Item 14 - Note from R. W. Chapman to R. B. McKerrow

Clarendon Press, Oxford.—Comments on a passage about copyright.

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Transcript

The Clarendon Press, Oxford
29 December, 1926.

Slips 40-1. Copyright.

The “trade” doctrine of perpetual copyright, in the 18C, is of some importance. Tonson claimed perpetual copyright in Shakespeare, and actually stopped the edition for which Johnson issued Proposals in 1745. (The documents are extant.) He did not prosecute the University of Oxford (1744) but I think he undersold us.

The Scottish courts in 1774 decided that there was no such thing as “literary property”. They argued that it arose out of printing, and therefore could not have inhered in Adam and Eve; also that if it had been perpetual (even in England) the Act of Queen Anne (14 years) would have been useless. There was also litigation in England. Injunctions had been obtained by publishers against what they called piracy; but the doctrine came to grief finally in the House of Lords (see Boswell) and thereafter statutory copyright was the only right recognised (except for Clarendon and other picturesque survivals!). I am afraid I am rather vague about it all. Johnson was opposed to perpetual copyright.

RWC

R. B. McKerrow, Esq.

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Typed, except Chapman’s initials and some corrections. At the head is the reference ‘Pkt. 428/R.F.’ A pencil line has been drawn through the text.