion 1715 – Any good history of the Rebellion 1745 – A display of the Secession Act & Testimony by Mr Gib – Hervey’s Meditations – Beveridge’s thoughts – & another copy of Watson’s body of Divinity – This last heavy Performance is so much admired by many of our Members, that they will not be content with one Copy, so Captn. Riddel our President & Patron agreed with me to give you private instructions not to send Watson, but to say you could not procure a Copy of the book so cheap as the one you sent formerly . . . (Ross Roy 1985: II: 19–20) A year later Burns asks for Joseph Andrews, the Arabian Nights and others, adding: ‘for these books take your fair price, as our Society are no judges of the matter, & will insist on having the following damned trash, which you must also send us, as cheap as possible’. And he lists Scots Worthies, Cole on God’s sovereignty, Newton’s letters, Doddridge’s thoughts, and more (Ross Roy 1985: II: 66). The 1851 catalogue of the Gentleman’s Society of Dumfries contains scholarly authors such as Camden, Maitland, Tacitus and Machiavelli, and works such as Bower’s History of the Popes and Chardin’s Travels in Persia (1686 edition). Only English books could be acquired, and the lightest work was a 1742 edition of Don Quixote. The library was sold off in 1875 (Shirley 1907; 1934). This reveals what solid fare the subscribers of a proprietary library preferred. The very first books ordered for the Perth Library in 1786 on the other hand were the mainstays of the Scottish Enlightenment, such as Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Hume’s History of England, William Smellie’s translation of Buffon’s Natural History and works by William Guthrie and William Robertson, soon followed by Lord Kames, John Millar, Sir James Steuart and Smollett

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(Allan 2002b). The first orders too of the Edinburgh Subscription Library (1794) represent an Enlightenment reading list, with several books listed above and additionally Captain Cook’s Voyages, Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Gibbon and many travel books. An alternative slant to book provision comes from the poetical member of the (working-class) Dalkeith Subscription Library, quoted above: There’s Goldsmith, Godwin, Raynal, Cook, Ray, Radcliff, Robertson, an’ Brooke, An’ Zimmerman, that lik’d a neuk, To muse and think, Young, Thomson, Cowper, an’ a Buik, Ca’d Baron Trenk. There’s Monk and Marlborough, fetchers twa, There’s Wallace wight, cou’d lick them a’ There’s Lithgow, wha gaed far awa, An’ gat sic crieshin About some kirk court that they ca’ The inquisition. There’s Voltaire, Volney, but, beside, There’s Fuller, wha does trim their hide, An’ Addison, wha deep does wide, An’ reasons strong, An’ whirls them roun’ an’ lays their pride An’ shows their wrong. There’s Books by Bishops, Deans an’ Rectors, Some gay an’ true, and some conjectures, Wi’ Novels walth, an’ Select Lectures, By some great guns, An’ some cram’d fu’ o’ ghaists an’ spectres, An’ bleedin Nuns. These libraries were essentially general collections, catering for wide membership tastes. Specialist libraries appeared in the nineteenth century; however a library near Crieff, supplied in 1774 by the bookseller Charles Elliot, provides a forerunner. It proposed ‘that all the Books should Relate to Farming or Improvements of that kind’.28 28

NLS John Murray Archive, Charles Elliot letter books, letter 112, 2 Dec. 1774, to Thomas Keir, library at Crieff.

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Most subscription libraries were conservative in their tastes and only flirted with radical ideas. Censorship arose when the authorities judged Thomas Paine’s writings seditious; the Ayr Library in 1793 ordered their destruction, as did Selkirk. At Greenock William Godwin’s Political Justice and Caleb Williams, and the radical Thomas Holcroft’s Hugh Trevor, were turned out in 1799. Missing books were a serious issue and the librarian took the blame. At Greenock Library in 1794 the librarian was sacked but permitted salary arrears because of his distressed condition. The Duns Library catalogue of 1789 listed no fewer than forty-five volumes that members had not returned, including the apposite Memoirs of a Social Monster. Damage was another concern. At Arbroath in 1798 the Provost and a local laird were summoned before the directors for injuring books. The former pleaded guilty and had to repair the book; the latter refused to appear and was fined 2s 6d (M’Bain 1894: 11). At the Jamestown miners’ library, members were frequently fined 1d for blots in books. In Dunfermline Library in 1794 an enquiry was conducted into the turning-down of leaves. At Dundee Public Library in 1798, the minute book records that ‘Alex[ande]r Simson was impeached by the Librarian for lending a book [to a non-member] but it appearing that the person to whom he had entrusted to carry it to the Library had stolen a reading of it without his knowledge or consent the committee agreed to acquit him’. But another member in the same year had to pay 1d for each of the thirty-two nights a friend had been reading library books. In 1780 summonses were issued against members of the Kirkcudbright Library who had not paid their dues; nine were struck off in 1781. Similar problems were encountered in Wigtown Subscription Library, where a majority of subscribers in 1798 had not paid for the previous year, while fines incurred for overdue books went unpaid. Scottish and English practice diverges around book clubs. Dividing book clubs comprised one to two dozen members who met monthly to select and circulate books and divide them once a year amongst themselves. They flourished throughout England and Wales from the very beginning of the eighteenth century. But in Scotland (as too in Protestant Northern Ireland), book clubs turn out to be societies with permanent collections. The Mauchline Conversation Society and the Monkland Friendly Society, both connected with Burns, were sociable literary clubs which, though short-lived, collected books for permanent use. There may be many reasons why dividing book clubs found no favour in Scotland before the nineteenth century. Topographical considerations might have made regular monthly meetings impossible in many localities during winter months. Meetings of English book

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clubs were social occasions, often held in taverns. In the Leadhills miners’ library there was provision for an annual dinner in a public house, but no more than 6d each could be spent on liquor. In England the mainstay of book clubs were local clergy. In Scotland Presbyterian ministers clearly held a less liberal attitude to the union of books and beer. Scots preferred the idea of a permanent library, available to other members of the community. In a dividing book club members bought books collectively, but they became individual property. Every member recovered the value of their outlay within a year; it was not an investment for the future. Book clubs and subscription libraries represented different ways of regarding the use of books and reading – community versus individual. Few places in England possessed more than one subscription library by 1800. In Lowland Scotland relatively small towns (population 3,000 or fewer) had one by 1800, but several had more. In Kelso (population 4,000) there were three proprietary libraries: the Old (1750), the New (1778) and the Modern (1800). Each library catered for a lower class of society. There were two in nearby Jedburgh, another shortly after 1800; and two in Hawick. Such libraries throve in small towns with stable populations. On the other hand, Greenock, on the busy Clyde, had one library by 1800, with a membership of 145, only twice that of Kelso Library; yet there was a population of 17,000. Social and economic circumstances were quite different; many Greenock inhabitants were Gaelic-speaking refugees from the Highland clearances intent on working on the ships and docks rather than acquiring culture, for which they had precious little free time; Greenock Library was for the middle classes (Hamilton 1969: 35–6). During the 1790s subscription libraries were increasingly founded by working men, with cheap shares. The Dundee Library (1792) was for the better-off, but the Dundee Public Library (1796) was for the lower classes, had no transferable shares, charged only 5s entry and absorbed its predecessor in 1815. By 1796 Glasgow claimed at least three working-class subscription libraries, with nine in its immediate vicinity, including two in the Gorbals and one at Gillespie’s cotton mill (Scots Chronicle, 30 December 1796, 20 January, 10 February 1797). Dalkeith Subscription Library charged only 1s for its shares plus 1d a week (it still existed in the 1930s). Renton Subscription Library (1797), near Dumbarton, initially did not allow shares to be transferred but bought them back with interest, although, when a member resigned in 1811 without giving a reason, payment was denied.29 29

Renton Subscription Library minute book in Dumbarton Public Library.

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The cause of workers’ libraries appealed to John Millar, Professor of Civil Law at Glasgow University and a supporter of workers’ education. In 1796 Millar had a chance encounter with a labourer who belonged to a reading society whose members paid 6d per month and owned over 100 volumes (Crawford 1996: 55–60). Further enquiries revealed about fifty similar libraries in the Glasgow area (ten in Paisley), as well as in Falkirk, Kilmarnock, Catrine (Ayrshire), Campbeltown (Argyllshire) and the Rothesay cotton mills on the Isle of Bute. Voyages and travels were the prevailing taste, and the workmen often spent their evenings reading to their families. Millar knew too of Leadhills, whose valuable library ‘most people who visit Scotland, I believe, have heard of’ (Scots Chronicle, 25 October 1796). After 1800 small, cheap subscription libraries for workers, including so-called trades libraries, spread all over Scotland, and dividing book clubs began to appear. By 1800 approximately 100 subscription libraries can be identified in Scotland, of which at least half could be described as working-class. Only two comparable working-class libraries existed in England, in Birmingham and Kendal. Mere statistics are difficult to interpret, but the idea of permanent storehouses of knowledge had found favour in Scotland, while commercial circulating libraries existed in virtually all towns for recreational reading. Although many subscription libraries may have enjoyed only a relatively small membership, their importance in encouraging mutual improvement – an idea taken further by mechanics’ institutes (also Scottish-inspired) – cannot be denied, and in particular the dissemination of knowledge to all classes of society.

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Newspapers and Magazines Stephen W. Brown At the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, Scotland had little native trade in periodicals. Scots mostly made do with London papers, local pamphlets and newsletters until 1699 when James Watson the younger issued the first genuine Scottish newspaper, the Edinburgh Gazette, in partnership with John Reid Sr. This delay is noteworthy: England’s first paper, Diurnal Occurrences, had appeared in 1640–1 (it was reprinted in Edinburgh but with no local additions) and London had a daily (the Daily Courant) by 1702. But the cause was not political suppression, despite the authority of Scotland’s town councils over the circulation of the news within their jurisdiction. It was the usual practice, for example, to contract with local booksellers to provide London papers; and councils alone granted licences to print the news, which early Scottish mastheads acknowledged in the phrase, ‘by Authority’. Still, unauthorised serials appeared and early on the newspaper business became a free market. The initial dearth probably reflected the Scottish economy’s inability to support serials. But the entrepreneurial Watson recognised the value of the new journalism and after initiating the Gazette he published at least eight other periodicals through to 1711, including reprints of the Paris Gazette, the Tatler and the Haerlem Courant, along with such Addison-Steele imitators as Robert Hepburn’s Edinburgh Tatler (in the persona of Donald Macstaff of the North) and the original Mirror. Watson’s principal rivals were the printers John Reid Sr and Jr, whose combined output of periodicals matched Watson’s and included more than one failed Courant and Gazette before Reid Jr’s precedent-setting final Edinburgh Gazette of 1714. During the decade after the Union, such aggressive competition effectively established the demand for a local paper that reflected Edinburgh’s political, social and cultural life alongside the obligatory 353

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digest of foreign news derived from the London and Amsterdam press. Thus John Reid Jr’s Scots-Post-Man or Edinburgh Gazette for 7–9 August 1711 takes on the London Flying Post (a favoured paper in Edinburgh) for its misrepresentation of the minutes of a crucial meeting of the capital’s Faculty of Advocates. But it is important to note that the story appeared as a paid advertisement, together with eleven other adverts in that number of the Gazette which, taken together, provide a detailed picture of Edinburgh’s emerging commercial classes who comprised the paper’s primary readership. Newspapers emerged when they did essentially to provide information for these new business classes. An increasingly active advertising market sustained them, and their subscribers were mostly men interested in buying and selling. Shipping news became prominent on the back page of Edinburgh’s papers, each advertisement bearing its striking engraving of a ship. By mid-century, a successful newspaper needed to fill half its columns with advertisements; a single page of news in a four-page folio paper was not uncommon. In the 1790s, the OSA for Dumfries observes of the local weekly that ‘besides circulating public news, this paper is now found to be very useful, as a vehicle for advertisements, to facilitate the transactions of business throughout the country’ (IV: 121–2). When the bookseller James McEuen, who had premises in London, established the Edinburgh Evening Courant in 1718, his principal innovation was importing Continental papers supplied by Dutch contacts through the Leith port, giving him access to foreign news as quickly as his London colleagues. While still dependent upon English papers by mail coach or horseback for his national news, McEuen could guarantee the most immediate intelligence of international affairs, a valuable service to the financial beneficiaries of the Union. Thus McEuen remarked in his correspondence that those ‘who had London papers sent them, have laid them aside because [the Courant] contains the substance not only of them but of the foreign posts too’ (Couper 1908: II: 22). McEuen also ensured that his Courant was available in London’s coffee houses, no doubt supplying it gratis through his London book shop. Local news was a novelty in the Courant’s early decades, since Edinburgh’s coffee houses provided the town’s intelligence through gossip and conversation. McEuen initially published on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the London mail was delivered. Because the post arrived first in Edinburgh before slowly moving west and north across Scotland (a Glasgow–Edinburgh coach service commenced only in 1749), the capital’s printers had earliest access to the

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English papers, which contributed significantly to their dominance of the Scottish periodical press for much of the century. However, it also promoted fierce competition among Edinburgh’s trade. Patrick Neill, who printed the Edinburgh Chronicle (1759), supposedly ‘used to ride to Leith, intercept the London mail, and return in haste to the city by a shorter route, in order to forestall his contemporaries’ (Couper 1908: I: 120–1). Mail delayed, whether through weather or highway robbery, could stop the presses, while additional postal services led to an expansion in circulation. An increase in the frequency of mail delivery in 1763 from three to five days a week encouraged Alexander Donaldson to launch his Edinburgh Advertiser (3 January 1764), printing it on the two days of the week now newly served by the post. It also led the Caledonian Mercury, then managed by John Robertson, to experiment briefly in 1776 with a daily, through the publication of the Caledonian Gazette on the days when the Mercury was silent. McEuen was joined in 1720 by William Rolland’s Caledonian Mercury, first printed by William Adams, and then in January 1724 by Thomas Ruddiman, whose family took over full proprietorship when Rolland died in March 1729. Only then did the newspaper genuinely thrive, through a heightened emphasis on Edinburgh and Scottish affairs and a notable increase in advertising. The Mercury initially found the bulk of its subscribers among those who still opposed the Union. Its Jacobitism would continue to distinguish the Mercury from the Courant. Both papers survived well into the next century and encountered only modest competition before Donaldson launched the Edinburgh Advertiser in 1764. In fact, after 1720, Edinburgh saw only two newspapers enter the market ahead of the Advertiser: the Edinburgh Chronicle (1759–60) and the Edinburgh Weekly Journal (1757–71), another Ruddiman property. Donald Govan produced Glasgow’s first newspaper three days a week at his ‘Printing House in the Colledge’ in 1715. He changed the original title, the Glasgow Courant, to the West-Country Intelligence after the third number, and ceased publishing with the sixty-seventh, suggesting that Glasgow lacked Edinburgh’s readership. In 1741, Andrew Stalker brought out the Glasgow Journal, printed by Robert Urie until 1771 and afterwards by Peter Tait. In 1742 William Duncan produced the Glasgow-Weekly-History, dedicated to ‘the Late Progress of the Gospel at Home and Abroad’, followed in 1750 by An Exhortation to the Inhabitants of the South Parish of Glasgow, both religious serials, sold weekly by subscription at 1d each, the former running to fifty-two issues and the latter thirty-three. These two titles reflect the more evangelical nature of Glasgow’s print culture, a characteristic that

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separated west and east Scotland throughout the eighteenth century, an issue explored at more length by Michael Moss in Chapter 2. It no doubt contributed to the slower growth of an authentic news press in Glasgow. Matthew Simson published a new weekly Glasgow Courant in 1745 and continued it to 1760, with the printing done by Robert and Andrew Foulis. This was succeeded by the Glasgow Weekly Chronicle, published briefly in 1766, and then by Alexander Duncan and Robert Chapman’s Glasgow Mercury from 1778 to 1796. Although Urie and the Foulis brothers produced some of Scotland’s best printed newspapers, Glasgow could not match Edinburgh’s Courant and Mercury as commercial enterprises, until John Mennons brought his Edinburgh experience to publishing the Glasgow Advertiser, launched in 1783 and continued as the Glasgow Herald from 1802. Mennons attracted advertising on a scale unlike anything previously seen in Glasgow, and began semi-weekly publication in 1789, printing an eight-page quarto, emulating Donaldson’s Edinburgh Advertiser, on Mondays and Fridays. Until Mennons’s arrival, Glasgow’s had never been a competitive newspaper environment. The market was small and sufficiently served by publications from Edinburgh and London not to need much of a home-grown press. When the Advertiser joined the Journal and the Mercury, the Glasgow of the 1780s had finally achieved the commercial culture necessary to sustain a local news industry. With a tobacco trade annually importing 46 million pounds weight (Phillips 1982: 14), half of Glasgow’s newspaper advertisements might be shipping news (Glasgow Mercury 12 September 1787). Still it was Edinburgh’s Evening Courant and Caledonian Mercury that were sought out by London’s coffee houses and provided most Scottish by-lines for the English press throughout the eighteenth century. Only Aberdeen joined Edinburgh and Glasgow in establishing an early eighteenth-century newspaper with an enduring legacy. In 1748, James Chalmers began the weekly Aberdeen Journal, which was joined for five years in 1752 by Francis Douglas and William Murray’s Aberdeen Intelligencer. But on 22 February 1757, the Journal bought out its competition after it was suggested to the Commissioners of Supply for the County of Aberdeen – probably by Chalmers himself – that a return to a single paper would better serve anyone ‘who had occasion to advertise’ since they ‘would save half the expense of said advertisement’ (Craig 1931: 53), a fracas discussed by Iain Beavan in Chapter 2 of this volume. Chalmers still had to compete with the Edinburgh papers reaching subscribers by mail, and he did so by emphasising regional news and providing in depth coverage of the national press.

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The issue for 9 September 1755 was typical: the ‘Domestic Occurences’ column for Perth and Aberdeen appeared prominently on the fourth or back page, while the third-page national news mined fourteen British papers, including Edinburgh’s Courant and Mercury. Still, advertising was less than half that of an Edinburgh paper. It is said that John Boyle produced a short-lived weekly in 1770, but the title is unrecorded, and Leighton and Shirrefs’s Aberdeen Chronicle is known only from its first issue (May 1787). Thus the Chalmers family’s newspaper monopoly was effectively unbroken until 1806, when John Booth issued his more radical Aberdeen Chronicle. In April 1787, the Northern Gazette, Literary Chronicle and Review was proposed by James Chalmers II as a sister publication to his Aberdeen Journal, with the intention of providing a forum for cultural news. Stamp duty pressures, however, forced its conversion in January 1788 to a fortnightly magazine which ran until 1791. Elsewhere in the north, Henry Galbraith published the four-page Dundee Weekly Intelligencer (1755), while his successor, Thomas Colville, attempted a second Weekly (1778). But competition from both Aberdeen and Edinburgh made that venture untenable. Not until the first decade of the nineteenth century would the persistent Colville find the readership for a Dundee newspaper and magazine. Dumfries had that region’s first paper, the Drumfries [sic] Mercury briefly in 1721, but waited over fifty years for Robert Jackson’s 1777 Weekly Journal. This replaced his 1773 Dumfries Weekly Magazine, no doubt because a newspaper better served advertisers. It lasted until 1833, with the Kelso Chronicle (1783) its only competitor before 1800. Where newspapers succeeded, they did so under the direction of the town’s most prominent printers and were often family enterprises. Newspaper publishing was not altruistic, despite the obligatory claims to the contrary in subscription proposals and editorials. Peter Williamson – publisher of two magazines, the Scots Spy (Figure 4.2) and the New Scots Spy (1776–7) – complained that his competition increased their ‘news-papers to an enormous size, and yet, as by the Leger-de-Main, make them contain less matter than they did before’ (Mob Contra Mob 1769: ii). Such sleight-of-hand simply created advertising space (S. W. Brown 2008: 120–6). Newspapers with predominantly political motives did not appear until the 1790s, although Bonnie Prince Charlie and George Washington crucially rejuvenated Scottish journalism in the 1740s and 1770s. Local politics definitely generated controversies in the press, but these were isolated moments, and newspapers at the time had neither leader writers nor consistent editorial policies. Town councils suppressed most reports of local political

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Figure 4.2 Peter Williamson’s Scots Spy.

scandals by prosecuting printers and the High Court heard enough cases to keep journalism in line. The proceedings brought against the Edinburgh Evening Courant, Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh Weekly Journal and Scots Magazine in 1765 for printing a London legal opinion questioning the verdict in an Edinburgh murder trial, provide one striking example (S. W. Brown 2009: 21–43). Martin Moonie’s case study below, Edinburgh v. the Advertiser, offers another. Lawsuits for libel were common and contributed to the Edinburgh Magazine and Review’s failure (Zachs 1992: 63–95). However, since the owners of Scotland’s enduring periodicals were themselves entrepreneurs and not agitators, as well as often appearing as jurymen, they were unlikely to offend. Self-interest was the best censor. Nationalism (and regionalism) might sell a few papers, but advertising was the cash cow, and publishers were drawn to newspapers for reliable profits. One half of the Edinburgh Evening Courant sold for

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£1,300 in 1783 when David Ramsay bought out Robert Fleming; a share in the Courant had reputedly gone for £36 in 1744–5. In another instance, John Mennons sold Benjamin Mathie two-thirds of the Glasgow Advertiser in 1802 for £900; Mennons’s son Thomas retained the remaining third. But only Edinburgh provided enough advertising revenue to instigate sustained advertising wars. Even during journalism’s formative years, advertising was such an expanding source of newspaper profits across the United Kingdom that the government added it to the 1712 Stamp Act, and steadily increased the tax on advertisements. The initial duty on newspapers was ½d for a half-sheet, 1d for a whole sheet (with a 1s tax for every advertisement in a newspaper published weekly or more often). This rose to 1d and 1½d in 1757 (2s on every advertisement), 1½d and 2d in 1776, 2d and 2½d in 1789 (2s 6d for every advertisement) and 3½d and 4d in 1797 (3s for each advertisement) (Dowell 1888: IV: 341–6). Most newspapers comprised a single, stamped sheet folded to produce four pages, and sold for 2d more than the tax. When the duty was 1d, papers usually sold at 1½d, with long-term subscription discounts. In the latter part of the century in Edinburgh, the printer sold space for an advertisement at 3d per column inch, adding this to the tax and making the typical price of a small commercial insert 3s or more. Combined with the duty on paper, the Treasury had much to gain from newspaper circulation. Any publication deemed to be printing ‘news’ at intervals of one week or less was required by law to use only paper sold by the government and officially stamped. John Mennons futilely attempted to circumvent the law with his Edinburgh Eighth-Day Magazine (1779–80), while Walter Ruddiman Jr successfully avoided the duty for years. The British concept of ‘Liberty of the Press’ included the government’s interest in the free flow of taxes. Eighteenth-century stamp duties never seriously impeded the growth of journalism, although the eventual increase of the tax to 4d for every half sheet, sheet or other piece of paper in 1815 was part of a strategy to limit political opposition in the papers. This yielded £20,282 in Scotland (Dowell 1888: IV: 343). Despite the tax, newspaper ownership in Edinburgh remained competitive. That competition grew rancorous in 1759, when Gavin Hamilton and John Balfour launched their Edinburgh Chronicle. Four years prior, their Edinburgh Review (1755–6) became Scotland’s first literary magazine, its mandate simple but profoundly new: frank criticism of native publications. Despite (or perhaps because of) the incisively critical contributions to the Review by Hugh Blair, William Robertson and Adam Smith, it stopped after two issues, but achieved its objective of

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challenging Scots to expect more from their home-grown talent. The Review’s aggressive stance would become the hallmark of Scottish critical review writing. Hamilton and Balfour’s newspaper continued their review’s mandate, emphasising local and national affairs, while vigorously engaging the emerging literary culture. This included publishing Scotland’s first theatre reviews, by a young James Boswell (I. Brown 2011: 35–6). Appearing twice weekly, the Chronicle commenced 22 March 1759 and promised readers ‘to give a full collection of news . . . together with a variety of essays relating to entertainments, politics, literature, manufactures, antiquities, &c’. Melding a magazine with a newspaper proved popular: the Chronicle began ‘publish[ing] thrice a-week, viz. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, in course of the post from London’ (15 September 1759). Hamilton and Balfour had thrown down a gauntlet. The response was an advertising war that revealed the dependence of Scotland’s newspaper industry upon a rudimentary form of protectionism. Even Andrew Stalker fomented in his Glasgow Journal against the new enterprise, recognising in the Chronicle’s promise to reach subscribers across Scotland through the post an encroachment of a sort never attempted by the Courant and Mercury (Couper 1930). But the Ruddimans had anticipated this threat in 1754 when they surrendered Thomas Ruddiman’s position as University Printer to Hamilton, Balfour and their printing partner Patrick Neill, with the proviso that the latter agree in writing not to involve themselves in a three-day-aweek serial. The university sinecure was a gem, and Balfour continued to print the theses for decades, eventually in partnership with William Smellie, so the Ruddimans must have put an immense value on controlling Edinburgh’s newspapers. What is more, Thomas’s nephew, Walter Jr, had begun experimenting with weekly magazine and news formats through his partnership in the Journal and his sole proprietorship of the Edinburgh [Weekly] Magazine, both established in 1757. When Hamilton and Balfour decided to attempt a serial that married aspects of both a newspaper and a magazine, they were already trespassing on Walter Jr’s property, even before they crossed the thrice-aweek line. Hamilton and Balfour’s prospectus for the Chronicle complained about the excess of adverts and the paucity of Scottish interests in the national press – just as Peter Williamson would some fifteen years later. And they promised their subscribers that advertising would not motivate their publication. Noble as their ambition was, their expectation that profits could be derived exclusively from a national subscription proved premature. Although they were partly undermined

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by a new and self-interested printing partner, John Reid, who would go on to a litigious relationship with the proprietor of the Chronicle’s successor, Alexander Donaldson (McDougall 1991: 26–7), a lack of regular advertisers doomed Hamilton and Balfour from the beginning. By the winter of 1759, the Chronicle had difficulty filling even a column of its eight quarto pages, while the Courant and Mercury had two and often three full folio pages of advertisements. The Ruddimans next published front-page editorials attacking Balfour’s integrity, and then escalated their offensive by spreading rumours that the Chronicle was no longer accepting advertisements. The latter had a devastating impact on business, despite Balfour’s vigorous attempts to discount them (S. W. Brown 2008: 122–6). The demise of the Chronicle did not end the advertising war. In 1764, when Alexander Donaldson brought out his Edinburgh Advertiser – published as an eight-page quarto, after the Chronicle’s example – he avoided direct competition with the Courant and the Mercury, taking on the Weekly Journal instead. The Ruddimans abandoned their interest in the Journal that same year, leaving William Auld its sole proprietor until he was joined in 1765 by William Smellie and then in 1769 by John Balfour, both refugees from the now defunct firm of Hamilton and Balfour. Donaldson steadily wore down the Journal’s advertising, until the paper disappeared in 1771, after two years of printing only two or three ads an issue. Auld sought solace in publishing magazines: the Scots Farmer, 1772; the Caledonian Weekly, 1773–4; the Gentleman and Lady’s Weekly, 1774–5; and the North British Intelligencer, 1776–7. Edinburgh’s three newspapers kept the market closed until the press explosion of the radical 1790s through a 1768 agreement that none of the three would undercut the others in pricing or billing practices for advertising (S. W. Brown 2008: 132–3). This cartel, which at the time included the failing Weekly Journal, was announced in a banner on the front page of all the Edinburgh papers and reported in Glasgow, Aberdeen and in the Scots Magazine. The agreement called for uniform pricing of advertisements and a stop to the practice of extending credit to advertisers, thus overturning Hamilton and Balfour’s innovations in charging only the government tax for advertisements (foregoing their own profit) and carrying advertisers on their books beyond the month most publishers were willing to wait. Extending credit had always been one way of poaching a rival’s customers; doing away with that option effectively shut down competition. Just how profitable advertising was in the crucial mid-century when Scottish newspapers were finding their financial way is clear from the

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surviving records for the Edinburgh Evening Courant from the late 1730s through to the end of the 1780s.30 Publishers usually kept their advertising accounts through running tallies in the margins of their firm’s in-house copies of their newspaper. Beside each advertisement they wrote the client’s name together with the amount paid. Above the masthead, the printer would record the profit for that number, once taxes had been deducted. Printing and overhead costs were mostly recovered from subscriptions. Although all newspapers at the time indicated that advertisements were taken in at the printing house, it was increasingly the practice after 1760 for booksellers to be the agents for those wishing to advertise in Edinburgh’s newspapers. Thus the Courant regularly records booksellers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and even Aberdeen as the ones paying for advertisements that range from obituaries and marriages to bankruptcies. Government announcements from flax prices to land auctions provided reliable income. All local letters to the publisher were also treated as advertisements, and only printed if the correspondent paid the per-column-inch rate charged to advertisers. This may explain the paltry local correspondence in Edinburgh papers; in the first six months of 1778, the Courant printed only fourteen original letters, while reprinting thirty-two from English newspapers.31 In 1778, when over 15,000 advertisements were placed in Edinburgh’s newspapers, the Courant’s advertising profits came to several hundred pounds. Although advertising revenues for Scottish newspapers tripled between 1707 and 1720, the range of businesses promoting themselves in the press was narrow, and nearly half of all advertisements were placed by booksellers. This changed by mid-century, and the 1760s saw property advertisements become dominant, with retail other than books taking second place. By the 1770s, advertisements regularly featured medicines, educational and employment opportunities, theatrical and other entertainments, coach schedules, gardening and farming, meetings and a wide range of personals, as well as shipping, banking and government announcements. But half of all advertising was now tied to the selling and letting of property (Table 4.1). In an important sense, advertisements were local news. In the 1720s, the Courant seldom had more than ten ads in any number. This remained more or less constant through the 1730s but increased in every 30 31

These are mostly located in Edinburgh Central Library, with a few in the NLS. Reprinted letters were always headed ‘To the Printer/Publisher’; original correspondence, ‘To the Printer/Publisher of the Edinburgh Evening Courant’. This was common practice in Edinburgh.

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subsequent decade until the 1790s saw the paper regularly printing from seventy to over eighty ads in each issue. The Courant had also grown from a four-to-six-page quarto 1707–30 in the 1720s to a four-page Book trade folio, its price rising over that Real estate period from 1½d to 3½ d. By Consumer goods the end of the eighteenth century it was not rare for page one to be almost exclusively advertisements. Newspapers more than any other aspect of publish1731–60 ing demonstrate how much Book trade the book trade was dependReal estate ent upon Scotland’s increasConsumer goods ingly complex economy. In Shipping news Other April 1778, the Courant sold 378 advertisements, with Saturdays usually representing the high point with up to forty-four (11 April) and 1761–90 Mondays the low, dropping Book trade Real estate to sixteen (20 April). After Consumer goods taxes, the profits amounted to Shipping news £19 17s 2d. And April was a Other quiet month when compared with March (£26 1s 3d) and February (£23 3s 3d). The leanest month came at year’s end: December recorded £15 10s 6d, although November had been strong at £21 16s 1d, with £4 6 taken from the final issue. No month saw profits less than £15. In 1721 the Courant printed 783 advertisements; that annual total had risen to just over 9,000 by 1793. Thus even in the 1790s when Napoleon and sedition guaranteed readers and spawned five new papers in Edinburgh, advertising was vital and determined which publications would survive. In eighteenth-century Scotland, circulation was never sufficient on its own. The Caledonian Chronicle (9 October 1792), the Edinburgh Gazetteer (16 November 1792), the Edinburgh Gazette (2 July 1793), the Scots Chronicle (1 Table 4.1 Real estate as a share of the advertising in Edinburgh newspapers, 1707–90.

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March 1796) and the second Edinburgh Weekly Journal (3 January 1798), all began with political motives, both Whig and Tory, in response to the increased demand for news during the turbulent 1790s, but only the Gazette and the Journal survived, the former because it was a government organ and the latter because its proprietor, William Brown, was an experienced periodical publisher who had a healthy respect for advertising and managed over £1,000 annual income from that source (Couper: II: 147–9). The other three depended upon political partisanship to attract readers. Still, opposition to the government did not generate advertising from Edinburgh’s conservative business community: prosecutions for seditious libel brought notoriety, but did nothing to enhance profits. Scotland’s magazines emerged even more slowly than its newspapers. Until the Scots Magazine appeared in 1739, emulating London’s Gentleman’s Magazine, but promising to promote the nation’s culture, most Scottish magazines were Tatler–Spectator derivatives. These included the Mercury (1717), the Echo (1729), the Conjurer (1735), the Reveur (1737) and Letters of the Critical Club (1738), all printed in Edinburgh. William Cheyne’s the Thistle (1734) – he also published the Critical Club – was one of several attempts to produce a London-style news-magazine like Fog’s Weekly Journal. The 1730s were notably busy with experiments in magazine publishing and when the Scots Magazine arrived, its proprietors William Sands, Andrew Brymer, Andrew Murray and James Cochran knew what the market might sustain. Their patriotic mandate followed Cheyne whose Thistle had emphasised its Scottishness, in title and motto – nemo me impune lacessit (‘no one attacks me with impunity’). The Scots Magazine’s 1739 preface credits its launch to the ‘general increase of readers for some years past’. It praises Scotland as ‘a nation where Liberty is enjoyed’, and promises its readers to displace the Gentleman’s and London magazines in the north so ‘that the just and grievous charge of castration and mutilation might be entirely remov’d, by admitting every Gentleman to speak his own language’ (i, ii). No fewer than forty-seven magazines appeared in Edinburgh after 1739, with another nine in Glasgow, four in Aberdeen and perhaps as many as seven elsewhere in Scotland. They ranged from duodecimo to quarto, from eight to sixty-four pages, and might cost as little as 1d. Glasgow was unable to support any magazine for more than a few months. Even the Glasgow Magazine and Review brought out in 1783 by the irrepressible John Mennons, who relied here – as he had with the Glasgow Advertiser – upon his extensive Edinburgh experience, withdrew after eight months. Perth, Dumfries, Dundee and Aberdeen

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had their own interesting failures. The Perth Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure was first printed on 3 July 1772 by George Johnston for Robert Morison (Plate 21), postmaster, bookbinder and founder of a particularly successful family publishing firm. It was a fiercely independent publication that courted scandal and employed innovative means of promoting sales. Loss leaders were a common device and included free serialisations of books with Morison’s imprint, sewn in with the monthly issues (S. W. Brown 2006a: 65–6). Nevertheless, it folded by December 1773. Dumfries was more fortunate and its Weekly Magazine, published by William Boyd and Robert Jackson, ran four years (16 March 1773 – 24 June 1777), while Dundee supported a Weekly Magazine for three years from 11 August 1775. Its publisher, Thomas Colvill, undertook at least six serials in persistent succession until the end of the century saw him triumph with the Dundee Magazine (January 1799). Aberdeen’s Caledonian Magazine was the north’s most promising, running for five years, first under Andrew Leighton (1786–7) and then Andrew Shirrefs (1788–90). The Aberdeen Magazine, attempted twice by James Chalmers II (1761; 1788–91), had a third series under the imprint of Burnett and Rettie from 1796. The Scots Magazine dominated the national market because it had first access to parliamentary intelligence from the London periodicals and could reach across Scotland through a steadily improving post. But the Scots Magazine was not without its competitors in Edinburgh. There were four serious rivals: Walter Ruddiman Jr, first with his Edinburgh Magazine (July 1757- December 1762) and then his Weekly Magazine (July 1768 – June 1784; Figure 4.3), which uniquely among Scottish, indeed British, magazines made advertising a prime concern; William Smellie, Charles Elliot, Gilbert Stuart and William Creech with the Edinburgh Magazine and Review (October 1773-August 1776), which attempted the London market through partnering John Murray, and practised criticism after the example of Hamilton and Balfour’s 1755 Edinburgh Review; James Sibbald and John Murray’s Edinburgh Magazine (January 1785 – December 1803), which toned down the Magazine and Review’s approach, reached London again through Murray and eventually combined with the Scots Magazine in January 1804; and James Anderson’s The Bee (December 1790-January 1794), which suffered from controversy at the wrong political moment and found itself sullied by a sedition trial. The rivalry among magazines in Edinburgh was far more intense than among newspapers because magazines were not subject to stamp duty unless they printed the news weekly, and thus it was possible to enter this

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Figure 4.3 Walter Ruddiman Jr’s Edinburgh Weekly Magazine with advertisements on blue-paper cover.

market with a modest investment. John Mennons attempted at least seven such ventures, William Auld four, the penniless James Tytler three and the entrepreneurial Peter Williamson two, and while each met modest success on occasion, none published titles that lasted as long as a year. Even Henry Mackenzie’s two forays into literary journalism, The Mirror (January 1779 – May 1780) and The Lounger (February 1785 – January 1787), despite acclaim, ran their course quickly. And although their Edinburgh Magazine and Review prepared the way for Francis Jeffrey’s 1802 Edinburgh Review, Smellie and Stuart failed as much from their own poor business practices as from the public outrage their frankness aroused (Table 4.2). Success did not derive from stellar content without sound management, which both Ruddiman and Sibbald knew. Ruddiman made profits that surpassed the Scots Magazine’s through three strategies.

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Table 4.2 Major owners of periodicals in proportion to the total of such publications, 1707–1800. J. Watson The Reids J. McEuen The Ruddimans R. Fleming W. Auld W. Smellie J. Mennons T. Colvill W. Brown Others

The first was shared with other Scottish periodicals: an emphasis on native content. But whereas the Edinburgh Magazine and Review stressed the intellectual side of nationalism, challenging their countrymen to put aside Scotticisms and seek a global reputation for letters, the Jacobite Ruddiman defended the Scots tongue; publishing Robert Fergusson’s poetry to make his point, he generated a weekly circulation in excess of 3,000. Ruddiman’s other two strategies were equally canny but uniquely his own: flouting the stamp duty by printing news in his weekly and saturating his covers with advertisements (Figure 4.3). The blue wrappers in which magazines were sold were often blank or used simply as title-pages. But some, especially those protecting the Scots Magazine, carried late-breaking items such as parliamentary speeches that arrived after the magazine had been printed. A magazine with advertisements printed them on the wrappers. But only the most successful magazines in Scotland could attract advertising: Peter Williamson, Robert Morison and John Mennons never had more than two or three advertisements in any one issue, Auld none. Even the Scots Magazine seldom filled more than one-and-a-half of its four coverpages with ads. Ruddiman, however, usually packed all four – in double columns – and generated enviable annual profits. Because he claimed his weekly publication was not purveying the news, he also paid no stamp duty. Eventually disgruntled competitors (probably Williamson) complained loudly enough to the Excise Office, and Ruddiman was charged with failure to pay the duty. He lost the case. And consequently lost interest in magazines, as his profits dwindled. Even Scotland’s most notorious periodical, the openly seditious Historical Register, which sold

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland Table 4.3 Edinburgh’s share of Scotland’s eighteenth-century periodical trade.

Edinburgh Glasgow Other sites

thousands of copies in 1792, could not rely exclusively on the inflammatory prose of its chief contributor, James Tytler, to attract readers (S. W. Brown 2005). Its publisher, Cornelius Elliot, gave away free engraved portraits and copies of Thomas Paine’s tracts (stitched into the Register’s wrappers) to promote sales (S. W. Brown 2006a: 54–6). Scotland’s eighteenth-century newspapers and magazines shaped the nation’s identity, with Edinburgh dominating the trade (Table 4.3). This was unavoidable in a country where the capital so surpassed the provinces in population and commerce. And although the serial press was often enlivened by political controversies whether local, national or international, profits determined which titles would endure, and profits derived primarily from advertising, carried on the back of circulation. Rebellion in America, revolution in France and riots at home were always a boost to circulation, but advertising was under the publisher’s control, and thus advertising controlled the periodical press.

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Edinburgh v. the Advertiser: a Case Study Martin Moonie A dispute involving the bookseller Alexander Donaldson, publisher of the Edinburgh Advertiser, and his lawyer James Boswell with Edinburgh’s Town Council in 1766–7 speaks effectively to the increasing authority and independence of the periodical press in Scotland. In a series of articles (2, 16, 19, 23, 26 and 30 September 1766) the Advertiser had criticised the Council’s setting of commodity prices, especially for wheat, during the national harvest failure. Donaldson was duly summoned to appear before the Council for inciting the city mob. The magistrates considered the issue resolved when Donaldson undertook to say nothing further concerning the city without having first consulted them.32 However, if the Town Council had hoped to silence the paper, they were mistaken. Throughout the autumn and into the first months of 1767, hardly a week passed without the Advertiser addressing prices, shortages, or the recent harvest. The following year brought a second confrontation between the Advertiser and the municipal authorities. At the time, the Council could only collect money from individuals living within the bounds of the city walls. But, having begun work on the New Town development, the Council formed a committee to investigate the possibility of extending the Royalty of the city. However, before the final copy of the Bill was sent to Parliament, extracts appeared in the Edinburgh Advertiser and the Council took legal action. Perhaps surprisingly, Boswell chose to focus Donaldson’s defence on press freedom, arguing that [T]he Representer as a citizen and as a servant of the public is anxious to have it established whether the Publisher of a 32

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Newspaper in this free Country is to be perpetually at the mercy of a Procurator Fiscal or of a Magistrate who may instigate the Fiscal to bring prosecutions of this nature attended with so great disadvantages to a Publisher and a Man who wishes to maintain a fair character; and when such prosecutions upon a fair trial are found to be without foundation and clearly aggressive, the Defender shall not be indemnified of the expense to which such a wanton and injurious attack had unavoidably exposed him.33 Initially, Donaldson was acquitted, but the Procurator appealed and Boswell was required, once again, to plead the freedom of the press. This time he opened with the assertion that Donaldson was ‘impelled by a principle of supporting the liberty of the press as well as a laudable regard to his own Character as . . . the Publisher of a Newspaper’, claiming that Donaldson shall confine himself to the one great general principle of the liberty of the Press and the Security of a Publisher as a Servant of the Publick . . . He does with all submission maintain that the liberty of the Press and the Security of a Publisher cannot be considered as properly established, unless any infringement of that liberty, or any groundless attack upon a Publisher receives some check in a Court of justice.34 Although Donaldson was not awarded expenses, the main principle of the case – press freedom in the reporting of Town Council affairs – was settled in his favour. The decision removed what remained of the Council’s historic control of newspapers, dating back to the turn of the century. Still when freedom of the press had been raised by Edinburgh’s newspapers in defence of a charge from the High Court in 1765 over press intrusions into the court’s handling of the notorious murder and incest trial of Katharine Nairn and her brother-inlaw Patrick Ogilvie (Brown 2009), Donaldson and the Advertiser were conspicuously absent from the summons; Donaldson was in fact praised from the bench for his restraint as a publisher and his respect for authority on that occasion. Of course, the Advertiser was barely a year old at the time and needed the advertising supplied by local and national government to survive. Still contemporary observers recognised a change in the political climate, doubtless helped by 33 34

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the actions of John Wilkes and events in America. Thus Hugo Arnot observed: Within these few years, a great change [has] taken place in the liberty of the press. The conduct of persons in public office has been animadverted upon with freedom, and in several instances censured with acrimony. The bench has not escaped those criticisms, for which, so long as they are just, it will always be the better; and, from recent observations, we may venture to affirm, that, till this country shall suffer some melancholy revolution, no judge will be hardy enough to challenge publications, which, twenty years ago, no man would have ventured to print. (History of Edinburgh, 1779: 272; 1785: 451)

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Cheap Print on Scottish Streets John Scally Cheap print or street literature has its antecedents in Scotland’s oral storytelling traditions and its roots in the early productions of Scotland’s first press (1508), the so-called Chepman and Myllar prints and the tales referred to in The Complaynt of Scotland (1550). Robert Chambers captured some of these oral echoes in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland with Illustrations Chiefly Collected from Oral Sources (1826) while ‘Hero and Leander’, ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, ‘Wallace’, ‘Bruce’, ‘Robin Hood and Little John’ and ‘Jack the Giant Killer’ found their way into print and onto the streets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (J. Fraser 1873: 104). The eighteenth-century emergence of chapbooks so expanded street literature’s availability that Chambers estimated an annual production of 200,000 items by 1800 (Fraser 1873: 111). Here, as in other facets of print history, Scotland followed the trajectory of England and mainland Europe (Watt 1991). The genre is characterised by inexpensive paper, rudimentary illustrations (if any) and a rough appearance resulting from worn-out type and an unsophisticated printing process. It appears in various formats: single sheet, small booklet, or single sheet folded and stitched. Broadsides and chapbooks predominate because they required the least paper, which accounted for 75 per cent of the production cost (Gaskell 1972: 177). The cheapest format, single-sheet broadside was aimed at a semi-literate audience (Figure 4.4). As in England, the Scottish emergence of the broadside was linked to song lyrics, and these sixteenth-century broadside ballads set to popular tunes created the market for other cheap print (Watt 1991: 11). However, broadsides used for ordinances and official announcements should not be considered instances of ‘cheap’ print or ‘street’ literature, since the state, town council or burgh was behind their production. Expanding literacy 372

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Figure 4.4 Broadside.

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produced the chapbook, which was sold through the broadside’s distribution network. Defining a chapbook is not an exact science; Barry McKay calls it ‘a bibliographic conceit, employed as a generic term to cover a particular genre of pocket-sized booklet, popular from the sixteenth to the latter part of the nineteenth century’ (2003: 5). One chapbook volume in the NLS raises a common dilemma. Among its content are two items: A Funeral Sermon by Father Murtagh O’Lavery (Glasgow: Saltmarket, 1795) in sixteen pages, with a crude title-page illustration and inexpert print on cheap paper measuring 9.5 x 16.5 cm; and A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Mr. John Welch; sometime Minister of the Gospel at Ayr, which is physically similar, but has only a title-page decoration and was printed the previous year by J. and M. Robertson in the Saltmarket. Are both chapbooks, or is the former, with its characteristic inelegant illustration and spoof text, a chapbook and the Welsh sermon a pamphlet? This study accepts both, the latter because of its look and feel. The content of cheap print was wide-ranging, authorship often uncertain and illustrations usually derivative and even inappropriate. Popular songs and ballads, accounts of crimes, romantic cautionary tales and humour were ubiquitous. Humour was appreciated for its rudeness; crimes and punishments for gore. A main theme was love and marriage, often treated amusingly, as in The Wedding Song of Gibbie and Marjorie (Figure 4.4), an ironic celebration of the 1718 union between an 88-year-old groom and 72-year-old bride. The Battell of Bodwell-Bridge, or, The Kings Cavileers Triumph (1680) is thematically typical of most war ballads, while The Moderate Man’s Advice Against Extravagant Drinking (1707) explores a popular broadside and chapbook theme: Whatever we say or do, Let’s not drink to disturb our brain; But laugh for an hour or two, And never be Drunk again. Street literature was distributed by ‘patterers’ and chapmen who wandered towns and cities or local fairs but their market often went beyond the semi-literate masses. For example, Sir Walter Scott had a significant chapbook collection which survives at Abbotsford. In England in the seventeenth century Samuel Pepys bought chapbooks prolifically, classifying them as ‘Vulgaria, Penny Witticisms, Penny Merriments, & Penny Godlinesses’ (McKay 2003: 5–6). Thus the audience for cheap print (substantially labourers, artisans, domestic servants and agricultural workers) also included the educated, professional

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and ruling classes. Chapbooks would naturally have been passed around a common alehouse in the Glasgow Saltmarket, but they would also have been perused in an Edinburgh coffee house by a young laird and his companions. By its very nature, cheap print was not meant to be collected or placed on a bookshelf. Broadsides, slip ballads, chapbooks and almanacs (as precursors to newspapers) were just as ephemeral and transient as the newsheets that gradually replaced them. Often read to less literate hearers and circulated among friends, the broadside would eventually fall apart or land in the gutter, replaced by the next newsworthy murder or racy song. The cheap printing process makes it difficult to estimate the numbers of broadsides and chapbooks produced by individual printers and the survival rate for this material is poor. The successive legal deposit Acts did not apply to such texts, and printers of street literature paid little heed to copyright. Occasionally litigation occurred, as with the production of counterfeit almanacs in the 1660s and 1680s in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen (Mann 2000a: 103–4), but this was normally burgh authorities pursuing chapmencounterfeiters. There is a similar paucity in the survival of printers’ business records for this material, both in Scotland and elsewhere. The main sources for Scottish cheap print are, therefore, sparse, the most important being the incomparable Lauriston Castle collection (NLS), amassed by Edinburgh businessman William Robert Reid and John A. Fairley. The collection includes 5,000 items printed up to 1900, with approximately 2,500 undated and 433 dated 1637–1800. Of the 2,104 broadsides in NLS printed up to 1900, 1,058 are undated, with 155 dated and 103 postulated for the period 1658–1799. Only dated/postulated chapbooks and broadsides will be used as principal sources for the current study. The final challenge in examining cheap print is identifying place of publication. Of the 258 broadsides selected, only 83 have an imprint site, with 92 accorded a postulated publication place based on internal evidence. By contrast, all 433 pre-1800 chapbooks clearly announce their publication sites. The key production centres for cheap literature were Glasgow and Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, Perth, Falkirk and Paisley sustaining two or three successful producers of cheap print. This allowed publishers to generate print runs which could easily be taken up by ballad sellers, flying stationers, chapmen and other street vendors. Chapmen, however, carried their stock further afield, to country markets and fairs where rural consumption defined their customer base (Morris 1997). The quality of work varied within certain limited parameters for the unsophisticated production of basic single-sheet broadsides and tiny

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octavo booklets. As the pseudonymous author Felix Folio of Hawker’s and Street Dealers in the North of England recalls, broadsides were: printed on very thin paper, with old worn out type, which had been set up by some person who was anything but “up” in orthography, and who was not at all particular as to the size or style of the letters he used in making up a word, for you frequently saw a noblelooking Roman capital, doing duty by the side of a sickly-looking and diminutive italic, neither of them being the right letter in the right place! (1858: 110) Typographical mistakes were not uncommon, especially in broadsides, which were often produced quickly to capture current events like an execution. Even experienced cheap print publishers like Glasgow’s John and James Robertson could issue a title with glaring errors: Crhist [sic] on the cross suffering for sinners (1788). The listings for producers of cheap print in local directories, shown in the SBTI, often illustrate the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ nature of their business. Patrick Mair of Falkirk is recorded as a ‘printer and bookseller’; and as newspaper publishing emerged as an occupation, Thomas Johnston describes himself as ‘printer, newspaper printer, and bookseller, Falkirk’. Thus a continuous line of association connects broadside printers with chapbook printers, then newspaper printers and finally, in the nineteenth century, lithographic printers. Family dynasties are also apparent among publishers of cheap print. Patrick Mair, printer and bookseller in Glasgow then Falkirk, 1764–97, was succeeded by his son-in-law, Thomas Johnston, who grew the business, especially in chapbook production, which he sold in ‘wholesale & retail’, until his death in 1831. As Iain Beavan demonstrates elsewhere in this volume, the Chalmers family in Aberdeen ran several branches of a very successful printing and publishing business in the north-east, and profited significantly from such chapbook productions as the Mother’s Catechism (1749) and the Fables of Aesop (1781). The Robertson family in Glasgow, who dominated that city’s cheap print production throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, established an even more impressive dynasty than their northern neighbours. John Robertson Sr was a printer, bookbinder and bookseller, initially in partnership with Mrs McLean in the Middle of the Saltmarket, 1739–53, then on his own, 1753–64. Three of his four sons (John, James and Matthew) became involved in the family firm. John and James traded in the Saltmarket from 1774 to 1782, while James and Matthew traded from the same address from 1782 to 1799 and at 20 Saltmarket between 1800 and 1809. All three siblings were

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burgesses and guild brothers in the city. The Robertson brothers, first John and James, then James and Matthew, printed much greater numbers of chapbooks compared to other printers in the city. The brothers were also importing children’s books from England, publishing reprints of titles by John Newbery of London and sending their stock to James Magee in Belfast. Competition was aggressive between the various cheap print producers both within large centres like Glasgow and Edinburgh and elsewhere as publishers sought to make their stock more attractive to the street vendors and chapmen. A copy of Young Grigor’s Ghost, probably printed in 1790 by Patrick Mair, proclaimed on the title-page: ‘Falkirk printed, where travelling Chapmen may be served with Histories, School Books, and many others too tedious to mention, as cheap as in Edinburgh or Glasgow.’ As the demand for cheap print grew, even serious bookmen dipped into the market, such as Robert Foulis, Glasgow University’s printer and producer of some of eighteenthcentury Scotland’s finest books, who issued the chapbook, The Old Historical Scots Poems, Giving an Account of the Battle of Harlaw, and Reid Square (1748). Judging by their unit output, and accepting that cheap print was not their only type of printing, there was significant variation in the amount of stock a cheap print publisher produced. Only a single chapbook from each of J. Reid (The Art of Thriving, Edinburgh, 1700), Alexander Duncan (Shorter Catechism, Edinburgh, 1771) and James Maxwell (A New Song. The Fumbler, Paisley, 1785) survives in the Lauriston Castle collection. Solitary broadsides from Margaret Reid (Last Speech and Confession of Anne Fogget, Edinburgh, 1716) and Thomas Duncan (Full and Particular Account of a Horrid Murder, Glasgow, 1799) also remain in the collection. There are, however, eight strikingly varied chapbooks bearing Patrick Mair’s Falkirk imprint, including Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1788) and Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs (1793). Glasgow’s James and Matthew Robertson have twenty-three surviving titles with dates and imprints clearly stated. In fact, 1799 saw nine thematically varied chapbooks from the Robertsons. They included the prophesies of the blind seer John Porter of Crossiebeig, The History of Fortunatus who possessed a purse that was constantly full and a wishing hat that conveyed him to any place in the world; William Secker’s perennial favourite, A Wedding Ring Fit for the Finger, one of the most popular chapbook histories telling of the destruction of Troy; and finally the enduring best-seller, Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace. With a keen eye for identifying money-spinning chapbook titles, the Robertson family dominated

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the Saltmarket trade in cheap print. Indeed, in his introduction to the collected writings of Dougal Graham, George MacGregor claims that around this time the Robertson brothers were making £30,000 a year selling chapbooks (1883: I: 78). According to the surviving copies in the Lauriston Castle collection, eighteenth-century Edinburgh had some fourteen publishers producing broadsides and chapbooks, while Glasgow had seventeen. Most of these Glasgow printers congregated around the city’s Saltmarket, near the Trongate, while in Edinburgh the cheap-print industry was concentrated in Niddry’s Wynd off the High Street. About 133 broadsides with Edinburgh and twenty-three with Glasgow imprints survive. Chapbooks have an opposite survival pattern: fourteen from Edinburgh and at least fifty-five from Glasgow. These approximate figures, while excluding the many items lacking a publication site or date, demonstrate Edinburgh’s superiority in producing broadsides, and Glasgow’s dominance of chapbooks, perhaps in parallel with Glasgow’s economic expansion and population growth during the latter half of the eighteenth century, or because of the influence of that city’s thriving evangelical market (see Moss on the Glasgow printers). Edinburgh, on the other hand, likely concentrated on the mid-tohigher end of the printing trade, such as book and periodical production, although Edinburgh-based James Tytler and Peter Williamson embody the opposite trend in their careers as cheap printers (S. W. Brown 2005, 2008). As its publishing industry became more sophisticated, Edinburgh may have mostly ceded the cheap print trade to Glasgow by the mid-eighteenth century. The sale of cheap print, however, was as much driven by the vendor’s skills as the content of the broadside or chapbook. Felix Folio captures the audacity of the northern English broadside sellers effectively: ‘Flying Stationers are men who rush into the streets, generally in couples, bawling out at the very top of their voice “A true and correct account” of something, which is neither one nor the other’ (1858: 108). Capturing the attention of passers-by and drawing a crowd were essential to selling cheap print, and thus the seller’s good banter, patter, or showmanship ensured success. Ballad-sellers often sang snippets from the works they sold, others told stories based on their wares, or recounted the dastardly deeds and heartfelt repentance of murderers (O’Connell 1999: 167–76). These salesmen were variously known: chapmen, pedlars, patterers, flying stationers, hawkers and even ragmen by the twentieth century. Even in 1960s Paisley, the ragman’s arrival created commotion in the street, as he blew his trumpet and offered ‘dabbities’ and chapbooks in exchange for old clothes. The

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eighteenth-century street vendors might also sell school-books, stationery and pens along with their stock of ballads, poems and execution speeches. According to Sheila O’Connell, England’s ‘street sellers were among the poorest of the poor’ often but ‘one step above a beggar’; their status in Scotland was likely to have been no higher (1999: 168). For some, the purveyors of cheap print were part of a wider problem: the perceived disintegration of morals and polite behaviour in public spaces. The Edinburgh bookseller and publisher William Creech, describing the decline of civil standards since the 1760s, lamented the influence of ballad-sellers in the 1780s: The streets are infested, as formerly, by idle ballad-singers, although no person, by the law of the borough, is allowed to hawk or cry papers in the streets but the Cadies, under cognisance of the magistrates. The only difference is, that their ballads are infinitely more loose than they were, and that servants and citizens children make excuses to be absent, to listen to these abominable promoters of vice and low manners, and convey corruption into the families by purchasing them. (Letters Respecting the Trade, Manners, &c. of Edinburgh, 1788: 23) Whether in Glasgow’s Trongate, Edinburgh’s Cowgate, or markets and fairs around the country, street literature drew readers and hearers in large numbers. Although readers of all rank perused the material, the 200,000 items of cheap print produced annually in Scotland were designed for the urban labouring and servant classes, and the semi-literate who congregated at fairs and markets (Cowan 2000: 12). Creech’s concern for their moral well-being would have been echoed in the pulpits and drawing rooms of the country, albeit many of those uttering a tut of disapproval would most likely have read (and probably enjoyed) the ‘offensive’ publications themselves. Biographical information on eighteenth-century chapmen and ballad-sellers is sparse, save for Dougal Graham (1721–79), born in Stirling lame, hunchbacked and under five foot tall. In 1770 he became Skellat Bellman, or Town Crier, of Glasgow after a successful career as a chapman and author of an account of the ‘Rebellion in the Years 1745–6’ – as well as allegedly being the poet responsible for over twenty well-known chapbook titles. His contested or certainly unproven authorship highlights the difficulty in identifying the progenitors of cheap print. Since copyright infringement was a right of passage for most cheap printers, and a way of life for the more established, there was great reluctance to be identified on printed productions. Piracy was a defining characteristic of the cheap print industry. This normally

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took the form of copying verses or blocks of text from signed editions and incorporating them into chapbook verse collections. The work of Robert Burns was targeted by the chapbook pirates on a regular basis, with even well-established printers like Brash and Reid publishing unauthorised editions of Tam O’Shanter in 1795–6, which Ross Roy discusses elsewhere in this volume. Less contentiously, perhaps, the popularity of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe continued from its publication in 1719 right through to Charles Randall’s cheap 1801 Stirling edition under the title, The Life of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. Copyright avoidance meant that pseudonymous or apocryphal names were often used when assigning authorship for chapbooks or songs in songbooks. This partly explains why publishers, in order to avoid litigation, maddeningly chose not to assign publication sites, dates and printers’ names to their productions. The contrast between two titles by Dougal Graham, one certain, the other an attribution, serves to illustrate the point regarding copyright and piracy. Graham’s An Impartial History of the Rise, Progress and Extinction of the late Rebellion in Britain, in the Years 1745 and 1746 first appeared in Glasgow (1746) and had eight editions by 1808, all by the Robertson family and all recognising Graham’s authorship. One of Graham’s most popular attributed works, however, The Comical Sayings of Paddy from Cork went through numerous eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century editions without attribution, mostly undated and ‘Printed for the Booksellers’ in Glasgow, Falkirk, Dunbar, Paisley, Kilmarnock, Edinburgh and Stirling. The Comical History of Simple John, another of Graham’s popular attributed works, followed a similarly anonymous course. The swift uptake of popular titles by other printers, not only in Scotland, but across the United Kingdom and beyond, was not confined to Graham’s works. Alexander Montgomery of Glasgow’s The Pleasant Art of Money-Catching regularly flew off presses across the UK. It probably first appeared in London with a third and fourth edition published there in 1714 and 1737, followed by fifth and sixth editions in Glasgow in 1750 and 1784. Most of the rest of the numerous appearances in Glasgow, Falkirk, Belfast and Gateshead, with the exception of the Dublin ‘fourth edition, corrected and much enlarged’ of 1793 printed by T. McDonnel, were undated. A similarly wide dissemination was enjoyed by The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan commonly called the King’s Fool, probably first printed by J. and M. Robertson in Glasgow in 1777. NLS has no fewer than thirty-seven editions, printed between 1777 and 1880, with fourteen issued before 1800. Places of publication include Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen,

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Elgin, Dumfries, Dublin, Falkirk, Stirling, London, Newcastle and Philadelphia. In his Humorous Chapbooks of Scotland (1873), John Fraser suggests that as the eighteenth century began, the reading matter available to the households of ‘poor folk consisted of only a Bible, the Confession of Faith, a bunch of ballads, and Sir William Wallace’ (1873: 111). The Wallace was almost certainly a chapbook and the ‘bunch of ballads’ broadsides. It is beyond reasonable doubt that such cheap print was the main source of secular writing for the majority of Scotland’s common people. The church or state had little control over the content and production of cheap print and its consumers read, heard or sang it largely for entertainment. They sought inspirational tales and fascinating adventures, accounts of misdemeanours and crimes, songs and jokes, guidance on how to rear and nurture children, and some direction on the meaning of life and what death was all about. The texts were inexpensive and could easily be carried around in a pocket or taken home from the fair or alehouse, with the added virtue of being largely uncontrolled by the authorities. Addressing themes to satisfy most interests, cheap literature’s wide-ranging subject matter has been appropriately described as ‘the Folk in their Condition’ (Cowan and Paterson 2007). Despite the widespread development of cheap print in Scotland in the eighteenth century, the great flowering of the genre occurred in the early decades of the century after. Even so, the establishment of the Religious Tract Society in 1799 eventually resulted in the swamping of the cheap print network with non-secular offerings. More ominously, the publication of Chambers Edinburgh Journal in 1832 brought a more long-term and fatal blow to the traditional cheap print market, as it signalled the arrival of the periodical press – 50,000 copies of the first issue of Chambers Journal were bought, while the third issue put 80,000 copies into the market (Harvey 1971: 1903). At its high point in the early nineteenth century, therefore, the seeds of the decline in cheap print had already been sown.

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The Pamphlet Iain Beavan Pamphlets have long had a mixed reputation, considered either carriers of scurrility, complete lies and treason, or vehicles for disseminating truths and improving society. Many were undoubtedly (and quite intentionally) polemical, provocative, factional, vindictive and abusive; just as many expressed subtle and balanced arguments, and were read and respected as informative or spiritually uplifting. Observations on the content and purpose of pamphlets often reflect the rhetorical mode of the originals. Some likened pamphlets to seductive ‘Bags of Sugar-Plums’, with ‘poisonous Contents’ and ‘Paragraphs of false Intelligence . . . which are swallowed greedily’ and ‘cry’d about our Streets every Day’: these observations come from a 6d pamphlet – The Norwich Dream – published in London in 1745, reacting to current Jacobite views (1745: 14–15). A little earlier, Myles Davies had observed of the genre: ‘From pamphlets may be learn’d the Genius of the Age, the Debates of the Learned, the Follies of the Ignorant, the bevews of Government . . . and the encroachments of Rivals’. They ‘furnish Beau’s with their Airs, Coquets with their Charms’ and ‘are as Modish Ornaments to Gentlewomen’s Toylets as to Gentlemen’s Pockets’ (A Critical History of Pamphlets, 1715: 2–3; Raymond 2003: 83–97). Political pamphlets that set out to ‘disabuse the Publick in Respect to some false Notions’ generally had recourse to ‘undeniable Facts, and plain Reason, for the Support of Truth’ while those intended for ‘the Service of some Party’ relied upon suppositions and conjectures (Select Letters from Fog’s ‘Weekly Journal’, 1732: 105). But what is a pamphlet as a material artefact? Stab-stitched, pamphlets were frequently issued with paper covers, though limp vellum might be used. Lacking any strict bibliographical definition, they remain immediately recognisable as texts: often (though not invariably) 382

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controversial or promotional, composed to express a favourable or adverse reaction to some social, political or economic development. Pamphlets were not, however, entirely reactive: some initiated debates, or else forced issues to a decision, like those of Ebenezer Erskine and his brother Ralph, founders of the Secession Church in Scotland. And pamphlets had a quasi-legal definition. They were first subjected to duty in 1712 (10 Anne c.19, sect. 101) at the rate of 2s for every sheet (up to twenty sheets in folio; six in octavo, or twelve in quarto), not per copy, but per impression (Raymond 2003: 82). This rate was increased in 1815 to 3s per sheet, but the tax was totally repealed in 1833. During the eighteenth century it was not an onerous tax,35 and was regarded as indirectly enabling ‘the government to keep an eye on such publications’ (Aspinall 1949: 16). It did, however, feature in the early-nineteenth-century’s revolt against ‘Taxes-on-Knowledge’, when radical publishers tried to escape oppressive newspaper duties by unsuccessfully claiming their publications were pamphlets (Weiner 1969: 15–16). And where were pamphlets sold and read? The size of London’s trade accommodated some degree of specialisation. William Seward’s Journal of a Voyage from Savannah to Philadelphia . . . with Rev . . . George Whitefield, 1740, was for sale at booksellers and ‘pamphletshops’. Such differentiation is not evident within Scotland, although as early as 1709 John MacGregory’s forty-four-page Geography and History of Tournay, printed by John Moncur in Edinburgh, was sold, according to the imprint, ‘at all the coffee-houses in town’. Throughout the century, Scottish booksellers sold pamphlets and newspapers advertised them. The Edinburgh Evening Courant (7 January 1746) noted the recent publication of ‘THE EDINBURGH PACKET opened, by a Collection of curious Pamphlets published on Occasion of the present unaccountable Rebellion . . . sold by the Booksellers in Edinburgh’. In the same newspaper, on 30 January, Gideon Crawfurd of Parliament Close was advertising two of the sermons of William Warburton. Much later, the Aberdeen Journal (8 August 1797) carried Alexander Brown’s advertisement for the Edinburgh-published Speech of the Hon. Thomas 35

Henry Grieve’s Observations on the Overture concerning Patronage, Edinburgh, 1769, consists of sixty-four pages, 8vo. This indicates that the printing of a copy absorbed four sheets. Tax on the full edition would therefore have been 8s. George Whitefield’s Unbeliever Convicted, printed in the Saltmarket, Glasgow, in 1742, by John Robertson and Mrs McLean, was a quarto of sixteen pages. Two sheets were thus needed to produce a copy. Tax was therefore 4s for the whole edition. The pamphlet tax had to be included in the cost of production, but, given that the cost of many pamphlets was underwritten (partially or completely) by interested parties, it is difficult to know what difference it made to the actual price of the pamphlet, or profits accrued.

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Erskine on the part of the Prosecution . . . [against the] Publishing [of] Paine’s Age of Reason. On occasion they were also included in the stock carried by hawkers, chapmen and street-sellers (Magee 1826: 18). Most had no pre-publication distribution arrangements, relying on topicality and immediacy for sales. That is not to say, however, that they did not achieve widespread distribution. Patently they did – and needed to – since affairs affecting more than one country were subject to intense interest, as the pamphlets concerned with the Union in the early years of the eighteenth century attest (McLeod and McLeod 1979). Controversial books often generated immediate reactions through pamphlets, which in turn might spawn yet more tracts. Thus the very nature of pamphlets raises questions about the notion of a text: is it a discrete publication or the whole of the public exchange in which each pamphlet participates? Disagreements over the presence of divine intercession and the nature of conversion were major factors in the controversy between James Robe, revivalist Church of Scotland minister in Kilsyth, and James Fisher, one of the founders of the Secession Church. Robe’s book-length A Faithful Narrative of the Extraordinary Work of the Spirit of God, at Kilsyth (224 pages) was printed and sold by William Duncan (Glasgow, 1742) with a pamphlet-length version, simply titled Faithful Narrative (twenty-eight pages), issued that same year in Edinburgh. In response, James Fisher penned his Review of the Preface to a Narrative of the Extraordinary Work at Kilsyth and Other Congregations in the Neighbourhood, a sixty-eight-page pamphlet, printed by John Bryce and sold by him and Patrick Bryce at Glasgow, also in 1742. By the following year, the controversy had so expanded that James Robe looked again to Edinburgh and to Robert Fleming and Co. to print and John Trail[l] to sell, his splendidly contorted Mr. Robe’s Fourth Letter to Mr. Fisher, wherein his Preface to a 2d edit. of his Review is Considered . . . as also, The Fraud and Falshood of the Reverend Mr. Ralph Erskine’s Appendix to his Fraud and falsehood, & c. is laid open. By this point in the textual exchange, a separate (and equally complex) tract had obviously appeared, namely Ralph Erskine’s Fraud and Falshood Discover’d, printed in Edinburgh and ‘sold at the printinghouse in the Parliament-close, 1743’, which itself had contained comments on James Robe. In so far as these pamphlets were not simply reporting the development of the controversy, but were in fact generating and sustaining it, one wonders if they were read or understood by those on the periphery of the controversy. The visceral content of such pamphlets could generate real anger and disdain, as demonstrated in the splendidly vituperative attack by Reverend John Anderson, a

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Church of Scotland minister, in his running controversy with Robert Calder over the form and basis of Presbyterian and Episcopalian liturgies. The text, printed at Edinburgh by John Moncur, saw Anderson warm to his theme: ‘I have seen thy Paper entitled, A Return to Mr. A, & c. The date of it . . . Accounts for the Nature of it. Though thou art Drunk once at least every day . . . Nothing was to be expected from Thee; but the Intemperate Raveings of a Brain doz’d with the Fumes of Liquor.’ The tone scarcely improved throughout (Curat Calder Whipt, by T.T., 1712: 1). Newspaper articles often prompted pamphlet writers into challenging expressed views or correcting facts. The twenty-page Letter from a Gentleman in Glasgow, to his Friend in the Country, Concerning the Great Tumults which happened in that City, containing a True Account of the Plundering of Daniel Campbell of Shawfield’s House (1725), begins by reminding readers that the Edinburgh and London newspaper accounts of the popular feelings about the levying of the Malt Tax, the despoiling of the property of one of the city’s MPs and the military reaction were inaccurate, and then offers a different interpretation of events. Two small but related details stand out: first, the implication that newspapers and pamphlets circulated within the same reader communities in Glasgow and second, the assumption that Edinburgh and London newspapers were readily obtainable in Glasgow. Newspapers evidently also responded to pamphlets and tracts. In August 1713, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland issued their Seasonable Warning . . . Concerning the Danger of Popery. Published in Edinburgh, it was reprinted in both London and Dublin, and may thus be considered an anti-Catholic text, aiming for cohesion in Britain, rather than one simply supporting the Church of Scotland. A month later, in September, the Post Boy, a Tory newspaper, published a series of pieces critical of the Warning that were fundamentally driven by a deep dislike of Presbyterianism. A subsequent pamphlet reaction to the Post Boy and a defence of the Church of Scotland came later that year in the form of The Seasonable Warning . . . concerning the Danger of Popery Defended against . . . False Remarks . . . in the Post Boy, printed both in Edinburgh and London. Pamphlets, if not ubiquitous, were a frequently encountered, recognisable form of publication which, by the end of the seventeenth century, was embedded in Britain’s print culture (Raymond 2003: 381). Many have the quality of instalments, assuming and absorbing what had gone before in a particular argument, developing it, and setting forth a text subject to further appraisal and comment. The fortypage pamphlet, Considerations on the Game Law (1772), printed in

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Edinburgh for Kincaid and Creech and written by Alexander Fraser Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee), was composed (as its title makes clear) to respond explicitly to the anonymous fifty-five-page The Present State of the Game Law and the Question of Property (1772), issued by Edinburgh’s Fleming and Neill. The publication of the one clearly initiated the writing and publication of the other. John Bryce, Glasgow printer and bookseller, was the prime instigator of Glasgow’s ‘evangelical print culture’ with its production of ‘pious Calvinist books and pamphlets’. His imprint, from the 1740s to the 1780s, appeared on over 200 mostly religious titles (Sher and Hook 1995: 13; Landesman 1995: 222), whose distribution was partially a family matter. John Newlands is regularly listed as the point of sale for the pamphlets of the brothers Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, and for James Fisher. Whether Newlands, of the Gallowgate, Glasgow, and in trade at least from 1731 to 1750, undertook this work through conviction is not known; he assuredly did it through matrimony, as his wife, Margaret Erskine, was Ralph’s daughter. The Foulis Press in Glasgow was also not averse to publishing religious pamphlets, though their name is not usually associated with such material. The State of Religion in New-England since . . . George Whitefield’s Arrival there and John Barnard’s A Zeal for Good Works Excited and Directed, in a Sermon . . . in Boston were both printed by them in Glasgow (1742), though the latter first appeared in Boston. A Letter on Occasion of the Late Earthquakes by Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London, also came from the Foulis Press, who between 1741 and 1769 produced seven pamphlet editions of The Temper, Character, and Duty of a Minister of the Gospel, originally delivered as a sermon in 1741 by William Leechman, eventually Principal of Glasgow University. Pamphlets were not restricted to religious contentions: politics and constitutional affairs (though themselves often denominational during the eighteenth century) also provided pamphlet makers with opportunities for quick profits. The cross-border nature of the Jacobite uprisings induced London printers to contribute significantly to the constitutional crisis. The sixty-four-page Authentick Account of the Intended Invasion by the Chevalier’s Son (1744), printed and sold in London by M. Cooper, is typical, while Philip Skelton’s anonymously published Chevalier’s Hopes and An Answer to a Dangerous Pamphlet, entitled A Candid and Impartial Account of the Behaviour of Simon, Lord Lovat (1747), both issued in Dublin by James Esdall, indicate the understandable yet obsessive interest that the (Protestant) governing classes in Ireland had in the affair. George Wishart sought God’s guidance in

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his Times of Publick Distress, Times of Trial . . . some Sermons Preach’d in the Tron-Church of Edinburgh on Occasion of the Present Rebellion (Edinburgh: Robert Fleming and Co.), while John Anderson (perhaps the Glasgow University professor) saw his Book of the Chronicles of His Royal Highness William Duke of Cumberland printed in Edinburgh and reprinted in Dublin (1746). That same year Andrew Henderson demonstrated his classical education with Expeditio militaris; sive Britannia liberata: carmen in honorem Cumbriae Ducis illustrissimi, again printed in Edinburgh, though with no printer named; given the work’s Hanoverian sentiments, it must have been after Culloden and safely on the victor’s side. Caution on the part of printers in identifying themselves was entirely understandable. The Edinburgh printer who set to type the sixteen-page poem To His Royal Highness, Charles Prince of Wales, the first line of which began, ‘Hail Glorious Youth, the Wonder of the Age’, was prudent to have omitted his name on the title-page, as were the persons responsible in Edinburgh for A True and Full Account of the Late Bloody and Desperate Battle at Gladsmuir . . . to which is prefix’d Occasional Reflections on the Amazing Happy Success. That the working definition of ‘pamphlet’ is imprecise is effectively demonstrated by this last title. Consisting of only eight pages, it might be better considered an urban chapbook, but the style and layout strongly suggest it was meant to provide information (or propaganda as fact). After the uprisings, a more peaceable kingdom started slowly to emerge, though not without bickering and flashes of prejudice: The Wilkiad, a Tale was a twenty-four-page satirical verse pamphlet published in Edinburgh and aimed at John Wilkes and his antipathetic Scottish campaign (Colley 1992: 105–16). Pamphlets also provided the arena for more intellectual disputations. In 1755 John Bonar, Church of Scotland minister, published in Edinburgh his anonymous Analysis of the Moral and Religious Sentiments contained in the Writings of Sopho [i. e. Lord Kames] and David Hume, which that same year itself became subject to a critical eye with Hugh Blair’s Observations upon a Pamphlet, intituled, An Analysis. In 1756 Blair also penned (with others) the sixty-four-page Objections against the Essays on Morality and Natural Religion [by Lord Kames] Examined. Political philosophy clearly was Thomas Blacklock’s subject in his Remarks on the Nature and Extent of Liberty, as Compatible with the Genius of Civil Societies . . . and on the Justice and Policy of the American War (Edinburgh, 1776). George Campbell, Principal of Marischal College, approached the American Revolution in terms of loyalty to the Crown in his sermon The Nature, Extent and Importance of the Duty of Allegiance, printed in Aberdeen

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and (according to the imprint) also distributed in London and Edinburgh (1777). Economic improvement with its beneficial social consequences was a major concern for many of eighteenth-century Scotland’s educated, commercial and landed classes, and institutions were established to survey the state of agriculture and fisheries, and promote national innovations in these areas. Subsequent findings were published as pamphlets and issued chiefly from Edinburgh on behalf of one or other society. John Ker’s Report to Sir John Sinclair . . . Chairman of the Society for the Improvement of British Wool of the State of Sheep Farming (Edinburgh: Printed by William Smellie, Printer to the Society, and sold [in Edinburgh, London, Glasgow and Aberdeen]) is a prime example, although its effective distribution list indicates a more than usually professional (and well financed) approach by both Printer and Society. However, it would be entirely wrong to conclude that pamphlets were used just to identify, isolate and develop internal or British concerns. Most did, but some responded to larger moral issues, as with Alexander Adam’s printing, in Glasgow, on behalf of an unnamed society, of their Address to the Inhabitants of Glasgow, Paisley, and the Neighbourhood, concerning the Slave Trade (1791). When Adam Black started business as a bookseller in Edinburgh in 1807, the political atmosphere within the nation was nervous, suspicious and oppressive. He was very careful about what he displayed in his shop – radical publications were rapidly moved out of sight – since to be considered sympathetic ‘was dangerous to the prospects of a tradesman. Many were afraid of their credit at the banks being affected by such a suspicion’ (Nicolson 1885: 45). He was also aware of what had befallen his friend, the bookseller Walter Berry, who was imprisoned for three months (and his printing partner James Robertson for six) for ‘wickedly and feloniously’ publishing, in 1792, James Callender’s notorious pamphlet, The Political Progress of Britain (Cockburn 1888: II: 128–43). Berry had been discreetly observed by Robert Dundas (Lord Advocate for Scotland) for his short-lived radical newspaper, the Caledonian Chronicle (Aspinall 1949: 353). Something The Political Progress had in common with many other radical pamphlets was wide dissemination; it was not unusual for such tracts to cross borders, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic. But Adam Black started business at a time which, far from seeing the smothering of pamphlets through early-nineteenth-century repressive legislation like the Six Acts of December 1819, was to see great growth, particularly in the years leading up to the Great Reform Act of 1832. Pamphlets played a major part in Scottish and British affairs, and there

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was scarcely a matter of public debate that was not commented upon in them. Pamphlets became a primary mode of communication and expression (along with newspapers and serials) for evolving ideas in Victorian Scotland. Their role within eighteenth-century print communications had been highly significant, and positioned the genre to be a crucial medium for popular debate throughout the following century.

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Pamphlet Wars in the 1790s Gordon Pentland Although a newspaper press representing a range of political opinion developed more slowly in Scotland than in England, the medium of the pamphlet provided a familiar vehicle for the prosecution of political and religious controversies. Beginning with the seventeenth century, pamphlets became an integral part of political culture and the primary means of creating and contesting public opinion in print. The dynamic role of Scottish printing presses, alongside those of London and the Low Countries, in the revolutionary upheavals of the seventeenth century had provided ample evidence of the power of the pamphlet (Raymond 2003). This was not forgotten by the pamphleteers of the eighteenth century and it was to a venerable tradition that James Thomson Callender appealed in 1795, when he predicted a Scottish revolution within ten years and observed that ‘in Britain authors and editors of pamphlets have long conducted the van of every revolution’ (Political Progress of Britain [Philadelphia] 1795: 3). A number of scholars have grappled with the difficulties in defining precisely what type of production constituted a pamphlet proper, but a none-too-rigid bibliographical definition is probably the best guide. By this definition a pamphlet is a booklet formed by folding and stitching loosely together (i.e. not binding) somewhere between one and twelve printer’s sheets and thus constituting between eight and ninety-six pages in quarto (Raymond 2003: 5). The advantages of this type of production are obvious: the flexibility of the format made it easy to respond to current events; pamphlets were simple to produce and cheap to manufacture; and they could be easily distributed. As such, the pamphlet was the medium par excellence for those writers who engaged in the political and religious debates of eighteenth-century Scotland. Certain events and controversies (the Union with England, the Porteous Riots in 1736 390

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and the opposition to Catholic relief in 1778, to name a few examples) stand out as having been accompanied by vigorous and wide-ranging pamphlet wars. There seems to have been, however, a demonstrable increase in the number of pamphlets dealing with the themes of civil and religious liberty and reform during the period of profound instability following the American Revolution. Proposals for the reform of both county and burgh representation were raised at this time in Scottish pamphlets, while older issues, such as the running sore of the Patronage Act of 1712, were agitated afresh (Bono 1980). If this seems to create a rather Whiggish picture of a politically immature or ‘unawakened’ Scotland before the French Revolution, the 1790s certainly did witness something of different magnitude. A mushrooming print culture produced pamphlets on a scale that was both unprecedented and much remarked upon by contemporaries: ‘In the history of Britain there has not, perhaps, occurred a period when such a vast number of political pamphlets, handbills, circular letters &c &c attracted the notice of the public, as that which we live in’ (Caledonian Mercury, 30 September 1793). In a decade of tumultuous and fastmoving world events, the pamphlet was an important vehicle through which people publicised their responses and in which they could frame a wide range of ideas and agendas. Critics of government evinced a considerable faith in the transformative capacity of the printed word and for their purposes the pamphlet as ‘a pre-eminent model of public speech, a way of conceiving of the power of the word’ offered a number of advantages (Raymond 2003: 26). While newspapers were expensive operations and susceptible to the various financial and political pressures that government and its supporters could bring to bear, radicals were more reliant on other, cheaper forms of print (B. Harris 2005a: 51–3). Paine’s Rights of Man, at 3s for Part One, still sold in impressive numbers, but it was arguably its dissemination in numerous pirated and abridged pamphlet editions with an accompanying increase in the social range of its potential audience that rendered it such a severe threat to the authorities (O. Smith 1984: 57–8; Altick 1957: 69–71). The pamphlet provided the best medium for circulating information and arguments widely, and radicals in Scotland were sensible of its benefits. Pamphlet production was certainly the objective behind a motion at the first National Convention of the Friends of the People, which argued that because ‘the best books for conveying political knowledge were published in so extravagant a mode’ the Convention ought to select the best ‘and cause them to be printed upon the cheapest plan’ (Minutes of the General Convention, 1793: 12). Later in the proceedings we can infer

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that pamphlet literature would be used to meet the Convention’s aim of finding ‘constitutional means of diffusing political knowledge in the Highlands of Scotland’ (Edinburgh Gazetteer, 3 December 1793). If radicals were apt to see the pamphlet as a key means of prosecuting what was an evangelical mission to disseminate political knowledge, this kind of proselytising activity helps to explain and contextualise the actions of government supporters and loyalists. While, of course, seditious newspapers and books were viewed as dangerous, it was cheap pamphlet literature and its possible audience that proved most challenging, something that was reflected in the Scottish law officers’ choice of targets for prosecution. One of the first trials for sedition in Scotland in the 1790s was that of James Robertson and Walter Berry, a radical printer and publisher respectively, for the publication of James Thomson Callender’s pamphlet, The Political Progress of Britain (Cockburn 1888: I: 128–43). Indeed, a good part of the prosecution case against the most well-known Scottish radical, Thomas Muir, was premised on his having distributed or recommended certain named pamphlets and newspapers (Bewley 1981: 68–75). This acknowledgement of the potential power of untrammelled pamphleteering saw the government support moves by various loyalist organisations to use the very strategy of the reformers against them. Beginning with the formation in London of the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers (APLP) in November 1792, a network of loyalist bodies was established throughout Britain to provide a counterbalance to radical and reform activity (H. T. Dickinson 1990). While the initial goals of the APLP were to stimulate the creation of similar bodies and to appeal to the political nation as it was traditionally conceived, it quickly aimed to provide and circulate popular loyalist publications throughout Britain (Philp 1995). The Goldsmith’s Hall Association was formed in Edinburgh in December 1792 and, along with other bodies, such as the Glasgow Constitutional Association, was at the forefront of this propaganda effort in Scotland (B. Harris 2005b: 178–9). The loyalist associations were assisted in their aims by the circumstances of the 1790s and developed a complex ‘vulgar conservatism’ with a broad appeal, which, in terms of its printed output, outstripped the efforts of radical pamphleteers (H. T. Dickinson 1990: 526–7; Dinwiddy 1991). A sampling of pamphlet literature from the 1790s demonstrates the protean nature of both radical and loyalist attempts to speak to ‘the people’. Bernard Bailyn identified three principal types of American revolutionary pamphlets: those that constituted direct responses to events; those that sought to argue, reply and rebut, and consequently

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created ‘chain-reacting personal polemics . . . in which may be found heated personifications of the larger conflict’; and those that took the form of more stylised orations or sermons (Bailyn 1965: 5–6). These types certainly account for the majority of the pamphlet material circulating in Scotland in the 1790s. Both radical and loyalist pamphleteers, however, used a variety of forms to pursue their campaigns, some of which do not easily fit into these categories, such as catechisms, dialogues and explicitly literary productions. Aside from Paine, the most successful and notorious contribution to the debate on the French Revolution in Scotland came from James Thomson Callender. His Political Progress of Britain had initially appeared as a series of eight letters from ‘Timothy Thunderproof’ in The Bee, but when it was published in Edinburgh as a pamphlet in 1792, the initial run of 1,000 quickly sold out and by the end of the year there were requests from London for 500 more copies (Durey 1990: 43–9). This work, from a ‘hack’ writer, who had previously been employed in the Sasine office and as a propagandist for Scottish brewers protesting about the corruption of the Excise, provides a good example of how radicals sought to use pamphlet literature to advance their critique. As a production, it compares well with Paine’s Rights of Man. Callender was concerned to ensure that the ‘style of this work is concise and plain’ and in doing this he came close to achieving the intellectual vernacular that so distinguishes Paine’s prose (Callender 1792: 7; O. Smith 1984: 35–67). Like Paine, Callender had to demolish the idea of a perfect British constitution, and he consequently contrasted the notion of a constitution based on the ‘feudal jargon of subjecting a people and their posterity forever to the assignees of a Dutchman who was universally detested’ with ‘the concise and philosophical decrees of the French’ (Callender 1792: 31). Callender was, however, unusual as a Scottish radical who chose to deliver his critique of the British state in pamphlet form, and he was certainly unique in openly pushing a Scottish nationalist agenda. A few other radicals did offer a sustained account of their ideas. The Dundee weaver George Mealmaker’s circulation of his Moral and Political Catechism of Man, or a Dialogue between a Citizen of the World and an Inhabitant of Britain, for example, formed part of the charge against him at his trial for administering unlawful oaths in the United Scotsmen movement (McFarland 1994: 154–7). Similar material was more likely to originate outside Scotland and was simply printed or circulated within the country. Alongside the many different versions of Paine, other radical pamphlets from England and from further afield, such as Volney’s Dialogue between the Governors and the

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Governed, circulated in Scotland (Account of the Trial of Thomas Muir, 1793: 8). More frequently, radicals and reformers used pamphlets in another way, though one that certainly did not preclude attempts to convince and inform readers of the justice of their cause. If handbills and broadsides provided the opportunity to respond to and publicise events very quickly, pamphlets could fulfil a similar function when a somewhat longer publication was required. France was, of course, one obvious source of news in the late eighteenth century, and one of the first sedition trials in Scotland (10 January 1793) saw the abortive prosecution of the Edinburgh bookseller John Elder and a Leith merchant, William Stewart, for publishing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens of the French National Assembly (Cockburn 1888: I: 109–14). Another way in which the pamphlet (along with newspapers) was put to use was to circulate minutes and resolutions of the radical societies that had sprung up in Scotland throughout 1792 and, in particular, those of the national conventions held in Edinburgh. In one sense, this kind of publication was intended to strengthen and advance the movement and to provide an account of its activities to interested parties and, especially, to the local societies who were to pay for their own copies of the minutes (Minutes of the General Convention 1793: 17). The resolutions published by the conventions were, however, assiduously and even ostentatiously loyal and the repetition of formulae pledging to ‘maintain the established Constitution of Great Britain on its genuine acknowledged principles’ and ‘to repress riot and tumult’ were aimed at defusing claims that the reformers acted as ‘the promoters of public discord, and advocates for an unjust and absurd violation of property, by an equal division’ (Minutes 1793: 7–8). Even more frequently pamphlets were vehicles for publishing trial proceedings. The radical publishers Robertson and Berry published an edition of the trial of Thomas Paine in 1792 and, over the next two years, sympathetic publishers brought out numerous editions of the trials of the ‘Scottish Martyrs’. Thus political trials afforded not only dangers of incarceration, transportation or death for radicals but also certain opportunities (Epstein 1996). Ideologically and practically, the context of a trial allowed for the dramatisation of the confrontation between the defender and the authorities. In the trials of the Scottish Martyrs, such opportunities were fully exploited as radicals used the confrontation with the bench, and especially Lord Braxfield, to question government and deliver various critiques of the state (Davis 2005). These confrontations were all published as part of the considerable media attention surrounding the trials. Aside from the obvious ideological

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content, trial accounts could perform other functions. When William Skirving, the secretary of the British Convention, had an account of his trial published and sold in Edinburgh, York and London he prefixed an ‘Address to the Public’ (Trial of William Skirving 1794: 3–4). A pamphlet account of the reading of the indictment itself might provide a surreptitious means of circulating radical material: indeed, the indictment against Thomas Muir reads at one stage like an anthology of aphorisms of Thomas Paine and Constantin-François Volney (Account of the Trial of Thomas Muir, 1793: 8–15). A survey of 1790s radical pamphlet literature ought not to ignore the numerous other ways in which the format was put to use in Scotland. It was a perfect medium for collections of songs and poems, such as Rights of Asses (1792) and Husks for Swine (1794), which could often espouse radical sentiments in a memorable way. Pamphlets had long been the most effective means of circulating sermons and, while the loyalists had something of a stranglehold in most churches, some prominent clergymen, especially in the early stages of the French Revolution, supported the radical cause. William Dunn, for example, earned three months in prison for a sermon printed in 1792 (Bono 1980: 13). The pamphlet was also the natural conduit for old and new religious tracts which, while not overtly advocating political activism, might still dovetail with radical politics if, for example, they explored notions such as justified resistance against tyrants (The Mystery of Magistracy, 1795). Historians have also drawn links between millenarian religious thought and popular radicalism, and the most faithful supporter of Richard Brothers, the best known prophet, was a lawyer from Cupar called John Finlayson, who circulated pamphlets in Scotland in 1797 supporting Brothers and defending the accuracy of his prophecies (Harrison 1979: 61–7). If radical sermons appeared only occasionally, sermons and other moralising literature formed the very backbone of loyalist pamphleteering. Printed sermons had, of course, a pedigree as long as printing technology itself, but the sheer volume of sermons printed in Scotland in the 1790s, some of them circulating in the thousands, marks it out as a peculiar period (B. Harris 2005b: 184). Political preaching tended to be based on three principles: first, that divine sovereignty implied an active God who intervened in the world; second, that sin was the cause of all national evils and so rebellion would meet with chastisement; and third, that national repentance was both necessary and possible (Vincent 1994). Following these principles, the majority of pamphlet sermons preached political quiescence based on any one of a number of biblical injunctions. Fairly typical of the genre was David

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Gellatly’s A Sermon, shewing the Cause of War at Haddington on a fast day in 1794, which was based on Isaiah 30: 1: ‘Woe to the Rebellious Children, saith the Lord.’ It began by proclaiming the war to have been caused by ‘the violation of the commandments of Almighty God’ and called for a moral reformation, while praising fulsomely those real patriots ‘who defend the public cause, their King and their country’. It also offered some muted engagement with a radical critique of British institutions by asserting that, while Britons would never fight in an ‘unlimited monarch’s cause’, all ought to support the sovereign and his family as ‘free born Britons . . . sons of freedom, friends to real freedom’ (Gellatly 1794). Loyalists went far beyond the sermon in their use of the pamphlet and produced publications every bit as diverse as those of the radicals. If one strategy, evident in Gellatly’s sermon, was to inculcate ‘by sheer repetition and by emotional appeals to a simple patriotism’ admiration for the British constitution (H. T. Dickinson 1990: 511), historians have demonstrated the considerably greater range and sophistication of loyalist propaganda (Hole 1983). The main thrust of the loyalist campaign in Scotland occurred while the radical agitation was at its peak, from the end of 1792 until 1794. This period saw associations throughout Scotland pressing for subscriptions with which to purchase and distribute pamphlet literature (Harris 2005b: 178–84). These pamphlets were aimed at a wide range of groups in Scottish society and their messages were tempered accordingly. One intended for the ‘manufacturers and others in the West of Scotland’ offered a careful argument that even went so far as to admit that some aspects of Scotland’s parliamentary representation might be susceptible of reform, before going on to warn that ‘he would be a madman who would risk the enjoyment of what we have, for the hope of acquiring what we have not’ (A Few Thoughts on Political Subjects, 1792: 7). The exhortation to passive obedience was, of course, a theme that ran through a good deal of loyalist pamphlet literature, but the preferred format for those pamphlets aimed at a popular audience was the dialogue. One strategy was to render these in Scots with the aim of communicating effectively with a popular audience. A very widely circulated dialect pamphlet, which was reprinted in America and again in Scotland in 1819 during a later period of radical activity, offered the reader an archetypically quiescent member of the lower orders in the figure of the weaver Tam Thrum: ‘I’m no a rich man, mair than many o’ my neighbours, but I have a contented mind, an’ that’s muckle better than riches’ (Look Before Ye Loup, 1798: 4–5). Such pamphlets followed a fairly standard plot in which a well-meaning artisan flirted with radical politics only to discover his previous relative prosperity

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smashed and his fellow radicals revealed as wolves in sheep’s clothing (Hole 1983: 57–63). They tended to make an emotional appeal and invariably portrayed radicals as labouring under a full complement of vices. Another widely circulated pamphlet presented the reader with two members of the Friends of the People, Gibby Grunt, a seceding weaver and advanced radical, and John Dunt, a Presbyterian blacksmith, redeemable and beginning to suspect his fellow radicals of going too far. The names, occupations and religions of the characters were all designed to underline the message of the pamphlet and offered an image of the worst kind of radical. If any more signposting were needed it was provided by the interventions of the staunchly loyal school-master, Mr Tacit Neuter, who helpfully provided the standard loyalist construction of radicals: ‘cruel unnatural husbands and fathers, scoffers at religion, atheists, free-thinkers, bankrupts in their affairs, idle, disorderly drunks, dissolute and unprincipled’ (Modern Politics, 1793: 14). Like the radicals, loyalist pamphleteers also used the format to respond to current events, something that was apparent in dialogues that referred frequently to active radicals. One, for example, represented Maurice Margarot, a delegate at the British Convention, as a London trickster who made a living ‘by cheating poor folk out of their siller’ (Look Before Ye Loup, 1794: 34). If radicals used pamphlets to publicise their own activities, loyalists similarly published loyal addresses and the names and occupational status of those who subscribed them, pushing the impression of a loyal, respectable, propertied and peaceable majority (Letters &c From Friends of the People, 1792: 13–15). Pamphlets might also comment on and contest radical interpretations of contemporary affairs; loyalists publicised the increasing violence in France and attempted to subvert radical representations of sedition and treason trials. The Declaration and Confession of Robert Watt, for example, which was alleged to have been dictated by Watt on the eve of his execution for involvement in the Pike Plot of 1794, enjoyed extraordinary success and lent credence to the loyalist image of violent radicals bent on insurrection. Watt’s finishing prayer also provided what must have been an effective exhortation to passive obedience: ‘My prayer to God is, That he may inspire all the people with a spirit of subordination and loyalty; and teach them to lead, under the powers that be, quiet and peaceable lives, in godliness and honesty’ (Declaration and Confession of Robert Watt, 1794: 32–3; Harris 2005b: 181). Radical activity in Scotland faded quickly after the defeats of 1794, although recent scholarship has highlighted the survival of networks of

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booksellers and radical customers into the later 1790s (Harris 2005b: 174–8). Loyalist pamphleteering also continued with reduced intensity, although the period after 1795 witnessed the phenomenal success of Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts, which were distributed in Scotland where they outstripped the circulation of all previous pamphlets. A minority of these tracts dealt directly with political subjects, but their main purpose was to push a vision of harmonious social order seen through the lens of evangelical religion (Hole 1983: 64–6). A good case has been made for the novelty of this type of publication, which was not overtly political, but rather appropriated and subverted the modes of popular culture more subtly in getting its message across (Pedersen 1986). English publications such as the Cheap Repository Tracts, which circulated throughout Britain and Ireland, should remind us of the limits of this kind of inquiry. In some senses, examining a distinctly Scottish pamphlet war obscures as much as it reveals. The aims of both radicals and loyalists were pan-British and often universalist and transnational. While some pamphlet material dealt with specifically Scottish issues, both radicals and loyalists and their printers and publishers operated in political and print cultures that were British as much as Scottish (Harris 2005b: 165–6). Nor can we overlook the fact that print culture in Britain was locked into an Atlantic world, where political debate was carried on between radical exiles and loyalists. For example, James Tytler, the editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, who fled Scotland under threat of arrest for his broadside address To the People and their Friends, took the time to pen a pamphlet in Belfast attacking Paine’s deism before making his way to Boston and continuing his writing and other pursuits (Reply to Mr Paine’s ‘Age of Reason’, 1794; S. W. Brown 2005: 47–63). Perhaps the most notorious exiled pamphleteer, James Thomson Callender, continued the debate over his Political Progress on the other side of the Atlantic against the formidable talents of the English journalist William Cobbett, who dubbed the pamphlet ‘Sawney’s complaint’ (The Political Program of Britain, 1795: 10). Callender was to go on to earn the dubious distinction of slandering three American presidents, including his erstwhile patron, Thomas Jefferson, and he stands as an example of how pamphlet wars that were vigorously pursued in Scotland were part of an extended battlefield in the 1790s (Durey 1997: 242).

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Agricultural Pamphlets Heather Holmes Pamphlets were crucial to eighteenth-century Scottish agricultural print with eighty-eight appearing between 1696 and 1800, more than twice the number of agricultural books and journals published from 1683 to 1790 (Holmes 2007). Pamphlets were diffuse publications since each author generally published only one title. However, there were exceptions, such as Robert Sandilands (1786, 1790) and Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk (1757, 1760, 1766). Pamphlet authors could be anonymous or highly-esteemed names in Scottish agriculture and rural affairs who boasted European reputations. They identified themselves on their pamphlets in three ways. Before 1771, most were anonymous. The few known include such improving agriculturists as Sir George Clerk-Maxwell (1756), Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk and Lord Kames (1766). A second group disguised themselves through occupational pseudonyms: ‘an old ploughman’ (1759); ‘farmer’, used by two authors (1763, 1781); ‘a Minister of the Gospel’ (1773); and ‘a gentleman, a member of the Board’ [Commissioners of the Annexed Estates] (1773). ‘A lover of his country’ (1732), identified as William Mackintosh of Borlum, makes agricultural improvements a patriotic matter. A third group employed personal or institutional names, which increasingly became the eighteenth-century practice because it enabled authors to promote themselves and their work. Adam Dickson (1764), William Barron (1774), Alexander Wedderburn (1776) and David Young of Perth (1791) always declared their authorship, as did agricultural societies and public bodies charged with promoting agriculture. National organisations, those with county or parish jurisdiction (including farmers’ clubs) and public bodies promoting agriculture were important sources of pamphlets. Nine institutions published 399

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pamphlets at distinct periods. The Commissioners and Trustees for Improving Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland was the earliest, issuing pamphlets for several decades from 1729. Others mostly published over shorter durations, defined by their own longevity. The Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures and Agriculture issued pamphlets between 1755 and 1762, while the Society for the Improvement of British Wool printed three in 1791 and 1792. The Highland Society of Scotland, which would become an important disseminator of agricultural information, published none before 1790. Pamphlets appeared in various forms, including sixteen in the epistolary; a further four were written as addresses. These two approaches, used increasingly from 1734 and especially after 1791, allowed their authors directly to engage specific groups of readers. Epistolary pamphlets usually named an individual interested in their subject, who had often inspired their thesis, while addresses were made to readership groups, usually agricultural societies such as the Kilbarchan Farmer Society (1773, 1774), the Farming Club at Gordons-Milne near Old Aberdeen (1760), public bodies like the Society for the Improvement of British Wool (1791) or broader sections of society like ‘the landed gentlemen and farmers of Great Britain’ (1791). Two authors set their texts in religious frameworks: William Thom’s Seasonable advice to the landholders and farmers in Scotland (1769) was a sermon on Exodus 3: 7, 8; while George Frazer’s 1785 pamphlet was a catechism ‘collected and gathered from the sacred scripture’. Still others were essays with structured arguments. Premiums, however, in pamphlet form were simply lists of competitions, rules and awards. Agricultural pamphlets generally had one edition, with notable exceptions, including Sir John Dalrymple of Cowsland’s Essay on the husbandry of Scotland, with a proposal for the further improvement thereof, 1735 (second edition, 1745). Most were simply reissued, often in the same year but in different printing centres. Patrick Lindsay’s Reasons for encouraging the linen manufacture of Scotland and other parts of Great Britain was reissued twice in London in 1735. Charles Smith’s A short essay on the corn trade, and the corn laws, issued in Edinburgh and London in 1758 and reprinted that year in the Scots Magazine, was reissued in London in 1766 and 1767. Some pamphlets were reissued over decades, with long-lasting influence: The Countryman’s rudiments (1699) reappears in 1713, 1732 and 1761, while the Directions for raising flax from the Commissioners and Trustees for Improving Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland (1763) was reprinted in 1772, 1781 and 1802. A true method of treating light hazely

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ground, published by A Small Society of Farmers in Buchan (1735), returns in 1811 and again the following year in an appendix to David Souter’s General view of the agriculture of the county of Banff. Pamphlets were often reprinted in agricultural books and journals published when the need arose. Two collections were especially important. The first, John Reid’s Scots gard’ner for the climate of Scotland of 1756 and 1765 incorporated Thomas Hamilton’s A short treatise on foresttrees, acquatics, ever-greens, fences and grass-seeds (1756). The second, Robert Maxwell’s The practical husbandman (1757), included another two pamphlets: The rules and orders of the Edinburgh Society (1755) and Hugh Graeme of Argomery’s Report of the Committee appointed by the General Quarter Session of the County of Stirling (1754). One journal, The Scots Farmer (late 1772–4), an important vehicle bringing together agricultural publications, reprinted pamphlets such as A letter to the Edinburgh Society concerning the method of managing outfield ground, 1773 (1773: I: 58–75) and A letter to the west country farmers, concerning the difficulties and management of a bad harvest, 1773 (1773: I: 476–503, 555–74, 589–606). Such reprints could appear any time after the pamphlet’s original publication, as a readership arose. Agricultural pamphlets and books interacted with one another, and with periodicals and newspapers. Four authors of agricultural books also wrote pamphlets: Lord Kames (1766), David Young (1791) and James Anderson (1796) each with one pamphlet, and Adam Dickson with three (1764, 1773, 1788). Their pamphlets were not always their first publications. David Young and James Anderson wrote theirs after publishing a number of monographs. Pamphlets sometimes commented on ideas expressed in agricultural books and other publications. James Anderson’s Two letters to Sir John Sinclair, baronet, President of the Board of Agriculture, on the subject of draining wet and boggy lands etc (Edinburgh, 1796) argued that Mr Elkington’s recent account of draining, ‘so successfully practiced of late, and which was honoured by the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement’ (1796: 3), was actually recorded in Anderson’s Essays relating to agriculture and rural affairs of 1775. A. B. wrote A letter to the author of the Interest of Scotland considered; containing some hints about the linen manufactures (Edinburgh, 1734) in response to Patrick Lindsay’s newspaper advertisement requesting further advice to incorporate into of his Interest of Scotland considered, which he proposed to reprint (1734: 3). Adam Dickson composed his Small farms destructive to the country in its present situation (Edinburgh, 1764) in reply to a letter published in the Scots Magazine and the Edinburgh Magazine (December 1763). John Rotheram’s Observations on the proposed plan

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for an universal standard of weights and measures; in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, Bart member of Parliament (Edinburgh, 1791) answered Sinclair’s proposal and provided him with ‘hints [to] throw any fresh light on so obscure a subject, or suggest any new ideas towards the execution of the plan’ (1791: 2). As noted, some pamphlets were reprinted in books, but they could themselves reprint information from earlier books, newspapers and other publications. The first of James Anderson’s Two letters to Sir John Sinclair . . . on the subject of draining wet and boggy lands had been published ‘in the newspapers nearly in the present form, a short time after its date; and is now reprinted for the sake of connection [with his second letter]’ (1796 Advertisement). William Knox’s 1793 pamphlet translated a treatise first published in Swedish. Pamphlets also promoted agricultural books and their ideas. Those of Hugh Graeme of Argomery (1754) and David Young of Perth (1791) advertised their earlier pamphlets and books. Young’s Address to the landed gentlemen and farmers of Great Britain included a recommendation for his three books (National improvements, in twentyseven essays, 1785, Agriculture the primary interest of Great Britain, 1788 and The farmer’s account book, 1790) signed by farmers, the Highland Society of Scotland and Dr Coventry, Edinburgh University Professor of Agriculture. Scottish agricultural pamphlets had several functions, including circulating information and promoting debate at a relatively low cost, with the most expensive, such as Alexander Wedderburn’s An essay upon the question what proportion of the produce of arable land ought to be paid as rent to the landlord? (1776), priced 1s 6d. Pamphlets by Charles Smith (1758), Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk (1760), William Thom (1769) and Robert Sandilands (1786) were each 1s. Others had lower prices. The anonymous Considerations on our corn laws (1777) cost 6d. For 3d, readers could purchase the anonymous Political Observations (1756) or William Thom’s Seasonable advice to the landholders and farmers of Scotland (1771). Some published by public bodies with an interest in agriculture such as the Commissioners and Trustees for Improving Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland were gratis, including four relating to flax growing (1747, 1750, 1763, 1781). Some evidence suggests authors wanted cost-effective pamphlets: although Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk’s The practical farmer’s pocket companion (Aberdeen, 1766) contained sufficient material for an 18d pamphlet, its 3d price encouraged wide distribution. Landlords were offered a bulk-purchase price of one guinea per 100 to enable circulation among their tenants, according to an advertisement on the pamphlet’s back page.

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As pamphlets could be quickly written and published, they were an obvious medium for prompt commentary on contemporary events. In 1777, a proposed change that would make Scottish oatmeal importation prohibitively difficult initiated four pamphlets, with one anonymous Edinburgh author noting, ‘the subject in question is of much importance, and should be considered, on all sides, with impartiality’ (Thoughts, respecting the proposed new corn bill, 1777: 12). A further 1789 bill led to three pamphlets by the Committee of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures of Glasgow, all 1790. In 1791, ‘a gentleman in Leith’ published An abstract on the corn laws, pointing out in a few words, and in a distinct perspicuous manner, all the articles of that very volumous act. Reforming the system of weights and measures was also contentious, as shown by the publication of John, Lord Swinton’s A proposal for uniformity of weights and measures in Scotland (1779). Sir John Sinclair’s 1791 suggestion for weights-and-measure reform caused John Rotheram to reply with Observations on the proposed plan for an universal standard of weights and measures; in a letter to Sir John Sinclair, Bart member of Parliament (1791). Other pamphlets commented on such topics as the slow progress of agricultural improvement (A short enquiry into the cause of the general non-improvement of land in Scotland; and the best method to remove it, 1731) or impediments to agricultural improvement in the north and the need for schemes suited to the region’s soil and climate (Political observations, occasioned by the state of agriculture in the north of Scotland, 1756). Most pamphlets were intended to encourage agricultural improvements. Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk’s A dissertation on the chief obstacles to the improvement of land (Aberdeen), for example, urged agriculturists to ‘employ their thoughts on the subject, and to execute more fully what is here well intended’ (1760: 8). Pamphlets filled gaps in the knowledge of a range of subjects, as the Edinburgh ‘lover of his country’ notes: ‘we, in this country, are deficient in publishing instructions adapted to the state of husbandry here; and this seems to be expected now, when every body is at work’ (An essay on the husbandry of Scotland, with proposal for the further improvement thereof, 1732: 4). Alexander Wedderburn’s Essay upon the question what proportion of the produce of arable land ought to be paid as a rent to the landlord? (Edinburgh, 1776) acknowledges that the Edinburgh Society had neglected for twenty years to discuss the rent payable to a landlord for arable land, a subject that had ‘hitherto been overlooked by all the professed writers on husbandry’ (1776: 4). Pamphlets proved an efficient way to communicate advances in agricultural tools and techniques. Through them William Cheape promoted

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his machine for scutching flax (A descriptive account of a machine for scutching flax, after the manner of hand scutching, Edinburgh, 1761) and Robert Sandilands first announced his sward cutter (1786), before reissuing the same with improvements and a price reduction: A description of the patent instrument, called a sward-cutter . . . now much improved, particularly with regard to the expence (Edinburgh, 1790). Drainage techniques, fundamental to agricultural improvement, aroused intense debate. Hugh Graeme of Argomery related the issue to Stirlingshire (1754, 1754, 1756), while an anonymous writer recounted the improvement of moss by John Smith of Swindrig-Muire, Ayrshire, and his tenants (1797). James Anderson provided further reflection on draining techniques (1796). Miscellaneous pamphlet topics included a Swedish method of extinguishing fire, hints to preserve timber used in houses or ship building and the making of bread from potatoes, as described by the Earl of Dundonald (1791). Their ephemeral nature made pamphlets ideal for conveying cheaply and widely the ever-evolving ‘helpful hints’ of agencies like the Commissioners and Trustees for Improving Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland with their interest in flax cultivation. Others advised on harvesting techniques (A letter to the west country farmers, concerning the difficulties and management of a bad harvest, Paisley, 1773); hay harvesting (On the hay harvest, and the hay best adapted for that purpose, Edinburgh, 1774), tree-planting (1756) and A true method of treating light hazely ground (Small Society of Farmers in Buchan, Edinburgh, 1735). William Barron advertised his Essay on the mechanical principles of the plough (Edinburgh, 1774) as helping to understand the construction, manner of operation, and best form of the plough; so that, by attending to the nature and state of the soil he has to manage, he [the agriculturist] may know what construction of this instrument is best suited for accomplishing the purpose he has in view; and be enabled to give directions for making it accordingly. Pamphlet writers’ desire for agricultural change is clearly evident in their titles, especially early in the century: The countrey-man’s rudiments: or an advice to the farmers in East Lothian, how to labour and improve their ground, 1699; A short enquiry into the cause of the general non-improvement of land in Scotland; and the best method to remove it, 1731; Observations on the method of growing wool in Scotland, and proposals for improving the quality of our wool, 1756; A dissertation on the chief obstacles to the improvement of land, and introducing better methods of agriculture throughout Scotland, 1760; The practical

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farmer’s pocket-companion, or a brief account of the husbandry that now prevails in Scotland; in which its errors are pointed out, and better methods proposed, 1766 (my emphasis). The need to ‘diffuse a spirit of investigation and experiment’ and ‘a zeal for improvement’ was still paramount late in the century in Sir John Sinclair’s Address to the Society for the Improvement of British Wool; constituted at Edinburgh, on Monday, January 31 1791 (1791: vii). Improvements were often stimulated through pamphlet critiques of existing agricultural deficiencies. The contents page of Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk’s 1760 Dissertation on the chief obstacles to the improvement of land (Aberdeen, 1760) explicitly pointed out impediments to improving yield, income and maintenance. Pamphlets often urged their readers to continue the conversation through their own research and authorship. The Society for the Improvement of British Wool asked readers to forward ‘additional facts or observations’ to Sir John Sinclair ‘in order that accurate descriptions may be obtained, of such of the different breeds propagated in England, as are truly valuable; and that the best mode of managing them may be completely ascertained’ (Observations on the different breeds of sheep, and the state of sheep farming in some of the principal counties of England, Edinburgh, 1792: 6). Such requests also came from Sir John Sinclair’s Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement to collect further information when it revised its first series of county agricultural surveys starting in 1793, through advertisements like that in James Anderson’s pamphlet, General view of the agriculture of the county of Aberdeen (Edinburgh, 1794). As agricultural societies gained increasing significance from the 1720s, they stimulated innovation and discussion through pamphlets (Boud 1984), which they employed in six ways. First, pamphlets disseminated their constitution and rules to the wider agricultural community, as with the Select Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures and Agriculture (1755), the Buchan and Boyne Farmer-Society (1786) and the Society for the Improvement of British Wool (1791). The Highland Society of Scotland also circulated its members’ list in a 1796 pamphlet. Second, pamphlets broadcasted their agricultural investigations. Advertisements in the pamphlets issued by the Society for the Improvement of British Wool promoted the introduction of improved breeds of sheep into specific districts of Scotland (1791, 1791, 1792). Third, they provided guidance and advice to farmers through treatises, like those of the Society for Improving of Agriculture and Manufactures in the Shire of Air [sic] (1778). Fourth, they directed specific agricultural undertakings through pamphlets by

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organisations such as the Commissioners and Trustees for Improving Fisheries and Manufacturers (Short rules and observations for sowing of lint seed and hemp seed, and for pulling and dressing the flax and hemp, Edinburgh, 1729) or the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates in Scotland (Rules and articles by the Commissioners of the Annexed Estates in Scotland, for the improvement of Highland farms, and for the encouragement of tenants on said estates, Edinburgh, 1774). Fifth, they announced annual premiums, essential for stimulating agricultural innovations and encouraging enthusiasm. And sixth, pamphlets might record annual transactions, although only one in Scotland did so (the Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture within the Counties of Dumfries and Wigton, and Stewartry of Kirkcudbright). In England, where publishing transactions was more common, they often appeared as books, as did the first transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland (1799). Pamphlets were twice as common as agricultural books. Their cheap and efficient dissemination was especially important at a time when the knowledge of agricultural practices and techniques was imperfect and a better understanding was attainable only through private experimentation and public education. These inexpensive printed texts were essential to improving Scottish farming.

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Cookery Books Catherine Brown No Scottish cookery book appeared in print until the 1730s. Manuscript collections of family recipes were rather common, however, and the best known is Lady Castlehill’s leather-bound ‘Receipt Book’ with over 400 recipes in three different hands (1712–13). A twice-married, wealthy heiress living with her thirteen children at Cambusnethan House near Wishaw, Lady Castlehill put together both a reference book with family variations on standard dishes and a commentary on upper-class appetites. Further down Glasgow’s social scale, Mrs McLintock published Scotland’s first cookery book for gentry, merchants and professionals with servants. Her Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-work (1736) joined the substantial list of cookery books printed in England, where the genre had a considerable head start and included several French examples. Ten had appeared by the end of the sixteenth century and forty by the end of the seventeenth, many of which circulated in Scotland. Firstgeneration Scots cookery writers sometimes copied English – or even French – recipes for standard dishes. But Mrs McLintock’s slim volume of almost 200 recipes bears, to an extent, a distinctively Scottish stamp in its measurements, language and content. This is not to say that there were recipes for porridge, oatcakes and broth, everyday foods that cooks could make without written directions. Recipes in cookery books are one thing; everyday food is an entirely different matter. Mrs McLintock provided, according to this truism, a sophisticated, ‘special occasion’ porridge called an oatmeal pudding, made with butter, eggs, sugar and brandy. Her liberal additions of French claret – Scotland’s favourite tipple – and her prolific and original use of shellfish (200 oysters in one recipe), indicate other significant differences between English and Scottish cookery texts: 407

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To Frigasie Oysters Take two hundred Oysters, stew them in their own Liquor and wash them therein from the shells, then strain the Liquor, and put the Oysters into it, with some white Wine, pickled Mushrooms, and some Capers, sweet Butter rolled in flour, grated Bread Some Lemon Peil, stew them a little in the Pan with a little Pepper, beaten Nutmeg and Mace, then take the Yolks of four Eggs beat very well, put them into the Pan, and toss all round lest the Eggs curdle, till they be near boiling, then put them into your dish, and garnish it with sliced Lemon, Mushrooms and Pickles. (1736: 61, CLXXXIV) Nothing is known of Mrs McLintock’s credentials. Was she a cook? Was she a professional man’s wife with a cook to manage? Whatever her background, she compiles her book in the simple form of a numbered list of recipes, not unlike a family manuscript collection. This is a recipe book to be dipped into when the occasion demands. It is not a complete guide to a ‘system’ of cookery. Such books had already appeared in England: Eliza Smith’s Complete Housewife (1727) and later Hanna Glasse’s Art of Cookery (1747). They became bestsellers throughout Britain for the remainder of the eighteenth century with eighteen editions of Eliza Smith and twenty of Hanna Glasse. Glasse was published several times in Edinburgh, and her book survived well into the nineteenth century until overtaken by Mrs Beeton (1861). Undoubtedly, Scottish cookery writers were influenced by their English contemporaries, with some recipes becoming trusted norms. But eight years after Glasse’s first edition, Elizabeth Cleland published A New and Easy Method of Cookery, which not only challenged the English monopoly on ‘complete’ guides but also launched an Edinburgh cookery-school textbook dynasty that lasted, like Glasse, into the nineteenth century. Mrs Cleland’s cookery school was in her house in the Luckenbooths, adjacent to St Giles Cathedral. Scotland retained the flavour of the ‘auld alliance’ in its culinary culture, something no food historian has properly unravelled. Plenty of that influence can be seen in books written by French chefs who cooked in British kitchens, many fleeing the French Revolution in 1789. In Scotland, the Duke of Buccleuch’s kitchens were managed in the latter part of the eighteenth century by Joseph Florence, a French chef, so highly esteemed by the family that he had his portrait painted. He did not write a book of recipes; however, Jassintour Rozea (cook to the Earl of Hopetoun for a time) did begin a twelve-part French system of

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cookery. He published only two numbers in 1753, which concentrated on preparing the necessary stocks for French haute cuisine. Each was advertised in the Edinburgh Evening Courant and the Caledonian Mercury (9 January and 22 March, respectively) priced 1s, stitched in blue paper and sold initially by George Rig, grocer, and Thomas Trotter, merchant, but available as of 13 February from Hamilton and Balfour and other booksellers. Another Scottish book with French aspirations was George Dalrymple’s The Practice of Modern Cookery where every dish had its French name. Mrs Cleland’s pupils, however, were not likely to be the sort to indulge in the extravagances of a French kitchen at its most sophisticated, with expensive reductions of stocks and sauces for the sake of flavour. It is possible that Walter Scott’s mother, Anne Rutherford, daughter of the Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh University, was one of their number, since she lived around the corner in the Cowgate before her marriage in 1758. A 1755 first edition of Cleland’s book is in Scott’s library at Abbotsford. This social class had a proper regard for thrift in their cooking and enjoyed head-to-tail eating (the practice of employing every part of the animal in one recipe or another). Imported luxuries were used sparingly. Local foods were eaten in season. Claret, again, found its way into sauces. Shellfish was a prolific seasoning and oatmeal used, as in McLintock, for rich, special occasion dishes such as flummery and posset. And there was a ‘Scots’ broth with barley as well as a few ‘a la’ French dishes. As the century proceeded, more books in the ‘complete’ system of the cookery schools appeared, building on Mrs Cleland’s strengths. Susanna Maciver’s Cookery and Pastry and her colleague Mrs Frazer’s The Practice of Cookery remained in print throughout the 1770s, 1780s and 1790s with additional features on ‘bills of fare’ and lists of seasonal foods. Yet not all cookery books were fullproof manuals. Vague ingredients and imprecise methods prompted Mrs Frazer to note that cookery books may be ‘fraught with so many extravagant and useless recipes . . . written with so little accuracy and attention to method . . . that it is not at all to be wondered why they should be so deficient, perplexing and unintelligible’ (Preface: iii, iv). Her own book – she claimed – did not suffer from such faults. Mrs Maciver conducted her cookery school in her house in Stephen Law’s Close in Edinburgh. The first runs of the popular Practice of Cookery were printed for her, but for the editions of 1784, 1787 and 1789, Charles Elliot was publisher. He widened the distribution to London by bringing in, first, George Robinson, then his own firm of Elliot and Kay, and targeted the sales, advertising the fourth edition during the festive season of 1783, as ‘A Proper Christmas

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Table 4.4 Chronology of Scottish cookery books. ‘Lady Castlehill’s Receipt Book’ (1712–13). Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Mrs McLintock’s receipts for cookery and pastry-work (Glasgow, 1736). First published Scottish cookery book. Only two copies survive in the University of Glasgow Library. James Dunbar, The industrious country-man and virtuous house-wife’s companion (Edinburgh, 1737) Mrs Johnston’s receipts for all sorts of pastry, creams, puddings, custards, preserves, marmalets sauces, pickles and cookery, after the newest and most approved method (Edinburgh, 1740). Of 115 pages, the first ninety-two reprint Mrs McLintock’s receipts. Jassintour Rozea, The gift of Comus, or practical cookery. Number 1 and Number 2 (Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour and Neill, 1753). Only two of twelve intended numbers on French cookery were published. Elizabeth Cleland, A new and easy method of cookery . . . chiefly intended for the benefit of the young ladies who attend her school (Edinburgh: printed by Gordon and Wright, 1755; 2nd edn 1759; 3rd edn 1770). Thomas Houdlston, A new method of cookery, or, expert and ready way for the dressing of all sorts of flesh, fowl, fish etc. (Dumfries, 1760). Hannah Robertson, The young ladies school of arts; containing a great variety of practical receipts (Edinburgh: Walter Ruddiman Jr for Mrs Robertson, 1766; 2nd edn 1767; 4th edn 1777; 4th edn with large additions: York, 1777, 1784; a new edition: Edinburgh, 1777). E. Taylor, The lady’s, housewife’s, and cookmaid’s assistant: or the art of cookery explained and adapted to the meanest capacity (Berwick upon Tweed: printed by H. Taylor, for R. Taylor, bookseller 1769; 2nd edn 1778; 3rd edn enlarged and improved 1795). East Lothian residents chiefly comprise the subscribers. Susanna Maciver, Cookery and Pastry. As taught and practiced by Mrs. Maciver, teacher of those arts in Edinburgh (Edinburgh: for the author; sold by her and W. Drummond, W. Gray, C. Elliot and other booksellers, 1774); 2nd edn (Edinburgh: printed for the author; and sold by her, at her house, 1777); 3rd edn (Edinburgh: printed for the author; and sold by her, at her house, 1782); 4th edn (Edinburgh: printed for C. Elliot and G. Robinson, London, 1784); a new edition, To which are added, for the first time, figures of dinner and supper courses, from five to fifteen dishes. Also, a correct list of everything in season For Every Month in the Year. (Printed for C. Elliot, Edinburgh, and G. G. J. and J. Robinson, London, 1787); a new edition (London: C. Elliot and T. Kay; and Edinburgh: C. Elliot, 1789);a new edition (Edinburgh: printed by D. Schaw and Co., for J. Fairbairn, 1800).

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Table 4.4 continued George Dalrymple, The Practice of Modern Cookery; adapted to families of distinction, as well as to those of the middling ranks of life etc. (Edinburgh: C. Elliot; London: T. Longman, 1781). Mrs Frazer, The practice of cookery, pastry, pickling, preserving, containing a full list of supper dishes directions for choosing provisions; with two plates showing the method of placing dishes upon the table (Edinburgh: Peter Hill; London: T. Cadell, 1791). Mrs Frazer, a colleague of Mrs Maciver, took much of her content from Maciver, who had died the previous year. P. Carruth, Domestic Economy; or general recipe book: containing a number of useful recipes, compiled from valuable private manuscripts and expensive works of eminent men (Edinburgh: Robert Menzies, 1800). Chapbook containing recipes and hints.

Present to Young Ladies, Housekeepers, Servant Maids, &c’ and then as ‘A Proper New Year’s Present’ (Caledonian Mercury, 20 December 1783). Books associated with cookery schools were, on the whole, among the more accurate. But not all were straightforward or complete methods. Hanna Robertson’s The Young Ladies School of Arts (1766) takes a wider interpretation of the domestic arts and includes information on Japanning, Filigree, Gilding, Painting, Cosmetics and Wine-making alongside Cakes, Cordials, Creams and Curious Receipts for medical problems. She suggests that ‘young women who have no fortune can find work among fashionable people’ if they have these skills (1766: Preface: ix). And those ‘young women’ must have found the book useful: it ran to four editions in the eighteenth century, with a further six in the nineteenth. Yet neither she, nor the Edinburgh cookery-school ladies, and certainly not the aristocratic followers of the French, provide a book of recipes for dishes that would have been common among people who worked in rural and fishing communities. Nor are there any recipe books about city-tavern, rural-inn or cook-shop eating. All classes ate in these places; from noblest judge to humblest caddie, they sat together around the communal table. What is missing, however, is a cookery book with recipes for this everyday food of the people, although accounts of eighteenth-century social life fill in some of the gaps.

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Children’s Books Brian Alderson Children’s books in England, aside from ABCs, fables and admonitory works, were eighteenth-century inventions, the products of several booksellers, mostly in London, who recognised an unexploited market. The growing affluence of ‘the middling sort’ brought a keener interest in bringing up children and introducing into the home books for the nursery as well as the drawing room. From the 1740s onward much ingenuity went into rendering more attractive the often dour or forbidding character of the printed codex. The speed with which this innovation was taken up bespeaks its success. Bright young men like John Newbery and his co-adjutor in Salisbury, Benjamin Collins, unattached to a settled trading position, thought up unprecedented editorial and marketing wheezes. Things were different in Scotland, however. The conditions in England that were encouraging the growth and spread of an indigenous children’s literature did not prevail north of the border, although – as we shall see – that would all begin to change in both Glasgow and Edinburgh by the 1770s. There was not one but a series of interlocking reasons for this. The dominance of the kirk in social and educational affairs was altogether more rigorous than variable Anglican latitudinarianism, and the serious caste of mind that was to produce the marvels of the Scottish Enlightenment doubtless saw the ‘recreational reading’ for children fostered in England as a deterrent to the serious business of the Latin school and an early entry to university life. At the same time, the comparatively sparse population of Scotland, its terrain and the disconnectedness of its towns and seats of learning hindered the formation of any social movement that might be more hospitable to children’s books. In edition numbers, print runs and publishing locations, the book 412

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serving the Scottish trade for much of the century was ‘the Shorter Catechism’, and early Edinburgh editions were issued by George Mosman (1696) and the heirs and successors of Andrew Anderson (1699). The books were often aligned with other didactic works such as T. H.’s A Guide for the Child and Youth, dating back at least to a London edition of 1667, but published thrice over in Edinburgh in 1711 and elsewhere in Scotland throughout the century. It included the well-known alphabet couplet beginning ‘In Adam’s fall / We sinned all’, which was illustrated with little ladders of woodcuts running down the page, alongside the verses. That model was also found, with roughly copied images, among the contents of The New England Primer. The Primer, which usually included the Shorter Catechism, was of course staple reading in the American colonies and later in the infant republic. Editions of the Primer were printed in Scotland for export to America, and in 1784, the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Elliot was supplying Scottish-sourced primers to James Rivington of New York to whom he wrote: ‘I hope the New England primers will please. You desire all in leather. We usually stitch them only in paper. I put the one half in full leather, the other in leather backs’ (10 September 1784).36 And copies for home consumption are found as well, mostly from Glasgow’s evangelical presses, in the second half of the eighteenth and the early decades of the nineteenth century. The Primer and other editions of the Shorter Catechism also called upon the exhortations of the English congregationalist Isaac Watts to add variety to their standard copy. Sometimes Watts himself would be the catechist as in The Young Child’s First and Second Catechisms of the Principles of Religion (Glasgow: John Bryce, 1783), but more usually Watts’s famous Divine Songs of 1715 was adopted from London editions. Under the title of Twenty-eight Divine Songs copies are recorded from publishers in Paisley (an 18th edition, 1784), in Glasgow (a 41st edition, 1793) and in Edinburgh, with a catechism (1798). All were modest duodecimos, omitting Watts’s ‘Moral Songs’ which usually followed the divine ones, but ‘most of Dr Watts’s Divine Songs’ and all his Moral Songs were included in the compendium, A Present for Children, a second edition of which was printed in Edinburgh for William Gray (1761) and a fourth for Charles Elliot in 1778.37 While the purpose of this religious publishing was determined by 36 37

NLS Elliot letter books, John Murray Archives. Curiously, J. H. P. Pafford includes none of these Scottish editions in his bibliography of Divine Songs in the facsimile editions he edited in 1971 (without benefit of ESTC). He does include a London edition of A Present for Children dated 1805 which suggests that the Edinburgh compilations may be the original ones.

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Scottish custom, its sources lay south of the border and in considering what little recreational reading was published it is there too that one must go for the texts and illustrations upon which Scottish publishers called. Thus it is disappointing – if understandable – to find that the work that accompanied the catechisms in Scotland as a publishers’ stand-by throughout the eighteenth century, Aesop’s Fables, was mostly copied from editions first published in London. With its simple narratives and unimpeachable morals, and with the potential for serial illustration, it was an ideal children’s text, and from Caxton’s great edition of 1485 onwards both texts and illustrations were regularly borrowed with impunity from successful editions published elsewhere. By the 1740s two prose versions of the fables were particularly evident among titles intended for young readers: Roger Lestrange’s, first published without illustrations in 1699 but later adapted for illustrated editions, and Reverend Samuel Croxall’s (reprobating Lestrange’s) in 1722. This had ‘a print before each fable’ relief-engraved on soft metal by Elisha Kirkall (copying previous images, especially the 1666 Francis Barlow) and was to become the publishers’ favourite for providing sample images in their own versions while the ‘official’ edition continued serenely on its way for more than a century. Unsurprisingly Croxall was the foremost English Aesop taken up in Scotland (the Foulis brothers printed two admirable plain-text editions in Latin). The story of these replications of a London model can be told again and again in the eventual introduction of recreational children’s books into Scottish booksellers’ trade lists. With John Newbery pointing the way towards a profitable exploitation of children’s books, other London firms – most notably that of John Marshall – followed. They in turn found their wares copied in the provinces by printers and booksellers such as the Moseleys of Gainsborough and Thomas Saint in Newcastle, and some Scottish booksellers still took stock wholesale from suppliers south of the border. In Glasgow James and John Robertson were publishing children’s books (originating with Newbery) with their own imprint ‘from at least 1777’ (SBTI), and Edinburgh’s Charles Elliot was dealing nearly as often with the Robertsons and James Duncan, another Glasgow bookseller, as he was with Newbery. Correspondence between Duncan and Elliot on 29 June 1778, 13 October 1779, 25 October 1779, 2 December 1780 and 12 June 1781 records Elliot purchasing children’s titles in lots of between two and six dozen, including Goody Two Shoes, Four Footed Beasts, Sugar Plum, Tom Thumbs Song Book, Gulliver’s Travels, History of England and Christmas Tales (Figures 4.5 and 4.6). Spelling and grammar books are also among his acquisitions, and Elliot observes at one point that ‘the Childs. Books fright me on accot. Of the Bulk’, as I ‘will

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Figure 4.5 Christmas Tales.

Figure 4.6 Adventures of Captain Gulliver.

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scarcely have room for one half of what I intended’ in a cargo for New York (5 February 1783). Throughout this period, Elliot is exporting much of what he gets from Duncan to America so when Thomas Dobson opens his Philadelphia business in 1785 by announcing, among many serious titles, ‘books for entertainment [of] children’, it is likely that Elliot (who had underwritten Dobson’s operations) was supplying him with stock from Glasgow (McDougall 2004: 203–4). Elliot’s large and regular purchases of Scottish printed children’s books clearly indicate that the demand at home and abroad for such material was significant, and Scotland’s production in that kind would only grow with the subsequent decades. Adam McNaughtan finds thirty-eight ‘Books for the Instruction and Amusement of Children, bound in Gilt Paper, and adorned with Cuts’ in a 1798 J. and M. Robertson catalogue. The source texts continued to be Newbery’s but the manufacture was entirely Scottish. Charles Elliot did much to stimulate entrepreneurship in the Scottish trade, as Warren McDougall details in this volume’s discussion of the Edinburgh trade. And his efforts in the sale of children’s literature, both instructive and diverting, equalled his reputation. He secured a significant role in that market for Scotland’s printers and booksellers. On 14 January 1774, Elliot’s advertisement in the Edinburgh Evening Courant lists forty ‘new Books, for the instruction and amusement of Children’ and alludes to ‘many others too tedious to mention’ sold by him and the other Edinburgh booksellers and newly arrived from ‘F. Newbery, at the Little Book Warehouse, the corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard, London’. The titles include The Bag of Nuts, Ready Cracked, Vice, in its proper shape, with cuts, Mother Bunch’s Fairy Tales, The Cries of London and The Hobby-Horse; or Christmas Companion, as well as The Pocket Bible and a History of the Bible, with cuts. Prices were as low as 1d for The Sister’s Gift, or naughty boy reformed, and as high as 1s 6d for The Tutor, or Epistolary Guide, with the average 6d. Elliot publishes his own Mother Goose and advertises it in the Courant on 8 July 1775 ‘for the instruction and entertainment of all good little Masters and Misses’. Interestingly, Elliot’s advertisements group novels (Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, Pamela, Clarissa, Charles Grandison) together with children’s titles. Perhaps he recognised that these new genres were the heralds of a new cultural ethos that increasingly defined family life as an encounter with literacy. Nevertheless, reading circles in the drawing room had not yet supplanted ‘the chimblay nuik’, and references to that traditional story space, even before children’s books were ever contemplated, guide attention to perhaps the most significant presence in children’s awareness of narrative art: the folktale. We have no direct, documentary

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evidence before the nineteenth century of what the subjects and the sound of that elusive category might be in Scotland, but through indirect references and through personal testimony a convincing – and indeed predictable – assurance of its centrality to the cultural life of the people can be argued. The indirect evidence is found in the literature itself. One of the best-known instances occurs in the unique surviving copy of The History of Tom Thumbe, printed in London (1621), where R. J. [Richard Johnson?] writes in his preface that ‘his Tales haue compassed the Christmas fire-blocke, till the Curfew Bell rings candle out’ and ‘who but little Tom, hath made long nights seeme short, & heauy toyles easie?’38 This early endorsement of the shared pleasures of storytelling (where children would surely be found among the audience of ‘Batchelors and Maides’) can be found throughout Europe. A similar group of listeners is portrayed surrounding Mother Goose in the frontispiece to her first appearance in Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé (Paris, 1697), a portrait group reprinted in most eighteenth-century English translations, at least five of which were published in Scotland before 1801. Similar references occur in eighteenth-century Scotland, including Robert Fergusson’s ‘The Farmer’s Ingle’ (1773): The childer, wi’ a fastin mou’, Grumble and greet, and make an unco mane, In rangles round before the ingle’s low and then: Frae gudame’s mouth auld warld tale they hear, O Warlocks louping round the Wirrikow, O’ gaists that win in glen and kirk-yard drear, Whilk touzles a’ their tap, and gars them shak wi’ fear. The omnipresence of these ‘gudames’, frightening the daylights out of their young charges as darkness comes, is vouched for by the young charges themselves in their riper years. Boswell’s nervousness about ghosts stems from stories heard when young; James Hogg, brought up in a largely illiterate community in the Ettrick Forest, was ‘steeped in’ border folklore and superstitions through tales told by his mother; Walter Scott records examples of ‘anecdotes handed down by 38

The NLS has a ballad version of Tom Thumb, his Life and Death . . . published in Edinburgh in 1682.

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tradition’ found in local families or told by travelling gaberlunzie men (Mack 1970: xiii) As with folktales, the folk rhymes and ballads, which are a rich part of Scotland’s heritage, provided a foundation for children’s culture. Robert Chambers observes that the nurses first introduced these verses to children: ‘the numberless merry lays and capriccios of all kinds, which the simple honest women of our native country used to sing and enact with such untiring patience . . . beside the evening fire in old times’ (1847: 174). Comparative accounts of recorded versions show how not just the texts but the language of the texts varied from place to place. Thus the celebrated adventure of the ‘Hunting of the Wren’ appears in the first English collection of nursery rhymes, Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book c. 1744, beginning: We will go to the Wood, Say Robbin, to Bobbin, We will go to the Wood, Says Richard, to Robbin, We will go to the Wood, Says Iohn and [ie. all?] alone. But Chambers, following a printing in Herd’s Songs (1769), gives us: ‘Will ye go to the wood!’ quo’ Fozie Mozie; ‘Will ye go to the wood!’ quo’ Johnie Rednosie; ‘Will ye go to the wood!’ quo’ Foslin ’ene; ‘Will ye go to the wood!’ quo’ brither and kin. The repetitions and the comedy of everyone feasting off a single wren (‘“I’ll have a wing” quo’ Fozie Mozie . . .’) are much the same but the vernaculars differ (Opie and Opie 1997: 437–40). Some of these rhymes would have been printed in Scotland through the proliferation of song and verse collections that followed the success of Allan Ramsay’s 1724 Tea-Table Miscellany; such volumes became repositories for the growing, but unco-ordinated, assembling of ballad texts. The key work in this endeavour was Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) – where ‘English’ by no means precluded ‘Scottish’ and where texts from Scotland were printed in a version of the vernacular. Walter Scott’s well-known discovery of the Reliques as a boy of thirteen, staying with his aunt at Kelso, gives testimony to the force with which printed ballads may strike young people attuned to their presence. Indeed, in 1807 Vernor and Hood and John Harris in London and E. Upham in Exeter published a compilation by ‘A Lady’ of Ancient Ballads; selected from Percy’s Collection . . . for the use and

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entertainment of young persons. She noted the pleasure young readers took in the verses and while she (predictably) ‘omitted all objectionable passages’ she largely honoured the Scottish dialect where it occurred. Although from this time on (not least because of the publication of Scott’s Minstrelsy in 1802–3) the power of the ballads would come to most people off the printed page, one may extrapolate from that the appeal they would have had to any Scottish child who encountered them as they were meant to be encountered. The chastening condemnation voiced to Scott by James Hogg’s mother may continue to ring true: ‘there was never ane o’ my songs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel’ and ye hae spoilt them a’ togither. They were made for singin’ an’ no for readin’, but ye hae broken the charm now, an’ they’ll never be sung mair’ (J. Reed 1975: 11). That stricture is not to be applied, however, to the other voice of the people to be heard in print: the stories in vernacular chapbooks. There are many testimonies from authors and others who were children in the eighteenth century of the pleasure that they took in these ‘penny histories’ (Neuburg 1977: 102–22). Most of them cried up the traditional titles of folktales like Fortunatus, or truncated romances like Guy of Warwick, or comic anecdotes like The Mad Men (or more usually Wise Men) of Gotham with no reference to anything specifically Scottish. Indeed, James Boswell, who said that he ‘always retained a kind of affection for [such little Story Books], as they recall my early days’ mentioned only Jack the Giant-Killer and the mistitled Seven Wise Men of Gotham.39 These were certainly reprinted by Scottish booksellers who by the end of the eighteenth century were issuing chapbooks from Edinburgh, Glasgow and some ten other provincial towns. What is of consequence, though, and less widely recorded, are the specifically Scottish titles that presumably circulated chiefly within Scotland and were very often devoted to local subjects narrated in a form of Scottish dialect. Roscoe’s account of the Glasgow publishers James Lumsden and Son refers to twenty-seven such productions clearly intended for the itinerant chapbook-sellers. In all probability those undated chapbooks came out under the Lumsden imprint during the final years of the eighteenth century (when J. and M. Robertson in the Saltmarket were combining similar fare with dated chapbooks of English origin intended for children such as The History of Fortunatus [1787], Mother Goose’s Fairy Tales [1799] and The House that Jack Built [1798]). Such frivolities did not find their way into the Glasgow Public Library however, whose 39

Manuscript note. Catalogue of English and American Chapbooks. Houghton Library.

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published Catalogue of 1810 devoted six pages to its ‘Juvenile Library’, replete with what look to be children’s books that originated with eighteenth-century English publishers. Still they were harbingers of what would shortly become a remarkable upswing in what Scotland had to offer its children.

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Chapter Five

PUBLISHING THE ENLIGHTENMENT Reading the Scottish Enlightenment Mark Towsey

I

n 1762 patrick bower reported a stash of books stolen from his shop on South Street in St Andrews and a search of the private apartments of all students at the University was authorised by Professor Robert Watson. The sixty-three volumes were eventually recovered from a locked chest in David Rattray’s room, and included Francis Hutcheson’s System of Moral Philosophy (1755) and Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).1 The incident abruptly ended Rattray’s academic career, yet expressed in some perverse way his attempt to engage in the print culture of his time. Still, Rattray’s dubious association with such eminent works actually tells us little about how he responded to them as a reader. Rattray’s scenario illustrates perfectly a fundamental problem in relating books to readers in the past. To show that individuals had the opportunity to read a book is not to prove they ever did. Nor to demonstrate why they read it, whether they understood it, or how they responded to its ideas. Accordingly, researchers have turned increasingly towards sources that allow them to reconstruct the experiences of historical readers and to understand, in Robert Darnton’s account, that ‘reading and living, construing texts and making sense of life’ were far more closely related in past times than they are today (Darnton 1986: 6, 1982; Allan 2003a). What follows explores sources that might cast light on eighteenth-century Scottish reading, illustrating what reading could mean to the era’s ordinary consumers of literature. As Robert DeMaria advises, ‘evidence for lives of reading . . . should not come from the public published statements of writers, but rather, 1

St Andrews University Library, Miscellaneous Papers (eighteenth century).

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wherever possible, from documentary sources: marginalia, notebooks, commonplace books, diaries, anecdotes, letters and casual, conversational remarks’ (DeMaria 1997: 2). Many of these sources are readily familiar and need no particular clarification. Among their other functions, letters in the Georgian period were often sites for recording reading experiences and discussing books. For instance, Charlotte Murray updated her brother on communal reading at Blair Castle: ‘After tea we went to our work as the Duke [of Atholl] began reading a new book to us, Humphrey Clinker, it seems very entertaining so far as we have gone in it’ (17 September 1771).2 Henry Cockburn’s letters are packed with humorously acute observations on books and their authors, a marker of the vibrant intellectual culture that persisted in Edinburgh in the 1790s and early 1800s. Such sources illustrate the sheer ubiquity of books and anecdotally colour investigations of reading experiences, although they are usually too unpredictable in scope and character, and too widely scattered, to provide a basis for systematic study of the meaning of reading. Other engagements with literature are recorded in diaries, which can be used to enumerate the books someone actually read. The diaries of Christian Broun list all the reading of her adult life, including Scott, Robertson, Blair, Stewart, Reid and Burns, though crucially she never commented on any – meaning that her diaries, like most surviving diaries, give little substantial insight into her reading experiences.3 George Ridpath’s diary is more exceptional in the extent to which it records his responses to books, but it was only part of a strikingly selfconscious process of evaluating and assimilating his reading. Ridpath did not simply skim the books he read, as might be implied by modern claims for the extensive reading habits of eighteenth-century readers (Engelsing 1974, challenged by Colclough 1998; Darnton 1986, DeMaria 1992 and Wittmann 1999). He took great care to assess the books he read critically, both in style and content, often revising his initial impressions with further rereadings and reading contextually between books. Most importantly, he entered what he considered most thought-provoking into commonplace books, and occasionally annotated the books themselves – two common eighteenth-century practices that grant access to readers’ experiences more systematically than correspondence or diaries. Annotations in books are ‘a contested goldmine’, according to Heather Jackson: ‘common assumptions about marginalia that they 2 3

NRAS 234, Box 54/II/148. NRAS 2383, Bundles 60–6, Christian Broun, Diaries, 1811–39.

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are spontaneous, impulsive, uninhibited, that they offer direct access to the reader’s mind, fail to take into account inherent complexities of motivation and historical circumstance’ (Jackson 2001: 6, 99). Annotations take myriad forms, ranging from simple marks of ownership to extensive critical commentary squeezed into a book’s margins and end pages. Marginal notes were often used to enhance a reader’s engagement (identifying an author who had chosen to remain anonymous, for example, adding biographical details or inserting adapted tables of contents or indices), or to manipulate another’s reading (like the note inside the Delgatie Castle copy of Robertson’s Historical Disquisition on India describing the text as ‘a reward for part good conduct and an encouragement to future perseverance and study’). They might also simply be a reader’s correction of typographical, printing or factual errors, as in Ridpath’s own treatment of the Kelso Subscription Library’s copy of Thomas Stanley’s History of Philosophy: ‘corrected many gross typographical errors, though many no doubt still remain. Never was there a good book so horribly mangled in the printing . . . This is an infinite pity, and what Millar deserves to be whipt for, that Stanley should be printed so incorrectly’ (Ridpath 1922: 35, 40). James Brodie of Brodie, who signed all the books he owned, made a range of minor corrections to Shaw’s History of Moray (1775) pertaining to his own family’s history – aptly demonstrating that such annotations often arose from information privy only to the reader (Brodie Castle copy: 107, 109, 114). Marginalia also allowed readers to engage texts on intimate – and sometimes belligerent – terms. Professor John Robison’s marginalia in Thomas Reid’s Essays usually took the form of extended critical essays squeezed into the margins and the page bottoms, in which Robison agreed with his friend’s philosophical views and occasionally took issue, suggesting that ‘reading Reid’s works for Robison was akin to a conversation or debate about major themes in metaphysics and moral philosophy’, and that Robison was ‘an intensive reader’ (P. Wood 2000: 116). The same might be said of Alexander Fraser Tytler, a serial annotator of all kinds of books. Extensive annotations in Wodrow’s History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland (1721–2) and Goodall’s Examinations of the Letters of Mary Queen of Scots (1754) clearly represented preparatory research towards Tytler’s own historical compositions, but others were far more personal – including a series of caustic notes in his copy of Hume’s Essays and Treatises.4 4

Tytler’s Wodrow and Goodall are at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; his Hume’s Essays and Treatises is in a private collection.

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Such coherent marginalia is rare. More common are symbolic annotations: dashes, crosses, arrows, ticks, exclamation marks and underlinings, still current today, that help shape the reading of books, but lack explicit meaning (Stoddard 1985). The Urquharts of Craigston Castle avidly annotated their books, but their markings are largely unintelligible. For instance, manuscript sketches adorn the pages of their copy of Hume’s History of England under the Tudors: a chest (with dimensions), a horse and cart, a man with a hat and walking stick, and an ‘English gallant’ stabbing a ‘Spaniard’ in a sword fight (433, 703). The last may be related to Hume’s account of the Armada, but such doodles reveal little about the Urquharts’ reading of Hume – why they annotated Hume in this way, what they thought of him, or who in the family was the doodler. In fact, of all the markings in their Hume’s History, only one is accompanied with coherent commentary – the execrable outburst ‘Good Riddance, of Bad Rubbish’ alongside the death of Mary Tudor, presumably reflecting only the Urquharts’ implacable opposition to Catholicism (400).5 Deriving usable evidence from marginalia is a frustrating process. Most readers do not leave keys to enable historians to break their coded marks in books, while we commonly know neither who annotated nor when. The possibilities that more than one reader marked up a book or that annotations were made on multiple readings affected by different circumstances and motivations cannot be set aside. Most important, marginalia too often exist isolated from other evidence of an individual’s wider reading. Without such knowledge marginalia contribute little to any systematic analysis of reading experiences (Jackson 2001: 43; Allan 2003a: 108–10). And the attrition rate for such sources is high. New owners of old books have always tended to regard previous markings as imperfections – erasing pencil jottings, cutting out ownerships that no longer apply and recropping the pages. Finally, and despite encouraging signs of progress, locating surviving marginalia is problematic, since they tend to be catalogued in modern research libraries only when they represent authorial corrections or can be associated with famous readers. Given these problems, it is hardly surprising that marginalia are a recent feature of scholarship on the history of reading (Grafton and Jardine 1990; Grafton 1997; Sherman 1995; Sharpe 2000). The continuing neglect of commonplace books by modern researchers is 5

Other instances, 7, 165, 327, 714–15.

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less easily understood. Commonplace books developed during the Renaissance from the classical tradition of collecting rhetorical sententiae, and from the medieval practice of compiling florilegia (Moss 1996: 25; Lechner 1974): readers selected ‘passages of interest for the rhetorical turns of phrase, the dialectical arguments, or the factual information they contain’ and copied them into their commonplace book, ‘under appropriate headings to facilitate later retrieval and use, notably in composing prose of one’s own’ (Blair 1992: 541). The technique originated as a specialist tool for academics, lawyers and physicians; commonplace books were storehouses of ready knowledge that a writer, orator or courtier could parachute into his own arguments and discourse. The perception persists that commonplace books were less important in the eighteenth century: ‘the decline of the commonplace into the trivial and the banal was foreshadowed in the seventeenth century, accelerated in the eighteenth century, and was irreversible by the nineteenth . . . It was by Locke’s time a rather lowly form of life, adapted to fairly simple tasks, and confined to the backwaters of intellectual activity’ (Moss 1996: 2, 279). Nevertheless, the technique was significantly refreshed by John Locke, whose ‘New Method’, first published in English in 1706, set strict rules to make the commonplace book a more efficient filing system: readers were enjoined to enter their reading notes by subject (not author or text), and index them for cross referencing. Critical reading was thus encouraged (Dacome 2004; Havens 2001). Locke’s method was extremely popular in Enlightenment Britain, selling well in many editions and adaptations, perhaps because, by stressing independent judgement and reflection, it was remarkably suited to the eighteenth-century processes of self-improvement and self-fashioning: ‘the ideals of politeness . . . required that a person fashion a polite identity by regulating and refining his passions, a goal that could best be achieved through the medium of literature and the arts’ (Brewer 1997: 106; Greenblatt 1980). The commonplace book became indispensable to the critical reader, allowing him or her to negotiate the ‘revolutionary’ new world of extensive reading with ‘enforced and regulated intensity’ – to avoid, as Dugald Stewart observes in Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, the detrimental ‘habit of extensive and various reading, without reflection’ (DeMaria 1992: 88; Stewart 1792: 446). As a result, it presented itself to the common reader as well as the scholar, and when John Bell released an updated version of Locke’s Common Place Book in 1770, he argued that

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It is not solely for the Divine, the Lawyer, the Poet, Philosopher, or Historian, that this publication is calculated: by these its uses are experimentally known and universally admitted. It is for the use and emolument of the man of business as well as of letters; for men of fashion and fortune as well as of study; for the Traveller, The Trader, and in short for all those who would form a system of useful and agreeable knowledge, in a manner peculiar to themselves, while they are following their accustomed pursuits, either of profit or pleasure. (1770: ii) Taken together, literary correspondence, diaries, marginalia and commonplace books open up the world of the eighteenth-century Scottish reader, beyond the consumer nexus of books bought or borrowed (Kaufman 1964–5; Dunstan 2006; Towsey 2008) by suggesting how books were read, why and with what level of understanding. Some readers clearly used books with professional or vocational ends in mind. History was traditionally recommended as providing ‘philosophy teaching by example’ for young gentlemen preparing to enter public life (O’Brien 2001: 105–6; Hicks 1996; Woolf 2000). History remained a vital prerequisite to an active political career even in the late eighteenth century; John Grant, the minister of Dundurcus, advised Lord George Gordon (recently elected MP) to study English parliamentary history before going down to Westminster – advice the dangerously unbalanced Gordon would have done well to follow (R. K. Donovan 1987).6 David Murray (1727– 96), second Earl of Mansfield, raided Robert Watson’s History of the Reign of Philip II of Spain in the late 1770s for comparisons between the sixteenth-century Dutch Revolt and the American Revolution. Murray was then Britain’s leading diplomat, and may have used Watson’s narrative about the Dutch rebels and the Treaty of Utrecht (which Watson saw as a prototype Declaration of Independence) as historical precedents in his negotiations with the colonists and their French allies.7 Others turned to history for professional reasons: Reverend David Imrie consulted Kames’s Historical Law Tracts (1758) in researching land valuations in and around Dumfries, while others compiled commonplace books of legal history.8 Scottish conjectural history, meanwhile, was a vital educational tool for readers embarking on careers 6 7 8

NAS GD248/616/3/2, Rev. John Grant, Correspondence. NRAS 776, v. 811, Mansfield, Historical Notes on the Reign of Philip II of Spain. Rev. David Imrie, Accounts and Notes, Dumfries and Galloway Archives, GGD446/2; NRAS 776, v. 804–5, Mansfield, Commonplace Books; NAS GD248/535/8, John Grant, Notebooks.

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in the burgeoning British Empire, who looked to Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), Millar’s Distinction of Ranks (1771) and Kames’s Sketches of the History of Man (1774) for guidance on how modern British society differed from those at an earlier societal stage (Spadafora 1990; Hopfl 1978; Berry 1997). Alexander Fraser of Reelig, Invernessshire, prepared to join his elder brothers in India by compiling a sequence of question-and-answer notes on The Wealth of Nations (1776) which tested his understanding of Smith’s themes, paying particular attention to Smith’s observations on the foundation and administration of the East India Company.9 Nurseryman William Drummond of Coney Park, outside Stirling, attempted his own index of Smith’s thoughts on the British Corn Laws (though he soon gave up),10 while the navy paymaster Andrew Douglas of Cavers, Berwickshire, added occasional glosses to transcriptions he made from Smith, seemingly fascinated by the geographical spread and exotic provenances among Smith’s sources (Allan 2002a).11 The linguistic agenda of certain Scottish authors to expunge ‘Scotticisms’ from their writing also affected the way ordinary readers prepared themselves for employment outside Scotland. Sir John Sinclair’s Observations on the Scottish Dialect (1782) and James Beattie’s List of Two Hundred Scotticisms with Remarks (1779) were especially suited to this kind of self-fashioning, leaving blank spaces explicitly inviting readers to fill in the correct English usage. John Drummond Erskine accordingly annotated his copy of Sinclair’s Observations ahead of taking up a post in India, adding extemporaneous notes: ‘Word in Scotch means also mention, report + / I have heard no word about him / I have heard no mention of him’, ‘the English usually divide the Day into two parts only morning & evening – the Scotch divide it into four parts, morning, forenoon, afternoon, & evening’, and ‘Dull of hearing is used for deaf, but the single word dull is not used in that sense’.12 Paymaster Douglas, probably living in London most of his adult life, was guided by a more unusual source – James Elphinston’s Animadversions upon the Elements of Criticism (1771). Douglas immediately focused on Elphinston’s introductory argument that ‘improvement ought to be the sole object of criticism. Expression may be improved in its arrangement, neatness, veracity, harmony, dignity, 9 10 11 12

NRAS 2696/v. 18, Alexander Fraser, Commonplace Book. NLS Acc.5699, William Drummond, Commonplace Book. NLS Adv. MS17.1.10–12, Andrew Douglas, Commonplace Book. Dunimarle Library copy, 34, 47 and 101. Similar annotations survive in Beattie 1779, BL copy, c.61.b.6(1).

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precision & purity’. He translated Elphinston’s assault on Scotticisms in Lord Kames’s classic Elements of Criticism (1762) into a series of injunctions that he could apply to his own English, ranging from snappy maxims (‘In terminations, avoid a feeble word’; ‘Licentious ellipses detract from beauty as well as from correctness’) to longer summaries: ‘Scotticism consists chiefly in the different application or construction of English words. No English word is so often misapplied by the Scotch as these for those. These, like this, exhibits its object near & definite; those, like that, its object remote or indefinite.’13 Meanwhile, landowners and tenant farmers took their lead from books promoting agricultural improvement, including the Irvine laird of Drum Castle, who studied James Anderson’s tactics in overcoming the harvest failure that blighted Aberdeenshire in 1782.14 A member of the Pierson family of Balmadies farm, Angus, reported being ‘more delighted’ by Home’s Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation (1756) ‘than with any other I have yet read’. He was especially impressed by Home’s ‘observations on the different manures – with the distinctions he makes – betwixt clay marle and our shell marle which he observes is an animal substance’, and clearly approved Home’s staunch empiricism. However, Pierson objected to Home’s view ‘that animals inhabiting their shells are rarely to be found’, noting that his own experience of using marle as a manure suggested that ‘in parts that have been cut for peatts when the water is drain’d off we find multitudes of these bukies full of animals resembling a welk, but very small and the shells of a blackish colour’.15 Women might also read ‘vocationally’, turning to books for guidance on their tasks within the domestic economy. Elizabeth Rose, the lady laird of Kilravock, recorded the price of livestock in 1199, the sixteenth-century introduction of ‘sallads, carrots and other vegetable roots’ to English tables and the relative price of beef, mutton and veal in the reign of Henry VIII.16 Her reading increasingly focused on books about the education of young children – pillaging texts as challenging as Hume’s History, Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Beattie’s Elements of Moral Science (1790), Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792) and Johnson’s Journey to the Western Isles (1775) for extracts that best matched her view that ‘the privacy of 13 14 15

16

Douglas, Commonplace Book, f127r; compare, Elphinston 1771, iii, 55, 51, 84–5, and 87. NRAS 1500/17, Irvine family, Commonplace Book, 146. Pierson Commonplace Book, 158–9, Angus Local Studies Centre, MS 324; compare Home 1756, 79. NAS GD1/726, Elizabeth Rose, Notebook on Hume’s History, f3r, 15v; compare Hume 1983: I: 404; III: 327, 330.

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domestic education be preferable’ to the moral degradations of public school.17 She had been widowed while pregnant, and had inherited the title of Kilravock after the premature deaths of her father and two brothers, and therefore placed inordinate emphasis on educating her young son, as she says in her own poignant verses: ‘An infant son to truth engage / His sinking fortunes to prop’ (Rose and Shaw 1848: 509; Drescher 1967; Towsey 2007). Where Elizabeth Rose raided certain books for advice on her son’s education, she turned to others to educate herself as a reader. Early on, she seems to have treated Hume’s History as a testing ground for her own approach to reading – though sadly she never reflected directly on her development as a reader. In reading Hume and Robertson, she focused on moralistic character studies, since the fate of historic personalities, her commonplace book elsewhere notes, ‘should direct attention to those sacred & indelible characters on the human mind’. By contrast, Elizabeth transcribed a long passage on the dangers inherent in reading novels, a particular bugbear of eighteenth-century moralists which Elizabeth noted were ‘in every view calculated to check our moral improvement’.18 Accordingly, her commonplace books feature from such ‘fictitious histories’ only a few transcriptions of well-penned passages from unimpeachable novels like Camilla and Cecilia. Though her journal shows her reading many more novels, she did not linger on them – reflecting the advice of the Lady’s Magazine that ‘some books may be hurried over, for they contain nothing worth retaining’ (quoted by Raven 1996: 196). Of course, Elizabeth’s careful attention to self-improvement reflects the fact that reading played a historically crucial role in self-fashioning (Greenblatt 2005), with readers using books to learn how to behave, to feel, to think and to conceive of themselves and the world around them. Readers like Andrew Douglas and Reverend William Cameron of Kirknewton extracted material from books to help develop their own taste, for instance, providing themselves with the tools for understanding language (including definitions of rhetorical terms like perspicuity and propriety) and paying close attention to the literary examples used by James Beattie, George Campbell and Hugh Blair to demonstrate good taste in composition.19 Books also helped readers control their own emotions. In the 1790s, Elizabeth Rose transcribed the conclusion of the supposed 17 18 19

NAS GD1/726, Rose, Commonplace Book, 1790, 157; compare Beattie 1790–3: II: 146–8. Rose, Commonplace Book, 1790, 89–90; compare Stewart 1790: I: 520. NAS CH1/15, Douglas, Commonplace Book; William Cameron, Commonplace Book.

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Ossianic fragment ‘Cuthon the son of Dargo’ which seemed to sum up her own catalogue of losses: ‘My friends are gone: their memory like the stones of their tomb is half sunk & the place of their abode is desolate but such changes are not the lot of the Bard alone.’20 By meditating on affecting passages, Elizabeth was not associating herself with the stereotypical image of a sentimental female reader, so often condemned by contemporary critics. Instead, her reading of such passages was disciplined and educative, ‘a means of overcoming rather than encouraging frivolity’ – much like Anna Larpent’s reading of sentimental literature, which John Brewer argues was intended to refine her own senses of sympathy and compassion (1996: 235). Elizabeth hoped better to deal with her own losses, perhaps minimising what she called elsewhere ‘their depredations on domestic delight’ (Rose and Shaw: 490), so that her deeply felt grief would not compromise her virtuous emotions. Such passages could also help cultivate the sympathetic fellow-feeling required to console her friends in their own grief, allowing her ‘to soften for a moment the weight of their affliction’ (Rose and Shaw 1848: 492). Similar motivations probably explain Christian Broun’s transcription of sorrowful verses on the death of children, including Helen d’Arcy Stewart’s celebrated ‘The tear I shed must ever fall’.21 Reading could also bolster faith, of course, often in response to eighteenth-century Scotland’s great sceptic, David Hume. Reverend Cameron dutifully took notes on every one of Hume’s Essays and Treatises, but exploded when it came to Hume’s apparent maltreatment of organised religion. He inserted a snide aside about ‘the tendency of sceptical philosophy to destroy the power of both’ on reading Hume’s argument that ‘superstition [will] . . . promote the due fear of both civil & rel: authority’, and objected that ‘the rage of system & disputation borrow’d from phil’y . . . corrupted Chr’y & raised partyspirit & the violence of faction in the church’.22 Other readers more forthrightly condemned Hume, including the anonymous compiler of a commonplace book entitled ‘Amusements in Solitude’ who was so horrified by Hume’s obstinately secularist account of the Reformation that she exclaimed, ‘the mind is not only starved by this Celebrated author; but the Heart is Hurt in all Her delicate feelings. The exercise of all her rational powers perverted’.23 Other commonplace books 20 21 22 23

Rose, Commonplace Book, 1790: 158–9; compare Smith 1780: 309–12. NRAS 2383, Bundles 57–8, Christian Broun, Commonplace Books. Cameron, Commonplace Book, ff73v, 75r, 74v; compare Hume 1987: 62. NLS MS8238–40, Anon, ‘Amusements in Solitude’, ff19r, 17v.

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enlisted the Scottish Common Sense philosophers against Hume’s perceived assault on Christian orthodoxy, including nurseryman Drummond, who triumphantly concluded that George Campbell ‘completely silences Hume notwithstanding all his arts and ingenuity’,24 and paymaster Douglas, who mercilessly teased Hume’s argument that ‘the soul is only a bundle of perceptions’: ‘Pray, where is the percipient? Has Mr Hume mislaid his? It may be so – yet still it may exist – and may God have mercy on it.’25 Books also provided readers with more worldly opinions, especially history, which could enrich a reader’s understanding of current affairs. Reverend Cameron took detailed notes from two books by William Barron which informed his view of late-1770s events in America (optimistically concluding that ‘the Am: colonies may in time be more reconciled to a standing army’) and late-1790s Ireland (where Henry VII ‘restored . . . peace to Ireland’ and James I ‘greatly improved the state of I.’, George III could be relied upon to rescue Ireland once more from its ‘wretched situation’).26 More typically, an anonymous member of the Irvine family of Drum Castle looked to classical Rome to help rationalise late-1790s French upheaval: ‘Internal commotion during the Roman republic proved the cause of foreign wars. The Patricians were glad to employ the attention of the plebeian in this way to secure their own authority – This principle of action exemplified in the French Revolution.’27 Of course, domestic histories tended inevitably to consolidate readers’ political affiliations, including those of the teenage David Boyle (eventually appointed Lord President of the Court of Session as Lord Sherralton), whose nascent Whiggism was enhanced by a rather partial reading of Hume’s History28 and John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, another staunch Whig, who considered Dalrymple’s Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (1771, containing a justification of the Glorious Revolution) ‘one of the most pleasing pieces of history I know’ (Ramsay 1966: 101). Conversely, Sir James Steuart of Coltness compiled a stepby-step refutation of Hume’s indictment of Mary Queen of Scots,

24 25

26

27

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Drummond, Commonplace Book, ff50v-51v. Douglas, Commonplace Book, f130v; compare Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (Edinburgh, 1770: 265–7). Cameron, ff57r-57v; compare William Barron’s History of the Political Connection between England and Ireland (London, 1780), 2–3, 88, 127–8, 134, 200. NRAS 1500/97, Irvine family, Notes on Ancient Rome, f1r; possibly based on Abbé de Vertot’s History of the Revolutions that Happened in the Government of the Roman Republic (London, 1720). GUL MS Murray 170, David Boyle, Commonplace Book.

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whose tragic story had acquired totemic significance for Scottish Jacobites. Indeed, Steuart’s manuscript notes on Hume were circulated within the Jacobite community by his widow in the 1780s to commemorate ‘those valuable sentiments which formed the basis on which their Friendship was built, and mutually subsisted’.29 Meanwhile, reading also cultivated a sense of patriotic pride. Few were as narrowly parochial as the illegitimate son of the second Duke of Buccleuch, Major Walter Scott of Dachett, whose commonplace book collected historical anecdotes on his famous ancestors to consolidate his own somewhat tarnished identification with the Buccleuch household. Doubtless he dreamt of emulating the heroism of Walter Scott of Buccleuch, the ‘powerful border chieftain’ who in 1526 had been ‘forced to retire but not without the slaughter of many of his enemies’.30 More broadly, readers in post-Union Scotland did not resist the tendency to cast the English as the ‘other’ against which Scottish identity has always been constructed, wallowing in material that celebrated Scotland’s fiercely independent past. William Cameron reduced Robertson’s History of Scotland (1759) to three pages of concise notes on critical divergences in the two nations’ pasts: ‘Ed: I of Eng: nearly reduced Scot’d but by the bravery of Bruce & Wallace was defeated . . . Henry 8 first gain’d interest in Scotland – thought to make himself master of it by marrying his son to Mary queen of Scots’.31 A member of the Irvine family of Drum Castle, perhaps the art dealer James Irvine, focused with pride on Scotland’s ancient traditions, like ‘the Scottish white rose, which . . . appears to have had no connection whatever with the York rose, & to have been more ancient than it’, and especially on those associated with the by-then defunct Scottish parliament.32 He was also fascinated by tales of the heroes and villains of Scottish history, usually relating them to sites or objects that could still be seen in modern Scotland: ‘On Flodden Field, “an unhewn column” marks the spot where James IV fell (Marmion)’; ‘On the face of the hill of Kinnoul there is a cave in the steep part of the rock called the Dragon hole, in it Wallace is said to have hid himself’; ‘Two miles NW of the village of Kincardine O’Neil, just by the parish church of Lumphanan, there is a valley where the vestiges of an 29

30

31 32

Compare ‘Notes on Hume’s Elizabeth’ and ‘Queen Mary’, both attributed to Sir James Steuart of Coltness (NLS MS 9367; Leith Hall, National Trust for Scotland, 77.8160). NAS GD224/812/12, Major Walter Scott, Pages from or intended for a commonplace book, 15; compare John Pinkerton’s History of Scotland (London, 1797: II: 277–8). Cameron, 12r-13v; compare Robertson 1759. NRAS 1500/85, Irvine family, Historical Anecdotes, f12r, f3r; compare James Andrews’s History of Great Britain (London, 1794: 428); Pinkerton 1797: I: 373.

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ancient fortress are still to be discerned . . . in this place we may conjecture that Macbeth sought an asylum.’33 Reading Scottish history could therefore inform the way eighteenth-century Scots interpreted the physical landscape around them, allowing material traces of Scotland’s independent past to reinforce the persistence of a distinctly Scottish identity. As Reverend John Grant noted, the ‘history of our country is always an object of importance, as it informs us of the various revolutions of the state, the manners of our ancestors and their progress in civilisation’.34 He proceeded to praise the merits of a little known work by a fellow clergyman whose own reading notes are highlighted subsequently in this volume, George Ridpath’s Border History of Scotland and England (1776). Though ‘not possessed of the political sagacity of an Hume, the pleasing arrangement of a Robertson, or the elegance & discerning research of Gibbon’, Grant nevertheless commended Ridpath for the ‘plain & artless manner’ in which he had presented ‘a great variety of facts properly vouched, that throw considerable light on the Border transactions . . . What particularly pleased me, & which I consider as the best detailed part of his book, is the account of Edward his acquiring the sovereignty of Scotland, & the manner that it was lost by Edward II’.35 Ridpath’s neutral, ‘artless’ presentation of evidence about Scotland’s past ultimately empowered readers to judge the significance of this crucial episode for themselves, and was thus, according to Grant, eminently preferable to the narrative constructs of the Scottish past propagated by the Edinburgh Enlightenment’s Anglophone historians. As James Raven, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor point out, ‘the history of reading is also a history of the culture in which it takes place, requiring close attention to what it was possible to think, to perceive and, not least, to feel, in particular situations at particular moments in the past’ (1996: 21). By introducing the types of sources that might be used to reconstruct eighteenth-century Scottish reading experiences, the study of reading can make a vital contribution to the history of the book in Scotland – helping to clarify the role books played in Scottish culture. Though such sources are notoriously difficult to interpret, the potential rewards are great. Even the exceptionally small sample of surviving reading notes surveyed here illuminate an array of important 33

34 35

NRAS 1500/874, Irvine family, Biographical Notes and Monuments, unpaginated; compare Sir Walter Scott Poetical Works (London, 1883: 584), OSA: XVIII: 560 and OSA: VI: 388. NAS GD248/616/3/1, Rev. John Grant, Loose Unnumbered Papers. Rev. Grant Papers; Grant proceeded to transcribe material from Ridpath 1776, 224ff.

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themes, including the role of women in eighteenth-century Scotland, developing notions of national identity in response to the Union of 1707, the craze for agricultural improvement, Scottish involvement in the burgeoning British Empire, continuing support for Jacobitism in the decades after the ’45, the evangelical revival, cultural Anglicisation and responses to the American and French Revolutions. Most importantly, perhaps, reading notes demonstrate how far ordinary consumers engaged with and at times resisted the ideas and writings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Commonplace books, diaries, literary correspondence and marginalia allow us to glimpse what ordinary people actually thought about such issues.

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The ‘Age of Criticism’ and the Critical Reader: George Ridpath Mark Towsey From the late 1740s, a phalanx of critical periodicals emerged in Britain (led by the Monthly and Critical Reviews, in 1749 and 1755 respectively) assuming ‘the authority to identify and enforce . . . a single standard of taste in an increasingly pluralistic class of readers’ (Donoghue 1996: 21, 18). Philosophical writers weighed in, especially in Scotland, to clarify what that standard of taste was, how it could be identified and, most importantly, how to acquire it (Engell 1989; R. Crawford 1998; Moran 1994), reinforcing the idea that good taste was an attainable attribute of polite gentility, and encouraging readers to practise and perfect it by reading books with a critical eye. Consequently, eighteenth-century readers cast themselves in the reviewer’s role, evaluating and interrogating what they read. An instructive case in point was the minister of Stitchel in Roxburghshire, George Ridpath, who established his own precocious literary judgements within contexts provided by critical reviewers (Ridpath 1922). His response to William Robertson’s History of Scotland (1757) was typically forthright: The work certainly deserves great praises. The choice of facts is judicious, the disposition of them clear and regular, the descriptions animated, reflexions just and natural, characters painted in glowing colours, and the stile elegant, perspicuous, easy, and full of vigour. What seems most liable to objection is a want of sufficient detail in some facts of consequence, which, by sparing some reflexions and declamation, might have been given without increasing the bulk of the work; and I cannot help thinking that there is at least a striking impropriety in the kindness shown to 435

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Mary, when ’tis plain the author holds her guilty of the worst of crimes. This also is naturally accompanied with a severity to Elizabeth for which there scarce appears sufficient ground, when the dangers to which she and her people were continually exposed by the increasing plots of her rival are impartially attended to. (Ridpath 1922: 242) Ridpath was not content simply to praise Robertson’s stylistic excellence, agreeing with a published review which was ‘very favourable, but not more than the work deserves’ (243). But in his eagerness to criticise Robertson’s contribution to the Marian controversy he identified the very issue that has made the History so diverting for recent commentators. As Karen O’Brien argues, Robertson was ‘a fertile inventor of narrative strategies for conflict elimination’, and his treatment of the rival queens, though disorientating for Ridpath, was apparently designed to consolidate the 1707 Union by neutralising this divisive myth of the partisan past (O’Brien 1997a: 75; O’Brien 1997b; Kidd 1993; FearnleySander 1990). Ridpath was an especially well-positioned reader of this particular text, being on good terms with Robertson and having ‘had a good deal of chat with him about his History’ (143). Even so, Ridpath regarded as its greatest weakness the very aspect of the History that has most impressed modern commentators. Instead, as a member of Edinburgh’s Culloden Club (xvi), he brought his own Whiggish politics to bear on an episode whose Jacobite associations still held considerable political currency in 1750s Scotland (Bongie 1963–4; O’Brien 1997a: 121). Ridpath was far less enthusiastic about Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759): ‘The work shows him to be a man of knowledge and of genius too,’ Ridpath admitted, ‘but yet I can by no means join in the applauses [sic] I have heard bestowed on it. What is new in it is perhaps of no great moment in itself, and is neither distinctly explained nor clearly established.’ Acknowledging the book’s general critical approval, Ridpath revised his reading ‘with more attention than before’, but persisted in his initial conclusion: ‘his indulging of this humour for playing everywhere the orator, tho’ his oratorical talents are far from being extraordinary, has made him spin out to the tedious length of 400 pages what in my opinion might be delivered as fully and with far more energy and perspicuity in 20’ (276; Reeder 1997). Ridpath was even more damning in his assessment of David Hume, though he agreed with the critics that some of the Essays made ‘good philosophical criticism’ (131). Of Hume on Trade, Ridpath noted ‘as usual, he finds all the world mistaken but himself’ (319), and he

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considered the Natural History of Religion ‘entertaining and has curious things in it, but its tendency is very bad’. He correctly diagnosed the Enquiry on the Passions as ‘an attempt to elucidate and popularize part of the Treatise of Human Nature’, but he nevertheless considered it ‘both very useless and still . . . very obscure’ (131). Moreover, Ridpath concluded of Hume’s History that ‘there are always entertaining things in him but not without a great mixture both of trifling and blundering . . . His account of James [II]’s reign and of the [Glorious] revolution is, in general, fair and candid, but the detail is often wanting that is sufficient to enable a man to judge for himself’ (262–4). Such distrust of the Great Infidel overflowed Ridpath’s diary into social encounters with his cronies from the Kelso Subscription Library: on one occasion, revealingly, the ensemble assessed a published review of Hume’s History, agreeing that ‘he is treated severely enough, yet not more than he deserves’ (130; Price 1990; Fieser 1996). Ultimately, Ridpath proved himself as a critical reader by casting judgement on the reviewers themselves, accurately assessing their political proclivities (Roper 1978): Got in the evening from Sir Robert [Pringle, third Baronet of Stitchel] by Nancy [Ridpath’s sister] a number of the Critical Review which I saw there the other night. Read most of it. I see it is contrived to please the Tories and High Church in political articles and other things, though, perhaps, there is more vivacity and even a greater show of learning than in the Monthly Review; yet a satirical spirit seems to be much more intemperately indulged. Nor is the writing in general so correct, so that, as far as I can judge from this specimen, I think the Monthly Magazine much preferable. (239) George Ridpath was an exceptionally well-qualified reader, on excellent terms with Robertson, Hume and other Scottish literati, and eventually realised a long-held ambition to enter the republic of letters himself – albeit with the posthumous publication of his highly-respected Border History of Scotland and England (1776). His fascinating diary reminds us, however, that readers’ responses were shaped by external forces – foremost among them in the eighteenth century, published critics who exerted unprecedented influence on the private thoughts of individual readers.

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Women’s Reading Mark Towsey With widening access to print, improved literacy and more leisure, women from the upper echelons of British society were increasingly important to the eighteenth-century literary marketplace. As Jacqueline Pearson’s Women’s Reading in Britain 1750–1835: a Dangerous Recreation (1999) demonstrates, the woman reader became ubiquitous, while conduct writers, moral philosophers, periodical editors and journalists monitored female engagement with books, prescribing what was and what was not appropriate reading for young ladies. Pearson’s portfolio of ‘historical women readers’ remains, however, decidedly Anglocentric; and even the basic practicalities of how women in eighteenth-century Scotland got hold of books, let alone what kinds of books they read, remains largely uncharted. Although some young women were forbidden access to family libraries to shield them from the moral dangers of reading (Pearson 1997: 4), many others were introduced to books at an early age. Elizabeth Rose of Kilravock, perhaps the best-documented eighteenth-century Scottish woman reader (Towsey 2007), remembered with fondness the many ‘winter evenings, when I was scarcely nine years old, that I have sat by my father reading translations of the classics . . . the silence for hours only broken to bless me with fervour, or to utter some fond appellation’. In her tenth year, her uncle (and Hume’s friend), Dr John Clephane, advised her that ‘reading . . . deserve[s] great application’. Her burgeoning love of reading was further encouraged by her cousin, the novelist Henry Mackenzie, with Elizabeth initiating the pair’s correspondence soon after her twenty-first birthday precisely to continue her intellectual and literary development (Rose and Shaw 1848: 461; Drescher 1967: 15, 35). The celebrated female mathematician and natural philosopher Mary 438

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Somerville may not have recalled the experience with such obvious relish, but her first encounter with books also came through her father who ‘made me read a paper of the Spectator aloud every morning, after breakfast; the consequence of which discipline is that I have never since opened that book. Hume’s History of England was also a real penance to me’ (Somerville 1873: 20). The most immediate site for female encounters with books was thus the family library, although some owned considerable book collections in their own right, as Murray Simpson has established elsewhere in this volume. Upon inheriting the title, estates and fine library of Kilravock, Elizabeth Rose decided to create a lasting record of the family book collection of nearly 2,000 titles,36 with particular strengths in classical and foreign-language literature, alongside many of the period’s most innovative texts. The best-selling works of Scotland’s polite historians William Robertson, David Hume, Robert Henry and Adam Ferguson joined important Continental writers like Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and Maupertuis. These were complemented by other standards of the eighteenth-century country-house library, including the aesthetic philosophy of Francis Hutcheson and George Campbell, the poetry of Pope, Burns and Ossian, the devotional and conduct works of Hugh Blair and James Fordyce, and the collected essays of Hume and James Beattie. The Kilravocks also owned important mathematical texts, including Colin MacLaurin’s influential popularisation of Newton’s philosophy, while their collection of practical works on agriculture and industry, including Lord Kames’s Gentleman Farmer, Francis Home’s Essay on Bleaching and James Anderson’s Essays on Agriculture, was characteristic of a family who had pursued the improvement of their estates from the 1740s. Although such direct evidence of female book ownership is both rare (largely because moveable property still tended to accrue to men at this time) and problematic (many of the books at Kilravock had been bought by Elizabeth’s father and grandfather, thus reflecting their cultural and intellectual preoccupations rather than hers), there are frequent hints in the historical record that family libraries were the preserve of the women in a household. A series of catalogues survives for the Newbattle Library, for instance, which are reputably written in the hand of the Marchioness of Lothian rather than her husband, while the Burgie Library was originally built up by Anne and Sophia Brodie 36

NAS GD125 Box 1, ‘Catalogue of the Kilravock Library, 1783’. Many books are explicitly noted to be in ‘Mrs Rose’s Room’ or ‘Mrs Rose’s Closet’.

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of Lethen House, near Nairn,37 and only transferred to Burgie when Sophia married Lewis Dunbar of Grange, taking the books with her to the marital home. Temporary household inventories can be especially useful in associating particular books with particular women. A 1780 inventory of Elizabeth Lady Torphichen’s personal effects lists Voltaire’s History of Charles XII, an edition of Horace and a collection of Ossian’s poems alongside her jewellery, lace and other keepsakes. A corresponding list of her husband’s possessions featured much more intellectually austere works like Hume’s Enquiry, Gilbert Burnet’s History of his Own Times, John Erskine’s Principles of the Law in Scotland and an early eighteenth-century imprint of Buchanan’s Latin poetry.38 At the beginning of the next century, Lady Breadalbane kept well-thumbed copies of Burns, William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine and Blair’s Sermons with a handful of other canonical eighteenth-century texts in her Taymouth Castle dressing room, books she presumably consulted often and probably shared with female visitors like Elizabeth Rose.39 Indeed, eighteenth-century Scots did not necessarily have to own books to have access to them, and Elizabeth Rose was probably typical in borrowing many of the books she read from friends, relatives and neighbours. That much is evident from her voluminous journals and notebooks, which record her reading many books that she did not actually own – including Thomas Reid’s Essays on the Active Powers, Dugald Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind and John Smith’s Galic Antiquities. Moreover, the moniker ‘Kilravock’ turns up repeatedly in a borrowing register for Brodie Castle Library in the 1780s, 1790s and early 1800s (years in which the designation referred to Elizabeth herself as the titular laird), while Elizabeth was also named in more familiar terms – ‘Mrs Rose’ recorded as borrowing John Blair’s Chronology and History of the World, Ferguson’s History of Rome and Henry’s History of Great Britain in 1788–9, for example.40 Elizabeth could also have borrowed or consulted books at Taymouth, Dunrobin, Earlsmill and Castle Grant, among the many other country seats she visited with extensive libraries, as well as 37

38

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40

NLS MS 5818–27, ‘Catalogues of the Lothian family libraries at Newbattle and London’; Grolier Club Library, New York, *08.26/D898/1820Arch, ‘Burgie Library Catalogue’. NAS CS313/1040, ‘Inventory of the moveable effects belonging to James Lord Torphichen 1780; inventory of the moveable effects which belonged to Elizabeth Lady Torphichen, 1780’. NAS GD112/22/35, ‘List of Books in Lady Breadalbane’s dressing room at Taymouth Castle, 16th January, 1814’. National Trust for Scotland, Brodie Castle, ‘Library Receipt Book’.

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Gordon Castle, where she had once admired the ‘many books that I wished for leisure to examine’ in the Duchess’s apartment (Rose and Shaw 1848: 496). In fact, the gentry’s willingness to lend books to one another, and to dependents and associates further down the social scale, must have made a significant, though ultimately unquantifiable, contribution to female reading opportunities. The Brodie sisters of Lethen and the Russell sisters of Earlsmill joined Elizabeth Rose in borrowing books from Brodie Castle in the 1780s, almost certainly on the invitation of young women in the Brodie household.41 They were joined in using that library by at least ten other ladies, while at Craigston Castle near Turriff, female readers were even more prevalent – with as many as forty-eight women using the library, accounting for more than 40 per cent of loans in a twenty-year period either side of the turn of the century. Miss Urquhart of Craigston, notably the sole member of the household to sign her name in the borrowing register, perhaps hosted them in part to use the library, and it may be that she initiated an informal reading club there for like-minded ladies in the area between Turriff, Banff and Peterhead.42 Similar patterns are reflected at other Scottish houses where evidence of book use survives, while it is clear that landed families were also happy to lend books to less privileged women whose reading opportunities might otherwise have been severely limited. Sixteen women borrowed books from Thomas Crawford of Cartsburn in the first half of the eighteenth century, mostly from trading, mercantile and maritime families living in or around nearby Greenock. Besides occasional loans to female relatives of the lairds of Hartwood, Blackhall and Darloisk, Crawford also lent books to Janet Adam, a shopkeeper in Greenock, Mary Anderson, relict of a shipmaster in Crawfordsdyke, Christina Broun, the wife of a cooper in Greenock and the merchant’s daughter Ann Corbet.43 Well-disposed clergymen and professionals also offered reading opportunities to poorer Scotswomen, like the autodidact poet Jean Adam, also of Greenock, who borrowed books from her local minister and died in a poorhouse in Glasgow (R. K. Marshall 1983: 242). In isolated areas, private libraries were an especially important source for Scotland’s women readers. The Macpherson-Grant lairds 41 42

43

National Trust for Scotland, Brodie Castle, ‘Library Receipt Book’. Craigston Castle, ‘Library Borrowing Register’. My thanks to William Pratesi Urquhart for permission to use this source, and to Craigston’s librarian Sandra Cumming for her assistance. NLS MS 2822, ‘Catalogue of books of Thomas Crawford 2nd of Cartsburn’.

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of Ballindalloch often sent large packets of books to local clergymen and their families to provide reading during Strathspey’s long winter. Borrowers included at least eight women between 1797 and 1815, with the widows of local ministers William Peterkin of Elgin and William Spence of Inveraven particularly prolific.44 Since neither borrowed books while their husbands were alive, their use of the Ballindalloch Library hints at the hidden opportunities available to women as readers of books borrowed by male relations – it is scarcely conceivable that some of the books Reverends Spence and Peterkin borrowed before their deaths were not intended for (or at least read by) their wives. Elizabeth Rose may also have been typical in using more formal lending libraries, though we have no firm evidence that she frequented any of the circulating or subscription libraries that were becoming commonplace in local towns – the Forres Subscription Library (founded 1805), for instance, or Isaac Forsyth’s Elgin Circulating Library, which the Brodies frequented in the 1790s.45 It was common for women to be excluded from the overwhelmingly masculine domain of the proprietary or private subscription libraries. Their natural territory was thought instead to be the commercial circulating library, with which impressionable young ladies were inevitably linked from the 1740s. As John Brewer admits, ‘the received wisdom about circulating libraries was that they were repositories of fictional pap, served up to women who had little to do but surfeit themselves with romantic nonsense’ (Brewer 1997: 179), while William St Clair reiterates the view that institutional reading was ‘strongly gendered’: ‘if the mainly feminine circulating libraries concentrated on novels, the mainly masculine reading societies read the non-fiction texts of the public sphere’ (St Clair 2004: 252; cf. Kaufman 1969; Manley 2003; Varma 1972; Stewart-Murphy 1992; Allan 2008). Although the femininity of circulating libraries may have been exaggerated by contemporary moralists bewailing inappropriate female responses to romances and novels (Pearson 1997; Towsey 2007), they undoubtedly made women into consumers of all kinds of books in unprecedented numbers. The lack of evidence relating to the use and clienteles of Scottish eighteenth-century circulating libraries means that it is impossible to make any concrete claims, but what does survive 44 45

NRAS 771, ‘List of Books Borrowed from Ballindalloch, 1797–c.1820’. Scottish circulating and subscription libraries are the subject of a forthcoming book by K. A. Manley.

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points to the kind of women who might have used circulating libraries, and in what numbers. Around a quarter of subscribers to Robert Chambers’s Circulating Library in New Town Edinburgh in the 1820s were women, a proportion roughly comparable with most subscription libraries that admitted women, while the long-serving proprietor of the Elgin Circulating Library, Isaac Forsyth, sent circulars to Lady Jane Grant of Grant and other neighbouring gentlewomen.46 Moreover, allusions to a much broader female customer-base are embedded in contemporary catalogues, which habitually feature a range of practical self-help works explicitly targeted at women readers, such as The Complete House-wife, or Accomplish’d Gentle-woman’s Companion and The Experienced English House Wife, for the use and ease of Ladies, House-keepers, Cooks Etc.47 Given their commercial motivations, the proprietors of these establishments must have anticipated an interest in such titles. At the same time, however, some subscription libraries could also provide Scotswomen with opportunities for reading. Of course, they were not encouraged everywhere, and women were expressly banned from subscription libraries in two of Scotland’s fastest-growing industrial towns, Hawick and Forfar.48 Meanwhile, it was perfectly possible for women to become members of subscription libraries that would otherwise have blocked female participation, by default, inheriting their share from deceased male relatives, as was evidently the case for the three female members of the Kirkcudbright Subscription Library.49 They were regularly admitted too on the basis of living family connections, like the sole female member of the Selkirk Subscription Library, Miss Plummer, who was apparently given special dispensation as the 46

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NLS MS Dep.341/413, ‘Ledger of Robert Chambers’ Circulating Library, Edinburgh, 1828’; NAS GD248/204/10/11, ‘Account due by Lady Grant to Isaac Forsyth, 11 November 1803’. See A Catalogue of Books Consisting of some thousand volumes . . . Which are Lent to be Read . . . By A. Davidson, Printer, Stationer & Bookbinder, At the Sign of Pope’s Head, Inverness ([Inverness?], 1782); A Catalogue of the Paisley Circulating Library . . . which are Lent to Read . . . by George Caldwell, Bookseller and Stationer, at his Shop, opposite the head of Dyer’s Wynd, near the Cross, Paisley (Paisley, 1789); A Catalogue of the New Circulating Library . . . By R. Nicoll, Bookseller, Stationer and Printseller, Dundee (Dundee, 1782); Sale and Circulating Catalogue of Books . . . to be had of William White at his Shops in Irvine and Beith (n.p., 1780); Catalogue of the Elgin Circulating Library, Containing a Select and Valuable Collection of Books by the Latest and Best Authors . . . Which are Lent to Read . . . by Isaac Forsyth, Bookseller, Stationer and Bookbinder, Elgin ([?], 1789). Hawick Subscription Library: List of Present Proprietors of Hawick Library, and Catalogue of the Library (Hawick, [1810?]); Regulations and Catalogue of Books belonging to the Forfar Library (Dundee, 1795); Catalogue of the Forfar Library (Forfar, 1821). NRA 10173, MS 2/11, Hornel Library, Kirkcudbright, ‘Records of the Kirkcudbright Subscription Library’; MS 4/26, ‘Minute Book of the Kirkcudbright Subscription Library’.

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daughter of the laird of Middlestead, Andrew Plummer, a prominent agitator in the society’s affairs.50 Elsewhere, though, subscription libraries welcomed women on their own terms: the Wigtown Subscription Library had seven women in a total membership of sixty-three, while the Hamilton Subscription Library had twenty-one female members and the Ayr Library Society fifty-two – roughly 20 per cent of total membership in each case (Towsey 2010).51 Indeed, though women were generally excluded from the management of subscription libraries, the governing committee of the Ayr Library Society appointed a female librarian in 1805. Furthermore, when women were admitted as members, they could exploit lending facilities with all the enthusiasm of their male counterparts. Five women borrowers at Wigtown accounted for 123 loans between 1796 and 1799, out of the association’s total of 701. As ‘one of the few quasi-public places where respectable women could go alone’ (Pearson 1997: 161), subscription libraries allowed women to explore new roles in society, enabling some to participate personally in the Scottish Enlightenment’s overwhelmingly masculine culture. But like the private libraries and book collectors who lent books less formally and for free, they also allowed women to become consumers of literature in less accessible ways – whether through borrowing books under a husband’s or a father’s name, or in the sort of scene frequently depicted in contemporary literature and correspondence: reading aloud as a communal family experience. Indeed, founding members of subscription libraries usually took these circumstances into account when they framed constitutions. K. A. Manley explores the policies of such institutions in detail in this volume, including their acknowledgement of women readers. Finally, the charitable endowed libraries for which Scotland is so renowned also offered women opportunities to engage with the world of the book on an unprecedented scale. The doyenne of all ‘community libraries’ at Innerpeffray had eleven women borrowers before 1800, out of a total of 287, drawn from local farming, artisan and trading families

50

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Scottish Borders Archive and Library Service, Hawick Archive Hub, S/PL/7, ‘Selkirk Subscription Library Registers, 1799–1808; 1808–1814’. The minutes of the Selkirk Subscription Library do not survive, but Andrew Plummer of Middlestead, Sheriff of Selkirkshire in 1793, is listed as one of the most active members by T. Craig-Brown who had seen the minute book before its destruction: see ‘Selkirk Subscription Library’, Southern Register, 23 May 1901, a copy of which is pasted in the Selkirk register. NRA 10173, MS 11/28–30, Hornel Library, Kirkcudbright, ‘Borrowing Books of the Wigtown Subscription Library’; Names of Subscribers to the Hamilton Subscription Library (Glasgow, 1824); Ayr Carnegie Library, 672QC, ‘Minutes of the Ayr Library Society’.

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(Kaufman 1969: 157; Houston 1985; Aitken 1971). As many as fifty women matriculated at the Leightonian Library in nearby Dunblane in the same period, most from the households of local landowners, clergymen and well-to-do professionals in Stirling and Dunblane.52 Though slightly less well known, the Gray Library in Haddington may have been more important in facilitating women’s reading further down the social scale. At least seventy-three female borrowers used the library between 1732 and 1816, compared with 584 identifiable male borrowers; female patronage is most intensive from the 1760s, with the presence of teenage girls especially revealing. One bookish group of school-age girls visited the library most Saturdays in 1814–15 – including Sarah Shiells, a brewer’s daughter, surgeon’s daughter Mary Anne Somerville and Marianne Dods, a local seed merchant’s daughter (Dunstan 2006: 54; Towsey 2007). Pointedly, Jane Welsh Carlyle did not – though her uncle, who regularly frequented the Gray Library, is more than likely to have borrowed books on her behalf, given his influence on his intensely bookish young ward (R. K. Marshall 1983: 218–9; Knox 2006). In line with conventional stereotypes of eighteenth-century women’s reading, female borrowers did tend to favour the Gray Library’s small stock of novels and poetry by Pope, Burns, Ossian and Scott, but it is striking that the most popular books – including Forsyth’s Beauties of Scotland, Robertson’s histories, Fielding’s Works, Rollin’s Ancient History and Roman History and Burns’s Poetic Works – were equally popular with men and women (Dunstan 2006: 50). Indeed, although contemporaries fretted about women’s increasing susceptibility to frivolous and sentimental pulp fiction, especially in commercial circulating libraries, this survey clearly shows eighteenth-century Scottish women reading all kinds of books – wherever they managed to acquire them. Elizabeth Rose may have been exceptional in engaging with some of the foremost intellectual debates of the age (Townsey 2007), but women like Mary Anne Somerville (the surgeon’s daughter, who borrowed Robertson’s History of Scotland and every volume of Henry’s History from the Gray Library), Mrs Milroy (the widow of a Wigtownshire farmer, who borrowed Hume’s History of England, Johnson’s Lives of the British Poets, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the 52

University of Stirling Archives, MS25, ‘Leighton Library Matriculation Book, 31st October 1734–1814’; MS26, ‘Notes of borrowings from the Leightonian Library, 1725–8, 1746–8 and 1792–3’; MS27, ‘Register of borrowings from Leighton Library, May 1780–1833, and 1840’; MS29, ‘Notes of borrowings from the library 1812–28’; and MS30, ‘Register of borrowings from the library by short term visitors, August 1815–July 1833’; Gordon Willis, The Leightonian Library, Dunblane: Catalogue of Manuscripts (Stirling, 1981).

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Roman Republic, Bell’s British Theatre and Cook’s Voyages from the Wigtown Subscription Library) and Sophia Fraser of Philorth (Lord Saltoun’s aunt, who borrowed Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, Rousseau’s Emile and Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments from Craigston Castle before her death in 1784) displayed remarkably eclectic – and sophisticated – tastes. Of course, to show that certain women could lay their hands on some of the eighteenth century’s most challenging texts proves little about the extent and nature of their engagement with such books. We do not even know for sure if those women who borrowed books from Brodie Castle, from the Leightonian Library or from the Ayr Library Society ever read them, still less what they thought of them. Moreover, the traditional view that women should not read still prevailed in many parts of Scotland throughout the period (Mary Somerville complained that her ‘turn for reading was so much disapproved of, and thought it unjust that women should have been given a desire for knowledge if it were wrong to acquire it’; Somerville 1873: 28); while reading tended to be sacrificed by poorer women in favour of more utilitarian skills like sewing, cookery, needlework and spinning (R. K. Marshall 1983). Nevertheless, the proliferation of libraries of all kinds ensured that at the dawn of the nineteenth century most Scotswomen could, if they desired, access the world of the book for the first time.

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A Woman’s Library in 1729: Grisel Erskine Murray C. T. Simpson The study of Scottish private libraries before 1800 favours collections by men, not least because records of women owning books are so patchy. Certainly, women could and often did write their names in their books; and personalised bindings, particularly on bibles and devotional works, exist. Scottish women also commissioned their own bookplates, like Lady Frances Scott, sister of the third Duke of Buccleuch, a notable blue-stocking, or Susanna, third wife of the ninth Earl of Eglinton, another celebrated wit (and beauty), but such are exceptional. Even the highly literate Lady Grizel Baillie, daughter of the first Earl of Marchmont, used her husband’s bookplate, personalised with her signature. This scarcity of evidence makes the rare contemporary lists of collections owned by women crucial to an appreciation of female book ownership, as well as of female readership. One such list was compiled early in the eighteenth century in her own hand by Katherine Bruce, wife of Sir Robert Fletcher of Saltoun and mother of the great book collector Andrew Fletcher.53 Another, drawn up for a woman, rather than by her, is the 1729 catalogue of Grisel Erskine’s books. Unlike the Fletcher list, it includes imprint details, but in numbers of items it is similar: 186 or so in Fletcher, 168 in Erskine. Grisel Erskine was the wife of Charles Erskine, fourth son of Sir Charles Erskine, first Baronet of Alva. The name was commonly written as ‘Areskine’ (see 1729 catalogue), but Erskine is the modern spelling and thus used here. As a younger son, Charles made his own way 53

NLS MS 17861, ff. 39-42.

447

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in the world, first specialising in mathematical and scientific study and then law, becoming Edinburgh University’s first Professor of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations (1707), then an advocate, an MP (1722–41), Solicitor-General (1725–37), Lord Advocate (1737–42) and finally a judge (1744), sitting as Lord Tinwald (Cairns 2007). Charles Erskine’s own library was catalogued two years after his wife’s (1731) in the same hand.54 Incidentally, Charles’s elder brother Robert, Physician to Peter the Great, was also a book collector, whose library was purchased by the Tsar. Grisel married Charles in 1712. Conveniently for his material prosperity, she was an only child who inherited her father’s estate of Barjarg, about ten miles north of Dumfries. Grisel’s catalogue, unlike her husband’s, is not handsomely bound in leather, and is much shorter. His exceeds 200 pages, although over half comprises a duplicate listing, arranged differently. It includes about 1,300 titles, plus manuscripts and ‘a heap of pamphlets &c’.55 His wife’s catalogue was originally a mere notebook with Dutch gilt covers, listing the 168 titles over twelve pages. Five were obviously added after 1729, four bearing later imprint dates. Charles’s library, containing a substantial number of post-1731 imprints, is a superb legal collection, with items of bibliophilic interest, like the 1471 Venice Suetonius. However, Mrs Erskine’s books can hold their own and reveal a lively mind responsive to new works, some of which rarely found their way into contemporary Scottish institutional libraries. Despite misspellings, and a few gnomic descriptions, individual titles in the catalogue can almost always be identified through the ESTC and multiple-access online library catalogues. The places and dates of publication are usually, although not invariably, correct. Some items in Mrs Erskine’s collection were incomplete: she owned only the second of William Perkins’s three-volume Works, for instance, and Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon’s Pyrrhus was noted as imperfect. The title-page of James Durham’s Blessedness of the Death of These that Die in the Lord was torn, as was that of Samuel Smith’s Christians Guide to Devotion, while that to Baxter’s The Safe Religion was not there at all. Some titles she owned in more than one copy or edition. All but fifteen titles with identifiable places of origin were printed in Great Britain: the exceptions were one from Italy, six from the United Provinces, four from Germany, eight from France and three from the Spanish Netherlands. The name ‘Lady Laurie’ appears 54 55

NLS MS 3283. NLS MS 3283, 54.

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several times in the catalogue, as someone given books. This was Mrs Erskine’s eldest daughter Christian (born 1715) who married a Barjarg neighbour, Sir Robert Laurie, fourth Baronet of Maxwelton, on 4 February 1733. Two of the annotations mention 19 February 1733 specifically, and it is surely the case that her mother gave her what she thought was suitable reading material on her marriage. The annotations also mention Lady Laurie’s going ‘home to ye country’, which could suggest that Mrs Erskine kept her books in Edinburgh. The donated titles comprise a bible in English, another in French, an edition of Thomas à Kempis of which she had two copies, an English edition of love poetry by Ovid and others, a collection of French texts edited, as its title states, by William Ker ‘pour l’utilité de la jeunesse’, and a seven-volume collection of English plays. Clearly, Mrs Erskine provided her daughter with a reading selection closely reflecting her own tastes. One book listed, Scougal’s Sermons, seems not to have been Mrs Erskine’s at all, and is marked as having been returned to Lady Menzies, its rightful owner. The convention of exchanging books among women – a widespread phenomenon, discussed earlier in this chapter by Mark Towsey – is evident here; in similar vein, Lady Fletcher of Saltoun’s books were bequeathed to her daughterin-law, and then came into the possession of her granddaughter (Glover 2005: 6). The largest proportion of the 168 entries, ninety-four in number or 56 per cent, covers theological and religious matters, including good conduct and personal morality. Theological reading was universally popular, and the Bible and devotional literature thought particularly apt for female minds. The first entry in Mrs Erskine’s list is a particularly sumptuous bible. She also had a finely bound and illustrated 1712 Book of Common Prayer, as well as a copy of the notorious 1637 Scottish prayer book (and a 1635 edition of the more acceptable ‘Knox’s Liturgy’). The authors of her library’s theological works range in their doctrinal views from English Puritans and Scots Presbyterians to Anglicans and Catholics. For spiritual guidance, St François de Sales, François Fénelon, ‘Father Thomas’ (the Spanish mystic Thomas à Jesu) and Antoinette Bourignon all appear, while Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi had long been a favourite in Presbyterian Scotland: it was among the twenty-eight books (all theological) on the ownership list that Lilias Grant, Lady Innes of Balvenie, had drawn up in the 1630s (R. K. Marshall 1983: 137). Mrs Erskine had two editions, one in two copies. She even had an Officium Beatæ Mariæ Virginis and an Officium Hebdomadae Sanctae, as well as a recent two-volume survey, by Filippo Buonanni, of the different

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Catholic orders. This Roman publication was heavily illustrated, and one suspects that the pictures were of more interest to her than the Latin text, as she had few Latin titles in her collection. Otherwise, Mrs Erskine relied on works in English and French, with one bilingual text in Italian and English. The French bibles and Testaments (including the 1677 Mons New Testament) were undoubtedly aids to learning French. There is no German, Greek or any other language represented in the list. Second in numerical importance as a group are language, literature and music titles: some forty-seven or 28 per cent, although it is impossible to be completely categorical about subject division (is the Tatler contemporary affairs or literature, is Pilgrim’s Progress literature or religion?). This section is an extremely lively and interesting one. There are a number of aids to learning French, and poems by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English figures such as Milton, George Villiers, Lord Lansdowne, Matthew Prior, Samuel Butler, John Pomfret, the very obscure William Dawson and Alexander Pope, as well as translations of Ovid by Dryden, Congreve and Tate, and Pope’s Homer. One literary Scot is represented, the poet Patrick Gordon with his verse history of Robert the Bruce, or two if the Chevalier Ramsay is counted. Works by post-Renaissance Continental writers are present: Fénelon, Gracián and Guarini (the latter two in translation). Mrs Erskine had both the Tatler and Spectator, although probably not complete sets. She clearly had a passion for recent literature and music. Gulliver’s Travels is here in an edition from the year of its first appearance, 1726. Even more recent was a substantial anonymous work of 1728 purporting to be about the ‘Love & Intrigues of a certain Irish Dean’, none other than Jonathan Swift. Also from 1728 and 1729, and thus almost hot off the press, were six titles involving Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, in the ‘plays and pamphlets’ section of the catalogue. She had two copies of the original itself, and one of the second part (Polly, 1729), but also pamphlets narrating the lives of Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum. It is not certain if her copy of the Beggar’s Opera contained music, although most 1728 editions did. The artist David Allan produced a delightful conversation piece (now in the National Gallery of Scotland) in 1780 showing Grisel’s son, Lord Alva, and his wife and children in a room where one daughter is singing the ballad ‘Where Helen Lies’ accompanied by her sister on the two-manual harpsichord, and a brother on the cello (Plate 35). Perhaps the preceding generation did likewise. Mrs Erskine was also interested in recent French opera (Amadis de Grèce, Ajax, Armide). Again, she probably owned the music as well as the texts (no copies

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of the particular editions she had have been located): she certainly owned ballet music by André Campra, Les Fêtes Vénitiennes. She had only the words by Haym of Tolomeo Re di Egitto (1728), set to music by Handel, but John Mottley and Thomas Cooke’s Penelope (1728) included music. The third largest section was history, politics and geography, with eighteen titles, or 11 per cent. Here, despite limited examples, a wideranging interest is again displayed: the trial of Henry Sacheverell; a life of Colbert; the memoirs of the Duchess of Marlborough (1742 and thus a late acquisition); the trial of King Charles I and the history of the Civil War; travel literature by John Macky, Gilbert Burnet and Andrew Balfour, the last two being Scots; and a paean (in French) by James Freebairn to the glories of Scottish womanhood, giving copious contemporary examples, some no doubt known personally to Mrs Erskine. There are no ancient historians, which tallies with the dearth of classical literature: only Ovid and Homer in translation and a work on The Exiles of the Court of Augustus. Being the History of the Various Amours of the Celebrated Ovid, Horace, Virgil . . . and many other poets, hardly a serious investigation into Roman culture. Works outside the above categories account for seven titles. Two are on cooking (recipes by Mary Kettilby and John Nott’s Cook and Confectioner’s Dictionary). Both are recent: 1728 and 1726 respectively. Four are on medicine, all eighteenth-century imprints; and the seventh The French Perfumer, by Simon Barbe. All reflect the supposed interests of early-eighteenth-century, upper-class Scottish women who were expected to provide good food for husband, family and household, to keep them healthy and themselves physically attractive. Many male contemporaries, and some female, would have disapproved of Grisel Erskine’s taste in contemporary literature, some of it quite racy. Elizabeth Mure of Caldwell, reflecting on the 1720s, declared later in the century: The women’s knowledge was gained only by conversing with the men, not by reading themselves . . . whoever had read Pope, Addison and Swift, with some ill-wrote history, was then thought a learned lady, which character was by no means agreeable. The men thought justly on this point, that what knowledge the women had out of their own sphere should be given by themselves and not picked up at their own hand in ill-chosen books of amusement. (Marshall 1983: 220) Grisel Erskine of Barjarg would not have agreed. Her reading matter shows an independent mind, particularly responsive to recent developments in music and literature.

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Table 5.1 Catalogue of books belonging to Grisel Grierson, Mrs Charles Erskine, 1729 (NLS MS. 5161 ff. 17–27). Transcription conventions: ● There has been no attempt to reproduce the right-alignment of imprint details in the original. ● Marks that appear to have no grammatical or perceived informational significance have been ignored, as have accents over the letter ‘u’ and catchwords at the foot of pages. ● With superscript letters, the dot transcribed after the superscript character usually appears in the original underneath the superscript character. ● Data that appear to have been added later than the original 1729 compilation of the catalogue have been transcribed in italics. ● Any additions to the original have been put in square brackets. These include the names of authors where the original entry is not immediately clear, and where an author is known with reasonable certainty. [f.17r] 29th August 1729. Catalogue of Books belonging to Mistris Areskine of Barjarg. Books in Folio. 1. The Holy Bible containing the Apocrypha, printed on large Royal Paper by John Basket, neatly bound in red Turkey, and gilded. 2 Vol: London, 1717. 2. Mr Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Bible In 6. Volumes. London 1721. 3. Arch Bishop Tillotson’s Sermons. 3 Vol: Ibid. 1722. 4. Mr William Perkine’s Works. 2d Vol: Cambridge 1609. [William Perkins] 5. Calvin’s Commentary on Isaiah Lond: 1609. 6. Ordinum Religiosorum Catalogus, earumq[ue] Indumenta, Iconibus expressa. in 2 vol:. [Filippo Buonanni] 7. The Book of Common Prayer for Scotland Edr 1637. [f.17v] Books in Quarto. 1. The Holy Bible, with the Apocrypha London 1706. 2. The Apocrypha bound by it self. 3. Royer’s [sic] Royal Dictionary, French & English. Hague 1702. [Abel Boyer] 4. The Hero, from the Spanish of Baltasar Gracian, with Remarks of Father Courbeville. Lond. 1726. 5. The Religion of Nature delineated Ibid. 1725. [William Wollaston]

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Table 5.1 continued 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

The History of the Old & New Testament, by Royaumont Ibid. 1711. [Nicolas Fontaine] Blackwall’s Sacred Classicks. Ibid. 1725. [Anthony Blackwall] Baxter’s Saints everlasting Rest Ibid. 1709. [Richard Baxter] The Morning Exercises at Cripplegate 2 vol: Ibid. 1660 &c. [Samuel Annesley] A Supplement to the Morning Exercise. Ibid. 1674. [Samuel Annesley] Manton’s Commentary on the Epistle of James. Ibid. 1657. [Thomas Manton] Bishop Leightoun’s Commentary on the first two Chapters of S. Peter York, 1693. [Robert Leighton] The Way to the Sabbath of Rest by Mr Bromley. Lond. 1692. [Thomas Bromley] Dr Ames his Cases of Conscience 1639. [William Ames] An Essay on Scripture Prophecy. [William Barnet]

[f.18r] 16. The History of Adam, or 4 Fold State of Man. Lond. 1606. [Henry Holland] [f.18v] Books in Octavo et infra. 1. The Holy Bible in 2 Vol: Given to my Lady Laurie. Lond. 1698. 2. The Book of Common Prayer, finely bound in Turkey & Gilded, with Cuts by V.der Gucht. Oxfoord. 1712: 3. Tait and Brady’s Psalms, wt a Supplement yrto. 2 Vol: Lond. 1718. [Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady] 4. Prideaux Connection of the Old & New Testamt 3d Vol Lond. 1718. [Humphrey Prideaux] 5. Dr Welton’s Translation of Father Thomas on the Sufferings of the Son of God. 2 Vol: Ibid. 1720–1. [Thomas à Jesu; Richard Welton] 6. The Travels of Cyrus by the Chevalier Ramsay in 2 vol: Ibid. 1727. [Andrew Michael Ramsay] 7. A Journey through England & Scotland 3 Vol. Ibid. 1723. [John Macky] 8. Guilliver’s Travels. 2 Vol. Ibid 1726. [Jonathan Swift] 9. Kerr’s French Grammar Edinr 1729. [William Ker] 10. Michael Maittaire’s Essay on English Grammar. Lond. 1712. 11. Receipts in Cookery &c Ibid 1728. [Mary Kettilby]

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Table 5.1 continued 12. 13.

Clarendon’s History. 6. Vol: Ibid. 1721. [Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon] The Athenian Oracle Ibid. 1703.

[f.19r] 14. Dr Sacheveril’s Trial Lond. 1710. [Henry Sacheverell] 15. Guy Miege’s present state of Great Brittain Ibid. 1707. 16. Chamberlain’s present state of Great Brittain Ibid. 1708. [Edward Chamberlayne] ------- Another Edition of Ditto -------- 1736 17. Bysshe’s Art of English Poetry. Ibid. 1710. [Edward Bysshe] 18. Prior’s Poems Ibid. 1709. [Matthew Prior] 19. Lansdoun’s Poems Ibid. 1712. [George Granville, Lord Lansdowne] 20. Dr Cheyn’s Essay on Health & long Life Ibid. 1724. [George Cheyne] 21. ----- On the Gout Ibid. 1723. [George Cheyne] 22. Stanhope’s Thomas á Kempis 2 Copies [scored through] Ibid. 1717. [George Stanhope] one of these to my Lady Laurie 23. Hickman’s Sermons Ibid. 1713. [Charles Hickman] 24. An Introduction to a Devout Life by Bp. Sales. Ibid. 1701. [François de Sales] 25. Augustines Meditations. 2. Copies Ibid. 1709. 1708. 26. Bp. Burnets Sermons Ibid 1713. [Gilbert Burnet] 27. Dr Sherlock’s Sermon Ibid. 1725. [William Sherlock] 28. Mr Nalson’s Sermons Ibid. 1724. [Valentine Nalson] 29. The Bishop of Coventry’s Defence of Christianity. Ib: 1725. [Edward Chandler] 30. Arndt’s true Christianity. 2 vol. Ibid. 1712. [Johann Arndt] 31. The Grounds & Reasons of the Christian Religion. Ibid. 1724. [Anthony Collins] [f.19v] 32. Petrucchi’s Christian Perfection Lond. 1704. [Pietro Matteo Petrucci] 33. The Christian’s Library Vol. 1. Edinr 1724. [The Devout Christian’s . . .] 34. The Arch Bishop of Cambray’s pious Thoughts. Lond. 1720. [François Fénelon] 35. The Duke of Buckinghames Works. 2 Vol: Ibid. 1715. [George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham]

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Table 5.1 continued 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

Antonia Bourignon her Works. 5 Vol: 1693, 1696, 1699 Ibid. 1703 & 1708. Dr Burnets Letters of Travelling. Rotterdam. 1686. [Gilbert Burnet] Dr Patrick’s Mensa Mystica Lond. 1706. [Simon Patrick] Howe on the Blessedness of the Righteous Ibid. 1673. [John Howe] The Vanitys of Philosophy & Physick by Dr Harvie Ibid. 1700. [Gideon Harvie] The Loves of Charles Duke of Mantua & Margaret Countess of Rowera Ibid. 1669. [Gregorio Leti] England’s Black Tribunal in the Trial of K. Ch: 1 &c. Ibid. 1703. Therapeutica Sacra by Mr David Dickson. Edinr. 1664. Baxter’s Treatise of Self Denial Lond. 1675. [Richard Baxter] Mr Henry’s Communicant’s Companion Ibid. 1715. [Matthew Henry] A Short Letter of Instruction on Christian Perfection 2 Copies. Ibid. 1723. Isaac Wats: Guide to Prayer Ibid. 1715. [Isaac Watts] The Arch: Bishop of Cambray’s Life Ibid. 1723. [Andrew Michael Ramsay]

[f.20r] 49. The Spectator 7 Vol. Lond. 1712. 50. The History of the Affair of Dr Sacheveril. Ibid. 1711. [John Oldmixon or Arthur Maynwaring] 51. Les. Livres de L’Ancien & Noveau Testament. 10. Vol: A Cologne 1715. 52. Le Nouveau Testament a Mons. 1677. 53. La Sainte Bible To Lady Laurie Amsterd: 1710. 54. L’Histoire des Revolutions de Suede Paris. 1695. [René de Vertot d’Aubeuf] 55. Grammaire Francoise par Chiflet. Ibid. 1687. [Laurent Chiflet] 56. Histoire de Princes Illustres Ibid. 1699. [Germain de Bezançon] 57. Durham on the Blessedness of those that dy in the Lord. In 7 Sermons Title Page torn. [James Durham] 58. Milton’s Paradise lost Lond. 1725. 59. La Vie de Colbert a Cologne 1695. [Gratian Courtilz de Sandras] 60. Nasmyth’s Treatise on the Entail of the Covenant of Grace Glasgow 1725. [Robert Nasmith] 61. Mr Henry’s Directions for daily Communion with God. Lond. 1715. [Matthew Henry] 62. Owen’s Concordance to the Holy Bible. Ibid [Vavasor Powell]

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Table 5.1 continued 63. 64. 65.

Nelson on the Sacrament of the Lords Supper. Edr. 1722. [Robert Nelson] Ovid’s Art of Love To Lady Laurie Lond. 1719. Essays on the pious Institution of Youth. Edinr. 1700. [George Monro]

[f.20v] 66. La Theologie du Coeur Cologne 1697. [Pierre Poiret] 67. Histoire du Procez. du Roy d’Angleterre. Lond. 1650. [Charles I] 68. Receuil de Quietisme par Madame Guion. Cologne 1699. [Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon] 69. Les Avanture de Telemaque. 2 Vol: a la Haye 1700. [François Fénelon] 70. The Tatler. 4 vol. Lond. 1712. 71. Hudibras Ibid. 1710. [Samuel Butler] 72. Rutherfoords Letters 1664. [Samuel Rutherford] 73. Sir Andrew Balfour’s Letters for Travelling in France & Italy. Edinr. 1700. 74. The Art of Divine Contentment Lond. 1676. [Thomas Watson] 75. Vincents Catechism Glasgow. 1674. [Thomas Vincent] 76. The French Perfumer Lond. 1697. [Simon Barbe] 77. The Christian’s Guide to Devotion. Title page torn. [Samuel Smith] 78. The Spiritual Combat, by John de Castaniza. Lond 1698. [Lorenzo Scupoli] 79. The Pilgrim’s Progress 1st & 2d Parts. 2 vols printed Edinr 1681, and Lond. 1684. [John Bunyan] 80. Josephus History of the Jews Ibid. 1670. 81. The Case & Cure of a deserted Soul by Joseph Symons. Edr. 1642. [Joseph Symonds] 82. Divine Meditations. By a Person of Honour. Lond. 1682. [Sir William Waller] 83. The Art of Contentment. By the Author of the whole Duty of Man. Edinr. 1675 [In the margin:] This is Number 99. [Richard Allestree] [f.21r] 84. Les Mœurs des Isralites et de Chrestiens. par M. Fleuri a la Haye. 1682. [Claude Fleury] 85. Comparative Theologie Lond. 1700. [James Garden] 86. Baxter’s Safe Religion. Title Page wanting. [Richard Baxter] 87. A saint indeed. By John Flavel. Lond. 1676.

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Table 5.1 continued The burning Bush not consumed. Edinr 1674. [John Hart] Another copy of Tait & Bradys Psalms. Lond. 1710. [Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady] 90. Thomas a Kempis. 2 vol. Edinr 1717. 1721. 91. The Practice of Piety. at Delf. [Lewis Bayly] 92. Officium Beatæ Mariæ Virginis Antwerpiæ 1616. 93. Officium Hepdomodarium, Cum Litaniis &c. Atrebati 1620. 94. Pope’s Homers Iliades. 3 Vol. unbound. Lond. 1718. [Alexander Pope] 95. Mr Rookes select Translations. unbound. Ibid. 1726. [John Rooke] 96. Scougal’s Sermons This was Lady Menzies & given her. Lond 1726. [Henry Scougal] 97. Law’s Christian Perfection Ibid 1728. [William Law] 98. ---- Call to a Holy Life Ibid 1729. [William Law] 99. 3V Author of ye whole Duty of Man’s, Works, 5 Vol. [Richard Allestree] 100. Knox’s Liturgy Edr 1635. 101. Reflections on Time & Eternity by J: Shower. [John Shower] 102. The Nature of indwelling Sin in Beleivers. Lond 1675. [John Owen] 103. The Cook & Confectioner’s Dictionary Lond 1726. [John Nott] 88. 89.

[f.21v] 104. Tippermalloch’s Receipts Edr 1716. [John Moncrief] 105. Kerr’s Collections To my Lady Laurie 19 ffeb: 1733 when she went home to ye Country. Ibid 1727. [William Ker] 106. Pastor Fido returned [this could refer to the previous item] Lond 1664. [Giovanni Battista Guarini] 107. Pope’s Works [scored through] This marked alread No. 94. Ibid 1718. 107. The Gentlman’s Calling Ibid. 1667. [Richard Allestree] 108. The History of K. Robert the Bruce Edinr 1718. [Patrick Gordon] Dutchess of Marleboroughs memoirs Lond 1742. Greenwoods English Grammar Lond 1737. [James Greenwood] Watts Guide to prayer Lond 1715. [Isaac Watts] Popes works vol. 2 part 3d Lond 1740. [Alexander Pope] [ff.22 and 23 are blank] [f.24r] Plays and Pamphlets. A Collection of the best English Plays. Printed for T. Johnson. 6 Vs[?] 1710. in 7 Volumes [In the margin:] 19 ffeb: 1733 This to my Lady Laurie when she went home to ye Country. Another Volume of Plays, containing Cato &c. Lond. 1722.

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Table 5.1 continued Cato. By itself. Ibid. 1716. [Joseph Addison] Beggar’s Opera. 2 copys. Ibid. 1728. [John Gay] Ptolomey King of Egypt Ibid. 1728. [Nicola Francesco Haym] Polly. Or the 2d Part of the Beggar’s Opera Ibid. 1729. [John Gay] Polly Peachum’s Opera Ibid. 1728. The Life of Polly Peachum Ibid 1728. [The Life of Lavinia Beswick ] Memoirs concerning the Life & Manners of Capt. Macheath. Ib: 1728. [Unidentified] Memoirs of the Love & Intrigues of a certain Irish Dean. Ibid ----. [Some memoirs of the amours and intrigues ] A Defence of true Liberty agt Mr Hobbs. by the Bp. of Derry. Ibid. 1655. [John Bramhall] Mr Pomfret’s Poems Ibid. 1716. [John Pomfret] Dr Burnet of the Earl of Rochester’s Life & Death. Ibid. 1700. [Gilbert Burnet] Advice to the Freeholders of England. Ibid. 1723. [Charles Hornby] Three Sermons of Mr Rankine’s. 2 Copys. Edinr 1722. [David Ranken] Some Reflections of a Treatise of Mr McEuen’s. Ibid. 1717. [James Small] John Corbet’s Self Imployment in Secrete Ibid. 1715. An Answer to the Letter from a parochial Bishop Ibid. 1715. [James Small] [f.24v] Mr George Logan’s Sermon before the Commissioner to the Genll Assembly 4 May 1729. Edinr 1729. Mr Tandon’s French Grammar Ibid. 1722. [J. E. Tandon] The Exiles of the Court of Augustus Cæsar. Lond. 1726. [Madame de Villedieu] The British Swain. By Wm Dauson. in 5 Pastorals. Ib: 1724. [William Dawson] The Bishop of London’s Pastoral Letter. Ibid 1728. [Edmund Gibson] Penelope. A Dramatick Opera Ibid. 1728. [John Mottley and Thomas Cooke] A little volume of printed Musick. [Unidentified] The Masquerades. [Unidentified] L’Eloge d’Ecosse, et Des Dames Ecossoises Edr. 1727. [James Freebairn] Amadis de Grece. Tragedie. Toulouse 1703. [words by Antoine Houdart de la Motte; music by André Cardinal Destouches] Pyrrhus. Tragedie. Imperfect. [Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon] Ajax. Tragedie A Lyon. [words by Menisson; music by Thomas Bertin de la Doué] Armide. Tragedie. Toulouse 1699. [words by Philippe Quinault; music by Jean Baptiste Lully] Les Festes Venitiennes a Lyon. 1715. [André Campra] [ff. 25 to 27 all blank]

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Religion Ann Matheson Religion dominated eighteenth-century Scottish life in a way difficult for the twenty-first-century reader to comprehend. This does not mean all Scots were religious, or that spirituality was a pervasive ethos, but rather that the observance of religion and all its outward forms forged the way in which people thought and behaved. The very question of the national religion itself was not settled securely for the first half of the century, despite the formal establishment of Presbyterianism in 1690. Religious publishing in eighteenth-century Scotland divided into a number of fairly well-defined categories. First, there were sermons, both new and reissued. The majority were initially designed for delivery in the pulpit, sometimes in variant versions, and then prepared by their authors for publication. When James Murray published his Sermons to Asses in 1768, he justified his decision on the grounds that, When a person is disposed to preach a sermon or two for the edification of any of God’s creatures, he is under great difficulties to find a proper subject to discourse upon . . . There are now sermons to young men, and sermons to young women, lectures on heads and lectures on hearts. Almost every subject is exhausted and sermonized to death. (1768: v–vi) Reissued sermons were generally those of the seventeenth-century models favoured by the different wings of the eighteenth-century church: the elegant sermons of John Tillotson and Henry Scougal and the deeply doctrinal sermons of John Calvin and Hermann Witsius. Sermon manuals were published as guides to sermon-writers. In his 1783 Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Hugh Blair emphasised the importance of composing sermons with care and attention: ‘No sort of composition whatever is such a trial of skill, as where the merit 459

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of it lies wholly in the execution; not in giving any information that is new, not in convincing men of what they did not believe; but in dressing truths which they knew, and of which they were before convinced, in such colours as may most forcibly affect their imagination and heart’ (Blair 1783: II: 102). Throughout the century, the Bible, psalm-books and catechisms were issued in numerous editions. Further important groups were the works of influential university teachers and those inherited from the seventeenth century. Towards the latter part of the century, tract literature increased in significance and became a favoured method of conveying religious instruction, particularly that of an Evangelical persuasion. The most powerful medium that the eighteenth-century Scottish church had to assist it in conveying its message was the sermon. It therefore stood to reason that eighteenth-century sermon-writers identified and used the models that they considered would best help them in this task. The growing divergence of views within the Church of Scotland from the 1730s on the nature of the message, and how best to convey it, added a further impetus. By the 1750s, one wing of the church was being popularly identified as the ‘Moderate’; and the other the ‘Evangelical’ or ‘anti-Moderatism’. The Moderates accommodated in their sermons the tenets of good taste, and in the period after 1750 this was viewed as an essential accompaniment to the clergy’s secular role in society. By contrast, the Evangelicals clung to the old verities of message, based on doctrinal truth, devoid of ornamentation. This significant divergence caused Scottish sermon-writers to follow separate models, and the two wings were influenced by different ideas. Numerous guides were published in the eighteenth century to assist aspiring ministers in tailoring their sermons to the demands of the age. Robert Dodsley’s Art of Preaching, a satire on the lethargic pulpit oratory of English divines, appeared in London (1735), and Robert Urie published an edition in Glasgow (1746). Dodsley’s work contained three ideas that were to be influential among the Moderates: the need for originality in sermon composition; the importance of persuading the audience by personal conviction; and the requirement that sermon content be adjusted to the intellectual capacity of the audience. In 1752, James Fordyce published the treatise on preaching composed by his late brother, David Fordyce, Aberdeen University Professor of Moral Philosophy. First published by Robert Dodsley in London, six further editions appeared between 1752 and 1755. Theodorus: a Dialogue Concerning the Art of Preaching is enacted between Agoretes, a student of divinity, and Theodorus, a minister, the latter ‘at once the

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best Model of Preaching, and the noblest Example of Living’ (1752: 81). Fordyce’s treatise stressed the emotional rather than the intellectual basis of good sermons, emphasising sympathy, benevolence and pity, and underlining that the composition of sermons was a difficult task since, ‘It is the Art of Speaking to the HEART of Man, which of all Pupils is the most intractable, variable, and indocile’ (105). The same year, James Fordyce published his own work on The Eloquence of the Pulpit, originally delivered as an ordination sermon in Aberdeen in 1752. His concern was stylistic excellence, and he harshly criticised the fustian rhetoric of Evangelical sermons for their ‘minute criticisms, trifling conceits, words without a meaning, divisions without a difference, quaint turns, forced allusions, and other frivolous flourishes of a childish or low fancy’ (15). In an appendix (Essay on the Action Proper for the Pulpit), Fordyce made an explicit connection between influencing a congregation’s emotions and convincing them of the truth of the message, which he termed ‘sensibility’. This was to become an intrinsic component of the refined Scottish literary sermon: ‘By cultivating a quick and strong Sensibility to the best Interests of Mankind, you will acquire in a greater Degree a certain flowing Tenderness, or benevolent Meltingness of Nature . . . it is the Tear of Virtue’ (84). Fordyce’s published sermons were very successful: his Sermons to Young Women ran to more than fourteen editions, was translated into French in 1788 and provoked the verse satire Fordyce Delineated in 1765. In 1750, Glasgow’s Foulis Press published William Stevenson’s English translation of Fénelon’s Dialogues Concerning Eloquence, which had first appeared in Amsterdam (1717), two years after the author’s death. Fénelon advocated conviction and persuasion as the sermon-writer’s tools in conveying the true simplicity of religion, and his Dialogues contained many of the ideas that came to pervade post1750 Scottish sermons: ‘Persons of distinction have more delicate ears, and we must adapt our discourses to their polite taste’ (1722: 6). Later that decade, Charles Rollin’s De la manière d’enseigner et d’étudier les Belles Lettres was published in English translation as The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres by Robert Fleming for Alexander Kincaid in Edinburgh (1759), the year Hugh Blair gave his first lectures on rhetoric. A second Edinburgh edition followed in 1768. In his section on the eloquence of the pulpit, Rollin propounded his ideas on simplicity of style and conviction of purpose. These writers had a major influence: in the funeral sermon preached on the death of William Robertson, John Erskine paid tribute to the influence of Fénelon and Rollin in improving the previous poor quality of Scottish

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sermons: ‘Happily, however, this flimsy style was soon checked . . . by the translation of Fénelon and Rollin’s writings, and the just sentiments of eloquence which they inculcated’ (1801–4: I: 269). Another significant work was Jean Claude’s Essay on the Composition of a Sermon, translated from French by Robert Robinson, a Baptist minister in Cambridge, in 1778. Robinson was well known to James Fordyce, having preached at his London meeting-house; and he visited Scotland in 1780, two years after his translation appeared. While in Edinburgh he met a number of the literati, including William Robertson, a visit subsequently described in Robinson’s Memoirs (1796: 199). Hugh Blair had been familiar with Claude’s work in the original French, and the success of Blair’s sermons was often attributed to its influence. This view is reinforced by S. T. Sturtevant in his Preacher’s Manual: ‘Claude’s Essay on the Composition of a Sermon was at length introduced into this country; and it is supposed that Dr Blair, of Edinburgh, obtained his high reputation, which spread over both Scotland and England, by adopting the rules of that celebrated Essay’ (1834: I: 3). Claude’s Essay continued to be popular throughout the eighteenth century: it was found in the private libraries of men of taste (a copy is listed in the Catalogue of the Valuable Library of the late Henry Mackenzie and his Son the late James Mackenzie, 1870), and it was recommended for use to aspiring sermon-writers in Letters from a Father to his Son, a Student of Divinity (1796: 102). As the eighteenth century progressed, sermon publishing expanded to satisfy differing emerging tastes. Scotland had inherited from the seventeenth century not only the heavily structured Covenanting sermons but also those of the elegant tradition of Robert Leighton and Henry Scougal. Leighton’s Works was reprinted in three eighteenthcentury editions, and Scougal’s The Life of God in the Soul of Man, for which William Wishart, Principal at Edinburgh, wrote a preface in 1742, was published in at least sixteen editions between 1700 and 1800, four of them in Scotland. The nature of sermons began to change in the 1740s, and as they began to be associated in the public mind with reflecting good taste, they became a popular genre with the reading public, particularly those who wished to demonstrate their cultivated interests. From the 1750s onwards, a substantial number of Scottish ministers were preaching sermons that contained many of the fashionable ideas in vogue in contemporary society: a stress on the moral virtues; benevolence; charity and candour; the sympathetic emotions; and the connection between religion and civilised society. Of all Scottish eighteenth-century sermons, those of Hugh Blair were the most popular and sold best among the educated classes at home

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and abroad. In 1780, the New Annual Register noted that, ‘Several collections of sermons have of late sold remarkably well, though none in degree equal to those of Dr Blair’ (I: 200). While Hugh Blair was representative of Moderate thinking in the eighteenth-century Scottish church, there was an equally distinctive approach to sermon writing by the so-called Evangelical wing. These two co-existed in the Edinburgh pulpits of the 1760s and 1770s, leading Henry Gray Graham to observe in Scottish Men of Letters that, If they were ‘High-flying’, they entered the door which led to the Tolbooth Kirk, where Dr. Alexander Webster entranced the ‘Tolbooth saints’, as they were called, thrilling them by his fervid appeals . . . If they enjoyed a solid, sound yet intellectual discourse, they went into the Little Kirk . . . where Dr. Wallace . . . might be heard discoursing elegant morality, quoting Gray’s Elegy, just published, and comparing it with the finest specimens of classic poetry. (1901: 123) The Evangelical tradition was strongly rooted in the seventeenth century, and its sermons were heavily influenced by those of seventeenthcentury Covenanting divines like Samuel Rutherford and Alexander Peden, whose works continued to be published in the eighteenth century (and later) and provided the staple reading of generations of Evangelicals. Thomas Boston and the brothers Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine carried on this tradition during the early eighteenth century. The attraction of Evangelical sermons was that although structurally complex, the imagery was simple and easily understood by readers with little in the way of formal education. They were dramatic and, indeed, almost crude in their imagery and language, but they readily satisfied the wish of congregations not only to be instructed but also to be entertained. Samuel Rutherford’s imagery in his Exhortation, a sermon frequently reprinted in the eighteenth century, exemplifies this tradition: ‘Christ was the lamb roasted with Fire for you. He suffered hot Fire for you. He got a Roast and a Heat that made him sweat Blood’ (1728: 9). The worst stylistic excesses of seventeenthcentury Evangelical sermons had been satirised in Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence: or, The Foolishness of their Teaching Discovered from their Books, Sermons and Prayers in 1692, and precisely the same tradition of criticism continued throughout the eighteenth century. Two principal factors influenced Evangelical views on pulpit and published sermons. The first was the controversy over the doctrinal content of Edward Fisher’s The Marrow of Modern Divinity, which led to the General Assembly passing an Act in 1720 prohibiting its use in

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the pulpit and in print, and which encouraged an inflexible approach to the content of Evangelical sermons as a guard against the erosion of doctrinal truth. The second was the Secession of 1733, when a group of ministers led by Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine left the Church of Scotland to form the Secession Church, a step that symbolised their stand with past established tenets against any innovation. Evangelicals roundly criticised the published sermons of Moderates, and sought to get their own in print. The Evangelical author of The Fashionable Preacher summed up Moderate sermons: ‘Such discourses may . . . do honour to the authors as critics, or philosophers; but not as preachers: they may please the fancy and tickle the ear, but they touch not one feeling of the heart’ (1773: 7). In direct contrast to Moderate sermons, which were usually carefully prepared for publication, those of Evangelicals were published more or less as delivered. They were deliberately informal or conversational in tone, or ‘familiar’ as the Moderates termed them. Evangelical sermons underwent almost no revision for printing, and their authors would often go to some lengths to point this out as a virtue. When James Ramsay published his ordination sermon, The Character of the True Minister of Christ Delineated, in Kilmarnock, his preface stressed his intention ‘to say plain things, without affected ornaments’ (1778: iii). To Evangelical sermon-writers, the courting of fine feeling by Moderate divines was considered ‘soul-ruining flimsiness in religion’, as John Brown put it in The Christian, the Student and Pastor (1781: iii). In his sermon Gallio, John Clarkson deplored the trend: ‘With respect to the different branches of philosophy, what are called the fine arts, elegance in composition, improvements in agriculture, or an acquaintance with trade; I will grant that it is an enlightened age. But alas! with respect to religion the case is lamentably reversed’ (1774: 12). However, equally strong condemnation of Evangelical sermons came from both Moderates and from literary critics. In 1755, the Edinburgh Review’s discussion of Thomas Boston’s The Redeemer’s Ability to Save Sinners cited his reference to Satan ‘lying nibbling at the heels of the saints’, commenting: ‘Such vulgarisms as these, are indecent in conversation, but much more so in a solemn discourse from the pulpit’ (1755: II: 26–7). Evangelical sermon-writers were aware that their published sermons would be assessed by the conventions of the age, but they remained sternly resistant. The preface of A Sermon Preached in East Lothian in 1761 contained the caveat: ‘Any reader who may be inclined to censure the stile and composition of the following Sermon, is intreated to remember, that it is a popular discourse, wherein force of expression is often times more requisite than correctness’ (1761: i).

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This insistence on the part of Evangelical sermon-writers led to fierce condemnation from literary reviewers and men of taste. The Edinburgh Review in 1755 condemned Ebenezer Erskine’s sermon The Plant of Renown as, in our opinion but little calculated to promote that reformation of manners, which ought to be one great object of every preacher’s attention . . . They are so full of childish conceits and fancies . . . that we are sorry to say, they seem to be rather calculated to do harm than good; to expose religion to contempt and ridicule, instead of recommending the love and practice of it. (1755: I: 39) In addition to the sermons of such distinguished literati as Blair, Alexander Carlyle, Alexander Gerard and James Beattie, among others, large numbers of individual parish ministers published sermons, or selections from sermons, that had usually first been delivered in the pulpit. It was also common to publish occasional sermons delivered on public ‘occasions’. Benefit sermons were often published for a deceased minister’s widow and children, usually edited by the minister’s colleagues and friends. This practice was fairly widespread in the eighteenth century, as a glance at prefaces will reveal. Sermons on political subjects were also very common: Shall I go to War with my American Brethren (Edinburgh, 1776) and The Equity and Wisdom of Administration: in Measures that have Unhappily Occasioned the American Revolt (Edinburgh, 1776). By the second half of the century, the editing of sermons for the press had become more common, and by the 1770s it was more or less standard practice. Editing for publication normally consisted of excising faulty sentiments and expressions from the delivered version of the sermon, and the substitution of terms and phrases with more appropriate ones. Up to the 1750s, the published sermon normally had a short ‘advertisement’ before the main text, but from mid-century it became more common for authors to add a preface in which they explained their literary methods in greater detail. John Ogilvie’s preface acknowledged that his Sermon Containing a Comparison, Arising from the Subject of the Republicks of Athens and France was ‘very different from that which was preached at Mid Marr and Aberdeen on the same subject’ (1794: i). He justified his modifications on the grounds that they were necessary to meet the standards demanded by the literary market. Discerning sermon-writers fully appreciated the connection between careful editing for the press and subsequent success with the public. The Evangelicals were, of course, exceptions to this trend, and they often deliberately chose to flout literary style

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in their published sermons. In prefacing his Obedient Believers the Friends of Christ, John Ker stated triumphantly, ‘If the reader expects in the following pages elegance of composition, and a display of the powers of oratory, or if he expects a philosophical harangue, he will be disappointed’ (1779: i). The published works of university teachers were equally influential in fashioning eighteenth-century Scotland’s new approach. Elizabeth Mure commented: I may justly mention Ministers as teachers. Professor Hamilton & the two Mr Wisherts at Edin, Professor Hutcheson, Craig, Clark & Principal Lishman in the west, these taught, that whoever would please God must resemble him in goodness & benevolence, & those that had it not must affect it by politeness & good manners.56 Francis Hutcheson, who came from Ireland to the Chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow in 1729, was, in retrospect, the most significant figure in moving Scottish thinking in the direction of a new philosophical credo based on a universal aspiration to virtue and benevolence, the idea which so profoundly influenced subsequent eighteenth-century Scottish attitudes. He drew a wide spectrum of ‘disciples’ to his lectures, including William Leechman, later Professor of Divinity in Glasgow, and Robert Foulis, founder of the Foulis Press; and he remarked of himself, ‘I am called “New Light” here’ (W. R. Scott 1900: 257). Hutcheson’s major works, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) and Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1728), were published in London. The posthumously published A System of Moral Philosophy, with a life by the Reverend William Leechman, was published by R. and A. Foulis in Glasgow in 1755. Subsequent teachers such as William Leechman, John Stevenson, who held the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Edinburgh, William Wishart the Younger, Principal of Edinburgh University, and Hugh Blair, first holder of the Chair of Rhetoric at Edinburgh, followed in Hutcheson’s footsteps, combining for the most part dual roles as academic teachers and ministers of religion. As such, they were ideally placed to inculcate their ideas and to influence public thinking through their delivered and published sermons. Robert Heron, Blair’s one time assistant, commented that, 56

NLS MS 5003, f. 7, Elizabeth Mure, ‘Some Remarks on the Change of Manners in my Own Time (1700–90)’

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I know not that any Professor of Rhetoric and Criticism ever contributed more to the Reformation of Taste in a Nation than Dr. Blair has done . . . under him has a School of Taste and Eloquence been formed, which has diffused a skill in elegant composition and Taste to relish it, through all Scotland. (Robert Heron, Observations made in a Journey through the Western Country of Scotland, 1793: 495–6) In 1709, the Society in Scotland for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge was established, with a central purpose of spreading knowledge of the Scriptures through the Highlands. They began by enforcing the teaching of English by direct method in the schools they established, but later in the century when this was perceived to be less than successful, the Society adapted its policy to allow the teaching of English through the medium of Gaelic. The most significant development for eighteenth-century Gaelic religious publishing was the printing of the New Testament in Gaelic by Balfour, Auld and Smellie in Edinburgh in 1767. The translator was the Reverend James Stewart of Killin, with the assistance of Dugald Buchanan, the hymn-writer. Ten thousand copies were printed, many of them distributed free to Gaelic-speaking parishes in Scotland. After the New Testament came the Old Testament published in four volumes over the period 1783 to 1801 by William and Alexander Smellie in Edinburgh. Dr Stuart of Luss was responsible for the translation of the first, third and fourth volumes, and the Reverend Dr Smith of Campbeltown undertook the second volume. At the same time, the Evangelical movement began to manifest itself in the Highlands, possibly a retreat into religion that was consequent on the major historical vicissitudes that had afflicted Highland society. In much the same way as had occurred with the Methodists in the eighteenth century, people sought an explanation for the break-up of their traditional world, and Evangelical religion with its emphasis on the present life as a vale of tears and the promise of the life to come offered one that was comprehensible. This led directly to the popularity of works like Richard Baxter’s Gairm an Dé mhóir do’n sluagh neimh-iompoichte (Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live), translated by Alexander MacFarlane and published by Robert and Andrew Foulis (Glasgow, 1750), with a 1775 second Glasgow edition by John Orr; Joseph Alleine’s Earail dhurachdach do pheacaich neo-iompaichte (Alarm to the Unconverted), translated by John Smith, first published by Macfarquhar and Elliot (Edinburgh, 1781) and then by John Gillies (Perth, 1782); and William Guthrie’s Còir mhòr a Chriosduidh (The Christian’s Great Interest), translated by

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Patrick MacFarlane and published by Patrick Mair in Falkirk (1783). John Willison’s Leabhar-ceist na màthair (The Mother’s Catechism) was published in a Gaelic/English edition by Hamilton, Balfour and Neill (Edinburgh, 1758), and in an earlier Gaelic edition by John Orr (Glasgow, 1752). John Willison’s Eisempleir shoilleir ceasnnuighe air leabhar aithghearr nan ceist (An Example of Plain Catechising upon the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism) was published by John Reid (Edinburgh, 1773), with a second edition (1799) published for the translator, Robert MacFarlane. The vast majority of Gaelic titles published in eighteenth-century Scotland were religious (the Bible, Psalms, Shorter Catechisms and evangelical sermons and treatises). The main publishing centres were Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth and the principal publishers were James Duncan and John Orr (Glasgow); Alexander Anderson, Charles Elliot and John Robertson (Edinburgh); and John Gillies (Perth). Towards the century’s latter end, the first Gaelic printers appeared in Falkirk, Inverness and Aberdeen. William Creech compared the position of sermon attendance in Edinburgh in the twenty years between 1763 and 1783: In 1763, places of worship were punctually attended by people of all ranks, who seemed to be interested about religion . . . This attention to the duties of religion was greatly diminished in 1783: Sunday was devoted by many to amusements and idle recreations, and to go to church in a family capacity was reckoned ungenteel. (Arnot, History of Edinburgh, 1788: 662–3) Part at least of the emphasis on catering for the sermon tastes of the educated part of society stemmed from the belief that if the church lost its grip on the rich and literary (often one and the same), its hold on the rest of society would automatically weaken. Equally, it was contended, the popularity of religion in the higher social echelons would commend it to the rest of society. William Peterkin’s Dialogue on Public Worship observes: ‘Persons in elevated stations, Sir, have it in their power . . . to discourage vice, and make virtue flourish around them’ (1780: 33). The polite classes in society read the improving sermons of the Moderates, and the works of Marmontel and Laurence Sterne. The writers favoured by Evangelicals, as John Mitchell recorded in his Memories of Ayrshire about 1780, were: ‘domestic writers such as the Erskines and Boston; British authors such as Owen, Howe, Flavel, Henry, Poole and the other puritanical divines’ (1939: 309). In his Rural Recollections, George Robertson recalled that up to 1765 the

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reading of the husbandmen of the Lothians had consisted of the ballads and the Bible, and then the works of Sir David Lindsay, of Buchanan, of Knox, of Rutherford, of Bunyan, of Boston, and of Wodrow (1829: 98). In the same period, he recorded that the cottars read material of a similar vein but ‘on a lesser scale, being usually pamphlets, or religious tracts; such as Christian Ker, Elizabeth West, and Peden’s Prophecies’ (100). Robertson considered the year 1765 to be the watershed between the older tradition for reading sermons and religious works and the movement towards reading more secular literature, or the ‘new species of book-entertainment, of fictitious story’ (103). Until the advent of the sentimental novel, the most popular reading material was the sermons and didactic literature produced by Evangelical writers. The works of John Willison, minister in Dundee, were standard fare for the eighteenth-century Evangelical public. In 1727, he published his An Afflicted Man’s Companion, which was issued in dozens of editions throughout the eighteenth century. Other popular Evangelical works included William Crawford’s Dying Thoughts in Three Parts (Edinburgh, 1738), and Robert Shirra’s A Death-Bed Dialogue: Being a Series of Conversations (Edinburgh, 1769). Towards the end of the century, religious tract literature of an Evangelical disposition became a very popular staple form of reading. The immense scale of reviewing sermons and religious works in eighteenth-century Scotland seems astonishing to the modern reader. The Monthly Review in 1776 calculated over 15,000 sermons printed in English at that point in the century. There is some evidence that magazines like the Scots Magazine treated Scottish sermons more leniently than did their English reviewers in the Critical Review and the Monthly Review. The Critical Review condemned John Farquhar’s 1772 Sermons on Various Subjects for their affectation of style and language, but the Scots Magazine commended them for ‘a correctness of taste, a lively imagination, and a delicate sensibility’ (XXXIII: 488). Scotticisms in published sermons were frequently singled out for criticism. Even Hugh Blair’s Sermons were pinpointed for ‘occasional Scotticisms, or small improprieties of diction’, but by the end of the century comment on Scotticisms in sermon reviews more or less disappeared, influenced no doubt by the strenuous steps taken to ‘improve’ use of the English language in Scotland. There are notable similarities in the way in which periodical reviewers treated sermons and the minor novels that began to appear from the 1770s. By that point, the principal aim of the Moderates was to produce ‘sermons of feeling’ or ‘sentimental sermons’. In his satire The Love of Pleasure

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Inconsistent with Reason John Mackenzie comments that it will be considered ‘as no small recommendation of my sermon, that (without any design of mine) it partakes not a little of the nature of a romance’ (1772: v–vi); and John Witherspoon stated boldly in his Ecclesiastical Characteristics that, ‘If it be said, that sermons are not poems, and therefore not to be composed by the rules of poetry: I answer, it is a mistake’ (1754: 18–19).

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Hugh Blair’s Sermons Ann Matheson He who thro’ life pursues thy wholesome plan; Becomes the child of God, and friend of Man. These lines from ‘On Reading the First Volume of Dr Blair’s Sermons’ published in the Aberdeen Magazine: or, Universal Repository (1796) sum up Hugh Blair, the archetypal eighteenth-century Moderate sermon-writer, of whom David Drummond commented: he ‘lighted things up so finely, and you get such comfortable answers’ (Scott and Pottle 1928–34: VII: 16–17). His sermons, published in five volumes from 1777 to 1801, became highly fashionable both at home and abroad; and of all eighteenth-century Moderate sermon-writers, he achieved the most spectacular success in print. By contrast, although he was a popular pulpit preacher because of the content of his sermons, his delivery was not considered distinguished. In his Recollections, the English poet Samuel Rogers observed on a 1788 visit to Edinburgh: ‘Blair’s sermon was good, but less impressive than Robertson’s; and his broad Scotch accent offended my ear greatly’ (1788: 46). From 1760 Blair combined the roles of minister and university teacher on his appointment as first incumbent of the Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in Edinburgh University. His clerical career had commenced with his ordination to the parish of Collessie in Fife (23 September 1742), from where he translated to Edinburgh’s Canongate Church (July 1743) and then Lady Yester’s Church (1754) until 1758 when he went to the High Kirk, a move met with Evangelical opposition: a letter in the Saltoun Correspondence refers to Lord Milton seeking to block Evangelical opposition to the transfer at the request of William Robertson.57 57

NLS Saltoun MSS, Box 90, 14 May 1758.

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When Blair first approached William Strahan, with a proposal to publish his sermons, he described them as ‘mostly of a popular & sentimental kind; intermixed with one or two of a more Philosophical cast’.58 Initially, Strahan discouraged Blair, but took the precaution of sending the sermons to Samuel Johnson, whose favourable opinion was instrumental in advancing their publication: ‘I have read over Dr Blair’s first sermon with more than approbation. To say it is good is to say too little’ (Redford 1992: II: 367). Most eighteenthcentury sermons were published with little hope of commercial success, and Blair’s own initial approach was a cautious bid for a small edition to assess its commercial prospects. In 1776, Alexander Kincaid, publisher and King’s Printer in Scotland, offered Blair £100 for an edition of sermons to be jointly undertaken by Kincaid and Strahan. In a letter of October 1776, Blair commented that Alexander Kincaid had ‘out of favour to me, proposed to print at present only a Small one’.59 On Kincaid’s death in 1777, William Creech took over the task of publishing the sermons, and the first volume appeared in 1777 under the imprint of Creech, Strahan and Cadell. Although Blair described his sermons as of the ‘sentimental sort’ when he first submitted them to Strahan, he showed his acute business sense within a relatively short time and engaged in negotiating tough contracts with his publishers, and worrying into minuscule details of edition size, type and paper. In April 1778, writing to Strahan about the forthcoming London edition, he stressed that the paper and print should at least not fall short of the last Edinburgh edition which he considered the best; that the octavo format should be kept; and that the edition number on the title-page should be retained rather than adopting the fashion of stipulating ‘a new edition’, since, in his opinion, ‘the succession of editions . . . certainly tends to buoy up a Volume of Sermons’.60 By August 1779, Blair was busily preparing his second volume, intending to go to press in January 1780 with publication in March, as with volume one. In December 1781, Blair informed Strahan that Creech, the bookseller, could no longer meet his commissions for the volume until he received further supplies by sea from London. In June 1790, with commercial success assured by the publication of the first two volumes, Blair wrote to Thomas Cadell underlining that the third volume (just published) was considered by Edinburgh’s men of taste to 58 59 60

NLS MS 1707, f. 4, Hugh Blair to [William Strahan], 29 October 1776. NLS MS 1707, f. 4, Hugh Blair to [William Strahan], 29 October 1776. EUL MS Dc.2.76, f. 10, Hugh Blair to William Strahan, 10 April 1778.

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be the best of the three. Now he could confidently write to Dr Robert Blair: ‘The New Volume of my Sermons, the third, is about to be published here in 2 or 3 days. The Bookseller without the least hesitation has agreed to give me £600 for it; and well they might; considering what profit they made of 15 Editions of the two former ones’.61 In October 1793, Blair informed Thomas Cadell that he was preparing a fourth volume of sermons: ‘After 18 Editions I think we may safely venture on a 4th Volume; and I can positively assure you that this will be the last of my publications.’62 He pressed again for spring publication, agreeing to £600 for this fourth volume as he had for the third, terms readily accepted by Cadell and Strahan, with printing again to take place in Edinburgh at Blair’s request. The fourth volume appeared in 1794. Blair summed up his intentions in publishing his sermons by entertaining the hope that ‘the currency of my Sermons may have contributed to advance the interests of Religion, & that . . . it affords ground to think that the present age is not so irreligious as some would represent it’.63 Blair published eighty-nine sermons in five volumes (1777 to 1801). Forty-one were from Old Testament texts, and forty-eight from the New Testament. His favourite biblical sources for selecting texts were Psalms, Proverbs and Corinthians. The average extent of Blair’s published sermons was about thirty pages, although they could exceptionally extend to fifty-six. An approximate division of his published sermons into moral essays, doctrinal sermons and methodical sermons demonstrates that 60 per cent were moral, 15 per cent doctrinal, and 25 per cent on precise texts. Many in the first category had purely secular titles: ‘On Fortitude’; ‘On Candour’; ‘On Devotion’; ‘On Gentleness’; and ‘On the Influence of Religion on Prosperity’. Blair’s published sermons met with outstanding international success. In America, the Sermons ran to sixteen editions by 1792, issued in Baltimore by John Adams. His Select Sermons were published in New York by Hodge, Allen and Campbell and sold at their several bookstores, and by Robert Campbell in Philadelphia, in 1790; by 1795 Campbell had issued the eighth American edition in Philadelphia. Blair’s success was equally great at home: in his Memoirs, the bookseller James Lackington commented: ‘Sherlock’s Sermons had a very great sale, as had Dr White’s and many others, but none ever sold as well as Dr Blair’s, and the sale of them is as great as ever’ (1794: 221). 61 62 63

NLS MS 588, f. 1374, Hugh Blair to Robert Blair, 14 April 1790. NLS MS 948, f. 8, Hugh Blair to Thomas Cadell, 25 October 1793. EUL MS Dc.2.76, f. 10, Hugh Blair to Thomas Cadell, 8 June 1795.

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Noting the sermons’ popularity with female readers, John Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, commented to Alexander Carlyle in 1790: ‘The Ladies will insure a great Sale for Dr Blair’s third Volume’.64 Blair’s sermons did not, however, appear in Gaelic until 1812. In preparing his sermons, Blair gave them a good deal of attention. James Boswell in the Tour to the Hebrides recorded that Robert Watson, Blair’s predecessor as lecturer in Rhetoric, had told Samuel Johnson that it took Blair a week to compose a sermon (Boswell 1963: 45); and the author of Letters on Dr Blair’s Sermons referred to the ‘long-laboured revisal of the author’ (1779: 5). Blair circulated his sermons in manuscript to his literary colleagues in 1776 for advice, but he still wrote to his publisher, Strahan, in these terms: ‘If your corrector be a good judge of language, and if he notices any thing he takes to be a Scoticism or an impropriety, let him mark it on the Margin with a qand I shall attend to it’.65 Blair also encouraged other sermon-writers contemplating publication. George Hill in his Life records writing to Blair about publishing his own sermons in January 1794 and receiving a very encouraging response: As to my Sermons, I do not think that they form any obstacle. It is true, that I have been so lucky as to hit, in my strain of composition, the present taste; but it does not follow that I have engrossed it, so as not to leave room for writing in a different strain. Quinctilian says, very justly: ‘Plures sunt eloquentiae facies [Eloquence has many faces]’. (Cook 1820: 250–1) In his comment to the Reverend George Hill, Blair had aptly summed up the success of his own sermon writing: it had touched the spirit of the times by urging a connection between sensibility and fine feeling and piety.

64

65

EUL MS Dc.4.41, f. 26, John Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, to Alexander Carlyle, 10 March 1790. MS, Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Samuel Johnson, Houghton Library, Harvard College Libraries, Hugh Blair to William Strahan, 4 December 1779.

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The Novel Peter Garside Evidently Walter Scott’s last act in writing his first novel, Waverley (1814), was dedicating it to ‘our Scottish Addison, Henry Mackenzie’. There are a number of personal and practical reasons why Scott should have settled on Mackenzie. He was highly regarded by Scott as a surviving luminary from the Scottish Enlightenment. Anonymity was a stratagem linking both authors; and, more broadly, Scott was no doubt impressed by Mackenzie’s ability to balance professional status with literary involvement: comments on the apparent contrast between the ‘Man of Feeling’ and hard-nosed lawyer are legion in the period. A more ‘practical’ motivation might reside in Scott’s difficulties in launching his anonymous work from a Scottish platform. Mackenzie’s judgement still carried weight in Scottish literary circles, and he was apparently the key figure in a group selected to preview early parts of Waverley before its publishers finalised contractual arrangements. Robert Pierce Gillies, another of the new century’s novelists, recollected how ‘the patriarchal critic’ had ‘drifted along the streets at his fleetest pace, to express his conviction that this would turn out to be no ordinary novel’ (1851: II: 183). But this is no ordinary dedication, and ultimately one senses its connection to Scott’s experiment in switching genres from poetry to prose fiction. The clue is the sobriquet ‘our Scottish Addison’, which obviously alludes to Mackenzie’s contributions to and effectual editorship of The Mirror (1779–80) and The Lounger (1785–7). Certainly the division between ‘periodical’ and fiction from Scott’s position would not have been clear-cut (Mackenzie’s story ‘La Roche’ from The Lounger was one of the most extracted moral fictions of the period), and the pages of both periodicals are packed with characters, incidents and fictional devices, where one frequently senses parallels or direct borrowings in 475

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Scott’s own novels. Behind this undoubtedly lay Scott’s awareness of Mackenzie’s success and enduring reputation as the author of three of the 1770s’ major fictions: The Man of Feeling (1771), The Man of the World (1773), and the epistolary Julia de Roubigné (1777). Thus the dedication is directed to the first writer of fiction resident in Scotland to gain recognition on a British scale, a position that Scott set out to emulate and exceed. In making this gesture, however, as his own partial muteness suggests, Scott was pointing to a tradition that was partly invisible, and still calls out for fuller exposure. Scott’s position in 1814 contrasts suggestively with Mackenzie’s in 1769, when he was completing The Man of Feeling. Addressing his cousin Elizabeth Rose of Kilravock, Mackenzie lamented the almost complete absence of Scottish precedents for fiction writing: ‘It is a Sort of Composition which I observe the Scottish Genius is remarkably deficient in; except Smollet, & one female Author [Jean Marishall], I remember none of our Country who have made Attempts in that Way’ (Drescher 1967: 18). Some modern literary historians present a more complicated picture. Robert Crawford (2007), for example, describes the energetic production of fabulous romances by seventeenth-century Scottish writers, with highlights in John Barclay’s Latin allegory Argenis (1621) and George Mackenzie’s roman-à-clef Aretina; or the Serious Romance (1660), the latter published in Edinburgh. Yet Crawford acknowledges a dearth of Scottish fiction in the following century when the genre was making large strides in England: ‘Only about forty book-length works of prose fiction were published in Scotland before 1800’ (2007: 313). If this is construed as referring to new works of fiction primarily published in Scotland, with Scottish booksellers as managers, the figure is probably exaggerated. The popular Travels of Cyrus, by the exiled Jacobite Andrew Michael Ramsay (which Crawford sees linking Aretina to Smollett’s perambulatory fictions), was written in French and first published in Paris, with a succession of London translations, beginning in 1727, predating the Edinburgh dual-language edition of about 1729. From Mackenzie’s vantage point, indigenous works matching the classic English ‘realistic’ novels of the 1740s, and the new-style feminine sentimental domestic fictions of the 1750s, were virtually non-existent. Nor was Scotland in any significant way involved in the material production of new fiction between 1770 and 1800, thus comparing unfavourably with pre-Union Dublin, which in addition to its considerable reprint industry also issued many original titles. During these three decades, Edinburgh was the primary publication site for just seven new novels. Other Scottish locations supplied two titles from Perth, both

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translations, issued by the Morisons, and a miscellaneous collection from Glasgow. Otherwise, Scottish booksellers feature on imprints as subsidiaries of managing London publishers, with London by far the leading producer of new fiction in mainland Britain (Garside, Raven and Schöwerling 2000). Various reasons might be adduced for this paucity of output, including the sway of the Presbyterian kirk in large areas of the country, patriarchal opposition to what was increasingly regarded as a predominantly ‘female’ form and the low status accorded to ‘fictitious history’ by some Scottish Enlightenment aesthetic theoreticians. However, these factors are less significant than two salient features of British book production: the dominance of London as a publishing centre and the concentration of fiction’s main market in southern England. Some of the impediments to the development of an indigenous school of fiction are apparent in the careers of the two predecessors named by Henry Mackenzie in his 1769 letter to Elizabeth Rose. Tobias Smollett, who first moved south in 1739, combined a close interest in his native Scotland with a London-oriented publication record. His first novel, The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), follows the path of its Scottish-born eponymous hero through a London filled with hostility to Scots and service in the West Indies, prior to a celebratory return to his native country that anticipates Waverley in its figuring of a regenerated Anglo-Scottish Union. This wider British focus is again apparent in Smollett’s last major work, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), with its extensive views of a variegated Scottish society (and its famous description of Enlightenment Edinburgh as a ‘hotbed of genius’), providing a template for later Scottish socio-historical novelists, notably Scott in Guy Mannering (1815). Nonetheless all Smollett’s novels on first publication bore London imprints, which display publishers without evident Scottish connections. A letter of 1747 to Alexander Carlyle indicates a mixture of curiosity and powerlessness over the Scottish distribution of Roderick Random: ‘As I have long ago disposed of the Copy, I know not what Method the Booksellers will follow in the Sale of it, but I believe some Hundreds will be sent to Scotland’ (Knapp 1970: 7). Further investigation, however, reveals a Scottish dimension not immediately apparent. Surviving ledgers show that a number of early impressions of Smollett’s novels were printed by his countryman William Strahan, who had left for London about the same time as Smollett, including 6,500 copies of Roderick Random in the first two years of its circulation (Knapp 1932: 284). Strahan also seems to have taken a share in some titles, including The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), and features as a

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co-publisher on the imprint of several London-published reprints in the 1760s and early 1770s. The career of Jean Marishall, who was born in Scotland but began writing in London, offers a rare glimpse of a Scottish woman writer directly engaging in English domestic fiction. Her two main novels, The History of Miss Clarinda Cathcart, and Miss Fanny Renton (1766) and The History of Alicia Montague (1767), both published in London, typically follow young female protagonists in the ‘fashionable’ social world, and are noteworthy for their effervescent comedy and the forthrightness of their heroines. Each contains significant Scottish components. Clarinda Cathcart, after being abducted by an aristocratic rake, finds refuge in the home of a Scottish gentleman, and in one of her letters describes a visit to Edinburgh and Holyroodhouse. The mother of the heroine of the second work is Scottish, and characters move between Scottish and English locations during the narrative, with Alicia ultimately finding moral and financial support from her Scottish connections, in terms conveying a larger national significance: ‘A firm and lasting union between England and Scotland was toasted in a bumper every day after dinner’ (1767: II: 166). Subsequently Marishall settled in Edinburgh, where she attempted to set up a periodical paper, and worked as a private teacher. Her quasi-fictional A Series of Letters (1789), published in Edinburgh, offers in its later stages a lively yet withering account of her difficulties promoting her two novels in London, as well as her failure to have a comedy, Sir Harry Gaylove, staged in either of the two metropolises. Among other things, Marishall describes: her shock at being offered just five guineas for Clarinda Cathcart by the publisher Noble; an abortive effort to place it with other London booksellers, including ‘an eminent bookseller who lives in the Strand’, all of whom declared ‘they never purchased the productions of ladies’; her mixed fortunes in trying to secure patronage from the queen; and her determination to take the financial risk in self-publishing her second novel, a strategy providing a profit of ‘about a hundred guineas’ (1789: II: 153–95). If London offered a treacherous field of operation for a Scottish female novelist, Scotland was hardly a haven. At one point Marishall recalls the challenge of explaining her novel-writing activities to her mother, a female connection being enlisted to assure her ‘that there was nothing more common in England than ladies writing novels’ (1789: II: 173). The unstaged Sir Harry Gaylove was eventually published in Edinburgh by subscription in 1772, with about 750 names, almost exclusively Scottish and male, including Henry Mackenzie. In a number of respects, a similar gravitational pull towards London

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is evident in the production of Mackenzie’s own novels. His first and most influential work of fiction, The Man of Feeling (1771), was begun in London where he was furthering his legal studies, and may simply express the anxieties of yet another alienated Scot, though the work’s subjectivity and the generality of its main tropes and settings encouraged wider interpretation. The title-page indicates nothing other than a straightforward London publication, with Thomas Cadell, who had recently succeeded to Andrew Millar’s business, alone in the imprint. In the wake of the Monthly Review’s objections against its ‘provincial and Scottish idioms’ (1771: 44 [May]: 418), the author readily emended his text for the ‘corrected’ second edition (Drescher 1989: 56). Having returned to Edinburgh, Mackenzie had limited influence over the production and marketing of the work, not least its distribution in Scotland. Writing to Elizabeth Rose (18 May 1771), about a month after the London publication, he explains how ‘the Book was in Edinr some Days, & actually advertised in the Papers before I knew anything of it’s [sic] Arrival’ (Drescher 1967: 87). Other letters show similar frustration as relatively small batches of his titles were shipped north, to be dispersed by Edinburgh booksellers, themselves acting as agents of the managing house.66 In the case of his second novel, the Scottish publication was contingent on external factors, as Mackenzie recognises in a letter (1 March 1773): ‘The Man of the World, who made his Appearance in London about 10 Days ago, we hope to launch in the world here about the middle of this week, the Ship aboard of which he is being hourly expected’ (Drescher 1967: 125). One would also look hard and long for signs of a Scottish provenance in the narratives themselves. The Man of Feeling and its immediate successor move between a country setting and metropolitan London, which is translated and enlarged into the provincial France/Paris/West Indies arrangement of the epistolary Julia de Roubigné (1777). Apart from early mention of Scotticisms in the Monthly Review, there is little awareness in contemporary accounts that the author is a Scotsman. On the contrary, for many readers the Reverend Mr Eccles of Bath, whose claims to the authorship forced the publishers into outing Mackenzie in 1777, must have seemed a plausible originator of these anonymous publications. At the same time, Mackenzie’s Scottish credentials are never far 66

The Man of Feeling was advertised, ‘This day published . . . By John Balfour’ in the Caledonian Mercury, 15 May 1771; and The Man of the World, ‘By A. Kincaid & W. Creech, and J. Balfour’ (10 March 1773). It would be a mistake, however, to interpret these issues as separate ‘Scottish’ editions, and no instance of these Edinburgh booksellers appearing on the title-page is known.

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from the surface, and should have been apparent to those contemporaries fully apprised of the situation. Mackenzie was by now firmly domiciled in Scotland, both as a member of the legal establishment and as part of an increasingly confident body of Enlightenment writers. Further examination of his publishing connections reveals an even stronger Scottish component. When he took control of Andrew Millar’s business in 1768, Thomas Cadell naturally entered into a close association with William Strahan, at that time eager to engage in publishing as well as printing, thus forming the house which was to become ‘the preeminent publisher of the Scottish Enlightenment’ (Sher 2006: 327). Despite his absence on the title-page of the first and second editions, Strahan owned half the copyright of The Man of Feeling and appears as co-publisher on the third and succeeding editions. He was present from the start on the imprint of The Man of the World (‘Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell, in the Strand’); and the same combination recurs with Julia de Roubigné, where some copies of the first edition add William Creech as the Edinburgh publisher. Mackenzie’s letters indicate that he considered ‘my worthy Friend & Bookseller Mr. Strahan’ (Drescher 1967: 138) his chief business contact and the two socialised during Strahan’s visits to Edinburgh, with Strahan contributing a paper to the Mirror and Mackenzie later supplying his friend’s obituary for the Lounger. Cadell and Strahan’s advertising lists commonly place Mackenzie’s novels among historical and philosophical works by leading Scottish Enlightenment figures, as well as alongside upmarket English fiction. Despite their somewhat erratic distribution, Mackenzie’s new titles apparently were eagerly sought after in Scotland. By his own testimony, the copies of the Man of Feeling first allotted to Edinburgh ‘were all sold in about a Week’s Time’ (Drescher 1967: 89). Mackenzie’s fellow philosophes in Scotland likely recognised the invasiveness in all three novels of issues concerning human sympathy and its relationship to the material world and social custom. Anecdotal evidence relating to the more popular appeal of Mackenzie’s sentimentalism is plentiful. Robert Burns supposedly wore out two copies of The Man of Feeling, though a 1790 letter expresses Burns’s concern about its practical suitability for a young man setting out in life (Ross Roy 1985: II: 25). Mackenzie himself emphasises his popularity with female readers. ‘Among your Sex have been many of it’s [sic] warmest Advocates’, he writes of The Man of Feeling to his cousin in 1771; later he similarly confides, apropos Julia de Roubigné, that ‘’Tis to one or two female Critics that it owes it’s [sic] Existence at all’ (Drescher 1967: 90, 199). Other Scottish authors were part of the novel-publishing scene

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in later-eighteenth-century London, and gravitated (like Mackenzie) to firms with strong Scottish connections. William Russell, after serving an apprenticeship with the Edinburgh printers Martin and Wotherspoon, emigrated to London in the 1760s, worked as a corrector of the press for William Strahan and published his Sentimental Tales (1771) there. He later settled in Dumfriesshire, corresponding with his publisher George Robinson, a leading London promoter of Scottish Enlightenment books, and himself originally from Carlisle on the Scottish border. William Thomson, a Scottish Episcopalian clergyman, settled in London as a miscellaneous writer in the late 1770s, publishing two satirical novels, The Man in the Moon (1783) and Mammuth (1789), under the imprint of his fellow-Scot, the publisher John Murray, who himself on coming to London had contributed a short (unfinished) novel to the Court Miscellany (Zachs 1998: 13–4). Thomson’s second wife, Anna, about whom little is known, was evidently a prolific novelist, beginning with Excessive Sensibility (1787) and Fatal Follies (1788), both published by Robinson, the second of which brought William a fifty-guinea fee. A better-known novelist with Scottish connections is Charlotte Lennox, neé Ramsay, whose husband Alexander Lennox, a Scotsman, reportedly worked for William Strahan, and whose late semi-autobiographical Euphemia (1790) was published by Thomas Cadell. Isabella Kelly, a prolific author of Gothicstyle fictions, starting with Madeline; or, the Castle of Montgomery (1794), came from a Scottish mercantile family, though her literary career is hardly distinguishable from those of a number of impecunious female authors working for the Minerva Press in London. An interesting exception to London’s pull, however, is found in the case of Elizabeth Keir, now recognised as the author of two sentimental-domestic novels from the 1780s, Interesting Memoirs (1785) and The History of Miss Greville (1787). Little is known about Keir, other than her status as the wife of the Perthshire-born William Keir, who trained as a physician in Edinburgh, before dying of a fever in June 1783, aged thirty. While not much in the novels themselves suggests a Scottish origin, the preliminaries indicate a significant connection with Edinburgh, perhaps reflecting the author’s widowhood there. The imprint of Interesting Memoirs, which has a dedication to the queen, dated Edinburgh, 16 September 1785, reads ‘Printed for A. Strahan, and T. Cadell in the Strand; J. Balfour, and W. Creech, Edinburgh’, indicating the involvement of Andrew Strahan (William’s son and successor) along with Cadell in London and the booksellers John Balfour and William Creech in Edinburgh. In the case of The History of Miss Greville, whose dedication to the Countess of Glasgow

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is subscribed Edinburgh, 20 April 1787, variant title-pages are found for the first edition: the imprint of one reads ‘Printed and Sold for the Author at Mr Carruthers’s, No 36 Cheapside; and by T. Cadell, Strand’; the other ‘Printed for E. Balfour and W. Creech, Edinburgh, and by T. Cadell, Strand, London’. Here the likely explanation is a division of the edition for the London and Edinburgh sales respectively, with Creech and Elphingston Balfour (John’s son), overseeing the latter. At the same time, the misleading use of ‘by’ in relation to Cadell could indicate that the titles and possibly the work itself were printed in Edinburgh, a situation which would be convenient for an author resident and supplying copy there. Further support for the existence of this kind of arrangement has been discovered in the letter books of the Edinburgh publisher Charles Elliot, covering the years 1774–90. In a letter of 28 February 1784, concerning the shipment of a consignment of books to Thomas Cadell, Elliot refers to two novels, Andrew Macdonald’s The Independent (1784) and George Monck Berkeley’s Maria, or the Generous Rustic (1784). He also asks Cadell to register the former at Stationers’ Hall, and to place advertisements in the London newspapers, adding that: ‘Authors wish to have the most eminent publisher employd. I make no doubt you will ans[wer] their wish.’ Both novels bear a similar imprint: ‘Printed for T. Cadell, London; and C. Elliot, Edinburgh’; however, Elliot’s letter seems to indicate that the printing was actually done in Edinburgh. Elliot’s direct involvement in The Independent is again apparent in a subsequent letter (12 April 1784), which conveys Macdonald’s irritation at seeing no progress: ‘The author is a Gentleman of Some Consequence and Considerable Abilities he naturally says to me Elliot you are either very irregullar or you have a very Indolent and Inattentive Correspondent in Lond[on].’67 Andrew Macdonald, son of an Edinburgh gardener, was just commencing a literary career, which would meet some success with the play Vimonda, and take him to London in 1787 to experience a series of fresh disappointments. The Independent warns among other things against excessive feeling, acknowledging Mackenzie in a way, but otherwise contains nothing tangibly Scottish, and was evidently aimed at the London market. While Elliot’s publishing role seems deferential to his London partner, it probably reflects a novel’s likelihood of greater sales in the south at the time. In a later letter (4 October 1788) to Elliot and Kay, his London partnership with his brother-in-law, Thomas Kay, Elliot offers to print a further 250 of Maria, or the Generous Rustic 67

NLS John Murray Archive, Charles Elliot letter books, letters 2938 and 2974.

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(‘if you think you could sell them none will now sell here’), and also asks for advertisements to be placed for Misogug: or, Women as They Are (1788), when it arrives.68 Not all the firm’s ‘London’ novels were printed in Scotland, however; an earlier letter (29 February 1788) finds Elliot insisting to Kay of another (unidentified) work: ‘You must print the Novel with yourself & it ought to be done instantly if [it is] to be printed this Season’.69 All six works of fiction bear the London imprint of C. Elliot and T. Kay between 1787 and 1791, generally a period of high production for new fiction. Also evident from his letter books is Elliot’s increasing demand for fiction from other publishers; including regular orders to Cadell for Mackenzie’s three novels, the numbers by no means diminished over time. Elliot’s requests for new novels also accelerate in the 1780s. On 19 August 1782, he asks of George Robinson for two copies of the ‘New novel by the author of Evelina’ (presumably Frances Burney’s 1782 Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress). There follows an order for twelve copies from Cadell, its co-publisher (27 August 1782), repeated in November, with subsequent orders for dozens on 15 February, 11 March and 26 April 1783, reflecting the runaway success of this title.70 A similar pattern is found in the case of Sophia Lee’s historical romance The Recess (published by Cadell), with Elliot ordering over sixty copies between late February and mid-April 1786. While these were the period’s high-profile titles, Elliot also shows an awareness of the value of ‘newness’ in contemporary fiction in his order to Robinson (18 April 1786) for six of Anna Maria Bennett’s Anna; or, Memoirs of a Welch Heiress (1785), a Minerva production, together with ‘a few of anything New’.71 At the other end of the scale, Elliot was heavily involved with the reprint industry in fiction, sending cheap copies of classics by Fielding and Smollett to the London bookseller John Scott in 1784, and later corresponding with William Anderson in Stirling, who trafficked in both illegal imports from Ireland and Scottish reprints, including clear piracies. Developing from the 1750s, and freshly buoyed up by the 1774 decision confirming limited copyright, the Scottish reprint industry was especially active in the closing decades of the century, when novels (and collected works including them) are most conspicuous. Fiction thus features prominently in legal actions undertaken by London booksellers; in 1787, for example, 68 69 70 71

Elliot letter 4320. Elliot letter 4163.1. Elliot letters 2484 (Robinson), 2495, 2555, 2640, 2653, 2713 (Cadell). Elliot letter 3665.

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William Anderson and the Edinburgh printer John Robertson were sued for publishing an illegal edition of Burney’s Cecilia (McDougall 1997: 177). Underlying the whole phenomenon was the rapid growth of capacity in Scotland, in terms of printing and paper-making, and the development of new trade skills, including the establishment of a body of compositors adept at setting both English and vernacular Scots. The growth of an indigenous readership for new fiction can also be gauged from the records of circulating and subscription libraries. By the 1790s several commercial circulating libraries with considerable stocks existed in major urban areas, including those of James Sibbald and Alexander Mackay in Edinburgh, John Smith in Glasgow and Alexander Angus and Alexander Brown in Aberdeen. While non-fiction was the staple of established institutions, ‘Novels and Romances’ represented a significant component, which probably circulated faster than others, and was certainly restocked vigorously in the later century. James Sibbald’s New Catalogue of the Edinburgh Circulating Library (1780–5), boasting 20,000 volumes, was about 20 per cent fiction, with some 245 fiction items added between 1780 and 1785, 160 with new 1780s imprints. In his ‘Memoirs’, Walter Scott recalled his adolescent subscription to ‘James Sibbald’s library in the Parliament Square’, whence presumably came those ‘works of fiction of every kind’ that were his youthful ‘supreme delight’ (Hewitt 1981: 32–3). Proprietary subscription libraries, both those with predominantly professional-gentlemanly and working-class memberships, resisted fiction, though such inhibitions relaxed late in the century. Robert Burns was keen to order Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling and Man of the World in 1790 for the new-founded Monkland Society; and in 1793, the Kelso Library, which Scott had used as a boy, held a few contemporary novels, such as Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. Subscription lists also indicate the novel’s increasing respectability as the century progressed. One marker is provided by Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse (1776), by Miss Edwards, printed in Edinburgh ‘for the Author’, sold by Charles Elliot and consisting of occasional verse and some prose pieces, the largest of which is ‘Otho and Rutha: a True Story’, written in an Ossianic style. Its 650 subscribers, vouching for 880 copies, include lawyers and publishers such as William Creech and Walter Scott’s solicitor father. Otho and Rutha: a Dramatic Tale was subsequently published independently (1780), with a similar Edinburgh imprint, but there is little indication of it achieving any commercial success: a salutary reminder that a subscription’s strength can often reflect circumstances beyond the individual work’s merit. External factors likewise appear to have played a part in the massive total of over 1,200 names, subscribing for nearly 1,500 copies,

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found for Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh’s Munster Abbey, a Romance: Interspersed with Reflections on Virtue and Morality (1797). Egerton Leigh had died aged twenty-seven, in Edinburgh’s New Town, and the subscription (conducted by William Creech as lead publisher) was announced by his widow in the Edinburgh newspapers. Heading the list, alongside the Duchess of Marlborough, is ‘His Royal Highness Monsieur, Holyroodhouse’, referring to the exiled Bourbon prince later to become Charles X, and as a whole there is a sense of the British establishment engaging in a display of unity at a time of national crisis. One significant feature, however, is the high number of 333 Scottish subscribers, many residing in the New Town squares. Notwithstanding the special circumstances and the unexceptional nature of this moraldomestic pot-boiler, one catches a glimpse here of the newly emerging market for fiction within Scotland. Other factors contributing to the growth of an indigenous fiction industry also appear at the turn of the century. A more positive critical response to the genre is evident in documents such as Alexander Thomson’s verse epistle Essay on Novels (1793), which signals the success of Mackenzie, Burney and Charlotte Smith, among more recent novelists. While Scotland still lagged behind England and even Wales as a locus for fictional scenes, the Romantic potential of its history and terrain is adumbrated in the likes of Radcliffe’s The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne: an Highland Story (1789), with its admixture of Gothic and Ossianic, and Elizabeth Helme’s pastoral Duncan and Peggy: a Scottish Tale (1794), one of the first novels to include Scots vernacular speech. Among Scottish novelists operating productively in mainstream English fiction in the century’s closing decade are John Moore, who received £800 for Edward (1796) from Alexander Strahan and Cadell and Davies after the widespread success of his Zeluco (1789) and Elizabeth Hamilton, whose Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800), published by G. G. and J. Robinson, represents the most inventive of the anti-Jacobin fictions of that era. It was Hamilton’s decision to settle in Edinburgh in 1804 that led to the publication there of her The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808), bringing together a Scottish setting, Scottish printer (James Ballantyne) and managing Scottish publisher (Manners and Miller). However, as Scott’s Waverley dedication to Henry Mackenzie suggests, the spectacular if short-lived efflorescence of the ‘Scotch novel’ that followed hardly took place on barren ground.

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Adam Smith and Scottish Books on Political Economy Richard B. Sher If political economy was not actually a Scottish invention, by the late eighteenth century it had become a subject dominated by Scots. Several of them appear in the article on Scotland in the first American edition of William Guthrie’s A New System of Modern Geography (Philadelphia, 1794–5): In political economy, or the grand art of promoting the happiness of mankind, by a wise administration of government, Scotland can boast of some highly and justly celebrated writers, Smith, Anderson, and Steuart, whose works should be the statesman’s and legislator’s constant study, and who merit the warmest thanks from society, for the pains they have taken to advance its dearest interests. (I: 192) The Anderson cited here could be Adam Anderson but is more likely James; Steuart was Sir James Steuart and Smith was, of course, the author of the Wealth of Nations. Many other Scots made significant contributions to eighteenth-century political economy, including John Bruce, John Campbell, George Chalmers, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, John Knox, David Loch, John Millar, Sir John Sinclair and Robert Wallace (see e.g., Hont and Ignatieff 1983; Sakamoto and Tanaka 2003; Wennerlind and Schabas 2008). But the focus here is those cited in the Philadelphia edition of Guthrie’s Geography, and the role of the book trade in producing a corpus of political economy that was both unusually distinguished and distinctively Scottish. Such an approach eschews the intellectual historian’s traditional concerns with groups who adopt similar patterns of thought or common ideologies. Hume and Wallace disagreed about demographic and economic circumstances in ancient and modern times, just as 486

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Smith’s advocacy of market forces differed substantially from the more interventionist perspectives of Campbell, the Andersons and Steuart. Steuart was a Jacobite, James Anderson a liberal Whig, Campbell a Hanoverian Tory. What bound them all together in the first instance was not a common set of beliefs about the nature of politics and economics but a shared commitment to a general method for achieving economic improvement by means of well-informed and well-intentioned state policy. All would have agreed with the contributor to the American edition of Guthrie’s Geography that political economy entailed ‘promoting the happiness of mankind, by a wise administration of government’. And all believed, in varying degrees, that the methodological foundation of this ‘grand art’ was empirical. Facts about economic conditions (what Sinclair, following the German political economists, called ‘statistics’) were gathered, organised and compared, both across geographical boundaries and over time, with the intent of establishing general principles that could be used by political leaders to formulate sound policies. In this sense, Scottish political economy was the pursuit of national prosperity and wellbeing grounded in the knowledge of individuals and their societies. Far from the ‘dismal science’ that economics would soon become, it was an enterprise built on the Enlightenment’s faith in the possibility and desirability of large-scale material improvement. Much has been made of the close connections between political economy and academic moral philosophy (H. F. Thomson 1987: 221– 55). Hutcheson, Smith and Stewart were moral philosophy professors in Scottish universities, and moral philosophy provided the foundation for political economy as an academic subject. However, none of the other key figures in the emergence of late-eighteenth-century Scottish political economy was a moral philosopher by training, and excepting a brief professorial stint by John Bruce and John Millar’s career as a professor of law, none of them was an academic by trade. They were variously trained in medicine (James Anderson), law (Campbell, Chalmers, Millar and Steuart), religion (Wallace), or apprenticed to a practical trade (Loch). Many served at one time or another as civil or public servants: two members of parliament (Bruce and Sinclair); the inspector-general of the Scottish woollen industry, and later fisheries (Loch); a commissioner of excise (Smith); a clerk in the South Sea office in London (Adam Anderson); and chief clerk of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations in London, and secretary to the Board of Trade (Chalmers). Others devoted themselves to the cause of advancing economic prosperity without formal titles or positions, by practising agricultural improvement on their

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estates, advising the government about commercial policy, or privately researching and analysing economic problems and advocating solutions (James Anderson, Hume, Knox, Steuart). Transcending their differences in background, education and occupation was their second common trait: they articulated their interpretations of political economy in books, through which they both attained literary acclaim as individuals and established Scotland’s collective reputation as the hub of modern political economy. Scottish political economy during this period was distinguished by its comprehensiveness. Earlier Scottish writers incorporated political economy into their moral philosophy books, as in Hutcheson’s posthumous System of Moral Philosophy (1755), or treated particular aspects of political economy in essays, as in Hume’s Political Discourses (1752), which was almost immediately absorbed into his copious Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. But from the 1760s, Scottish political economy was associated with large, systematic treatises that covered the subject with unprecedented thoroughness. None was larger than Adam Anderson’s An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, from the earliest accounts to the present time. Containing, an history of the great commercial interests of the British Empire, first published in two massive folio volumes in 1764. There were two main ways that a book of that size could be published in the mid-eighteenth century: subscription or, as in this case, collaboration among booksellers. The list of ten London firms for whom the book was printed includes some of the period’s most prominent names: Millar, Tonson, Rivington and Dodsley. Andrew Millar, who appears first in the imprint, may well have been the driving force, as he was with so many other works by fellow Scots. Adam Smith purchased a copy directly from Millar’s firm and cited it frequently in the Wealth of Nations, where he characterised Anderson as ‘a much more sober and judicious writer’ than another author he had been discussing, Arthur Dobbs (Smith 1979: II: 744; Mossner and Ross 1987: 124). The practical, improving intent of the Origin of Commerce was emphasised by the signed dedication to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which revealed the author’s identity, although his name did not appear on the title-page. What did appear on the title-page made it clear that Anderson’s vision of national improvement was projected on a global scale: the commercial nation was now equated with ‘the British Empire’. Although Anderson died the year after his magnum opus was published, his Origin of Commerce had a larger role to play in book history. In 1787 the London publisher John Walter printed proposals for

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‘a New and Beautiful Edition of Anderson’s History of Commerce’, to be printed using the innovative, if ultimately unsuccessful, ‘logographic’ technology which cast common combinations of letters such as ‘ing’ and ‘tion’ as a single type (Feather 1977: 92–134). Walter hired the miscellaneous writer and Pittite pamphleteer William Combe to extend the coverage from Anderson’s ending point in 1763 to 1788, and he and Combe added a preface that drew conspicuous attention to the importance of logography for reprinting ‘a corrected edition of [Anderson’s] excellent work’. The new preface justified the size of the book by observing that ‘distinct commercial subjects, when treated at large, will occupy considerable volumes’. Walter’s logographic edition of Anderson’s text appeared in three large quarto volumes in 1788 (with a 1787 imprint) and Combe’s continuation occupied an additional quarto volume (1789). It was by far the most ambitious of the 130 titles that were published at the Logographic Press between 1784 and December 1792: the retail price was an astounding five guineas, and Walter noted privately in March 1792 that the edition had ‘cost Me near £3000 Printing’ (Feather 1977: 102), although his expenses were presumably reduced by a subscription list that included George Chalmers, then secretary to the Board of Trade, and William Pitt, to whom the publisher dedicated the book. Walter’s decision to use the Origin of Commerce as the principal showcase for the logographic technology that he had taken over from its inventor, Henry Johnson, is one indication of the growing stature of Adam, his book and the discipline they represented. Other indications are the seven-volume German translation (1773–9), the six-volume Dublin octavo printed for Patrick Byrne (1790) and the inclusion of much of Anderson’s text in David Macpherson’s Annals of Commerce, Manufactures, Fisheries, and Navigation (London, 1805). Walter’s edition was reissued in four large quarto volumes in 1801 by a new coalition of London and Dublin booksellers, with Anderson’s name prominent on its title-page. Soon after co-publishing Anderson’s original 1764 edition, Andrew Millar collaborated on another large and expensive work of Scottish political economy, Sir James Steuart’s Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy: being an essay on the science of domestic policy in free nations. Steuart’s book shattered the tradition of anonymity in Scottish treatises on this subject and used the term political economy in the title of a major work for the first time. Millar and his publishing partners Thomas Cadell and William Strahan purchased the author’s copyright for £500 – a substantial sum at the time for this kind of work. Published in two royal quarto volumes in April 1767, Steuart’s book retailed for two guineas in boards and up to £2 10s bound.

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Strahan printed 1,000 copies at a cost of £203 9s 6d; the paper and advertising would have cost hundreds more (Sher 2004: 22). Despite promising early sales, octavo editions in Dublin (1770) and Basel (1796) and a French translation in Paris (1789–90), the book was not commercially successful. The first British reprint occurred with Steuart’s Works (1805), twenty-five years after the death of the author, who once commented that his Principles was ‘perhaps as little relished by the public’ as a book he might have written about his dog (Rashid 1998: 146–7) As General Sir James Steuart remarked in the biographical sketch accompanying his father’s Works, the Principles was ‘one of those books, with regard to which the critics, and the public, differed in opinion’ (Steuart 1805: III: 377). Despite losing money on Steuart’s Principles, its surviving publishers, Strahan and Cadell, did not demur from publishing another large treatise of political economy by a Scot. Like Steuart’s book, Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) first appeared in two expensive quarto volumes (two guineas bound, in this case). After their experience with Steuart’s Principles, however, Strahan and Cadell were apparently reluctant to purchase the copyright to Smith’s unproven manuscript in advance of publication. It was safer for them to publish the Wealth of Nations on a contingency basis, with the author and the publishers sharing expenses and profits. After the first edition achieved surprisingly strong sales, the publishers took the unusual step of producing a second expensive quarto (1778). Smith made relatively few textual revisions to the second edition, but one small alteration is of particular interest for the book history of Scottish political economy. In the interim between editions, the Scottish agricultural improver James Anderson produced Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry; chiefly intended to promote the agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and fisheries of Scotland, printed for the author in quarto by the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Elliot in an edition of 500 copies in the spring of 1777, with Thomas Cadell as London copublisher.72 The book differed from those by Adam Anderson, Steuart and Smith by focusing closely on Scotland’s economic problems, especially the Highlands, and addressing practical policies rather than theoretical issues. On 72

NLS John Murray Archive, Charles Elliot letter books, no. 577, Elliot to Cadell, 28 March 1777. Although the imprint reads 1777, other letters in this collection suggest that Cadell delayed publication until 1778, causing both Elliot and Anderson much consternation. In a letter of 2 May 1777 (no. 602), Elliot assures Cadell that ‘His strictures on Dr. Smith wont hurt his [Smith’s] book’, but one wonders if Cadell thought differently and put off publishing Anderson’s volume until the second edition of the Wealth of Nations appeared in late February 1778.

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grain prices, Anderson argued long and heatedly against the opposition to the Corn Laws in ‘the very ingenious treatise of Dr Adam Smith on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations’, contending that government regulation was needed to stabilise the price and availability of grain (Anderson 1777: 309). Thinking chiefly of this matter, Anderson records his original intention to publish anonymously but states that he changed his mind because ‘in some places of his work he has had occasion to controvert the opinions of some living authors who have acknowledged their performances’, and it would therefore have appeared ‘mean and disingenuous’, even ‘unmanly’, to keep himself ‘concealed’ (Anderson 1777: xxiv). Years later, Anderson recalled transmitting a copy of his Observations on National Industry to Smith through a mutual friend, the physician William Cullen (though Mizuta 2000 does not include the book in Smith’s library). Cullen had then relayed Smith’s ‘great compliment’ in stating his intention ‘to answer these remarks’. Although Anderson was disappointed that Smith ‘never made the answer he proposed’, he noted with pleasure that this incident began ‘a friendly intercourse that subsisted between us for the rest of Smith’s life’ (Anderson 1800). Anderson seems not to have recognised Smith’s response to his criticism in the alteration of a single phrase in the second edition of the Wealth of Nations. Writing to Andreas Holt (October 1780), Smith observed that ‘a very diligent, laborious, honest Man of the name of Anderson, has published a large quarto volume concerning improvements; in this volume he has done me the honour to employ a very long chapter in answering my objections to the bounty upon the exportation of Corn’. Smith proceeded to say that Anderson’s argument rested entirely on this ‘careless expression’ in the first edition of the Wealth of Nations: ‘The nature of things has stamped upon corn a real value which no human institution can alter.’ By changing the last five words in this sentence to read ‘cannot be altered by merely altering its money price’, Smith felt confident that the second edition removed ‘the foundation of the whole argument of Mr Anderson’ (Mossner and Ross 1987: 515; n. 28). Meanwhile, Smith was preparing the greatly expanded third edition of the Wealth of Nations (1784). Published in three thick octavo volumes at half the cost of the quarto editions, the third edition brought Scottish political economy to a new, expanded readership. Strahan and Cadell responded to brisk sales of its 1,000 copies by increasing the print run to 1,250 for the fourth edition (1786), 1,500 for the fifth (1789), and 2,000 for the posthumous sixth (1791), all three-volume octavos. Because they had not purchased the copyright at the time of

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initial publication, the publishers had to negotiate with Smith on an edition-by-edition basis, apparently sharing profits on the second and third editions and paying a flat fee of £200 for the fourth edition. They finally paid Smith £300 to purchase the copyright retroactively in 1788 and another £300 to renew it for an additional fourteen years when Smith was on his deathbed in 1790 (Sher 2004: 3–29). From the standpoint of financial compensation, the different experiences of Smith, Steuart and James Anderson illustrate a range of options that were available to late eighteenth-century authors. Both Steuart’s and Anderson’s books appear to have sold poorly, but Steuart received £500 by virtue of selling the copyright before publication. Anderson, by contrast, published his book at his own expense, which was the most lucrative method for authors in the event of a bestselling book but the riskiest for a commercially unsuccessful one. Anderson would have advanced hundreds of pounds for paper, print and advertising, and he probably lost most of that investment. Like Anderson, Smith did not sell the copyright to his book before its initial publication in 1776, but by sharing expenses and profits with his publishers, he lessened his risk. The Wealth of Nations became an international bestseller, and when the author died fourteen years later, he had earned at least £1,500 from it (Sher 2004: 11). To historians of economic thought, the century or two before the publication of the Wealth of Nations is often considered the discipline’s prehistory. To the book historian, however, Smith’s great work may be regarded as one in a series of large, expensive productions by Adam Anderson, Sir James Steuart, James Anderson and others (including John Campbell’s two-volume quarto of 1774, A Political Survey of Britain) that established the form and stature of Scottish political economy in the 1760s and 1770s. The pattern continued in the decades to come, with quartos such as George Chalmers’s An Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Britain during the present and four preceding reigns; and of the losses of her trade from every war since the Revolution (1782), John Knox’s A View of the British Empire, more especially Scotland; with some proposals for the improvement of that country, the extension of its fisheries, and the relief of the people (1784 as a thin quarto, later expanded to a multi-volume octavo), Sir John Sinclair’s The History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire (1785–1804) and John Bruce’s Historical View of Plans, for the government of British India, and regulation of trade to the East Indies (1793), as well as substantial octavos such as Sinclair’s twenty-one-volume Statistical Account of Scotland (1791–9) and James Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth,

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and into the means and causes of its increase (1804). Whether these works were universal in scope or focused narrowly on economic issues and policy questions facing the British Empire or Scotland in particular, they all announced the names of their authors on the title-page and contributed to the widespread perception that political economy was a ‘grand art’ and a systematic, comprehensive, empirically grounded discipline, cultivated chiefly in big books by Scots.

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Medicine Fiona Macdonald When the market in scientific print expanded in the second half of the eighteenth century, Edinburgh was the natural centre for medical publishing because it possessed Europe’s most progressive medical school. However, major Edinburgh publishers seldom limited themselves to the Scottish market. Commercial incentive and scientific progress were closely linked and publishers looked for lucrative, untapped niches where their business expertise could combine with the specialist requirements of professions eager to systematise bodies of knowledge in print. The codification of Scottish medical knowledge – its progression from observation to classification and theory – took place mainly in Edinburgh or through books by London-based Scots physicians. Serials, which acquired increasing importance in the eighteenthcentury trade by guaranteeing booksellers a regular income, also played an important role in shaping medicine (Feather 1988: 110, 115). The earliest medical serials were subsidised proceedings of medicalscientific societies or in-house journals; independent, commercial journals published by booksellers for profit came later. The form and content of these serials helped fashion contemporary medicine and good practice, as much as reflecting it. Although most ground-breaking material continued to be published in books, the processes of summarising, abstracting and reviewing that occurred in periodicals helped to standardise new ideas and render them acceptable before consolidating them as part of an authorised medical knowledge (Jardine 2000: 403–4). The following account considers only those Scottish medical books that had a significant impact on eighteenth-century theory and practice or were a publishing phenomenon in their own time. The advent of the medical periodical press is also discussed. 494

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In his survey of Scottish Enlightenment scientific and medical books, Richard Sher identifies 111 first editions in English between 1745 and 1800 (2000: 113–22), but only a few of these affected the direction of medicine. Some work continued to appear in Latin, though this increasingly gave way to the vernacular. Surprisingly, no publication by Edinburgh’s William Cullen, Europe’s most famous English-speaking professor of medicine, is mentioned, perhaps because he emphasised the practical use and systematisation of existing medical knowledge (Porter 1997: 263). However, eighteenth-century Edinburgh is acknowledged for innovative research on the nervous system, while Lanarkshire Scots teaching and practising in London broke new ground in physiological and morbid anatomy and revolutionised obstetrics. The work of Robert Whytt, Edinburgh Professor of the Theory of Medicine, established a Scottish school of physiology. His book On the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals (Edinburgh: Hamilton, Balfour and Neill, 1751) originated the idea of reflex action. According to Whytt the sentient (sensitivity) principle in involuntary motion was not under the control of the conscious soul; rather, in automatic actions like the beating of the heart, muscular contraction was controlled by the nervous system and sensory information was not perceived. Whytt’s work combined experimental research and clinical observation in a way unmatched by Cullen’s (Bynum 1993: 153). Another Scottish vitalist interpretation of physiology was expounded by John Brown, a recalcitrant pupil of Cullen’s, in his Elementa Medicinae (Edinburgh: Charles Elliot, 1780). Brown’s new medical system substituted the principle of ‘excitability’ for irritability, which he tried to subject to precise mathematical measurement. To Brown, life was a result of agents acting on excitability, and health consisted in maintaining a balance between those stimuli and the vital activity necessary to well-being. He paid little attention to disease symptoms, nosology or morbid anatomy, which he regarded as the results of imbalance in excitability. His simple therapeutics involved administering alcohol or opium to adjust the excitability in either case. Brown’s medical system was clinically restricting but found support in Germany, Italy and North America. Dubbed ‘the educated physician’s version of William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine’, Brunonianism challenged the medical establishment and could be perceived as promoting potentially harmful self-physicking (Barfoot 1988: 37). The eighteenth-century expansion of the book trade encouraged cheap printing and ready distribution of popular texts plying simplified versions of elite medicine in the vernacular (Porter 1997: 283). The bestseller in this genre was William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine

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(1769). Having written his book while practising in Yorkshire, Buchan paid the learned printer William Smellie to edit and print his manuscript, telling him: ‘I think I have hit upon something that will sell’.73 But Buchan was equally convinced of the merit in ‘laying Medicine more open to mankind’ (1774: xxi). First published in Edinburgh (Balfour, Auld and Smellie) and subsequently in London, eighteen authorised editions appeared in Buchan’s lifetime (1729– 1805), all in large print runs. Domestic Medicine was translated into French, Spanish and Russian, among other European languages (Sher 2000: 45). Buchan’s was essentially a medical self-help text for laymen with an emphasis on the prevention of infection through cleanliness, good ventilation, mitigating overcrowding and practising temperance. One distinctive feature of early eighteenth-century medical practice was the rise of man-midwifery. By 1750, accoucheurs were dealing with complicated deliveries and managing normal births, as were surgeonapothecaries in their general practice. The two outstanding physicianaccoucheurs in London were both Scots: William Smellie (no relation to Buchan’s editor-printer) and William Hunter. Smellie’s Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery (London: Wilson/Wilson and Durham, 1752) was a textbook written for the further instruction of his male pupils and not for midwives, a departure in midwifery writing. He produced two volumes of case histories to accompany it, based on experience of normal and abnormal labours: A Collection of Cases in Midwifery (London: Wilson and Durham, 1754, 1764) and A Sett of Anatomical Tables (London, 1754), with illustrative plates. William Hunter, surgeon and famous anatomist, studied midwifery for a year under Smellie when he first came to London in 1740 and then under James Douglas, Scottish physician and anatomist, before working as man-midwife at the Middlesex and the Lying-in Hospitals. Hunter advocated as little interference in the delivery process as possible. His anatomical atlas, the Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus (Birmingham, 1774), resulted from twenty years’ extensive research. Visual imagery was of prime importance to its didactic success, and its engravings were a watershed in the history of book illustration. This folio volume, which includes thirty-four beautifully wrought plates by the artist Jan van Rymsdyk, with parallel text in Latin and English, is regarded as one of the most accomplished artistic works in medicine. It laid bare the anatomy of the pregnant woman and was the first realistic depiction of the foetus in utero. 73

NMS William Smellie’s Manuscript Papers, ‘Personal Correspondence’.

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The last significant eighteenth-century publication on childbirth by a Scot concerns the transmissibility of disease during the birthing process. In his Treatise on the Epidemic Fever of Aberdeen (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1795), the Aberdeen physician Alexander Gordon first demonstrated conclusively that puerperal fever was highly contagious, four decades before the American physician Oliver Wendell Holmes or the Hungarian Ignaz Semmelweis, who are usually credited with the discovery. The treatise generated sufficient interest to be reprinted in 1822, 1842 and 1849. Gordon served as a naval surgeon (1780–5), before studying midwifery in London and being appointed physician to the Aberdeen Dispensary. Eighteenth-century practitioners believed the disease was contracted from stagnant miasma in the atmosphere. However, Gordon showed, by keeping a list of all his patients during the epidemic of puerperal fever in Aberdeen (1789– 92), that ‘this disease seized such women only, as were visited, or delivered, by a practitioner, or taken care of by a nurse, who had previously attended patients affected with the disease’ (Gordon 1795: 63). Scurvy was another disease for which the cure was identified long before it was implemented in 1794. In his Treatise of the Scurvy (Edinburgh: Sands, Murray and Cochran for Kincaid and Donaldson; London for Millar, 1753), the physician James Lind gave an account of the disease’s causes, prognosis, cure and prevention, and showed lemon juice to be an effective antiscorbutic. He outlined experiments on twelve scurvy patients when serving as a naval surgeon in 1747. Lind divided them into six pairs, assigning each different treatments for two weeks: elixir of vitriol (a stomach tonic), cider, vinegar, seawater (a placebo), oranges and lemons and a medicinal syrup containing garlic, mustard, Balsam of Peru and myrrh: ‘The consequence was that the most sudden and visible good effects were perceived from the use of oranges and lemons’ (Lind 1753:192, 193). Yet although it was widely known that lemon juice or a vegetable diet might alleviate scurvy, a cure was thought by most eighteenth-century medical theorists, including Lind in the third edition of his Treatise (London, 1772), to be dependent on mitigating a number of other factors including confinement below decks, cold moist air, insanitary living conditions, salted provisions and immorality. William Hunter’s brother, John Hunter, a Scottish physiological anatomist and pathologist, became interested in dentistry between 1763 and 1768, when he was working with James Spence, one of the most skilled dentists in London. Hunter’s The Natural History of the Human Teeth (London: J. Johnson, 1778), explaining the development of the teeth and jaws in anatomical and physiological terms, as

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well as dealing with pathology and clinical treatment, was illustrated with sixteen plates. Little was understood about dentition before it. Published together with a later supplement, A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of the Teeth (London: J. Johnson, 1778), in a combined edition, it is regarded as a classic of dentistry. English editions were published in New York and Philadelphia as well as editions in Latin, Italian, German and Dutch. Hunter’s nephew, Matthew Baillie, was schooled in anatomy and pathological anatomy at William Hunter’s London Anatomical Theatre where Baillie was appointed anatomy lecturer in 1782. His Morbid Anatomy of Some of the Most Important Parts of the Human Body (London: J. Johnson, G. Nichol, 1793), one of the period’s most influential medical textbooks, was published in eight English and three American editions, two in French and one in Italian, German and Russian. Baillie attempted to link patients’ symptoms of illness to areas of disease revealed by post-mortems and to investigate the production of pathology (structural changes in organs and tissues caused by disease) so that disease could be better understood and diagnosed. Baillie is considered the founder of British pathological anatomy. His book was enhanced by A Series of Engravings Accompanied with Explanations, which are intended to illustrate the morbid anatomy of some of the most important parts of the human body (London: W. Bulmer for J. Johnson, G. and W. Nicol, 1803) drawn by William Clift. Baillie is credited with the first accurate descriptions of cirrhosis, which he connected with hard drinking, and of emphysema, in which he distinguished the abnormally dilated alveoli (Cunningham 1992: 2). Clear, concise and relatively brief, the book was an extremely readable account of the anatomical changes caused by disease in a format, from the second edition (1797), especially useful for practitioners. Practitioners could also access current medical ideas in the new periodical media, through which medical science became a subject of learned public interest. The early eighteenth-century market for serials in Scotland was dominated by society transactions, each of which had a virtual monopoly of the Scottish medico-scientific audience. Societies published their proceedings with a view to raising their profile and attracting new members. Volumes appeared erratically when the society secretaries had amassed sufficient material and with no sense of urgency since society members provided a captive audience. The earliest serials were therefore little more than occasional compendia of essays that only rarely published innovative science. The 1770s saw the advent of a commercial medical press in Scotland and the beginnings of a more sophisticated organisation of content, making these periodicals recognisable forerunners of the modern medical periodical genre.

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Like transactions, commercial periodicals were founded with the motive of improving medical science, but also furthered the medical careers of their editors, who came exclusively from the ranks of physicians, the medical elite. But commercial publication was a riskier business dependent on the financial situation of the publishers, the state of the print market and the economic climate. The five-volume Medical Essays and Observations (Edinburgh: T. and W. Ruddiman for W. Monro/W.Drummond, 1733–44), published by the ‘Society for the Improvement of Medical Knowledge’, were the first medical proceedings produced in Britain (1733: 10). The Medical Society was founded in 1731 by the professors of the Edinburgh Medical Faculty and prominent city surgeons who decided that the infirmary’s register of clinical cases would provide a good basis for periodical publication (Erlam 1953–4: 87). Alexander Monro primus, Professor of Anatomy at Edinburgh, was its main editor and Andrew Plummer, Professor of Medicine and Chemistry at Edinburgh, his co-editor. The Society also aimed to address a number of perceived inadequacies in the European periodicals of the time, especially to improve the intellectual standard and to present medical science in a more concise way (1733: x, xiv). The periodical’s coverage was relatively broad, including original essays on the theory and practice of medicine, surgery, anatomy, chemistry and drugs as well as correspondence, resumés of recently published literature and medical news. The preface to the 1740 Paris edition of the Medical Essays (Essais et observations de medicines de la Société d’Edinbourg) made it clear, where the first English edition had not, that ‘Memoirs sent by correspondence are distributed according to the subject matter to those members who are most versed in these matters. The report of their identity is not known to the author’. The Society was obviously conducting peer review. Charles Alston, Edinburgh Professor of Medicine and Botany, published in Medical Essays the results of experiments demonstrating that the anodyne effects of opium administered to frogs depended on its action upon the nerves rather than on the blood or brain (1742: V: 153) An important contribution was made to obstetrics when Medical Essays included an early account of obstetric forceps by Alexander Butter, surgeon in Edinburgh, who was introduced to the instrument in Paris because the instrument’s London-based inventors, the Chamberlens, had ‘kept the Form of it a Secret’ (1735: III: 320–2). The periodical also printed Duncan Stewart’s ‘the Caesarian Operation done with Success by a Midwife’, recounting the first successful Caesarian section in Britain by ‘an illiterate Woman’ in Tyrone, a remarkable achievement when major abdominal surgery was usually fatal (1742:

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V: 440). The Medical Essays was a ground-breaking periodical that conveyed Scottish learning to Europe. The celebrated Albrecht von Haller ‘represented it as a book quem nemo carere potest’ (‘that no one can do without’; Duncan, An Account of . . . Alexander Monro Secundus 1818: 23). Five English editions were published between 1733 and 1771, two in French, and one each in Dutch, German and Italian. But after 1733, the burden of publication fell entirely on Monro. Ill-health led him to relinquish his editorship after volume four (Erlam 1953–4: 87). Thereafter medical papers were published in Scotland as part of a scientific project that encompassed all of natural knowledge. ‘The Society for the Improving Arts and Sciences and particularly Natural Knowledge’, also known as the Philosophical Society, was founded in Edinburgh in 1737 by the Newtonian scholar Colin Maclaurin, Edinburgh Professor of Mathematics. It encompassed natural philosophy, natural history and antiquities as well as medicine, and attracted a number of gentleman amateurs. Monro and Plummer continued as joint secretaries, with David Hume replacing Plummer when the Society reconvened in 1750 after the ’45. Maclaurin’s aim in persuading Monro to publish the last two parts of the Medical Essays under the sponsorship of the Philosophical Society was probably to ensure an immediate audience and recognition for the new society as a European academy of note (Emerson 1979: 169, 174). A gap of ten years ensued before the publication of the first volume of the Society’s own transactions, the Essays and Observations (Edinburgh: Hamilton and Balfour/John Balfour, 1754–71). The Society continued to peer review contributions, appointing two of its members to review a paper and draw up a report. The new serial included a second article by Robert Whytt on the effect of opium on frogs, using true controls prepared in different ways, which stressed the ‘sympathy’ (interconnection) of the nerves, brain and spinal cord (1756: II: 302–4). But the most important paper was undoubtedly ‘Experiments upon Magnesia Alba, Quick-lime, and some other Alkaline Substances’ (1756), published by Joseph Black, then Glasgow Professor of Chemistry. Black demonstrated that magnesium carbonate lost weight when heated, because it gave off ‘fixed air’ (carbon dioxide), which was also present ‘in all vegetable matters’ and expired air (214). In the final quarter of the century, this discovery formed the basis for expansion in pneumatic (gas) chemistry. The Edinburgh Medical School’s successful foray into periodicals was continued in its third publication, the Medical and Philosophical Commentaries (1773–95). This medical journal (the first to be produced commercially for profit) was edited by Andrew Duncan Sr,

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whom Richard Huie named ‘the father of Medico-periodical literature’ (Harveian Oration 1829: 26), and published by the London-based Scot John Murray, although printed in Edinburgh by William Smellie. Regular publication was necessary to maintain an audience for a commercial publication and the journal was the first to be published quarterly. It was also the first medical periodical published in the review genre, helping to guide busy practitioners through the accumulation of medical literature. The advent of critical reviewing, undertaken in the public arena with a view to improvement and reform, was an important step in delineating the relationship between theory and practice in medicine. By 1776, the Commentaries were being published in German. However, it proved difficult for Duncan to sustain quarterly publishing in tandem with his academic commitments and the periodical was published annually from volume seven (1780). Publishing transferred to Edinburgh for the second series when Charles Elliot offered Duncan more for the copyright (McDougall 2002: 219) and Edinburgh graduates began to introduce a proto-statistical approach to evaluating medical therapies based on numerous cases (Tröhler 2000). A review in the Commentaries of Gilbert Blane’s Observations on the Diseases Incident to Seamen (1785) thus stressed that he drew his conclusions ‘from a very great number of facts’, which he ‘has endeavoured to analyse and collate, by throwing the monthly returns into the form of tables’ (1788: 19). The main aim of the Annals of Medicine (Edinburgh: Mudie and Son for G. G. and J. Robinson, London, 1796–1804), the fourth title in this series of Edinburgh-based periodicals, was, like the Commentaries, to review medical literature. Jointly edited by Andrew Duncans Sr and Jr and published annually, it contained more summaries of European medical articles than the Commentaries. Although communications between Britain and France were severely impeded by the Napoleonic wars, the first two volumes of Georges Cuvier’s important Leçons d’anatomie comparée (1800) were summarised at length in the Annals shortly after their publication (1801: 223–53). Review journals also included short articles on specialist subjects affecting general practice. The Annals published articles on military medicine, midwifery and obstetrics, vaccination against smallpox, and insanity. In 1804, after eight volumes, Duncan Sr found that his other interests would ‘not allow him to dedicate to an annual volume . . . that time which it requires’, and he relinquished his involvement in medical editing (1804: 482). Scientific activity like other learned activity was essentially social in nature, and networks of communication among practitioners were

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important in bringing about the circumstances that gave rise to Scotland’s medical periodicals. Serials reached a larger audience than books and permitted new developments in medicine to be published more quickly and cheaply. Practitioners could submit short papers when their time restraints precluded writing books. Consensus for medical knowledge and authority was established by the process of peer-reviewing, and periodicals published diverse opinions, allowing the aim of medical science to be condensed through argument. The process of reviewing in journals like the Commentaries, the century’s most important British review of medical literature, further encouraged refinement and reform in medicine. In all these ways, medicine was put on a more scientific footing. The Edinburgh Medical School marked the zenith of medical achievement in eighteenth-century Britain and led the way in medical publishing. Using print and especially the periodical to improve medical practice became a way for practitioners to enhance their professional status.

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Agricultural Publishing Heather Holmes Although ‘many large and learned treatises on husbandry’ were available to the Scottish agriculturist in 1697, these were English or Scottish reprints of popular English titles (Houston 1993: 381). James H. Handley claims the first Scottish agricultural book was printed that year, although others disagree (Handley 1953: 117; Watson and Amery 1931: 79–80; H. Holmes 2007: 103–4). During the eighteenth century, however, works on Scottish agriculture (written by Scots and published at home) appeared increasingly; found in ‘abundance’ by 1795 (James Donaldson, Modern Agriculture, 1795: 325), they had become a distinct genre with several branches. But, despite the growing importance of the ‘Agricultural Revolution’ and the extent of agrarian change, especially in the Lowlands, Scotland’s volume of farming literature remained modest alongside England’s. Watson and Amery’s ‘Handlist of Scottish Agricultural Literature down to 1790’ (1931), records fortysix authors writing one or more texts (1697–1790), mostly books, with a total of seventy-seven books, pamphlets and journals by the early nineteenth century, some with more than one volume and some having several editions (1931: 60–85). However, 123 publications have now been identified between 1683 and 1790 (Holmes 2007: 97–158), comprising forty agricultural books and journals, seventy-eight pamphlets and a further five publications of four pages each (a catalogue of agricultural seeds, a premiums list, two publication prospectuses and a description of an agricultural implement). Between 1791 and 1800, thirteen more pamphlets appeared. Not much is known about their authorship, production and circulation, and bibliographers even disagree about the definition of eighteenth-century Scottish ‘agricultural books’ (McCallum 1934: 372–80; Symon 1956: 2–8; Adams 1980: 174; Aslin n.d.). Debate has 503

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centred on the eligibility of publications about livestock diseases, farriery and equines, beekeeping and ready-reckoners that helped farmers convert weights and measures in selling their grain (Watson and Amery 1931: 60–85; Perkins 1939). The publications listed by Watson and Amery suggest twelve subject categories for agricultural books by 1790: specific aspects of agricultural affairs such as crops, implements or livestock; the science of agriculture; agricultural systems; farming tours or surveys; agricultural economics; commentaries on the current state of agriculture and rural affairs; ready-reckoners of prices and weights and measures; extracts from other books; encouragements of agricultural development; catalogues of agricultural products, usually relating to trees and other plants; dictionaries (gardening rather than agriculture); religious, political or classical frameworks providing advice to farmers (Holmes 2006: 45–78). The authors of such publications were diverse and not always directly associated with agriculture. But the most important were members of the agricultural community itself, including landlords and tenant farmers. Only a few major figures wrote more than one book. Watson and Amery’s list indicates that thirty-four of their forty-six authors produced only a single title (1931: 80–5), with most writing before 1760. Single-title authors after 1760 usually published multi-volume works; Andrew Wight’s Present State of Husbandry in Scotland (six volumes, 1778–84) is one example. A further six authors each wrote two books, including some of the earliest, such as James Donaldson (1697, 1698), William Mackintosh (1729, 1732), Patrick Lindesay (1733, 1735), Sir Archibald Grant (1757, 1766) and such later ones as Lord Kames (1766, 1776) and James Bonnar (1789, 1795). Few wrote more than two, all from the 1740s onwards, with most appearing in the century’s second half and especially from the 1760s. Robert Maxwell had three (1743, 1747, 1757), David Young, four (1785, 1788, 1790, 1791) and Adam Dickson five (1762, 1764, 1770, 1773, 1778). James Anderson, the economist, was the most prolific, publishing fifteen titles on agriculture and rural affairs, and editing two journals (The Bee and Recreations on Agriculture), which printed many agricultural essays. Anderson also contributed to other periodicals from 1771 to 1806, including Georgical Essays (York, 1803). Some authors wrote over extended periods, sometimes throughout their lives. Scottish agricultural publishing was slow to emerge. Even by 1743 Robert Maxwell could comment that ‘there are few Scots Books wrote upon husbandry’ (Select Transactions of the Honourable the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland: xvi). The 1745 Rebellion is sometimes identified as stimulating agrarian

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change (Adams 1980: 155), but true growth in agricultural books only occurred in the 1760s and 1770s (Devine 1994: 43). In these decades, authors who were to have long standing significance, such as Adam Dickson, Lord Kames and James Anderson emerged, along with The Scots Farmer, a periodical issued from late 1772 until 1774. Two local agricultural societies, the Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture within the Counties of Dumfries and Wigton, and the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and the Society for Improving of Agriculture and Manufactures in the Shire of Air, published their transactions during this period when the increasing demand for books ensured that the most important ones, especially those describing agricultural systems, were reprinted, sometimes in a number of editions. For example, Adam Dickson’s A Treatise on Agriculture, first published in 1762, had second and third editions in 1765 and 1766. Lord Kames’s Gentleman Farmer extended into six editions between 1776 and 1815. Ideas on agriculture, agricultural practices and techniques proliferated rapidly and required frequent updates to reflect new developments. In the 1770s and 1780s agricultural treatises by Dickson, Kames and Anderson were revised regularly. The second edition of Dickson’s A Treatise on Agriculture had ‘large additions and amendments’. Anderson’s Essays on Agriculture and Rural Affairs was continually brought up to date and by 1800, when the fifth edition appeared, the book extended to three volumes. The 1793 establishment of the London-based Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement further stimulated farming publications, both books and periodicals, including its own county agricultural surveys undertaken throughout Britain. In Scotland, twenty-one surveyors wrote accounts for the first series and only one, William Marshall, was English. This greatly extended the number of Scottish agricultural writers, especially since the majority had not previously attempted the subject. Although the Board did not regard this first series of reports as formal publications, several authors entered their surveys at Stationers’ Hall, including Alexander Lowe (General View of the Agriculture of the County of Berwick, with observations on the means of its improvement. Drawn up for the consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement, 1794). Only the second series, the revised surveys, were considered formal publications by the Board (1795–1817), with the Scottish ones issued between 1795 and 1816 (Catalogue of the Walter Frank Perkins Agricultural Library 1961: 287). More extensive than the first surveys, sometimes running to 600–700 pages, only a few of the second series were written by authors involved in the first round, including George Robertson and James Robertson. Some of these

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authors continued their engagement with agricultural writing and, in the years following the publication of their surveys, produced further books in the field. By 1800, the market for agricultural books changed with the establishment of long-running periodicals, especially The Farmer’s Magazine (1800–26) and Transactions (later Prize Essays) of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland (1799–1968). Agricultural publications thus adapted over time together with developments in agriculture. Some authors declared their works to be practical guides for particular members of the agricultural community, but all provided advice on a range of agricultural topics. By mid-century, books had become specific to Scotland’s soil and climate. As improvement schemes appeared during the 1760s, authors described and discussed their own schemes or observed the success of others, thus mapping local and national progress. Agricultural print, publication and distribution were established principally in Edinburgh, Scotland’s book-trade hub and one of the eighteenth century’s four leading production centres (Sher 1998: 33). After the 1750s, other sites emerged, allowing modest agrarian publications to be produced and distributed over a wider geographical area. Between 1757 and 1766, three pamphlets were printed and published in Aberdeen (Beavan 1990: 58). Glasgow’s first agriculture publication appeared in 1725, with others in 1756, 1757 (jointly with several Edinburgh booksellers), 1768, 1769, 1771, 1778, 1779, 1787, 1784 and 1790. Paisley has a 1773 imprint, Dumfries 1776, Berwick 1789 and Perth 1799. From the 1760s, some agricultural books were ‘not so much Edinburgh published or London published as British published’ (McDougall 1978: 1): Francis Home’s The Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation, first published in Edinburgh, had its second and subsequent editions in London. William Creech and Charles Elliot would later share imprints with London colleagues on several agrarian texts. Leading printers and booksellers involved with agricultural titles included John Bell, William Creech, Gavin Hamilton, John Balfour, Alexander Kincaid, William Sands, William Smellie and William Auld, their cohort as disparate as that of the genre’s authors. A survey of imprints reveals that through 1790 over sixty firms produced or sold agricultural texts, with most engaged in only one aspect of the production of a single publication. The exceptions include the Aberdeen printer Francis Douglas with three titles (1757, 1760, 1766); and Edinburgh printers Murray, Sands and Cochran, five (1743, 1756, 1756, 1761, 1766). Two Edinburgh booksellers count eight titles each: John Bell, five ‘printed for’ (1756,

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1761, 1762, 1764, 1775) and two ‘sold by’ (1785, 1786); and William Creech (1775, 1776, 1776, 1777, 1777, 1778, 1784, 1788), all ‘printed for’; while Charles Elliot totalled fourteen, eight ‘printed for’ (1761, 1777, 1777, 1779, 1779, 1780, 1781, 1784) and six ‘sold by’ (1777, 1777, 1780, 1784, 1787, 1788). Three other Edinburgh traders had multiple agricultural publications: Hamilton and Balfour, seven, with three ‘printed for’ (1754, 1761, 1757) and four ‘sold by’ (1743, 1757, 1757, 1758); William Gordon, two (1724, 1757); and William Gray, two (1757, 1770). Authors who wrote more than one text did not always publish them with a single firm. In Aberdeen, Francis Douglas printed only two of Sir Archibald Grant’s pamphlets; while in Edinburgh Mrs Mundell printed one of James Anderson’s books and his periodical, The Bee, in 1790. Booksellers also vary on an author’s imprints. William Creech is noted on four imprints of James Anderson’s books and pamphlets between 1775 and 1777 and Charles Elliot on four of them between 1777 and 1788. John Bell is recorded on two of the imprints of Lord Kames’s works (1779, 1788); Alexander Kincaid is named on four imprints of books by Adam Dickson (1765, 1769, 1770, 1764) and three of Francis Home (1765, 1759, 1762). These patterns of production show the increasing importance of a small number of booksellers to the printing and selling of agricultural publications and the development of their distinctive market. Readership of agrarian texts was shaped by several factors with literacy at the head. In the farming community, reading was wide among landowners, but patchy among tenant classes with their varying degrees of wealth and education (Houston 1989: 43–61). In 1762 Adam Dickson observed predictably that the tenants of large farms were ‘men of greater wealth and more liberal education’ than those of smaller ones (A Treatise on Agriculture: xxx). The price of publications also affected readership by determining the market. Contemporary observations suggest that agricultural books were expensive and a number of prospective purchasers and readers were discouraged by their cost. In 1699 Lord Belhaven remarked that ‘these Books are either so Dear and ill to be had, that they cannot be easily got by ordinar[y] Farmers’ (The Countrey-man’s Rudiments; or advice to the farmers of East Lothian: 1). Much later, James Anderson said that farmers lacked ‘money to spend in buying many books’ (1800: III: 183–5). The cost varied from 1s to 1s 6d for pamphlets. Books, mostly octavos, were priced from 3s to 6s, but those issued in quarto, such as James Anderson’s An Inquiry into the Causes that have hitherto retarded the advancement of agriculture in Europe, were prohibitively expensive; this one cost 13s (Caledonian Mercury, 17 July 1779). Few

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other quartos were published, suggesting that the trade in agricultural books was more practical than collectible. From the 1760s, authors and booksellers attempted to expand the readership for agricultural literature, especially books. James Anderson proposed making them available at ‘a moderate price as to be within reach of every one’ (1800: 185). Certain publications advertised their use of cheaper paper to encourage accessibility, including The Bee (Prospectus of a New Work to be Entitled the Bee, 1790) and Select Essays on Husbandry (Caledonian Mercury, 14 February 1767), thus employing a practice which ‘was not uncommon’ in the trade (Gaskell 1986: 18). Simpler bindings lowered the cost of some agricultural books (Caledonian Mercury, 8 February 1777), while the bookseller Charles Elliot simply advertised lower prices for his titles (Caledonian Mercury, 23 June 1779). Reputation could encourage or discourage readership; the preface to the fifth edition of Lord Kames’s Gentleman Farmer acknowledges that ‘the commerce of books is carried on with no great degrees of candour: those of husbandry with very little’ (1802: vii), and David Young observed in National Improvement how ‘some’ books had been ‘rather apt to mislead than to instruct’ (1785: vi). Authors commonly assured readers of their professionalism by asserting their practical experience. James Anderson and David Young advertised the favourable reviews accorded their books. Texts such as Adam Dickson’s A Treatise on Agriculture and Kames’s Gentleman Farmer were reprinted and circulated for years after their first publication, sustained by dint of reputation. As late as 1829 George Robertson still thought The Gentleman Farmer ‘the best treatise on husbandry then extant, and is still justly held in high expectation’ (1829: 557). Recent evidence suggests that agricultural books reached an increasing and various readership throughout the farming community, something especially true of Select Transactions of the Society of Improvers (1743), Charles Varlo’s The Modern Farmer’s Guide (1768) and David Young’s three books, National Improvements upon Agriculture, in Twenty-Seven Essays, (1785) Agriculture the Primary Interest of Great Britain (1788) and The Farmer’s Account Book (1790) (Holmes 2004– 5: 71–7). If in 1772 The Scots Farmer could still claim ‘that the inferior class of our farmers (and they comprise the greatest part) are not yet in a condition to use these books with judgement, so as to profit by them’ (Caledonian Mercury, 3 October), by 1780, Alexander Bald could marvel that ‘books on agriculture are now so universally read’ (vii). An analysis of the 1785–90 subscribers for David Young’s books (Holmes 2004–5: 22–56) discloses a wide range of occupations

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with professionals and public administrators alongside the anticipated farmers and landowners. Nor were the subscribers confined to Perthshire where Young was a merchant, but spread throughout the Lowlands, especially Angus, Lanarkshire and East and Mid Lothian, thus illustrating the widespread distribution of these books (Holmes 2004–5: 41–5). This readership widened so much by 1816 that Sir John Sinclair could commend Scottish farmers for their habit of reading (General Report in the Agricultural State and Political Circumstances of Scotland, 1814: 395).

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Archaeological Publication in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century Iain Gordon Brown At the opening of The Antiquary, Walter Scott has his hero, Jonathan Oldbuck, unwrap in triumph the latest acquisition for his library at Monkbarns: a copy of Alexander Gordon’s Itinerarium Septentrionale (London: Strahan, 1726). This was a work (as Oldbuck tells his young companion) for long the vade mecum of the Scottish gentleman and scholar interested in the remote history of his country, and especially the Roman remains dotted through the landscape which spoke eloquently of past links with the sympathetic world of classical antiquity before the rude interruption of the ignorance and Gothicism of later times. What is surprising is not that Oldbuck wanted this seminal work, but that he did not possess it earlier in his antiquarian career. Scott surely made a mistake. Gordon’s would have been, in all probability, the first book on any amateur antiquary’s list of desiderata. The Itinerarium would doubtless have been bought at his first setting out on the road to the discovery of the past and a lifetime’s interest in what Gordon himself had defined as ‘Archiology, which consists of Monuments, or rather Inscriptions, still subsisting; in order to prove demonstratively those Facts which are asserted in History’ (Gordon 1726: Preface). Scott and his alter ego Oldbuck knew well the literature of eighteenthcentury Scottish antiquarianism. Gordon’s celebrated book took its place behind the pioneering essays of the learned Sir Robert Sibbald, and marched beside those of the eccentric William Stukeley and the meticulous John Horsley (strangely unmentioned by Scott) towards the supreme topographical achievement of General William Roy in the 1790s; and it preceded George Chalmers’s Caledonia, the many books 510

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straddling travelogue and antiquarian treatise like those by Thomas Pennant, Charles Cordiner and Adam Mansfeldt de Cardonnel, and the works on coins, medals and iconography to be written by John Pinkerton. Any Scottish amateur antiquarian needed to own Gordon’s Itinerarium Septentrionale (I. G. Brown 2011). So closely was Gordon identified with his book that he was sometimes known (and mocked) as ‘Itinerarium’. An Aberdeen graduate, Gordon was not a professional antiquarian scholar (if such a profession were possible in his day). He was first an opera singer; later he enjoyed a varied career as drawingmaster, teacher of Italian, bookseller and cultural gadabout, ending his days as secretary to the governor of Carolina. His patron, the virtuoso Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, a lawyer by profession, cosmopolitan in education and outlook and himself no mean musician, once wrote that Gordon had been ‘bred up in the idleness of a musitian’, but that ‘his head [had] taken a more useful, and least a more diverting turn’ when he became the laborious antiquary posterity remembers.74 We know more of how Gordon’s book was conceived, compiled and offered to the world, and of the motives underpinning his venture, than we do of any comparable work of the time. An examination of Itinerarium Septentrionale is thus an instructive case-study in the production of Scottish antiquarian literature. Most contemporary antiquaries relied on work like Gordon’s to aid their individual studies. For many, the fruits of their learning appeared in publications of their own; like Oldbuck, they prided themselves on being ‘not an apprentice in the mysteries of author-craft’. Slight works, enjoying limited circulation, on topics that had been intellectual hobby-horses for years, dribbled laboriously from their pens. Thus Jonathan Oldbuck, ‘an author of experience’, ever returned to his unfinished (and quite possibly unfinishable) ‘Essay on Roman Castrametation’, projected to occupy a quarter-inch of shelf-space in the libraries of like-minded contemporaries, as a more lasting memorial to his endeavours than his previous ephemeral contributions to The Antiquarian Repertory or The Gentleman’s Magazine (Scott 1995: 84, 87, 106). Clerk of Penicuik’s curriculum vitae of antiquarian writing is the great instance of such endeavours. Extensive and erudite was his correspondence with other gentlemen scholars, far-reaching his influence, and important his contribution to the work of others. But he himself published little, though, like Oldbuck (for whom Clerk was one 74

NLS Adv. MS 23.3,26, f. 21, Clerk to Patrick Lindsay, 4 April 1739; cf. MS 3044, f. 87v, Clerk to Robert Arbuthnot, 22 February 1726.

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of Scott’s models), he toiled over essays that remained in manuscript (I. G. Brown 1980a and b). The evolution of two such opuscula offers a further instructive case-study in Scottish antiquarian print culture. This chapter, therefore, considers the making of one major book (Gordon’s Itinerarium) and two minor tracts (Clerk on his celebrated Roman stylus, and on the sculptured and inscribed Roman stones from Middlebie, or Birrens, Dumfriesshire).

‘A book of a pretty competent thickness’: Alexander Gordon’s Itinerarium Septentrionale, London 1726 Gordon’s years as a singer on the Italian stage introduced him to Grand Tour connoisseurship and collecting, and gave him a love and knowledge of antiquities. By the early 1720s he had come under the influence of the ‘antiquarian lords and gentlemen’ in the circle of the Earl of Pembroke joined together in the Society of Antiquaries of London. Sponsored by Pembroke and others, he returned to his native Scotland to begin surveying Roman and other remains. (Surveying was indeed one of his many easily acquired accomplishments.) Through London contacts he met Sir John Clerk, who introduced him to like-minded men. Clerk became his principal Scottish patron and a loyal friend in the antiquarian endeavours Gordon would increasingly see as a furrow ploughed almost alone. To assist Gordon’s field-work Clerk lent him a horse (which Gordon called ‘my old brown Pegasus’) and saddle-bags for his drawing implements.75 Clerk wrote cheeringly to Gordon, linking his enterprise with that of Continental antiquarian scholarship: ‘Go on in your work, and solace the manes of the Scaligers, Gruterus, Hentius, Graevius and Gronovius with all the tribe of great men that have spent their time in such studies. As for those who are voide of letters we must leave them to their scrapes of modern history, foolish genealogies & old women’s tales’.76 In his day, Sir Robert Sibbald had been discouraged by the prevailing uninterest in such studies, causing him to restrict to 200 copies the print run of Historical Enquiries concerning the Roman Monuments and Antiquities in the North Part of Britain called Scotland (1707).77 By the 1720s Clerk, too, would feel that few cared about their country’s past. Nevertheless, Gordon persisted. In Sibbald’s work he found an invaluable starting-point. In 1723 he 75 76 77

NAS GD18/ 5023/3/7, Gordon to Clerk, 17 March 1724. NAS GD18/ 5023/4, Clerk to Gordon, 6 April 1724. EUL Dc. 8.35, Sibbald to Hans Sloane, 29 February 1708.

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asked James Anderson to lend him one of Sibbald’s books to take on that summer’s ‘antiquary peregrination’ or ‘virtuoso tuer’ he was to make with Clerk.78 His ‘long but prosperous peregrination in Virtuosoship’79 ended in his native Aberdeen, where he took clerical work in the Customs house at least until autumn 1724 to maintain himself while he wrote his text, and drew and engraved his plates. His evocation of his ‘Customs-house blues’ is a fine instance of the man of letters forced to seek financial support in uncongenial ways as a book was written: I confess if the question was putt to me sincerely, if these matters sute exactly with my genius and taste, I could not so far hipocrese as not to confess that the keeping tallies of Norwegian barrel skews on a bitt of stick or paper and the retaining the nice number of hemp matts and Almagnia whistles in one’s head is not the very noblest exercise that a rational creatour may be employ’d in in these so precious hours . . . Tis a sad thing not to have been born to a few riggs . . . I am observant of Caesar’s due even to the mathematicall division of a pickled herring. The town is astonished to see one whom they thought un uomo di piazza so far metamorphosed as all at once to drop into salmond barrels, matts of flax, gauging firkins, &ca.80 From Scotland Gordon sent to Pembroke’s circle in London regular reports of his ‘antiquity discoverys’. ‘I thank my stars,’ he told John Mackenzie of Delvine, ‘it seems to promise me more than adequate encouragement.’81 He communicated to the Society of Antiquaries proposals for publishing his findings. William Stukeley read these to the fellowship, and gave an account of the ‘many curious Antiquitys . . . which [Gordon] has lately discovered and describd’.82 In February 1725 Gordon issued his prospectus, printed by Thomas Ruddiman.83 The designation ‘Citizen of Aberdeen’ followed his name, though no arrangements were specified for collecting subscriptions in Scotland. The book was designed for the London market, and aimed at its substantial Scottish professional and aristocratic presence, particularly those with cultural pretensions (I. G. Brown 2010a: 60). The terms were half-a-guinea at signing, with the remaining half-guinea payable 78 79 80 81 82 83

NLS Adv. MS 29.1.2 (iv), f. 75, 19 August 1723. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/2, Gordon to Clerk, 8 November 1723. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/11, 6 October 1724. NLS MS 1281, f. 109, 25 March 1724. SAL Minute Books, MS 268, f. 44v. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/13, Gordon to Clerk, 23 November 1724.

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on receipt of the finished book, the sheets to be delivered either in London or Edinburgh. Royal paper copies were 30s. Orders for six copies elicited a seventh gratis. Gordon was delighted to tell Clerk that subscriptions were coming in from the best people such as bishops, the Duke of Devonshire and other noblemen. But some hostility from Scottish peers was manifest, and Clerk was asked to enlist support among the legal fraternity of London and Edinburgh.84 Sir John was pleased to assure Lord Hertford that ‘Mr Gordon has taken more pains this way [antiquarian research] than any here.’85 As the publication year opened, Gordon told his patron that success would come only through ‘keeping always at home and at incessant labour like a recluse’. With all his plates completed the work would make ‘a book of a pretty competent thickness’.86 Gordon’s 1725 proposals puffed the merits, originality and authenticity of a work three years in the making. By examining and describing the physical remains themselves, the ‘Monuments’, he would verify and illustrate the historical account. Accurate graphic record, the result of painstaking survey, would accompany the transcription of epigraphic evidence. In an age when authors promising much often failed to deliver (allegations later laid at his own door; Gordon would bemoan ‘the diffidence you Edenburgers have about me’ after he was suspected of taking subscriptions for another book the completion of which his enemies doubted, wrongly as it turned out),87 Gordon, by assuring the public his prints were already etched and printed, sought to convince potential subscribers of the book’s certain appearance. The work’s planned tripartite structure was ultimately reduced to two parts (the first Roman, and the second Pictish and ‘Danish’ antiquities) by omitting an over-ambitious section describing all Scotland’s collections and cabinets containing ‘Curiosities of fine Taste’. Behind Gordon’s pursuit of Roman remains and other evidence of the ancient conquest (however temporary) of Scotland lay a political purpose. Whether in the field or in print, his was ‘political antiquarianism’. Physical evidence of Roman intervention in Scotland would demonstrate the tribute paid by the world’s conquerors to a small, primitive and fiercely independent nation. Scotland was worth the effort to attempt subjection. Her freedom was bought at the price of her own continuing barbarism. Gordon, a modern post-Union 84 85 86 87

NAS GD18/ 5023/3/18, 4 March 1725. NAS 5028/4, 17 April 1725. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/27, 8 January 1726. EUL MS La.II. 220, Gordon to Charles Mackie, 2 June 1730.

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Scot with a chip on his shoulder, saw the English as the Romans. He studied the history of the Roman period largely for the credit it appeared to do the old tribal Caledonians: his hero was no Roman, but the defeated Galgacus. Gordon would have enjoyed Oldbuck’s whimsical suggestion that Lovell write a historical epic poem entitled ‘The Caledoniad; or, Invasion Repelled’, to which Lovell protests that Agricola’s invasion was not repelled (Scott 1995: 107). Gordon and Sir John Clerk – the latter an Augustan, pro-Union Whig, living as ‘Roman’ a life as possible in the Scotland of his day – both indulged in this sentimental double-game of pride at Rome’s notice, interest in the material remains of the occupation period, pleasure at repelling the conquerors and regret at the cost of exclusion from Rome’s civilising reach. Gordon carried his love–hate relationship with ancient Rome much further than Clerk; but then he was not a Baron of the Court of Exchequer who needed to live with post-Union realities of place and pay (I. G. Brown 1987; 2010: 60). Gordon’s book, even more its 1732 supplement, and much of his correspondence during the Itinerarium’s compilation, harks on these themes. As his dedication to the Duke of Queensberry asserts, Gordon’s exposition of the monuments was ‘intended chiefly to illustrate the Roman Actions in Scotland, and of consequence, the Atchievements of its ancient Inhabitants’ (my italics). Letters to John Mackenzie of Delvine especially reveal his attitudes: there was an English plot to deny Scotland’s history and ancient greatness, ‘to strip us of every thing that does our Country honour’; but this ‘shall not go altogether impune, if my weak endeavours can help it’.88 On publication of this proposal Gordon confided to Mackenzie: ‘the contents of the work will conduce to the Illustration of our country’s honour’. True patriots would be his subscribers.89 Gordon proposed to do justice to my country in applying these monuments of Roman antiquity in order to show them as lasting Trophys of the invincible valure of our noble predicessors and by them shame the growing degeneracy we’re involv’d in with Southeren luxury. If therefore I meet with discouragement from Scotsmen I don’t wonder, since how much the more I shall illustrate our forefathers’ grandeur, they will be stings to so many corrupted and degenerate sones. The greatest enemies I’ve mett with here [London] have been some few Scotsmen who have discountenanc’d my

88 89

NLS MS 1281, f. 108, Gordon to Mackenzie, 5 February 1724. NLS MS 1281, f. 112, 5 January 1725.

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undertaking, and made it their business to disparage the work and hinder the very English to subscribe. But this apart, ‘the best Quality and most learned of the nation here [are] my Encouragers’.90 In finishing his book Gordon observed that, with greater encouragement through the advance money called for in his subscription, his plates might have been better; they are, in fact, generally poor, exhibiting both naïve draughtsmanship and indifferent engraving. But he carefully points out that presentation should not divert the reader from appreciating the essential veracity of the visual evidence assembled (Gordon, Itinerarium, 1726: 187). Gordon recruited all and everything he could to his political antiquarian crusade. When Clerk wrote a series of private letters to the antiquary Roger Gale on Scottish cairns and archaeological evidence for ancient burial practices, Gordon was desperate to include them in his book, with or without authorial consent. (The letters were in fact published by subterfuge, annoying and embarrassing Clerk, who would happily have seen them printed as Gordon’s and his own role suppressed.) Clerk’s writing opportunely, though completely innocently and coincidentally, enhanced Gordon’s political aims, and he told Sir John he had never seen so glorious a performance in so small a space. I have many reasons to be rejoised at yr sending it and blessed be God I’ve by this been able to show the English what kind of men of learning Caledonia has yet reserved for herself as Galgacus said quos sibi Caledonia viros seposuerit.91 Clerk did not nourish grudges. Certainly the publication of his letters surprised him, though the episode did not restrict his own rising reputation in the antiquarian world of London of which he enjoyed the adulation on his 1727 visit. He was genuinely anxious about the reception of Gordon’s work, and begged the assistance of London friends in helping Gordon ‘put off [sell] his books’: ‘Tho’ he proceeded to write of antiquities without any fund of letters, yet his endeavours deserve commendation, and I hope his performance will not be so far wrong as some people fancy’.92 Clerk, who hesitated habitually in his own publishing ventures, will have been alarmed on Gordon’s behalf by one contemporary London scholar’s gloom. William Stukeley, author of Itinerarium Curiosum (1724), told Clerk that 90 91 92

NLS MS 1281, f. 114, Gordon to Mackenzie, 13 March 1725. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/28, 29 January 1726. NLS MS 3044, f. 87v, Clerk to Robert Arbuthnot, 22 February 1726.

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the state of learning and books here lies more in the art of raising subscriptions than in writing . . . I was in hopes when I fell into the road of antiquities that I should have made it more beneficial to me, than endeavouring to entertain the public at the expense of my own private fortune as well as study and labor.93 It appears that Clerk imagined Stukeley and Gordon pooling their resources to publish their books (or at any rate certainly their future work) jointly as an on-going ‘Thesaurus’ of discoveries in RomanoBritish archaeology, presumably on the pattern of contemporary Dutch encyclopaedic works of classical scholarship.94 Gale cheered Clerk with his initially favourable opinion of Itinerarium Septentrionale: ‘a beautifull work, performed with a great deal of industry’.95 Clerk was relieved, despite the shock of seeing his letters in print: it is ‘really a work above my expectation and might have pleased everybody if [Gordon] had been less precipitate in publishing it’. But Clerk was uneasy at the strongly nationalist tone of Gordon’s argument, and his willful misreading of literary evidence to suit his political purpose: ‘Mr Gordon’s high respect for his country hath carried him too far, and made him commit a sort of laudable fault.’96 Gale soon concurred, chiding Gordon for thinking himself ‘perfectly right in all things’, being too hasty in publication and too zealous for Scotland’s honour, a tendency that ‘may have exceeded its due bounds’.97 Gordon found London more conducive by far to scholarship than Scotland. Paradoxically for a nationalist like Gordon, his letters to Clerk and others praise English taste and learning, while abusing what Gordon interpreted as Scottish boorishness – which may actually have been the animus against him of London Scots with their own motives: ‘Indeed, Baron, ’tis not here as in Scotland that men of fashion and quality are ashamed to talk of Antiquities, but the greatest ornament a man can have is to know and be able to converse upon them’.98 Some Scotsmen hoped his book would never materialise; others that it would fail should ever it appear. Gordon crowed with delight as both camps were disappointed. Clerk received an impartial judgement from a London contact that ‘Most people here, may I say all, looks upon 93

NAS GD18/ 5027/5, Stukeley to Clerk, 18 April 1726. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/17, Gordon to Clerk, 12 February 1726. 95 NAS GD18/ 5030/3, Gale to Clerk, 26 April 1726. 96 NAS GD18/ 5029, p. 104, Clerk to Gale, 2 June 1726. 97 NAS GD18/ 5030/4, Gale to Clerk, 24 June 1726. 98 NAS GD18/ 5023/3/17, Gordon to Clerk, 12 February 1726. 94

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[the book as] the most just and distinct of its kinde that well could be publish’d, an the more that reads it the more it takes.’99 Itinerarium Septentrionale’s Edinburgh distributor was Allan Ramsay, who told Clerk that Gordon had sent him a modest three dozen copies. Of these, Clerk personally accounted for five, three of which Ramsay bound for 12s.100 Sir John’s annotated copy has recently been discovered, and its owner’s comments shed further light on the relationship between patron and author (I. G. Brown 2011). Gordon published a 1732 supplement to the Itinerarium, containing ‘Additions and Corrections’, stating that it was intended for the Latin edition then being printed in Holland (of which we hear no more), but that out of fairness to the original British subscribers to the 1726 edition, he had issued it in English. The Scottish nationalist flavour was stronger in this supplement, as lines in its dedicatory epistle make clear: ‘The Remains of Antiquity I am describing, are such as illustrate the History of the noblest and most successful Resistance of any to the Violence of the Usurping Roman.’ Gordon’s treatment in London in the intervening years, and especially the emergence of a scholar who promised a more sophisticated history of Roman Britain, had soured his view of life and authorship. All that mattered to Gordon now was bringing out his Supplement before the publication of what would be the magisterial work of John Horsley, Britannia Romana (1732), which would rapidly eclipse his own. Gordon developed a pathological dislike of Horsley and his achievement. He was upset that the even-handed Clerk had assisted Horsley, and he was jealous, vindictive and peevish in all his references to the poor North Country clergyman. Gordon had become conscious as early as 1728 of Horsley’s threat to his reputation, and immediately scorned his adversary, belittling his project, his research and fieldwork, his draughtsmanship, his plates, his integrity as man and priest and his very sanity. A drawing of Horsley’s that Gordon received from Clerk was dismissed as feeble: it as much resembled the plan of a Roman camp ‘as a camp’s like a gown and cassock, and as my word with the world will as soon be taken as Mr Horsley’s I conceive he’d better apply to the antiquities of the Gospel than those among us in Scotland’.101 Gordon’s vituperation increased daily, as he learned of Horsley’s intentions and progress: ‘I verily believe the Poor Priest is crasey . . . In fine, I take Mr Horsley’s antiquarian affairs to be like thorns crackling under 99

NAS GD18/ 3207/20, George Gray to Clerk, 7 June 1726. NAS GD18/ 4319, Ramsay to Clerk, 7 May 1726. 101 NAS GD18/ 5023/3/40, Gordon to Clerk, 13 August 1728. 100

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a pot: vox et praeterea nihil . . . Let us see what production this parturient montes will give us.’ Gordon would not acknowledge Horsley’s scrupulous attention to the archaeological and topographical record of a land Gordon regarded as a personal antiquarian fiefdom. Thus he wrote of a standing stone: I saw it and did not think it worthwhile to mention so shapeless and bare a stone to the publick, we having hundreds and thousands in Scotland more shapely and large than that and not deserving to trouble the world with, and indeed many cairns . . . larger than his senseless tumulus. You may be sure I looked at them and despised them, as everybody will his descriptions of such tryffles . . . I laugh at his second gleanings of the harvest I’ve reapt, and I remit all to time . . . 102 Clerk attempted to hold the ring between the warring antiquaries, mediating and assisting both parties (I. G. Brown 2011). All the favour I desire of him [Horsley] is to be discreet to poor Mr Gordon if he thinks he has mistaken anything . . . This gentleman has done better than anybody who went before him and indeed considering his education he has done much better than anybody cou’d expect. Mr Horsley will not I hope differ from him about trifles, tho’ most of the disputes which happen between Criticks and Antiquaries are of this kind. Clerk’s condescending attitude to Gordon was matched by a somewhat contemptuous assessment of Horsley’s motivation: ‘The work he is undertaking is rather for bread . . . he being but soberly provided for’ as a dissenting country clergyman.103 One recalls Gordon’s wistful comment about a needy scholar not having been born to a few rigs. The race between Horsley and Gordon was most intense in 1731. Clerk found himself research assistant to both men, with Gordon effectively putting pressure on him to furnish information (drawings and texts of inscriptions) to deadlines determined by the perceived progress of ‘Mr Horsley’s leviathan’ which had ‘not shewen its head as yet’. ‘If I do not publish my supplement before Horsley’s Britannia Romana (which I hear will be very soon abroad), my enemies may say I have borrowed all my corrections & everything from him . . . Dear Baron, procure them with all imaginable haste. I’d sell my cloathes

102 103

NAS GD18/ 5023/3/41, Gordon to Clerk, 7 September 1728. NAS GD18/ 5033/3, Clerk to Professor Matthew Crauford, 6 January 1729.

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before I had them not.’104 Gale described Gordon blustering about, ‘injudiciously ravenous after every thing that will swell his Appendix’ and threatening to ‘take up the cudgels against [Horsley] if he attacks him upon any thing he has wrote’.105 Gordon speciously protested that to differ from any man in opinion either as to a branch of literature or virtuosoship ought not, methinks, to be reckoned criminal among the curious or phylosophicall set of mankind, so long as one uses good manners . . . Curiosity is the soul of all praiseworthy researches, the very vitals of learning, as learning is the first spring of virtue . . . nor ought my differing from my friend in a point of curiosity be like a punctilio of honour among officers, foxhunters, beaux and suchlike insects of nature.106 Publication of both Horsley’s massive book (a posthumous event) and Gordon’s slim Supplement only highlighted the unequal confrontation. Clerk did his best to defend and excuse Gordon: ‘a little more learning would make him a compleat modern critic. I have been sorry often to observe such weaknesses . . .’ One such was Gordon’s ‘borrowing’ yet again Clerk’s own writings – this time an early version of his Middlebie stones dissertation – to be included without permission. Gordon, always fickle, produced nothing further on Roman Scotland. No sooner was the imperfect supplement to Itinerarium Septentrionale out than he embraced the even trickier subject of Egyptian antiquities, to which (despite Clerk’s discouragement) he devoted the rest of his life. Learned dissertations were projected; a series of plates was engraved and sold; a magnum opus was long toiled over. But that is another story. Clerk loyally bought the prints by subscription, but refused to countenance the larger-scale Egyptian undertakings, suggesting to Gale that Gordon’s work would have ‘so little profite either to himself or to others’ that it was better abandoned. He told Gordon he would ‘willingly give ten guineas that nothing should be published to the world but what a society of learned men thought worth the publishing, and in that case very few things would be thought to deserve the light’.107 Yet Clerk retained his affection for ‘Gordonius the Caledonian’, paradoxical in his support for a paradoxical figure epitomised thus in 1739: ‘Whatever weaknesses you may discover about him he is one of the most friendly, grateful men I ever knew in my 104

NAS GD18/ 5023/3/53, Gordon to Clerk, 16 June 1731. NAS GD18/ 5030/22, Gale to Clerk, 20 November 1731. 106 NAS GD18/ 5023/3/57, Gordon to Clerk, ? June 1732. 107 NAS GD18/ 5031/9, Clerk to Gale, 12 May 1736. 105

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life, and prodigiously sober and laborious.’108 Gordon, essentially, had the last laugh: Jonathan Oldbuck, well satisfied with the Itinerarium, entertained no need of Horsley’s Britannia Romana.

‘Unlick’d cubs’: Sir John Clerk’s Essays on the Roman Stylus and on Roman Stones from Middlebie All his life, Clerk was uncertain about committing himself to print, oscillating between hostility and indifference. His unpublished output was large, but he agonised over the long-term fate of his many lucubrations, referring frequently to his wish to preserve his writings, but equally to his reluctance to see them published. But he also believed that he (like all good antiquaries) owed a debt to posterity to preserve the material remains of the past which he held, as it were, in trust; and he recognised that publication achieved this most effectively. Alexander Gordon went as far as one in his dependent station could to upbraid his patron for his diffidence, chiding the baronet for insisting ‘upon a modesty and self-denyal which is too great’.109 Clerk liked to see in his clerkly surname the identification with men of learning and literature; not surprisingly, by extension, his interests embraced the historic tools of the physical business of writing. One particular item in his collection inspired him especially to publish on the topic; and the fact that he discoursed on the subject at different times and different lengths over nearly thirty years in two languages and published in two countries is worth remarking. Very early in the eighteenth century what was thought to be a Roman brass stylus in its case or theca graphiaria was dug up on the Penicuik estate. (This seems to be a surgeon’s probe in its tubular container, and nothing whatsoever to do with writing – a fact adding whimsicality to the story of Clerk’s authorship on the subject.) At the time Clerk, recently widowed and depressed, wrote that he, like the very type of literary man, ‘lived very retiredly, studied hard, eated and sleept little’ (Clerk 1892: 45). He must have taken a particular interest in this object, for in 1704 he published a four-page pamphlet, An Enquiry into the Roman Stylus: lacking author’s name, date or any imprint, this was overlooked as Clerk’s until the identification of his own copy among the Penicuik muniments (NAS GD18/ 3129) allowed the NLS copies (L.180.9.4(2); RB.s. 2287 (2)) to be given to him, and a date assigned. The work is undoubtedly very rare. In 1775 George Paton alerted 108 109

NLS Adv. MS 23. 3. 26, f. 21, Clerk to Patrick Lindsay, 4 April 1739. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/35, 6 June 1726.

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Richard Gough to a copy (‘not to be met with here else [I] would have sent it you long ago’) appearing in a bookseller’s catalogue. Paton transcribed the entire tract for Gough.110 Without evidence to the contrary, or incontrovertible proof of Clerk’s authorship, Paton attributed the pamphlet to James Sutherland. Sir Robert Sibbald referred to the stylus in his Historical Enquiries (1707), Miscellenea Quaedam Eruditae Antiquitatis (1710) and Conjectures Concerning the Roman Ports, Colonies and Forts in the Firths (1711), and illustrated it in his books’ crude plates, engraved by Robert Miln. Gordon, too, featured it in his Itinerarium as ‘the greatest Rarity of that Kind ever found in Britain’ (Gordon 1726: 117). Thus Clerk’s stylus or probe (or whatever it was) entered the archaeological canon. The ultimate accolade came when Daniel Defoe (who had known Clerk in Edinburgh around the time of the Union controversy) referred in flattering terms both to Clerk and his little pamphlet in his Essay upon Literature (1726) when discussing the history of writing. Clerk was alerted to this by a correspondent who had no idea that Defoe was actually the writer of this praise111 (Backscheider 1987: 381). Sibbald had told Sir Hans Sloane that his English publications attracted so little notice that he resorted to a more learned tongue: ‘I find so few here curious of that sort of learning, I judged it better to publish it in Latine.’112 Even Gordon determined to issue the text of a projected map of the Roman walls in English and Latin ‘for the Use of Foreigners’ (Gordon 1726: 188). Clerk, imbued by the Roman ethos and devoted to the pursuit of a Roman life, eventually revisited his early interest; thus in the later 1720s he compiled an enlarged Latin version of his 1704 pamphlet. The intervening years had thoroughly convinced Clerk of the value of material evidence to the understanding of classical literature and culture: ‘the things themselves speak’, he reasoned. As an exponent of the cult of ‘honestum otium’ he always carried notebook and pencil with him, even when shooting or fishing, as his hero Pliny had carried his stylus and wax tablets. His publication of 1731, Dissertatio de Stylis Veterum et Diversis Chartarum Generibus, was heavy with discussion of Roman sources for the use of writing implements and materials: pens, ink, styli, tablets, papyrus, paper, etc. This work, like its predecessor anonymous and lacking date and imprint, is also very scarce. Within the year Gale published a synopsis in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (vol. 420, 110 111 112

NLS Adv. MS 29.5.7 (ii), f. 71, 7 December 1775. NAS, GD18/ 5083, anon to Patrick Anderson, n.d. EUL Dc.8.35, f. 35, 8 October 1706.

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August–September 1731: 157–63), of which Clerk had recently been elected a Fellow, crediting him as ‘the learned & judicious author’. Contemporaries received Clerk’s work well, praising his comprehensive use of classical authorities and his illustrating the sources by reference to the material evidence. Gale assured the author that ‘he could not get [his] dinner till [he] had read it once over’.113 Gordon asked for copies to give Dr Richard Mead and Sir Hans Sloane. Then (transiently) in bookselling, Gordon also sought to reprint the work in London.114 Professor Thomas Blackwell found the dissertation exemplar and proof of ‘the neatness and truth that distinguished [Clerk’s] things’. Clerk’s learned endeavours threw into relief the prevailing philistinism that Blackwell saw around him among the landed and professional classes: ‘There is no wrong done to our countrymen in thinking them careless about learning. The cares of ambition and money, or the last pleasure of sauntering and drinking swallows up the whole time of those who should taste and encourage literature most.’115 Word of Clerk’s work spread to Europe. Copies were distributed in his old university of Leiden and Clerk’s friend Hermann Boerhaave and Abraham Gronovius (son of his sometime teacher, Jacob) were among the recipients. Another was Professor Havercamp, who likes it very much and will write to his friend at Venice to have it put into the extraordinary volume which is to be added to the Thesaurus now printing there; but we wait your consent and at the same time that you’ll give us your title in Latin which we would have from yourself lest we might commit some mistake in it.116 For a provincial British gentleman antiquary to be included in what would become Utriusque Thesauri Antiquitatum Romanarum Graecarumque Nova Supplementa, Joannes Polenus’s five-volume supplement to the great thesauri of classical antiquities compiled by Graevius and Gronovius (the work of the former having also, though indirectly, influenced the young Clerk) was a major coup. One can imagine the pride with which the Baron of the Scottish Court of Exchequer set out his orotund style for the Venetian printer Giovanni Battista Pasquali: the previously anonymous essay on the stylus was to be credited to ‘Joannis Clerici Baronis Aerarii Scotici apud Britannos’. 113 114 115 116

NAS GD18/ 5030/18, Gale to Clerk, 2 March 1731. NAS GD18/ 5023/3/52, Gordon to Clerk, 19 April 1731. NAS GD18/ 5036/10, Blackwell to Clerk, 5 March 1731. NAS GD18/ 5094, Isaac Lawson to Clerk, 29 September 1734.

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All the more astonishing, therefore, is the erroneousness of part at least of Clerk’s thesis. In his anxiety to include among his corpus of archaeological evidence as many examples as possible of ancient styli, he mistakenly identified as writing implements objects that were quite obviously fibulae. The absurdity was made fully manifest in the engraved plate illustrating Clerk’s 1731 dissertation, reprinted in Polenus’s thesaurus (Figure 5.1). A hand is shown writing with the pin of an Iron Age or Romano-British brooch, the bow of which nestles in the writer’s hand! The ornamental terminal or butt end of the brooch could, in Clerk’s distorted reasoning, be used for erasing characters inscribed upon wax tablets. Not even an Oldbuck could have imagined that. The handsome volumes of Polenus’s thesaurus (Venice, 1737) bear upon their elegant title-pages an emblematic design by none other than G. B. Tiepolo, engraved by Pietro Monaco. But of this design there are two states. In one, Minerva and her owl appear wideawake and intelligent. Clerk’s dissertation was included in the third volume of the work; and on that title-page Minerva, appropriately enough, appears to have her eyes firmly shut, as if the goddess of learning herself nods over a book that contains such a manifestly absurd theory as Clerk’s of the brooch-pen. One senses the editor’s struggling to say something complimentary of Clerk’s ‘opusculum’, which came to him unsolicited from a ‘very learned and honest Dutch friend’. In his introduction Polenus observed the anonymity and lack of bibliographic details of the original 1731 pamphlet. Now, in its Venetian version, he was pleased to ‘decorate with a famous name a little work clearly worthy of a famous author’ (Polenus: III: xxvi). Given Clerk’s gaffe, anonymity and obscurity might have been preferable. Only the year before, Blackwell had shared with Clerk his belief that ‘Writing, or at least Publishing, is an idle thing. It is hazarding your quiet and reputation, two substantial things, to catch at a shadow.’117 More substantial and less controversial than Clerk’s styli was the Middlebie group of Roman stones. In 1731 he rescued these from illusage. They would be much discussed subsequently. Looking back twenty years later, Clerk noted that his Latin dissertation on the stones had been undertaken ‘that at least posterity may not despise and destroy them’ (Clerk 1892: 139). Though this shows commendable concern for preserving antiquities, and admits that publication best conserves their scholarly value, Clerk nevertheless took his accustomed time steeling himself for his next published appearance. His dissertation, composed in 1743 but subsequently much revised, 117

NAS GD18/ 5036/39, Blackwell to Clerk, 9 January 1736.

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Figure 5.1 Clerk’s ‘writing implements’ illustrated in Polenus’s thesaurus.

was seven years reaching print. By way of rehearsal he had written a shorter English description of the antiquities in 1731. This he had sent to Gale, and it no doubt circulated in that antiquarian coterie.118 Drawings were also sent to Horsley, and he took account of the information as his book was in the press.119 By early 1732 news of the stones and Clerk’s work had spread to Leiden where Abraham Gronovius paid deferential attention to what his father’s former pupil had to say.120 As already stated, Gordon (determined to scoop Horsley) got hold of and printed a version of the early dissertation on the stones, much to Clerk’s displeasure (Additions and Corrections . . . to the ‘Itinerarium Septentrionale’ 1732: 27–9), and also included a poor plate of the sculptures. Considering the exposure that his stones, and his thoughts 118

NAS GD18/ 5040. NAS GD18/5038/ 15 and 17, Horsley to Clerk, 20 September and 7 December 1731. 120 NAS GD18/ 5089, Abraham Gronovius to Clerk, [January 1732]. 119

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on them, had already received, Clerk’s coyness about publishing seems odd. Gale recognised this in the context of yet another of his friend’s manuscript essays and wrote: ‘I shall strictly observe your commands to suffer its falling into no hands that may publish it. It shall remain a hidden treasure with me.’121 Clerk spent summer 1743 at Penicuik working on the Latin treatise, ‘chiefly that these valouable Monuments may be preserved’. It was also ‘design’d as a present’ to the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, of which he was a vice-president. (Clerk 1892: 166). After many revisions, he noted on the final manuscript in January 1748: ‘This if my friends think fit may be printed to do justice to the above named Monuments.’122 His mind was finally focused by Gavin Hamilton’s and Thomas Ruddiman’s interest in publication. Hamilton wrote in April 1747: ‘Mr Ruddiman seems fond that it be published and it will be a great disappointment to him if it is suppressed’123 and, on the same day, Ruddiman also assured a diffident Clerk that the dissertation was ‘a very learned and ingenious performance and that it well deserves to be made publick’. The grammarian had, however, found some errors in the language (to spare Sir John’s blushes he attributed these to the transcriber) and other points of dispute ‘which by your minding more the things themselves, than the manner of expressing them, may have escaped yourself’. The manuscript was returned for revision.124 When Ruddiman next wrote, Clerk had made his final changes and determined to go forward. Ruddiman confessed to being ‘fond of everything that helps to illustrate the Antiquities of our Nation’ and proposed an edition of 200 copies.125 Richard Cooper was the engraver and considerably improved upon Gordon’s effort. Clerk still seemed to swither over which language to use, and proof plates titled in both English and Latin survive. Anonymity was firmly chosen, but moderated by an arch half-concealment of the whereabouts of the antiquities, which any cognoscente would have realised was Penicuik. But Clerk, now old, had never been keen on pedantry and the minutiae of scholarship: his title-page clearly indicates the original discovery of the stones in 1731, although the date 1733 appears opposite in the frontispiece. The rector of Dalkeith grammar school suggested Clerk distribute his work to friends and admirers, and in a schoolmasterly way John Love took to task the venerable antiquary for indifference to his 121

NAS GD18/ 5030/ 84, n.d. NAS GD18/ 5061. 123 NAS GD18/ 5108/3, 23 April 1747. 124 NAS GD18/ 5108/1. 125 NAS GD18/ 5108/2, Ruddiman to Clerk, 5 April 1748. 122

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own efforts: ‘It is a Dissertation not unworthy of the gravest judge in England, and it is what persons of the greatest rank would not only not be ashamed of, that on the contrary they would value themselves in giving light to and explaining of Roman antiquities and monuments dug up in Britain.’126 Clerk explained to Thomas Blackwell why he had not put his name to the treatise, and cast a final dim light on his authorial persona. Blackwell was a university professor for whom writing and publishing were ‘in perfect character as became his profession’. For Clerk, the amateur, it was neither in character nor in decorum: ‘At this time of life I did not think it proper for me to write anything by way of amusement. All I intended was a compliment to these antiquities in my custody and to prevent them being lost and destroyed.’127

126 127

NAS GD18/ 5065, 27 April 1750. NAS GD18/ 5048, 6 August 1750.

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The Journalistic Life: Thomas Blacklock David Shuttleton In 1913 it could be confidently asserted that ‘the name of Blacklock is still a household word in Scotland’ but if Thomas Blacklock (Plate 36) is remembered today it is for being ‘the first literary man of established reputation who recognised the genius of Burns’ (Miller 1913: 369). A complimentary letter from Blacklock has often been credited with persuading Burns to abandon his emigration plans and try his poetic fortunes in Edinburgh (Ross Roy 1985: I: 145). Inevitably Burns came to overshadow Blacklock, but the latter’s career as a poet, educator and translator rewards attention. While this represents a typical range of activities for a scholarly man of letters, in one respect Blacklock’s was an exceptional achievement for he had been left totally blind after contracting smallpox at five months old. Burns’s remark that Blacklock ‘belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope’ is often quoted but never seriously considered (Ross Roy 1985: I: 145). On the face of it Blacklock’s literary output does not seem to justify Burns’s remark until we consider his mature activities as a scholarly journalist. Blacklock’s work as a reviewer for Gilbert Stuart’s innovative Edinburgh Magazine and Review, which appeared monthly from November 1773 to August 1776, was acknowledged in Robert Kerr’s biography of William Smellie but, as William Zachs notes, Kerr’s attribution lists are questionable; he relied upon the marginalia in Smellie’s now lost annotated copies of the Edinburgh Magazine (Kerr 1811: I: 401–8; EMR: I: vi, xiii–xvi). Firmer evidence comes from Blacklock’s own manuscript ledger containing twenty-one reviews and other essays (Miller 1913: 62; Shuttleton 2003).128 Sixteen appeared in Stuart’s publication, addressing literary 128

In addition to those discussed here, Blacklock’s confirmed reviews for EMR are: November 1773, 92–3 [Treatise of Modern Faulconry] and 39–44 [An Attempt to shew that the

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works – including poetry, verse-drama and prose fiction – as well as education, theology and philosophy. In keeping with Stuart’s editorial policy, Blacklock’s reviewing emphasises Edinburgh or Glasgow publications; often there is a direct connection between a title’s printer or bookseller and one or more of the magazine’s share-holders, the printer Smellie and the booksellers William Creech, Charles Elliot and John Murray. Where a commercial connection is lacking, there is evidence of Blacklock’s own personal interest, either as an associate of the author or because the work occupied an intellectual position that he opposed. The former includes his complimentary review of Infancy; a Poem, by the Exeter physician Hugh Downman, an Edinburgh medical graduate with whom Blacklock sustained a literary friendship (EMR, August 1774); The latter takes in Blacklock’s vehement tirade against the 1774 English translation of The Child of Nature improved by Chance, a Philosophical Novel, by the radical French philosophe Claude Adrien Helvetius (EMR, August 1774: 605–7). Some of Blacklock’s reviews, such as that of Gorges Edmond Howard’s Irish tragedy The Siege of Tamor, conventionally offer an extract from the work framed by only the briefest comment (EMR, January 1774: I: 207–12). Others reflect Stuart’s pioneering approach for the London reviews, in offering substantial critical comment. Blacklock’s stance towards native productions is expressed in his review of Poems, Chiefly Rural by William Richardson, Glasgow University Professor of Humanity: However common it may be among us to extol the refinements and learning of the present period . . . still it must be acknowledged that, in purity of idiom, in propriety of diction, and in accuracy of accentuation, the generality of Scotch writers, who have not travelled, or studied the language with unwearied attention and assiduity, are obviously inferior to the English . . . It must, therefore, give us and every sincere enthusiast for literature, the most real and sensible pleasure, to see a new genius arise in our country . . . whose Muse, discovers not by the barbarity of her accent, and Knowledge of God has in all ages been derived from Revelation or Tradition, not from Nature]; November 1773, 93–6 [New System of Catholic Theology]; February 1774, 271–3 [William Richardson, Poems by the Author of the Sentimental Sailor]; March 1774, 328–9 [Nathaniel Tucker, The Bermudians]; March 1774, 330–2 [John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters]; June 1774, 491–4 [John Tait, Cave of Morar]; August 1774, 609–10 [John Tait, The Druid’s Monument]. Contra Kerr, Blacklock did not write the review of David Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind on the Principle of the Association of Ideas (December 1775, 703–10).

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the harshness of her numbers, that she has acquired her first ideas of harmony and modulation north of the Tweed. (EMR, February 1774: I: 262–3) Such anxiety over linguistic propriety – so-called ‘Scotticisms’ – was commonplace within the polite, metropolitan, Whig circles to which Blacklock, a staunch Unionist, belonged (Basker 1993). Burns may well not have expected praise from such quarters, but while Blacklock’s reviewing shows a concern to both appease and patriotically impress a London readership, nonetheless as early as 1765 he was privately experimenting with writing verse in Scots (Miller 1913: 7). Blacklock’s reviewing also betrays a strong engagement with current debates in metaphysics, philosophy and conjectural history. When praising William Richardson’s Philosophical Analysis and Illustration of some of Shakespeare’s Remarkable Characters, Blacklock considers how, for those who pursue ‘the importance of experiment, as well in the philosophy of mind as of body’, it is ‘much more difficult . . . to pursue a course of mental’ rather than ‘corporeal’ investigations (EMR: August 1774: II: 605). His university studies had left Blacklock a well-informed opponent of scepticism. He eventually used journalism to champion the arguments for religious orthodoxy propounded by his friend and patron, the Aberdeen moral philosopher James Beattie. Since the late 1760s Blacklock had been in regular receipt of early drafts of Beattie’s provocative Essay on the Immutability of Truth (1771), which vilified the blind poet’s one-time patron Hume, immediately gaining Beattie widespread acclaim as a champion of orthodoxy. Shortly before publication Blacklock received a request from Beattie to draw up a short critical account of my Book, to be inserted in the Edinburgh publick papers. It has I find become the fashion to recommend every new publication in this manner to the notice of the publick; and were it to be omitted in the present case, I am afraid it would be thought that no body is interested either for me or my works.129 Blacklock obliged, though his first draft was so effusive that Beattie had to tone it down so that it ‘might seem to be, what it is supposed to be, a piece of intelligence, not communicated by a friend, but drawn up

129

AUL b. 23, Beattie to Blacklock, 3 May 1770.

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by the publishers of the News-papers’.130 The revised version appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, the Caledonian Mercury and the Scots Magazine. For the Edinburgh Magazine (June 1774), Blacklock wrote a glowing review of the second part of what proved to be Beattie’s popular poem The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius (1774) (II: 438–42).131 Blacklock also produced an important critical review of Joseph Priestley’s Examination of . . . the Principles of Common Sense which identified Beattie and his associate Thomas Reid as representing a new school of Scottish philosophy. The first part of Blacklock’s very substantial discussion appeared in the Edinburgh Magazine for November 1774 and continued over the following six issues. Beattie later thanked Blacklock for his ‘curious’ ‘strictures on Priestley’ which ‘have left little’ for himself and ‘Dr Reid to do’.132 In fact Blacklock had already written a critical review of Priestley’s Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (EMR, October 1774: II: 701–21). By attacking Priestley’s materialism Blacklock was defending his own academic patrons, but he was also addressing epistemological problems directly relevant to the debate over his own abilities as a poet; a debate that shaped whether he was to be considered a genuine descriptive poet or merely a mimic. Blacklock also authored two pseudonymous essays for the Edinburgh Magazine and Review. ‘Thoughts on the Accessory Advantages of a Classical Education’ appeared in November 1773 over the signature ‘Cosmophylus’ (EMR: II: 59–67). Prompted by the lapse in the use of Latin for teaching at Edinburgh University, it reveals Blacklock’s concerns as a grammarian. More significant is ‘An Essay on the Education of the Blind’ which opened the October 1774 issue over the pseudonym ‘Demodocus’, the name of a blind bard praised in The Odyssey. Blacklock later expanded this to form the substantial article ‘Blind’ for the 1778–84 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (I: 283–306). This historically important article marks the emergence of a new discourse recognising the blind as a disadvantaged social group with particular educational requirements. Blacklock not only confronts hostile and patronising social attitudes but illustrates their inhibiting psychological impact by presenting agonistic passages from the blind poets Homer, Milton and Ossian. The personal subtext becomes even more 130

AUL a. 59, Blacklock to Beattie 27 May 1770 and NLS, Fettercairn Archive, Beattie to Forbes, 19 June 1770. 131 AUL b. 80, Beattie to Blacklock, 7 July 1774. 132 AUL b. 91, Beattie to Blacklock 19 March 1775.

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telling when Blacklock, writing in the third person, actually addresses the philosophical speculations prompted by his own career. The more practical sections reflect Blacklock’s concern with French innovations in educating the blind. At the time of his death Blacklock was preparing a composite study of blind education, for which he began a translation of the Essai sur l’education de aveugles, ou exposé de différens moyens . . . pour mettre en etat de lire à l’aide du tact (Paris, 1786), by the Parisian academic Valentin Haüy, which contains the first use of embossing (raised type). Hoping to replicate Haüy’s method Blacklock sought the patronage of the Society of Antiquaries and the technical expertise of his former editor William Smellie (Kerr 1811: II: 21), one of the Society’s founders and Edinburgh’s most accomplished printer. The project aimed to raise a charity subscription for the ‘Royal Blind Asylum and School’ eventually founded at Edinburgh in 1793 (Grant 1882: II: 335). Blacklock’s translation of Hauy’s Essai was appended to his posthumous Poems (1793). Blacklock also contributed the article ‘Poetry’ and entries on other, unidentified subjects for the second edition of the Encyclopaedia. However, a letter from Blacklock to the banker William Forbes (16 April 1777), who had promised to interpose with ‘the proprietors of the Encylopedea [sic], if any difference should occur’, offers a glimpse of these commercial negotiations. Thus far there had been nothing to dispute ‘because we have not entered minutely into the question but as I have reason to fear that scruples may occur from the parts of the proprietors’ Blacklock wished ‘if possible to anticipate and prevent them’: It was my wish to transact the matter with Mr. [John] Hutton alone, but I am afraid others may interfere, whose manners and dispositions are less liberal. When I first engaged with these gentlemen, my personal affairs were in some degree embarrassed, and my spirits too much depressed to form any plan, or to specify any precise conditions with them; nor did such measures appear necessary, because at that time, I regarded the task undertaken, as much less extensive and laborious, than it has in reality proved. For what I have already written for them amounts to upwards of 90 sheets in MSS. and before I have finished, the quantity, must rise to more than an hundred. Last night Mr [Andrew] Bell the engraver called upon me, and desired to know my terms . . . As this is the first negotiation of its kind in which I have ever been concerned. I then was, and still continue to be, at a loss what answer to return.

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With Bell pressing for a deal, Blacklock asked Forbes the favour of ‘previously entering into a conversation with Mr. Hutton upon the subject’ for if they ‘will submit the affair to your arbitration, I will . . . acquiesce without a murmur’, but should they not choose ‘to treat me as an author conscious of performing his task not without success, may expect to be treated, I will give them such articles as are extraneous to Musick Gratis, restore them what I received from them, and publish the musical article with its notes and illustrations in a volume by itself, which I hope may in some measure reward the labour it has cost me’.133 Blacklock may have carried out this last threat for he has been credited with being the author of the substantial ‘Dissertation on Scottish Music’ appended to Hugo Arnot’s History of Edinburgh (1779). Blacklock’s protracted critique of Priestley was his final contribution to Stuart’s journal. In April 1775 he was telling Beattie that ‘the circulation of the Edinburgh Review in England is not so extensive as could be wished’ since ‘there is a prepossession against it’.134 Reflecting upon Stuart’s reputation for personal animosity, Beattie replied: You need not wonder that the Edinburgh Review should have been so little read in London. Reviews of all kinds are less minded there than in any other parts of the Kingdom . . . There seems to be some unaccountable want of consideration in the conduct of that paper. What has the Publick to do with their private quarrels? The Author of a magazine, Review or News-paper, should be as impartial as a historian; and every thing he says in his own person should have the appearance of candour and good nature.135 Within a month Blacklock had himself clashed with Smellie because he was unwilling to expose himself ‘to ridicule and censure’ by writing to ‘chastise’ a poet he had not even read. Blacklock was ‘almost resolved never to write anything but what is exhorted from me by the indispensable necessity of my private affairs . . . though I should be no longer considered your assistant, you may still regard me as your subscriber, for which punctual payment may be expected, when the numbers are regularly sent’ (Kerr 1811: II: 21). As a consequence of Stuart’s notoriously vitriolic style the Edinburgh Review only lasted another eight months. Stuart’s sustained mockery of James Burnett, Lord Monboddo’s Of the Origin and Progress of Language (1773), must have placed Blacklock in 133

NLS Fettercairn. AUL c. 227, Blacklock to Beattie 3 April 1775. 135 AUL b. 103, Beattie to Blacklock, 10 December 1775. 134

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a particularly uncomfortable position since Monboddo’s glancing reference to Blacklock’s own theory that language had originated with the imitation of birdsong had already prompted the latter to write a series of open letters to Walter Ruddiman’s Edinburgh Weekly Magazine (April 1773) defending the religious propriety of such speculations. The manuscript volume of Blacklock’s journalism is entitled ‘Letters and Observations on Men, Books, and Manners, By George Tenant, Farmer in the Lands of Grim Gribber’. This pseudonym probably alludes ironically to Blacklock’s protracted legal wrangles with the kirk over the payment of a stipend after his rejection by the parishioners of Kirkcudbright; the term ‘Grim Gribber’, the name of an imaginary estate named in a marriage dispute in Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1723) had come to indicate ‘legal gibberish’. ‘Lands’ refers to legal property and is used of tenements in Edinburgh’s Old Town, with ‘farmer’ in this context meaning a collector of rents. None of Blacklock’s contributions to Stuart’s journal appeared over this sobriquet, but he did use it elsewhere. For example, it appears beneath a substantial piece of ‘Theatrical Intelligence’ in the two December 1770 issues of the Weekly Magazine, written in the voice of a visiting farmer reporting his experience at an Edinburgh performance of Samuel Foote’s comedy The Minor (307–10; 353–61). This facetious account of a rowdy audience drowning out the players takes on added significance when we know the author was blind. Encouraged by Spence, Blacklock was to translate at least two French tragedies (Miller 1913: 4). Neither reached the stage but he did compose the published prologue to Jean Marshall’s Sir Harry Gaylove; or, Comedy in Embryo (Edinburgh, 1772). The morality of the stage was a perennial theme, but Blacklock’s substantial pseudonymous discussion is marked by a distinctly patriotic concern that the Scots have a duty not to emulate English vices and should appoint their own equivalent of the Lord Chamberlain to act as theatrical censor. In 1770 Blacklock was supporting Marshall in launching a new journal to be called The Trifler by ‘supplying her with a few numbers’ including ‘a formal attack upon Mr Hume’s Solution of our idea of causes & Effects’.136 Blacklock seems to have felt let down by this early champion, but Hume’s philosophy ‘had long in its full extent been the object of my contemplation’, even though the effect had been to plunge him into Miltonic ‘Darkness Visible’. However, as he informed Beattie, ‘after long suspense and painful investigations a more luminous philosophy took possession of my spirit which was confirmed . . . by your 136

AUL c. 31, Blacklock to Beattie, 30 April 1770.

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essay’. Blacklock added that those who have read his critique of Hume for The Trifler, express much surprize that I who was so intimately connected with Mr Hume & so much oblig’d to him should take up my pen against him; without considering that Philosophers & their Tenets are very different Things, & that it is possible to declare against the last without any Violation of Fidelity or Gratitude to the first. This at least appears to have been the Sense of Antiquity, in which all the different Sects treated the principles of their Antagonist in a manner which we would call more than Ridicule, without the smallest degree of personal Resentment.137 Claiming to have written with such ‘honour’, Blacklock sent his critique to Beattie who, by return, offered his anti-Humean allegory ‘The Castle of Scepticism’ for inclusion. By late January 1771, Blacklock mentions providing copy for six issues of The Trifler but regrettably none has been traced possibly because, as Blacklock himself feared, it never reached print; it is not recorded by either Couper (1908) or Craig (1931). Elements of Blacklock’s analysis of Hume were probably incorporated into his review of Priestley’s Examination. Vulnerable to the fashions of the marketplace, even magazines now recognised as culturally influential were often short-lived. Blacklock’s ledger includes a substantial essay entitled ‘A Conversation on Apparitions inscribed to the Author of the Mirror, but sent in that peculiar crisis when the paper intended for a Conclusion of his plan was in the press and ready to be published’. The Mirror, appearing twice weekly from 23 January 1779 to 27 May 1780, was compiled by Henry Mackenzie, who later wrote Blacklock’s ‘Life’ (1794). Despite such knock-backs, journalism offered the learned though physically and economically vulnerable poet the opportunity to supplement his seasonal income as a tutor. In July 1765 when the physician Sir Alexander Dick was warmly recommending Blacklock’s new boarding-house to Benjamin Franklin, there was room for eight lodgers at £10 per annum (Labaree 1968: XII: 197–8). The fact that at least one Edinburgh bookseller, Charles Elliot, asked Blacklock to check proof-copy for stylistic errors is evidence of his reputation as a grammarian. In a letter to James Anderson about his Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Interest, chiefly intended to promote the agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and fisheries of Scotland (1777), Elliot reports that ‘Murray and Cochran found many 137

AUL c. 288, Blacklock to Beattie, 3 February 1777.

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difficulties in some very trifling Articles in the Errata all of which related intirely to Grammatical properties’, but these have now been ‘refered to D. Blacklock – I desired everything in the Errata might be left to him’.138 Blacklock exercised choice over which books he reviewed. His obvious intellectual interest in those titles and in the topics of his original essays indicates that he was no hack. Evidence has yet to emerge for how much Blacklock was actually paid as a journalist or copy-editor, but his letters do reveal an anxiety to keep his reviews anonymous. After publishing his riposte to Priestley for example, Blacklock is unwilling to show a mutual associate one of Beattie’s letters because it ‘contained an authentick discovery of the author of those Reviews’.139 On another occasion we find him contriving to send copy to Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine through a trusted intermediary, having already ‘taken the precaution of employing a hand different from that of my ordinary amanuensis’.140 Such machinations reflect a desire to avoid recriminations, but he clearly valued anonymous or pseudonymous magazine writing for the ‘opportunity of delivering his real opinion of persons and things without appearing in his own character’.141 Journalism provided Blacklock with a public voice insulated against the patronising attention he felt obliged to endure in his reluctant role as Scotland’s blind poetic prodigy. The elderly Blacklock encouraged Burns to try his hand at journalism. Conscious that his own poetic powers were diminished by ‘age and infirmity’, writing in September 1790 Blacklock is anxious that Burns should be freed from ‘the servile employment of excise’ so that he can again ‘[i]ndulge the strong passion that reigns in your soul’. Blacklock hoped that early promotion would leave Burns with ‘more leisure’ and ‘free from control’, but nevertheless he took the practical step of providing an introduction to James Anderson, proprietor of the newly launched periodical The Bee (Chambers 1896: III: 201; Ross Roy 1985: I: 59; II: 437). As portrayed by Mossner, Blacklock was a bad poet promoted to temporary fame when benevolence got the better of Hume’s literary judgement, and a pathetic, increasingly paranoid figure who turned on his first patron (Mossner 1943: 13–37). But Blacklock did not fall off the literary map nor challenge Humean scepticism out of 138

NLS John Murray Archive, Charles Elliot letter books, 11 April 1777. AUL c. 227, Blacklock to Beattie, 3 April 1775. 140 EUL La. II 82, Blacklock to James Cumming, 23 October 1771. 141 Head-note in ledger, Blacklock Manuscripts, Ewart Library, Dumfries. 139

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mere personal spite. Rather he remained a respected participant in metropolitan intellectual culture, using journalism to shape literary taste, to champion more enlightened attitudes towards the blind and to launch one of the earliest informed defences of Common Sense philosophy.

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The Encyclopaedia Britannica Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall In 1812, when Archibald Constable began repackaging his ‘greatest speculation’ (Constable 1873: II: 302), the Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was, in fact, emulating the strategy brought to the second (1778–84) and the third edition (1788–97) by the Edinburgh bookseller Charles Elliot. It was Elliot who first recognised the Britannica’s potential as an international literary property and laid the foundation for it as a brand and a franchise. But that literary property had curiously local and disorganised origins. In the 1760s, the bookseller John Balfour, Edinburgh’s leading importer of French books, began aggressively promoting Diderot’s Encyclopédie through a flurry of newspaper advertisements. His competition in Scotland came mainly from the continuing sales of the London-published, ‘corrected and revised’ 1752 seventh – properly tenth – edition of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, with its 1754 two-volume supplement, and more recent dictionaries of the arts and sciences: Dennis de Coetlogon’s 1759 New Universal History of Arts and Sciences (retitled second edition of his 1745 Universal History . . .); John Barrow’s 1751 New and Universal Dictionary . . . (with 1754–5 Supplement); William Owen’s 1754–5 New and Complete Dictionary . . . (second edition, 1763–4); and Temple Henry Croker’s 1764–6 Complete Dictionary . . . (second edition, 1768). Their market presence probably encouraged the printer Colin Macfarquhar to approach the engraver Andrew Bell with a proposal for a Scottish rival. They enlisted the printer William Smellie, who had attended Edinburgh University (unlike his partners) and edited the Scots Magazine (1759– 65). In fact, the Britannica’s principal innovation – its ‘treatises’ – perhaps derived from Smellie’s experience compiling and occasionally writing essays for that magazine, a practice he continued as co-editor 538

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and contributor to the Edinburgh Magazine and Review (1773–6). Certainly, it was Smellie, as we shall see, who would vigorously defend the length of these treatises when that innovation was challenged in July 1769. At any rate, the concept for the Britannica was not firmly established by its founders, and the first edition suffered from apparent disagreements about its format. The initial proposal was advertised in the Edinburgh Evening Courant (1 August 1767): This day is published and given gratis (stitched in blue covers) at the shops of J. Balfour, and the other Booksellers, and of A. Bell Engraver in the Parliament-close, PROPOSALS for Printing by Subscription, A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences . . . Proposals are likewise to be had at C. Macfarquhar’s printing-house in Stair’s close, Lawnmarket, to which place letters and commissions from the country may be directed. The proposal itself was subsequently printed in full in Edinburgh’s three newspapers on various dates through at least February 1768, calling for an octavo with 300 engravings, which was only revised to a large quarto with 160 engravings in June 1768, when a second proposal suddenly appeared.142 The idea for the project had clearly been circulating in the trade, in the press and thus among those reading Edinburgh’s newspapers for nearly a year. The original intention to print the work in octavo was probably suggested by Smellie’s and Bell’s experiences working in that format with the Scots Magazine (Bell was the magazine’s engraver). There also seems to have been an initial intent to keep the cost of each number as low as possible, thus expanding the potential market. The Britannica’s preface (1771) would identify its readership as ‘any men of ordinary parts’. Plates were obviously prepared and printed in octavo before June 1768, since the proposal bearing that date describes ‘the expense of engraving a-new all the copperplates which were done for the former size’ (2). Planned ultimately for issue in 100 weekly numbers at a cost of 6d or 8d each, depending upon the quality of the paper, the Britannica’s publication was at first delayed and then slowed by Smellie’s insistence upon making the treatises longer than Macfarquhar had anticipated. As the entries under the letter ‘A’ dragged on, the matter came to a head. Throughout July 1769, when the promised weekly numbers, first launched on 10 December 1768, continued to appear erratically (only sixteen numbers had been published by 8 July 1769), an advertisement, 142

NLS R. 234.b.I (30).

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written by Smellie and addressed ‘To the Public’, was printed in the Edinburgh newspapers, targeting subscribers who yet ‘did not fully comprehend the nature and design of the book’ (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 5 July 1769; Caledonian Mercury, 8, 15 July). Smellie went on to dismiss those who had expected the Britannica ‘not to be an original work, but only a bookseller’s jobb’, a misconception he ascribes to ‘the general quackery of the age’. To those readers who had complained about the length of the articles on Agriculture, Algebra, Architecture and especially Anatomy, Smellie replied that ‘no man ha[d] a right to complain, so long as the compilers shew no preference or partiality in favour of any particular science’. Thoroughness was the innovation that Smellie claimed for this new encyclopaedia, while denigrating Chambers as a reference work from which no man could ‘make himself master of any science whatever’ (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 5 July 1769; Caledonian Mercury, 8 July). Of course, the delays in issuing the Britannica may simply have resulted from the fact that Smellie was under pressure from William Buchan to edit and print his Domestic Medicine, which appeared in a dense 624-page octavo on 19 July 1769; Smellie was also editing and printing a newspaper, the Edinburgh Weekly Journal in 1768–9. However, had Smellie continued to produce articles to rival Anatomy in length (165 double-columned pages with ten elaborate plates), the project would have far exceeded its planned 100 numbers. It is likely that Macfarquhar reined in Smellie somewhat in the final two volumes – letters A to B occupy the entire first volume – perhaps leading to Smellie’s later dismissal of the Britannica as a dictionary made with ‘a pair of scissars’ [sic] (Kerr 1811: I: 362). The first Britannica faced aggressive competition throughout its run – but especially in its initial year – from John Balfour’s promotion of his nouvelle edition de L’Enciclopedie [sic], which included two-column front page advertisements in the Courant and the Mercury. The latter were invariably in French and signed ‘Jean Balfour’ (Edinburgh Evening Courant, 22 July 1769). In turn, the Britannica reemphasised its native origins. A plea to nationalism had been at the heart of each Britannica proposal from the start, with proud assertions that the entries would have a Scottish angle wherever possible; the article on Law was the clinching example. Declarations of a work’s ‘Scottishness’ had resonated through Scotland’s eighteenth-century trade, starting with Watson’s ‘Publisher to the Reader’ in his Choice Collection (1706) and reappearing with vigour in the advertisements for the first Edinburgh Review (1752), the Edinburgh Chronicle (1759), the Edinburgh Magazine and Review (1773) and, most dramatically, the

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Edinburgh Gazetteer (1792). Indeed, whatever the faults of Smellie’s approach, he drew upon as many Scottish texts as he could, and the first edition is a testimony in its plagiarism to the burgeoning of Scottish authorship in medicine, sciences and philosophy (Kafker and Loveland 2009: 38–58). The irregularity in publishing the first edition’s parts definitely affected sales, especially in the initial eight months when newspaper advertisements for new numbers constantly indicate delays; indeed, only after Smellie publishes Buchan’s Domestic Medicine in a 5,000copy run, does the Britannica keep to its promised weekly issues. Yet Bell and Macfarquhar had prepared for a significant market: the ‘Britannica’ in the title seems to anticipate a readership beyond Scotland. They launched their encyclopaedia with no fewer than a dozen named booksellers in six Scottish towns and three at two northern English locations: John Balfour, Kincaid and Bell, A. Donaldson, W. Drummond, J. Dickson and W. Gray in Edinburgh; Robert Urie and William Walker in Glasgow; Thomson and Angus and Son in Aberdeen; W. Charnley, T. Slack and B. Fleming in Newcastle; and others in Dundee, Perth and York. By July 1769 booksellers in Alloa, Alnwick, Anstruther, Arbroath, Dumfries, Dunfermline, Durham, Falkirk, Haddington, Hawick, Jedburgh, Kilmarnock, Leith, Stirling and Sunderland were added. The list not only testifies to Macfarquhar’s grand design but illustrates equally the wide distribution network available in 1769 in Scotland, with its easy access to the north of England. The imprint, however, conspicuously lacked a London distributor. But bookseller participation declined over the subsequent months, and when the encyclopaedia was completed in three volumes in 1771 (selling for £2 10s or £3 7s, depending on paper quality), a significant quantity of sheets remained with the printers. These would turn up in 1773 and 1775 as so-called ‘London editions’, sold by Edward and Charles Dilly and John Donaldson, respectively. The 1773 issue featured a new preface which was far more specific in its critique of Chamber’s Cyclopaedia; the style suggests Smellie’s authorship, and it is likely that he agreed to write a London-specific preface as part of the negotiations between Macfarquhar and the London dealers over the purchase of the unsold sheets. Constable suggests that 3,000 sets were ultimately printed, but there is nothing to support that speculation (Constable 1873: II: 311), and the run was probably much more modest. The failure of the first edition was in part the product of Macfarquhar’s reluctance directly to engage the London market from the outset.

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Despite the claims of Robert Kerr that Smellie declined to participate in the Britannica’s second edition because he disagreed with the intention to include biographies (Kerr 1811: I: 363), it is likely that Bell and Macfarquhar decided to look elsewhere after their struggles with Smellie’s editorship in the first instance. At any rate, by 1773 Smellie was fully occupied with editing and printing the Edinburgh Magazine and Review, as well as printing the Medical Commentaries for John Murray. They chose instead the journalist James Tytler, who would become notorious in 1784 for his experiments with hot-air balloons and who brought a university background, extensive practice in chemistry, experience as a ship’s surgeon with the Greenland whaling fleet and an informed fascination with geography to his task. Tytler had just published with the bookseller William Darling a New Universal Geographical Grammar (Edinburgh, 1777) and received 17s a week during the seven years of his editorship. Thomas Blacklock, whose career is examined previously in this volume, also contributed, as did Robert Heron. Still much of the second edition’s content was lifted from unacknowledged sources, or ‘pillaged’, as the London bookseller John Murray would argue in a copyright case against Macfarquhar when he discovered that the lengthy article on Scotland was taken verbatim from Gilbert Stuart’s History of the Scottish Reformation (1780) and his History of Mary Queen of Scots (1782), both Murray properties. Murray won his case in Edinburgh in 1785 and received twenty-five sets of the Britannica, second edition, valued at £300 retail, in compensation (Zachs 1998: 189–91). But the real contribution of the second Britannica to Scotland’s book trade history was not in its content but in its ‘repackaging’ by Charles Elliot. As he had done for the first edition, Macfarquhar enlisted significant numbers of booksellers in Scotland and the north of England to promote the second which appeared in 181 numbers comprising ten volumes of over 8,000 pages and 340 engraved plates, but in 1783 he and his partners, the engraver Andrew Bell and the paper-maker John Hutton, were left with many unsold sets. At that point Charles Elliot emerged from the imprint syndicate to buy up all the remaining stock for £3,000 and, with George Robinson of London as his partner, proceeded to advertise vigorously, and especially in London; previously the Britannica had been promoted only in Edinburgh newspapers because Macfarquhar had balked at the considerable expense of London advertising and relied exclusively on the circulation of Edinburgh’s three dominant periodicals, the Evening Courant, the Mercury and the Scots Magazine, among London’s coffee houses. Elliot tells Robinson on 12 February 1785 that ‘the price [of the encyclopaedia] hitherto here

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[in Edinburgh] is £10.10. Bds but I think it will bear £12 which is 24/ pr vol’;143 Elliot would charge the trade ‘£8.10 in Quires or £9 in Boards’, ‘bearing the everdy expence’ himself (17 March 1785).144 On 5 March, Elliot wrote to Robinson again describing his various shipping arrangements and observing that his business connections in Liverpool and Bristol were arranging for advertising there and asking Robinson ‘to give orders to do the same in the other Principle [sic] trading Towns’. Elliot goes on to assert the importance of Robinson ensuring that all the English booksellers keep to the £12 price to avoid internecine competition, while remarking on correspondence ‘from two Booksellers in Dublin the one for 20 the other for 25 sets desiring Terms’. In a final reference to the Britannica, Elliot urges Robinson to ‘take care of my Child’.145 And Robinson did. Following Elliot’s advice, he undertook probably the most extensive promotional campaign the trade had known, and within a year Elliot would write: ‘You need not advertise the Encyclopaedia I fancy any more now as I presume you are near . . . out and I have only two [or] three left in quires’ (25 March 1786).146 Clearing out the second Britannica achieved two things for Elliot: it was profitable and it paved the way for an even more profitable third edition, by establishing a reliable international reputation and sales network that strategically included London. Elliot took an active role in the third Britannica from the outset in 1788 through a London partnership with Thomas Kay that enabled him to buy parts in large quantities to supply a ready and lucrative southern market. The third edition was issued in weekly numbers from 1788 through to 1797, priced 1s; these were subsequently bound in volumes of thirty and sold for 10s 6d, with the ultimately thirty-volume set running to more than 14,500 pages with 542 plates. Macfarquhar took on the editorship himself with some apparent assistance from Tytler, although the latter’s increasing radicalism by 1790 made him a liability. With Macfarquhar’s premature death in 1793 George Gleig, later Bishop of Brechin, became editor and Andrew Bell then acquired the full rights from his partner’s estate. These were eventually purchased by Archibald Constable after Bell’s death in 1809. Elliot considered his bulk-buying deal with Bell and Macfarquhar ‘a hard one’,147 but generated his profit by charging Kay 9d per number (‘allowing Commission & Expences’) and by 7 July 1788 he had sent 143

NLS John Murray Archives, Charles Elliot letter books, 3223. Charles Elliot letter books, 3258. 145 Charles Elliot letter books, 3248. 146 Charles Elliot letter books, 3634. 147 Charles Elliot letter books, 4272. 144

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some ’1900 Copies’ of the first ten numbers of the third edition to London.148 Elliot effectively paved the way for this quantity by flooding London with advertisements and ‘also 14,995 Proposals 8o’, which he had ‘hope[d] would be in time for 1st July Magns [magazines], and if not ‘delyd till next Mo[nth]’.149 Elliot constantly pushed Kay to advertise (the cost was covered by Elliot), insisting that ‘the Encyclopaedia [appear] Once in some paper every Week, for Instance Morning Herald & 3 or 4 more but time about, or oftener as you judge best’.150 Elliot died in 1790 following a stroke and never saw the international success of his ‘Child’. Not all of that success, however, would have pleased him; an American edition would be issued in numbers costing ‘a quarter of a dollar’ each, commencing 2 January 1790, by Thomas Dobson of Philadelphia who engaged in a thorough advertising campaign. All this he had learned from his master, Charles Elliot, who had set up Dobson in business in Philadelphia only to see his former apprentice essentially steal that business from him (McDougall 2004). Dobson’s Encyclopaedia (like the Dublin edition printed by James Moore, 1791–6) was legal at home, if a piracy in British terms. Dobson dropped the Britannica from the title, made nationalistic adjustments to discussions of American geography and history, and had all the engravings remade, producing an icon of early American printing.

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Charles Elliot letter books, 4272. Charles Elliot letter books, 4260. 150 Charles Elliot letter books, 4272. 149

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Chapter Six

SCOTTISHNESS AND THE BOOK TRADE Print and Scotticisms Marina Dossena

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inguistic practice in eighteenth-century Scotland requires special attention, complicated as it is by the Scottish Enlightenment convention of writing in English, even in personal letters, while continuing to speak in Scots; Robert Burns, as Ross Roy notes later in this chapter, is a notable instance. David Hume expressed his own frustration with this uncomfortable duality in an often-quoted letter to John Wilkes (16 October 1754): ‘Notwithstanding all the Pains, which I have taken in the study of the English Language, I am still jealous of my Pen. As to my Tongue, you have seen that I regard it as totally desperate and irreclaimable’ (Greig 1932: I: 205). Scottish speakers had been aware of their linguistic specificity in relation to southern English at least since the early seventeenth century, and the attempt to approximate southern models concerned lexis, morphology and phonology. In particular, it is phonology that appears to have attracted the greatest attention in the eighteenth century as it has in modern scholarship. Among a plethora of grammars and dictionaries published both north and south of the border, the case of Sheridan’s very popular elocution lessons, begun in 1757 and first published as a Course of Lectures on Elocution (1762), is perhaps the tip of the iceberg in a cultural environment in which the desire to overcome the markers of provincial usage characterised anyone who wished to ‘get on in the world’, especially where ‘the world’ meant London. At the same time, a new cultural trend developed in the eighteenth century, which aimed to retrace the historical roots of language and suggested that in Scots the evidence of ancient connections with Saxon were more clearly perceived than in English. Tendencies both to celebrate and to denigrate Scots appear in the observations of the leading commentators of the time, and special attention is often paid to the divergence between spoken and written discourse. 545

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In approaching the subject of anglicisation in Scotland, a distinction should be made between the attitudes that were expressed about pronunciation on the one hand, and grammar and vocabulary on the other. While the first has been widely discussed, vocabulary and syntax seem to have attracted less attention until relatively recently (Dossena 2005). Also, in addition to the distinct class bias present in the many prescriptive works published throughout Enlightenment Britain, in Scotland the picture is rendered more complex by the political agenda that may be perceived to underlie opinions on accents and varieties. The 1707 Union accelerated anglicising trends in language that had already started with the introduction of print in 1508 and had gained momentum throughout the Reformation and especially with the Union of the Crowns (1603). At the same time, commentators used linguistic issues to reinforce unionist points by referring to the ‘inhabitants of North Britain’ in title pages and prefaces. James Buchanan (Linguae Britannica Vera Pronuntiato, 1757: xv) was among the first to highlight the discrepancy between the written and the spoken modes of expression: It would be surprising to find [Scots] writing English in the same manner, and some of them to as great perfection as any native of England, and yet pronouncing after a different, and for the most part unintelligible manner, did we not know, that they never had any proper guide or direction for that purpose. As a matter of fact, the print culture of the period made users very selfconscious about their linguistic choices. In this regard, the Regulations that were published in Edinburgh by the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland (1761) seem particularly relevant: As the intercourse between this part of GREAT BRITAIN and the Capital daily increases . . . gentlemen educated in SCOTLAND have long been sensible of the disadvantages under which they labour, from their imperfect knowledge of the ENGLISH TONGUE, and the impropriety with which they speak it. (Jones 1993: 97) Such worries about linguistic impropriety were also the concern of the Scottish periodical press (Craig 1931: 2–3). In 1743 the Scots Magazine had complained that its contributors were hampered by ‘the difficulty of writing STERLING English’ (iv), while in 1755 the seminal Edinburgh Review pointed out ‘the difficulty of a proper expression in a country where there is no standard of language, or at least one very

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remote’ (ii). Nor was the situation different in the second half of the century, if the Mirror (1780) could comment: The Scots dialect is our ordinary suit; the English is used only on solemn occasions. By this means, when a Scotsman comes to write, he does it generally in trammels. His own native original language, which he hears spoken around him, he does not make use of; but he expresses himself in a language in some respects foreign to him, and which he has acquired by study and observation. (331) On the other hand, the printer-publisher Peter Williamson, recognising the vogue for Scots in the contemporary press of the 1770s tried to compete with the Edinburgh Weekly’s popular promotion of Robert Fergusson’s Scots verse by peppering his Scots Spy (1776) and New Scots Spy (1777) with dialect pieces, awakening the editorial wrath of the Edinburgh Magazine and Review’s editor, William Smellie (S. W. Brown 2008). In 1760, as editor of the Scots Magazine, Smellie had reprinted Hume’s list of Scotticisms in the magazine’s annual appendix, arguing that ‘these Scotticisms were annexed to the Political Discourses . . . printed at Edinburgh in 1752 . . . but are not continued in later editions of that book. As they may, however, be useful to those of our countrymen as would avoid Scotticisms in speaking or writing, we presume that our republishing them will be approved of’ (686–7). The apparent uncertainty between educated (but perhaps unfamiliar) usage and idiomatic phrases could only be solved by relying on ‘authority’. Indeed, James Beattie, in a letter to Sylvester Douglas in 1778, challenged the idea that ‘Hume, Robertson, &c. write English better than the English themselves: than which in my judgment there cannot be a greater absurdity. I would as soon believe that Thuanus wrote better Latin than Cicero or Caesar’ (Hewitt 1987: 256). Beattie admitted that ‘To speak with the English, or with the Scotch, accent, is no more praiseworthy, or blameable, than to be born in England, or Scotland’, but in a letter to Robert Arbuthnot (26 November 1785) he had complained: ‘Our language (I mean the English) is degenerating very fast; and many phrases, which I know to be Scottish idioms, have got into [English] of late years’ (Hewitt 1987: 255). This comment suggests that the contact between Scots and English was in the process of generating the kind of variation that was to result in Scottish Standard English, although in a letter to John Pinkerton in 1778, Beattie described this variety as ‘an affected, mixed, barbarous dialect, which is neither Scotch nor English, but a strange jumble of both’ (Hewitt 1987: 256). However, in 1710 Sir Robert Sibbald had already

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made a distinction between ‘The Language of the Common People’, or ‘That Language we call Broad Scots, which is yet used by the Vulgar . . . the Highlanders Language, and the refined Language of the Gentry, which the more Polite People among us do use, and is made up of Saxon, French and Latin Words’ (Robert Sibbald, An Account of the Writers Ancient and Modern of North Britain, 1710: 15–16). Sibbald thus highlighted the importance of external influences, an issue which was gradually to take centre stage. As we have seen, David Hume was well aware of the discrepancy between written and spoken expression that Buchanan had outlined. Indeed, it was a discrepancy that contradicted in an almost paradoxical way the achievements of the Scottish Enlightenment (Wood 2000). Again Hume’s observation of the phenomenon is revealing. In a letter to Gilbert Elliot, he asks, Is it not strange that, at a time when we have lost our Princes, our Parliaments, our independent Government, even the presence of our chief Nobility, are unhappy, in our Accent and Pronunciation, speak a very corrupt Dialect of the Tongue which we make use of; is it not strange, I say, that, in these Circumstances, we shou’d really be the People most distinguish’d for Literature in Europe? (Greig 1932: I: 255) However, Hume uses one of the numerous derogatory adjectives (‘very corrupt’) that other prescriptivists employed, and indeed his may have been one of the earliest lists, if not the first one, of proscribed Scotticisms. For instance, Buchanan talked about ‘that rough and uncouth brogue’ (1757: xv), which Sinclair echoed in 1782 when he spoke of ‘uncouth, unintelligible’ Scots. Certainly Hume’s determination to purge his writing of Scotticisms established the publication standard for emerging Scottish writers, especially William Robertson and Thomas Reid (Sher 2006: 53). So important was the aspiration to conform to a southern standard of English that only Adam Smith may have been exceptional in his belief that ‘someone born north of the Tweed could yet attain “a correct and even elegant style”’ (Rogers 1991: 59). And Robert Burns himself, whose popularity was partly based on a perception of the poet as a ‘rustic bard’, was in fact very careful in his linguistic choices. One of Hume’s correspondents, David Mallet, who assisted Allan Ramsay in compiling his early anthologies of Scots popular verse and later prepared Hume’s History of England for publication (which included correcting its Scotticisms), anglicised his name from its original Malloch, upon settling into a successful career in London, a not uncommon action among Scots emigrating to the

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south. William Strahan, one of London’s most prominent publishers in the eighteenth century, changed his name from Strachan after leaving Edinburgh, although he retained strong Scottish trade connections, as Richard Sher has demonstrated in an earlier chapter. And Hume is itself an anglicised form of the original Home. Other Scottish writers and publishers displayed equally contradictory feelings about their native dialect. For instance, James Boswell, despite his well-documented attempts to overcome his own cultural (and linguistic) background, had planned to compile a dictionary of Scottish words (Pottle 1952: 103–4). In literature, Scots had been reassessed thanks to the works of Allan Ramsay, a founding member of the Easy Club, a Jacobite literary society, which aspired to a ‘Mutual improvement in Conversation’. But if Ramsay’s anthologies promoted Scots verse, his circulating library (1726), encouraged the spread of works printed in English among the Scots-speaking population. As a matter of fact, in catalogues of Scottish printers and booksellers, we find little use of Scots, except for the occasional ‘anent’, in title pages and advertisements (Plomer 1922; Carnie and Doig 1958; and Carnie 1961). One exception is David Dalrymple’s 1765 edition of James, Robert and John Wedderburn’s sixteenth-century A Specimen of a Book, Intituled a Compendious Booke, of godly and spiritual sangs, collectit out of sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other ballates changed out of prophaine sanges, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie. With augmentation of sundrie gude and godly ballates, not contained in the first edition. Walter Ruddiman’s reissue of that 1567 title included an extensive glossary of Scots words and is typical of the Edinburgh book trade’s recurring fascination with dialect as an antiquarian pursuit. The Ossianic fashion contributed to the Scottish literary tradition in a similarly ‘learned’ way, although its diction was distinctively removed from Scots. Still, the debate on antiquity that surrounded Ossian included, and indeed relied upon, linguistic considerations. In particular, Adams’s 1799 Pronunciation of the English Language defended Ossian very passionately, distinguishing between broad ‘Scoto-Saxon-English’ and the ‘tempered medium, generally used by the polished class of society’ (156–7); in discussing the latter, Adams borrowed Alexander Geddes’s terms from his ‘Three Scottish Poems, with a Previous Dissertation on the Scoto-Saxon Dialect’s (Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 1792: 402–40), whose forty-two observations on the proper pronunciation of Scots underpin Adams’s work. Geddes’ proposal that Scots shared a greater proximity with the original Germanic languages would become crucial to the defence of the dialect, though one of the most

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controversial and long-lasting issues was whether the lineage of Scots was Gothic or Teutonic. But outside late-eighteenth-century learned debates, the popular book trade continued to emphasise glossaries and lists of Scotticisms. Not only was Beattie’s Scoticisms arranged in Alphabetical Order, designed to correct improprieties of speech and writing (Edinburgh, 1787) reissued often, but it was a source of imitation, as in Hugh Mitchell’s Scotticisms, Vulgar Anglicisms and Grammatical Improprieties Corrected (Glasgow, 1799). Such texts were buoyed up throughout the period by two apparently opposing markets: teachers of English and elocution throughout Scotland’s vibrant educational system and common Scottish urban readers attracted to the old vernacular through the ubiquity of Burns. After all, the very need for glossaries in later eighteenth-century Scots books suggests a readership uncomfortable with dialect in print. The linguistic situation in eighteenth-century Scotland was extremely complex. Leaving aside Gaelic, use of which was both geographically and politically restricted, the relationship between Scots and English reflected distinct class and intellectual attitudes. On the one hand, English was perceived to be the language of political stability, refinement, education and success; on the other, the equal antiquity of Scots, its literary heritage and its persistent diffusion in spoken discourse caused it to be perceived with mixed feelings – was it just the language of the ‘vulgar’, thus to be avoided, or was it even ‘purer’ than English, thus worth preserving? Throughout the century these contrasting views appear to co-exist, though the proscribing one was certainly more powerful and long-lasting, which the persistent lists of Scotticisms confirm. In both cases, the importance of Scots as a marker of cultural identity emerges very clearly, though of course not always with the positive connotation we attach to such markers today. And from the moment in 1720 when the preface to the Edinburgh Miscellany attacked the coarse vernacular of James Watson’s earlier Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems (1706–11) (S. W. Brown 2011), the debate around the legitimacy of Scots in print provided the book trade with a steady supply of texts and their requisite glossaries. Thus Alexander Geddes observed in 1792 that those ‘who, for almost a century past, have written in Scots’ had always ‘duly discriminated the genuine Scottish idiom from its vulgarisms’ (403).

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The Revival of Scotland’s Older Literature Alasdair A. MacDonald Eighteenth-century Scotland was innovative and rational, but also significantly retrospective. Much of the country’s literary culture from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was republished during the Scottish Enlightenment, not as an act of cultural nostalgia, but as a reaffirmation of Scotland’s own identity after the 1707 Union of the Parliaments. Older literary works were able to co-exist and even interact with their modern counterparts. Thus Scottish literary culture during this key period reinvigorated itself by rediscovering its roots. There was an increased interest in and publication of the ancient classics; a fascination with Scottish historiography of all sorts; participation in the cult of the virtuoso and the antiquarian; and the ‘rediscovery’ of the older vernacular literature of Scotland. All this was ushered in with the publication of James Watson’s anthology, A Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems (1706, 1709, 1711). His materials were mainly drawn from such printed sources as broadsides and chapbooks, which were the cheap, easily distributed medium for the vulgarisation of literary culture, with frequent reprinting compensating for their ephemerality. However, any literary text absorbed into a collection like Watson’s would ipso facto gain in cultural prestige, as the fate of Alexander Montgomerie’s poem ‘The Cherrie and the Slae’, well illustrates. Composed during the age of James VI by the king’s distant cousin, it represents a high point in the literary culture of the Scottish Renaissance. The poem has been interpreted as an allegory of the poet’s choice between contrasting religious and moral positions (Shire 1969: 117–38; Lyall 2005: 317–31). While this rhetorically flamboyant, post-medieval work was widely received and much reprinted in the seventeenth century, its appearance in Watson’s book made the poem a Scots ‘classic’. The stanza form used 551

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by Montgomerie, with its intricate internal rhymes, became a model for seven poems by Burns. Watson’s collection is trilingual, with poems in Scots, English and Neo-Latin. Of the last, the longest is the facetious ‘Polemo-Middinia’ (usually attributed to William Drummond of Hawthornden) which though dealing with a fictitious local dispute in rural Fife would have appealed to a European readership. Many of Watson’s English-language poems emanated from the country-house culture that emerged after the Union of the Crowns and was to some extent engaged in a standoff with Presbyterian orthodoxy (MacDonald 1998: 86–97). Watson resembles later Scottish anthologists in his pride in the literary achievement of his own nation, although he differs from them in including English compositions and not preferring vernacular Scots to the exclusion of works in the two other languages of the Lowlands (Gaelic is not relevant here and was totally beyond Watson’s ken). Perhaps the most significant aspect of Watson’s book, however, is its recognition of vernacular poetry as a phenomenon worthy of general cultural attention. In this respect his enterprise may be compared with that of Sir John Scot of Scotstarvit (this locale being one of the two squabbling in ‘Polemo-Middinia’), who edited the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (Amsterdam, 1627). Nor should one forget that Watson was the printer of one of the earliest accounts of Scottish literature, Dr George Mackenzie’s The Lives and the Characters of the most Eminent Writers of the Scots Nation (Edinburgh, 1708–22), in which Scots writing in Latin takes pride of place, but attention is also given to vernacular writers, such as Sir Gilbert Hay, Gavin Douglas and Sir Richard Maitland; Dunbar and Henryson, however, are conspicuous by their absence. Despite Watson’s significance, a figure of greater importance was Allan Ramsay, whose first anthology, The Ever Green (1724), is emblematic in the manner of a Janus-head: not only did the volume reach over the seventeenth century back to an even earlier period, it would also effectively facilitate the rejuvenation of modern Scottish poetry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries through promoting the literary precedents of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The influence of Ramsay’s anthology is ubiquitous: for example, the six-line so-called ‘Burns stanza’, cultivated by Ramsay and Fergusson, derives, via Ever Green, from the sixteenth-century poet Alexander Scott (himself by no means the inventor of a verse-form that is as old as the troubadours). The Ever Green’s innovation is to locate its primary source not in Watson’s quarried seventeenth-century texts, but in George Bannatyne’s manuscript anthology of 1568. In its final state, this most comprehensive compilation of early Scottish verse contained five

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distinct – and generically conceived – sections, containing religious, moral, comic, amatory and fabular poems (Hughes and Ramson 1982; MacDonald 2003). There is no Latin verse in the Bannatyne MS, and all the English poems (of which there are quite a few) are converted into Scots by the scribe; any collection based upon Bannatyne could not fail to privilege the Scots vernacular. Equally, Bannatyne’s collection must have impressed eighteenth-century readers with its demonstration of the wide range of genres and stylistic registers cultivated by earlier Scottish poets writing in the vernacular. Not only Ramsay but also such subsequent poets and editors as Fergusson, Burns, David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes) and Sir Walter Scott fell under the spell of Bannatyne’s sixteenth-century anthology, and their enthusiasm made it a national cultural icon. While Ramsay’s use of the Bannatyne MS amounts to a commendable return to the proper vernacular sources, circumventing dependence upon inferior and derivative texts, his book harvested considerable criticism: Ramsay’s understanding of older linguistic forms was declared inadequate; his transcription skills were less than perfect; he shrank neither from excising stanzas nor from eking out others with lines of his own; he was sometimes guilty of misattributions; his glossary contained inaccuracies; and despite the claim made in the full title – a collection of Scots Poems, wrote by the Ingenious before 1600 – he included poems written after 1600. Yet, while the force of this censure may be conceded, it cannot detract from the cultural importance of The Ever Green, whose celebrated preface marks a turning-point in Scottish taste. The Scottish verse chosen by Ramsay was a corpus distinguished by several factors: age, rooted nationalism, freedom from sophistication, antiquarian attraction and vernacular sincerity of expression. In the dedication (to James, Duke of Hamilton) Ramsay emphasises the patriotic love of liberty that shines from the poems in his collection. Here are the essentials of a new literary aesthetic, one that sought deliberately to distance itself from the seventeenth century’s genteel, anglicising and classicising trends. Do Ramsay’s claims hold up? Certainly, his collection presents a picture radically different from Dr George Mackenzie’s literary history. The two volumes of The Ever Green contain eighty-one poems: twenty-four by William Dunbar, seven by Alexander Scott, five by William Stewart, four by Alexander Montgomerie, three each by Robert Henryson, Robert Semple and Walter Kennedy, and smaller numbers by some nine named, and other anonymous, poets. Much of this material had been written for the courts of James IV and his descendants, where patronage was more significant than love of liberty. As it

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happens, some of the poems that best correspond to Ramsay’s ideals are misattributed and therefore misdated (‘Christ’s Kirk on the Green’ is wrongly assigned to James I), or they are recent, pseudo-medieval compositions (‘Hardyknute’). Furthermore, the poetic criteria articulated by Ramsay do not always correspond with the nature of his selections. For example, the fact that most of his anthologised pieces were written by Catholic poets is conspicuously unacknowledged. Also, such works as Dunbar’s ‘Thistle and the Rose’ and the ‘Flyting’ of Dunbar and Kennedy are remarkable for their stylistic artfulness and rhetorical brilliance: this early poetry was anything but free from sophistication, though Ramsay may have been unprepared, unequipped or unwilling to concede the point. As a result, and by one of the oddest paradoxes of Scottish culture, The Ever Green passed along to eighteenth-century readers many specimens of medieval and Renaissance verse which, despite being courtly, elitist and highly stylised, were now claimed as demotic, naive and libertarian. Such a misprision was possible as a consequence of the unfortunate situation of medieval vernacular poetry in the seventeenth century – transmitted in cheap, popular prints, or preserved inaccessibly in the libraries of the gentry – with the result that Scotland’s early literary productions were dissociated from the historical awareness necessary for their proper contextualisation. In 1770 David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, published his anthology Ancient Scottish Poems. The Greek quotation on the title page – Theocritus: ‘The dried flower will not perish’ – immediately suggests that his book is to be a production of superior taste. In his preface, Hailes chides Ramsay for his editorial and philological inadequacies, his intermingling of ancient and modern poems and his inclusion of indecent and/or unintelligible matter. In its seventy-five items, Ancient Scottish Poems is somewhat smaller than The Ever Green, although it is a ‘purer’ selection. Where Ramsay’s contents had no obvious sequence, Hailes proceeds by way of authorship: he opens with thirty poems by Dunbar, and follows them with fourteen by Henryson (including the ‘Three Deid Powis’, here attributed to Patrick Johnstoun). He next prints works by various named or anonymous authors (including three by William Stewart), before rounding off with a group of seven by Alexander Scott. Hailes follows Ramsay in according chief distinction to Dunbar, and the arrangement by individual author serves to create the impression that a canon of Middle Scots poets is being implicitly promoted, with Dunbar and Henryson in the vanguard. This canon has, in fact, proved perdurable, and even today is little contested (Daemen-de Gelder 2001; Clifton 2006). Also notable is Hailes’s concentration on lyric verse, leading to an imbalanced

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representation of Henryson’s oeuvre, of which he prints only the minor poems, a mere two fables in full, and the Moralities of a further four. Hailes has no place for romances, or for poems written post-1568; as a result, ‘Hardyknute’, together with all Montgomerie’s poems, make no appearance. For its part, the ‘Flyting’ is excluded on account of its perceived offence against decency. As compared with Ramsay, there is altogether less comedy in Hailes; however, though the later editor omits that vigorous poem of rustic life, ‘Christ’s Kirk on the Green’, which had opened Ramsay’s collection, he follows Ramsay in including ‘The Wyf of Auchermuchty’, perhaps seeing it as some version of pastoral (MacDonald 2005). Yet, while Hailes obviously surpasses Ramsay in the technical quality of his texts, he may not be the more interesting anthologist. In effect, the tidier arrangement and greater philological trustworthiness of Ancient Scottish Poems is achieved by narrowing the focus. As editor, Hailes is animated not so much by love of liberty as by antiquarian curiosity and cultivation of taste. While Hailes facilitates an awareness of the tradition of older Scots poetry, he does not follow Ramsay in showing how that awareness can be carried through to modern poetic practice. Another significant eighteenth-century anthology of Older Scots verse was John Pinkerton’s Ancient Scotish Poems (1786). Pinkerton, famous for his irascibility, doubtless wanted his collection to vie with that of Hailes, and the near identity of the two titles is unlikely to be coincidental. This new collection offered a larger sampling of medieval Scottish verse than its two predecessors, and it continued the antiquarianism already visible in Hailes. Pinkerton based his collection not on the Bannatyne MS but on the other great sixteenth-century storehouse of vernacular verse, the manuscripts connected with the circle of Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington. This brings the topic back to the fascinating matter of manuscript survival and cultural transmission between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In principle, such manuscripts remained in the families of their respective compilers, many of whom were prominent in legal affairs. Thus the so-called Maitland Folio and Quarto MSS descended to John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale. At the sale of the latter’s library, they were bought by Samuel Pepys and ended up in Magdalene College, Cambridge. Earlier in the same century, such family manuscripts might be copied for the use of friends: the Maitland Folio was copied to produce the Reidpeth MS, and the Quarto to produce the Drummond MS (MacDonald 2001: 134–9). In a comparable way, the Bannatyne MS was passed down through the scribe’s descendants, the family of Foulis of Colinton, and several of the latter have inscribed their names in the margins.

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Only after the manuscript had passed out of Foulis possession did it ‘re-emerge’ in time to be used for The Ever Green and consulted by Bishop Thomas Percy. In 1772 it was presented by John, fourth Earl of Hyndford, to the Advocates’ Library. In recognition of the enormous cultural importance of the Maitland Folio and the Bannatyne MSS, these names would, in the nineteenth century, be adopted by two of the most prominent literary and antiquarian clubs dedicated to the publication of the literary heritage of medieval and Renaissance Scotland (Scott 1829; Ash 1980). In addition to these two most celebrated manuscripts, several other anthologies of verse and song were produced in the seventeenth century to cater for the privileged circles of the country houses and the legal professionals (Bawcutt 2005); the editors and collectors of the eighteenth century – men such as Hailes and Pinkerton – drew on this mass of early vernacular verse and, through their publications, opened it up to a much wider readership. So far the focus has been vernacular lyric verse; the treatment given to such material, however, should be seen in the larger context of the recovery and rescue of Scotland’s literary tradition. An excellent example here would be the translation of Virgil’s Aeneid by Gavin Douglas, produced by Thomas Ruddiman in 1710. This edition, furnished with a full, trustworthy glossary, was published in large folio format, and treated with the lavish care usually reserved for Ancient classics. Ruddiman was an outstanding Latin philologist, and his edition of Douglas’s poem combined veneration of the classical genre itself with patriotic pride in the greatest single work of medieval Scottish literature (Duncan 1965). Similar motives doubtless lay behind his editions of Arthur Johnston’s Latin paraphrase of the Song of Solomon and George Buchanan’s Opera omnia (1709; 1714–15). Responsible for printing Ruddiman’s Douglas was Robert Freebairn, publisher and Jacobite, and a man imbued with love for Scotland’s older culture. From his press emerged: the De animi tranquillitate of Florens Wilson (1707); the vernacular Historie and Cronicles of Scotland of Robert Lindesay of Pitscottie (1728); the Historia Majoris Britanniae of John Major (1740); and Walter Goodall’s edition of the Scotichronicon by John of Fordun and Walter Bower (1759). Freebairn shared Ruddiman’s cultural and political attitudes, which is evident from the titles printed by the latter in his own right (Duncan 1965: 170–3). Ruddiman in particular played a leading role in stimulating the eighteenth-century Scottish enthusiasm for classical texts – an enterprise that reached its apogee in the editions published by Foulis of Glasgow and Edinburgh’s Hamilton and Balfour. In many ways, the publication of the Ancients provides an interesting parallel to that

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of vernacular Scottish texts, and, in reality, the two are organically linked. The bibliography of the Freebairn press indicates a large market for works of Scottish history, no doubt a consequence of the controversies attendant upon the Union of Parliaments (1707) and the ensuing Jacobite rebellion (1715). Such issues were also propitious to the (re) publication of vernacular versified histories. In this category belong Freebairn’s editions (1714–15 and 1715) of ‘Blind’ Harry’s Wallace and John Barbour’s Bruce. The patriotic sentiment inherent in both works – to say nothing of the Wallace’s truculent xenophobia – would have found a grateful readership in Scotland, and it seems likely that Allan Ramsay’s association of medieval Scottish verse with love of liberty is not unconnected with his response to these two poems. Unlike most works of Older Scots literature, such historical romances had by no means fallen into desuetude after 1600. The Bruce was printed six times before Freebairn’s edition; the Wallace was a veritable cultural constant, with some twenty-three print editions preceding Freebairn’s (Geddie 1912). Despite the plethora of such reprints, Freebairn retains the merit of being the first to attempt a critical edition (Macdiarmid 1968–9: I: xii). The age of Ramsay and Ruddiman was also that of Pope, and, under the powerful influence of the heroic couplet, updated versions of the old romances were composed. The best known was the 1722 Glasgow translation of Harry’s Wallace by William Hamilton of Gilbertfield from which Burns derived his acquaintance with the stirring medieval narrative. While Dryden and Pope also translated older poets (Chaucer, Donne), these efforts had little subsequent influence; with Hamilton’s Wallace it was different, and the reworking of the medieval romance patriotically enflamed the historical imagination of many Scottish readers, not least Burns (King 1998). A later composition in the same vein was The Bruciad, or the Life of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland: a Heroic Poem in Three Books by John Harvey (London, 1769); indeed, these two ‘imitations’ were sometimes printed together in the one volume. The eighteenth-century recovery of older Scottish vernacular verse also stretched to song-texts. Among the important publications of the seventeenth century were editions of the Cantus by John Forbes (Aberdeen, 1662, 1666, 1682). While such large sixteenth-century poetry anthologies as the Bannatyne MS or the Maitland Folio and Quarto MSS contained no musical notation, anthologies of song-texts were different, and the words might be accompanied by the appropriate music; such items were performable as solo or part-songs, supported by lute, cittern or harpsichord. Song collections regularly contained

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mixtures of Scottish and English material, and they might well juxtapose sets of secular and sacred words to be used with the same tune – the determining factor in the performance choice being the outlook of the audience, with religious contrafacta to placate the pious. In this regard, Allan Ramsay was once again a significant figure, and his TeaTable Miscellany (1723–37), which on completion included more than 450 songs, propelled the whole phenomenon of Scottish song to new levels of prominence. The items in this collection were various in both type and source: contemporary, seventeenth-century, or even earlier; Scottish or English; rustic or refined. As a song collector, Ramsay was followed by David Herd, with his Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads (1776). Yet more important and copious was the Scots Musical Museum of James Johnson and Robert Burns, published between 1787 and 1803 (Low 1991). Among the repositories of early song visited by eighteenth-century anthologists is the Reformation collection customarily referred to as the Gude and Godlie Ballatis (GGB). Three specimens from this book were included towards the end of Ramsay’s Ever Green, and, as the century progressed, more and more of the contents of this volume found a new audience. Many of the poems in the GGB, which was printed at least six times between 1565 and 1621, were contrafacta based on considerably earlier material, and thus the volume links the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries (MacDonald 2005). In 1765 Lord Hailes edited a small selection (eighteen items) from the GGB’s 1621 edition, and in 1801 Sir J. G. Dalyell published the integral text of the same issue. In the following year the 1600 printing of the GGB was edited by James Sibbald. David Laing’s edition (1868) of the 1578 text was followed by A. F. Mitchell’s (1897) of the 1567 text. The antiquarian recovery of the poems from this collection was thus a retrospective process, working successively back to ever-earlier printings. However, it was probably the quotations in Sir Walter Scott’s The Abbot (1820) that brought the GGB its largest readership. In more modern times the book has continued to provide inspiration for the likes of W. C. Dickinson’s The Sweet Singers (1953). The monumental cultural significance of the GGB may be compared to a bridge of two spans, one reaching backward into the Middle Ages and the other forward into the present, with both arches resting upon a central pier erected in the eighteenth century. In some ways, the recovery of the Older Scots poets by eighteenth-century editors and publishers provided constant movement across this cultural bridge.

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Volusenus, 1751 Alasdair A. MacDonald One example of cultural transmission from an earlier age is provided by the De Animi Tranquillitate Dialogus [‘Dialogue Concerning Peace of Mind’], by the Scotsman, Florens Wilson – perhaps better known under the Neo-Latin form of his name: Florentius Volusenus. His work arises out of and reflects upon Reformation theological controversies,

Figure 6.1 Hamilton, Balfour and Neill’s Volusenus, 1751.

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and displays a Stoic desire for spiritual tranquillity. First published at Lyons (1543), it presumably enjoyed some renown, since an Italianlanguage ‘metafrase’ appeared at Siena (1574). Wilson’s book was twice printed in the seventeenth century (Amsterdam, 1637; The Hague, 1642), the first versions to carry David Echlin’s dedication to Robert Ker, first Earl of Ancram and courtier under James VI and Charles I. The first edition known to have been produced in Scotland was Freebairn and Ruddiman’s (Edinburgh, 1707). In 1751, Edinburgh’s Hamilton, Balfour and Neill printed a version edited by Principal William Wishart of Edinburgh University, for students at the High School, for whose convenience the volume had a finding-index of topics. The text was last published at Leipzig and Frankfurt (1760). In the present context, Wilson’s book provides an excellent illustration of how a Scottish Renaissance classic functioned during the Enlightenment. Yet this is scarcely surprising: many Enlightenment figures were also occupied by the search for peace of mind, given the doctrinal disputes then playing within Christianity, to say nothing of the pressures from deism, agnosticism and atheism. Wilson, also a talented Neo-Latin poet, had his Horatian ode, Quid vos, ô superi boni, rendered into English verse by the Stoically-minded author of The Grave (London, 1743) and minister of Athelstaneford, Robert Blair.

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Scots Poetry before Burns Christopher MacLachlan The acknowledged starting point for eighteenth-century Scots poetry is James Watson’s anthology A Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems both Ancient and Modern, published in three parts in 1706, 1709 and 1711. In the preceding essay, Alasdair MacDonald relates Watson’s work to Scots poetry before the eighteenth century, while the current essay contemplates the implications of A Choice Collection for poetry written and issued after its publication. Watson printed his volumes himself, and the title-pages for the second and third declare that they are to be sold ‘at his Shop next Door to the Red-Lyon, opposite to the Lucken-booths’, the famous row of retail premises along the north side of St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh. Watson’s anthology follows no discernible system in its arrangement and offers no clues about sources, other than the claim in a preliminary note from ‘The Publisher to the Reader’ that the poems ‘are now copied from the most Correct Manuscripts that could be procured of them’. Watson prints several well-known poems, including ‘Christ’s Kirk on the Green’, ‘The Cherry and the Slae’ and ‘The Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan’, along with two versions of ‘Old-Long-syne’, but also anthologises previously unpublished poetry; several poems by the Marquis of Montrose appear nowhere else. While, therefore, some of Watson’s material probably came from seventeenth-century pamphlets and broadsides, he may also have used genuine manuscripts. His reliability is impossible to ascertain, although comparison of his versions of better-known poems with previous printings he may have known suggests that he probably followed his sources closely. Little is known about Watson himself, but nothing points to the sort of literary ambitions that would have inclined him as an editor to improve the poems in his collection. 561

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What he did do, as Harriet Harvey Wood says in her edition of the Choice Collection for the Scottish Text Society, was to ‘gather together a few older poems which were already circulating in ephemeral form with some more recent ones in similar traditions, and to perpetuate their existence in a more durable publication’ (1991: II: xxix). She notes also ‘the impossibility of drawing a clear dividing line between the Scottish and English material’ (xxxiv) in the Choice Collection, despite Watson’s claim that the poems are ‘in our own Native Scots Dialect’. Quoting an advertisement for the book in the Edinburgh Courant (10–12 December 1711), she speculates about Watson’s possible market: ‘[t]he price at which it was sold (“first and second parts . . . at one shilling each part, or the three parts bound together in calf leather, at half-a-crown”) reinforces the impression that it was intended to reach a fairly popular audience’ (xl). From these and other considerations certain elements can be extracted. Watson’s publication was a product of his own initiative and combined a desire, however unscholarly, to serve the interests of Scottish poetry with a professional and commercial aim. The Choice Collection was based, at least partly, on the mass of mainly seventeenth-century occasional, ephemeral printings of poetry, which Watson edited, simply by making the selections. He hardly organised them at all. Watson, however, did combine the editor’s role with those of both printer and seller of his anthology. As such, he must have had a clear idea of the possible market and priced his books accordingly. Many of the publication features of the Choice Collection will recur in relation to the print history of poetry later in eighteenth-century Scotland, and notably in the case of Watson’s most immediate and significant successor, Allan Ramsay. Ramsay came to Edinburgh at the beginning of the eighteenth century and was apprenticed to a wig-maker, but he had a passion for literature and, although he set up in the wig trade, he soon branched out into bookselling, which gradually became his main concern. He began publishing his own works singly in the second decade of the century. Among the earliest of his poems to appear in this way was ‘On the Great Eclipse of the SUN, the 22d April, nine a Clock of the Morning; wrote a Month before it happened, 1715’. Coincidentally, Ramsay’s printer was James Watson, but the connection does not seem to have gone further than that. Ramsay’s next poem, ‘THE BATTEL: or, Morning-interview’ was printed for George Stewart ‘at the Book and Angel in the Parliament-Close’ (1716) as a pamphlet of twenty-four pages, including a one-page epilogue and a two-page ‘Advertisement’ at the beginning, in which the author explains that he has ‘naturally an

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Itch of Rhiming’ and, having shown the poem’s first sketch to a friend, he was encouraged ‘to carry the Design a little further’. He confesses the work’s faults, but if readers inform him of them ‘in a civil Way’ he will see to it that a second edition will merit the title ‘Corrected and Amended’. All this indicates a social context for the poem’s publication that tries to establish an informal and friendly relationship between poet and reader, with no hint of commercial motivations. Three years later Ramsay’s poems, such as ‘Content’ and the second edition of ‘Tartana or, The Plaid’, appear with the words, ‘Printed for the Author, at the Mercury, opposite to Niddery’s-Wynd’; the poet, now evidently his own publisher and bookseller, was also undoubtedly his own marketing executive. This series of individual works was joined by small collections, such as the three elegies on Maggy Johnston, John Cowper and Lucky Wood (no doubt previously published separately), brought together in one twenty-page booklet in 1718. Its last page advertises three other works, all to be had at the Mercury opposite Niddry’s Wynd. Another collection was the seven Scots Songs of the same year; a year later a second edition appeared with four additional songs. By the end of the decade Ramsay had enough poetry pamphlets to start selling them as a group; or, to put it another way, he had built up enough of a market to be able to sell not just the poem of the moment but much of his back catalogue. In 1720 this process culminates in the publication of Poems. By Allan Ramsay, with the now familiar title-page declaration, ‘Printed for the Author at the Mercury, opposite to Niddry’s-Wynd’ (though the spelling of the wynd’s name continues changeable). But this volume is really no more than a collection of the pamphlets that preceded it; the very order of the contents follows the chronological appearance of the individual poems, and the earlier collections recur intact. The three elegies, for instance, are grouped together, and so are the Scots songs. Indeed, the heading ‘Scots Songs’ is present in the text, and the sequence ends with the signature ‘A. R.’ at the foot of page 88, before a full title-page appears for the next poem, ‘Christ’s Kirk on the Green’. ‘Tartana, or the Plaid’ is preceded not only by a title-page but also by the verses to the author that were present in the poem’s first print appearance in 1718. Yet the 1720 version’s typography is different and the pagination continuous with the rest of the volume. It ends with not only a glossary but also a two-page contents list, running from the ‘Morning-Interview’ on page 1 to the ‘Conclusion’ on page 362. There is also an index of names after ‘Christ’s Kirk on the Green’ on page 152. The whole volume has simply grown together out of the booklets that Ramsay published in the preceding four or five years.

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Later editions of Ramsay’s poems alter little; although the 1721 edition, printed for the author by Thomas Ruddiman, is much finer in appearance and omits the separate title pages carried over from the pamphlets into the 1720, it does not much disturb the arrangement of the poems. The major addition, a significant one, is ‘An Alphabetical List of such of the Subscribers Names as have come to Hand’, eight pages of names in double columns, a striking testament to Ramsay’s reputation and a clear attempt to elevate his work from street literature to library volume. Yet one wonders how the list’s dukes, earls, lords, colonels, advocates and esquires reacted to a book that still bore so many traces of its humbler printing origins. Nor was the 1723 third edition an improvement. This too was printed by Thomas Ruddiman, ‘for, and sold by the Author’, but this time the title-page added that the book was also to be sold ‘by Mr. Taylor at the Ship in Pater-noster-row, London, by Mr. James M‘Euen in Glasgow, by Martin Bryson in Newcastle, and by Mr. Farquhar in Aberdeen’, a sign of Ramsay’s spreading fame not only in Scotland but also over the border. The 1727 fourth edition drops the references to Glasgow’s and Aberdeen’s booksellers but retains those to London’s (now Longman) and Newcastle’s (Bryson). Otherwise it is much like the third, with the same list of contents and the same sense of having been pieced together from separate printings of the poetry. In 1728, Poems by Allan Ramsay, Volume II was published, with verses written by Ramsay since the 1720 issue of volume one. Again, many of the new works had already been printed and sold separately. The second edition (1726) of Ramsay’s verse drama The Gentle Shepherd (also included in Poems of Allan Ramsay, Volume II) carried on its final page an advertisement for many of these new pamphlets: ‘A Poem on Health’ and ‘The Fair Assembly’ could each be had for 4d, ‘Tales and Fables’ for 6d and ‘Jenny and Maggy’ (a pastoral dialogue later incorporated in The Gentle Shepherd) for 2d. Four other poems were for sale at 6d together or 2d each. These prices emphasise just how affordable Watson’s Choice Collection had been. The advertisement in the 1726 Gentle Shepherd gives the price of ‘an Octavo Volume of former Poems bound in Calf’, presumably the first volume of Poems by Allan Ramsay, as 5s (60d), twice the cost of all three parts of Watson’s anthology. By the 1730s Ramsay’s fame so far outreached his native land that his collected poems next appeared in editions printed not in Edinburgh but in London (1731) and Dublin (1733). The two volumes would continue to be published from time to time in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1780 and 1794; Glasgow, 1760; Aberdeen, 1776), but there were also further London editions in 1761 and 1796, and one in Berwick in 1793. Clearly Ramsay had become both a canonical writer and a commercial one for

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his century, before and after his death in 1758. His achievement, however, transcended his own writing to reflect the tradition of Scottish poetry, since alongside volumes of his own verse he also brought out two important collections that included poems by others. In 1724 Ramsay had published The Ever Green, in two volumes, described on the title page as ‘A Collection of Scots Poems, Wrote by the Ingenious before 1600’, employing mainly the Bannatyne manuscript, a crucial anthology of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Scots verse, including Robert Henryson and William Dunbar. Ramsay had already used the manuscript as a source for ‘Christ’s Kirk on the Green’, which he had printed in the first volume of his Poems along with his own continuation of it in two original cantos. Ramsay’s ‘Advertisement’ to ‘Christ’s Kirk on the Green’ notes its source in ‘an old Manuscript Collection of Scots Poems, written an hundred and fifty Years ago’, without naming it, but Ramsay was brash enough to write on the Bannatyne Manuscript itself a note indicating his use of it. In this he gained an advantage over James Watson and for that reason, and also because of Ramsay’s greater reputation, the Ever Green is more celebrated than A Choice Collection as one of the earliest published collections of Middle Scots verse. Nevertheless, Ramsay was no more a modern editor than Watson, and his treatment of his source-texts is unreliable. He also includes in the second volume of The Ever Green the ballad ‘Hardyknute’, now usually attributed to Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw, who first produced the fragments of the poem in 1719. Whether or not Ramsay was aware of the spuriousness of ‘Hardyknute’, he also included in the first volume of The Ever Green his own imitation mediaeval poem, ‘The Vision’, with a cryptic signature, ‘Quod Ar. Scot.’, just enough perhaps to excuse him from a charge of literary forgery. Like Watson, Ramsay made available to his contemporaries a wealth of pre-1600 Scottish poetry, but he also contributed to inventing a tradition, which led to the Ossianic controversy later in the century. Ramsay’s other anthology, The Tea-Table Miscellany, also appeared in 1724. This song collection is both a counterpart to the longer poetry of The Ever Green and an inspiration for the tradition of Scottish song collecting that develops throughout the eighteenth century. Again Ramsay is no modern editor and brings together old and new songs, and changes and improves the former without compunction, but his collection is significant for making available such a large quantity of traditional songs and for including work by lesser poets of his own time. The Tea-Table Miscellany ran to four volumes, the last appearing in 1737, and, like Ramsay’s Poems, continued to be reprinted, in London and Dublin as well as in Scotland, long after his death.

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Ramsay clearly had an advantage in publishing his poetry because of his involvement in the book trade. He himself could do everything, from preparing copy to selling his books, except for the actual printing of them. All other eighteenth-century Scottish poets had to rely on support from others for most of the process of publication. A quite opposite case to Ramsay is that of Alexander Ross, the schoolmaster of Lochlee, an isolated village deep in the Grampians. When, after many years, he yielded to the urgings of those few who had heard his songs and poems and decided to try to publish them, his first step was to call on James Beattie, the author of The Minstrel and a professor at Marischal College, Aberdeen, in perhaps an early example of a creative writer turning to an academic for support. Beattie advised Ross on selecting poems to print and encouraged the 1768 publication in Aberdeen of The Fortunate Shepherdess, along with a selection of Ross’s songs, all in Scots. Beattie further assisted Ross by promoting his book in an Aberdeen newspaper and through private letters. Ten years later a second edition appeared, now with the title Helenore, by which Ross’s pastoral poem is more commonly known (altered from the first edition’s Flaviana), and with a prefatory poem, in Scots, by Beattie himself, who had also arranged for the book to be dedicated and, when published, presented by Ross to the Duchess of Gordon. The second edition’s title-page states that the book is to be sold not just in Aberdeen but also in nearby Banff and Montrose, as well as Edinburgh and Glasgow. Ross’s book is therefore an example of how a regional publication could step up to become a national one, in a process parallel to the way Ramsay moved from being a local to a Scottish and then a British author. This process of stepping up is also evident in the case of Robert Fergusson, Ramsay’s most significant successor as a writer of Scots verse before Burns. Fergusson’s poems for the most part first saw the light in the pages of The Weekly Magazine, an Edinburgh periodical published by Walter Ruddiman, nephew of Thomas Ruddiman, the publisher of Ramsay’s Poems. Fergusson’s first contribution appeared on 2 January 1772 and thereafter came a stream of verse in Scots, fortnightly and even weekly for the rest of that year and into the next. It was not long before Fergusson was hailed as Ramsay’s heir and by the beginning of 1773 he was able to publish a volume of poems by subscription, printed by Walter and Thomas Ruddiman. This, however, includes only nine poems in Scots and eighty-four of its 132 pages bear English poems. What is more, these English poems are placed first in the book. It was not until five years after Fergusson’s death that a more complete collection of his work became available, when

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in 1779 the Ruddimans published Poems on Various Subjects, Part II by Robert Fergusson, opening with a preface lamenting the poet’s untimely decease and closing with an elegy for Fergusson by John Tait, a constant feature of Fergusson editions into the next century. Notably in this 1779 volume the Scots poems precede the English and, were it not for a final section of posthumous verse, would just about outnumber them. The second edition of Fergusson’s Poems on Various Subjects (1782) rearranges the order of the texts in Part 1 but otherwise preserves the two parts as before, each with its sections of English and Scots poems. Only with the third edition of 1785 do the Ruddimans collect the English poems together in the first section and the Scots in the second, though they retain a concluding section of mostly English posthumous poems. Not included in the 1773 Poems by Robert Fergusson was his major Edinburgh poem, Auld Reikie, which was printed separately, as a chapbook, ‘for the Author’, price 6d, according to the title-page, in the same year, presumably shortly after the Poems (Figure 6.2). On the final page of Auld Reikie the text is closed by the statement ‘End of CANTO I’ but although forty lines were added to the poem when it was included in the 1779 Poems on Various Subjects, Part II, no further cantos appeared. In reverting to Ramsay’s practice of selfpublishing single works, Fergusson may have been asserting some kind of independence from the Ruddimans as his publishers, but if that was the case (and it has to be said that there is no evidence for it and Fergusson’s poems continued to be printed in The Weekly Magazine until November 1773) the experiment was not repeated. Perhaps that is why there is no second canto, though obviously Fergusson’s early death in 1774 prevented long-term poetical projects. There were four more printings of his poems after the third edition of 1785, in four different places in Scotland: Perth, Edinburgh, St Andrew’s [sic, though in fact the book was printed in Cupar] and Glasgow. The title-page of the 1788–9 Perth edition asserts that it is also sold by J. Murray, Fleet Street, London, which, if true, would mean that Fergusson’s work reached readers outside Scotland just as Ramsay’s did. Much more rapid in his transition from Edinburgh to London publication was James Macpherson. Coincidentally his first published poem, The Highlander (1758), was printed by Walter Ruddiman but the first of the Ossianic volumes, FRAGMENTS of ANCIENT POETRY, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland, was printed by Hamilton and Balfour, reaching two editions in 1760. As is well known, the impetus for this volume arose after a meeting between Macpherson and John Home, the author of the play Douglas, in Moffat in 1759, when Macpherson

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Figure 6.2 Robert Fergusson’s Auld Reikie, original chapbook title-page.

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told an excited Home about the wealth of Gaelic poetry known to him. Home and two other members of Edinburgh’s literary circle, Adam Ferguson and Hugh Blair, lost no time in urging Macpherson to produce what he called translations into English of the best of these Gaelic poems. Blair himself wrote the preface to the Fragments. Thus publication was again the result of a combination of individual initiative and influential personal support. In Macpherson’s case the support was so strong and the success of the first publication so resounding that his next book of Ossianic poems, FINGAL. an ANCIENT EPIC POEM, in six books (1762), was, like the rest of Macpherson’s works, first published in London, where the author himself soon migrated. There is an ironic contrast with the fate of an earlier and much less famous publication, that of the Gaelic poems of Alexander MacDonald (Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair) at Edinburgh in 1751, in a volume entitled Ais-eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich, which translates as The Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Tongue. This was, as Ronald Black states later in this volume, the first publication of secular Gaelic prose or verse. As Black also argues, MacDonald’s title refers to a resurrection not of the Gaelic language but of the language of Scotland and the preface (in English) carries an appeal to Lowlanders as well as Highlanders. Ten years later, however, Lowlanders would be distracted from genuine Gaelic verse by Macpherson’s inventions. This survey of Scots poetry in print before Burns cautiously identifies a recurrent publication pattern. The poet begins in a local and personal way, his work circulating in manuscript or in occasional and ephemeral printed forms until support and encouragement from a readership, perhaps generous enough to subscribe to a collected volume of verse, brings about a first publication. Whether provincial or Edinburgh-printed, this first issue is relatively cheap and crude, but if successful there follow further, revised editions, often taken up by one of the better-known printer-publishers. Ultimate success, however, is marked by publication not just in Scotland but also in London. The process is, of course, that followed by Robert Burns himself but it continues to be the paradigm for Scottish poets down to this day. Modern poets now make names for themselves with initial publication of individual poems and groups of poems in magazines and collections of creative writing deriving from academic courses. In time they receive the accolade of publication in a slim volume from a small publisher of poetry, and then must await the supreme recognition of a collected edition by a major London-based publisher, such as Faber. It is therefore arguable that the eighteenth century book trade originated the modern paradigm for the publishing of poetry in Scotland.

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Robert Burns G. Ross Roy Robert Burns (Plate 37) is unusual among the poets of his own century and those who have followed, in that he had published nothing before the appearance of his first full volume of poetry. His ‘elder brother in the muse’, as Burns called Robert Fergusson, for example, had published several poems in The Weekly Magazine, or Edinburgh Amusement as well as in The Scots Magazine and The Perth Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure before bringing out his Poems in 1773 with the Edinburgh printers Walter and Thomas Ruddiman. Burns, however, was well known locally as a rhymer before he turned to ‘guid black prent’ in 1786. The poet’s father, William Burnes, who was trained as a gardener, came from Kincardineshire and ended up in Alloway, where he married Agnes Broun (or Brown) in 1757. Their first-born, Robert, arrived on 25 January 1759, a date that is now celebrated throughout the world. In 1780 Robert, his brother Gilbert and other young men formed the Bachelors’ Club, a debating society. It was probably here that Burns’s poetry became known to a substantial number of people, although the first song that he wrote dates from 1774, when the poet was coupled with Helen Blair in harvesting. It was then, he later wrote in an autobiographical letter to Dr John Moore, that he ‘first committed the sin of RHYME’ (Ross Roy 1985: II: 137). The result was the delightful ‘Handsome Nell’, not published during the poet’s lifetime. Burns met Jean Armour in April 1785 and began a love affair that resulted in her pregnancy. Jean’s father, James, repudiated the poet and sent his daughter to Paisley to bear the child. Meanwhile Burns took up with Mary (or perhaps Margaret) Campbell and the two planned to emigrate to Jamaica. Before leaving, Burns decided to publish a book of his poetry with John Wilson of Kilmarnock. Subscription 570

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bills, of which one survives, were circulated and some 350 advance copies were sold. Printing began on 13 July 1786, and on 31 July, 612 copies of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect were published. Postpublication sales must also have been good, since by 28 August Wilson had only thirteen copies left. On 15 November, Burns wrote to Mrs Frances Dunlop, apologising for being unable to find the six copies she desired, saying that five was ‘all I can command’ (Ross Roy 1985: I: 62). One assumes Burns had canvassed those who had subscribed for multiple copies. Unfortunately, Wilson did not print a list of subscribers, as William Creech (Plate 38) would do with the Edinburgh edition. The earliest review appeared in the Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany (October 1786), and was probably written by the editor James Sibbald, who said: ‘to those who admire the exertions of untutored fancy his poems will afford singular gratification’. By far the most important review of the volume was Henry Mackenzie’s in The Lounger (9 December 1786), a publication he edited. Mackenzie was already famous as author of The Man of Feeling, a book which Burns told his tutor John Murdoch ‘I prize next to the bible’ (Ross Roy 1985: I: 17). In the review (which filled all four pages of issue Number 97), Mackenzie said that whoever would read ‘our rustic bard will perceive with what uncommon penetration and sagacity this Heaven-taught ploughman, from his humble and unlettered station, has looked upon men and manners’. The idea of the ‘rustic bard’ who is great because he is ‘Heaven-taught’ caught on and has been quoted for over two centuries. Mackenzie’s review opened the doors of the Edinburgh literati to Burns, and when his Kilmarnock publisher demanded advance payment for a second edition, the poet was able to have a well-connected publisher in Edinburgh, William Creech, agree to a second, expanded, edition of his poems. Mackenzie also helped Burns negotiate the sale of his rights to the poems to Creech for one hundred guineas. And so the Edinburgh publisher took possession of one of the greatest books in the English language. Subscription bills were circulated and in December 1786 typesetting began, with an initial print run set at 1,500 copies. Before the book could be published, the subscription bills came in and more than this number of copies were bespoke. Unfortunately the type had been distributed for most of the gatherings, so they had to be reset. Burns mentions this in a letter to Mrs Dunlop (22 March 1787): ‘I have both a second and a third Edition going on as the second was begun with too small a number of copies, – The whole I have printed is three thousand’ (I: 102). This statement has posed two problems: when the title-page was produced it

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was used for both sets of pages, and whereas we know that Burns read proof once, there is no indication that he reread proof for the resetting. There are several differences in the two printings; the most famous one is in ‘To a Haggis’ (which first appeared in The Caledonian Mercury, 19 December 1786), where line 45 reads ‘Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware’, but in the reset version the word ‘skinking’ becomes ‘stinking’, greatly to the amusement of readers ever since. The size of the 1787 edition is, in my opinion, not a round 3,000 copies, but 3,250. This claim is based on a letter from Henry Mackenzie to Burns of 13 February 1788, on which the poet has jotted a column of figures which read ’1000 500 1500 250/3250’. There can be no series of numbers associated with Burns of this size other than the print run of the 1787 edition of his poems (Plate 39). The breakdown, I suggest, would be as follows: ’1000’ would be the additional names that came in when new subscription lists were circulated; ’500’ would be the copies Creech subscribed for himself; ’1500’ would be the early printing (the ‘skinking’ variant); the ’250’ might be the copies sent to the London firm of A. Strahan and T. Cadell, who advertised the edition in the London Chronicle (3 May 1787). That firm published its own edition in October 1787. With the appearance of the Edinburgh edition, Burns’s Poems quickly became a best-seller: piracies were published in Belfast and Dublin in 1787, and in Philadelphia and New York in 1788. Burns’s audience for the Kilmarnock edition did not stretch much beyond Ayrshire, but the poet felt the need for a glossary because Scots were not used to reading works in the Scottish dialect. Tracts were published in the poet’s lifetime warning against the use of Scots; the bestknown of these, Scoticisms, Arranged in Alphabetical Order, designed to correct improprieties of speech and writing, was compiled by James Beattie, author of The Minstrel, a book Burns owned. And while he was happy to write verse ‘chiefly in the Scottish dialect’, there is only one known Burns letter in which he uses broad Scots. All of his other surviving correspondence including love letters (where one would expect he might lapse into Scots) are in Standard English. Evidently by the time Burns had moved on to an Edinburgh publisher, and with English sales in mind, he had expanded the glossary considerably and words that were not glossed in 1786 were in 1787, even though they appeared in poems that were published in the earlier volume. The Kilmarnock edition was sold mostly to humbler readers and its survival rate is not great; today there are fewer than 100 copies known. The 1787 volume was subscribed to by a larger proportion of readers who lived in substantial houses where there was a library; that and the fact that the volume was issued in boards, rather than the paper

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wrappers of the 1786 volume, has meant that a larger proportion of the edition survives. After the Edinburgh edition appeared, poems by Burns were occasionally published in newspapers, but they were probably submitted by someone other than the poet. He habitually sent the texts of poems and songs he liked to friends, who saw no reason not to see them in print. Burns does not appear to have objected when friends did this, as he did not request that these works be kept confidential when he sent them. But the poet also occasionally sent his poems to editors. And as with every famous poet in this age there were spurious printings. This has continued over years; in the 1990s, radical poems of the 1790s were claimed to be works of Burns. The poet’s involvement with the Edinburgh edition was substantial. He mentions proofreading the volume, and there exists a small portion of the glossary in the poet’s hand, with corrections, which indicates that he did not leave that compilation to someone else. The printing itself was done by William Smellie, whose shop was in the Anchor Close off the High Street (Figure 1.6; Plate 4). Burns and Smellie hit it off, and the poet devotes a stanza to him in a poetic sketch in his poem on Robert Graham of Fintry, in which Smellie is dubbed ‘Crochallan’, no doubt a snide reference to the fact that Smellie was one of the founders of the Crochallan Fencibles. In the sketch we find him described: ‘Yet, tho’ his caustic wit was biting rude, / His heart was warm, benevolent and good’ (Kinsley 1968: II: 588). In a letter to Peter Hill (2 February 1790), Burns wrote: ‘What is become of that old Veteran in Genius, Wit and B[au]dry, Smellie’ (Ross Roy 1985: II: 10). Although it is frequently said that Burns’s Kilmarnock volume was aimed at a local audience, he nevertheless included a 144-word glossary with a short introductory paragraph discussing the Scots dialect. Burns does not appear to have deliberately chosen obscure Scottish words in writing his poems and songs, as, for example, Hugh MacDiarmid did in the twentieth century. Supposing that Burns’s friends and acquaintances who subscribed to the 1786 were familiar with almost all of the words in its glossary, some words were probably unfamiliar to other readers. One would not expect that many of them knew the word ‘ieroe’ (of Gaelic origin) for great-grandchild, which the Oxford English Dictionary lists as first recorded in 1701, followed by Burns in his ‘Dedication to Gavin Hamilton’, which he initially intended to include in the Kilmarnock volume. Where in 1786 Burns wrote in his ‘Address to the Deil’ the words ‘But fare-you-well, auld Nickie-ben’ without finding it necessary to gloss the world ‘auld’, it is glossed in 1787. ‘Ingle’ (fireplace), although it appears

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in both volumes, is glossed only in the later one. In a few instances Burns appears to have been over-zealous in compiling the 1787 glossary. Very few English readers would not know, or be able to guess, what the poet meant when he addressed a mouse ‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie’ and glossed that last word. But Burns’s use of dialect did not go unchallenged. On 13 May 1787, Dr John Moore wrote to the poet: It is evident that you already possess a great variety of expression and command of the English language, you ought, therefore, to deal more sparingly, for the future, in the provincial dialect – why should you, by using that, limit the number of your admirers to those who understand the Scottish, when you can extend it to all persons of taste who understand the English language? (Chambers 1896: II: 94–5) Moore went on to advise Burns to read the English poets, and become master of the ‘heathen mythology’. Fortunately, Burns knew where his strength lay, and he politely ignored the good doctor’s advice. While in Edinburgh, the poet made the acquaintance of James Johnson, an engraver and music seller there. Johnson was already gathering material for his Scots Musical Museum in which he planned to publish the musical heritage of Scotland. Burns enthusiastically agreed to work with Johnson and he spent the last decade of his life collecting tunes and words for the Museum. The first volume came out in 1787 containing only three songs by Burns. But the poet hit his stride in the second volume (1788) where thirty-two of the 100 songs are by Burns; from the third through the fifth volume, Burns was the de facto editor of the series. Volume three appeared in 1790 with forty songs by Burns, volume four in 1792 with forty-seven, volume five in 1796 with thirty-seven. Burns was rightly proud of his contribution. Around 1 June 1796, he wrote to Johnson: Your Work is a great one, & though, now that it is near finished, I see if we were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended, yet I will venture to prophesy, that to future ages your Publication will be the text book & standard of Scotish Song & Music. (Ross Roy 1985: II: 381–2) Without Burns’s enthusiasm for his project, the sixth and final volume of the Scots Musical Museum did not appear until 1803. Fortunately the project was nearing completion when Burns died, otherwise the Museum might never have been finished. Of the 600 songs in the collection, we know 177 were written by Burns.

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In September 1792 George Thomson, who was clerk (eventually rising to chief clerk) with the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Art and Manufacture in Scotland, wrote to Burns: ‘For some years past . . . I have employed many leisure hours in selecting and collating the most favorite of our national melodies’ (Currie 1800: IV: 1). He intended to enlist the poet in supplying words to the melodies of Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs, the first portion of which had already appeared. But the ever-cautious Thomson hedged his request: ‘We will esteem your poetical assistance a particular favor, besides paying any reasonable price you shall please to demand for it’ (Currie 1800: IV: 2). Burns replied on 16 September: As the request you make to me will positively add to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall enter into your undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I have, strained to their utmost exertion by the impulse of Enthusiasm . . . As to any remuneration, you may think my Songs either above, or below price; for they shall absolutely be the one or the other. (Ross Roy 1985: II: 148–9) And so began Burns’s second song-writing project. Thomson obviously held himself to be Burns’s social superior. On the other hand when he tried, unsuccessfully, to enlist Byron’s co-operation his tone was almost obsequious. Thomson had a high opinion of his own talents, not infrequently challenging the wording of songs that Burns had sent him; he also tried this with Beethoven, who had been recruited with Haydn to adapt the airs, but the composer told Thomson that he was not used to having others meddle with his music. Nevertheless, Thomson forced Burns to think through his songwriting in a way that Johnson did not, and so some good did come from Thomson’s tampering. The latter disagreed with the poet over the wording of one of Burns’s greatest songs, ‘Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn’ (better known by the opening words ‘Scots wha hae’). The song was very probably inspired by the news of the radical Thomas Muir being sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay. We do not know that Burns was a member of the Friends of the People, but he was certainly sympathetic to their tenets. Discussing the air ‘Hey Tutti Taitie’ Burns told Thomson that it had often ‘filled my eyes with tears,’ going on to say that tradition had it that this air was Bruce’s march at the Battle of Bannockburn. ‘This thought warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of Liberty & Independence, which I threw into a kind of Scots Ode’ (Ross Roy 1985: II: 235). Here follows Burns’s song:

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed,– Or to victorie. –

Burns followed the song with these words: ‘So may God ever defend the cause of TRUTH and Liberty, as he did that day!’ and in a postscript he added that: ‘the accidental recollection of that glorious struggle for Freedom, associated with the glowing ideas of some other struggles of the same nature, not quite so ancient [Burns’s italics], roused my rhyming Mania’ (Ross Roy 1985: II: 236). And this was written just a couple of days after the trial of Muir. On 5 September 1793 Thomson thanked Burns for the song, giving it high praise, but at the same time dismissing the air as not ‘worthy of notice’ (Currie 1800: IV: 113). He proposed instead that Burns use the air ‘Lewis Gordon’, which would mean that the final line of each stanza would have to be lengthened. The line noted above would change, as Thomson suggested, from ‘Or to victorie’ to the heavier ‘Or to glorious victorie’ (Currie 1800: IV: 113). The argument went back and forth until Burns, exhibiting an unusual degree of exasperation, opened a letter of 15 September with a quotation from Pope: ‘Who shall decide, when Doctors disagree?’ – My Ode pleases me so much that I cannot alter it. – Your proposed alterations would, in my opinion, make it tame. – I am exceedingly obliged to you for putting me on reconsidering it; as I think I have much improved it. (Ross Roy 1985: II: 248) Burns stood by his version of the song, telling Thomson that he might, if he wished, withdraw the song altogether, and that he would not be offended if Thomson did so. Unfortunately, Thomson had his way because the song did not appear until 1799, three years after the poet’s death, when it was set to the tune ‘Lewis Gordon’ with the expanded last line to each stanza. By 1803, however, Thomson had had a change of heart and he published the original words to the air ‘Hey Tutti Taiti’. In a note appended to the song Thomson writes (in the third person): ‘having since examined the Air “Hey tutti taiti” with more particular attention, [he] frankly owns that he has changed his opinion, and that he thinks it much better adapted for giving energy to the Poetry than the Air of “Lewie Gordon”’. Thomson goes on to say that he has sent it to Haydn who ‘with a felicity peculiar to himself’ has rendered it ‘completely martial, and highly characteristic of the heroic verses’. And so Burns was finally vindicated.

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The Select Collection continued to occupy Burns until his death, while he was also supplying Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum with songs. At the same time as he was writing completely new songs for both of these collections he was collecting songs from the oral tradition and also poring over poetical miscellanies for songs that could be used as they were, or in many cases that he could rewrite. Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany was the chief of these sources, but he also made considerable use of David Herd’s two-volume Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776) and Joseph Ritson’s Scottish Songs (1794), also in two volumes, together with Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). Burns also possessed several collections of music, mostly Scottish, which he mined assiduously for both Johnson and Thomson. One of these, the Orpheus Caledonius (1725), was edited by William Thomson, an Edinburgh native who had settled in London. Another important source book for Burns was James Oswald’s Caledonian Pocket Companion, published in London in 1759. Oswald had worked in Dunfermline and Edinburgh before moving to London in 1741. His collection came out in twelve parts, and Burns wrote to James Johnson in 1791 that he was ‘so lucky lately as to pick an entire copy of Oswald’s Scots [Music] & I think I shall make glorious work out of it’ (Ross Roy 1985: II: 91). A particularly remarkable example of how the poet took old songs and reworked them is to be found in ‘A Red Red Rose’. Almost every phrase in that song exists in an earlier version, none of which has any merit. What Burns managed to do was to take these various phrases, rework them, and create one of the greatest songs in Scots or English. At the same time that he knew when he had written a major song he could also be reticent about admitting that the work was his. We see this with ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which he first sent to his friend Mrs Frances Dunlop on 7 December 1788, with the comment: ‘is not the Scots phrase, “auld lang syne,” exceedingly expressive. – there is an old song & tune which has often thrilled thro’ my soul. – You know I am an enthusiast in old Scots songs’ (Ross Roy 1985: I: 342). Later in the letter Burns wrote out an early version of the song, adding at the end of it, ‘Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired Poet who composed this glorious Fragment’ (I: 345), sounding an unmistakable echo of Henry Mackenzie’s claim that Burns himself was ‘Heaventaught’. At some point Burns sent the song to Johnson, and it appeared in volume five of The Scots Musical Museum (1796). Unfortunately, we do not know when Burns sent it to Johnson, but he probably supplied Thomson with the words at an earlier date, since he wrote to the latter in September 1793:

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the air is but mediocre; but the following song, the old Song of the olden times, & which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, untill [sic] I took it down from an old man’s singing; is enough to recommend any air. (II: 246) During his lifetime only one volume of the Select Collection appeared, containing seven new songs by Burns. Through 1799 an additional fifty-four of his songs were published. Volumes three through six of Thomson appeared after 1800, all of them containing songs by Burns, but these had already been published in Currie’s edition of 1800. By 1792, the 1787 Edinburgh edition of Burns’s poems was out of print, and William Creech wrote to Burns asking if he could supply additional material for a new edition. On 16 April Burns replied that he could furnish about fifty pages of new material, and, as he had with Thomson, declined financial compensation: ‘A few Books which I very much want, are all the recompence I crave, together with as many copies of this new edition of my own works as Friendship or Gratitude shall prompt me to present’ (II: 139–40). Burns took revisions seriously and he apparently proofread the material which went into the 1793 edition, and probably also that of 1794. The sets sold well and there were reprints in 1797, 1798, and 1800. Burns supplied sixteen poems and songs that were printed for the first time in 1793, but there were also songs that had previously appeared in Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum. Without doubt the most important work to appear in the new two-volume edition was ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, which Burns had written for Francis Grose. Grose, who had already published his six-volume Antiquities of England and Wales (1773–87), was staying with Burns’s neighbour Robert Riddell when he met the poet. On 17 July 1789, Burns wrote to Mrs Dunlop saying that Grose had made his headquarters for the past two months with Riddell, while collecting material for the Antiquities of Scotland, which appeared in two volumes (1789–91). Burns interested the antiquary in depicting the ruined kirk at Alloway, and Grose agreed to do so if Burns would furnish him with a poem to accompany the illustration. ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, one of the world’s greatest tales of diablerie, appeared in the second volume of the Antiquities. But more people would see the poem in Burns’s 1793 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect than in Grose’s specialised and expensive quarto edition. ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ was so popular that it was printed by the Glasgow firm of Brash and Reid in a collection of eight-page chapbooks with the general title Poetry; Original and Selected. It is the third chapbook, of twenty-four, in the first volume of the collection. These chapbooks

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were sold separately and some were reprinted. None came close, however, to ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ which in its first Brash and Reid printing bore the title Aloway Kirk or Tam o’ Shanter. A Tale, either in very late 1795 or, more likely, early 1796. A further edition with the same misspelling of the word ‘Alloway’ was issued, and then these were followed by four more editions with the spelling of ‘Alloway’ corrected. The last of these reproductions is the only one to have printing information on the titlepage, which reads: ‘Glasgow: Printed by Chapman & Lang, For Brash & Reid’. The poem also appeared in a supplemental volume issued in 1803 which contained three new titles. The remaining twenty-one titles had already appeared in the four-volume series, and may have consisted of unused stock. Two other undated chapbook versions of the poem exist. One may have been copied from the first two Brash and Reid editions because it again misspells the word ‘Alloway’. Where all the Brash and Reid editions had a six-line quotation from the poem on the title-page, this one has a different four-line quotation. The final chapbook edition of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ published in the eighteenth century has a drop-head title followed by the first twelve lines of the poem. It is improbable that this is a Brash and Reid production because it does not bear the name of a publisher, whereas the six variants mentioned all do. There is one more book that does not carry Burns’s name on the title-page, nor anywhere internally, but which is inseparably linked with the poet – The Merry Muses of Caledonia; a collection of favourite Scots songs, Ancient and Modern; selected for the use of the Crochallan Fencibles (1799; Plate 40). We are only certain that a half-dozen of the entries are by Burns, but since its publication the work has always been associated with the poet. The last eighteenth-century edition of Burns was the collected works compiled by the Scottish physician James Currie of Dumfriesshire. He took his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh but settled into practice in Liverpool. At Burns’s death he was chosen to edit the poet’s work, a position for which he was not well qualified. In 1800 the four-volume Works of Robert Burns was published in Liverpool with the following information: ‘T. Cadell, jun. And W. Davies, Strand, London; and W. Creech, Edinburgh’. One of the aims of the edition was to raise money for the poet’s widow, Jean and her children. In the event, £2,000 was turned over to her. The venture was successful beyond expectation and the edition was reprinted in 1801, 1802, 1803, 1806, 1809, 1813 and in an eighth enlarged edition in 1820. All but the first edition were published in London, with Creech figuring prominently on the title-page. Scottish sales were

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good, as we can see from a letter Creech wrote to Messrs Cadell and Davies on 30 June 1800: But I am sadly disappointed in not receiving Burns when all the Trade in town and country have received them. I had about 150 bespoke and cannot furnish one. This makes me appear very awkward in the eyes of the public . . . I wrote you about a month ago that I should want 300 Burns.1 The enormous popularity of Burns can be judged from the editions entitled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect that were published outside Scotland in the eighteenth century. These were: Belfast, 1787, 1789, 1790, 1793, 1800; Dublin 1787, 1789, 1790; London, 1787; New York, 1788, 1799; and Philadelphia, 1788, 1798. As was mentioned, 1800 saw the last reprinting of William Creech’s Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. By this time there had been Scottish editions of Burns printed in Montrose and in Paisley in 1801, followed by editions printed in Dundee and Kirkcaldy in 1802. We have already seen that there were several eighteenth-century chapbook versions of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ but chapbooks and broadsides generally were important sources of the works of Burns. Chapbooks were the staple reading material of working-class city dwellers in lateeighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Scotland. Because they were lightweight, they also made up much of the reading material carried by itinerant pedlars (or chapmen) who worked the rural areas in both the Lowlands and the Highlands. They even figure in the opening line of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ (‘When chapmen billies leave the street’). The earliest Burnsian chapbook was entitled The Calf; the Unco Calf’s Answer; Virtue—to a Mountain Bard; and The De’il’s Answer to his vera worthy frien’ ROBERT BURNS. The chapbook bears no author, place of publication or date, but it is known to have appeared in 1787. The first broadside to contain Burns material was printed in Dumfries, probably in 1789. Its title is The Ayrshire Garland. An Excellent New Song. This is a preliminary version of what was to become ‘The Kirk’s Alarm’. In 1789 a chapbook was published bearing the title The Prayer of Holy Willie, A Canting, Hypocritical Kirk Elder. The subject of this poem, which is considered to be the greatest short satire in the English language, was William Fisher who, it was claimed, pushed the minister of Mauchline Parish in 1785, where Burns lived, to bring charges against Gavin Hamilton for failure properly to observe 1

William Creech, ALS, Ross Roy Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries.

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the Sabbath and other offences. Fisher was himself rebuked by the kirk for drunkenness, and in another church satire, ‘The Kirk’s Alarm’, Burns accused Fisher: ‘Holy Will, Holy Will, there was wit i’ your skull, / when ye pilfer’d the alms o’ the poor.’ Another chapbook containing a Burns poem was The Whistle (Plate 41), probably printed in Dumfries in 1791. The event that gave rise to the poem was a drinking contest where the winner was the person still able to blow a whistle after the other contestants had become incapacitated. We know that Burns sanctioned the publication of ‘The Whistle’ because in October(?) 1791 he sent his friend Robert Cleghorn a proofsheet of it. Burns was a witness to the contest, and he introduced himself at the end of ‘the ballad’ as he called it (‘Next uprose our Bard, like a prophet in drink’). The Glasgow firm of Stewart and Meikle in 1799 published several eight-page chapbooks that contained first printings of material by Burns. The most important of these works were ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’, ‘The Kirk’s Alarm’ and ‘The Jolly Beggars: a Cantata’, which lacks only ‘The Merry Andrew’ section. The firm had earlier published An Unco Mournfu Tale, to which is added, The Antiquarian (1796). The second poem in this chapbook is known as ‘On the Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations thro Scotland’. The 1799 chapbooks were collected in 1800 and issued as The Poetical Miscellany. One of the partners, Thomas Stewart, was the nephew of Burns’s friend John Richmond, who was the source of the previously unpublished Burns material. Many chapbooks were made up of selections of poems or songs with no author listed, and even the title of a particular poem or song might be changed. So the only way to determine which chapbooks contain poems or songs by Burns is to examine the text. When works are attributed to the Bard they sometimes turn out not to be his. For example, in a very rare Edinburgh chapbook of 1799, Gray’s Tracts No. II, Burns’s ‘The Lass of Ballochmyle’ is followed by an untitled song, ‘The Sun i’ the West Fa’s to Rest i’ the E’enin’’ and then ‘Helen’s Lament’ before we find ‘Address of Robert Bruce’. A reader who is not acquainted with Burns’s poetry could be led to believe that Burns was the author of all four of these. Chapbooks containing Burns material were common in the nineteenth century, beginning with a series printed in Newton Stewart in the first decade of the century. By Burns’s time broadsides had become less favoured than they had been, with the exception of those devoted to politics. Burns himself was the author of four political squibs produced during the period 1795–6. Known as the Heron Election Ballads, they were written in support of Patrick Heron, a Whig. Like most such works, these were all published

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anonymously, but apparently spurious broadsides were circulated bearing the poet’s name which led him to complain to an unnamed correspondent, quite possibly Patrick Heron himself, in a letter dated Dumfries, 24 April 1795: the inclosed ballads having fallen into my hands, I send them to you as a flagrant instance of the Poetica Licentia. – The Poet, whoever he is, seems to have some little wit with a great deal of illnature; & I pray that he may fall among hands who will reward him as he deserves! (Ross Roy 1985: II: 348) The popularity of Robert Burns in eighteenth-century Scotland was unprecedented, and it carried on through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is safe to say that during those two centuries Burns was always available from some publisher in Scotland and elsewhere. James Currie’s edition of the Works went into eight numbered (but actually nine) editions by 1820, and a piracy was available in Philadelphia by 1801. Addressing the Boston Burns Club on 25 January 1859, Ralph Waldo Emerson echoed the idea of Henry Mackenzie almost threequarters of a century earlier: ‘He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he has made that Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man’ (Wilson 1902: 37). It was this genius that fired the extraordinary sale of his works in Scotland and throughout the English-speaking world.

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The Merry Muses G. Ross Roy Scotland’s tradition of bawdry goes back well before the eighteenth century. Some found its way into print on broadsides, but much was passed on orally from one singer to another. Not infrequently these travelling people formed loose groups which moved from inn to inn, scrounging a living from patrons. Robert Burns painted a splendid picture of such an assembly in ‘The Jolly Beggars’, which at an earlier time was known as ‘Love and Liberty’. The enjoyment supplied in wayside inns by wandering minstrels was also available in city taverns. In Edinburgh (1786–7), Burns met William Smellie, printer of the Edinburgh 1787 (second) edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, who introduced him to a convivial society called the Crochallan Fencibles, and it was ostensibly this group that produced The Merry Muses of Caledonia; a collection of favourite Scots songs, ancient and modern; selected for use of the Crochallan Fencibles, which appeared in 1799 (Plate 40), three years after the poet’s death. There are numerous references to bawdy songs in Burns’s letters and he was quite explicit about this interest in writing to Robert Cleghorn, also a member of the Crochallan Fencibles, and enclosing his bawdy song ‘Act Sederunt of the Session’, which appears in The Merry Muses: Well! The Law is good for something, since we can make a B--dysong out of it. – (N.B. I never made anything of it any other way –). There is, there must be, some truth in original sin. – My violent propensity to B--dy convinces me of it. – Lack a day if that species of Composition be the sin against ‘the Haly Ghaist I am the most offending soul alive’. (Ross Roy 1985: II: 255) 583

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Here Burns quotes the king in Henry V (IV, iii), and before ‘Act Sederunt’ in this same letter, Burns had quoted Falstaff (1Henry IV, III, iii): ‘Come, sing me a Bawdy-Song to make me merry!’ We know that Burns had a collection of bawdy songs, because in a letter to his friend John M’Murdo of February(?) 1792 he wrote: I think I once mentioned something to you of a Collection of Scots Songs I have for some years been making: I send you a perusal of what I have gathered. – I could not conveniently spare them above five or six days, & five or six glances of them will probably more than suffice you. – When you are tired of them, please leave them with Mr Clint of the King’s Arms. – There is not another copy of the Collection in the world, & I should be sorry that any unfortunate negligence should deprive me of what has cost me a good deal of pains. – (Ross Roy 1985: II: 138) It would seem almost certain that Burns’s ‘Collection of Scots Songs’ would, after the poet’s death, become The Merry Muses. We must now go forward to the first collected edition of Burns’s works which was undertaken by James Currie. In the collection Currie published over 175 letters by Burns, but he ignored others he felt were unsuitable for inclusion. He published the letter to M’Murdo quoted above, evidently because he knew of the publication of The Merry Muses. But after the sentence ‘glances will probably more than suffice you’, Currie inserted the words ‘A very few of them are my own’ (Currie 1800: II: 425). He thus led scholars astray until 1951 when the original letter was discovered. Because Burns spent the last years of his life in Dumfries it has been suggested that The Merry Muses was printed there, but it seems far more likely that the volume was produced in Edinburgh, where the Fencibles were located. With Burns gone there would be no reason for a Dumfries printing. It does not appear that Burns’s ‘Collection of Scots Songs’ has survived, although G. Legman has suggested that the Cunningham Manuscript in the British Library is in fact a copy of Burns’s collection, transcribed by Allan Cunningham (Legman 1964: 133). There were no further editions of The Merry Muses published in the eighteenth century, but several appeared in the nineteenth, most of them corrupt.

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Music David Johnson It should be said at the outset that music notation, as used by Western society for the last 1,000 years, is essentially a handwritten system. Writing music by hand is fast, accurate and with practice, extremely beautiful. Doing the same job by machine is slow, laborious and prone to error. Printed music began in Europe in the early sixteenth century, but for the next 200 years, if a really splendid copy was needed – for instance, for presentation to a monarch – a manuscript was still the preferred form. Had the sixteenth century possessed a photocopier, music printing would perhaps have developed no further. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries music printing was carried out with moveable type. This was largely replaced around 1680 by engraving on copper plates, then by stamping on thin copper skins with punch tools. Since 1820 the processes have diversified – present-day methods include photography and typesetting by computer – but handwritten music is still viable, and in use, today. Music printing began in Scotland in 1564 with a book of metrical psalms, organised and paid for by the General Assembly of the Reformed Church. Other psalters followed up to 1635, nearly all of them published in Edinburgh, but no secular music was issued. After that printing lapsed for a quarter of a century. A second period began in Aberdeen in 1662: a joint enterprise between the printer John Forbes and the Aberdeen Town Council to celebrate Charles II’s restoration. Forbes’s first book was a collection of secular part-songs, Songs and Fancies To Thre, Foure, or Five Parts, which went through three editions: mysteriously, he produced only the Cantus (soprano) parts; while the Counter, Tenor, Bassus and Quintus parts, necessary to complete the music, were never issued. This was followed in 1666 by a book of harmonised psalms, Psalm Tunes to Four Voices, which achieved five editions. It was a noble 585

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effort, but by 1720 – the year of the last edition of the psalm-book – the impulse behind the enterprise had disappeared. The royal Stuart dynasty had gone; Songs and Fancies, many of whose songs dated back to sixteenth-century Stuart courts, was hopelessly out of date. Printed music after 1720 was hardly connected with what had gone before. Several factors combined to bring about a new wave of publishing from 1725 onwards: a growing fashion for Italian baroque music, which enabled the Edinburgh Musical Society to start weekly concerts and be formally constituted in 1728; Allan Ramsay’s song book The Tea-Table Miscellany (1723 and later editions), which established a standard repertoire of Scots songs even though it did not print the tunes for them; and an increased concern for Scotland’s regional and local music, which arose, paradoxically, from the country’s loss of political independence in 1707. Below is a table of Scottish music books printed between 1725 and 1745. All but three were published in Edinburgh; the exceptions – one each from London, Dublin and Paris – are included here as they were effectively a part of Edinburgh’s culture, and had significant sales in Scotland. Most of these composers went to the Edinburgh engraver Richard Cooper, whose career is discussed in some detail earlier in this volume. The list is impressive compared with what had preceded it in the seventeenth century; however, it averages only about one title a year. All these books were in fact private speculations by the composers, who had to hire engravers and printers, persuade their friends and patrons to subscribe – most of the books have subscription lists – and deal with the administration. Print runs averaged 200 copies, the usual print run for university theses; the venture would pay for itself with sales of about sixty. And these books were not cheap: McGibbon’s Six Sonatas (1734) cost 10s 6d and Barsanti’s Concerti Grossi (1742) £1 5s (£262.50 and £625 respectively in today’s market), showing that eighteenth-century music publishing depended on support from welloff amateur enthusiasts. Most lived in Edinburgh or were closely connected to it; they were almost a private club. After 1745, however, the market widened considerably. At this point, the publishing exploits of James Oswald are crucial. After a brief Edinburgh career, he left for London when he was thirtyone, where he continued to publish his compositions and Scots-tune arrangements. But his output was so voluminous that publishing became almost a full-time job, and the London market so buoyant that he no longer needed to collect subscriptions: the books almost sold themselves. In this he was helped by the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and its

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aftermath, for it seems to be an axiom that whenever Scotland becomes a political threat to England, the English become interested in Scottish music. From a present-day viewpoint Oswald’s outstanding book is The Caledonian Pocket Companion, issued in twelve volumes between c. 1745 and c. 1763. Each volume was small (average thirty pages) and cheap (1s 6d), and the tunes could be played on violin, flute, recorder, oboe, or indeed any other instrument. Oswald mixed traditional with new tunes of his own – not always telling customers which were which – and included Highland alongside Lowland ones. This format strongly influenced other Scots fiddle collections later in the century. The other great innovator was Robert Bremner, the first Scottish music publisher in the commercial sense that we recognise today. Born probably in Edinburgh in 1713, the first years of his life are obscure. He may have run a lucrative business of some other kind up to the age of forty; certainly he entered music publishing in 1755 with aplomb, confidence and a lot of working capital. Bremner’s Edinburgh list from 1755 to 1761 has an imagination and courage that put later Scottish music publishing to shame. He explored gaps in the market and spent serious money on advertising. His first publications were a manual for church choirs, two cittern tutors, two harpsichord tutors (commissioned from Nicolo Pasquali, an Italian musician in Edinburgh), a reprint of McGibbon’s Scots Tunes (whose printing plates he bought from McGibbon’s executors), a Scots fiddle book of his own, more rugged and ‘ethnic’ than McGibbon’s, and two first-rate books of Scots songs. His greatest work at this time, however, was signing up the 28-year-old aristocratic composer Thomas Erskine, Earl of Kelly. Kelly had studied in Mannheim with the avant-garde composer Johann Stamitz and returned to Scotland with his head full of the new Mannheim way of writing for orchestra. Bremner sensed, rightly, that this new style would catch on throughout Europe and revolutionise concerts everywhere. He engraved Kelly’s first six symphonies as a beautiful set of orchestral parts in Edinburgh in 1761, then, fired by success, moved his business to London and immediately reissued the symphonies with a London imprint. In this way he launched Kelly internationally; though it might equally be argued that Kelly’s music launched him. Bremner maintained his Edinburgh shop under a manager, John Brysson, and kept up links with the Edinburgh Musical Society (EMS) by becoming their London agent. In 1772 the EMS’s secretary asked him to find them a new principal cellist for their concerts. Bremner enquired round London and discovered Johann Georg Christoph Schetky, aged thirty-four, a brilliant virtuoso badly in need of work, but there were difficulties:

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Table 6.1 Scottish music books, printed 1725–45. [1725]

William Thomson

Orpheus Caledonius (London): fifty Scots songs for voice and harpsichord, thirty-eight of them from The Tea-Table Miscellany

1725–6

Lorenzo Bocchi

A Musicall Entertainment for a Chamber (Dublin): twelve sonatas respectively for violin, recorder, cello and viola da gamba with harpsichord, together with an Italianate cantata with words by Allan Ramsay

c.1726

Alexander Stuart

Musick for Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scots Songs: the tunes for vol. 1 of The Tea-Table Miscellany set for violin and harpsichord

c. 1727

Adam Craig

A Collection of the Choicest of the Scots Tunes: forty-four Scots tunes set for solo harpsichord

1729

William McGibbon

Six Sonatas for Two German Flutes or Two Violins and a Bass

c. 1730

Adam Craig

a second edition of The Choicest of the Scots Tunes

1732

Alexander Munro

Recueil des meilleurs airs Ecossois (Paris): twelve Scots tunes arranged as sonatas for flute or violin and harpsichord

1733

William Thomson

a second edition of Orpheus Caledonius, expanded to 100 songs

1734

William McGibbon

a second set of Six Sonatas for Two German Flutes or Two Violins and a Bass

1735

Alexander Baillie

Airs for the Flute: four suites for recorder and harpsichord

1736

James Oswald

[A Collection of Minuets]*

1737

Charles McLean

Twelve Solos or Sonatas: twelve sonatas respectively for violin and flute with harpsichord

1740

James Oswald

A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes: Scots tunes set for various instruments, together with three Masons’ Songs for male voices

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Table 6.1 Continued 1740

William McGibbon

Six Sonatas or Solos for a German Flute or Violin and a Bass

1742

Francesco Barsanti

A Collection of Old Scots Tunes: thirty Scots tunes set for violin and harpsichord

1742

Francesco Barsanti

Concerti Grossi: ten concertos for various instruments, with string orchestra and harpsichord

1742

William McGibbon

A Collection of Scots Tunes: forty-seven Scots tunes set for violin, flute or oboe and harpsichord

c. 1743

Francesco Barsanti

Nove Overture a Quattro: nine overtures for string orchestra and harpsichord

* Caledonian Mercury, advert, 6 January 1736. No copies of this book are known to survive.

I had by the advice of Mr Abel engaged one Mr Schetky at Fifty Guineas a year and a [Benefit] Concert for one year only he not chusing to have it for more, but he now insists on his traveling charges together with that of a Brother of his who always goes with him and is a German-flute player, which by the Fly wile at least be 15 guineas – I offered to pay their charges by Sea but he would not agree to go by water. You wile therefore please on receipt of this to consult with the Directors and acquaint Mr Abel or me in course of Post how to behave in the affair. If you do not agree to the Terms he is to sett off for Hamburgh. He came over here about a fortnight ago in hopes of doing great things, but we are for this Season overstock with first-rate Violoncello Performers. Mr Schetky & his Brother set off this morning in the Newcastle Fly – I shall say nothing at present of the trouble I have had in this matter suffice it that I have advanced twenty two guineas to get them off As Schetky is not rich (owing to his Brothers illness on the Journey) The Directors will do well to make his Benefit Concert as soon as possible.2 But Bremner’s London publishing prospered despite such distractions. He brought out minuet books, a vocal magazine, a series of new British 2

Letters from Bremner to the EMS, 7 and 28 February 1772, EMS minute-books, ECL.

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and Continental symphonies, even six books of Schetky’s chamber music (for after this inauspicious start, Schetky settled comfortably into Edinburgh and lived there the rest of his life). Bremner brought out everything. When he died in 1789 his business was bought by another London publishing house, Preston and Sons, who described their purchase as ‘not only the most extensive, but also the most valuable list of works ever exhibited in this Kingdom’.3 Meanwhile back in Scotland, a dancing revolution was taking place. During the 1760s and 1770s dancing became the national pastime; lessons spread socially downwards to the lower middle classes and dances proliferated, all of them requiring fiddling. It was suddenly possible for many previously amateur fiddlers to give up their other jobs, and earn a good living as players. But to do that they had to advertise themselves, for which an attractive strategy was to write lots of new dance tunes, dedicate them to patrons and then publish their own fiddle book. So new fiddle books rolled off the presses in increasing numbers from 1775 onwards. The most notable was that of Niel Gow in Dunkeld (1784, many reprints and later volumes). Other distinguished fiddlers who issued their own books were William Marshall, Robert Mackintosh, Nathaniel Gow and Robert Petrie. Many of the tunes these fiddlers wrote have continued to be played to the present day (D. Johnson 1984: 212–33). The song-book The Scots Musical Museum is also a living force today, and is often seen as eighteenth-century music publishing’s finest achievement. It was begun around 1785 by James Johnson in Edinburgh, with help from Stephen Clarke, the city’s leading organist, and an advisory committee of well-known literati. In spring 1787, when the first volume was nearly ready for the press, this team was joined by an electrifying new member, Robert Burns, who wrote of the situation: An Engraver, James Johnson, in Edinburgh has, not from mercenary views but from an honest Scotch enthusiasm, set about collecting all our native Songs and setting them to music; particularly those that have never been set before. – Clarke, the well known Musician, presides over the musical arrangement; and Drs Beattie & Blacklock, Mr Tytler [of] Woodhouselee, and your humble servant to the utmost of his small power, assist in collecting the old poetry, or sometimes for a fine air to make a stanza, when it had 3

An Additional Catalogue of Instrumental and Vocal Music, printed and sold by Preston & Son late the property of Mr. Robert Bremner (London, 1790).

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no words. Johnson’s terms are: each Number, a handsome pocket volume, to consist of at least a hundred Scotch Songs, with basses for the Harpsichord, &c; the price to Subscribers, 5, to non sub: 6sh – He will have three Numbers I conjecture. (Ross Roy 1985: I: 163–4) Burns was being modest. By the end of 1787 he was effectively the book’s editor, and collecting Scots songs, and writing and restoring them, had become the centre of his life. He was particularly interested in the song-potential of new fiddle tunes: one of his great lyrics is ‘Of a’ the Airts the Wind can Blaw’, written for his wife in summer 1788 and designed to go to Marshall’s fiddle tune ‘Miss Admiral Gordon’s Strathspey’, itself only just published in 1781. Burns’s setting would appear as number 235 in the Museum’s third volume (1790). He always took great pains to ensure that his words fitted the tunes exactly. This is vividly shown by an account of him at work in a house in Edinburgh, ensconced at the harpsichord with his host’s young daughter: About the end of October [1787], I called for him at the house of a friend, whose daughter, though not more than twelve, was a considerable proficient in music. I found him seated by the harpsichord of this young lady, listening with the keenest interest to his own verses, which she sang and accompanied, and adjusting them to the music by repeated trials of the effect. In this occupation he was so totally absorbed, that it was difficult to draw his attention from it for a moment. (Josiah Walker, Poems by Robert Burns with an Account of his Life, 1811: lxxx) Burns’s assistant here is Jenny Cruikshank, for whom he wrote the song ‘A Rose Bud by my Early Walk’, number 189 in the Museum’s second volume (1788). One drawback of the collection was Stephen Clarke’s musical arrangements, which were not as good as Burns believed. Clarke understood Scots folk-song modes – better, at least, than most classically-trained musicians did – but nevertheless many of his harmonisations run off the rails, and his decision to notate the accompaniments in figured bass was a mistake: figured bass was rapidly becoming obsolete. But Burns’s lyrics and his taste in selection carried the book, and at his death in 1796 a sixth volume would be needed for all the material he had assembled. Burns wrote to Johnson a few weeks before passing: Your Work is a great one; & though, now that it is near finished, I see if we were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended, yet I will venture to prophesy, that to future ages your

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Publication will be the text book & standard of Scotish song & Music. (Ross Roy 1985: II: 381–2) Posterity has generally agreed. Many Scots emigrated to America in the late eighteenth century with musical spin-offs that unfortunately are not well known. James Bremner, son of the publisher Robert, trained in Edinburgh as a junior employee of the EMS and did advanced studies in Naples. Then, in 1763, he exported himself to Philadelphia. He opened a music school immediately, and the next year started the city’s first series of classical concerts. A programme from 1765 shows that his concerts were modelled on those in Edinburgh: they were divided into three ‘Acts’ with two intervals – a much more sociable, audience-friendly scheme than the two-Act, one-interval plan normal in London – and mixed instrumental and vocal, ancient and modern, repertoire. They also included symphonies by the Earl of Kelly – Kelly’s American debut – the copies of which had doubtless been sent over from London by Bremner’s father. Bremner Jr died in 1780, and six years later another young Scottish musician arrived in Philadelphia from Edinburgh, Alexander Reinagle, the brother-in-law of the cellist Schekty whom his sister married in 1774. Like Bremner, he had been brought up under the wing of the EMS; like Bremner, he divided his concerts into three Acts; and in 1787 he published a book of piano variations on Scots tunes (‘The Lea Rig’, ‘Laddie, Lie Near Me’, ‘Steer her up an’ Haud her Gaun’ and so on), which were the first such pieces of music to be printed in America. Another Scottish contribution to Philadelphia’s musical life was the song-book The Scots Musical Museum, edited by John Aiken at 193 South Second Street in 1797. Though clearly influenced by the Edinburgh book of the same name it differs considerably from it, with fully realised accompaniments instead of figured basses, and a preface that includes William Tytler’s essay ‘On the Origins of Scottish Music’ (which had also first appeared in Edinburgh, attached to Hugo Arnot’s History). Aiken appears to have been related to the prominent Scots-born printer in Philadelphia, Robert Aitken. Travelling in the opposite direction are two fiddle tunes, both nowadays classics of the Scots fiddle repertoire, which were almost certainly composed in America. ‘The De’il among the Tailors’ was first published in Edinburgh in Robert Petrie’s second collection, c. 1795; however, it is entitled there ‘The American Reel’, which points firmly to its origins. Similarly, ‘Staten Island’ was first printed in James Aird’s Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs (Glasgow 1783); but

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as it is named after one of the islands of New York, it too was probably imported. For that matter, the tune ‘Yankee Doodle’ – whose American origin no one doubts – was also first printed in Glasgow by Aird. The musical traffic across the Atlantic was not all one way. It should be emphasised that printed music is not the whole story. Manuscript music was also in significant use at the time, as the following examples will show. John Clerk of Penicuik was Scotland’s first important Enlightenment composer, yet none of his music reached print during his lifetime. His reputation at present rests on six works that survive in his own handwriting, five cantatas and a violin sonata, all in the Clerk Papers (NAS). It is likely that he wrote far more music than that, and we await its rediscovery. In 1740 David Young, fiddler and copyist in Edinburgh, made a beautiful manuscript for the patron Walter McFarlane of McFarlane, with the idea that it would be the largest book of Scots fiddle music ever produced. It was in three volumes, and probably took Young two years to make. By the time he reached volumes two and three he was struggling for material. He wrote to all the composers he knew and asked to borrow their unpublished violin works to copy; he was lent many. He also copied out several violin pibrochs – long pieces full of decorations – to help to fill the pages. As a result the book now contains many pieces for which there are no other known texts.4 Of the Earl of Kelly’s music, only a sixth reached print despite Robert Bremner’s efforts; many unpublished works are known to have been in circulation between 1760 and 1780. The Kilravock Manuscript has added greatly to our knowledge since it contains nineteen works ascribed to Kelly, sixteen of which – six string quartets, nine trio sonatas and a sonata for two violins – were believed lost. The manuscript was made for the Rose family of Kilravock Castle, Inverness-shire, c. 1770, and came to light when the castle library was sold in 1989.5 Finally, there is the fiddle manuscript made by John Brysson between 1790 and 1815, probably started after he retired from managing Bremner’s Edinburgh shop, where he would have handled such music daily. His compilation manuscript is in seven volumes, six of them now owned by the Duke of Buccleuch and one by the NLS. Only the NLS volume has so far been studied.6 Some of the pieces in it are merely copied from printed books, but others appear to be unique: for instance, only here can one learn that the reel ‘Yell Yell’ in Gow’s first collection was also called ‘Salmon Tail Ges up the Water’; or find two 4 5 6

NLS MSS 2084–5. Vol. 1 was lost early in the nineteenth century. NLS Acc. 10303 (1–4). NLS MS 3346 (Glen 153).

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strathspeys, ‘Rose Street’ and ‘Bruntsfield Links’, named for places in Edinburgh and composed by the local fiddler Robert Ferguson. Scottish printed music in the eighteenth century was divided into two main categories: art music, written by Scots in mainstream European styles; and regional music, written in the markedly different local style. Both categories are aspects of the Enlightenment. By printing the first, Scotland made a statement that it was now a civilised European country, whatever it had been in the past. By printing the second, it became the first country to take seriously what is now called folk, traditional or ethnic music. This inaugurated a new intellectual discipline, ethnomusicology, which has spread to all Western countries.

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Gaelic Secular Publishing Ronald Black On 8 September 1773, as they sailed past Scalpay, Samuel Johnson jovially suggested to James Boswell that they buy the island and set up ‘a good school and an Episcopal church . . . and a printing-press where we should print all the Erse that could be found’ (Black 2007a: 149). It would have surprised Johnson to discover that seventy-one Gaelic books had already been printed, and that, even without a press in lonely Scalpay, no year would ever again pass in which a Gaelic book would not be published. Before Johnson’s tour, three of the eighteenth century’s six great Gaelic poets (MacDonald, Buchanan, Macintyre) had published their own verse to acclaim in 1751, 1767 and 1768 respectively; the other three (MacCodrum, MacKay, Ross) would depend mainly on posthumous publication in a later era (D. Thomson 1974: 156–217). And the years immediately after Johnson’s visit would see the great poetry anthologies of 1776 and 1786, as well as Macintosh’s Proverbs (1785), incorporated into Nicholson’s (1881) and still in print. Between these landmarks, however, are large unploughed fields. Few have heard of Duncan Lothian’s songs of 1780, for example, or Angus Campbell’s of 1785, or Duncan Campbell’s of 1798 – yet all of them would richly repay study. One gap in our collective knowledge is particularly noticeable. A recent anthology of Gaelic prose from c. 775 to 1997 (Cox and Ó Baoill 2005) contains no passages whatever from the period 1710–1800. This underlines three facts of importance about eighteenth-century Gaelic publishing: prose literature consists mainly of translations; original (i.e. non-translated) literature consists mainly of verse; and, with the exception of the ‘landmarks’ listed above, the printed literature is not well known. Orthography is also crucial. When the Reverend Robert Kirk came of age in 1665, Scottish Gaelic was spelt like Irish; by 1800 it was spelt 595

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much as it is today. But change was achieved only through major and minor milestones; for example, a notice first appended to Macfarlane’s Psalms and Paraphrases (1784) explains how this new edition of the ‘psalm book’ has been corrected and improved, ‘Irishisms’ rooted out and the orthography ‘reduced to the standard of Mr Stewart’s Gaelic Pentateuch’ – part one of the Old Testament, published the previous year.

Translated Prose There is a danger of assuming that because a passage of Gaelic prose is secular it is also necessarily original – clearly a matter of concern to the literary historian. On the other hand, should the scholar be in search of Gaelic prose passages uninfluenced by scripture or theology but furnished with ready-made translations, this is the material he requires, and the vocabularies of 1741 and 1795 provide good examples. Alexander MacDonald begins his appendix of religious terms with a brief introduction in English, followed by the same in Gaelic; the Gaelic may well be a translation of the English, in which case of course it lacks independent value. Much the same applies to Robert Macfarlane’s Gaelic preface, as it looks suspiciously like a free translation of the English preface that follows. In his Analysis of 1778 Shaw prints the speech of Calgacus from Tacitus in Gaelic and Latin, and a passage from Sterne’s ‘Sensibility’ in Gaelic and English. Also potentially in this category, though not always conveniently furnished with English originals, are the Gaelic title-pages of translated works. Some books of a bilingual nature have twin title-pages; this also applies (at least in some copies) to one work otherwise entirely in English, Archibald Fraser’s Annals of . . . the Distinguished Family of Fraser (1795). The only sustained work of translated secular prose in our period is Macfarlane’s rendering of Benjamin Franklin’s ‘The Way to Wealth’, appended to Macintosh’s Proverbs (1785) at the request of the compiler’s patron, the Earl of Buchan. Macfarlane’s text would repay detailed study as an exercise in creative translation. Franklin’s Father Abraham and Poor Richard, for example, become Athair Aoighneas (‘Father Angus’) and Eoghan Tiarmail (‘Prudent Hugh’). The text is prefaced by an extraordinary ‘Address to the Inhabitants of the Highlands of Scotland’ written by Buchan and translated, where he claims, with respect to the repeal in 1782 of the Act prohibiting Highland dress: ‘When you got your manly old raiment back, I was the first person to wear it, in the bleak Lowlands (san du’-ghaltachd), in time of snow and

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tempest’. When the Proverbs were reissued in 1819 the address was dropped and the original of ‘The Way to Wealth’ was put in its place.

Translated Verse The bulk of this category consists of largely spurious Gaelic ‘originals’ of materials previously published in English ‘translation’. The ‘originals’ were produced in response to public demand. In reality they were merely Gaelic translations of the English. The process was initiated by the commercial success of James Macpherson’s Fragments (1760) and Fingal (1762). When he published Temora in 1763, he attempted to assuage his critics by appending a twenty-page ‘specimen of the original’. It must have cost him a great deal of labour. He declares: It is thought proper to give a specimen of the original Galic, for the satisfaction of those who doubt the authenticity of Ossian’s poems. The seventh book of Temora is fixed on, for that purpose, not from any other superior merit, than the variety of its versification. To print any part of the former collection was unnecessary, as a copy of the originals lay, for many months, in the bookseller’s hands, for the inspection of the curious. (1996: 330) Even if we leave aside Macpherson’s dubious claim that the originals of Fingal had been on public display (Gaskill 1990), this remains a monument to disingenuity. The varied versification of what follows results from the impossibility of rendering his ambling prose into the rhymed quatrains of which real Gaelic ballads consist. Macpherson diversified his interests and found no need to justify himself further. Inevitably, however, others similarly qualified saw the potential for following his route to fame and fortune. The first to try his luck was John Clark, whose Works of the Caledonian Bards appeared in 1778 and was reprinted in 1783. Its contents are best described as ranging from original poems to meditations on the themes of real Gaelic ones (such as MacDonald’s Òran an t-Samhraidh, ‘The Song of Summer’). Perversely, he quotes only eight lines of Gaelic; they are perfectly genuine, but he fails to translate them. There followed the Reverend Dr John Smith (1747–1807). Of the three it was Smith, in his Galic Antiquities (1780), who came closest to a style of translation that could be backed up by plausible originals. The result was his Sean Dana of 1787, published in London and Edinburgh in quarto and octavo editions. These ‘Old Poems’ were imitations of real Ossianic themes, obviously created by Smith at the

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same time as the Galic Antiquities, of which they purported to be the originals. Many years later Smith said of Sean Dana (Report . . . of the Highland Society 1805: Appendix, 90): ‘I some time ago used a copy I had in papering a dark closet that had not been lathed, in order to derive some small benefit from what had cost me so much: I question if any other copy of the book has ever done so much service.’ The quantity of honestly translated secular verse is smaller. In his 1751 Ais-Eiridh Alexander MacDonald revealed the (unsurprising) identity of his personal hero when he published translations of three poems by the Marquis of Montrose. To his 1780 collection (Comh-Chruinneachidh, Orannaigh Gaedhealach agus Bearla) Duncan Lothian added translations of seven popular songs and poems (with their originals), including Allan Ramsay’s ‘Wat Ye who I Saw Yestreen’. The 1786 Gillies Collection included a different rendering of ‘Wat Ye’ and one of General Reid’s ‘Garb of Old Gaul’ (with the original). Kenneth Mackenzie appended translations of four songs or poems (with their originals) to his 1792 collection. Two different translations of Pope’s ‘Messiah’ appeared in this period: by William Shaw in his Analysis (1778) and by Ewen MacLachlan in MacDougall’s Orain Ghaidhealacha (1798). Also in the latter are MacLachlan’s translations of parts of the fourth and eighth books of the Iliad, of which the Edinburgh publisher Robert Jamieson wrote (Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, 1818: xxxvii–xxxviii): My very learned and excellent friend Mr. Ewen McLauchlan, now engaged in preparing a Dictionary of the Gaëlic Language, a few years ago translated the first four books of Homer’s Iliad into Gaëlic verse. This translation he read, in the neighbourhood of Fort-William, to groups of men and women of the very lowest class, shepherds and mechanics, who had never learnt the power of letters. They listened to him with such enthusiasm as showed that the beauties of the composition had their full effect, and made such remarks as would have put to shame the comments of better instructed critics. MacLachlan appears not to have read the eighth book but to have sung it, as it is sub-titled: ‘To the tune of Mo thruaighe, mo thruaighe mi’.

Original Prose To assume that the eighteenth century produced a Gaelic novel or periodical is to be disappointed: the first printed Gaelic periodical

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was Thomas Duncan’s An Rosroine (1803); the first printed Gaelic folktale John Mackenzie’s Eachdraidh Mhic-Cruislig (1836); and the first printed Gaelic novel John MacRury’s Am Mac a b’ Oige, which appeared in the Gaelic supplement to Life & Work (1902–3). The first substantial piece of creative Gaelic prose in print was a schoolboy-type essay by the Reverend William Shaw in his Analysis (1778). It is headed in English ‘Soliloquy’ and begins: Moch am maddin shamhrich, nuair bha’n t athar fionnor, an talamh tais, agus aghai na Cruthachd, go leir, uror, sgiamhach, dh’ erich agus chuaidh mi mach (‘Early one summer’s morning, when the air was cool, the ground moist, and the whole face of Creation fresh and beautiful, I arose and went out’). Imaginative prose was purveyed orally – and much more competently – by the ceilidh-house, meeting on winter nights in every Gaelicspeaking community. The satirical crosanachd mode, which alternates stately verse with scurrilous prose, reflects its atmosphere well, and is found in print in two items in Gillies’s 1780 Feuds and Conflicts: Bethune’s ‘Baran Supair’ and MacLeod’s ‘An Taisbean’ (Black 2001: 192–201). Another staple of ceilidh-house fare was proverbs, so it is no surprise that the nearest thing to a sustained work of original secular prose was the Reverend Donald Macintosh’s Collection of Gaelic Proverbs (1785). The justification for printing proverbs was that they were regarded as true. The reluctance to print fiction was because it was regarded as untrue. This taboo was to haunt Gaelic literature until well into the twentieth century. In the eighteenth, it is difficult to find the merest scraps of what we might now call fictional, imaginative or creative Gaelic prose: two Ossianic ballads, for example, are introduced in Gaelic in the Gillies anthology of 1786. Two collections of secular verse contain Gaelic dedications, both to Highland chiefs. That in MacDonald’s Ais-Eiridh (1751) is to Walter Macfarlane, that in Cameron’s Orain agus Rannachd (1785) to John Macdonald of Clanranald. The Ais-Eiridh contains in addition a list of errata headed Mearachd’ a Chlo-Bhualaidh with an eight-line statement in Gaelic, beginning: ‘As the author was unable to attend the press (freasdal do an fháisgen), and as the printers knew not one word of the language, it can well be imagined, that this work could not be free of errors’ (MacDonald 1751: 212). For the rest we must look to the Gaelic title-pages, introductions and explanations that besprinkle the pietistic publications of the period. Successive editions of the Shorter Catechism contain a history of the work, while successive editions of the Psalms contain an introduction devoted mainly to questions of language. The colophonesque

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title-pages of Kirk’s Bible and New Testament (1690) inform us in Gaelic that, among other things, these books have now been ‘carefully changed from Irish script into neat, easily-read Roman characters for the general good of the Highland(er)s of Scotland’. Both books also contain original-looking material at the end, including (in the Bible) the Scottish month-name Diblin for April and (in the New Testament) an introduction to the vocabulary and a list of errata quaintly headed: Seachràin bheag an chlódóir, leasuigh réd pheann, & léigh. ‘The printer’s little wanderings, improve with your pen, & read’. The 1754 edition of Kirk’s New Testament includes advice in Gaelic on reading Gaelic, and in his 1795 Searmoin do Mhnai’ (‘A Sermon to Women’) the Reverend Dugald Crawford includes an introduction and a dedicatory address to a lady whom he calls Baintighearna na Cour ann an Ceantire, ‘the Lady of Cour in Kintyre’. Neither of these can be described as pious. Finally we may note a curious pair of texts that appear in various editions of the Shorter Catechism (1776, 1779, 1783, 1786, 1797, 1799). They consist of a page of alphabets, lists of punctuation marks, etc., headed An A B C Rhomanach (‘The Roman ABC’) and another headed Clar dh’inshis dhuit ainm rann no Caibbidil, araon le literibh agus figuribh, O aon gu mile, &c. (‘A table that tells you the name of a verse or chapter both in letters and in figures, From one to a thousand, &c.’). It goes from ‘Aon, i, 1,’ ‘da, ii, 2,’ down to ‘Mile. M. 1000’.

Original Verse When Alexander MacDonald’s poetry appeared in 1751, just five secular poems had preceded him into print: John Carswell’s dedicatory epistle to Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh (1567), and odes to Edward Lhuyd (1707) by Andrew MacLean from Tiree, the Reverend John MacLean from Mull, James Currie from Islay and Robert Campbell from Cowal.7 The title of MacDonald’s Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich (‘The Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Tongue’) echoes Lhuyd’s scholarly definition of Gaelic and cries defiance in the teeth of those, notably MacDonald’s own erstwhile employers the Society in Scotland for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), who had successfully conspired to exclude the Gaelic language’s most dynamic medium from the printing presses for nearly half a century. The twenty-six original poems by MacDonald in the Ais-Eiridh fall 7

John MacLean’s and Robert Campbell’s odes were reprinted in Macfarlane’s Vocabulary (1795).

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into three categories: sedition (Jacobite); obscenity (never translated in print until the twenty-first century); praise (of women, of nature, of Gaelic, of indeed almost anything except famous men). The book also includes three translations, two songs by John MacCodrum and a Latin ode to the author by ‘D. M———’, probably Donald Roy MacDonald of the Baleshare family (Black 2007a: 518). The title-page states simply that the book was Clo-bhuailt’ ann / DUNEIDIUNN, / Go feim an Ughdair (‘Printed in EDINBURGH, For the Author’s use’). Donald MacLean pointed out (1915: 189) that the typeface is identical to that used by John Orr in printing Macfarlane’s Psalms (1752), and that ‘it is not improbable that the book was printed in Glasgow’. In view of the contents, such a subterfuge was extremely likely, although the only Gaelic parallel is the obscene Leobhar Liath, printed, according to the title-page, in 1801 in Baile nam Breabadairean (Tradeston?), but probably published by John Mackenzie about 1833 (Black 2001: 372–3). The fact that Orr published a second edition of the Ais-Eiridh openly in Glasgow (1764) suggests that MacLean is correct. It is also worth noting that the phrase go feim or gu feim is used by only one known eighteenth-century publisher – John Orr. (The 1790 edition of Macintyre’s songs has Clo-bhuailt’ ann / DUNEIDIUNN, / Gu feim an Ughdair, which is clearly copied from the Ais-Eiridh, but no printer’s name is given.) On the other hand, if Orr was a Gaelic speaker, as his later career suggests, it should be noted that MacDonald claims on his errata page nach b’aithne do na cloi-fheara aon fhacall do an chánoin ‘that the printers did not know one word of the language’. This suggests that Orr subcontracted the printing and read no proofs – a wise decision in the circumstances. The second edition of the Ais-Eiridh consists of a modest selection of the same poems as in the first – twelve of MacDonald’s, ranging through all three categories described above, and one of MacCodrum’s (J. L. Campbell 1947). It may have been the catalyst for the publication of the poems of another giant of Gaelic literature, Duncan Ban Macintyre. Macintyre could not write, and was dependent upon the scribal services of the Reverend Donald MacNicol. MacNicol objected to the inclusion of certain material on grounds of indecency, and this held up publication until 1768 (MacLeod 1952: 455–6). When it appeared it contained twenty-six of Macintyre’s songs, leaving his satire on John Wilkes to be published separately, seemingly in the same year (MacLean 1915: 231). In 1770 a pamphlet appeared in Glasgow containing three or four Gaelic poems, new and old. Entitled Marbh-Roinn an Leigh Mhic Lachluin, it was the work of Lachlan, the young chief of the

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MacLachlans, then a student at Glasgow University, and of Donald MacBrayne, a merchant in the town, grandfather of David who acquired the celebrated shipping company that was to bear his name. It was around 1770 that Alexander MacDonald died in Arisaig; six years later his son Ronald, the tacksman of Laig in Eigg, published the first of the great Gaelic anthologies routinely quarried by scholars to this day, the so-called ‘Eigg Collection’. It contains 106 verse items: the fifteenth-century Harlaw ‘Brosnachadh’, the sixteenth-century ‘Òran na Comhachaig’, twenty-nine items by leading poets of the period 1630–1730 (including six by Màiri nighean Alastair Ruaidh and one by Sìleas na Ceapaich), one on Killiecrankie, one on the Glencoe massacre, ten by the anthologist’s father and one addressed to him, three by MacCodrum, thirty other elegies and eulogies, fourteen men’s love-songs, four aristocratic women’s love-songs, two women’s songs of the ‘waulking’ type, six poems of moral and religious reflection, the pseudo-Ossianic ‘Miann a’ Bhaird a fhuair Aois’ and two satires, including one on Samuel Johnson. The ‘Eigg Collection’ marks the arrival of women in Gaelic print, and is also notable for its northerly centre of gravity in a period when the initiative in Gaelic publishing lay firmly in the southern Highlands. In his preface to the Ais-Eiridh Alexander MacDonald had chosen to bespeak, if possible, the favour of the public, to a greater collection of poems of the same sort, in all kinds of poetry that have been in use amongst the most cultivated nations, from those of the earliest composition to modern times . . . with a translation into English verse, and critical observations on the nature of such writings. The ‘Eigg Collection’ looks like the son’s attempt to fulfil the father’s ambition (it even contains, at the end, some ‘critical observations’ and English translations), but the only motivation mentioned by Ronald in his preface is the Ossianic controversy. Surprisingly, he states that he has ‘bestowed much labour and expence, during the course of two years, in collecting the poems now offered to the public’; taking this together with his remark about Ossianic verse that ‘some persons, judging from their own depravity, could not believe the existence of the state it described’, it looks as if he was aroused by the appearance of Johnson and Boswell in Skye in September 1773, and the news that their guide – Donald MacLean, younger of Coll – had ‘proposed we should see the islands of Eigg, Muck, Coll, and Tyr-yi’ (Black 2007a: 269). In the event, a gathering storm blew them straight past Eigg on 3 October and they were lucky to land safely in Coll. Sixteen months

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later, on 18 February 1775, Boswell wrote to Johnson from Edinburgh (Boswell 1964: 309): There is now come to this city, Ranald Macdonald from the Isle of Egg, who has several MSS. of Erse poetry, which he wishes to publish by subscription. I have engaged to take three copies of the book, the price of which is to be six shillings, as I would subscribe for all the Erse that can be printed, be it old or new, that the language may be preserved. This man says, that some of his manuscripts are ancient; and, to be sure, one of them which was shewn to me does appear to have the duskyness of antiquity. The ‘Eigg Collection’ was not a success. A planned second volume never appeared, and an attempt was made in 1782 to sell off the remaining stock by printing a fresh title-page which calls the book a second edition. Ronald had neglected the basic facts of Gaelic publishing, which his father had established before him: well-heeled enthusiasts like Boswell were thin on the ground; the real consumers of Gaelic literature were among the poorest of the poor; very little coin circulated in the Highlands; so Gaelic books must be cheap, and as they were hawked by pedlars from door to door, they must also be light. We see these principles applied for the next ten years until John Gillies of Perth was persuaded that the time had come to attempt another anthology. The little collection An Sugradh printed by Thomas Forrest in 1777 (the editor’s name is unknown) cost 4d and contains just thirteen poems, consisting of what are best described as Gaelic popsongs, with an anti-Hanoverian lament for the times (the only cure is emigration to America), a song in praise of a snuffbox and a couple of old favourites – ‘Marbhrann do dh’Ailean Dearg’ and ‘Òran na Comhachaig’ (Black 2001: 54–9; McLeod and Bateman 2007: 392–405). A variety of other approaches was tried in this period. New songs by Macintyre (1778, 1781, 1782) or entries for the Highland Society’s annual competitions (Macintyre 1782, 1784, Peter Maclean 1784) appeared as four- or eight-page octavo leaflets that could be bound with existing works (see MacLeod 1952: xv). In 1780 Duncan Lothian published Comh-Chruinneachidh, Orannaigh Gaedhealach agus Bearla, a collection of lightweight songs, full of fun and under 100 pages, and John Gillies added sixteen Gaelic poems to his History of the Feuds and Conflicts among the Clans. Peter Stuart’s songs were printed in 1783, but no copy survives; Donald Dewar’s collection fared still worse, as it is not known for sure if it was ever printed. At the top end of the market, the Reverend Patrick Macdonald published a collection of Highland Vocal Airs, with the words to the tunes mostly in Gaelic (1784).

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Further comment is needed on the two books published in 1780. Duncan Lothian, a schoolmaster from Glen Lyon who had been a pupil of the hymn-writer Dugald Buchanan (D. Campbell 1910: 79–80), was a man of the people, and his collection is mostly by himself – five cheerful elegies and eulogies (not to the aristocracy but to a tacksman, a young buck, a weaver, a hunter, a smith), eight love-songs, four comic songs about courting and the like, two songs about the other preoccupations of his day (emigration, tobacco and drink), one about a one-eared cat (a topic often met with in Gaelic verse, for some reason), seven translations of English and Scots songs, one macaronic, three hymns and (his speciality) three religious songs. Feuds and Conflicts was claimed by John Leyden to have been edited by a Hugh MacPherson from manuscripts in the possession of a brother of the Reverend Donald MacNicol of Lismore (Matheson 1938: xii; Black 2001: 463). Its sixteen poems are an eclectic mix: two classics from other centuries (‘Òran na Comhachaig’ and ‘An Làir Dhonn’), two songs by MacCodrum, one by MacDonald, Hector MacLeod’s Jacobite vision ‘An Taisbean’, two pieces of moral advice, one brief item on the obnoxious ‘Disclothing Act’, two on tobacco, one on drink, an outrageously comic satire called ‘Baran Supair’ by John Bethune or MacBethac on James Maxwell, the Duke of Argyll’s factor for Mull and Morvern,8 and three love-songs, one of which is addressed to a minister of Kilninver on his marriage by Captain Blann’s daughter, who had expected to be his bride. This is clearly the Reverend Alexander Macfarlane, the celebrated editor of the Psalms, who was minister of Kilninver from 1740 to 1754 and married a Susan Campbell in 1743. The girl says: Your kisses were sweetest, your speech the most learned, in Gaelic, in English, in Greek and in Latin. No preacher in pulpit did I see after you without my falling asleep and being wakened by that. By the side of the river I loved your kind welcome – in the blaze of the sun I thought it not shameful. Not one hidden thing was unseen by you, darling, from the top of my head to the soles of my heels. I was there before you just like my first mother. (my translation) This period saw the first issue of items that would reappear in the Gillies Collection of 1786 – the song to Macfarlane, also three poems published by Shaw in his Analysis (1778) and three satires on Dr Johnson (1781). Shaw’s material consisted of an ‘Ode from a MS. Collection in the Possession of Miss Campbell of Blandfield’ 8

This also has two manuscript sources, and has been edited by Michael F. Ranauro (‘Baran Supair’, unpublished MA dissertation, Department of Celtic, University of Edinburgh, 1994).

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beginning ’S luaimnach mo chodal an nochd, the pseudo-Ossianic ‘Malvina’s Dream’ and the genuinely Ossianic ‘Claidhamh Guth-ullin’ with a verse translation by Sir James Foulis of Colinton, the leading Gaelic scholar of the day. This had surfaced (whether in manuscript or print is unclear) in the hands of the Reverend Donald MacQueen at Ullinish on 23 September 1773, when Rorie MacLeod and James Boswell heard it compared to MacQueen’s original of a passage in Fingal (Black 2007a: 261): ‘When Mr Macqueen read a description of Cuchullin’s sword, with a verse translation by Sir James Foulis, Rorie said that was much liker than Macpherson’s translation of the former passage.’ Following the repeal in 1782 of the Disclothing Act, the restitution in 1784 of the forfeited estates and the founding in the same year of the Highland Society of Scotland (the ‘Gaelic Academy’), there was a palpable surge of confidence in the Gaelic-speaking community. This is reflected in the sheer bombast of Donald Mackenzie’s 1785 Oran Gairdeachais and in the fact that no fewer than three different individuals published their collected verse in that year: Alexander Cameron, Margaret Cameron and Angus Campbell. The little collection by Alexander Cameron from Lochaber is, admittedly, underwhelming. It consists of five flattering eulogies on the Highland aristocracy and a much briefer one on Foulis. Struggling to come to grips with the new medium, he could not think of a word for it: Cuiri mi sios ann am print e, / Chum ’s gu’n teid gu pailt a sheanachas. ‘I will put it down in print / So that it will be widely discussed.’ Margaret Cameron divides her book between twenty of her own songs and six older ones, but the topics are the same: elegant praise of the aristocracy and lesser gentry of Lochaber and south Perthshire, along with sympathy for their domestic tragedies, and one or two lovesongs. The pattern is broken only by her lively poem on the new church bell of Callander (Black 2007b: 47–8). By far the most important – as well as the largest – of these three collections is Angus Campbell’s. It contains forty-three songs, and despite being much written about at one time (D. Campbell 1884–5; Cameron 1890–1: 130–2), it is now completely unknown, one suspects, either to the world of Gaelic scholarship or to the people of Lochtayside whose ancestors he names. Campbell lived at Edramucky and was known as Mac a’ Ghlasaraich, indicating that (like the Lochaber Campbells and Ross-shire MacIvers) he was descended from the MacIver Campbells of Asknish in the Argyllshire parish of Kilmichael Glassary. He knew something of the world, having been in London, Mull and Lewis. He was a turner, and

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his songs are replete with the beauty, dignity and detail of craftsmanship. He can do classical eulogy with all the big motifs, while his satire on mice is the first of that substantial genre to be printed (Morrison 1993). His work has the tension between lust and virtue that we find in Burns. A weaver debates with his loom whether to leave his wife for a younger woman – and decides to do just that. Campbell praises women, many women, and supplies other men with the love-songs they need to use when courting. When thanking a man who has given him a dirk before leaving for Jamaica, he repeatedly says that he wishes he were a young girl so that he could marry him. He is forever bemused that anyone should look outside Breadalbane for a bride when there are so many beautiful girls at home. He laments that shieling girls have no fun any more – just work, work, work. He hates so much to see young people persecuted by gossip-mongers that he wishes the lies could be true for once, even if it meant that he would have to suffer the ‘stool’ in church – Ge do bhiodh-maid ga’r n èibheach gu stòl. But above all his book conveys the sights, sounds, smells and textures of the material culture of Lochtayside in the years 1765–85. The colours of cloth. A mill-wheel turning. The smith at his anvil. A wood-worker’s tools. The skills of writing. A soldier’s equipment. The new road in Glen Lochay. A cart-wheel so perfect that it turns in silence. And wool that is combed as fine as silk. The time had come, then, for another anthology, but the risk was squarely shouldered by an experienced publisher and bookseller, John Gillies of Perth. With 114 items, his 1786 collection is the most substantial of the century. Gillies, as editor, relates that the material was transmitted to him ‘by several clergymen and other Gentlemen in the Highlands’ (meaning principally the Reverend Donald MacNicol, the Reverend James MacLagan and James Macintyre of Glenoe) and that many of the poems were procured and carefully revised by Foulis; MacLean says (1915: 136) that the editor was MacLagan, and that Gillies ‘knew no Gaelic’. Its importance lies mainly in its twenty-two genuine Ossianic pieces, but there is much more besides: nineteen men’s love-songs (including one from Glen Isla in Angus), four aristocratic women’s love-songs, thirteen waulking-type songs and versions of two popular classics, ‘Òran na Comhachaig’ and ‘Mackintosh’s Lament’, here entitled ‘Bealach a Ghraidh’. Compared to the Eigg Collection, there are few poems from the masters of panegyric. Iain Lom, Sìleas na Ceapaich and the Pìobaire Dall muster only seven between them (including Iain Lom’s song on Killiecrankie), and there are only six elegies or eulogies by lesser poets of that period, such as the mysterious Aigeannach nighean Dòmhnaill Ghuirm. There are

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two other poems on Killiecrankie, however, and one on the Glencoe massacre. Unsurprisingly, given its sources, the collection is strong on moral and religious reflections (there are eight items of this kind, including one on theft by the Reverend Alexander Macfarlane), on the leading mid-century poets and on miscellaneous material. There are five poems by MacCodrum, three by MacDonald, three by Lachlan MacPherson of Strathmashie, three by the great Reay Country poet Rob Donn MacKay – his first appearance in print – and one by Hector MacLeod. There are two translations, a macaronic and four bogus Ossianic pieces, two of which are basically the same, but masquerading under different titles (‘Aisling Mala-mhin’ and ‘Mhahline’s Brughdar le Ossain’). We also find five satires, a drinking song, a song on Montgomerie’s Highland regiment of 1756 and one from St Kilda, in response to Johnson’s remark that St Kilda poetry ‘must be very poor, because they have very few images’ (Boswell, Tour to the Hebrides, 1785: 278). Donnchadh Bàn’s second edition (1790) consists basically of fortyseven poems, twenty-three of which were new (listed in MacLeod 1952: xiii–xiv). Unknown to MacLeod, however, some additional poems were printed and bound in at the end of unsold copies. NLS RB.s.534 contains the satire on John Wilkes in four pages. NLS I.37/1.f has two further additions, paginated 5–8 and 1–6. These contain Macintyre’s brilliant Clearances satire ‘Òran nam Balgairean’, three songs that reappeared in the 1804 edition and are clearly datable to 1793–4 (‘Rainn Claidhimh’, ‘Òran do Iarla Bhràghaid-Albann’, ‘Òran do Réisimeid Bhràghaid-Albann’) and, most interesting by far, one song that did not reappear and was unknown to MacLeod. It begins Fhuair mi Sgeul air Muintir Hoptoun, and is a vigorous thirty-twoline satire (in the satirical metre snéadhbhairdne) on the men of Lord Hopetoun’s fencible regiment who mutinied at Banff in March 1784 when ordered aboard the transports that would take them to England (Black 2010). The poet could not understand their attitude, for he loved soldiering. In 1792 Kenneth Mackenzie published his poems: a substantial and important body of work. He may be contrasted, however, with Angus Campbell. He is brittle, over-confident, not rootless but uprooted. The best years of his life were spent in the navy and the army. His songs show him in his community (Inverness and Strathnairn) while not entirely of it. The title of his last song, ‘Oran Gearan air Cairdean’ (‘Song of Complaint to Kinsfolk’), says it all. An analysis of his themes reveals many of the old categories: sixteen elegies or eulogies, six satires, four comic songs, four pieces of moral reflection or advice, four

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translations, three love-songs, two pieces on drink; but new themes also clamour for recognition, reflecting a complex character, a changing world and the horror of what is being lost – seven songs on women, three each on modes of dress, the Gaelic language, the Highland regiments and the Clearances, two on the sea and one on a strange dream. He has a wry sense of humour: a lost knife dances to enjoy its freedom, leaky shoes are accused of taking to drink. In 1797 Duncan Lothian came back with his third book. It contains not only his dialogue between the Pope and Reformation but his ‘Seanfhocail agus Comhadan’ (‘Proverbs and Comparisons’) in fiftyseven quatrains (Watson 1918: 29–37). Although little more than versified sayings, mostly traditional, this poem is not doggerel, but ranges from statements of the obvious (‘No man is without a fault’) through earthy substance (‘What is found at the Devil’s head / Is lost at his tail’) to subtle juxtapositions: ‘A pleasant wife, inactive, improvident, / Even if she’s pleased your eye, / What use can a swordblade be / Without a hand in its hilt?’ So Lothian made his readers and their hearers think about their heritage, just as was done in every ceilidh-house. In an attempt to provide something for all types of reader, MacDougall’s collection (1798) is in three parts. The first consists of twenty-five songs by MacDougall himself – thirteen eulogies and elegies (including the smeòrach or ‘thrush’ of the MacDougalls), four lovesongs, three on drink, three on courting, the well-known satire ‘A Song on the Lowland Shepherds’ (Cheape 1995; Meek 1995: 47–53) and the ‘Conversation with his Friend about this Book’. The second consists of thirteen poems by the erudite Ewen MacLachlan in which Gaelic literature is consciously brought forward through the absorption of influences – seven on nature, man and the seasons (one of which is given in English also), two pieces of moral reflection, one eulogy (the smeòrach or ‘thrush’ of the MacLachlans) and three translations. The third consists of thirteen popular items by minor poets – seven lovesongs, three elegies or eulogies, one on the corries of Glencoe, one on whisky and one comic song about a wedding (the first appearance in print of ‘Banais Chiostail Odhar’). By contrast, Duncan Campbell’s collection of the same year defies categorisation. Campbell was from Stronachullin on the shore of Loch Long in Cowal. In 1798 he was a soldier in the Rothesay and Caithness Fencibles and had his book published in Cork. It embodies the spirit of a Highland regiment as a Gaelic community, with Campbell as its bard, but it is much more than that. The dedication (in English) is to his commanding officer, but in his preface (also in English) Campbell declares that his sole purpose is ‘to prove himself

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a lover of his Country, and an inoffensive man’ – precisely the words used by MacDonald in the Ais-Eiridh before breathing flames of Jacobite rebellion. The first song is to Gaelic, the second is to the regiment’s colonel (Sir John Sinclair of the Statistical Account, who bought twenty-five copies), the third is to its commanding officer (LtCol James Fraser of Culduthel, who bought a dozen), and the last is MacDonald’s ode to Gaelic, sung to the tune ‘Cumha Mhic Aonghais Òig’ (J. L. Campbell 1998: 177–8). In between, Campbell takes us on a riotous tour of south Argyll and its people. He is very good on material culture, the harshness of rural life and the tang of the sea. A girl points a gun at an ardent suitor and it goes off: Campbell makes a song about it to the tune ‘Tinneas na h-Urchaid’ (MacDonald’s ‘Venereal Disease’). His favourite motif is ‘gun as woman’ and he has enormous fun with it: Tha tannail gu neo churaidh, / A nuair thig am a Bruchd fod creabhag (‘Your breath’s far from scented / When it’s time to belch it from your body’). We are not always sure whether a gun is being addressed or a woman; it may well be both. When a cobbler goes hunting, gets drunk and loses his gun, it is time to beware of doubles entendres, for Campbell’s work is full of the unexpected. When a ship is driven ashore, it is the sea that speaks to the skipper. His love-songs, eulogies and elegies have great beauty and lyric power. When a girl is drowned, Corp bu ghile air an traigh thu, / Na ban Jasg air saile. ‘You were a fairer corpse on the beach / Than a female fish on the sea’. (The ‘female fish’ motif is MacDonald’s.) Campbell can do panegyric as well as any man in his century. When he chooses to complain of being too long in Ireland, he handles the theme as Donnchadh Bàn would have done – and uses the woman/gun figure like a signature. The book contains thirty-three songs, including one in two languages, and one in English only showing the Rothesay and Caithness Fencibles waiting for the French to land at Bantry Bay. They saw no action, however, and the poet probably ended his days in contented retirement at Stronachullin.9

Exposition Every so often eighteenth-century Gaelic words and phrases are printed neither as prose nor as verse but as an object of study or reference. The earliest items of this kind are the word-lists appended to Kirk’s transliteration of the Bible and New Testament (1690). At the end of the Old Testament are four tables entitled in Gaelic: ‘List of 9

I am grateful to Keith Sanger for information on Campbell’s regiment.

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people’s titles and ranks’; ‘List of tribes and relationships; the forbidden degrees of marriage, according to the word of God and the laws of the Kingdom’; ‘List of weights and measures mentioned in Scripture’; ‘List of seasons’. These clearly go beyond mere transliteration. At the end of the New Testament in both books is Kirk’s five-and-a-halfpage vocabulary; in 1702 it reappeared, with additions, in Nicolson’s Scottish Historical Library, under the rubric: ‘A Vocabulary of the Irish Dialect, spoken by the Highlanders of Scotland; collected by Mr. Kirk, publisher of their Bible. The words, &c. included in two are added by the learned Mr. Ed. Lhwyd’. By 1702 Lhuyd had completed his fieldwork in the Highlands and Ireland, and was busy laying the groundwork of Celtic philology. His great work Archaeologia Britannica (1707) distinguishes between Welsh, Cornish and Breton, but not between Scottish Gaelic and Irish. The Reverend David Malcolm of Duddingston was so enthused by Lhuyd’s demonstration of the connections between the Celtic languages that he chose to take them further. Influenced by JudaeoChristian myth and the popular legends peddled in The Turkish Spy, he set out to demonstrate kinship between Gaelic and the language of Darien. At the same time, in collecting materials for a dictionary, he threw in Scottish Gaelic and Irish promiscuously. It is variously described in his specimen (1738) as ‘A Dictionary, Celtick-English, or, Mr. Lhuyd’s ancient Scottish, or Irish-English Dictionary’ and ‘An ancient Scots, or Irish-English Dictionary’, and Malcolm remarks that ‘the ancient Scottish or Irish is a most valuable dialect of the ancient Celtick’. The words and definitions which he presents may be described as Irish with occasional Scottish touches. Lhuyd, for example, defines airghe as ‘An Herd. Plur. Airighe & Airgheadha’; Malcolm makes it ‘a Herd, a Summer Pasture in the Hills. Utensils, Instruments’. Not being a Gaelic speaker (he seems to have been from East Lothian), he based his labours on Irish dictionaries, published works in Scottish Gaelic and correspondence with scholars, notably Alexander MacDonald, to whom he refers as one of the greatest Masters of the ancient Scottish Language I know, and withal, a great Friend to Christianity, and generally esteem’d for Justice, Honour, Generosity and Bravery; and at the same Time well apprised of what I am now to write, viz. The Affinity between the most ancient Languages of these Islands, and that of the Terra Firma, or Isthmus of America, or Darien. Compared to this, MacDonald’s own vocabulary of 1741, written for his employers, the SSPCK, was practical, soundly-based and

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straightforward (R. Black 1986: 24–30; Campbell 2000: 165–73). The same didactic approach can be found here and there in his 1751 AisEiridh, which contains three pages of notes on orthography and a ninepage ‘GLOSSARY, explaining, in English, all the words that seemed difficult in the preceeding work’. While MacDonald’s practice was clearly influenced by Kirk and the pietistic works of his day, later expository writers were under the shadow of Pennant and Johnson. The botanist Lightfoot accompanied Pennant to the islands in 1772, and his Flora Scotica of 1777 includes an ‘Erse Index of the Names of Plants’. It was reissued twice after his death, in 1789 and 1792, with a biography of the author by Pennant, full of the latter’s characteristic charity, elegance and scientific forthrightness. The Analysis of the Galic Language (the first Gaelic grammar, 1778) and A Galic and English Dictionary (1780) would never have appeared had their author, the Reverend William Shaw, not been patronised by Johnson. By now the relationship between Scottish Gaelic and Irish was becoming problematic. Shaw began his lexicographical fieldwork in the Highlands, but finding that his informants expected to be paid – Macpherson’s influence again? – went seeking words in Ireland, where he fared better. When his dictionary appeared, some of his subscribers refused to take their copies on the grounds that ‘there were a good many Irish words in it’; Shaw prosecuted them for debt and won his case on the grounds that ‘when a definition of a Gaelic dictionary was given in Court, this book legally answered the description’ (Reid 1832: 56; K. D. MacDonald 1979: 13–17). In certain Gaelic publications of the 1780s, words are regularly glossed in English in the margin or at the foot of the page. What appears to have happened is this. The Reverend Donald MacNicol and some other Highland gentlemen were inspired by Johnson’s example to compile a Gaelic dictionary. When (as they saw it) their hero turned upon them in his 1775 Journey to the Western Islands (Black 2007a: 207–10), they gave up collecting words and started making satirical verses against Johnson instead. These poems were published in their own right in 1781 and in the 1786 Gillies Collection. The glosses are an intrinsic part of the satirical narrative. They are at once a learned jest and a device that allows the poet to speak – even to sing – Gaelic Johnsonese and still be understood. The joke was lost, however, on Donald Mackenzie from Inveraray. Wishing to enter a poem for a prize offered by the Highland Society of Scotland, he saw nothing wrong in displaying an already pompous ode as ostentatiously as possible. He decorated his Oran Gairdeachais

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(1785) not merely with glosses but with a five-line chorus, a musical score, an encomium in Gaelic verse to the organisers and letters of commendation in English from the Reverend Charles Stewart and MacNicol himself. The role of the HSS as a Gaelic academy may also be seen in Robert Macfarlane’s 1795 vocabulary. Macfarlane was appointed to hold Gaelic classes as the Society’s ‘professor’ in 1792. The verdict of an anonymous annotator on his vocabulary, for which the Society gave him a publication grant, is as unfair as it is comical (Reid 1832: 57): ‘It is shameful to see such a miserable, poor and paltry performance as this come from a Professor’s pen. O tempora! O mores! eheu! eheu!’ The office of professor was discontinued in 1799, and Macfarlane was run down and killed by a coach at Walthamstow in 1804 (R. Black 1986: 8, 15).

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CONTRIBUTORS

Thomas Ahnert is Senior Lecturer in History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Brian Alderson is an author, editor and bibliographer of children’s books. Iain Beavan was formerly Keeper of Rare Books in Historic Collections, University of Aberdeen. Fiona A. Black is Director of the School of Information Management, Dalhousie University, Canada. Ronald Black was formerly Senior Lecturer in Celtic at the University of Edinburgh, and is Gaelic editor of The Scotsman. Catherine Brown is a food historian and journalist. Iain Gordon Brown is Principal Curator of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland. Stephen W. Brown is 3-M Fellow and Professor of English at Trent University, Canada. Marina Dossena is Professor of English Language and Head of the Department of Comparative Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bergamo, Italy. Matthew D. Eddy is Senior Lecturer in the History of Science and Culture at Durham University. 613

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Roger L. Emerson is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Western Ontario, Canada. Chris Fleet is Deputy Map Curator at the National Library of Scotland Map Library. Peter Garside is Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. Howard Gaskill is Honorary Fellow in German at the University of Edinburgh. Anette Hagan is a Senior Curator in Rare Book Collections at the National Library of Scotland. Brian Hillyard is Head of Rare Books at the National of Library of Scotland. Heather Holmes is an independent scholar and civil servant. David Johnson was an author and composer. Alasdair A. MacDonald is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature of the Middle Ages at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Fiona Macdonald is an independent scholar and an Intelligence Analyst with the Metropolitan Police. Warren McDougall is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh. Christopher MacLachlan is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews. K. A. Manley is an Honorary Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Anne Matheson was formerly Keeper of Printed Books in the National Library of Scotland.

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Esther Mijers is Lecturer in British History at the University of Reading. Martin Moonie is an independent scholar and bookseller. Terrence O. Moore is Assistant Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Michigan. John Morris was formerly an Assistant Keeper at the National Library of Scotland. Michael Moss is Research Professor in Archival Studies, University of Glasgow. Alexander Murdoch is a Senior Lecturer in Scottish History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Richard Ovenden is Associate Director and Keeper of Special Collections at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Gordon Pentland is Lecturer in History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Gilles Robel is Senior Lecturer in British Studies at the Université Paris-Est (IMAGER). Joe Rock is an independent scholar and photographer. G. Ross Roy is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus, University of South Carolina. John Scally is Director of University Collections, University of Edinburgh. Richard B. Sher is Distinguished Professor of History at New Jersey Institute of Technology. David Shuttleton is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Glasgow. Murray C. T. Simpson was formerly Director of Special Collections, and Head of Manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland.

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Beatrice Teissier is an independent scholar and Associate Member of the Oriental Institute, Oxford. Mark Towsey is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Liverpool. William Zachs collects old books and writes about them.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

Aberdeen Athenaeum, 344 book sales and auctions, 172–3 booksellers, 166–7 broadsides, 174, 175 chapbooks, 174–6 Colleges, 166 King’s College library, 323, 324, 325–6 Marischal College library, 324, 325, 326, 328, 335 printers, 113, 166–7 publishing, 15, 16, 169 students’ reading, 317, 318 subscription/part publications, 169–72 Theological library, 325 see also libraries; newspapers; and individual entries for booksellers and printers Aberdeen Medical Society (later Medico-Chirurgical Society), 328 Aberdeen Religious Tract Society, 175 Adair, John, cartographer, 101 Adam, Alexander, Edinburgh High School rector, 217, 302, 314 Adam, Alexander, Glasgow printer, 388 Adam, Robert, architect, 236, 237, 244–5, 333 Adam, William, architect, Vitruvius Scoticus, 84–5, 334 Adam, William, East Lothian printer, 136–7 Adam, William, Edinburgh printer, 9, 40 Adams, James, 549 Adams, John, Baltimore publisher, 473 Adams, William, Caledonian Mercury printer, 355 Adventures of Captain Gulliver, 415 Figure 4.6 advertising see under newspapers Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, 135, 323, 324, 326–7, 334, 556 librarians: Hume, David, 214, 241, 327; Ruddiman, Thomas, 327

purchases: Dutch, 204; French, 147, 214; Italian, 239, 241–2 Aesop’s Fables, 163, 376, 414 agricultural libraries, 349 agricultural organisations, 399–400, 404, 405–6, 505 agricultural publishing books, 128, 401, 402, 503–9: chief authors, 504; imprints, 506–7; price, 507–8; readership, 507, 508–9; types, 503–4 pamphlets, 399–406, 503, 507: and agricultural improvement, 296, 399, 403–5, 428; editions and reprints, 400–1; form, 400; price, 402 periodicals, 504, 506 agriculture, 13, 20 Aiken, John, children’s book author, 302 Aiken, John, Philadelphia music editor, 592 Ainslie, John, cartographer, 96, 100, 101 Aird, James, Glasgow music publisher, 592, 593 Aitken, Robert, Philadelphia printer, 160, 269, 270, 271, 592 Alexander, John, painter, 83 Alexander, Malcolm, Treatise of Music, 82, 85 Alexander, William, Stirling bookseller, 149, 153 Alison, Robert, Edinburgh bookbinder, 153 Allan, David, engraver, 90 Allan, David, painter, 77, 450, Plate 35 almanacs see under cheap print Alston, Charles, Edinburgh professor, 309, 499 America book piracy, 572, 580 Declaration of Independence, 270, 278–9 founders, 275–82

Glasgow tobacco company stores, 268–9 Irish imports, 199 reprints of Scottish titles, 270–1, 473 Scottish immigrant booksellers, 269 Scottish immigrant printers, 269–70 Scottish imports see book exports: to America typefounding, 270 War of Independence/ Revolution, 159, 281, 387, 391, 392, 398, 426, 431 An Exhortation to the Inhabitants of the South Parish of Glasgow, 355 Anderson, Adam, Origin of Commerce, 488–9 Anderson, James, economist, 97, 119, 304 agricultural improvement writings, 401, 402, 404, 405, 428, 439, 486, 487, 488, 492, 505, 507, 508 editor of The Bee, 270, 304, 365, 504, 507, 536 Observations on National Industry, 490–1 Anderson, John, Church of Scotland minister, 385 Anderson, John, Glasgow professor, 328 Anderson, William, Glasgow professor, 209 Anderson, William, Stirling bookseller, 126 Table 2.1, 199, 201, 209, 483–4 anglicisation, 134, 553 and grammar and vocabulary, 194, 546; see also Scotticisms and politics, 546 and pronunciation, 546 of Scots in London, 190, 194 of Scots names, 194, 548–9 Angus, Alexander, Aberdeen bookseller, 166, 172, 173, 343, 484

650

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index Angus, Alexander and Son, Aberdeen booksellers, 166, 167, 170, 172 Anslie, John, 303 anti-Catholicism, 157, 230, 385 Arbroath, first press, 117 archaeological publishing, 510–27 Argyll, Earl of, 114 Argyll, third Duke of, 75, 308, 331 Armour, Jean (Burns’s wife), 570, 579 Armstrong, Andrew, surveyor, 92, 94 Armstrong, Mostyn, surveyor, 92, 94 Arnot, Hugo, 10–11, 110, 320 Asia, books on, 258–67 printing history, 266–7 atlases, 92, 96, 98 Auld, William, Edinburgh printer, newspaper and magazine proprietor, 54, 55, 56, 361, 366, 367 Ayr first press, 116 libraries, 341, 342, 343, 347, 350, 444 Baille, Matthew, London pathological anatomist, 498 Baillie, Alexander, Glasgow engraver, 94, 101–2 Baillie, Lady Grizell, 447 Baine, John, St Andrews then Camlachie, Edinburgh and Philadelphia, typefounder, 8, 43, 44 Figure 1.5b, 50, 163, 270 Balcarres Papers, 326 Bald, William, land surveyor, 101 Balfour, John, Edinburgh bookseller, printer and newspaper proprietor, 11, 119, 195 Edinburgh partners, 55, 56, 63, 129, 181, 196 French books, 217, 219, 538, 540 London partners, 15, 121, 126, 189 newspapers, 10, 359, 360, 361 theses printing, 5 warns Customs on Irish smuggling, 201 Balfour, John Jr, 21 Balfours of Pilrig, 62, 63 ballad-sellers, 378, 379 ballads see under cheap print Banff, first press, 116 bankruptcy, 7, 9 banks, 9 Bannatyne, George, 552 Bannockburn, first press, 113, 114 Barbauld, Anna, 302 Barbour, John, Bruce, 557 Barclay, James, Dalkeith schoolmaster, 311 Barclay, John, carrier, 201 Barrie, James, surveyor, 97 Barrois the younger, Paris bookseller, 7 Barron, William, agricultural author, 399, 404, 431 Barrow, William, 310 Barsanti, Francesco, 586, 589 Table 6.1 Baxter, Daniel, Glasgow bookseller and bookbinder, 76

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Baxter, John, the younger, architect, 241 Bayardi, Ottavio Antonio, 238–9 Bayle, Pierre, Works, 209 Beattie, James, 79, 169–70, 173, 530–1, 547, 550, 566 Scotticisms, 427, 572 Beddoes, Thomas, 308 Beeton, Mrs, English cookery book author, 408 Bell, Andrew, Edinburgh engraver, 52, 90, 101, 127, 532, 533 and Encyclopaedia Britannica, 63, 90, 538, 539, 541, 542, 543 Bell, Andrew, London bookseller, 135 Bell, Benjamin, A System of Surgery, 121, 127 Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh booksellers and publishers, 59, 143 and Aberdeen and NE trade, 171 American exports, 272 and book auctions, 149–50 bookshop, Plate 32 business papers, 65, 67, 143–55 catalogue sales, 146–7 and Edinburgh booksellers, 145 and London trade, 154 pamphlets supplied, 149 and paper purchase, 150 periodicals supplied, 146, 147, 149 and provincial booksellers, 153 Bell, Edward, 48 Bell, John, Edinburgh bookseller and publisher, 21, 119, 121, 129, 153, 193, 195, 197, 254–5, 258; see also Bell and Bradfute Bell, John, London bookseller, 129 British (circulating) Library, 344 Bell, Robert, Philadelphia bookseller and printer, 269 belles lettres, 21, 319, 320, 321, 461 Bennett, Anna Maria, novelist, 483 Berkeley, George Monk, novelist, 482 Berry, James, 218 Berry, Walter, Edinburgh bookseller and radical publisher, 346, 388, 392, 394 Berwick-upon-Tweed, first press, 115 Beugo, John, engraver, 98 Bible reading, 290, 291, 295, 298, 299 bindings, 65–70, 75, 78, 138, 152–3 boards, Plates 7–9 calf, Plates 5, 16, 26, 27, 29 goatskin, Plates 10–15, 24, 25 herring-bone style, Plates 12, 25 sheepskin, Plate 6 spines, Plates 7–9 wheel style, Plates 23–4 wrappers, Plates 17–22 Binny, Archibald, Philadelphia typefounder, 270 Black, Joseph, Glasgow then Edinburgh professor, 62, 307, 500 Blacklock, Thomas, Annan-born blind poet, educator and translator, 528–37, Plate 36 and Burns, 528, 536

651 and Edinburgh Magazine and Review, 528–31, 533 and education of blind people, 532 and Encyclopaedia Britannica, 531, 532 and Hume, 530, 534–5, 536 Blackstone, Sir William, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 124, 200–1 Blackwell, Thomas, Aberdeen professor, 523, 524, 527 Blair, Hugh, 194, 196, 281–2, 466, 467, 471 adapted for schools, 313–14 Lectures on Rhetoric, 320, 459–60 on Ossian, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250 sermons, 462–3, 469, 471–4 Blair, Robert, Athelstaneford minister, 560 ‘Blind Harry’, Wallace, 557 blind people, education of, 532 Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvements, London, 405, 505 Bodoni, Giambattista, Parma printer, 241 Bonnar, James, agricultural author, 504 book auctions, 149–50, 172–3 book clubs, dividing and permanent, 350–1 book collectors academics, 335 aristocracy, 331–2 clerics, 335–6 doctors, 334–5 gentry, 332, 333–4 lawyers, 332, 336 the newly wealthy, 332, 336 book exports to America, 6, 7, 28, 37, 156–7, 160, 268–9, 271–4, 276, 277–8, 413, 416 to England, 32 to Ireland, 199, 200, 202 book illustration see engraving book imports Continental, 135–6 French, 147, 204, 214, 217–19 from London, 134–5 Irish see piracy bookbinders Edinburgh, 152–3 examples of work see bindings pay and conditions, 68 bookplates, 447 Borthwick-Gilchrist, John, 262 Boston, Thomas, 463, 464 Boswell, James, 76, 311–12, 328, 417, 419, 549, 595, 602–3 Bowen, Emmanuel, engraver, 99 Bower, Patrick, St Andrews bookseller, 421 Boyd, William, newspaper proprietor, 365 Boyle, David (later Lord Sherralton), 431 Boyle, John, Aberdeen bookseller and printer, 116, 153, 167, 168, 170, 172, 175, 176, 357 Bradford, William, 275 Brash and Reid, Glasgow publishers, 380, 578–9 Breadalbane, Earl of, 341

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Breadlebane, Lady, 440 Bremner, James, Philadelphia musician, 592 Bremner, Robert, Edinburgh then London music publisher, 8, 587, 589–90 Brewster, David, 14, 305 British Board of Ordnance, 93 broadside sellers, 378 broadsides see under cheap print Brodie, James, of Brodie, 423 Brothers, Richard, millenarian prophet, 395 Broun, Christian, 422, 430 Broun, James, Glasgow bookbinder, 159, 161 Broun, Janet, Glasgow bookseller, 161, 165 Broun, John, Glasgow bookbinder, 159, 161 Brown, Alexander, Aberdeen bookseller, 167, 170, 176, 484 Brown, Alexander, Edinburgh bookseller, 343, 344, 345–6 Brown, Hugh, Glasgow printer, 157–8 Brown, James, Duns printer, bookseller and stationer, 116 Brown, John, medical author, 495 Brown, John, religious author, 464 Brown, Robert, Aberdeen bookseller, 176 Brown, Robert, Edinburgh printer, 9, 40 Brown, T., Sanquhar printer, 117 Brown, Thomas, 346 Brown, William, Edinburgh bookseller, 135, 140 Brown, William, Edinburgh newspaper proprietor, 364 Bruce, James, 259 Bruce, John, 486, 487, 492 Bruce, Peter Henry, 255, 257 Bruce, William, journeyman printer, 11 Bryce, Alexander, surveyor, 96, 100, 101 Bryce, John, Glasgow printer and bookseller, 157, 291, 384, 386 Bryce, Patrick, Glasgow bookseller, 384 Brysson, John, Edinburgh music shop manager and copyist, 587, 593 Buchan and Boyne Farm-Society, 405 Buchan, Lord, 58 Buchan, Peter, Peterhead printer and ballad collector, 174, 175 Buchan, William, Domestic Medicine, 19, 52, 56, 60, 63, 127, 196, 219, 270, 495–6, 540, 541 Buchanan, Dugald, Gaelic poet, 595, 596 Buchanan, George, poet, 118, 175, 189, 319 Opera omnia, 206, 556 Rerum Scoticarum Historia, 82, 89 The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, 380–1 Buchanan, James, 546, 548 Buego, John, engraver, 127

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Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de, Natural History, 52, 59, 127, 308 Burnett, James, Lord Monboddo, 110, 151, 265, 306, 533–4 Burnett, John, Aberdeen circulating library and magazine proprietor, 343, 344, 365 Burney, Frances, novelist, 483, 484 Burns, Robert, 10, 14, 54, 165, 345, 348, 545, 548, 553, 570–84 bawdy songs’ collection, 583–4 and Broad Scots, 572, 574 and Canada, 285 correspondents: Blacklock, Thomas, 528, 536; Cleghorn, Robert, 583; Dunlop, Mrs Francis, 571, 577, 578; Hill, Peter, 101, 573; M’Murdo, John, 584; Moore, Dr John, 574; Murdoch, John, 571; Thomson, George, 575–6 and Cunningham Manuscript, 584 and Dunscore library, 294–5 family and relationships, 570, 579 and Hamilton, Gavin, 573, 580 portrait, Plate 37 publishers: Cadell and Davies, London, 579–80; Creech, William, Edinburgh, 52, 571, 578, 579, 580; Stewart and Meikle, Glasgow, 581; Strahan and Cadell, London, 572; Wilson, John, Kilmarnock, 116, 570, 571 in Sibbald’s Circulating Library, Plate 34 and Smellie, William, 52, 54, 573, 583 song collection, 558 sources used, 577 subscriptions, 571, 572 works: ‘A Red Red Rose’, 577; ‘A Rose Bud by my Early Walk’, 591; ‘Auld Lang Syne’, 577–8; broadsides, 581–2; chapbooks, 578–9, 580–1; collected Works of Robert Burns, 579–80, 582, 584; Merry Muses of Caledonia, 59, 579, 583–4 and Plate 40; ‘Of a’ the Airts the Wind can Blaw’, 591; Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, 52, 127, 146: Edinburgh edns, 154, 571–3, 578, 583; glossary, 572, 573–4; Irish and American piracies, 271, 380, 572, 580, 582; Kilmarnock edn, 116, 571, 572, 573; London edn, 572, 580; other Scottish edns, 580; print run figures, Plate 39; replica of press used for, Plate 2; reviews, 571; Holy Willie’s Prayer, 580; Scots Musical Museum (editor and contributor), 574, 577, 578, 590–2; ‘Scots wha hae’, 575–6; Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs (contributor), 575–7; ‘Tam o’Shanter’, 380, 578–9, 580; The Whistle, 581 and Plate 41

Burns, Thomas, 145, 146, 150 Bute, Lord, 308, 325 Bute, third Earl of, 243 Butter, Alexander, surgeon, 499 Byre, James, 241, 243 Byrne, John, Dublin bookseller, 199 Cadell and Davies, London publishers, 193, 579–80 Cadell, Thomas, London publisher, 7, 13, 22, 124, 193, 201, 472, 473 Calcutta, printing in, 265, 266–7 Calder, Robert, 385 Caldwell, George, 343 Callender, James Thomson, Political Progress of Britain, 388, 390, 392, 393, 398 Cameron, Alexander, Lochaber Gaelic poet, 599, 605 Cameron, George, engraver, 127 Cameron, Margaret, Gaelic poet, 605 Cameron, Mary (widow of Alexander Miller), 162 Cameron, William, Kirknewton minister, 429, 430, 431, 432 Campbell, Agnes, Edinburgh printer and bookseller, 7, 118, 134, 167, 181 Campbell, Alexander, Inverary minister, 335 Campbell, Angus, Gaelic song collector, 595, 605–6 Campbell, Archibald, Episcopalian bishop, 336 Campbell, Duncan, Gaelic song writer, 179, 595, 608–9 Campbell, John, 486, 487, 492 Campbell, Robert, Cowal Gaelic poet, 600 Campbell, Robert, Philadelphia printer and bookseller, 146, 269, 271, 272, 473 Campbell, Samuel, New York printer and bookseller, 146, 269, 272, 273 Campbell, Stewart and Company, New Brunswick merchants, 284 Campbeltown, first press, 114 Canada agricultural books, 285 and Burns, 285 and Gaelic Scriptures, 284, 285 merchants and book importers, 283–6 and vernacular Scots publications, 285 Carey, Mathew, Philadelphia bookseller, 272 caricatures, 107–11 Carlyle, Alexander, Inveresk minister, 336 Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 445 Carmichael, Alexander, and Company, 161–2 Carmichael, Alexander, minister, 161 Carmichael, Gershom, 317 Carron, first press, 115, 116 Carruthers, Thomas, Edinburgh bookseller, 135 Carswell, John, Gaelic author, 600 Caslon, William, London typefounder, 43, 50 Castlehill, Lady, ‘Receipt Book’, 407

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index catechism learning, 298–9 Catherine II, 255, 256, 257 Catholic relief, opposition to, 391 Caw, James, Kelso and Hawick printer, 116 Chalmers family, Aberdeen printers, 15, 376 James I, 166, 167 James II, 167–8, 172, 356, 357, 365 James III, 174–6 Robert, bookseller, 166 Chalmers, George, 486, 487, 492, 510 Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures of Glasgow, 403 Chambers, Robert, 418, 443 chapbooks see under cheap print Chapman, George, Dumfries schoolmaster, 311 Chapman, Robert, Glasgow printer, 160, 182 chapmen, 374, 375 cheap print almanacs, 45, 98, 167, 175, 303, 375 broadsides, 174–5, 375–6, 373 Figure 4.4, 377, 378, 381, 581–2; ballads, 372, 419, 554, 555, 565 chapbooks, 8, 20, 115, 116, 160, 165, 173–6, 374, 375, 377, 378, 381, 419, 567; and Burns, 578–9, 580–1, Plate 41; children’s, 299 collectors and collections, 374, 375 copyright infringement and piracy, 375, 379–81 decline, 381 market for, 374–5, 379 origins, 372 publishers, 375–8 sale and distribution, 374, 378–9 subject matter, 374, 381 typographical errors, 376 Cheape, William, agricultural author, 403 Chepman & Myllar, oldest example of Scottish printing (1508), 327 Cheyne, William, Edinburgh printer, 217 children’s books see reading: children’s Childs, Francis, New York bookseller, 272 Christie, William Jr, Montrose bookseller, 153 Christmas Tales, 415 Figure 4.5 Chrystie, William, Edinburgh bookbinder, 152 church publications, 15, 16, 17 Church of Scotland, 385 Clark, James, veterinarian, 57 Clark, John, 597 Clark, John, London and Edinburgh engraver, 82 Clarke, Stephen, Edinburgh musician, 590, 591 Clarkson, John, 464 classics, editions of, 119 Figure 2.1, 122, 134, 141, 234, 556, 301; see also Foulis, Robert and Andrew Claude, Jean, 462

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Cleghorn, William, Edinburgh bookbinder, 152 Cleland, Charles, Edinburgh bookbinder, 153 Cleland, Elizabeth, Edinburgh cookery author and cookery school proprietor, 408, 409 Clerk, John, of Elgin, 97 Clerk, Sir John, of Penicuik, 235, 337, 593 and Alexander Gordon, 511, 512, 515, 516, 517, 519, 520 and Middlebie Roman stones, 524–7 and the Roman stylus, 521–4 writing implements, 525 Figure 5.1 Clerk-Maxwell, Sir George, agricultural author, 399 Cobbett, William, 398 Cockburn, Henry, 422 Cockhill, William, 262 Coke, William, journeyman printer, 11 Coke, William, Leith bookseller, 149, 342 Collins, Benjamin, Salisbury bookseller, 412 Colville, Thomas, Dundee magazine proprietor, 357, 365 Commissioners of the Annexed Estates in Scotland, 406 Commissioners and Trustees for Improving Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland, 400, 402, 404, 406 Company and Society of Journeymen Printers of Edinburgh, 122 Complutensian Polyglot Bible, 327 compositors see printers Condy, Jeremy, Boston bookseller, 269 Constable, Archibald, Edinburgh publisher, 55 Continental publications, 135–6 Cook, John, 255, 257 cookery books: English, 408 cookery books: Scottish, 20, 407–11 and Table 4.4, 451 cookery manuscripts, 407 cookery schools, 408, 409 Cooper, Richard Jr, drawing master, 83, 89 Cooper, Richard Sr, London and Edinburgh engraver, 8, 81–90, 93, 101, 526, 586 Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, 334 copy money payments, 15, 52, 120–1, 192–3, 195 copyright, 7, 303–4 cheap print infringement and piracy, 375, 379–81 Copyright Act (1710), 1, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34, 124, 192, 198, 207, 324 deposit libraries, 324–5, 330 honorary, 39, 194 limited, 23, 194 perpetual, 23, 34, 194 sales and purchases, 154, 192, 194, 492 and Stationers’ Hall registration, 119–20, 121 copyright litigation, 10–11, 23–39, 117, 170, 194, 483–4, 542 London booksellers named in (1774), 35 Table 1.3

653 London booksellers supporting, 27 Table 1.2 Scottish booksellers and printers named: (1738–9) 26 Table 1.1, (1743–9) 27 Table 1.2 Corri, Domenico, 346 Cosh, Charles, bookbinder, 137 Coubrough, Archibald, 344 Coventry, Andrew, Edinburgh professor, 346, 402 Craig, James, architect, 98 Figure 1.15, 239, 242, 327, 336 Crawford, Dougal, Arran minister, 293 Crawford, Dugald, Gaelic minister, 600 Crawfurd, Gideon, Edinburgh bookseller, 383 Creech, William, Edinburgh bookseller and printer, 13, 58, 61, 190, 201, 271, 365, 472, Plate 38 and Burns, 571, 578, 579, 580 Edinburgh partners: Balfour, John, 129, 196; Kincaid, Alexander, 119, 121, 124, 195; Smellie, William, 52, 55, 59 French books, 216, 218 informing for London, 124–5 London partnerships, 15 mocks Scottish reprinting, 37–8 science books, 304, 308 titles published, 127–8 Crieff, first press, 116 Crochallan Fencibles, 573, 579, 583, 584 Cruikshank, Jenny, 591 Cullen, William, 121, 308, 335, 491, 495 Cummyng, James, 52, 53, 54, 59 Cunningham, Alexander, book collector, 205, 206 Cupar first press, 114 library, 342 Currie, James, Dumfriesshire physician and Burns editor, 579 Curry, James, Islay Gaelic poet, 600 Dahlberg, Erik, Suecia, 84–5 Dalry, first press, 117 Dalrymple, Alexander, hydrographer and publisher, 260 Dalrymple, David, Lord Hailes, 135, 333, 549, 553, 558 Ancient Scottish Poems, 554–5 Dalrymple, George, Edinburgh cookery author, 409 Dalrymple, Sir John, of Cowsland, agricultural author, 400 dancing, popularity of, 590 Darien venture, 1, 157 Davidson, Alexander, Inverness printer and bookseller, 116, 344 Davidson, Peter, Banff bookseller and binder, 116 Davies, Myles, 382 Davies, William, 193 daybooks, 133–4, 145–7 de Rossi, Giovanni Jacomo, publisher, 236 debts, 58 Defoe, Daniel, 522 Robinson Crusoe, 82, 295, 380

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Desgodetz, Antoine, 244 Dewar, Donald, Gaelic verse anthologist, 603 Dickson, Adam, agricultural author, 399, 401, 504, 505, 507, 508 Diderot, Encyclopédie, 6, 219, 538, 540 Didot Press, Paris, 220 Dilly, Edward and Charles, London publishers, 7, 124, 196–7, 541 Dobson, Thomas, Philadelphia printer and bookseller, 269, 273–4, 416, 544 Dodsley, Robert, 460 Donaldson, Alexander, Edinburgh bookseller and printer, 5, 7, 16, 25, 55, 119, 122–3, 184, 218, 219 litigation and House of Lords decision, 32–9 London discount reprint shop, 23, 33, 34, 189 newspaper proprietor, 24 Figure 1.1, 355, 361 Donaldson, James, agricultural author, 504 Donaldson, John, of Edinburgh, bookseller in London, 5, 23, 34, 35, 541 Donaldson, John, painter, 88 Donaldson, Peter, illustrator and engraver, 88, 90 Donaldson, Thomas, illustrator and engraver, 88, 90, 127 Douglas, Andrew, navy paymaster, 427–8, 429, 431 Douglas, Francis, Aberdeen bookseller and printer, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 365 Douglas, Gavin, poet, 118, 552, 556 Douglas, James, fourteenth Earl of Morton, 100 Douglas, James, Scottish physician and anatomist, 496 Douglas, Lord George, 320–1 Dow, Alexander, 262–3, 265, 266 Dow, Daniel, Saltcoats schoolmaster and bookseller, 198 Downman, Hugh, 529 Dreghorn, first press, 115 Drummond, John, physician, 335 Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, 552 Drummond, William, nurseryman, 427, 431 Dublin bookselling, 199 reprint smuggling and piracies, 198, 200–1, 544 Dun, Mr, West Niagara (Upper Canada), bookseller, 285 Dunbar, first press, 116 Dunbar, William, poet, 552, 553, 554, 565 Duncan family, Glasgow booksellers, papermakers, printers and merchants Alexander, newspaper proprietor, 160, 356 Andrew, 73, 160, 182, 184 Andrew, merchant in New England, 160 James, 158, 160, 182, 184, 200, 414, 416 James and Andrew, American exports, 272–3

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James Jr, Gaelic printer, 182 John, merchant in Maryland, 160 Robert, bookseller in Philadelphia, 160 Robert, Gaelic printer, 182 Thomas, bookseller in Philadelphia, 160 Thomas, broadside publisher, 377 Thomas, Edinburgh bookshop assistant, 160 William, 158, 159, 291, 355, 384 William Jr, 165 William, merchant in Virginia, 160 Duncan, Alexander, Edinburgh printer, 377 Duncan, Andrew Jr, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 500–1 Duncan, Andrew Sr, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 500–1 Duncan, Thomas, Gaelic author, 599 Duncan, William, author, 157 Dundee booksellers, 172 printers, 115 see also libraries; newspapers and magazines Dundonald, Earl of, 404 Dunfermline, first press, 116 Dunkeld, first press, 114 Dunlap, William, American printer, 270 Dunlop, Alexander, Edinburgh professor, 317 Dunn, William, 395 Duns first press, 116 library, 116, 147, 154, 341–2, 350 Dutch book piracy, 22, 25, 207, 209 Dutch publishing and bookselling, 203–6 East India Company, 259, 260, 261, 262, 266, 267 Easy Club, 549 Edgar, William, surveyor, 93 Edinburgh development, 132–3 Directory, 57 first press, 113 joint publications with Glasgow, 14 mail services, 4 map engraving, 101–2 maps and plans, 93, 98 Figure 1.15, 100 medical libraries, 327–8 medical publishing, 494–502 official printing, 17 Table I.2 population, 1 publishing, 5, 13, 14–15 Table I.1, 16, 17, 20, 133; see also individual traders Edinburgh Booksellers’ Society, 13, 55 Edinburgh bookselling (1715–17), 133–42 customers: private and institutional, 136–8; trade, 136–8 sources: Continental publications, 135–6; London publications, 134–5, 142 subjects, 138–41

‘Edinburgh Floral Binder’ (unidentified), 66, Plate 27 Edinburgh High School, 140, 301 Edinburgh Medical School, 499–501, 502 Edinburgh Musical Society, 586, 587, 592 Edinburgh Philosophical Society, 118, 120, 526 Edinburgh Rankenian Club, 318 Edinburgh School of St Luke, 83–4, 86 Edinburgh Select Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures and Agriculture, 400, 403, 405 Edinburgh Select Subscription Library, 347 Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Art, Sciences and Manufacture, 61, 88–9, 164 Edinburgh Subscription Library, 341, 347, 349 Edinburgh University library, 323–4 Figure 4.1, 325, 326, 335 Physiology class library, 325 student clubs, 318–19 students’ reading, 317, 318, 320 Theological library, 325 Edinburgh–London publishing co-operation, 7, 40, 119, 126–7, 127–8 editing and proof-reading, 73, 104, 158, 163, 465, 535, 572, 573, 601 Edmistoun, Archibald, 135 education (English), 310–11 education (Scottish) 311, 288, 428–9; see also school textbooks high schools, 301, 302, 307 parish schools, 298, 299, 307 Edwards, Miss Christie, novelist,127, 484 Egerton Leigh, Sir Samuel, novelist, 485 Egypt, 259, 264–5 Elder, Alexander, Peebles printer, 115, 153 Elder, John, Edinburgh bookseller, 394 Elder, Walter, Hawick bookseller, 115 Elgin, first press, 114 Elie, first press, 114 Elliot, Charles, Edinburgh bookseller, 11, 15, 55, 349, 365 Aberdeen and Inverness trade, 170–1, 173 American exports, 7, 217, 271–2, 273, 413, 416 and Bell and Bradfute, 145, 149 and Dobson, Thomas, 273–4, 544 Encyclopaedia Britannica repackaging/promotion, 538, 542–4 Glasgow trade, 156, 157 and Hume, 21–2 Irish trade, 198–9, 201 and Kay, Thomas, 189, 482–3, 543–5 letters to London trade, 127, 128 Table 2.2 London bookshop, 22, 189

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index on London copyrights, 39 Scottish–London co-operation, 7, 127–8 titles: children’s books, 414, 416; fiction, 127, 416, 482–3; Gaelic books, 181, 468; science and medicine, 57, 127, 308 Elliott, Cornelius, Edinburgh bookseller and auctioneer, 7, 307, 368 Elphinstone, James, 427–8 Elphinstone, John, surveyor, 93, 99 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 582 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6, 127, 305, 538–44 1st edn, 52, 56, 63, 147, 219, 270, 531, 539–41 2nd edn, 57, 62, 116, 154, 171, 197, 273, 532–3, 538, 542–3, Plate 16 3rd edn, 152, 274, 538, 543–4 contributors, 542 copyright litigation against, 542 distribution, 541, 542–3 Dobson American edn, 270, 274, 544 Dublin edn, 544 editors: Gleig, George (3rd edn), 543; Macfarqhar, Colin (3rd edn), 543; Smellie, William (1st edn), 52, 56, 538–9, 540, 542; Tytler, James (2 edn), 43, 57, 62, 116, 366, 367, 378, 398, 542 London edn, 541 proprietors: Bell, Andrew (1st– 3rd edn), 63, 90, 538, 539, 541, 542, 543; Constable, Archibald (later edn), 538, 543; Hutton, John (2nd edn), 63, 532, 533, 542; MacFarqhar, Colin (1st–3rd edn), 63, 538, 539, 540, 541, 542 repackaging/promotion by Elliot, 538, 542–4 encyclopaedias and dictionaries, 538; see also Diderot, Encyclopédie; Encyclopaedia Britannica English language elocution lessons, 545, 550 spoken and written, 545–6 English–Scots language relationship, 547, 550 engraving block, 103 book illustration, 81–90 copper plate, 101, 103–6 engravers’ workshop, 104 Figure 1.16 first Edinburgh engravers, 8 line engraving and tools, 104, 105 Figure 1.17 map engraving, 101–2 Enlightenment see Scottish Enlightenment Erskine, Charles (later Lord Tinwald), 447–8 Erskine, Christian (wife of Sir Robert Laurie), 448–9 Erskine, Ebenezer, 383, 386, 463, 464, 465 Erskine, Grisel, of Barjarg, 447–58 Erskine, James, Lord Alva, and family, Plate 35

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Erskine, John, 461 Erskine, John Drummond, 427 Erskine, Ralph, 383, 384, 386, 463, 464 Erskine, Robert, book collector, 448 Erskine, Thomas, Earl of Kelly see Kelly, Earl of Esplin and Forbes, Edinburgh booksellers, 346 evangelicals, evangelicalism, 398, 467 Cambuslang revival, 288–91 literature, 291, 386, 468–9 sermons, 460, 463–6, 468, 469 Evans, John, journeyman printer, 11 Faculty of Advocates see Advocates’ Library Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (later Royal College), library, 328 Fair Intellectual Club, Edinburgh, 19 Fairly, John A., cheap print collector, 375 Falconar, William, minister, 335 Falkirk first press, 115 library 341 Farming Club, Gordons-Milne nr Old Aberdeen, 400 Farquhar, Robert, Aberdeen bookseller, 166, 171, 172, 175 Farquhar, William, Peterhead bookseller and circulating library, 173 Fénelon, François, 88, 219, 461–2 Ferguson, Adam, 195, 211, 212, 320, 569 Ferguson, James, science author, 305 Ferguson, Robert, fiddler, 594 Fergusson, Robert, poet, 10, 367–8, 417, 547, 553, 566–7, 570 Auld Reikie chapbook, 567, 568 Figure 6.2 fiction and circulating and subscription libraries, 484 Gaelic, 599 growing acceptance of, 485 London and Edinburgh imprints, 481–2 London/England centred, 476–7, 478–9, 482 Scottish reprints and litigation, 483–4 subscription lists, 484–5 Findlay, J., Whitburn printer, 116 Findlay, John, Arbroath printer, 117 Finlayson, John, 93 Finlayson, John, Cupar lawyer, 395 Fisher, Edward, 463 Fisher, George, The Instructor, Edinburgh editions, 300–1 Fisher, James, Secession Church founder, 384 Fisher, William, 580 Flaxman, John, 77–8, 80 Fleeming, John, Boston bookseller, 269, 270 Fleming and Neill, Edinburgh printers Edinburgh Evening Courant, 41, 43 ledger, 40–1, 43–50

655 Fleming, Robert Jr, Edinburgh printer, 41, 63, 359 Fleming, Robert Sr, Edinburgh printer, 41, 55, 216, 384 Flemings, Edinburgh printers, 45 Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 135 Florence, Joseph, chef, 408 folk rhymes, 418–19 folktales, 416–18 Forbes, John, Aberdeen song and music printer, 557, 585–6 Forbes, John Jr, Aberdeen printer, 167 Forbes, Peter, 338 Forbes, Samuel, Edinburgh compositor, 40 Forbes, Sir William, 9, 58, 59, 110, 532, 533 Fordyce, David, 460, 461 Fordyce, James, 461 Fordyce, Sir William, surgeon, 335 Fordyce, William, 238 Forsyth, Alexander, Ayr bookseller and shipper, 198 Forsyth, Isaac, Elgin bookseller, 171, 344, 442, 443 Foster, Colin, surveyor, 94 Foulis Academy, Glasgow, 89, 164 Foulis, Andrew the Younger, 80 Foulis family, Colinton, 555 Foulis, Robert, 24 Figure 1.2 Foulis, Robert and Andrew, Glasgow printers (Foulis Press), 5, 6, 11, 16, 25, 36, 63, 162–5, 182, 257, 356, 466 bindings, 66 chapbook, 377 classics, 28, 163, 164, 317: Callimachus, 76, 89; Glasgow Homer, 70–80; ‘immaculate’ Horace, 71, 163 English Poets, 164 French titles, 219 proofreading, 73, 163 religious pamphlets, 386 reprints, 25–6, 163 subscriptions, 164–5 typography, 79, 163 Foulis, Sir James, of Colinton, Gaelic scholar, 605 Franklin, Benjamin, 75–6, 277, 281, 339, 596 Fraser, Alexander, of Keelig, 427 Fraser, James, 262 Fraser, Sophia, of Philworth, 446 Frazer, George, agricultural author, 400 Frazer, Mrs, Edinburgh cookery author and cookery school proprietor, 409, 410 Freebairn, David, 137 Freebairn, James, 215 Freebairn Press, 556–7 Freebairn, Robert, Edinburgh printer, 114, 118, 135, 137, 215, 556 freemasonary, 14, 19, 54, 56, 58 French publications in Scotland grammars, 215–16 imports, 147, 204, 214, 217–19 learned journals, 204, 206, 207, 208 in sales and auction catalogues, 217–18 Scottish printing, 217, 219 in subscription and circulating libraries, 218

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French publishing: privilège du roi and false foreign imprints, 222–3, 225 French reviews and translations Hume, 22, 211, 226–9, 231 Ossian, 249–50, 252, 253 French Revolution, 14, 109, 393, 394, 395, 397, 408, 434 French, teaching of, 215, 216–17 Fyfe, Alexander, 127 Fyfe, Andrew, 89 Gaelic authors, 177–80; see also individual entries Gaelic ceilidh houses, 599 Gaelic crosanachd mode, 599 Gaelic language and literature, 4, 292–4, 550, 552, 569 Gaelic orthography, 595–6 Gaelic printers Edinburgh: Anderson, Alexander, 181, 468; Balfour, Auld and Smellie, 181, 467; Campbell, Agnes, 181; Elliot, Charles, 468; Lumisden, Thomas, 181; Macfarquhar and Elliot, 467; Moir, John, 181; Paterson, David, 181, 184, 216; Paterson, John, 181; Peattie, George, 181; Reid, John, 468; Robertson, John, 468; Ruddiman, Walter, 181; Smellie, William and Alexander, 181, 467; Stewart, Charles, 182, 184 Glasgow: Anderson, Andrew, 181–2, 184; Bell, William, 182, 184; Chapman, Andrew, 182; Duncan family, 182, 184,185, 467; Foulis, Andrew, 182, 467; Gillies, James, 182, 185; Orr, Agnes (Anna), 182; Orr, Andrew, 182; Orr, John, 158–9, 182, 467, 468, 601 Perth: Forest, Thomas, 603; Gillies, John, 180, 182–3, 184–5, 467, 468 other locations, 180, 293, 468 Gaelic publishing, 16, 117, 177–87, 595–612 alphabets, 600 Canada, 284, 285 dictionaries, glossaries and grammars, 609–12 fiction, 599 first women published, 602 folktales, 599 original prose, 598–600 original verse (poems and songs), 600–9 proverbs, 595, 596, 599 readers’ annotations, 185–6 religion, 293–4, 467–8; Bibles, psalters and Testaments, 52, 116, 127, 182, 185–6, 284, 285, 467, 599, 600, 609–10; catechisms, 182, 185, 599, 600; translations from English, 467–8 subscriptions, 177–80 translated prose, 596–7 translated verse, 597–8 verse anthologies: Eigg Collection, 602–3, 606; Gillies Collection, 598, 599, 604, 611

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Gaelic translators, 467–8; see also individual entries Gaines, Daniel, Dundee printer, 115 Galbraith, Henry, Dundee printer, 115, 357 Galbraith, Joseph, Glasgow printer, 200 Gale, Roger, 516, 517, 520, 522, 523, 524 Garden, Robert, minister, 335 Gardiner, John, surveyor, 97 Gavin, Hector, engraver, 101–2 gazetteers, 302 Ged, William, stereotyper, 8 Geddes, Alexander, 549, 550 Gemmill, John, Dalry printer, 117 Geoffreys, Thomas, surveyor, 101 German, translations into, 210–13, 249, 251, 252 Gibbon, Edward, 70 Gilbert, William, Dublin bookseller, 199 Gilfillan, John, journeyman printer, 11 Gillies, John, Perth bookbinder and bookseller, 116, 149, 153, 182–4 An Sugradh, 603 Feuds and Conflicts, 184, 599, 603, 604 Gillies Collection, 598, 599, 604, 611 Gillies, Robert Pierce, novelist, 475 Glasgow American exports, 28, 37, 156–7,270, 272–3 first press, 113 Glasgow–Dublin smuggling trade, 198, 200–1 imprints, 156 joint publications with Edinburgh, 14 map engraving, 101–2 maps and plans, 94, 97–8 medical libraries, 328 population, 1 publishing, 14, 15, 16, 17–18; see also individual traders reprint trade, 3, 5, 13, 20, 25–6, 29–30, 163 share of Scottish printing, 18 Table I.3 trade with Edinburgh, 156 Glasgow Homer, 70–80, 74 Figure 1.8 Glasgow University bookshop, 161, 162 humanity class library, 325 Humanity Library, 317 library, 204, 319, 323, 325, 326, 335 students’ reading, 316–18 Theological Library, 325 Glass, Hannah, English cookery author, 408 glossaries Gaelic, 611–12 Scots, 549–50, 572, 573–4 Godwin, William, 59, 350 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 249, 250–1 Goldsmith, Oliver, 314 Good, John, Glasgow merchant, 135 Gordon, Alexander Egyptian antiquities, 520

Itinerarium Septentrionale and Supplement, 510, 511, 512–21, 522, 525 Gordon, Alexander, Aberdeen physician, 497 Gordon, Alexander, Italy, 242 Gordon, Alexander, Russia and Egypt, 254, 257, 264–5, 266 Gordon, George, Calcutta printer, 267 Gordon, James, cartographer, 94 Gordon, Patrick, 99 Gordon, Robert, 217 Gough, Richard, 92, 522 Govan, Donald, Glasgow University Printer, 158, 355 government publications, 15, 16, 17 Gow, Nathaniel, fiddler, 590, 593 Graeme, Hugh, of Argomery, agricultural author, 401, 402, 404 Graham, Dougal, Stirling chapman, author and Glasgow Town Crier, 379, 380 grammars English, 311, 314 French, 215–16 Gaelic, 611 geographical, 99–100 Latin, 311, 314 Oriental, 261, 266 Grand Tour books purchased on, 308, 320–1, 322 and Italy, 216, 233–45 Grange, Lord, 337 Grant, Charles, 264 Grant, James, journeyman printer, 11 Grant, John, Auchinleck minister, 335 Grant, John, Dundurcus minister, 426, 433 Grant, Lilias, Lady Innes of Balvenie, 449 Grant, Sir Archibald, of Monymusk, agricultural author, 399, 402, 405, 504, 507 Grant, William, Edinburgh printer, 40 Gray, Thomas, 79, 247 Gray, William, Edinburgh bookseller, 202, 342 Greenock, 1, 2 exports, 268, 284 first press, 116 imports, 198, 201, 272 library, 342, 350, 351 Gregory, David, 303 Gregory, James, Conspectus Medicinae Theoreticae, 57, 121 Greig, John, 291 Greive, Alexander, Edinburgh bookbinder, 153 Grierson, Grisel see Erskine, Grisel Gronovius, Abraham, 523, 525 Grose, Francis, antiquary, 578, 581 Gude and Godlie Ballatis song collection, 558 Gutenberg Bible, 327, 334 Guthrie, Alexander, 83 Guthrie, Maria and Matthew, 256–7 Guthrie, Mathew, ‘Arcticus’, 257 Guthrie, William, geographical writer, 99–100, 272, 486, 487

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index Haddington, first press, 114 Hall, David, Philadelphia bookseller, 269 Hall, James, physician and chemist, 308, 347 Hallhead, William, Dublin bookseller, 199 Hamann, Johann Georg, 212 Hamilton, Alexander, 258–9, 266, 279, 280–1 Hamilton, Archibald, London printer, 190 Hamilton and Balfour, Edinburgh booksellers and printers, 6, 10, 21, 119, 120, 129, 218 American exports, 269 Virgil, 119 Figure 2.1 Hamilton, Balfour and Neill, Edinburgh printers and publishers, 16, 17, 22, 40, 54, 122 site of printing house, 324 Figure 4.1 Volusenus, 559 Figure 6.1 Hamilton, Elizabeth, novelist, 485 Hamilton, Gavin, Burns’s friend, 573, 580 Hamilton, Gavin, Edinburgh bookseller, 5, 31 Figure 1.3, 63, 209, 219, 526 copy money for Scots, 15, 120–1, 192–3 and Hume, 21–2, 120–1 London shop, 188–9 newspapers, 10, 359 paper mill proprietor, 62 patriotic publishing, 30–1, 119 Hamilton, Gavin, Schola Italicae Picturae, 242 Hamilton, Sir William, 239, 244 Hamilton, Thomas, agricultural author, 401 Hamilton, William, of Bangour, 240 Hamilton, William, of Gilbertfield, 557 ‘Hardyknute’ ballad, 554, 555, 565 Hart, James, Glasgow printer, 158 Harvey, John, Bruciad, 557 Harwood, Edward, 70 Hastings, Warren, 261, 263, 266 Hawick, first press, 116 Hay, Alexander, 48 Hay, Andrew, 241 Hay, Sir Gilbert, poet, 552 Heirs of Andrew Anderson, Edinburgh printers, 181, 413 Helme, Elizabeth, novelist, 485 Helsham, Samuel, Dublin stationer, 134 Henderson, John, younger of Fordell, 235 Henderson, Robert, Edinburgh University Librarian, 325 Henryson, Robert, poet, 552, 553, 554, 555, 565 Hepburn, Robert, periodical proprietor, 353 Herculaneum, discovery of, 238–9 Herd, David, song collector, 558, 577 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 248–9, 250 Heron, Patrick, 581, 582 Heron, Robert, 259, 265 Hill, George, 474 Hill, John, 306

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Hill, Peter, Edinburgh bookseller and publisher, 59, 101, 218, 292, 348, 573 history, 19, 314, 316, 320, 341, 426–7, 431, 432–3, 451; see also under Hume; Robertson Hodge, Allen and Campbell, New York booksellers, 473 Hogg, James, 417 Holcroft, Thomas, 350 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 251–2 Home, Francis, 439, 507 Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation, 120, 276, 428, 506 Home, Henry, Lord Kames see Kames, Lord Home, John, 567, 569 The Douglas, 83, 269, 312, 567 Hope, John, botanist, 89 Hopetoun, Earl of, 340 Horseburgh, William, 304 Horsley, John, Britannia Romana, 510, 518–20 Hume, David, 14, 21–2, 192, 195, 276, 277, 279–80, 330, 486, 488, 500 Advocates’ librarian, 214, 241, 327 and Blacklock, Thomas, 530, 534–5, 536 French reviews and translations, 22, 211, 226–9, 231 German translations, 210–13 and Gournay circle, 231–2 personal library, 334, 343 in school textbooks, 314 Scotticisms glossary, 547 on spoken Scots vs written English, 545, 548 works: Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 21–2, 212–13; Essays Moral and Political, 16, 121, 193, 277, 280; Essays and Treatises, 22, 193, 211, 423, 430, 436; History of Great Britain (later History of England), 22, 120, 186, 188, 211, 269, 276–7, 314, 424, 429, 431–2, 437, 439, 445, 548; Political Discourses (absorbed into Essays and Treatises), 16, 221, 222–32, 488, 547; Treatise of Human Nature, 210–11, 212–13 Hunter, James, Scottish anatomist and pathologist, 497 Hunter, Janet (widow of James Broun), Glasgow bookbinder, 159 Hunter, John, Edinburgh bookbinder, 152 Hunter, William, London surgeon and anatomist, 496 Hutcheson, Francis, 157, 161, 162, 163, 486, 487 System of Moral Philosophy, 211, 421, 466, 488 Hutton, James, physician and geologist, 110, 308 Hutton, John, Dumfries physician and MP, 63, 329 Hutton, John, proprietor of Encyclopaedia Britannica (2nd edn), 63, 532, 533, 542

657 Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty, 102 Hyslop, William and Company, Boston booksellers, 269 Imlach, James, Banff bookseller, 171, 173, 343 Imrie, David, minister, 426 India, 260–3, 264, 265 Inverness bookselling, 116, 170, 171, 172, 344 first press, 115, 117 libraries, 329, 344 Ireland American exports, 199 Scottish exports, 124, 198–200, 201–2 Scottish imports, 199, 200, 202 Irvine book imports, 25, 198, 202 first press, 114 library, 343 Irvine family of Drum Castle, 428, 431, 432 Irvine, James, art dealer, 432 Italy and the Grand Tour, 233–45 Jackson and Dunn, Philadelphia booksellers, 273 Jackson, Robert, newspaper proprietor, 357, 365 Jacobite Rebellion (1715), 92, 93, 167, 557 (1719), 92 (1745), 92, 212, 303, 504, 586 James VI, 19 Jefferson, Thomas, 71, 276–7, 278–9, 281, 398 Jeffrey, Francis, Edinburgh Review (1802), 366 Jenkins, John, caricaturist, 107 jobbing printing, 41, 45, 116, 157, 160, 168 Johnson, Henry, inventor of logography, 489 Johnson, James, Edinburgh engraver, song collector and music seller, 558, 574, 590–1 Johnson, Joseph, publisher, 197 Johnson, Robert, Belfast bookseller, 202 Johnson, Samuel, 328, 472, 595, 602–3 satires against, 604, 607, 611 works: Dictionary, 126 Table 2.1, 192, 200; Lives of the Poets, 349 Johnson, Thomas, The Hague English-language bookseller and publisher, 205, 206–9, 217 and English piracies, 207, 209 French publishing, 207 and Journal littéraire, 207, 208, 209 Scottish outlets, 208–9 Johnston, George, printer, 365 Johnston, Hugh, New Brunswick timber merchant, 285 Johnston, Thomas, Falkirk printer and bookseller, 376 Johnstone, George, Aberdeen, Perth, Montrose and Kirkcaldy printer, 116 Johnstoun, Patrick, poet, 554

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Jones, William, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266 Kames, Lord, 278, 312, 399, 401, 504, 507 works: Elements of Criticism, 211, 276, 281, 428; Gentleman Farmer, 128, 151, 505, 508; Loose Hints upon Education, 151; Principles of Equity, 277; Sketches of the History of Man, 196, 306, 427 Kant, Immanuel, 210, 212 Kay, John, Edinburgh caricaturist, 107–11 Adam Smith, 109 Figure 1.22 Auction Room, 109 Figure 1.20 Miss Burns, 108 Figure 1.19 The Connoisseurs, 109 Figure 1.21 Kay, Thomas, 189, 543, 544 Keir, Elizabeth, novelist, 481–2 Kelly, Earl of, composer, 587, 592, 593 Kelly, Isabella, novelist, 481 Kelso, first press, 116 Kennedy, Walter, poet, 553, 554 Ker, John, third Duke of Roxburghe, 243, 331, 466 Ker, William, 215–16 Kerr, Richard, 308 Kerr, Robert, 62 Kidston, Richard Jr, Halifax merchant, 285–6 Kilbarchan Farmer Society, 400 Kilmarnock, first press, 116 Kincaid, Alexander, Edinburgh bookseller, 6, 16, 98, 119, 193, 195, 197, 472 American exports, 269 partnerships, 119, 121, 124, 195, 217 Kincaid, Thomas, physician, 335 Kinnear, Samuel, Edinburgh printer, 54 Kirkbride, first press, 114 Kirkcaldy, first press, 116 Kirkintilloch, first press, 113 Kirkpatrick, William, 261–2 Kirkwood, James, minister, 329 Kirkwood, James, Perth clockmaker and Edinburgh engraver, 102 Kitchen, Thomas, engraver and publisher, 92, 93, 99, 100 Knight, William, Aberdeen professor and chapbook collector, 175 Knox, James, Glasgow bookseller, 343 Knox, John, political economist, 486, 488, 492 Knox, Vicesimus, Elegant Extracts school textbook, 313–14 Knox, William, agricultural author, 402 Krasheninnikov, Sergei, 257 Lachlan, chief of the MacLachlans, Gaelic poet, 601–2 Lackington, James, London bookseller, 348, 473 Laing, Malcolm, 247 Laing, William, 218 Lang, William, Peterhead minister, 299 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 307

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Larpent, Anna, 430 Lassels, Richard, 234 Lauder, John, 337 Laurence, Richard, New York bookseller, 273 Lavoisier, Antoine, 308 Lawrie, Alexander, Edinburgh bookseller, 345 Lawson, John, engraver, 89 le Blanc, Jean-Bernard, 224–5, 227–9, 229–32 Leake, James, Bath bookseller, first English circulating library (1728?), 338 Lee, Sophia, novelist, 483 Leechman, William, Glasgow professor, 466 legal publishing law books, 5, 15, 16, 17, 20, 139–40 legal papers see Session printing legislation Copyright Act (1710), 1, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 34, 124, 192, 198, 207, 324 corn laws, 400, 403 Disclothing Act (1746, repealed 1782), 596, 604, 605 Great Reform Act (1832), 388 Importation Act (1739), 124, 198 Patronage Act (1712), 391 Six Acts (1819), 388 Stamp Act (1712), 359, 383 Leighton, Andrew, newspaper proprietor, 357, 365 Leighton, Robert, 462 Leith, 2 book imports, 25, 207 first press, 114 library, 343 Lennox, Charlotte, novelist, 481 Leobhar Liath, 601 Leslie, Charles, ballad singer and chapman, 174 Leslie, Edward, Dundee bookseller, 172 l’Honoré, Jonas, French publisher, 206, 207 Lhuyd, Edward, 600, 610 libel litigation, 13, 58, 358, 365, 392, 394, 397 liberty, civil and religious, 391 libraries and children’s books, 419–20 English, 338, 341, 344, 352 and Enlightenment literature, 348–9 and fiction, 484 locations: Aberdeen, 176, 343–4, 484; Airdrie, 347; Arbroath, 341, 347–8; Ardrossan, 343; Ayr, 341, 342, 343, 347, 350, 444; Banff, 171, 343; Beith, 343; Berwickupon-Tweed, 341; Biggar, 347; Crieff, 349; Cupar, 342; Dalkeith, 338–9, 343, 349, 351; Dumbarton: Presbytery, 329; Dumfries: Dunscore, 294–5; Dumfries: Gentleman’s Society, 341; Dumfries: Presbytery, 329, 340; Dunbar: Presbytery, 329; Dunblane: Leighton, 329, 445; Dundee, 329, 343, 347, 350, 351; Dunfermline,

350; Duns, 116, 147, 154, 341–2, 350; Edinburgh, 218, 337–8, 341, 342, 344–6, 347, 349, 443, 484, 549, Plate 34; Elgin, 344, 442; Falkirk, 341; Forfar, 347, 443; Forres, 442; Glasgow: Anderson’s Institution, 328; Glasgow: Public, 347, 419–20; Glasgow: Stirling’s, 347; Glasgow, 342, 346, 351, 484; Greenock, 342, 350, 351; Haddington: Gray, 328, 335, 339, 445; Hamilton, 444; Hawick, 341, 342, 351, 443; Innerpeffray, 328, 339, 444; Inverness, 329, 344; Irvine, 343; Jamestown miners’, 341, 348; Jedburgh, 351; Kelso, 341, 346, 351, 423, 437, 484; Kilmarnock, 347; Kirkcudbright, 347, 350, 443; Kirkwall, 328–9; Lanark school, 328, 335; Laurencekirk inn, 328; Leadhills Miners’, 340, 351, 352; Leith, 343; Logie, Fife, 340; Monkland: Friendly Society, 348, 350, 484; Montrose, 342, 346; Paisley, 343; Perth, 342, 347, 348; Peterhead, 173; Renton, 351; Saltoun, 329; Selkirk, 341, 350, 443–4; Tyndrum Miners’, 340–1; Wanlockhead Miners’, 340, 348; Westerkirk, 341; Wigtown, 350, 444, 446 types: agricultural, 349 booksellers: lending books ad hoc, 337 Catholic seminary, 329 circulating, 171, 173, 176, 218, 294, 337–8, 342–6, 442–3, 484, 549 endowed, 444–5 Highland, 329 middle class, 351 miners’, 340–1 music, 343, 346 parish, 329, 340 presbytery, 329 prints and drawings, 346 private, 439–42, 446, 448–58 Secession academy, 329 specialist, 346, 349 subscription, 218, 294, 329, 337–42, 347, 349, 352, 437, 442, 443–4, 446; administration, 341–2, 346–50; censorship, 350; origins, 341; stock, 344–5, 348–9 trades, 352 workers’, 352 working-class, 294, 351 and women readers, 437, 442–5, 446 see also book clubs; libraries (institutional); libraries (private); reading societies libraries (institutional), 20, 323– 30, 338 administration, 325–6, 327 catalogues, 325, 327, 328 copyright deposits, 324–5, 330

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index donations, 325, 326 non-book collections, 326 purchases, 325, 326, 327 student-designated collections, 325 libraries (private), 68, 331–6, 439–42, 446, 447, 448–58 Aberdeen, Earls of, Haddo House, 333 Adams of Blair Adam, 332 Anderson, James, 336 Baillies of Mellerstain, 332, 334 Ballindalloch, 442 Baxter, John, 336 Beattie, James, 335 Blair, Hugh, 335 Boswell, James, 334 Boswells of Auchinleck, 332, 333 Brodies of Brodie, 332, 440, 441 Bruce, Katherine (wife of Sir Robert Fletcher of Saltoun), 447, 449 Burgie, 439–40 Bute, Earls of, Mountstuart, 331 Cameron, Charles, 336 Campbell, Archibald, Earl of Ilay and third Duke of Argyll, 331 Clerks of Penicuik, 332, 335, 336 Colqhhouns of Luss, 68, 332, Plate 29 Craig, James, 242, 336 Craigston Castle, 424, 441, 446 Crosbie, Andrew, 336 Cullen, William, 335 Cumming, James, 336 Cunningham, Adam, 336 Cunningham, Alexander, 206 Dalrymple of Newhailes, 332–3, 334 Dalyells of the Binns, 332, 333 Delgatie Castle, 423 Douglas, Lord George, 205, 321 Dundases of Arniston, 332, 333 Erskine, Charles (later Lord Tinwald), 448 Erskine, Grisel, 448–51, 452–8 Table 5.1 Erskine, Robert, 334, 335 Erskines of Alva, 332 Erskines of Duns, 332, 333, 334 Ferguson, John, 75 Ferniehurst, Borders, 333 Fife, Earls of, Duff House, 332, 333 Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 332 Forbes, Duncan, of Culloden, 332 Forbes, Hugh, 218 Foulis, Robert and Andrew, 162 Gordon Castle, 441 Gordon of Gordonstoun, 332 Gordons of Fyfie, 332 Grants of Monymusk, 332 Gray, John, 328, 335, 339 Gregory family, 335 Grindlay, George, 336 Hope, John, 328, 335 Hopetoun House, Midlothian, 332, 333 Hume, Andrew, 139 Hume, David, 334, 343 Hume, Patrick, of Paxton, 332 Hunter, William, 325, 334 Ker, John, third Duke of Roxburghe, 243 Knight, William, 175 Leslie, Alexander, 208 Lothian, Marquesses of, 332

619122 HOBS VOL.2 PRINT (M2704).indd 659

Lumisden, Andrew, 239 Mackenna, Brian, 77 Mackie, Charles, 208 Maxwells of Pollok, 332 Monro medical teaching dynasty, 335 Mylne, Robert, 336 Newbattle, 439 Paton, George, 334 Pitcairne, Archibald, 334–5 Queensberry, Dukes of (Drumlanrig), 331–2 Rose, Alexander, 173 Rose, Elizabeth, of Kilravock, 439, 593 Rosehall, Lanarkshire, 333 Ruddiman, Thomas, 336 Seaton, Sir Alexander, 138 Seton, Sir Alexander, 332 Sibbald, Sir Robert, 334 Smellie, William, Lanark obstetrician, 328, 335 Smith, Adam, 334 Speirs, Alexander, 76, 332 Spottiswoode, John, 336 Steuart, David, 334 Strathmore, Earl of, Glamis, 333 Stuart, John, 217 Traquair House, Borders, 333 Tweedale, Marquesses of, 332 Walker, John, 307 Wodrow, Robert, 336 Yester, East Lothian, 333 Library Company of Philadelphia, 339 Liddell, John, Glasgow bookseller, 200 Lind, James, physician, 497 Lindsay, Patrick, agricultural author, 400, 401, 504 Linnaeus, Carl, 303, 306 literacy, 18–21, 287–96, 298 ‘aborginal’ illiterates, 292 and Cambuslang evangelical revival, 288–91 definition, 287, 288 and education, 288 female, 287, 289, 292 and Gaelic, 292–4 Northern England, 287 Scandinavia, 289 Scottish Highlands, 287 Scottish Lowlands, 287 and self-improvement, 295–6 see also reading Lizars, Daniel, engraver, 101 Loch, David, 486, 487 Locke, John, 278, 310–11, 425–6 Logan, John, 263–4, 265, 266 London art societies and academies, 82–3 book trade domination first challenged, 6 booksellers’ combination: Parliamentary petition for relief (1774), 23, 25, 33, 35, 37–8; prosecutions of, 32–5 bookshops of Scottish publishers, 22, 33, 34, 188–9, 190 London books sold in Scotland, 142 London and Edinburgh editions, 22 Scottish booksellers in, 188–9, 197 Scottish printers in, 190–7 Scottish publishers in, 188–97 under-pricing, 30–1

659 Lothian, Duncan, Gaelic poet, 595, 598, 603, 604, 608 Love, John, Dalkeith grammar school rector, 526–7 Love, Tobias, journeyman printer, 11 Lowe, Alexander, agricultural author, 505 Lumisden, Andrew, 234–5, 236–7, 238–40, 242–3 Lumisden, Thomas, journeyman printer, 11, 215 Lumsden, James and Son, Glasgow chapbook publisher, 419 M’Arthur, Peter, Kilmarnock printer, 116 McAlpine, William, Greenock printer, 116 McArthur, John, surveyor, 94 McAslan, Alexander, Edinburgh, 342 MacBrayne, Donald, Gaelic poet, 602 McCallum, Rev. Duncan, Arisaig minister, 177, 179 MacCodrum, Gaelic poet, 595, 601, 607 McCoig, Malcolm, Botanical Gardens’ head gardener, 57 McColl, Archibald, Halifax merchant, 285 McCulloch, William, Cambuslang minister, 288–91 MacDonald, Alexander, Gaelic poet, 569, 595, 597, 599, 600–1, 602, 607 MacDonald, Alexander, Gaelic translator, 596, 610–11 Macdonald, Andrew, novelist, 482 MacDonald, Donald Roy, Gaelic poet, 601 M’Donald, John, Albany (New York) printer, 285 MacDonald, Patrick, minister and Gaelic song collector, 179, 603 MacDonald, Robert, Gaelic verse anthologist, 602–3 MacDougall, Allan, Gaelic song writer, 178–9, 598, 608 McDougall, William, surveyor, 94 McEuen, James, Edinburgh bookseller, printer and newspaper proprietor, 119, 137, 189–91, 217 London bookshop, 189, 190, 354 McFadyen, John, 346 MacFarlane, Alexander, minister and Gaelic translator, 596, 604, 607 Mcfarlane, Peter, Gaelic author, 183 MacFarlane, Robert, Gaelic teacher and author, 184, 596, 601, 612 Macfarquhar, Colin, 63, 124–5, 130, 538–43 McGibbon, William, fiddle book publisher, 85, 586, 587 Macintosh, Donald, Gaelic translator, 595, 596, 599 Macintyre, Duncan Ban (Donnchadh Bàn), Gaelic poet, 177, 179, 180, 601, 603, 607 Maciver, Susanna, Edinburgh cookery author, 409

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Mackay, Alexander, Edinburgh circulating library, 342, 345, 484 MacKay, Gaelic poet, 595 Mackenzie, Donald, Gaelic poet, 605 Mackenzie, George, 552 Mackenzie, Henry, 438, 572 magazines: The Lounger, 348, 366, 475, 571; The Mirror, 348, 366, 475, 535, 547 works: Julia de Roubigné, 476, 479–80; The Man of Feeling, 124, 476, 479–80, 484, 571; The Man of the World, 476, 479–80 Mackenzie, James Stewart, Lord Privy Seal, 100 Mackenzie, John, of Delvine, 513, 515 Mackenzie, Kenneth, Gaelic poet, 177–8, 179, 598, 607–8 Mackenzie, Murdoch, hydrographer, 96–7, 100 Mackie, Charles, 206, 207–9, 217 Mackie, John, Edinburgh bookseller, 209 Mackintosh, William, of Borlum, agricultural author, 399, 504 Mackintosh, William, fiddler, 590 MacLachlan, Ewen, Gaelic poet and translator, 598, 608 MacLagan, James, minister and Gaelic editor, 606 McLane, Mistress, Glasgow bookbinder, 159 Maclaren, John, fiddler, 186 Maclaurin, Colin, mathematician, 96, 307 Maclaurin, John, Lord Dreghorn, 115 MacLean, Andrew, Tiree Gaelic poet, 600 McLean, Archibald, Glasgow and Paisley printer, 115 Maclean, John, Mull Gaelic minister, 600 McLean, Mrs, Glasgow bookbinder, 160 Maclean, Peter, Gaelic poet, 603 McLeish, James, Edinburgh bookseller, 342 McLintock, Mrs, Glasgow cookery author, 407–8, 410 MacNicol, Donald, minister, 601, 606, 611 Macpherson, Hugh, 184 Macpherson, James works: Fingal, 247, 249, 569, 597; Fragments of Ancient Poetry, 122, 246, 247–9, 269, 567, 569, 597; Poems of Ossian, 247; Poems of Ossian in the Original Gaelic, 247; Temora, 247, 250, 597 see also Ossian verse/controversy MacQueen, Donald, Ullinish minister, 605 MacRury, John, Gaelic novelist, 599 Madison, James, 275, 279–80 magazines, 357, 364–8 binding, 66 and Scotticisms, 546–7 titles see newspapers and magazines; periodicals

619122 HOBS VOL.2 PRINT (M2704).indd 660

Magee, James, Belfast bookseller, 198, 377 Magee, John, Dublin bookseller, 198, 199 Mair, John, Falkirk printer, 468 Mair, Patrick, Glasgow then Falkirk printer and bookseller, 376, 377 Maitland, James, Earl of Lauderdale, 492 Maitland, Sir Richard, poet, 552, 555 Maitland, William, History of Edinburgh, 94 Malcolm, David, Duddingston minister, 610 Mallet, David, playwright, 318, 319, 548 Manners and Miller, Edinburgh French booksellers, 220 manuscripts Auchinleck Manuscript, 326 Bannatyne Manuscript, 326, 552–3, 555–6, 557, 565 cookery, 407 Cunningham Manuscript, 584 Drummond Manuscript, 555 Kilravock Manuscript, 593 Maitland Folio and Quarto Manuscripts, 555–6, 557 medieval collections, 334 music, 585, 593 Reidpeth Manuscript, 555 science textbooks (lecture outlines), 307–8 map-making battle plans, 93 county maps, 92, 94, 96, 97 Figure 1.14, 99 engraving and printing, 103–6 burin, 105 Figure 1.17 rolling press, 106 Figure 1.18 and the Enlightenment, 91, 92, 99 first road atlas, 94 geographical grammars, 99–100 land surveying, 92, 94 maps of Scotland, 100 military, 92, 93 patronage, 100 state-funded, 97, 102 surveying instruments and methods, 96–7 town plans, 94, 98, 100 Mar, Earl of, 114 Margarot, Maurice, 397 Marishall, Jean, novelist, 476, 478 Marrow controversy, 463 Marshall, Jean, 534 Marshall, John, London publisher, 414 Marshall, William, agricultural author, 505 Marshall, William, fiddler, 590, 591 Martin, Gilbert, 21 Martin, Martin, 306 Martins’ Apollo Press, 21, 129 Maskeylene, Nevil, Astronomer Royal, 100 Masson, Arthur, 216 mathematics publishing, 141, 300, 317–18 Mathie, Benjamin, newspaper proprietor, 359 Mauchline Conversation Society, 350

Mauvillon, Eleazar de, 223, 224, 229–31 Maxwell, James, Edinburgh printer, 377 Maxwell, James, engraver, 89 Maxwell, Robert, agricultural author, 401, 504 Maybole, first press, 114 Mealmaker, George, Dundee weaver, 393 medical libraries, 327–8 medical publishing, 5, 13, 17, 19, 20, 118, 127, 139, 494–502 anatomy, 498 dentistry, 497–8 Edinburgh focus, 494 illustrations, 84, 89 man-midwifery, 497 medical theses, 156 obstetrics, 499 pathological anatomy, 498 periodicals: Annals of Medicine, 501; Medical Essays and Observations, 84, 118, 499–500; Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, 500–1, 502 puerperal fever, 497 scurvy, 497 Thesaurus Medicus, 57 translations into European languages, 496, 499, 500, 501 Medical Society of Edinburgh (Royal from 1778), library, 327, 499 medieval and Renaissance literature, republication, 551–8, 560 Mein, John, Boston bookseller, 269, 270 memorisation, 298–9 Mennons, John, Edinburgh and Glasgow printer, 11, 55–6, 356, 359, 364, 366, 367 Mennons, Thomas, 359 mercantile class, 19 merchants and seafarers, books for, 139 Merry Muses of Caledonia see under Burns Merry, Robert, 244 Meuros, James, Kilmarnock bookseller and printer, 172, 202, 343 Millar, Alexander, Glasgow printer, 165 Millar, Andrew, London bookseller, 119, 120, 162, 163, 190, 191 Asian books, 266 copyright prosecutions of Scottish booksellers and printers, 25–9 and Tables 1.1, 1.2, 192 Scottish partnerships, 193 Millar, George, Petersburg (Virginia) bookseller, 273 Millar, John, Glasgow professor, 157, 211, 320, 352, 486, 487 Millar, Philip, Gardener’s Dictionary, 28 Millar, William, Boston bookseller, 269 Miller, Alexander, Glasgow printer and bookbinder, 159, 161 Miller, George, Dunbar bookseller, bookbinder and grocer, 116

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index Mills and Hicks, New York printers, 273 Miln, Robert, engraver, 522 Milne, Christian, 169 Milton, John, Paradise Lost, 79, 86, 88, 268 Minto, second Earl of, 234 Mitchell, Hugh, 550 Mitchell, James, engraver, 89 Moll, Herman, cartographer, 92, 99 Monboddo, Lord see Burnett, James Moncur, John, Edinburgh printer, 9, 40, 383, 385 Monkland Friendly Society, 348, 350 Monro, Alexander primus, 84, 88, 89, 118, 499, 500 Monro, Alexander secundus, 85, 88, 90, 127, 307 Montgomerie, Alexander, poet, 551, 553, 555 Montgomery, Alexander, Glasgow author, 380 Montrose, first press, 116 Montrose, Marquis of, poems, 561 Moor, James, Glasgow professor, 73, 163 Moore, James, Dublin printer, 544 Moore, John, novelist, 485 More, Hannah, Cheap Repository Tracts, 398 Morison, Colin, 241 Morison, Robert, Perth postmaster, bookbinder, bookseller, stationer and ‘glasier’, 342–3, 365, 367 Morison and Son, Perth booksellers and printers, 16, 63, 153, 169, 200 Morisons’ Scottish Poets, 10 Morren, John, Edinburgh printer, 20, 41 Mosman, George, Edinburgh printer, 413 Mosman, John, Edinburgh printer, 9, 40 Muir, Thomas, radical, trial of, 392, 394–5, 575–6 Muirhead, George, 73 Mundell, James, 216 Mundell, Robert, Edinburgh printer, 55 Mundell and Son, Edinburgh printers, 129 Mure, Elizabeth, of Caldwell, 451, 466 Murray, Andrew, 54 Murray, Charlotte, 422 Murray and Cochran, Edinburgh printers, 54 Murray, David, second Earl of Mansfield, 426 Murray, James, 459 Murray, John, London publisher, 7, 53, 55, 190–1, 196, 266, 365, 542 Scottish co-operation, 126–7 Murray, William, Aberdeen printer, 167, 168, 169, 356 music manuscripts, 585, 593 music publishing, 85, 585–94 and America, 592–3 art, 594 baroque, 586 fiddle music, 587, 590, 592–4 psalters, 585 regional and local, 586, 594

619122 HOBS VOL.2 PRINT (M2704).indd 661

Scottish titles, 588–9 Table 6.1 subscriptions, 586 women’s reading, 450–1 see also song-books Musselburgh, first press, 114 National Convention of the Friends of the People, 391, 394 nationalism (Scottishness), 8–14, 540–1 natural history, 301, 302, 304, 306, 308 natural philosophy, 304, 307, 308 natural sciences, 5, 19 Neill, Adam, Edinburgh printer, 50, 123 spy for London, 124 Neill, Patrick, Edinburgh printer, 40, 45, 46, 54, 63, 122, 123, 130, 355 Neilson, John, Quebec printer and bookseller, 283, 284 Newbery, John, London author and bookseller, 298, 302, 377, 412, 414 Newlands, John, Glasgow bookseller, 386 newspapers Edinburgh advertising, 57, 354, 356, 358–9, 360–4, 362–3 Table 4.1, 365, 367–8 Edinburgh cartel, 361 London, 353, 354 news: foreign, 354; local, 353, 354, 362; national, 356–7; political, 357–8, 364, 368; regional, 356–7; shipping, 354, 356 and pamphlets, 385 and paper mills, 63 and politics, 390, 391 Scottish locations, 353–7 titles see newspapers and magazines newspapers and magazines Aberdeen Caledonian Magazine, 365 Aberdeen Chronicle, 168, 357 Aberdeen Intelligencer, 168, 356 Aberdeen Journal, 168, 172, 356 Aberdeen Magazine (three series), 174, 365 Arbroath Magazine, 117 The Bee, 270, 304, 365, 393, 504, 507, 508, 536 Caledonian Chronicle, 363, 388 Caledonian Gazette, 355 Caledonian Magazine, 174 Caledonian Mercury, 3, 10, 57, 63, 121, 355, 356, 572 Chambers Edinburgh Journal, 381 Critical Review, 149, 190, 435, 437, 469 Drumfries Mercury, 357 Dublin Evening Post, 199 Dumfries Weekly Journal, 357 Dumfries Weekly Magazine, 357, 365 Dundee Weekly Intelligencer, 115, 357 Dundee Weekly Magazine, 357, 365 Edinburgh Advertiser, 7, 355, 356, 358, 361 Edinburgh Chronicle, 10, 122, 355, 359–61

661 Edinburgh Eighth-Day Magazine, 359 Edinburgh Evening Courant, 41, 43, 63, 354–5, 409, 416, 531, 539, 540, 542, 562; advertising, 356, 357, 358–9, 361–3 Edinburgh Gazette (1793), 363–4 Edinburgh Gazette (Reid, 1714), 63, 353 Edinburgh Gazette (Watson and Reid, 1699), 353 Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany (Sibbald), 571 Edinburgh Magazine and Review, 10, 56, 58, 358, 365, 366, 367, 528–31, 533, 539, 542, 547 Edinburgh Magazine (Sibbald and Murray, 1785), 365 Edinburgh Review, 464, 465, 533, 540, 546, 547 Edinburgh Review (Hamilton and Balfour, 1755), 10, 359–60, 365 Edinburgh Review (Jeffrey, 1802), 366 Edinburgh Tatler, 353 Edinburgh Weekly Journal (Brown, 1798), 364 Edinburgh Weekly Journal (Ruddiman, 1757), 10, 56, 355, 358, 360, 361, 540 Edinburgh Weekly Magazine (Ruddiman), 57, 360, 365, 366 Figure 4.3, 534, 536, 547, 566, 567, 570 Glasgow Advertiser (later Glasgow Herald), 356, 359 Glasgow Courant (later WestCountry Intelligence) (Govan, 1715), 355 Glasgow Courant (Simson, 1745), 356, 360, 361 Glasgow Journal, 161, 355, 360 Glasgow Magazine and Review, 364 Glasgow Mercury, 160, 356, 360, 361 Glasgow Weekly Chronicle, 356 Glasgow-Weekly-History, 355 Historical Register, 367 Kelso Chronicle, 357 The Lounger, 348, 366, 475, 571 Mirror, 353 The Mirror (Mackenzie, 1779), 348, 366, 475, 535, 547 Monthly Magazine, 437 Monthly Review, 147, 194, 435, 437, 469 The New England Primer, 413 New Scots Spy, 3, 357, 547 Northern Gazette, Literary Chronicle and Review, 357 Perth Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, 365 and Plate 21, 570 Post Boy, 385 The Scots Farmer, 361, 401, 505 Scots Magazine, 147, 149, 173, 240, 273, 303, 304, 365, 367, 547, 570; editor: Smellie, William, 52, 56, 130, 538; engraver: Bell, Andrew, 539; launch, 10, 364; on Scottish sermons, 469; on writing English, 546

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland

newspapers and magazines (cont.) Scots Spy, 3, 357, 358 Figure 4.2, 547 Scots-Post-Man or Edinburgh Gazette, 354 The Scottish Chronicle, 56 The Trifler, 534–5 Weekly Magazine or Edinburgh Amusement, 10, 570 Weekly Review, 57 Newton, Isaac, 307 Nicol, James, Aberdeen printer, 167, 174 Nicol, John, mariner, 295 North British Society of Halifax, 285 Nourse, John, London bookseller, 22, 71 novels see fiction nursery rhymes, 418 Ogilvie, David, Dundee bookseller, 172 Ogilvie, John, 465 Ogle, David, Edinburgh bookseller, 172 Ogstoun, Hugh, Edinburgh bookseller, 137 Ogstoun, James, Edinburgh bookseller, 135 ‘Oldbuck, Jonathan’ (Scott, The Antiquary), 510, 511, 521 Ordnance Survey, 93, 102 Oriental grammars and dictionaries, 261, 266 Ossian verse/controversy, 549, 602, 605, 606 ‘Blind Ossian singing’, Plate 33 European reception: France, 249–50, 252, 253; Germany, 249, 251, 252; Italy, 249, 250, 252, 253; elsewhere, 252 see also Macpherson, James Oswald, James, Edinburgh then London music publisher, 577, 586–7 Pagan, John, 289 Pagan, William, 289 Paine, Thomas, 59, 108, 171, 350, 368 Rights of Man, 294, 391, 393 trial of, 394 Paisley, first press, 115 Palmer, James, Kelso printer, 116 pamphlets, 20, 149, 165 anonymous printers, 387 binding, 66 definition, 382–3, 387, 390 and newspapers, 385 nineteenth-century repression, 388 pamphlet wars (1790s), 391–8 sale and distribution, 383–4 subjects: American Revolution, 387, 398; British as much as Scottish issues, 398; economic improvement, 388; see also agricultural publishing: pamphlets French Revolution, 393, 394, 395, 397 passive obedience, 396–7 philosophy, 387 politics, 382, 386–7, 390–1, 395–6

619122 HOBS VOL.2 PRINT (M2704).indd 662

religion, 383, 384–5 trial proceedings, 394–5 taxation, 388 types: dialogues, 396–7; loyal addresses, 397; loyalist, 392–3, 395–7, 398; radical, 392–3, 395; sermons, 395–6; songs and poems, 395; see also cheap print: chapbooks paper exports, 61, 64 imports, 6, 63, 150 manufacture, 8, 12, 61–4 manufacturers’ partnerships with printers and booksellers, 62–3 mills, 61–3, 158, 176, 196 Pasquali, Nicolo, 587 patents, royal, 117 Paterson, David, Edinburgh printer, 181, 184, 216 Paterson, William, Aberdeen bookseller, 170, 171, 176 Paton, George, 521–2 Paton, John, 137, 139 ‘patterers’, 374, 378 Pearson, Walter, Edinburgh printer, 40 Peddie, James, Edinburgh bookseller, 347 Peebles, first press, 115–16 Penman, Edward and James, Charleston merchants, 273 Pepys, Samuel, 374, 555 Percy, Thomas, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 418, 577 periodicals, 55–6, 57, 302 Edinburgh’s share, 368 Table 4.3 major owners, 367 Table 4.2 political motives for founding, 364 supplied by Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh, 146, 147, 149 see also agricultural publishing; medical publishing; newspapers and magazines Perth, 1, 16 first press, 114, 116 libraries, 342, 347, 348 Peter the Great, 256, 257, 334 Peter, Walter, Edinburgh bookseller, 342 Peterhead, first press, 114 Peterkin, William, Elgin minister, 442 Petrie, Robert, fiddler, 590, 592 Phin, Thomas, engraver, 89–90 Physico-Chirurgical Society, Edinburgh (later Royal Physical Society), library, 328 Pierson farming family, Angus, 428 Pike Plot (1794), 397 Pillans, James, Edinburgh compositor, 54, 130–1 Pine, John, London engraver, 82, 85 Pinkerton, John, Ancient Scottish Poems, 555 piracy of Burns’s Poems, 271, 380, 572, 580, 582 and cheap print, 375, 379–81 Dutch, 22, 25, 207, 209 Irish, 22, 25, 124, 125, 198–9, 200, 201–2, 483, 544

prosecutions for Scottish and Irish piracies, 23, 119, 124–6, 125 Table 2.1, 483 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 236–7 Playfair, John, Edinburgh mathematician, 52, 53, 318 Playford, Henry, 9 Plummer, Andrew, Edinburgh professor, 308, 499, 500 Plummer, Andrew, laird of Middlestead, 444 poetry before Burns, 561–9 see also Burns; Gaelic publishing: original verse; Gaelic publishing: translated verse Polenus, Joannes, thesaurus, 523–4, 525 Figure 5.1 political economy, 486–93 authors’ backgrounds and occupations, 487–8 book financing, 492 and moral philosophy, 487–8 politics, 13 loyalist organisations, 392, 394 radical organisations, 394 representation, county and burgh, 391 Pompeii, discovery of, 238 Porteous Riots (1736), 390 Priestley, Joseph, 531, 533 printers apprentices, 40, 54–5 emigration to colonies, 40 geographical spread in Scotland, 112–17, 112 Figure 1.23, 113 Table 1.4 prosecution of, 358; see also copyright litigation wages and conditions, 11–12, 49–50, 129–31 printing houses, 41–3 printing presses, 41, 41 and Plate 2, 43, 48, 85, 90, 105–6 Figure 1.18 printing processes, 46–9 chromolithography, 106 embossed printing for blind people, 532 etching, 104 intaglio, 103 lithography, 103 logography, 489 professional class, 19 Raban, Edward, St Andrews and Aberdeen printer, 166 Radcliffe, Ann, novelist, 484, 485 Rae, Peter, Kirkbride minister, 114 Rae, Robert, 114 Ramsay, Allan, the elder, Edinburgh poet and bookseller, 118, 137, 235, 238, 242, 562–3 Edinburgh circulating library, 337–8, 344, 549 portraits, 87 Figure 1.10, 90 Figure 1.12 works: Poems, 86, 563–5; TeaTable Miscellany, 268, 418, 558, 565, 577, 586; The Ever Green, 552–4, 556, 558, 565; The Gentle Shepherd, 77, 86, 87 Figure 1.11, 90; ‘The Vision’ imitation medieval poem, 565

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index Ramsay, Allan, the younger, artist, 87 Figure 1.10, 89, 234, 241, 243–4 Ramsay, Andrew Michael, 476 Ramsay, David, 43, 359 Ramsay, James, 464 Ramsay, John, of Ochtertryre, 431 Randie, David, 209 Rattray, David, 421 Ray, John, 306 reading children’s, 20, 160, 298–302, 412–20, 415 Figures 4.5–6 evidence for, 421–4; commonplace books, 422–4, 424–6, 429, 430, 432; diaries, 422; letters, 422; marginalia, 422–4 proficient readers’, 302–5 and Scottish Enlightenment, 421–34 specialised readers’, 305–9 students’, 315–20, 321–2: at Aberdeen, 317, 318; at Edinburgh, 317, 318, 320; at Glasgow, 316–18; at St Andrews, 315–16, 320; and clubs and societies, 318–19 subjects: agricultural improvement, 428; belles lettres, 21, 320; Bible reading, 290, 291, 295, 298, 299; children’s education, 428–9; classics, 315, 316, 317, 318; current affairs, 431; domestic economy, 428; emotional control, 429–30; history, 316, 320, 426–7, 431, 432–3; involvement in British Empire, 427; logic, 315, 319; mathematics, 317–18; morals, 319–20; natural philosophy, 317; patriotism, 432–3; politics, 431–2; reading matter for the poor, 381; religion and theology, 316, 318, 430–1, 449–50; rhetoric, 320; self-improvement, 429; to expunge Scotticisms, 427–8 women’s: and circulating libraries, 442–3; domestic economy, 443, 451; and endowed libraries, 444–5; and private libraries, 439– 42; subjects, 440, 445–6, 449–51; and subscription libraries, 437, 442, 443–4, 446 see also literacy reading societies, 294, 352 Reid, Daniel, Falkirk and Carron chapbook printer, 115, 116, 216 Reid, John, agricultural author, 401 Reid, John, Edinburgh printer, 55, 122–3 Reid, John Jr, Edinburgh printer, 63, 353, 354, 361 Reid, John Sr, Edinburgh printer, 353, 377 Reid, Margaret, Edinburgh printer and broadside publisher, 41, 377 Reid, Thomas, 123, 319, 440, 548 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, 121, 148, 197, 423

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Reid, William Robert, cheap print collector, 375 Reinagle, Alexander, Philadelphia musician, 592 religious publishing, 8, 138, 158, 159 American imports, 268–9 Bibles and New Testaments, 268–9, 460 catechisms, 413, 460 evangelical literature, 269, 291, 386, 468–9 psalm-books, 460 tracts, 157, 158, 165, 460, 469 and university teachers, 466–7 see also Gaelic publishing; sermons Religious Tract Society, 381 reprint trade, 7, 16, 20–1, 23, 119, 129 Dublin smuggling and piracies, 198, 200–1, 544 exports to America, 28, 37, 156–7, 268–74 exports to England, 32 fiction reprints and litigation, 483–4 in Glasgow, 3, 5, 13, 20, 25–6, 29–30, 163 Restalrig, first press, 116 Rettie, William, Aberdeen magazine proprietor, 365 Richardson, D., Dunfermline bookseller and printer, 117 Richardson, George, 242 Richardson, John, 261, 265, 266 Richardson, William, 529–30 Anecdotes of the Russian Empire, 254, 255, 257 Richmond, John, 581 Riddell, Maria, natural historian, 57, 59, 292 Riddell, Robert, of Glenridell, 295 Ridpath, George, Stitchel minister, 19, 294, 422, 423, 433, 435–7 Ritson, Joseph, 577 Rivington, James, New York bookseller, 269, 273, 413 Robe, James, Kilsyth minister, 384 Robertson, Alexander, Edinburgh printer, 41 Robertson, Alexander, Prince Edward Island printer, 284, 285 Robertson family, Glasgow printers, 160–1, 376–7 Robertson, George, agricultural author, 468–9, 505 Robertson, Hanna, domestic arts author, 411 Robertson, James, agricultural author, 505 Robertson, James, Edinburgh professor, 261, 266 Robertson, James, Glasgow printer, 160 Robertson, James and John, Glasgow printers, 414, 416, 419 Robertson, James and Matthew, chapbook printers, 377–8 Robertson, James, Nova Scotia bookseller and printer, then Edinburgh radical printer, 284, 388, 392, 394 Robertson, John, Edinburgh journeyman printer, 11

663 Robertson, John, Edinburgh printer, 126 Table 2.1, 355, 484 Robertson, John, Edinburgh printer of French grammar, 215 Robertson, John, Glasgow printer and bookbinder, 159, 160 Robertson, Matthew, Glasgow printer, 160 Robertson, Roger, of Ladykirk, 240–1 Robertson, William, 239, 264, 266, 548 Charles V, 121, 124, 126 T, 193, 194, 195, 200 History of America, 195, 200, 201 History of Scotland, 120, 193, 200, 276, 432, 435–6, 445 Irish reprints, 200 Robinson, George, London bookseller, 153, 197, 542, 543 Robinson, Robert, Cambridge Baptist minister, 462 Robison, John, Edinburgh professor, 423 Rogers, Samuel, English poet, 471 Rolland, William, newspaper proprietor, 355 Rollin, Charles, 33, 268, 312, 320, 339, 445, 461, 461–2 Ronaldson, James, Philadephia typefounder, 270 Rose, Elizabeth, of Kilravock, 428–9, 438, 440, 441, 445 Rose, William, 194 Ross, Alexander, Lochlee poet, 566 Ross, Gaelic poet, 595 Ross, Walter, 304 Rosse, Andrew, the Humanist, 316–17 Rotheram, John, agricultural author, 401, 403 Rouet, William, Glasgow professor book purchases in Holland, 321, 322 on Glasgow Homer, 71, 73, 74, 75 Roxburgh, William, naturalist, 260, 265, 266 Roxburghe Club, 331 Roy, General William, 510 Roy, William Military Antiquities, 95 Figure 1.13 Military Survey of Scotland, 92, 93, 94, 102 Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, library, 328, 335 Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, library, 327, 335 Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, library, 328, 335 Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, library, 328 Royal Society of Edinburgh, 100, 326 Rozea, Jassintour, Edinburgh cookery author, 408–9 Ruddiman, Thomas, Edinburgh printer, 54, 118, 119, 137, 140, 526, 556, 564, 566–7, 570, Plate 30 Advocates’ librarian, 327 and Caledonian Mercury, 355

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Ruddiman, Thomas, Edinburgh printer (cont.) gave up Printer to Edinburgh University position, 5, 119, 360 Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, 118, 286, 311 Ruddiman, Walter Jr, Edinburgh printer, 10, 57–8, 359, 360, 365, 366–7 Edinburgh Weekly Magazine, 366 Figure 4.3 Ruddiman, Walter Sr, Edinburgh printer, 3, 5, 9, 40, 55, 63, 121–2, 181, 566–7, 570, Plate 31 gave up Printer to Edinburgh University position, 5, 119, 122, 360 titles printed, 118–19 Rush, Benjamin, 270, 271, 273 Russel, Andrew, Rotterdam merchant, 205 Russell, Alexander, naturalist, 260, 265, 266 Russell, Francis, 139 Russell, J., engraver, 100 Russell, Patrick, naturalist, 260, 261, 265, 266 Russell, William, novelist, 481 Russia history and travel, 254–7 science, 257 Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, library, 334 Rutherford, Andrew, 93 Rutherford, Anne (Walter Scott’s mother), 409 St Andrews, first press, 113 St Andrews University library, 323, 324, 325, 326 students’ reading, 315–16, 320 St Martin’s Lane Academy, London, 83 Salmon, Thomas, 99 Sanders, Robert, Glasgow printer, 167 Sanders, Robert the younger, Glasgow printer, 157–8, 159 Sandilands, Robert, agricultural author, 399, 402, 404 Sands, Murray and Cochran, Edinburgh printers, 122, 172, 219, 506 Sangster, Peter, Edinburgh bookbinder, 153 Sanquhar, first press, 117 Schetky, Johann Georg Christoph, musician, 587, 589, 590 Schneider, Amsterdam bookseller, 223–4 school textbooks, 134, 138, 141 and Blair, 313–14 British history, 314 classics, 301 English anthologies, 312–13 English grammars, 311, 314 and Hume, 314 Latin grammars, 311, 314 mathematics, 300 natural history, 301 science, 300, 302 and the Spectator, 311–12, 313 schoolmasters, 141

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science, 141, 259–61, 265–6: commissioned translations, 308; Continental texts, 307; manuscript textbooks (lecture outlines), 307–8; popularisation, 304–5; publication other than in books, 302–3 Scot, John, Edinburgh printer, 115 Scot, Sir John, of Scotstarvit, 552 Scotland migration, 4 postal system, 3–4, 7, 354–5 transport: canal, 2; coach, 2–3, 7, 49; road, 2, 117; sea and river, 2, 3, 49–50, 135, 202 urban expansion, 1 Scots language Broad (Lowland, vernacular) vs ‘polished’, 548, 549, 569 glossaries, 549–50, 572, 573–4 Highland see Gaelic poetry, 552–7 pronunciation, 549 relationship with English language, 20, 547, 550 usage warned against see Scotticisms use by booksellers, 549 The Scots Musical Museum (Edinburgh), 558, 574, 577–8, 590–2 The Scots Musical Museum (Philadelphia), 592 Scott, Alexander, poet, 552, 553, 554 Scott, James, Edinburgh bookbinder, 66–7, 79, 152, 154, Plates 26, 28 Scott, Jonathan, 265 Scott, Lady Frances, 447 Scott, Major Walter, of Dachett, 432 Scott, Walter, Plate 34, 110–11, 345, 374, 417, 419, 553, 558 Scott, William, Edinburgh bookbinder, 66, 67, 152 Scott, William, Edinburgh professor and compiler of early French Grammar, 215 Scott, William, Edinburgh teacher and author, 271, 272, 312 Scotticisms, 427–8, 469, 529–30, 546–7, 548, 550, 572 Scottish Enlightenment, 5, 214 and London and Edinburgh trade, 193, 195, 197 and map-making, 91, 92, 99 and reading, 421–34 typical books, 199 Scottish identity, affirmation of, 9, 118, 433, 551 ‘Scottish Martyrs’, trials of, 394 Scottish publishing bibliometric account, 14–18 reputation, 12 workers in, 4–5 Scottish Standard English, 547 Secession Church, 329, 383, 384, 464 secularism, 19 sedition trials, 364, 365, 392, 394, 397 Select Society, Edinburgh, 19, 88 Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland, Regulations, 546

Selkirk, first press, 114 Semple, Jamieson and Lawson, tobacco company store, Maryland, 268 Semple, ‘Major’, 257 Semple, Robert, poet, 553 Semple, William, journeyman printer, 11 sermons, 290, 294, 343 Blair’s, 462–3, 469, 471–4 editing for publication, 465 and Evangelicals, 460, 463–6, 468, 469 and Moderates, 460, 463, 464, 468, 469–70 pamphlets, 395–6 reviews of, 469 sermon attendance, 468 sermon manuals, 459, 460–2 seventeenth-century reissues, 459, 462, 463 types, 465 and women, 474 Session printing, 41, 45, 49, 50, 57–8, 130, 131, 156 Shakespeare, William, Scottish editions, 21, 31–2, 122 Sharp, William, Inverness bookseller, 170, 171, 172 Shaw, William, minister and Gaelic author, 179, 596, 598, 599, 604, 611 Sheridan, Richard, 545 Shirrefs, Andrew, Aberdeen printer and newspaper and magazine proprietor, 167, 174, 357, 365 Sibbald, James, Edinburgh bookseller and magazine proprietor, 22, 39, 365 circulating library, 344–5, 484, Plate 34 Sibbald, Sir Robert, 326, 334, 510, 512–13, 522, 547–8 Simpson, Robert, 307 Simpson, William, Lasswade paper mill owner, 62 Simson, Matthew, newspaper proprietor, 356 Simson, Robert, Glasgow mathematician, 317, 335 Sinclair, Sir John, 256, 292, 402, 403, 405, 427, 486, 487, 509 Statistical Account of Scotland, 8, 13, 61, 62, 128–9, 305, 492 Skinner, Andrew, surveyor, 94 Skirving, William, trial of, 395 Sleater, James, Dublin bookseller, 199 Small, Robert, 75 Smellie, Alexander, printer, 58, 59, 151, 184 Smellie, William, Edinburgh printer, naturalist, antiquary and journalist, 9, 10, 40, 52–60, 53 Figure 1.6, 63, 122, 181, 361, 365, 366, 547 academic printing, 57 and Burns, 52, 54, 573, 583 and Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1st edn), 52, 56, 538–9, 540, 542 legal views, 58 partnerships, 55, 56, 59 Philosophy of Natural History, 52, 58–9, 211–12, 271, 304 political views, 58–9

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index printing house/office, 42–3, 46, 54, 196, Plates 3 and 4 and science, 304, 308 and Scots Magazine, 52, 56, 130, 538 shares in periodicals, 56 Smellie, William, London and Lanark obstetrician, 328, 335, 496 Smith, Adam, 21, 111, 281, 486, 487, 548 German translations, 211, 212 lectures, 319, 320 works: Theory of Moral Sentiments, 211, 276, 421, 428, 436, 446; Wealth of Nations, 157, 194, 211, 212, 490, 491–2 Smith, Charles, agricultural author, 400, 402 Smith, Eliza, English cookery author, 408 Smith, John, of Campbeltown, Gaelic ‘translator’, 253, 597–8 Smith, John, Glasgow bookseller, 343, 484 Smith, John, of Swindrig-Muire, Ayrshire, 404 Smith, Robert, 291 Smith, William, Glasgow bookseller and printer, 37 Smiton, Mrs (later Smiton and Millar), Edinburgh bookbinder, 152 Smollet, Tobias, 236, 476, 477–8 smuggling (book piracy) see piracy smuggling (non-book), 202 Society of Antiquaries of London, 512, 513 Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 100, 308, 326 Transactions, 54 Society of Booksellers in Glasgow, 165 Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture . . . Dumfries and Wigton . . ., 40, 505 Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (from 1847, Society of Arts), 94, 96 Society for the Forfeited Annexed Estates, 96 Society for the Improvement of British Wool, 400, 405 Society for Improving of Agriculture and Manufactures in . . . Air, 405, 505 Society in Scotland for the Propagating of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), 181, 467, 600, 610 Society of Writers to HM Signet, library, 327 Somerville, Mary Anne, 438–9, 445–6 song collections, 13, 176, 557 song-books, 557–8, 577, 586 Spectator, 277 Glasgow edition, 3, 29–30, 162 other Scottish reprints, 21, 32, 33, 138, 268, 439, 450 school excerpts, 311–12, 313 Speirs, Alexander, 19

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Spence, William, Inveraven minister, 442 Stalker, Andrew, Glasgow bookseller and newspaper proprietor, 161, 165, 355, 360 stamp duty, 8, 357, 359, 367 standing type, 45 Stationers’ Hall, book registration at, 23, 28, 29, 119, 324, 325 stereotyping, 8, 220 Steuart, Robert, Edinburgh professor, 317 Steuart, Sir James, of Coltness, 431–2, 486, 487, 488, 492 Principles of Political Economy, 211, 212, 489–90 Stevenson, John, Edinburgh professor, 466 Stewart, Charles, 184 Stewart, Dugald, philosopher, 307, 335, 425 Stewart, Duncan, 499 Stewart, George, Edinburgh bookseller and University Printer, 137, 209 Stewart, John, of Allanbank, 227–8 Stewart, Matthew, mathematician, 335 Stewart and Meikle, Glasgow printers, 581 Stewart, N., Edinburgh bookseller, 346 Stewart, Peter, Gaelic song collector, 604 Stewart, Thomas, 581 Stewart, William, Leith merchant, 394 Stewart, William, poet, 553, 554 Stirling, first press, 113 Stirling, James, mathematician and mining manager, 340 Stobie, James, surveyor, 96, 100 Stone, Jerome, Dunkeld schoolmaster and Gaelic translator, 248 Strachan, William see Strahan, William Strahan, Andrew, London publisher, 154, 196, 481 Strahan and Cadell, London publishers, 19, 52, 193–6 English authors, 194 Scottish authors, 194–5, 572 Scottish partnerships, 195–6, 472 Strahan, William, London printer and publisher, 13, 21, 119, 153, 190, 193, 201, 472, 473, 549 London Chronicle, 191, 194, 572 partners, 53, 127 reprints, 32 Strange, Sir Robert, engraver, 81, 82, 90, 237, 238, 239–40, 242 street literature see cheap print Stuart, Alexander, Music for Allan Ramsay’s Collection of Scots Songs, 85, 87 Figure 1.9, 588 Table 6.1 Stuart, Gilbert, author and magazine partner, 10, 365, 366 Stuart, James, ‘Athenian’, 242 Stukeley, William, 510, 513, 516, 517 subscription/ part publication, 169–72, 177–80, 484–5, 586

665 Susanna, third wife of ninth Earl of Eglinton, 447 Sutherland, James, 346 Swift, Jonathan, 450 Adventures of Captain Gulliver (adaptation), 415 Figure 4.6 Works Scottish editions, 16, 21, 25, 32 Swindon, John, 303 Swinton, Andrew, 255–6 Swinton, John, Lord, 403 Symington, James, Edinburgh bookseller, 345 English and French circulating library, 218 Symmer, Alexander, Edinburgh bookseller, 6 Symson, Andrew, Edinburgh printer, 41 printing house, 41–2 Figure 1.4 Tait, Peter, Glasgow printer, 200, 355 Tarbert, Loch Fyne, first press, 113, 114 Tassie, James, 111 Taylor, Elizabeth, cookery author, 115 Taylor, George, surveyor, 94 Taylor, James, Edinburgh bookbinder, 152 Taylor, Robert, Berwick-uponTweed, printer and bookseller, 115 Taylor and Skinner, Survey and Maps, 2 Tennant, Smithson, 307 textile industry, 1, 191 Theatre and Gentlemens Library, 342 theatre reviews: first Scottish, 360 theatres: Cooper’s Edinburgh, 83 theses binding, 65 theses printing, 5, 15, 16, 17, 56, 115, 119, 156, 360 Thom, William, agricultural author, 159, 400, 402 Thomas and Andrews, Boston booksellers, 272 Thomson, Agnes, Aberdeen bookseller, 166, 171, 175 Thomson, Alexander, Aberdeen bookseller, 166, 167, 170, 172 Thomson, Anna, novelist, 481 Thomson, George, A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, 575–6, 577, 588 Thomson, James, poet, 191, 318, 319 Thomson, William, Episcopalian minister and novelist, 481 Thomson, William, Orpheus Caledonius, 577, 588 Table 6.1 tobacco trade, 1, 268–9 Tod, John, Arbroath bookseller, 153 Tod, William, 40 Tonson, Jacob, London publisher, 7 Topham, Edward, 70 Torphichen, Elizabeth Lady, 440 Trail[l], John, Edinburgh bookseller, 384 translation methods, 250 travel literature, 234–5, 254–7, 258–9, 265, 349, 451

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edinburgh history of the book in scotland

Trimmer, Sarah, 302 Trudaine, Daniel-Charles, 227, 228 Trudaine, Jean-Charles, 227, 228 Turner, William, Exercises, 140 Tweedie, James, 73 Twiss, Richard, 76 typefaces, 43–6, 50, 270 Baine’s small pica, 44 Figure 1.5a Clarke’s Homer Greek, 72 Figure 1.7b Greek, 72–3, 79, 170 Wilson’s Double Pica Greek, 72 Figure 1.7a Wilson’s English, 44 Figure 1.5b typefounding, 8, 28, 270 Tytler, Alexander Fraser, 423 Tytler, James, journalist and editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2nd edn, 43, 57, 62, 116, 366, 367, 368, 378, 398, 542 Tytler, William, 592 Union of the Crowns (1603), 546, 552 Union of the Parliaments (1707), 1, 92, 142, 353, 390, 434, 546, 551, 557 United Scotsmen movement, 393 university student clubs and societies, 318–19 Urie, Robert, Glasgow printer, 16, 162, 200, 355 van der Heyden, Amsterdam merchants, 205 van der Water, Willem Sr, Utrecht bookseller and university printer, 205 van Rymsdyk, Jan van, 496 van Vreede, Dutch merchants, 205 Varlo, Charles, agricultural author, 508 Vasi, Giuseppe, 236 Virgil, 119, 122 Figure 2.1 Volney, Constantin François, 393, 395 Volusenus, Florens (Florens Wilson), De Animi Tranquillitate Dialogus, 122, 316, 556, 559–60, 559 Figure 6.1

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Wade, General, 2 Walker, John, 304, 307 Walker, Robert, 21, 144 Wallace, Robert, 486, 487 Walter, John, London Logographic Press, 488–9 Warden, John, 312 Wardlaw, Lady Elizabeth, poet, 565 Washington, George, 270, 282 Watkins, Richard, Edinburgh bookseller, 6 Watson, James, Edinburgh bookseller and printer, 8, 9–10, 11, 137, 215, 353 A Choice Collection, 9, 118, 319, 540, 550, 551–2, 561–2, 564, 565 History of the Art of Printing, 118 Rules and Directions to be Observ’d in Printing-Houses, 9, 40, 43, 45, 46, 47, 118, Plate 1 Watson, Robert, 320 Watt, Robert, confession and execution, 397 Watts, Isaac, 413 Webster, Noah, 282 Wedderburn, Alexander, agricultural author, 399, 402 Wedderburns’ Compendious Booke, 549 weights-and-measures reform, 303, 403 Weir, Alexander, Paisley bookseller, 115 Wells, Robert, Charleston, South Carolina, bookseller, 269 Whitburn, first press, 116 White, Luke, Dublin bookseller, 199 White, Mr, Leith, 153 White, William, 343 Whyte, James, Edinburgh bookbinder, 152 Whytt, Robert, 495, 500 Wight, Andrew, agricultural author, 128, 504 Wilkes, John, English radical, 387, 601, 607 Wilkins, John, 306 Willdey, Thomas, 93

Williams, James, Dublin bookseller, 199 Williamson, Peter, Edinburgh printer, 43, 55, 57, 360, 366, 367, 378 New Scots Spy, 3, 357, 547 Scots Spy, 3, 357, 358 Figure 4.2, 547 Willison, David, 126 Willison, John, Dundee minister, 170, 469 Wilson, Alexander, St Andrews, later Glasgow, typefounder, 8, 43, 44 Figure 1.5b, 50, 72–3 Figure 1.7a, 163, 199, 270 Wilson, David, London bookseller, 237, 238, 240 Wilson, Ebenezer, Dumfries bookseller, 153 Wilson, Herbert, 137 Wilson, James, Scots American émigré, 279 Wilson, John, Kilmarnock and Ayr printer, 116, 570, 571 Wilson, Patrick, 73 Wilson, William, Dublin bookseller, 199 Wilson, William, Edinburgh bookseller, 345 Wishart, William the younger, Edinburgh University Principal, 462, 466, 560 Witherspoon, John, 275, 289 Wodrow, Robert, 135, 204, 326, 337 Wood, John, Edinburgh bookseller, 34, 342 Wotherspoon, John, 21 Wyllie, David, 344 Yair, John, Edinburgh bookseller, 338, 344 Yair, Margaret, 338 Young, David, Edinburgh fiddler and copyist, 593 Young, David, Perth agricultural author, 399, 401, 402, 504, 508–9 Young and Imray, Inverness booksellers, 171 Young, William, Philadelphia printer, 269, 271

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