Paradigm Catalogue
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ColloquiumParadigm, Vol. 2, Issue 3 (July, 2001)
Ezra Greenspan and Jonathan Rose (eds), Book History ,Volume 3, pp., viii + 317. (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
The editors of Book History Volume 3 have assembled a dozen or so papers on the effects of the process of book production and publication upon what the reader 'reads'. The titles -- there are too many of them for all to be dealt with separately here - indicate the ever widening attention paid to, for instance, 'Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines', 'The Best Seller List' and 'Book Fastenings and Book Furniture'. However, the miscellany also includes papers on Matthew Arnold and some of the less well-known publishers of the 19th century. Amid such diversity notions of literature need to be interpreted somewhat liberally.
Bill Bell's paper on the evolution of Arnold's reputation separates the poet of the 'dreaming spires' from the Arnold of 'Culture and Anarchy'. He examines the cult of Arnold at Oxford. Was it not part of the romantic regionalism invoked by Burns and Wordsworth? Such seems to have been the opinion of G. C. Macaulay in his 1896 selection, for he apologises for the amount of annotation devoted to the topography of 'The Scholar Gipsy' and 'Thyrsis'. Bell suggests that Arnold's poetry was seen as the exclusive preserve of the chosen few, whereas Macaulay limits the exclusion to 'the very young' only. Bell traces the evolution of the fashionableness of Arnold at particular times back to the emergence of works from copyright.
The wealth of available information on book history is opulently set out by Peter France and Siân Reynolds in a long paper on the history of the French 'Collection Nelson' which, from 1910 to 1914, ran up 87 titles. The cream and gold pocket editions are seen less and less these days. The authors do not examine the widespread use of these editions in schools in Britain. There must be many who came upon Lettres de mon moulin as a 'set book' in school. For certain British readers this paper provides evidence of the energy of John Buchan who, on top of his own writing and general concern in the Nelson establishment, found time to steer this surprising venture at all stages.
There are two papers on nineteenth century publishers. James and Patience Barnes resurrect Thomas Tegg (1776-1846). The Tegg paper shows that in general he was as successful a publisher as Routledge later in the century. Like all publishers of the time, Tegg was engaged in collecting titles as they came out of copyright. The blurred distinction between publisher and bookseller was only slowly clearing at the time and Tegg was involved in the remainder business. It is enlightening to learn that works valued by posterity were by no means urgent reading immediately on first publication. Of Moore's Life of Byron, John Murray remaindered to Tegg 1,050 out of 1,750 sets of volumes. Murray also remaindered half of the 1,500 sets of Crabbe. If one uses sales rather than print-runs as an indication of fashionable taste, only about 750 buyers took Crabbe and Moore's Byron on publication, which must say something about reading patterns at the time.
The other publisher covered is John Camden Hotten (1832-73). His reputation, such as it is, has been that of a rather scurrilous character. Simon Eliot has consulted the records (kept by Chatto) and establishes Hotten as general publisher from Gilbert to Swinburne. He not only kept Grose's slang glossary in circulation; he wrote on slang himself. Indeed Eliot establishes Hotten as a compulsive cataloguer and considerable antiquarian author in his own right.
Obviously the papers here collected -- not all of them have been mentioned in this brief notice -- cover a very wide range of interests. They are all, however, of a very high standard. They are also written in unpretentious English.
Bernard Jones
Textbook
Colloquium