It is agreed that the work shall be printed in two volumes in quarto on royal paper, with the prints used in the Spanish edition printed by A. B is to procure the copy of the translation at his own expense and A are to furnish the plates for this and any future quarto editions, the cost of print and paper being divided equally between them. If B is obliged to furnish Jervas with fifty sets of books he is to pay A £25 as well as the cost of the print and paper for them. The net profits in this and any future editions printed by A and B shall be equally divided, and if they print the book in any other size the costs of engraving the plates shall be equally borne and A shall allow Mr (John) Vanderbank’s designs to be used. The property of a moiety of the translation shall be vested by B in A, but the property of the original quarto plates, after being used, shall remain in A.
Duncan’s translation and discourse being now ready to be published in one volume folio, it is agreed that B is to pay for the translation and discourse; that A are to provide the plates formerly printed in Samuel Clarke’s edition of Caesar and pay for their alteration; and that the expenses of print, paper, etc., of this and all future editions are to be divided equally between A and B, as is the profit (‘Produce’) from them. Any costs involved in engraving plates, etc., for future editions of a smaller size shall also be equally borne, and Tonson has agreed that the designs of the folio plates may be used in any such editions. The property of a moiety of the translation and discourse is to be vested in A and the sole property of the folio plates in Tonson. The edition now printed shall be subscribed (i.e. offered for sale by subscription) to the trade, then two hundred copies shall be equally divided between A and B and the rest of the impression stocked. When the two hundred are sold, the remaining copies are to be equally divided, forty copies at a time, till the whole impression is gone.
Taylor Institution, Oxford.—Refers to aspects of his own work (on Boswell’s Life of Johnson), and comments on Crane and Kaye’s Census of British Newspapers and Periodicals and McKerrow’s Introduction to Bibliography.
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Transcript
Taylor Institution, Oxford
7 Feb. 28.
Dear McKerrow (if you will pardon the familiarity).
I am glad you agree. I shall be able to show that Johnson suggested the publication of the Reliques to Percy some time before Shenstone & that Percy started to collect material much earlier than is generally known.
Pollard wrote to me about a week ago concerning facsimiles. I told him they were not really necessary as the editions are easily accessible & the Cancels can be dealt with without the aid of photographs.
Yes. Chapman did send me your book & I am reading it in what leisure I can snatch from other pressing duties. I will try to write a short notice for the April number, but I have to write a paper for the Johnson Club before the 14th of March & ‘one day treads on the heels of another’.
Crane & Kaye {1} get worse. I find Grose’s Olio solemnly struck down as a periodical! I think I will leave them alone for a bit & turn to better books.
If ‘marginal number’ was a recognized term I think you would have known it; but Percy was in close touch with Dodsley who may have told him. Anyhow I think his use is worth recording. {2}
Catchwords—I much prefer ‘catch-line’, but bow to authority. A good instance will be found in The Passenger of Benvenuto 1612, as book of some 600 pp. in which the Italian is printed on the versos & the English translation ‘de Messer Chingo’ otherwise Mr King, on the rectos. Percy has an instance of a separate series for text & notes. {2}
I will try to bring these points out.
I am looking forward to meeting you on the 20th.
Thanks for cards.
Yours sincerely
L. F. Powell
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{1} A Census of British Newspapers and Periodicals, 1620-1800, by R. S. Crane and F. B. Kaye.
{2} This paragraph has been marked by McKerrow by a line in the margin.
Wensleydale.—Submits some queries about imposition which have arisen in compiling a bibliography of Dodsley’s Collection.
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Transcript
In Wensleydale
17:8:24
My dear McKerrow
In working at a bibliography of Dodsley’s Collections† of Poems by several Hands I have struck difficulties about imposition, and should be grateful for advice.
The original work in 3 vols. 1748 (reprinted 1748, 1751) is a duodecimo of the ordinary kind. It was imposed ‘for cutting’; a conclusion suggested to me by the fact that a whole forme (ex hypothesi) is wrongly paged, and confirmed by the watermarks, which fall on the seventh and eighth or on the eleventh and twelfth leaves (or on both pairs when there were 2 watermarks; 2 different papers were used). There are numerous cancels; and I was pleased to find my conclusions from examination of stubs etc. very prettily confirmed by the w.-marks.
The chain-lines are horizontal.
But my difficulty begins with Vols. IV (1755) and V-VI (1758). They are uniform with the earlier volumes, but are in eights. The chain-lines being (in V, VI) horizontal. I assumed that the books were 16o printed in half-sheets, so that each sheet yielded two copies of an 8-leaf quire. This would mean the use of a paper of an unusual size; but it may have occurred to Dodsley that he could economize by getting an extra four pages on to each forme.
But while reposing in this hypothesis I discovered that some of the chain-lines are vertical!
In Vol. IV they are all vertical (and of course this volume may be 8o).
In Vol. V 19 signatures, & 2 prelim. leaves, are horizontal; but A8 & C8 are vertical.
In Vol. VI 20 signatures + 2 prel. leaves are horizontal; but X8 vertical.
There are unfortunately no watermarks in these 3 volumes.
I do not know of any uncut copy. My copy of V is 6¾ x 4¼, and I suppose may have been nearly 7½ x 5 (7 x 4½ is a minimum). I cannot see what imposition would get this on to a sheet so nearly square that it could be put in either way indifferently.
Please don’t think of going to the Museum and hunting out these books. I trouble you with my difficulty only in the chance that it may be quite simple and that the solution may be already familiar.
I expect you are very busy with No I {1}—I wish it all success.
Yours sincerely
R. W. Chapman
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Numbers in signatures and the 'o' in '16o' and '8o' are superscript in the original.
{1} The first number of the Review of English Studies.
† Sic.