SOURCE: Barnard, John. “The Large- and Small-Paper Copies of Dryden's The Works of Virgil (1697): Jacob Tonson's Investment and Profits and the Example of Paradise Lost (1688).” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 92, no. 3 (September 1998): 259-71.

[In the following essay, Barnard discusses Tonson's publication of Dryden's The Works of Virgil and considers the profits he made from this and other similar projects.]

The existence of large and small copies of the first folio edition of Dryden's The Works of Virgil published by Jacob Tonson in 1697 is well established. Hugh Macdonald reported seeing copies of what he called the “Ordinary” small-paper copies measuring 14 by 8[frac78] inches, while some of the large-paper copies measure 17[frac12] by 10[frac78] inches, others 16[frac34] by 10[frac78].¹ However, there is no mention at all of the small-paper copies in the contract for the subscription translation that Dryden and Tonson signed on 15 June 1694. This is surprising: the contract is drawn up very carefully and insists throughout on the exclusive nature of the subscribers' copies. (This subscription venture differs from the modern practice whereby subscribers are given a preferential rate: Dryden's subscribers, whether first or second, paid well above the market value to obtain an exclusive limited edition.) There were to be two kinds of subscribers; one group paying five guineas in two payments were to have their arms engraved on the 101 plates supplied at Tonson's cost, while the second subscribers paid two guineas, again in two installments, and had their names printed on a list separate from that of the first subscribers in the printed book. There was no limit on the numbers of second subscribers, and it was to Dryden's advantage to attract as many as he could. The second subscribers' copies were to be of exactly “the Same Size Volume Letter and paper together with the Prints [that is, plates]” as those for the first subscribers.² Not only was Tonson strictly bound to print no more copies “upon fine paper,” but he further agreed not to start printing or make any proposals for a second edition before Dryden had disposed of his subscribers' copies. All these points are repeated in Tonson's summary and in the draft advertisement that Dryden, with Congreve's help, wrote for his second subscribers.³ It seems odd, from Dryden's point of view, that there should have been any small-paper copies at all since they would appear to be in direct competition with his need for second subscribers and, worse, might seem to threaten the integrity of his limited edition.

A year after signing the contract, Dryden had a serious falling out with Tonson over the interpretation of how the money from the second subscribers was to be divided, and Congreve and a Mr. Aston were called upon to arbitrate between the two men.⁴ The cause of the disagreement was the following clause about what Dryden was to pay Tonson towards the paper for the production of the copies for his second subscribers:

[Dryden was to pay] Soe much above the Selling price of the Said Books printed upon Comon paper as the Charge of printing them upon the Said best paper Shall amount to or Stand him [Tonson] in over and above the price of the books printed upon Common paper.⁵

Dryden thought this meant he had only to pay for extra cost of the large paper: Tonson argued, successfully in the outcome, that Dryden had to pay him £1 for the book itself, as well as for the extra cost of the paper. Where Dryden expected to get about thirty shillings from each two-guinea subscription, he actually received only 15s. 8d.⁶ No wonder he wrote to Tonson on 29 October 1695 saying, “You always intended I should get nothing by the Second Subscriptions, as I found from first to last,” and later accused Tonson of being a “Sharper.”⁷

The mention of “the Said Books printed upon Comon paper” in the contract can only be a reference to the small-paper copies which Tonson must always have meant to print. Dryden, in the extant correspondence at least, makes no complaint about “Comon paper” copies, and this clause allows them to be an implied presence throughout the contract. They are, however, clearly referred to in Tonson's final casting up of accounts early in 1698 for the 250 second subscribers' large-paper copies in which he reckons “the selling price of my Small paper Virgill” at one pound.⁸

It is possible that Dryden (and Congreve) only learned of the small-paper copies in their meeting shortly after 8 June 1695, but if that were the case, Dryden would surely have mentioned it in his letters to Tonson on 8 June and 29 October 1695. Tonson must therefore have succeeded in persuading Dryden when the contract was being drawn up that because he was putting up £200 copy money for Dryden, paying the capital cost of the plates and for alterations, plus all the costs of the 101 copies for the first subscribers, along with a proportion of those for the second subscribers, he should be allowed to print and sell the small-paper copies. He could have argued that both subscription lists would already be closed when the book eventually went to press, and could also have pointed out that its smaller size and less fine paper meant it would not be a rival for Dryden's subscribers.

A comparison of the Brotherton Collection's copy of the large-paper version with a recently sold small-paper copy, taken together with the production schedule, gives reason to believe that Dryden was over-generous or lacked foresight (or both) in allowing Tonson to print off small-paper copies in addition to the subscribers' copies. The two books are printed from the same type throughout, but differ in three important respects. The small-paper copy is printed throughout on poorer quality paper than the largest part of the Brotherton large-paper copy. This, like the Chatsworth copy,⁹ has noticeably poorer paper in the preliminaries and end matter (see below). Second, both these large-paper copies contain the reset formes of the first two sheets, again on poorer paper, of the Pastorals (B1-4) designated by the California editors F1b, where the small-paper copy has the F1a setting.¹⁰ The most significant difference for immediate purposes is that the small-paper copy has significantly narrower gutters than the large-paper copies (for instance, on p. 130 the difference is 33 as against 59 millimeters, on sig. (e) 2^r the figures are 30 and 58 millimeters, and on p. 621 the figures are 40 and 59 millimeters). This difference of an inch or so for each page means that the furniture had to be rearranged for every single forme of the whole volume. The expense was of no concern to Dryden, since that fell on Tonson, but the result should have been, had he foreseen what a small-paper copy would look like and had also thought about the publishing timetable. Although the small-paper copy is on poorer quality paper and when placed side by side a large-paper copy, the top and bottom margins immediately appear a little cramped, it is a handsome book and contains everything to be found in the subscribers' copies; the typesetting (“Letter”) and all the plates in a volume, which though somewhat shortened and narrowed, is very comparable in thickness (the “Volume” of the contract) to the large-paper copies. When new, the inferior paper of this version of the Virgil must have looked, apart from the size, little different from the copies owned by two-guinea subscribers, and at a price—if Tonson sold them to the public at the same price as to Dryden—at under half as much. True, the first and second subscribers could flaunt their large-paper copies shortly before the purchasers of the small-paper version had them in their hands, but only in the privacy of their libraries or closets: Dryden's Virgil is not a book you would willingly carry around with you.

Because the contract implies the production of the small-paper (“Comon paper”) edition, there was no reason to prevent Tonson from alerting the public to its existence. His interests, however, were directly opposed to Dryden's. The fewer second subscribers Dryden had, the less Tonson had to subsidize their copies, and the more potential buyers he had for his own version of the book: further, the more small-paper copies Tonson sold, all without any obligation to Dryden, the sooner he could recoup his outlay.

Although most of Dryden's second subscribers probably paid their one guinea early, the fact that he received Robert Austen's down payment on 9 November 1696¹¹ and told the Earl of Chesterfield on 17 February 1697 that his translation was “already in the Press”¹² makes it clear that Tonson had a window of opportunity. When he began printing the first formes of the Pastorals in February 1697, Tonson, because both subscription lists were closed, had an extremely good idea of the number of sheets required for the large-paper version:¹³ the number of small-paper copies to be printed was a matter entirely of his own judgement. The volume was eagerly awaited. Thomas Burnett told the Electress Sophia on 29 July, writing from London, “We are every hour impatiently expecting the coming out of Mr. Dreydens laborious versione of Virgil into English.”¹⁴ Since The London Gazette of 24-28 June 1697 had announced that the book would “be ready next week to be delivered, as subscribed for in Quires,”¹⁵ and since the list of second subscribers was not printed until on or after 6 July,¹⁶ the edition may not have been actually ready until the beginning of the week after that promised. Burnet, writing from London almost a month later than the subscription edition was announced as almost ready, can only refer to the sale of the small-paper copies, presumably carefully released a little later in order to avoid any appearance of competition with the large-paper subscription copies. But Burnet's evidence describes an eager public, the size of which Tonson must have guessed at: he must also have calculated that despite their eagerness, some of the prospective second subscribers would be attracted by having what was in most ways the same book for substantially less than two guineas. It is hard not to believe that Dryden would have had more second subscribers but for the competition of the nearly simultaneous publication of an alternative version of his translation. (This may or may not account for the fact that Tonson and Bentley had 538 subscribers for their 1688 edition of Milton's Paradise Lost compared to Dryden's 349 subscribers, a third fewer.)

On its own, the use of poorer paper in the preliminaries and end matter of the Brotherton and Chatsworth copies of the large-paper version might suggest that Tonson was short-changing Dryden and his patrons. But a census of eighteen copies of the first editions points to a more banal cause. In the sample examined, eight proved to be large-paper copies, ten small-paper copies. The distribution of poorer paper in the large-paper copies is given in the following table:

Occurrence of Poor Paper Stock in Large-Paper Copies
Brotherton	A2	1*-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	B	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	(4K2?)
Chatsworth (1)	A2	1*-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	B	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	(4K2?)
Bodleian	—	-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	B	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	—
British Library	—	1*-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	B	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	4K2
John Rylands	A2	1*-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	B	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	4K2
Durham (D and C)	—	-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	B	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	—
Worcester	—	-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	(B?)	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	—
Houghton (2)	A2	1*-2*4	3-5*2	χ1	—	¶4 2¶2	4H-4I4	—

The subscribers' plates are also printed on paper of markedly variable quality (in the Brotherton's copy, this applies to eleven of the hundred plates). These, like the preliminaries (from A² to χ¹, containing the dedication to Hugh, Lord Clifford, the Life of Virgil, the Preface to the Pastorals, commendatory verses and the two lists of subscribers), gathering B, the dedication to and essay on the Georgicks (¶⁴ 2¶²), and the Postscript and Notes (from 4H⁴ to 4K²), were all printed after the main body of the text had been finished. Trade conditions, rather than petty-mindedness on Tonson's part, are the most likely explanation for this mixture of paper in the last stages of production. As John Bidwell has pointed out, in 1697 the paper trade was disrupted by war, and in addition, from March 1697 after the printing of the Virgil had begun, the English government imposed a 25٪ tax on all imports of paper, adding a further 5٪ in May, a tax not lifted until 1699.¹⁷

Tonson and his printer, Robert Everingham, evidently had little difficulty in obtaining paper for the small-paper copies of Virgil. The ten examples examined all have the same quality paper throughout.¹⁸ The large fine quality paper was a different matter. From the table above, and from the varying quality of the paper used for the plates, Tonson and Everingham still had enough of the quality paper left for a few quires in the subscribers' copies and for their plates but had to mix in inferior paper at the last stage. While it is possible that either Tonson or Everingham was cutting corners to save money, it is very unlikely that Tonson would have chosen to risk his reputation in a prestige publication like the Virgil.

The anomaly here is the inferior paper used for gathering B in all the large-paper copies examined except one (Houghton [2]). This contains the first two Pastorals and was the first gathering to be printed in February 1697. All the large-paper copies I have examined have the F1b setting of the two sheets which make up gathering B, while all the small-paper copies examined have setting F1a. Vinton Dearing reports that this gathering is the only example of resetting in the whole volume.¹⁹ None of the differences are substantial, being made up of minor changes in spelling and capitalization, all clearly compositorial changes.²⁰

Everingham must have printed off enough large-paper sheets of gathering B (the number of subscribers was already settled) before going on to rearrange the furniture for the small-paper copies. If so, when the volume came to be put together in quires it was discovered that owing to some printing-house accident, a substantial number of the sheets for gathering B were unusable; these therefore had to be reset at the last moment, by which time no high-quality paper stock was available.

The variable quality of paper in the large paper copies is of interest only insofar as it throws some light on the progress of Dryden's prose and verse texts through the press. Of substantially more importance to understanding the negotiations over the contract between Dryden and Tonson is that the sample examined suggests that small-paper copies are at least as common as large-paper copies. It is possible, then, to make reasonable conjectures about the numbers of each printed and to understand the publishing arrangements from Tonson's viewpoint rather than Dryden's (understandably enough the main emphasis in previous studies including my own). It also allows some rather more tentative speculation about the size of the translation's contemporary readership.

The subscription edition of Virgil benefited Dryden very substantially, bringing between £910 and just over £1,000.²¹ Using the contract along with the calculations made by Robert Everingham and Tonson on 28 March 1698, it is possible to reconstruct, with some important gaps, how much capital the bookseller had to invest in Dryden's translation and how soon he began to see a return on his investment.

The first element agreed in the contract was the payment of £200 copy money to Dryden, staged in £50 payments as specified parts of the translation reached Tonson. Tonson then had to find the costs of the paper, composition and correction, buy the plates or the rights to them, and pay for the alterations and then their machining at the rolling press. Robert Everingham's account of the amount of large paper used for the 250 copies for Dryden's second subscribers is 123 reams and 9 quires (for both text and plates).²² Tonson claimed that the “Large paper cost me one Ream with another [admitting that he bought paper lot by lot, which reinforces the argument about poorer quality paper] one pound two Shillings p Ream,” while the small-paper cost nine shillings.²³ As the census of copies indicates that as many of the small-paper copies were printed as large, then Tonson had at least 350 small-paper copies for sale. It is therefore possible to calculate how much Tonson had to lay out for the paper (always a major expense for a publisher) for both the large- and small-paper copies. His final settlement with Dryden also makes clear that Dryden received only 15s. 8d. out of the two guineas paid by his second subscribers. In reaching this figure, Tonson said that the “selling price of my Small paper Virgill shall be to him but one pound in quires p book.”²⁴ D. F. McKenzie's study of Cambridge University Press's records for 1696-1712 further allows the costs of composition, correcting, and presswork, together with the cost of machining the plates, to be worked out.²⁵

Tonson's investment in the Virgil is most easily understood in terms of production costs (including copy money) for the total print run of both large- and small-paper copies. These last were printed simultaneously by Robert Everingham in 1697. Copies of the first edition of the Virgil are made up of 142 sheets of the text of the translation set in Great Primer, 31 sheets of preliminaries and late matter set in English, and 50.5 sheets of engravings, making 223.5 sheets altogether. In the calculations below, it is assumed that Tonson printed as many small-paper copies as large, giving a print run of 700.

			£	s.	d.
1 Tonson's Expenditure
(a) Copy money (staged late 1694 to 1697)			200.	0.	0.
(b) Text of Translation
Composing in Great Primer	5s	0d
Correcting		10d
Work at press (700)	4s	0d
Third Profit	4s	11d
Cost per sheet (x 142 sheet)	14s	9d	104.	14.	6.
(c) Text of Preliminaries etc.
Composing in English	5s	4d
Correcting		10[frac34]d
Work at Press (700)	3s	6d
Third Profit	4s	10[frac12]d
Cost per sheet (x 31 sheets)	15s	7[frac14]d	24.	3.	8[frac34].
(d) Rolling Press
(700 copies x 50.5 sheets @ 8d. per 100)			11.	15.	8.
(e) Cost of Paper
(i) Large Paper (350 copies x 223.5 sheets = 156 reams 9 quires @ £1/2s.)26			172.	1.	11.
(ii) Small Paper (350 copies x 223.5 sheets = 156 reams 9 quires @9s.)			70.	8.	0[frac12].
(f) Cost of plates and additional engraving not known				?
			583.	3.	10[frac14].
2 Income
(a) Tonson's share of second subscribers' 2 guineas (£1.6s.4d. x 250)			329.	3.	4.
(b) 350 copies at selling price of £1			350.	0.	0.
			679.	3.	4.
less expenditure			583.	3.	10[frac14].
	+		95.	19.	6[frac34].

Excluded from this figure, of course, are Tonson's payment for Ogilby's 100 plates, the alterations to them, and the engraving of an additional frontispiece. The engraving cannot have been cheap, but, equally, it could not have cost as much as £95. It is clear that Tonson's 1694 contract with Dryden ensured that the publisher would very quickly recover his costs, including the £200 copy money advanced to the translator, and make him a reasonable profit (something less than 16.5٪ on his outlay) if he sold 350 small-paper copies. If, as is possible, he sold more than 350 and the first edition ran to a total of 1,000, he would have made substantially more (another £300, from which the costs of paper and machining at the letter and rolling presses would have to be deducted, bringing in between £100 and £200).

A number of points emerge. Tonson's profit was critically dependent on his receiving a substantial portion of Dryden's two-guinea second subscriptions: at £329. 3s. 4d. this far exceeded the £200 copy money paid to Dryden and covered almost two-thirds of the cost of the large paper for the 100 first-subscribers' copies. Further, although Tonson had to advance Dryden's copy money over a three-year period, once printing began, he knew he would quickly recover any outlay made in 1697 itself (made easier, in any case, in a trade dependent upon credit). Although Dryden was wrong to call Tonson a “Sharper” in 1695, the bookseller had been businesslike enough to ensure that his own interests were protected from the very beginning. As Dryden recognized—immediately after calling all Tonson's trade “Sharpers,” Dryden wrote, “Mr Aston does not blame you for getting as good a bargain as you cou'd.”²⁷

Yet if Tonson did well for himself, he did very well for Dryden. The bookseller's contract, in particular, his willingness to advance copy money, was undoubtedly based on his earlier experience of jointly publishing with Richard Bentley the subscription edition, in folio and with twelve engravings, of Milton's Paradise Lost (1688). Although no contract or accounts are known to be extant, the arrangements for the Virgil enable a probable outline of the arrangements for Tonson's and Bentley's Paradise Lost to be reconstructed.

There were 538 subscribers to a single list for a book made up of 84.5 letterpress sheets, mostly set in Great Primer, and 6 sheets for the engravings, making 90.5 sheets in all. Once more, the cost of the engravings is an imponderable. The figures work out as follows and assume that Tonson and Bentley used best quality paper:

			£	s.	d.
1 Expenditure
(a) Copy money not known				?
(b) Text of Poem
Composing in Great Primer	5s.	0d.
Correcting		10d.
Work at Press (500)	2s.	8d.
Third Profit	4s.	3d.
Cost per sheet (x 83 sheets)	12s.	9d.	52.	18.	3.
(c) Subscribers' List
Composing in English	5s.	4d.
Correcting		10[frac34]d.
Work at Press (500)	2s.	6d.
Third Profit	4s.	4[frac12]d.
Cost per sheet (x 1.5 sheets)	13s.	1[frac14]d.	1.	0.	8.
(d) Rolling press
(538 copies x 90.5 sheets @ 8d. per 100)			1.	1.	6[frac14].
(e) Paper
(538 copies x 90.5 sheets @ £1. 2s. a ream = 97 reams 7[frac12] quires)			107.	0.	6.
(f) Cost of plates not known				?
			162.	0.	11[frac14].

The exact amount paid by Tonson's and Bentley's subscribers is unknown, though Tonson later said that the 1688 folio was well-received “notwithstanding the Price of it was Four times greater than before.”²⁸ There is no known price for the earlier editions of Paradise Lost, but the Term Catalogues give prices for the 1671 and 1680 editions of Paradise Regained as 4s. bound and 1s. 6d. bound respectively.²⁹ The 1671 edition is a quarto made up of 13.75 sheets, a sixth the size of Paradise Lost (1688) and without plates. The 1680 edition of Paradise Regained is made up of 8.5 sheets, more than a tenth smaller than the Tonson-Bentley subscription edition, also without plates. In view of Tonson's later comment on the latter's expense, a price of 10s. or even 15s. a copy is a reasonable estimate. Either would have brought a handsome profit:

			£	s.	d.
2 Income
(i) @ 10s. a copy x 538			269.	0.	0.
	less		162.	0.	11[frac14].
		+	106.	19.	0[frac34].
(ii) @15s. a copy x 538			403.	10.	0.
	less		162.	0.	11[frac14].
		+	241.	9.	0[frac34].

Of course, Tonson shared any profits with Bentley, but the sizeable profit margin is self-evident. Tonson, then, could be confident about the marketing of this kind of book when he signed the contract for the Virgil in 1694. Even with the advance of £200 of copy money to Dryden, Tonson knew that he was very likely to make a profit on the first edition if he were allowed to print and sell his own small-paper copies.

A sense of the scale of Tonson's profits in contemporary terms is given by Gregory King's estimates of the average annual income of England's different classes and professions made in 1696.³⁰ Two thousand clergymen supported families of six people on £60 p.a.; another eight thousand clergy supported families on £45 p.a. Tonson's profit of at least £95 for the Virgil falls well above these professional incomes and approaches that for a “Person in Office” who required £120 p.a. to support a family of five. (Dryden's income of between £900 and £1,000 would more than have met the yearly income for a baronet with a household of sixteen [£880], or spread over three years, would have been rather less than the income of an Esquire with ten dependents [£450].)

Finally, these edition quantities allow for an educated guess at the size of the contemporary audience for Dryden's translation of Virgil, a major national cultural project in the England of the 1690s. Small- and large-paper copies of the first edition of 1697 probably numbered at least 700 and perhaps as many as 1,000. In 1698, Tonson promptly published a second folio edition of perhaps 1,000 copies. Not until 1709 did he publish a third edition, this time in octavo. In the twelve years from 1697 to 1709, the public's demand for a folio copy of his translation was satisfied by a total print-run of between 1,700 and 2,000.³¹ When Thomas Burnet described the public “every hour impatiently expecting” the publication of Dryden's Virgil in July 1697, he was speaking of a relatively small and clearly defined “polite” audience who shared his own, Dryden's, and Tonson's neoclassical ambitions for English literature and culture.

Notes

1. Hugh MacDonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), 57.

2. The two copies of the contract are edited in The Works of Virgil, ed. William Frost and Vinton A. Dearing, vol. 6 of The Works of John Dryden (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1987), 1179-82 (hereafter, “Calif.”). Frost also prints other relevant documents from Cambridge University Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library (Calif. 1183-7).

3. Calif., 1183-84. For Congreve's involvement see The Letters of John Dryden, ed. Charles E. Ward (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1942), 79, 173. (Hereafter “Letters.”)

4. Ward identifies “Mr. Aston” as Walter Aston, later fourth Lord of Forfar, Cheshire (Letters, 76, 171).

5. Calif., 1181.

6. For a fuller discussion see “Dryden, Tonson, and Subscriptions for the 1697 Virgil,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 57 (1963): 141-44.

7. Letters, 77, 80.

8. Calif., 1186.

9. Case 27, Shelf a. Chatsworth has a second copy of the small-paper version (Case 23, Shelf c). It has the signature of “George Granville,” probably that of the first Earl Granville (1773-1846), brother-in-law of the sixth Duke of Devonshire, on the title-page. It also is printed on poorer paper throughout and has the F1a setting of gathering B of the Pastorals. I am very grateful to Mr. P. Day, Keeper of Collections at Chatsworth, for his help.

10. Calif., 1133-34.

11. Calif., 1184.

12. Letters, 85.

13. He may have printed a few too many large-paper copies for second subscribers. On 6 July 1697, after printing was completed, Dryden instructed Tonson to have the names of any second subscribers who had not paid one of his collectors, Mr. Pate, a woollen draper, to be struck out of the printed list (Letters, 88). This was printed on a separate leaf (χ1) at the last minute.

14. State Papers and Correspondence … from the Revolution to the Accession of the House of Hanover …, ed. John M. Kemble (London: John W. Parker, 1857), 193.

15. Macdonald, A Bibliography of John Dryden, 58.

16. See note 13 above.

17. Private correspondence. See also D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry 1495-1860: A Study in Industrial Growth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1958), 67, 124.

18. These are as follows: a copy in private hands; Chatsworth (2) (Case 23, Shelf a); Cambridge University Library (X.7.10 and Forster a.2); Durham University Library; Edinburgh University Library; Houghton (2) (* f EC65. D8474.697va); William Andrews Clark Memorial Library; and University of Texas Library (wj. D848. + 697v and 8PA6807.A1 D7 1697). I am grateful to Elizabeth Leedham-Green, Murray Simpson, Hugh Amory, Steve Tabor, and James South for reporting on the copies in Cambridge, Edinburgh, the Houghton, the Clark, and Texas libraries respectively.

19. Calif., 1133-4. Vinton Dearing (ibid.) believed that copies with the F1b setting were rarer; the evidence above suggests they are more nearly equal.

20. For the collation see Calif., 1143, First and Second Pastorals.

21. See “Dryden, Tonson, and Subscriptions for the 1697 Virgil,” 139.

22. Calif., 1185.

23. Calif., 1186.

24. Calif., 1186.

25. D. F. McKenzie, The Cambridge University Press: A Bibliographical Study, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1966). See 1:80-93, in particular Tables 2 and 6 on which the following calculations are based.

26. A ream is calculated at 500 here. Tonson's and Everingham's figures for paper seem to be worked out for a ream of 480 plus wastage (Calif., 1185).

27. Letters, 80.

28. Paradise Lost (1711), Dedication to Lord Somers.

29. The Term Catalogues, 1668-1709 …, ed. Edward Arber (London: Priv. Ptd., 1903-06), 1:56, 453.

30. Gregory King, The Earliest Classics: John Graunt, National and Political Observations made upon the Bills of Mortality (1662): Gregory King, Natural and Political Observations and Conclusions upon the State and Condition of England (1696) …, Introd. Peter Laslett (London: Gregg International, 1973), 48-49. See Laslett's introduction for an account of the probable origins of King's project and its likely dependability.

31. The translation did well for Tonson and his family business. There were further three-volume editions in 1716 (8°), 1721 (12°), 1730 (12°), 1743 (16°), 1748 (12°), and 1763 (12°). The translation was frequently published in the last part of the century under the imprints of other booksellers.