with Wardle, and his defense of the anonymous party Hurst, Robinson, who Carey well knew were Constable’s London partners: “Were we to mention the name of the house by which [the sheets] have been furnished you would be astounded to hear that such a house would be guilty of such conduct.” “For ourselves,” Carey continued, “we feel perfectly free from the slightest impropriety in the transaction & we presume you will be convinced of the same & regret having charged us as you have done.” He was confident enough to call a witness on his own behalf to turn the tables on the Edinburgh publisher, who now played the fool: “Since the receipt of your letter this morning we have seen the agent [Wardle] & he informs us that when he was last in London, one Vol of one of the works was rec’d & the head of the house assured him that it had that morning been put into his hands by Mr Constable himself.”25 The arch tone was clearly a method, in itself, of earning credit in the eyes of his opponent; Carey’s honor was defined through its capacity to be thoroughly offended.
Carey also proved as capable as Robert Cadell in making a proposal couched in condescension and negativity. He aimed low in his offer for future novels, as anyone might while negotiating a price, but he emphasized over and over again that advance sheets might be less valuable than Constable & Company would wish. For most of the novels, he paid either $100 or $200, Carey wrote, and he added that “from these prices you may judge the value of the copies here,” even, as he said, “where the agent has the opportunity of making arrangements with any or all the Booksellers in the country.” Without a middleman, they might command an even lower sum, since in the current arrangement, agent and supplier split the profits. As Carey pointedly phrased it, “We could not believe that a house engaged in so large a business as they [Hurst, Robinson] would be guilty of so much rascality for the thrifty compensation they receive.” The implication was that such a cheap bundle wouldn’t even be worth stealing. In this context, his actual offer appears generous: “We are willing to pay fifty five pounds (about $250) for the first Copy of his future works.” Although this is more than twice what they paid for Ivanhoe, Carey felt it necessary to explain his low bid even further by mentioning that the swift arrival of the published books would erase the advantage of advance sheets, since in such cases, any bookseller “is sure of having the opportunity of taking part of an edition at cost of paper & print in less than 5 days after us.”26 Throughout the letter, Carey seemed as interested in explaining the demand structure of the American book trade as he was in introducing himself as an honorable tradesman. In doing so, he allowed a hint of condescension, as if to assure the Edinburgh publisher that if he wanted to profit from content that would otherwise be free, he must know whereof he spoke.
The establishment of this relationship was more urgent in Philadelphia than in Edinburgh because Carey depended much more on profits from Scott’s novels than Constable did on fees from America. But in Edinburgh, Cadell was determined to take as much advantage of the American demand for Scott as he could. In investigating the supposed breach of Ballantyne’s printing office, he sent an inquiry to Hurst, Robinson, in a move that suggests he had not quite forgotten their claim on advance sheets. He soon received a satisfying reply, and the day after he wrote to Philadelphia, he wrote to Constable with an update on the matter. In this letter, Cadell gloated about the international demand for Scott’s novels, declared his own optimism about profit, and indicated his desire to circumvent the London trade:
I have today a letter from [Joseph] Robinson, very reasonable, about the American Copies—the fact is he must be so, as we are at this moment in correspondence with Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York on the same subject—R. alludes to arrangements for the Continent—I already stated to you that I have made a German arrangement—and I would suggest that whoever calls on R. should be referred to this, as we may get into confusion, and there is no occasion for any London commission on such matters—we are the managers and patrons of the books, have all the risks of Author and his connections and must make hay while the sun shines—I have no hesitation in saying if we manage these works with attention we will make £1000 extra on each.27
It is unclear how Cadell could imagine making £1,000 on the kind of novel he had hitherto sold for only about £75, even with the Continent as a potential foreign market. What is clear is both his commitment to selling Scott’s books in unprotected markets and his palpable desire to take London out of the equation. As for Constable, he was more concerned with problems closer to home, namely, at Ballantyne’s. “The waste, thieving, and destruction during the last 18 years has been enormous,” he wrote to Cadell, in an immediate reply that presumed the printer’s guilt. “It would almost be worth our while to pay a warehouseman to superintend our property in the printing office. A severe example ought to be made of some of them.”28 The transmission of the “American Copies” had always been handled with care, for fear they would be leaked to the press during a long, circuitous, and secret journey through the hands of various agents in Edinburgh, London, and Philadelphia. Writing to Hurst, Robinson regarding The Monastery, for example, Cadell cautioned, “We send you with this under a sealed cover Vol 1st of the M[onastery], which you may wish to send across the Atlantic but the parcel must on no account be opened.”29 Transmitting sheets this way was a confidential business, containing equal parts profit and paranoia.
Furious Booksellers
Back in Philadelphia, as Carey waited for Constable to reply to his self-vindication, problems resulting from his arrangement with Wardle and Hurst, Robinson caused glaring errors in editions of the two latest novels, The Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel, which Carey issued, respectively, in February and July 1822. Because of changes made in Edinburgh after the shipment of the “American Copy,” The Pirate was missing a chapter and Nigel a preface—discrepancies that infuriated booksellers all over the Eastern Seaboard. Carey distributed the missing chapter of The Pirate on its own, and he belatedly printed the preface to Nigel in the second volume.30 The ensuing outcry meant that Carey had to publicly explain embarrassing errors while he was appealing to the firm that had it in its power to prevent them. In late July, a sarcastic screed in the Boston Daily Advertiser complained about Carey’s editions, setting off a short dispute that illustrates just how uncourteous the reprint trade could be. The dispute brought the language of the book trade to the foreground, as the different parties argued about transatlantic reprinting and its effect on the integrity of texts.
The Boston complaint illustrates that, like Constable, its writer had heard his own rumors about Carey’s London connection:
[We] have had the misfortune to see a copy of the Philadelphia edition [of The Fortunes of Nigel], in which the whole introductory chapter is omitted. This Philadelphia edition is from the same press that also gave us the Pirate without a chapter…. These enterprising publishers are said to have an agent in England, who forwards them the new productions, in sheets, as they come from the press. When it is about time for the whole work to reach the hands of other American booksellers, the publishers of these Philadelphia editions, it seems, reprint what sheets they have received, more or less, and if a very characteristic introduction has not yet come to hand, or a chapter is wanting in the middle, why it only increases the interest of the story, and, in the course of the season, the missing sheets will arrive—be reprinted—and sent (wonderfully liberally) gratis, to those who have bought the book…. We should not be surprised if these Philadelphia editions should rival the renowned Irish pirated editions abroad.31
The Boston paper ridiculed Carey for unacceptable results and for his pretentious attempt to achieve insider status among English booksellers—just the kind of fool’s errand an “Irish” printer might pursue. In thus insulting Irish editions, the Boston paper invoked Mathew Carey’s well-known national origins and belittled reprinting as a practice despite the writer’s obvious desire that it prove effective. In this notice, authority resides in Britain, where the “whole work” was issued in complete and unadulterated form. Through fashioning excuses for the error in an ironic language of aesthetic pleasure (“it only increases the interest of the story”), the complaint located Carey’s highest
