Item 7 - Letter from Cyprian Blagden to Sir Walter Greg

2 single sheets

Longmans, Green, & Co. Ltd, 6–7 Clifford Street, London, W.1.—Discusses Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing.

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Transcript

Longmans, Green, & Co. Limited 6 & 7 Clifford Street, London, W. 1 Ref. CCB/EAS 4th June, 1956

Sir Walter Greg, Litt.D., F.B.A.,
River Cottage,
Petworth,
Sussex.

Dear Sir Walter,

I have now read all through LONDON PUBLISHING, and some of it I have read twice. It is, however, so full of meat (I can well believe the “thousand pages of . . . foolscap”!) that it is a book which I shall go on using and finding, I am sure, new suggestions to follow up for many years; and I would like to say that it is the sort of book which I should like to have written.

I hope you will forgive me if I pick out some points which particularly appealed to me and a few with which I do not agree. My interests being what they are, I found Chapter II a really beautiful account of the Records; I only wish you had found the reason for the high fees charged for certain entrances (p. 39)! I am glad you made (p. 83) a reference, by implication, to the existence of wholesaling, a much neglected subject and one about which it is exceedingly difficult to find evidence. What you say (p. 87) about the financing of a book could not have been more welcome or more succin[c]tly put. On p. 48 you say that Watkins “sometimes acted for the Wardens” as Company licensee; {1} I have wondered about this and can only suggest that, as Treasurer to the partners in the Day and Seres privileges, he was more often on the spot than the master or the wardens; have you any solution?

As I see it, the basic problem in the book trade in the first half of the period covered by your book was: “How are the printers to get work?” This is, of course, also a publishing problem; and when printers were proprietors of copies, and particularly when they had patents, they were all right. But there were the trade printers who, from as early as 1558/9 (I 95/6), were establishing this right not to a copy but to the printing of a copy. Is this the sort of right to which you refer in the middle of p. 80? And is it possible that it is the sort of right at which Roberts was aiming with his blocking entries? On the 12th February, 1604 (III 252), he clearly established a printing right and I have wondered whether entrances to printers, even when the word “copy” is used, might not often represent a determination to get work rather than an expectation of publishing profit—which anyhow for a printer (unless he had a shop for distribution and exchange) cannot have been easy to make certain of. Might not this limited—printing—right also help to solve some of the imprints which at present appear to be anomalous? (I have not checked this, since the idea has only just occurred to me; and I do agree with your generalization about imprints on p. 89.)

May I conclude with a few queries which occurred to me as I read the book?

P. 6, line 7: ? add “in London” after Company, for there were freemen of the London Company working in the provinces.

P. 8: Seres’s letter of October, 1582 (II 772), may possibly have been the basis for the 1583 statement you quote.

P. 17, line 3: The making of regulations was allowed, by the Charter. {2}

P. 52, line 9: “Correctors of the press” were really proof-readers, weren’t they?

P. 71, line 8: I think the true interpretation of “to the use of the Company” is to be found on III p. 60; and I feel that the Company was trustee for rather than proprietor of the copies which were derelict.

P. 75: The Psalms in Metre were at this stage, 1588, only granted to the Company in languages other than English.

P. 101, line 1: Watkins has become Wilkins. Roberts was drawing £50 p.a., presumably as part of the payment for Almanacks, up to June, 1618—but on the Poor Account! {2}

Please forgive these little pecks, but it has been such a pleasure to wrestle with your book; there are so few people who are as interested in the Company and there is no one so knowledgable. Please also forgive the length of this letter; if you are too busy I hope you will not try to reply to it.

Yours with sincere admiration,
Cyprian Blagden

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Typed, except the signature.

{1} There is a tick in the margin by this statement.

{2} There is a tick in the margin by this paragraph.

Formerly inserted in Greg's copy of Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650 (1956) (V. 15. 84).

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2020.