SOURCE: Bonham-Carter, Victor. “Chapter Four.” In Authors By Profession, Vol. 1, pp. 71-89. Los Altos, Calif.: William Kaufmann Inc., 1978.

[In the following excerpt, Bonham-Carter discusses developments in international copyright law in the mid-nineteenth century and the founding of the Society of British Authors.]

It has been shown how, after about 1830, periodicals and part publication provided authors with the main means of communicating new works to the public en masse. Such means did not inhibit publication in volume form, indeed serialisation usually preceded it, by which time a work could be issued as a relatively cheap reprint. But to launch a new book in volume form tended to restrict sales owing to cost—a ‘three-decker’ novel being commonly priced at 31s 6d the set.

In 1823 there were only a handful of guinea-and-a-half novels, but by 1840 fifty-one out of fifty-eight new novels bore this price … The result was that fiction-lovers flocked, not to the bookshops, but to the circulating libraries … and the libraries became more firmly established as the publishers' best customers. Publishers could afford to be indifferent to the fact that they had priced their wares out of the individual buyer's reach: so long as the libraries took a substantial part of an edition, their profit was safe … The average edition of a serious book was around 750 copies … Only in very exceptional circumstances such as Scott's novels, did editions in the early nineteenth century run to 6,000 copies. Throughout the century, the ordinary circulating library novel seldom had an edition of more than a thousand or 1,250 copies.¹

Archibald Constable had been the first publisher of substance to contemplate the possibilities of new low-priced books for mass sale. In 1825 he had talked to Scott of ‘a three shilling or half-crown volume every month’, but bankruptcy and death had forestalled his grandiose plans, which duly gave place to the serialisation and instalment schemes described in Chapter Three, from which Dickens and others profited. As time passed technical advances in paper making, printing and binding, and the removal of excise duties, had an effect on prices: as also the demand for reading matter by travellers on the new railways, for whom ‘libraries’ of cheap reprints (and a few originals) at 1s-3s each were made available by enterprising firms. Nonetheless prices of new books stayed high; and not even the dramatic collapse in 1852 of the Booksellers' Association, founded four years earlier by a cartel of London publisher-booksellers to combat price cutting, made any immediate difference. In this dispute most authors interested in the issue were persuaded to support the ‘rebels’ led by John Chapman, an importer of American books, who opposed all control of retail prices and wanted ‘free trade’, i.e. freedom for the retailer to sell a book at any price he liked. Authors took the line that the cheaper the book the larger the sale; they were not convinced by the argument that treating books as groceries or haberdashery might lead to the extinction of bookshops proper. Two authors—George Grote, the historian, and H. H. Milman, Dean of St. Paul's—sat with Lord Campbell on the court of arbitration which came down firmly on the side of ‘free trade’.²

By c. 1850 therefore the book trade was still in the early stages of change. Likewise relations between authors and publishers were still regulated by the three or four contractual conventions—sale of copyright (often no more than a licence linked to an edition or period of time, after which the copyright reverted to the author),³ commission publishing, or profit sharing (or ‘half-profits’). Subscription in the 18th century style was now exceptional, while the royalty system was yet to come. On the other hand authors and publishers were closely involved in the question of copyright which, after 1830, experienced a series of important and complex changes.

The Copyright Act of 1814 had proved wanting on several grounds, and moves to replace it were soon being made. One glaring omission had been its failure to protect playwrights against unauthorised stage productions. So long as a play remained unpublished, there was nothing to prevent its presentation on the boards by anyone who came into possession of the script.⁴ This, then, was the first step.

In 1833 … the Dramatic Copyright Act (3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 15), commonly known as Bulwer-Lytton's Act⁵ … gave to the author of ‘any tragedy, comedy, play, opera, farce or other piece of dramatic entertainment’ the sole liberty of representing it ‘or causing it to be represented at any place or places of dramatic entertainment whatsoever’ in Great Britain and the Dominions for 28 years from publication, with a reversionary period to the author for the rest of his life.⁶

The inadequacies of this Act, soon evident in all kinds of evasions, are considered in the next chapter. Meanwhile the second step towards reforming domestic copyright, followed nine years later.

In 1842 the Literary Copyright Act (5 & 6 Vict., c.45) consolidated the law relating to the protection of literary, dramatic, and musical property and brought within the terms of a single statute the two rights so far recognised, ‘copyright’ or the right of ‘multiplying’ copies and ‘performing right’ or the right of representation.⁷

Furthermore, the period of protection was extended from 28 to 42 years after first publication or performance, or the life of the author plus seven years, whichever the longer. As it turned out, the Act experienced a long period of gestation, the progenitor being Thomas Noon Talfourd,⁸ who displayed remarkable pertinacity in introducing a Private Bill to no less than five sessions of Parliament 1837-41. However he made things unnecessarily difficult by omitting to lobby the book trade in advance, and by failing even to brief leading authors until too late a stage, and then only a handful of them. In consequence his proposals were swamped by a plethora of petitions from publishers, printers, and others—even up to his final attempt when the Bill foundered very early in the 1841 session. Talfourd was no tactician. He drew a bead on certain targets and nothing would alter his aim. For instance he wanted to extend the period of copyright to the life of the author plus 60 years, not a minute less; and added that, if an author sold his copyright, he might—after 28 years (the current term)—recover his rights and pass them on to his descendants for the full term proposed. This raised an outcry. Ordinary publishers objected strongly to paying twice for the purchase of copyright, while those who specialised in the issue of cheap reprints of out-of-copyright works were equally vociferous. Nor was the opposition confined to the trade. Macaulay, then a Cabinet Minister, as well as a leading man of letters, made an unaccountably vicious attack on the very concept of copyright:

The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on one of the most innocent pleasures; and never let us forget that a tax on innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures.⁹

Talfourd lost his seat at Reading at the 1841 election, when the Tories were returned to power, but the cudgels were immediately taken up by Lord Mahon (the future Earl Stanhope and President of the Royal Literary Fund) who achieved a quick, and seemingly easy, success. In fact Mahon was a clever tactician and left nothing to chance. He secured the support of leading publishers (notably the John Murray and the Thomas Longman of the day) by streamlining Talfourd's provisions to regulate the import of cheap foreign editions, and so swung the book trade to his side. In Parliament he pacified the redoubtable Lord Brougham,¹⁰ compromised with Macaulay, won over Sir Robert Peel, the new Prime Minister, and—at the last moment—sidestepped a proposal to hold up proceedings in favour of a Customs measure that duplicated some of the provisions of his own Bill. Royal Assent was received on 1 July 1842. Although the Act was by any criterion a great step forward, and was destined to last until 1911, flaws soon appeared: due principally to the fact that it ‘presented a new code of copyright, covering the ground of previous laws, but not in terms repealing them’.¹¹ In other words, any earlier provisions not specifically repealed remained in force, and so—taken in conjunction with the normal continuity of change—the Act generated so many problems of interpretation that, in its Report published in 1878, the Royal Commission on Copyright was forced to condemn it in forthright terms.

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The 1842 Act was not an isolated piece of legislation, but part of a pattern of law-making for the better protection of authors' rights at home and abroad. The process was lengthy, affected the entire book trade and—following the Dramatic Copyright Act 1833—involved no less than ‘five copyright acts and five relevant customs acts in the eighteen years from 1838 to 1855, and four relevant acts in the eleven years between 1875 and 1886’.¹²

The first of these was the International Copyright Act 1838 which, by means of Orders in Council, extended copyright protection to authors of books published in foreign countries, provided that British authors received similar protection in the countries concerned. In contrast to Talfourd's efforts for domestic copyright, the 1838 Act passed through Parliament without difficulty, possibly because no one grasped its importance. In fact it was an historic event, although Britain was not the first in the field. A similar law had been enacted by Prussia in the previous year, and following the formation of the Customs Union (Zollverein) in 1834, there seemed a good chance of linking up with all 39 of the German states, large and small. Likewise, thanks to the indefatigable Senator Henry Clay, championed on this side of the Atlantic by Harriet Martineau¹³ and others, hopes were high for concluding a mutual copyright treaty with the USA, the most formidable and unmanageable source of competition and piracy.

In the event no fresh treaty was concluded with any country, and the subject lapsed until the 1842 legislation revived interest. On 30 June a meeting of authors and publishers at the Freemasons' Tavern in London, chaired by Thomas Longman IV, deplored the absence of action, and emphasised that the best way to stop the smuggling of ‘copies of Spurious Editions into Great Britain and its dependencies’ was to conclude ‘treaties with Foreign Powers for the mutual recognition of Literary Property’.¹⁴

The 1842 Copyright and Customs Acts went some way to meet this demand: preventing the publication of any copyright work without the owner's consent, and prohibiting the import of any reprint of such work for ‘sale or hire’ in the UK, although nothing was said about ‘private use’—a concession to tourists and travellers abolished two years later. Furthermore all pirate copies were to be destroyed, and lists of copyright works supplied to the customs officers to make their task easier. By an oversight this provision was restricted to the UK, with the result that British colonies and dependencies profited vigorously from the omission, especially Canada,¹⁵ which continued to let in a flood of pirate reprints from the USA. Fresh legislation in 1845 and 1847 tried to plug the gap: first by extending the restriction to the colonies; and when this failed, by introducing a duty to be levied at the port entry, part of the proceeds to be remitted to the copyright owners. The results were farcical. Bulwer-Lytton, a best-selling author, received in one year less than £2 from his share of the duty throughout the entire British Empire. In Canada, where the problem was most acute, all kinds of legislative shifts were used to make the system work, but to no avail. But the fault did not lie entirely on one side. Despite a brave attempt by John Murray III to capture the overseas market with his ‘Colonial and Home Library’, British publishers made only feeble efforts to cater for the taste and pocket of the colonial reader. Neither were they willing to license Canadian firms to publish on their behalf. And so, thanks partly to ineptitude and partly to the refusal of the USA to recognise international copyright, pirate reprints continued to pour over the border—to the benefit of American publishers and Canadian consumers.

However some progress was made with other countries, following an Act passed in 1844 to ‘amend the law relating to international copyright’. Largely the work of Gladstone, President of the Board of Trade, its main aim was to bring the 1838 international Act into line with the 1842 domestic Act and open up relations with foreign states—in which matter it had some success, starting with a treaty with Prussia in 1846. A related Act in 1852 dealt with translations.¹⁶

Although treaties were signed with a dozen foreign countries between 1846 and 1861, the rights of the foreign author in Britain long remained obscure: largely because, for some twenty years, the law was differently interpreted in various British courts—notably the Court of Chancery and the three Common Law Courts (Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer). Barnes states that ‘broadly speaking, up to 1835 legal decisions went against foreigners securing copyright’.¹⁷ Nonetheless there were some publishers who voluntarily respected international copyright, both in Britain and in the USA:¹⁸ these being the chief countries concerned with literature owing to the common heritage of the English language; while music—which played an important part in the copyright disputes of the period—was of course open to the whole world. As will be related shortly, Dickens was the chief sufferer among contemporary British authors, and his visit to the USA in 1842 raised a storm, as he hoped it would. On the other hand Harriet Beecher Stowe provided rich plunder for British publishers with Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852, which quickly sold over a million copies in this country, without a penny reaching the unfortunate author.

Other American authors suffered similar treatment—among them, Washington Irving, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville. Their works were frequently reprinted by entrepreneurs such as Henry George Bohn and George Routledge—at the expense not only of the authors themselves but, in particular, of two established British publishers, John Murray III and Richard Bentley, whose firms had bought some of the copyrights in a straightforward manner. In 1850 Murray and Bentley took their rivals to law and, after various manoeuvres, sold them the copyrights in question.¹⁹ Ultimately the whole matter was taken to the House of Lords and decided on 1 August 1854, when it was decided that:

only if a foreigner travelled to Britain [and British dependencies] and remained there long enough to witness the publication of his work was he entitled to copyright protection. Otherwise he could neither claim copyright himself nor sell the right to a British subject, including a publisher.²⁰

As a result American authors merely had to take a trip to Canada or the West Indies and be there on the day of publication to secure protection for a new work under British law. No corresponding right of any sort was available to British authors until the first US International Copyright Act 1891, and then only if certain onerous conditions were complied with. 37 years (from 1854 to 1891) were a long time to wait, but the delay was partly due to the fact that the 1854 decision relieved American authors and publishers of any over-riding need to campaign for international copyright in their own country. Without the obligation of reciprocity, pressure dropped to near zero.²¹

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It may be thought that authors played only a small part in the copyright struggles of this period. That was not so. The long campaign for international copyright was supported from the first by a group of men and women of letters—Bulwer-Lytton and Harriet Martineau among them—who, in 1836, drew up a petition,²² addressed to the Senate and House of Representatives ‘in Congress assembled’. This petition was

presented to the Senate by Henry Clay on 2 February 1837, signed by 56 British authors, headed by Thomas Moore, praying Congress to grant to them the exclusive benefit of their writings within the United States. The signatories … included Lady Blessington, Bulwer [Lytton], Campbell, Disraeli, Maria Edgeworth, Hallam, Harriet Martineau, Milman, Rogers, Southey and Talfourd. It was prepared—probably jointly—by Harriet Martineau and her publishers, Saunders and Otley, and sent to Clay (a personal friend of hers) through the American explorer, Capt. Charles Wilkes … Harriet Martineau sent copies of it, with letters in support to influential American friends. To Everett²³ she wrote on 8 November 1836 complaining of ‘the late shameless aggressions of Messrs Harper of New York on the property of Messrs Saunders and Otley’.²⁴ ‘Every author of note is signing’, she said, ‘the Americans in London are confident that we shall obtain a Copyright Law, this very Session: & indeed I believe every American (not a bookseller) is willing to do us justice’.²⁵

Harriet's optimism was misplaced, despite the persistence of Senator Clay who submitted Bills in favour of international copyright in 1837, 1838, 1840 and 1842, in addition to presenting numerous petitions. The atmosphere therefore was highly charged before Dickens's visit to America from January to June 1842; but that did not prevent him from speaking out almost at once—at a public dinner at Boston on 1 February and at another at Hartford on 8 February. He ended his Boston speech thus:

You have in America great writers … who will live in all time, and are as familiar to our lips as household words … I take leave to say, in the presence of some of these gentlemen, that I hope the time is not far distant when they, in America, will receive of right some substantial profit and return in England from their labours; and when we, in England, shall receive some substantial profit and return from ours. Pray do not misunderstand me. Securing for myself from day to day the means of an honourable subsistence, I would rather have the affectionate regard of my fellow men, than I would have heaps and mines of gold. But the two things do not seem to be incompatible … There must be an international arrangement in this respect: England has done her part, and I am confident that the time is not far distant when America will do hers. It becomes the character of a great country; firstly, because it is justice; secondly, because without it you never can have, and keep, a literature of your own.²⁶

Dickens spoke in similar terms at Hartford and declared his determination to campaign for international copyright so long as he stayed in the States. His Hartford speech provoked immediate and mostly hostile comment: to the effect that he was abusing his hosts' hospitality, and that it was due to the absence of a copyright law that he owed his popularity in America. The real reason for this outburst was of course economic, underlined by the current depression. Payments to authors, it was argued, would raise the price of books, leading to a fall in sales and profits, and so bring ruin to printers, papermakers, and everyone else involved in the trade of books.²⁷ In a letter to John Forster of 24 February, Dickens attacked his critics as bitterly as they had attacked him.

The notion that I, a man alone by himself, in America, should venture to suggest to the Americans that there was one point on which they were neither just to their own countrymen nor to us, actually struck the boldest dumb. Washington Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Washington Allston—every man who writes in this country is devoted to the question, and not one of them dares to raise his voice and complain of the atrocious state of the law. It is nothing that of all men living I am the greatest loser by it. It is nothing that I have a claim to speak and be heard. The wonder is that a breathing man can be found with temerity enough to suggest to the Americans the possibility of their having done wrong. I wish you could have seen the faces that I saw, down both sides of the table at Hartford, when I began to talk about Scott.²⁸ I wish you could have heard how I gave it out. My blood so boiled as I thought of the monstrous injustice that I felt as if I were twelve feet high when I thrust it down their throats.²⁹

Although fully justified in his campaign, Dickens was not being fair to his American friends. Many had taken up the cudgels for international copyright, though none had spoken out so forcefully as he, but none perhaps had been in such a powerful and privileged position to do so. Shortly afterwards however, at a dinner in New York, Washington Irving gave a toast to ‘International Copyright’, and Cornelius Matthews ‘made a long and fervent plea in its support’.³⁰ Moreover Dickens received strong backing in the Tribune, edited by Horace Greeley, ‘which published two editorials urging international copyright, probably written by Greeley himself. The first, 14 February, demanded it on grounds of personal justice to Dickens … The second, 21 February … added justice to American writers to the demand for abstract justice.’³¹

Dickens had meanwhile asked John Forster to obtain a memorial on the subject, duly drafted by Bulwer-Lytton and signed by twelve British authors, which he forwarded with a covering letter for publication, early in May, in a number of American newspapers and journals. He also attached a separate supporting letter from Thomas Carlyle, who mentioned that he had signed the 1836 petition. Editorial reaction was mixed, and the eminence of the signatories doubted.³² Dickens concluded:

I'll tell you what the two obstacles to the passing of an international copyright law with England are: firstly, the national love of ‘doing’ a man in any bargain or matter or business: secondly, national vanity.³³

Dickens arrived back in London on 29 June, too tired to attend the meeting next day at the Freemasons' Tavern in support of international copyright. However he soon recovered and threw himself into all the business arising out of his American visit, beginning with a printed circular,³⁴ dated 7 July and addressed to ‘British Authors and Journals’ in which he described his experiences in the States, declaring

I will never from this time enter into any negociation with any person for the transmission, across the Atlantic, of early proofs of anything I write; and that I will forego all profit derivable from such a source.

He also urged fellow authors to have no truck with ‘editors and proprietors of newspapers almost exclusively devoted to the republication of popular English works’.

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As we have seen, neither Dickens's exertions, nor those of other authors, publishers, and sympathisers on either side of the Atlantic produced any immediate change in the situation so far as America was concerned. They did however hasten the signing of the reciprocal agreements with the European countries, and provoke a fresh attempt among British authors to combine for their own protection, the first of any significance since the 18th century.³⁵ This episode formed the subject of an article, ‘The First Society of British Authors', contributed by Walter Besant to the July 1889 issue of The Contemporary Review and reprinted in his Essays and Historiettes, published by Chatto & Windus in 1903.³⁶ Besant said that, on his return to England, Dickens ‘made a startling discovery’.

This was nothing short of the fact that his publishers had been making a fortune out of his books while he had not. Nothing so stimulates a sense of injustice as a personal wrong. He raged and fumed; he talked over the subject with other men; he found them full of bitterness, though they had so much less cause of complaint, and he agreed to join with them in an attempt to effect, by combination, a remedy for the wrongs of himself and his fraternity.

The founders of this combination first met in some informal preliminary manner, of which no record has been kept. They formed themselves, also in an unknown and unremembered manner, into an association, to be called the Society of British Authors; they nominated a Provisional Committee, consisting of the original founders, and they called their first formal meeting at the British Hotel, Cockspur Street.

The date of this meeting was 25 March 1843. It appears that the ‘original group included Charles Mackay, John Robertson [later editor of the Westminster Review], John Britton and G. L. Craik; by 19 March they had persuaded Carlyle to join them at a further informal meeting on 21 March, when resolutions were passed which were sanctioned on 25 March’.³⁷ Besant continued:

At this meeting Thomas Campbell took the chair. No report preserves the names of those present, but the speakers were Thomas Carlyle, Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, John Poole, and J. Westland Marston. John Robertson … read a draft prospectus, and a sub-committee consisting of Carlyle, Campbell, Bulwer, Robert Bell, Charles Mackay, John Britton, and John Robertson was appointed to consider and revise the prospectus.

Shortly afterwards Carlyle threw in his hand. He thought the prospectus unexceptionable but impracticable and, despite pressure by Robertson, refused to help in any way—‘because nobody but a madman can expect any good out of it under the present circumstances’.³⁸ A second meeting was held on 8 April at which Dickens took the chair. 19 persons attended, including Bell, Forster, Mackay, and Thackeray; and it was decided to print a revised ‘Proposed Prospectus’³⁹ and send it round ‘to the principal writers of the country, asking for suggestions, and for co-operation with the movement’.⁴⁰

Besant poured scorn on this document, dubbing it ‘the feeblest and the most futile that ever was put together by any body of oppressed and indignant mortals. They had nothing to advance by way of grievance, nothing to propose, to suggest, to offer. They had not even enough backbone to set forth their wrongs’. The substance was set out under four heads:

• 1) To register the names and works of all the authors in the British Empire.
• 2) To secure the observance of the laws for the protection of authors and their property.
• 3) To obtain such alterations of existing laws, and the enactment of such new laws, both national and international, as may from time to time be deemed necessary.
• 4) To establish correspondence with authors, both at home and abroad in reference to the objects of the Society, and the great interests of civilization involved in them.

Apart from suggestions for the formation of a library in London, lectures, means of registration, and the appointment of various subcommittees to procure legal advice and advance authors' interests in Parliament and elsewhere, that was all. Besant thundered:

On the great question of equitable publishing not a word to show that such a question could be raised; on the one point—the only point—which can unite members of any profession, their material interests, not a word of hope or even of understanding … However, at the end of this precious document, the Committee contrived to hit upon one practical idea—the only one in the whole document, and one of which they were totally unable to perceive the importance.

‘A field of industry’, they say, ‘vast, tangled, and important, lies before the Society. The present state of the literary trades—publishing, printing, bookbinding, paper-making, bookselling; the condition of the advertising system, of the circulating libraries, of the book clubs, of the publishing societies—these, and similar subjects, cannot fail to yield to inquiry a great tangible good not in existence at present …’

To acquire this information should have been their first object; if they had placed this end before themselves at the outset, the Society might have lived and flourished and done good work.

They began, in fact, with an impossible theory: that authorship is a profession as distinct as law or medicine; and that it is possible to unite its members, as those called to the Bar are united, into a guild or company governed by its own laws. At the most, authorship is a collection of professions … There is one thing, and one thing only, for which those who write books and papers which are sold can possibly unite—viz., their material interests. The authors of 1843 were like Dickens' American friends; they whispered to each other ‘Yes—yes—we are horribly treated—it is quite true, we all know it: but for Heaven's sake don't say so in public; in epigram as much as you please; but in plain English—no.’

Although he had chaired the meeting on 8 April, indeed as a result of that experience, Dickens withdrew his support almost at once. In a letter to Charles Babbage, the mathematician, of 27 April, he wrote:

You may suppose, from seeing my name in the Printed Letter⁴¹ you have received, that I am favorable to the proposed Society. I am decidedly opposed to it. I went there on the day I was in the chair, after much solicitation; and being put into it, opened the Proceedings by telling the meeting that I approved of the Design in theory, but in practice considered it hopeless. I may tell you—I did not tell them—that the nature of the meeting, and the character and position of the men attending it, cried Failure trumpet-tongued in my ears. To quote an expression from Tennyson, I may say that if it were the best Society in the world, the grossness of some natures in it,⁴² would have weight to drag it down.

In the wisdom of all you urge in the Notes you have sent me, taking them as statements of Theory, I entirely concur. But in practice I feel sure that the present Publishing system cannot be overset, until Authors are different men. The first step to be taken, is, to move as a body in the question of copyright—enforce the existing laws—and try to obtain better. For that purpose, I hold that Authors and Publishers must unite, as the wealth, business-habits, and interests of the latter class are of great importance to such an end. The Longmans and Murray have been with me proposing such an association. That I shall support. But having seen the Cockspur Street Society, I am as well convinced of its invincible hopelessness as if I saw it written by a Celestial Penman in the book of Fate.⁴³

On the same date Dickens wrote to Bulwer-Lytton:

I wish to speak with you in relation to the Brood of birds at the British Coffee House in Cockspur Street, who have certainly taken my name in vain, and I dare say have taken yours likewise. I also wish to impart to you the purport of some communications I have had from the Longmans and Murray.⁴⁴

Although, as is abundantly clear, Dickens had no use for the collective ability of fellow authors, he was prepared to support an organisation representative of the book trade as a whole; and that was the meaning of his reference to the Longmans and Murray. On 17 May at a meeting held at Thomas Longman's office and chaired by Dickens, it was agreed to found the ‘Association for the Protection of Literature’:⁴⁵ its aim being to support the 1842 Act, extend international copyright, and in particular to rouse opposition to the import of pirated works from abroad—in other words to promote all the copyright and customs legislation enacted and in contemplation during the 1840s. The Association was reasonably representative of the trade, with authors, publishers, printers, a paper-maker, and an editor on the Committee. A lawyer, Alfred Turner, was appointed Secretary, and there seemed a fair prospect of getting something done. However it was not long before dissension arose between the various interests—specifically over Bernhard Tauchnitz,⁴⁶ the Leipzig publisher, who apprised the Association of his plans for issuing English copyright works for sale on the Continent and making voluntary payments for the right to do so. He was in fact anticipating international copyright as an act of good will and as a sound investment. The publisher members of the Association objected, while the authors—some of whom had already signed up with Tauchnitz—did not, and duly resigned. And so, although it struggled on until 1849, the Association—like others of its kind—collapsed.

Dickens's efforts to help authors, however, were by no means at an end, although his emotional energy seemed fated to set him at odds with his fellows. In 1839 he had been elected to the Committee of the Royal Literary Fund, which owed its origin to the initiative of the Reverend David Williams (1738-1816). Aided by a few friends, Williams had founded a society in 1790 to assist authors and their dependents who had fallen on hard times. An important benefactor was George IV who, as Prince Regent, had granted the Society a Charter in 1818, besides contributing substantially to its income. In its early days the Fund had been administered in a somewhat haphazard fashion, but after the appointment of Octavian Blewitt as Secretary in 1839 matters had much improved. Blewitt was honest and efficient and kept costs down to a minimum, but gradually Dickens became dissatisfied and headed a faction of self-styled Reformers who, for three or more years, harried those in charge. In the end Dickens, Charles W. Dilke, editor of The Athenaeum, and John Forster published a pamphlet, dated March 1858, which alleged inter alia that the cost of the administration was absorbing nearly half the annual income, that the Managing Committee had acted unconstitutionally, and that the grants given to authors were parsimonious and ‘paid and received like a poor-rate’. Only the last point carried weight, for many of the Reformers' facts and figures were slanted or inaccurate, so that the Committee was able to rebut them with a well-researched reply. Further exchanges followed, but there was little doubt, when all was over, that the Committee had won the day.⁴⁷

Long before this, however—in 1850—Dickens had helped start a rival organisation for assisting authors. This was the Guild of Literature and Art, planned at Knebworth with Bulwer-Lytton and

in essence a scheme for persuading authors and painters to band themselves together in their own interests. It was proposed that each member should take out a life-policy at some recognized insurance office, and that those who through ill-health or age were uninsurable should be elected as associates of the Guild and share, if indigent, in the benefactions of the Fund to be accumulated by the founders. Certain land in the vicinity of Stevenage was by the generosity of Bulwer-Lytton to be made over to the Guild, and moneys to be derived from certain theatrical performances as well as the copyright in certain plays were to be ear-marked for building houses and endowing the Guild.⁴⁸

Dickens worked very hard at this scheme, organising and acting in several plays which were staged at Devonshire House and other places in London and the provinces. £4,000 was raised in this way, and in 1854 the Guild was duly incorporated by Act of Parliament—though with the proviso that scheme could not become operative for seven years. It was not until July 1865 that three houses, ‘built in the Gothic style’ at Stevenage were ready for occupation—but then, alas, no one wanted to occupy them, even rent free. The houses were unsuitable on several counts, but essentially

To authors and artists the whole scheme was tainted with the idea of patronage, and, though paved with blameless intention, the road to Stevenage appeared to them the road to extinction.⁴⁹

It remains sadly to record that the Guild was dissolved in 1897, and its funds apportioned equally between the Royal Literary Fund and the Artists' General Benevolent Institution.

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A far more drastic fate had long overtaken the Society of British Authors, also known as the ‘Cockspur Street Society’,⁵⁰ born and buried in 1843. During its short life, the Society had managed to attract about a hundred members: among them notables such as Bulwer-Lytton, Charles W. Dilke, William Hazlitt, Thomas Hood, Leigh Hunt, Douglas Jerrold, Harriet Martineau, Mary Russell Mitford, and W. M. Thackeray; but absentees included Browning, Carlyle, Dickens, Tennyson and Wordsworth; while some of the original pioneers, such as Hallam, Milman and Rogers dropped out at an early stage.

Besant commented:

It is characteristic of the opinion formed at the outset concerning the Society that the Athenaeum and the Literary Gazette never accord it a single paragraph. Yet the editor of the Athenaeum was one of its members … The journal … strongly advocates an alliance between authors and publishers for the protection of—whom?—the latter … In a word, literary property in the eyes of the literary papers of this date—and, no doubt, in the eyes of the world—belonged as a right, exclusively and naturally, to publishers. Authors—the producers of literary property—were still considered as publishers' hacks.

Before its demise, the Secretary of the Society received a shoal of letters⁵¹ in reply to the ‘Proposed Prospectus’. By far the most helpful and far-seeing came from Harriet Martineau, writing from Tynemouth on 25 April.⁵² She strongly supported the whole idea and, despite ill-health, offered personal assistance.

I do think a society of authors desirable, and I do see it to be my duty to assist if possible in establishing it.

The field of beneficent operation … seems to me almost boundless. The objects indicated in your prospectus—so various and so important—make one wonder how one can have gone on so long suffering under evils which union might ere this have obviated, and deprived of advantages which union might long ago have secured.

She then enlarged upon the ‘impossibility of making our books cheap’, the need for research into the state and workings of the book trade, the vast potential readership of a rapidly rising population, and the evils of malignant reviewing. She emphasised the lack of good children's books—‘no one … can for a moment compare English juvenile literature with the German’—and while acknowledging the importance of copyright, she underlined again and again the need to reduce prices.

Perfect copyright laws would aid us to a certain extent; but what we want more in relation to the price of our book, is mutual assistance to extricate us from the transition state between old patronage, and that free communication between speaker and hearers—writers and readers—which must be arrived at sooner or later.

Not many others responded in such practical terms. Robert Bell drafted a more workman-like constitution for the Society. T. N. Talfourd suggested co-operative publishing. Horace Smith⁵³ referred tantalisingly to ‘a similar attempt being made many years ago, principally at the instigation of Mr. Cumberland, which failed from a want of accordance among its members as to the best mode of conducting it’—prophetic words destined to be heard on many future occasions in connection with authors' affairs. On the other hand a letter from George Henry Lewes⁵⁴ was typical of the spinelessness that characterised the enterprise.

I thought I had been sufficiently explicit … in assuring you of my good wishes and willingness to belong to the Society when organised, but also of my incapacity and unwillingness to assist in the organisation. I am not a practical man; my business is to think and not to act. No one is more earnest in desiring to elevate the profession of literature to its true position. But my hopes of reform are from within, and not from without. Opinion must first be influenced, and then the organisation of a profession will evolve itself from the opinion … etc.

Besant wrote tartly:

His intellect, you see, was too lofty to stoop to things practical. Later on, it is true, when that intellect got the management of George Eliot's novels, it proved extremely practical. But just then it soared above things mundane.

Finally, a letter from Anna Maria Hall, wife of Samuel Carter Hall, revealed that even the Secretary had lost heart and that the Society was still-born.⁵⁵

I am sure you will believe me, when I tell you that Mr. Hall and myself regret most truly that any opinion we should have expressed could give you pain. I knew that Mr. Dickens did not think your plan as certain as you did yourself, and persons may change their opinions without doing a wrong thing. Your confidence of success in the first instance prevented, perhaps, persons from saying all they thought and all they feared. Of your integrity of purpose there could be no doubt … etc.⁵⁶

Besant made two concluding comments on the whole episode. The first emphasised the extraordinary insularity of men and women of letters in England at this time. No one had bothered to study the experience of the Société des Gens de Lettres in France, founded in 1837, and which despite initial difficulties had survived and was making good progress. Secondly he placed most of the blame for failure upon the shoulders of the Secretary, John Robertson. On the face of it, that seems a biassed and unfair judgement. Robertson may well have been impatient of criticism (as Mrs. Hall hinted), and he certainly irritated Carlyle (he was not alone in this), but can any one person be saddled with responsibility for success or failure in an enterprise of this kind? The answer is ‘Yes’, for this is exactly what happened in 1883-4. Without Besant the second Society of [British] Authors would have failed like the first. He wrote:

In every new society it is one man, and one man alone, who at the outset determines the success and the future of the association. It is one man who rules, infuses spirit, collects ideas, orders the line of march, lays down the policy, and thinks for the society. This is perfectly well known and understood by all who have ever worked upon committees or associated themselves with any combined effort. Therefore we must reluctantly acknowledge that the failure of this Society was due to the incompetence of the man who first started it and became its honorary secretary. Apathy on the part of those concerned, jealousy, even where personal interests are at stake, interference, hostility, and misunderstanding—these are difficulties which every association should expect. That so many good men withheld their names at first ought not to have mattered at all, so long as the projector and manager have a clear and definite programme to advocate. This the French Society had and held it steadily in sight and ultimately succeeded. This Mr. Robertson had not. Therefore he failed.

Notes

1. Altick, pp. 253-4.

2. See Free Trade in Books: A Study of the London Book Trade since 1800 by James J. Barnes, Chapters II-V. Clarendon Press 1964. This work is referred to as Barnes (1). Most publishers were still known as ‘booksellers’, hence the title of the ‘Booksellers' Association’.

3. Routledge, for instance, contracted to pay Bulwer-Lytton £2,000 p.a. for ten years' rights. Altick, p. 299. See also Note 5.

4. See Chapter Three of Gavin McFarlane's Copyright: The Development and Exercise of the Performing Right (thesis submitted to the University of London in 1975 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy), which describes in detail the ways in which dramatists' works were exploited before the 1833 Act.

5. Bulwer-Lytton was born Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer (1803-73), created baronet 1837, 1st Baron Lytton 1859. His mother, Elizabeth Barbara Lytton extended the surname after the death of her husband, General William Bulwer, and on inheriting her property at Knebworth. Thus Edward was referred to as Lytton Bulwer or Bulwer-Lytton at different times in his life. He combined an active public career with a prodigious output of novels, plays, essays, poems, and other works which gained great popularity during his lifetime. It was he who asked for a Select Committee (1831-2) to inquire into legislation affecting dramatic literature and performance—which preceded the 1833 Act.

6. From The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll, p. 202. Third Edition, OUP 1967.

7. op. cit., p. 202. The official title was the Copyright Amendment Act 1842.

8. Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), miscellaneous writer, barrister, serjeant 1833, justice of the common pleas 1849. MP for Reading 1835-41.

9. Hansard, 5 February 1841.

10. Brougham had not held office since being Lord Chancellor 1830-4, but he was still a powerful advocate in the House of Lords.

11. See Copyright: its History and its Law by R. R. Bowker, p. 28. Houghton Mifflin 1912.

12. From International Copyright and the Publisher in the reign of Queen Victoria by Simon Nowell-Smith, p. 22 and footnote. Clarendon Press 1968. An important source of information for this chapter.

13. Harriet Martineau (1802-76) wrote mainly on social and economic subjects and was highly esteemed in public life. See later in this chapter and in Chapter Five. She visited USA 1834-6 and published two books on her experiences which were eagerly read but, owing to the absence of a copyright treaty, she never received a cent from her American sales.

14. Quoted from p. 118 of Authors, Publishers and Politicians. The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement 1815-54 by James J. Barnes. Routledge 1974. Referred to later as Barnes (2). An important source of information for this chapter.

15. The British possessions in North America were not at that date united; and consisted of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island.

16. This Act applied chiefly to the treaty with France signed the previous year, and intended as much to protect authors of French farces against the depredations of British adaptors, as British novelists whose works proved popular in translation abroad.

17. Barnes (2), p. 153. However a music case, D'Almaine v. Boosey in 1835, and a book case, Bentley v. Foster in 1839, established that foreign authors were protected if a work was published in Britain ‘prior to or simultaneous with its appearance abroad’. Ironically, by introducing the concept of reciprocity, the International Copyright Act 1838 confused the issue, so that—despite the 1839 decision—most lawyers then took the view that copyright was only valid for authors whose countries had concluded treaties with Britain under the Act; but since no such treaties came into being before 1846, the whole matter was thrown into limbo.

18. Barnes (2), Chapter III, p. 49 et seq., traces the history of voluntary copyright payments by US publishers: e.g. by Carey and Lea of Philadelphia who made small payments for advance sheets of some of Walter Scott's novels, and by Harper Brothers of New York who made similar arrangements with Bulwer-Lytton. Eventually the latter's London publishers, Saunders and Otley, opened an office in New York in 1836 in an attempt to forestall their rivals and issue American editions of British copyright works themselves; but competition—particularly by Harpers—proved too strong and the venture had to be abandoned within a few years.

19. Although refused an injunction in the Court of Chancery, mainly due to doubts about the dates and origins of first publication in the UK, Murray and Bentley decided to take proceedings further. Their cause was greatly strengthened when, on 20 May 1851, in the same court, Lord Campbell reversed a previous ruling in respect of a music case, Boosey v. Jefferys, and upheld the right of a foreign author to British copyright protection. Soon afterwards Murray and Bentley settled with their opponents out of court and sold them the copyrights as mentioned. But that was not the end of the story for, two years later, Lord Campbell's decision was altered yet again. Thanks to the energy of Henry Bohn, who formed a group calling itself ‘The Society for Obtaining an Adjustment of the Law of Copyright’, recruiting Bulwer-Lytton and other authors in support, the question was referred to the House of Lords as described.

20. Barnes (2), p. 172.

21. op. cit. Chapters IV and IX-XII describe in detail the protracted efforts (including bribery) to secure an International Copyright Act in USA at this time.

22. The petition is reproduced in Bowker, pp. 341-4.

23. Edward Everett (1794-1865), US Minister to Great Britain 1841-5.

24. See Note 18.

25. From footnote, p. 86 of Volume Three of the Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Madeline House, Graham Storey, and Kathleen Tillotson. Clarendon Press 1974. Referred to later as CD Letters III. I have drawn on this work for all the quotations and most of the information about Dickens's visit to America in 1842 and his activities on his return.

26. op. cit., footnote, p. 59.

27. op. cit., footnote, p. 238. ‘A memorial against international copyright … forwarded to Congress by a convention of printers, publishers, and others engaged in the book trade, after a meeting in Boston on 26 April 1842 … concluded with statistics showing that 41,000 people were employed in the American book trade, and that the capital invested was almost 15 million dollars.’

28. Dickens pictured Scott in highly emotional terms, broken by debts that might have been met, had he received the income due from his American sales.

29. CD Letters III, pp. 82-3.

30. op. cit., footnote, p. 84.

31. op. cit., footnote, p. 85.

32. The memorial, printed on pp. 621-2 of CD Letters III, was dated 28 March 1842, and signed by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas Campbell, Alfred Tennyson, T. N. Talfourd, Thomas Hood, Leigh Hunt, Henry Hallam, Sydney Smith, J. J. Milman, Samuel Rogers, John Forster, and Barry Cornwall. The letter from Thomas Carlyle, dated 26 March, is printed on pp. 623-4.

33. From a letter to John Forster of 3 May 1842. CD Letters III, p. 231.

34. op. cit., pp. 256-9.

35. Earlier and contemporary attempts of which I have found evidence include:

    • i) The Society for the Encouragement of Learning, 1736-48. See pp. 28-9 of this book.
    • ii) Unnamed society, no date or details, proposed by Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, (1732-1811). Referred to by Horace Smith, see Note 53.
    • iii) Society for the Encouragement of Literature. Prospectus published in John Bull, 6 March 1825, and in the Courier, 11 March. Its main aim was to purchase the copyright of works ‘which may be deemed worthy of public approbation’. Capital to be £100,000 in shares of £25. Colonel Nugent, chairman. SoA archives.
    • iv) Thomas Campbell's Literary Union Club, 1831. Its object was to raise capital so that members could co-operate in publishing their own works. CD Letters III, footnote, p. 287.
    • v) William Jerdan's National Association for the Encouragement and Protection of Authors, 1838. This had aims similar to those of Campbell's Club. op. cit., footnote, p. 287.
    • vi) Charles Mackay's Milton Institute, 1842: proposed as an association of men of letters for ‘mutual support and assistance’, with club facilities. op. cit., footnote, p. 287.
    • vii) The Literary and Dramatic Fund Association, a benevolent fund, established late in 1842, first meeting 6 June 1843, Benjamin Bond Cabbell, President; William Carpenter, Secretary. op. cit., footnote, p. 435.
    • viii) The British and Foreign Institute, 1843, founded by James Silk Buckingham, who may have thought of the idea as early as 1825. The Prospectus proposed ‘a centre of Personal Intercourse’ for gentlemen of all countries, and ‘a permanent home and resting-place’ for Mr. Buckingham himself. Apparently over a thousand members joined, some of them possibly from the still-born Society of British Authors (described in this chapter). The Institute was formally opened in Hanover Square on 2 February 1844 by the Prince Consort, but the organisation collapsed in 1846. op. cit., footnote, p. 508.
    • ix) Also published in 1843 was John Petheram's Reasons for Establishing an Authors' Publication Society, which advanced proposals for co-operative publishing. Nothing came of the idea, which—with some of the other schemes mentioned—is discussed by James Hepburn in his The Author's Empty Purse & The Rise of the Literary Agent, p. 37 et seq. OUP 1968.

36. Walter Besant (1836-1901). His life and work are described later in this chapter and in Chapters Six to Eight. He had researched the history of the Society of British Authors in some depth, having acquired an important collection of correspondence and other papers (including some belonging to Wilkie Collins) which have unfortunately disappeared. The information here derives from Besant's article and CD Letters III (especially the footnote on pp. 442-3).

37. CD Letters III, footnote, pp. 442-3.

38. op. cit., footnote, pp. 477-8.

39. A proof of this Prospectus, with a copy of the covering letter dated 3 May 1843, signed by John Robertson, is in the possession of the Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia, USA. It is of interest that, in this version of the Prospectus, it was proposed to use the title ‘The Society of Authors’ instead of ‘The Society of British Authors’.

40. From p. 13 of Besant's article, from which succeeding quotations are taken.

41. An earlier covering letter, signed by John Robertson.

42. It is suggested that Dickens was thinking of Samuel Carter Hall, a journalist, and James Silk Buckingham, see Note 35 (viii).

43. CD Letters III, pp. 477-8.

44. op. cit., pp. 478-9.

45. See Barnes (2), p. 129 et seq, and p. 281, Note 33 on that page.

46. See Nowell-Smith, pp. 41-63.

47. Information from The Royal Literary Fund, 11 Ludgate Hill, London EC4.

48. Pope-Hennessy, p. 393.

49. op. cit., p. 570.

50. CD Letters III, footnote, pp. 478-9.

51. These letters formed part of the collection acquired by Besant. See Note 36.

52. She was commenting on the original draft, not the revised version of the Prospectus.

53. Horace Smith (1779-1849), friend of Richard Cumberland, see Note 35(ii), and joint-author with his brother James of Rejected Addresses, a best-selling collection of parodies.

54. George Henry Lewes (1817-78), man of letters, Common Law husband of Mary Ann Evans (‘George Eliot’). See Chapter Five.

55. All was virtually over by June 1843.

56. CD Letters III, footnote, pp. 478-9.

Select Bibliography

Reference Works

The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll. OUP 1967.

The Society of Authors. Relevant publications issued by or for the Society include:

The Grievances between Authors and Publishers. Leadenhall Press 1887.

The History of the Société des Gens de Lettres by S. Squire Sprigge. 1889.

Literature and the Pension List by W. Morris Colles. Glaisher 1889.

The Cost of Production by S. Squire Sprigge and Walter Besant. 1889.

The Methods of Publishing by S. Squire Sprigge. Glaisher 1890.

The Literary Handmaid of the Church by Walter Besant. Glaisher 1890.

The Author. The Society's Journal. 1890 onwards.

Copyright Law Reform by J. M. Lely. Eyre and Spottiswoode 1891.

The Society of Authors. A Record of its Action from its Foundation by Walter Besant. 1893.

Addenda to the Methods of Publishing by G. Herbert Thring. Cox 1898.

What are Writers worth? by Richard Findlater. 1963.

The Book Writers, who are they? by Richard Findlater. 1966.

See also the ‘Bibliography on the Conditions of Authorship’ contained in The Author's Empty Purse by James Hepburn. OUP 1968.

Special and General Studies

Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader. University of Chicago Press 1963.

———. The Sociology of Authorship. Bulletin of the New York Public Library. Volume 66, No. 6. June 1962.

Barnes, James J. Free Trade in Books. A Study of the London Book Trade since 1800. Clarendon Press 1964.

———. Authors, Publishers and Politicians. The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement 1815-54. Routledge 1974.

Besant, Walter The Pen and the Book. Burleigh 1899. This book contains a chapter on Copyright and Essays and Historiettes. Chatto 1903.

Bowker, R. R. Copyright: its History and its Law. Houghton Mifflin 1912.

Dickens, Charles The Letters of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition.

———. Volume 1, edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey. Clarendon Press 1965.

———. Volume III, edited by Madeline House, Graham Storey and Kathleen Tillotson. Clarendon Press 1974.

Hepburn, James The Author's Empty Purse and the Rise of the Literary Agent. OUP 1968.

McFarlane, Gavin Copyright: The Development and Exercise of the Performing Right. Thesis for the University of London 1975.

Nowell-Smith, Simon International Copyright and the Publisher in the Reign of Queen Victoria. Clarendon Press 1968.